Ninth inning home run Adam Frazier rescues Royals in 2-1 win

The Royals move to eight games over .500.

Adam Frazier’s ninth-inning two-run home run gave the Royals a come-from-behind 2-1 win over the Angels Friday night. The Royals move to 24-16 and are eight games over .500 for the first time since June 1, 2016.

The Royals have historically struggled against Angels starter Griffin Canning and they continued that tonight. The lefty allowed just five baserunners over 5 ¹⁄₃ shutout innings. In five career starts against the Royals, he lowered his ERA to 1.46, while he has a 5.08 ERA in 69 career games against everyone else. The Royals wasted a two-out triple by MJ Melendez in the second, then stranded two runners in the fourth. In the top of the fifth, Melendez singled with one out, and Adam Frazier singled to give the Royals a runner in scoring position. But Canning retired Dairon Blanco and Kyle Isbel to end the rally.

The Angels would make that hurt in the bottom of the inning, when Jo Adell hit a solo home run off Alec Marsh. But Marsh was otherwise fantastic, showing some increased velocity with a fastball that was regularly hitting 96 and even hit 98 mph on the radar gun.

Overall he had 17 swing-and-miss pitches and gave up just one run in 5 ¹⁄₃ innings with seven strikeouts and two walks. The Adell home run is the only run he’s given up in his last three starts combined, covering 15 ¹⁄₃ innings. The only other blemish was two throwing errors he made on grounders to the mound.

The Royals seemed headed to a disappointing loss, but the Angels are a very bad baseball team, and as Royals fans know all too well, bad baseball teams find ways to lose. MJ Melendez hit a one-out single off Angels closer Carlos Estevez, setting up the improbable Frazier home run.

John Schrieber was called upon to get the save in the ninth. He got into some trouble when Matt Thaiss doubled over the head of Dairon Blanco in center. But he retired Jo Adell on a groundout (that should have been ruled a foul ball), and Zach Neto grounded out to end the game.

The Royals can take the series tomorrow evening with Cole Ragans scheduled to face Tyler Anderson at 8:38 CT.