D-Backs blanked by Royals

The Arizona Diamondbacks were no match for Gil Meche.

The Kansas City Royals right-hander threw a four-hit shutout Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium, dealing the visiting D-backs a 5-0 defeat to extend their latest losing streak to three games.

“Anytime a pitcher goes CG shutout, even though it took him 130-plus pitches, it’s a good performance,” Diamondbacks manager A.J. Hinch said about Meche, who struck out six and walked one in posting his first complete game of the season and his third career shutout. “He got the outs when he needed to get the outs. He pitched multiple pitches and pretty much shoved it down our throat.”

In improving to 4-5 with a 3.31 earned-run average, the 30-year-old, ninth-year major-leaguer threw 132 pitches, 82 for strikes. Royals manager Trey Hillman said he had no problem with allowing Meche to finish the game on an 85-degree Kansas City evening.

“I wasn’t really concerned about the pitch count, to be honest with you,” Hillman said. “I think this definitely is the hottest night, and everybody knows that starting pitcher is carrying a pretty heavy workload with the pitches that he had. But I walked up to him at the end of the eighth and told him, ‘Nice job.’ And he said, ‘No way. I got this one.’ I was pleased to give him the veteran courtesy there. I wanted him to finish it. As I said, I wasn’t really concerned about the pitch count. It was more the perspiration between innings and how hard he had worked out there in the heat.”

While Meche was putting up zeroes against the Arizona hitters, the Kansas City offense was scratching out one run at a time against Diamondbacks starter Doug Davis, who was charged with four runs (three earned) on six hits in five and two-thirds innings. The Royals (29-34) scored single runs in the first, second, fifth and sixth off Davis (3-8, 3.72 ERA), and they added another in the eighth against reliever Tony Pena.

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“They came up with big hits,” Hinch said about the Royals. “And that’s kind of the nature of this game was they made plays. And you gotta make plays to win baseball games. Whether it’s a defensive play, whether it’s a clutch hit, whether it’s retiring the first batter, you gotta make plays. And they made more than we did.”

The Diamondbacks (27-38) added to their own adversity by committing three errors. They also misplayed two fly balls in the outfield that went for doubles.

“I’m very frustrated because we’re working our tail off, and the players are frustrated,” Hinch said. “Plays that extend innings, plays that get free base runners on base, and then to give them free outs, it’s not winning baseball. And the results are showing up in more losses than we should. So I think we’re all frustrated in here because we’re putting in time, we’re putting in effort, we’re putting in a lot of preparation and the results aren’t coming. It doesn’t make for very much fun.”

By: Tom Kessler
MLBcenter.com Arizona Diamondbacks correspondent

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