The Royals wasted yet another dominant outing from Noah Cameron.
Matt Quatraro didn't need much time to explain how the Kansas City Royals' Monday afternoon game against the Arizona Diamondbacks got away from them.
For nine innings, Kansas City and the Diamondbacks played the kind of game that leaves very little room for a mistake. Then the 10th inning arrived, and everything changed.
"The first nine innings were one game," Quatraro said postgame, via MLB.com. "And the 10th was another game."
The difference was difficult to miss. The Royals went into the bottom of the 10th still looking for their first run after getting six scoreless innings from Noah Cameron and two more from Nate Pearson. Steven Cruz kept the tie intact in the ninth with an unassisted double play from Nick Loftin before striking out Corbin Carroll.
Then Craig Kimbrel entered the 10th and allowed five runs, putting Kansas City in a hole that nearly became a comeback.
The Royals eventually scored four times in the bottom half, but the larger takeaway from Quatraro's comments had little to do with the late rally. For most of the afternoon, Kansas City had gotten exactly the kind of pitching they needed thanks to Cameron.
The left-hander struck out seven Diamondbacks on three hits and two walks over six scoreless innings. He threw 67% strikes and got first-pitch strikes to 68% of the hitters he faced, according to Statcast. More importantly, he never allowed a runner to reach second base.
Quatraro was especially impressed with how efficiently Cameron worked in the heat.
"He was pumping strikes," Quatraro said. "The slider was good, you know, throwing 100 miles an hour, big, big, keeping them where they were. You know, no margin for error."
Cameron explained afterward that the plan was fairly simple. Arizona's hitters are known for taking early in counts, so he wanted to challenge them rather than give them opportunities to get comfortable.
"I thought we were in the zone really well," Cameron said postgame, via MLB.com's Anne Rogers.
The approach produced plenty of foul balls, with Arizona sending 27 balls out of play. But Cameron wasn't bothered by the pitch count that came with it because so many of those swings came early in counts.
Even when Nolan Arenado came up for the third time in the sixth inning, Quatraro trusted Cameron to finish the frame. Cameron got ahead of him and eventually used the slider to produce an ugly swing for his seventh strikeout.
That allowed Pearson to remain available for the seventh, and the right-hander responded with two perfect innings on just 20 pitches.
The Royals ultimately didn't have enough offense to reward that work, and Kimbrel's 10th inning erased the cushion their pitching had created. But Quatraro's assessment afterward offered a different way to look at the loss.
The first nine innings showed what Kansas City's pitching can look like when it controls the game. Cameron and Pearson gave the Royals a chance to win without needing to dominate the scoreboard, and Cruz found a way through a difficult ninth.
As the second game rolls around on Tuesday, the Royals will send Michael Wacha to the mound in hopes of evening the series.
