Julio Urías looked shell-shocked when a disastrous first inning finally ended Saturday night. The Dodgers left-hander walked slowly towards the third-base dugout in Kauffman Stadium as he pondered what the heck just happened during a blooper reel of a five-run Kansas City rally.
Making his first start in six weeks in his return from a left hamstring strain, Urías threw 27 pitches before recording his first out and needed 35 pitches to complete the inning. Three of the four hits he allowed were bloop singles that left Royals bats with exit velocities of 68.5 mph, 63.8 mph and 71.5 mph.
The Royals scored one run on a sacrifice fly … to second base. They scored another on heavy legged catcher Salvador Perez’s acrobatic head-first slide home and two when Dodgers center fielder James Outman got a late jump on a bloop hit to shallow center.
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The situation looked so bleak for Urías that manager Dave Roberts instructed reliever Phil Bickford to start warming up before the second out of the inning.
Urías recovered — somewhat — to throw two scoreless innings but was pulled after the third, and the hole he dug was too deep for the Dodgers to overcome in a 6-4 loss that was delayed 1 hour, 25 minutes by rain.
The Dodgers scored three runs against left-hander Daniel Lynch in the third on Yonny Hernández’s RBI double, Mookie Betts’ sacrifice fly and Freddie Freeman’s RBI single, and they scored once on consecutive one-out singles by Max Muncy, David Peralta and Outman to trimmed the deficit to 6-4 in the eighth. But Hernández struck out on a 95-mph fastball from reliever Taylor Clarke, who was replaced by right-hander Scott Barlow, who is expected to be moved before the Aug. 1 trade deadline.
Barlow walked Betts on a full-count slider to load the bases but got Freeman to ground out to second base to end the inning. Barlow threw a one-two-three ninth for the save.
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The first inning could not have gone much worse for Urías, who went 5-4 with a 4.39 ERA in his first 10 starts before missing 36 games because of his hamstring strain. Maikel Garcia led off with a double to right-center and took third on Bobby Witt Jr.’s bloop single to right.
Witt took off for second on a pitch that Perez blooped just beyond the infield dirt on the right side, but with second baseman Miguel Vargas heading to the bag to cover, the ball dropped for an RBI single.
Nick Pratto then capped a 12-pitch at-bat in which he fouled off six two-strike pitches with a walk to load the bases. Edward Olivares hit a sacrifice fly that Vargas caught in shallow center, Witt tagging and beating a one-hop throw home for a 2-0 lead.
Matt Duffy was hit by a pitch to load the bases. Samad Taylor lofted a fly to middle right. Betts caught the ball with his momentum going towards the plate and fired a strong one-hop throw home that beat Perez, but Smith couldn’t get his tag on Perez in time, as the Royals took a 3-0 lead.
Drew Waters followed with a two-run bloop single to center for a 5-0 lead before Urías struck out Dairon Blanco looking at a changeup to end the inning.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.