Game Recap: Royals top Cubs |
Dustin Riese
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- Friday, March 07 2025
MESA - After getting a rare day off on Wednesday, the Chicago Cubs returned to Cactus League play Thursday for a nighttime tilt with the Kansas City Royals at Sloan Park. This was their second of two meetings this Spring, as the Cubs lit up the Royals in their first meeting.
In their previous meeting, Royals starting pitcher Cole Ragens had a rough go of things as he allowed seven earned runs in 2 1/3 innings. He was back on the mound for this one, facing off against promising young arm Ben Brown. Talk about a massive 180 from one start to the next as Ragens silenced the Cubs through three innings, allowing one hit and striking out six before the offense went to work in a 9-3 Royals win. Brown was also very good, and even though his final line will show he allowed three runs in 3 2/3 innings, he did open the game with three perfect frames and wound up striking out five. Even when the Royals did manage to get to Brown, all the damage came in the fourth inning, and most of the damage wasn't his fault, as there was some bad luck involved. The fourth inning was a strange inning for not only Brown but for the Royals offense in general as Kyle Isbel started things off with a leadoff double for the Royals' first hit of the game. Doubles were the theme of the inning for the Royals as they connected for four doubles, including a trio of RBI doubles from Michael Massey, MJ Melendez, and Freddie Fermin, to take a 3-0 lead, and they never looked back. Two of those three doubles weren't hit particularly hard, which is where the bad luck comes into play. Ben Brown, Filthy Knuckle Curve. 😷 pic.twitter.com/U0bpxxtKeF Following Brown's outing, the Cubs turned to Brad Keller and Keegan Thompson in relief, and both of them tossed a scoreless frame to keep things close. It took the Cubs five innings to break through on the scoreboard, and they scratched across their first run on some more Pete Crow-Armstrong magic, which is becoming a theme. With Jonathan Bowlan on the mound, it was a costly one-out error that allowed Dansby Swanson to reach base before he advanced to second on the Armstrong single. Swanson was later thrown out on a double steal, but with Armstrong stealing third later in the inning he was able to score as Bowlan uncorked a wild pitch on that steal attempt to make this a 3-1 game. PCA continues to cause CHAOS 🌪️ pic.twitter.com/6yxB0bkYZ4 That was as close as the Cubs would get as the Royals lit up Ethan Roberts and Chris Flexen for six runs to push their lead to 9-1 through eight. The first of those runs came off Roberts in the seventh as Jac Caglianone uncorked a two-run homer to put the Royals in front 5-1. Their big inning came off Flexen in the eighth as the Royals broke the game wide open with four runs to put this one out of reach. One-out singles from Javier Vaz and Daniel Vazquez set the offense up in a great spot, but the two-out magic did the damage, with Jordan Groshans picking up a double to push the lead to 7-1. Groshans would come around to score on the John Rave single later in the inning, and just like that, it was an 8-1 Royals lead. Kansas City would tack on another run in the top of the ninth to stretch their lead to 9-1 as the Cubs were down to their last at-bats, trailing by eight. Throughout most of this game, the Cubs offense was held in check, but it was in the seventh when they had a chance to keep things close with Armstrong picking up a clutch double to put a pair of runners in scoring position. Unfortunately, the Cubs couldn't cash in with the big hit, and had they done that, it does make you wonder how different this game could've been. After Jonathon Long picked up a leadoff single to begin the bottom of the ninth, it was Gage Workman coming through once again to connect for his team-leading third homer, making this a 9-3 game. Gage Workman drills his third Cactus League homer for the @Cubs ⚡️ Workman continues to be one of the most interesting stories of the Spring. He has been arguably their best hitter but finds himself fighting for a job. His homer was followed by a Greg Allen single, but that was it for the Cubs' offense. Andrew Hoffman settled down to strike out the final two hitters to preserve the win. The Cubs had six hits in the loss, and Armstrong led the way with two.
Selected in the Rule 5 Draft, the 25-year-old takes the Spring Training lead with 11 RBIs. pic.twitter.com/nAHmIJMEHy
