G116: Royals 6, Red Sox 2

Royals  - 000 213 000 - 6  7  0
Red Sox - 001 000 010 - 2  9  0

Andrew Cashner (5.1-7-6-2-4, 83) failed to endear himself to Red Sox fans once again. He has allowed four or more runs in four of his five Boston starts.

Jorge Soler belted two home runs (412 and 385 feet) and Ryan O'Hearn (he of the .174 average and .304 slugging) hit one.

Cashner: "I thought I had good stuff. Made three mistakes. They hit three home runs." (I did not watch this game, but I know that more than three of his 83 pitches were mistakes.)

Andrew Benintendi singled in a run in the third and Cashner got the first two Royals in the fourth. Then he walked Hunter Dozier and Soler crushed the first pitch he saw over everything in left.

Alex Cora: "We trust him. Stuff-wise, he's still throwing the ball well. ... There's a reason we brought him here. ... We see flashes of his stuff and what he can do."

When the team is sinking like it has over the last 10 games, Cora's optimism is a bit annoying.

Elsewhere: Toronto's Bo Bichette is the first hitter in major league history to have 10+ extra-base hits within his first nine career games. Teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is the youngest player with 16+ RBI in a five-game span in MLB history (July 27-August 1).

Dinelson Lamet of the Padres took a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Mariners on Tuesday night. Seattle ended the night with six hits and the mlb.com story notes the Mariners avoided becoming "the first team in MLB history to be no-hit three times in a season". It would have been worse than that. The Mariners were eights out away from being no-hit three times in less than four weeks! They were no-hit by the Angels on July 12 (13-0) and by the Astros on August 3 (9-0).

AL Wild Card: CLE/TBR –, OAK 0.5, TEX 6.5, BOS 6.5.

Jakob Junis / Andrew Cashner

Betts, RF
Devers, 3B
Martinez, DH
Benintendi, LF
Holt, SS
Vázquez, C
Moreland, 1B
Chavis, 2B
Bradley, CF

If the Red Sox go 47-0 over the rest of the regular season, they will still finish one win shy of last year's historic 108-54.

With eight weeks remaining on the schedule, Boston has already lost more games in 2019 (55) than they did last year (54). Which illustrates how disappointing this season has been ─ and how spectacular last year was. ... What fickle souls, the baseball gods.

AL Wild Card: CLE/TBR –, OAK 0.5, BOS 5.5, TEX 6.0.