Royals finish with winning road trip, but drop Sunday's finale to Guardians

Jaylon Thompson, The Kansas City Star on Aug 30, 2026

Published in Baseball

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

The Kansas City Royals handled their business during this week’s six-game road trip against the Toronto Blue Jays and Cleveland Guardians.

The Royals (62-76) won both road series. However, Kansas City will return home to Kauffman Stadium with a sour taste following an 11-1 loss to the Guardians on Sunday.

“Good road trip,” Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino told reporters in Cleveland. “Feel good about it. Obviously, not happy with the game. It’s not good enough today, but just got to take the off day tomorrow and get ready to get back at Miami on Tuesday.”

Cleveland dropped the first two games in the series. And their superstars responded Sunday afternoon with an offensive explosion.

Guardians sluggers Jose Ramirez and Nathaniel Lowe hit a pair of two-run homers off Royals starter Seth Lugo. Meanwhile, Joe Adell recorded a two-run single and Chase DeLauter turned in a four-hit performance.

“We didn’t help ourselves giving an extra out there in the third or fourth,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro told reporters postgame. “And they made us pay for that. You get to two strikes on Adell with the bases loaded and we couldn’t put him away. There was a lot of different little moments that compounded to make it not a good outing.”

Lugo took the loss Sunday. He didn’t have his usual command while surrendering nine runs in 3 2/3 innings. The Guardians did damage on Lugo’s curveball that was routinely left over the plate.

Ramirez crushed a 79.4 mph curveball in the fourth inning. It resulted in his 11th home run as the baseball just cleared the right-field wall. The Guardians registered four batted ball events and three hits against Lugo’s curveball, per Baseball Savant.

“I felt like I had a hard time with my breaking balls,” Lugo told reporters in Cleveland postgame. “I don’t think my sweeper was getting to a good spot. And, you know, the cutter was backing up a little bit. So that put me in a bind.”

Lugo has struggled in six August starts. He allowed 28 earned runs in 30 1/3 innings while the Royals’ offense overcame his inefficiency.

That wasn’t the case Sunday. The Royals took a 1-0 lead after Salvador Perez logged an RBI single off Guardians lefty starter Parker Messick.

However, Messick would settle into his start. He navigated an elevated pitch count but still logged six innings to qualify for the victory.

“He’s challenging and it’s a unique delivery,” Quatraro said. “He’s got a quick arm and his stuff is good too. There’s a reason that he has the numbers he has. I felt like we were pretty competitive early there. I think it was the third — he had quicker innings and he got into a little bit of a groove there.”

Messick improved to 11-8 this season. He tossed 61 of 105 pitches for strikes as the Guardians maintained their lead for the final spot in the American League wild-card race.

Cleveland (69-68) holds a 1 1/2-game lead over the Blue Jays. The Royals are now 7 1/2 games back in the wild-card standings.

What’s next

The Royals are off Monday before beginning a three-game series against the Miami Marlins on Tuesday night.

____