KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez, Chase DeLauter and Petey Halpin drew consecutive bases-loaded walks in a five-run ninth inning capped by Angel Mart\u00ednez’s two-run double, and the Cleveland Guardians beat the Kansas City Royals 12-9 Friday night to maintain a one-game lead over the Chicago White Sox in the AL Central.<\/p>\n
Cleveland (84-76) and Chicago (83-77) are both assured at least wild card berths. Each team has two games left, and the White Sox hold the division tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
Rookie Carter Jensen, who had a career-high five RBIs, tied the score 7-7 in the eighth with his second homer of the game, a two-run shot off Hunter Gaddis (6-3). Jensen has 27 homers this season.<\/p>\n
Nate Pearson (2-4) walked Nathaniel Lowe on four pitches starting the ninth and, after Travis Bazzana flied out, issued consecutive four-pitch walks to pinch-hitter Patrick Bailey and Brayan Rocchio.<\/p>\n
Steven Kwan grounded to third baseman Maikel Garcia, who threw home for a forceout, and Ram\u00edrez forced in the go-ahead run with a five-pitch walk.<\/p>\n
Nolan Hoffman relieved and walked DeLauter on five pitches and Halpin on four. Mart\u00ednez\u2019s double drove in two runs for a 12-7 lead, and Halpin was thrown out at the plate.<\/p>\n
Salvador Perez hit his 21st homer in the bottom half, a two-run drive against Matt Festa.<\/p>\n
Austin Hedges and David Fry homered for Cleveland.<\/p>\n
Up Next<\/p>\n
Guardians RHP Tanner Bibee (6-15, 4.35 ERA) and Royals RHP Michael Wacha (9-9, 3.33) start Saturday night. night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez, Chase DeLauter and Petey Halpin drew consecutive bases-loaded walks in a five-run…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":861874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[41445,2722,2724,852,363,3,6454,90616,7739,99,452],"class_list":["post-861873","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"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}