Yankees 1, Royals 12: Pineda, bullpen get hit hard

In his last outing, Michael Pineda notched a career-high16 strikeouts and pitched a terrific game against the Orioles, but he wasn't able to duplicate that success tonight. In fact, he set another career record, allowing ten hits in a game for the first time. The Yankees were counting on him to halt their losing streak, and the bullpen certainly didn't limit the damage, but this offense also looked terrible tonight. In their defense, they hit a lot of long fly balls, but Kauffman Stadium is huge and they just couldn't get one out.

The Royals wasted no time in getting on the board. Mike Moustakas doubled in the first inning, and they scored their first run on a double by Lorenzo Cain that bounced off the wall over Brett Gardner's head. Moustakas and Cain teamed up again in the third inning, with a triple and sac fly to score another run. Between the first and sixth inning, Pineda gave up a lot of hits, but the game didn't get out of control until the sixth. With the Yankees trailing by one run, the Royals batted around in the sixth, sending 11 batters to the plate, and adding six runs to put the game out of reach. Alex Gordon doubled, Omar Infante tripled, then it turned into a hit parade. Pineda left the game in the middle of the sixth, having allowed ten hits, five earned runs, and only getting one strikeout. David Carpenter and Justin Wilson both came in to try and put an end to the inning, but they allowed three runs to score between them. Finally, Jose Ramirez got Salvador Perez to pop out to end the sixth inning with a seven run lead.

If that wasn't enough, the Royals tacked on four more runs in seventh inning off of Ramirez, making the score 12-1. If you missed this game, consider yourself lucky. Branden Pinder ended up being the only Yankee reliever to pitch a clean inning tonight.

The Yankees scored their only run of the game in the fourth inning. Alex Rodriguez hit a leadoff double, which was followed by a single by Mark Teixeira and sac fly from Brian McCann to score the run. Tonight, Gardner hit his first triple of the season and Carlos Beltran hit a double but they couldn't capitalize on those. Other than that, there were a lot of fly balls hit back at the track that just didn't get out. Tonight's loss makes four in a row for the Yankees, which is the most they've lost in a row all season (They dropped three in a row the very first week).

Tomorrow's game will be a rare Saturday night game, with CC Sabathia set to pitch against Danny Duffy at 7:10 EST. With any luck, CC will right the ship and end the losing streak.

Box score, if you dare.