Matt Quatraro Explains Royals Starter's Rough Outing Before Rematch

Six days after giving up nine earned runs in Cleveland, Seth Lugo takes the ball again for the Kansas City Royals tonight at Kauffman Stadium, and the man on the other side is the same one he beat less than two weeks ago.

Max Scherzer starts for Toronto in the middle game of the series, a rematch of the August 25 meeting at Rogers Centre that the Royals won 5-3 when Lugo threw five innings of one-run ball and Scherzer walked five, and the two have gone in opposite directions since.

Lugo's last start came last Sunday at Progressive Field, and it went wrong almost right away.

The Guardians scored three runs off him in the first inning and kept going until he left with two outs in the fourth, charged with nine earned runs on nine hits in an 11-1 loss.

MLB.com called it a career high for the 36-year-old right-hander, and it is the most earned runs he has allowed in 28 starts this year.

Lugo told reporters that Cleveland kept spoiling good pitches with two strikes, and manager Matt Quatraro said the stuff was fine but the location early on was not.

"There were a lot of little moments that compounded to make it not a good outing," Quatraro said.

That start pushed Lugo to 6-8 with a 5.03 ERA over 154 innings, a long way from what Kansas City expected at the top of this rotation.

Scherzer followed his loss to the Royals with seven scoreless innings of one-hit ball and 10 strikeouts against Seattle last Sunday, even though the 42-year-old still sits at 2-7 with a 6.16 ERA in 13 starts.

The standings say the game means more to Toronto.

The Blue Jays sit at 71-71 after Friday night's 9-2 win at Kauffman Stadium and are one game out of the last American League wild card spot, while the Royals fell to 63-79, nine games out of that race.

Kansas City is spending September finding out which arms it can count on next year, and Lugo is the veteran the younger starters are supposed to learn from, so a bounce-back against a lineup in a playoff chase would go a long way.

The staff around him keeps getting thinner too, since Tony Gonsolin is still on a rehab assignment in Omaha after giving up five runs in his second outing there on September 1, Carlos Estévez is set for season-ending shoulder surgery on Tuesday, and Craig Kimbrel became ill on the mound and left Thursday's win over Miami in the seventh inning.

Lugo should be judged on nights like this one rather than on the Cleveland mess.

He has held opponents to one run or fewer in six starts this season, including the last time he saw Toronto, so the good version is still in there and the Royals need to see it against a team with something to play for.

Randy Dobnak, who held this same Toronto lineup to three runs over six innings on August 26, starts Sunday's series finale before Arizona comes to Kauffman Stadium for three games starting Monday.