CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 Michael Wacha dominated Cleveland’s lineup by allowing just four singles over eight innings as the Kansas City Royals stayed scorching hot with a 3-0 win on Friday night to end the Guardians’ winning streak at seven games.<\/p>\n
Wacha (8-8) was in control from his first pitch to his 103rd and cooled off the Guardians, who just returned from a 6-0 trip to Colorado and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Rookie Carter Jensen hit a two-run homer in the ninth for the Royals, who have won 11 of 12 and are 23-16 since the All-Star break.<\/p>\n
Wacha, who leads the AL with 18 quality starts, walked none and struck out a season-high 10. The Guardians only got one runner past second base against the right-hander. Wacha improved to 6-1 against AL Central teams in 2026.<\/p>\n
Steven Cruz loaded the bases in the ninth on two singles and a hit batter before retiring Angel Genao on a comebacker for his sixth save.<\/p>\n
Clinging to a 1-0 lead, Jensen gave the Royals two huge runs in the ninth by belting his 19th homer, a shot to right off reliever Craig Yoho.<\/p>\n
Tanner Bibee (5-14) suffered another tough loss for Cleveland. He only allowed one run in six innings, but the Guardians’ offense couldn’t get anything going against Wacha.<\/p>\n
Bibee came in getting an average of just 3.17 runs of support per game \u2014 third-lowest in MLB.<\/p>\n
After missing some early scoring chances, the Royals finally pushed across a run in the fifth inning against Bibee.<\/p>\n
Bobby Witt Jr., whose return from the injured list earlier this month has helped fuel Kansas City’s recent tear, doubled and went to third on a flyout. Salvador Perez brought him home with a hard groundout.<\/p>\n
Up Next<\/p>\n
Royals LHP Daniel Lynch (4-4, 2.93 ERA) starts against LHP Foster Griffin (15-4, 3.19), who is 3-1 with Cleveland since coming over in a deadline trade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND (AP) \u2014 Michael Wacha dominated Cleveland’s lineup by allowing just four singles over eight innings as the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1031794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[30319,7448,1578,13593,1266,50,1573,117580,13570,62,52,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1031793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-associated-press","tag-cleveland","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-ohio","tag-ohio-cleveland-guardians","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-sports","tag-top-stories","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117181112984452280","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1031794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}