And That Happened: Thursday's scores and highlights - MLB

Angels 6, Rays 5: Mike Trout’s walkoff caps a four-run ninth inning rally. The homer came off Brad Boxberger, but even if he lit the match, Grant Balfour spread the kerosene by walking two batters and giving up an RBI single just before Trout’s three-run bomb.

Twins 4, Red Sox 3: Another walkoff. This time the hit was delivered by Aaron Hicks. A day after his own team ripped him in the media. I guess in between Wednesday and Thursday Hick, to paraphrase Ron Gardenhire, studied the game a little more, studied the pitchers a little bit more, did drills and everything, threw his talent out on the field and said, “I can do this.”

Brewers 4, Pirates 3: Oh, another walkoff. Here it was Khris Davis, who delivered a two-run single off Mark Melancon. when the Brewers were down 3-2. The Brewers have won four of five and still have a five-game lead in the Central. I keep saying to myself “the Cardinals will close that gap in time” — and I still believe that — but it would help their cause of the Brewers started to lose. A pity for St. Louis that Milwaukee doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with all that.

Reds 5, Padres 0; Padres 6, Reds 1: Johnny Cueto is gonna petition the league office to have all of his starts move to the afternoon because he’s lights-out during day games. Well, he’s pretty amazing during all games, but his day game performances has been pretty incredible over the years. Even before yesterday’s gem he had a 2.53 ERA in daytime starts compared to 3.94 at night. On the 2014 season he’s now down to a 1.25 ERA and has three complete games. He had only six in his whole career before this season.

Blue Jays 4, Indians 2: Two homers for Edwin Encarnacion. At this point I’d insert that “Nacho Libre” video but the short version with just the chorus of that song and no preroll ads seems to have been taken off YouTube. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to call NBC to have them buy me that movie. A craftsman has to have tools at his disposal.

Cardinals 5, Cubs 3: Well, the Cardinals are at least trying to do their part. Playing the Cubs helps as they’ve lost nine of eleven. Here Michael Wacha pitched seven solid innings and [altogether now] helped his own cause by driving in two runs.

Editor’s Note: Hardball Talk‘s partner FanDuel is hosting a one-day $45,000 Fantasy Baseball league for Friday night’s MLB games. It’s $25 to join and first prize is $7,000. Starts at 7:05pm ET on Friday. Here’s the FanDuel link.

Orioles 2, Royals 1: Nelson Cruz hit a two-run homer in the fourth for all of the runs Baltimore needed. He’s on pace for 50 homers and 145 RBI. Someone alert Buster Olney that he needs to write a column telling everyone it’s OK to think Cruz is juiced.

Yankees 1, Mets 0: Alfonso Soriano had an RBI double for the only scoring in this one. The real show here: rookie reliever Dellin Betances coming into the game for the Yankees in the middle of the game and striking out six Mets in a row. He picked up the win too, and I now predict the New York media will anoint him the Yankees’ savior.

Giants 6, Marlins 4: A Buster Posey RBI double came in a three-run fifth inning that put the Giants ahead for good and helped Matt Cain get his first win of the year. Cain wasn’t fantastic — he gave up a couple of homers early — but he did give San Francisco eight innings.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The first thing that Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman thinks about when he wakes up each morning is how the club, stuck in what seems like an interminable rebuild, will play on that particular day.

Not where they will play four or five years down the road.

Yet given the modest expectations for a team that lost nearly 100 games a year ago, it makes sense many Royals fans are just as interested – quite possibly more so – in the plans for a downtown ballpark than whether infielder Bobby Witt Jr. can double down on his brilliant rookie season or pitcher Brady Singer can truly become a staff ace.

That’s why Sherman’s second thought probably moves to the downtown ballpark, too.

“This is a huge decision, and I look at it as maybe the most important decision we’ll make as long as we have the privilege of stewarding this team,” Sherman said before the Royals held a final workout Wednesday ahead of opening day. “I’m probably as anxious as you to get moving on that, but it’s a complicated process.”

The Royals have called Kauffman Stadium home since the sister to Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, opened 50 years ago next month.

And while most stadiums are replaced because they have become outdated, the unique, space-aged look of Kauffman Stadium – built during an era in which teams trended toward impersonal, multisport concrete donuts for their homes – remains beloved by Royals fans and visitors alike.

The problem is that despite numerous renovations over the years, the very concrete holding the ballpark together has begun to crumble in places. The cost simply to repair and maintain the ballpark has become prohibitive.

So with the decision essentially made for them to build an entirely new stadium, the Royals revealed plans to build an entire development in the same mold of The Battery Atlanta, where the Braves built Truist Park, and the Ballpark Village in St. Louis, where the new Busch Stadium is merely the centerpiece of a whole entertainment district.

No site has been secured, but several of the most promising are in downtown Kansas City, where the Power & Light District along with T-Mobile Center have spearheaded a successful era of urban renewal.

Sherman has said that private funds would cover the majority of the stadium cost and the entire village, each carrying a price tag of about $1 billion.

But if any public funding will be used, as it was to build and maintain Kauffman Stadium, then it would need to be voted upon, and the earliest that it could show up on a ballot would be August.

“You look at Atlanta, they took some raw ground – they started with 85 acres – and that has been a complete home run,” said Sherman, who purchased the Royals in August 2019, shortly before the pandemic wreaked havoc on team finances.

“This is one of the reasons we want to do this: That’s helped the Braves become more competitive,” Sherman said of the vast potential for increased revenue for one of the smallest-market teams in baseball. “They have locked up and extended the core of their future, and the Braves are in a great position from a baseball standpoint.”

So perhaps the first two thoughts Sherman has each day – about performance and the future – are one and the same.

When it comes to the team itself, the Royals were largely quiet throughout the winter, though that was by design.

Rather than spending heavily on free agents that might help them win a few more games, they decided to stay the course with a promising young roster in the hopes that the development of those players would yield better results.

In fact, Sherman said, the club has been discussing extensions for some of the Royals’ foundational pieces – presumably Witt, who was fourth in voting for AL rookie of the year, and Singer, who was 10-5 with a 3.23 ERA last season.

“We’re having conversations about that as we speak,” Sherman said. “We have a number of young players that we’re trying to evaluate and we’re talking to their representatives about what might work.”

Just because the Royals’ roster largely looks the same, that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. The Royals fired longtime general manager Dayton Moore in September and moved J.J. Picollo to the role, then fired manager Mike Matheny in October and replaced him with longtime Indians and Rays coach Matt Quatraro.

Sherman said the new voices created a palpable energy in spring training that he hopes carries into the regular season.

“When we acquired the team, we had three primary objectives,” Sherman said. “One was to win more games; we’re working on that. The second was to secure the future; that’s what (the stadium) is. And the third was to do good in the community.

“But the first priority,” he said, “is really the on-field product. That’s what really lifts everything else up.”

And That Happened: Thursday’s scores and highlights

Royals’ John Sherman optimistic about new ballpark, current team