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Sizemore homers twice as Indians extend Royals' misery

May 31, 2008 - 5:55 AM KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Ticker) -- With Cliff Lee a bit off his game, the Cleveland Indians turned to two hitters who have a knack for haunting the Kansas City Royals.

Grady Sizemore homered twice and Casey Blake belted a two-run shot in the sixth inning Friday, leading the Indians to a 5-4 win over the Royals, who have lost 12 in a row.

Despite one of his worst starts of the season, Lee (8-1) picked up his second straight win, tying Boston's Daisuke Matsuzaka, Anaheim's Joe Saunders and Mike Mussina of the New York Yankees atop the American League victory list. The lefthander surrendered four runs and 10 hits with a walk and three strikeouts in six innings.

"Cliff battled," Indians manager Eric Wedge said. "He wasn't at his best, but again, it's just another step for him. He didn't give in. He fought through it. He actually did get better as the game went along. He gave us every opportunity to win the game."

After Sizemore hit his fourth leadoff homer of the season, the Royals answered with a pair of two-run innings in an attempt to end their 11-game slide.

"This is really hard," Royals manager Trey Hillman said. "If you've got a heart at all and you're a Royals fan, you have to hurt."

However, Sizemore connected for his second home run of the contest - a two-run shot in the fifth - to record the third multi-homer effort of his career and trim Kansas City's advantage to 4-3.

One inning later, Blake - who played collegiately at nearby Wichita State - completed the comeback with a two-run blast off reliever Brett Tomko (2-7).

Sizemore's power display gave him 18 home runs and 50 RBI lifetime against the Royals, by far the best numbers he has collected against any opponent. In 90 career games vs. Kansas City, Blake has hit 14 shots and recorded 59 RBI - his highest total of runs driven in against any opponent.

"I don't know what that's all about - a coincidence," Blake said.

Trailing, 5-4, in the sixth, the Royals wasted a grand opportunity to at least tie the game.

With one on and two outs, David DeJesus and Esteban German both singled. However, DeJesus ventured too far past second base, allowing right fielder Ben Francisco to throw him out a split-second before Joey Gathright crossed the plate, nullifying what would have been the tying run.

"That's a real big play," Wedge said. "That's one of those games where every little bit of it meant something in the end, no doubt about it."

Then, as if the Royals had not suffered enough heartache, Sizemore ended the game with a spectacular catch against the wall in left-center on a hard-hit fly ball hit by Jose Guillen.

"I thought I had a good jump on it," Sizemore said. "I wasn't sure how close it would be to the wall. I felt like I was tracking it well, but I wasn't sure how it was going to end up. I caught it before I got to the wall. I just wanted to make sure I held onto it and keep it in the glove."

"That was a (heck of a) baseball game in general," Wedge said. "Grady was special with two home runs and, obviously, that catch to end the game - talk about no fear. We threw some leather out there. ... (Right fielder Ben Francisco) made a heads-up play, throwing the ball to second base (in the sixth inning). That was big."

John Buck had two RBI and Mark Teahen scored twice for Kansas City.

"Its increasingly more and more difficult (to stay positive)," Hillman said. "I'm searching as deep as I can and I'm thinking maybe we gave a really good crowd a glimmer of hope. We didn't get more breaks than the errors we made. We made the baserunning mistake, and that's it. Sometimes that's all it takes."