No one can blame the Kansas City Royals for wanting to get back home.
Kansas City's 8-2 defeat to Cleveland on Thursday night extended the Royals' losing streak to six games and completed a winless road trip.
"It's been a rough week," Kansas City manager Ned Yost said. "It hasn't been a fun week. (Hopefully), we can get home and start something."
The Royals haven't won since beating the Indians a week ago on Melky Cabrera's game-winning, two-run single that gave them a split of a four-game home series. The Royals were swept in three games in Texas and fared no better in Cleveland.
"We didn't hit very well and we didn't pitch very well," said Jeff Francoeur, who stretched his hitting streak to a career-high 17 games. "We didn't play very well on this trip."
The Royals left home one game behind the Indians in the AL Central. Kansas City returns home in a second-place tie with Detroit and trails Cleveland by 4 1/2 games.
Kansas City was outscored 46-22 and allowed 17 home runs, including four Thursday, in the six-game trip. And Yost, understandably, is tired of watching balls fly out of the park.
"We've seen a bunch of them," he said.
Kansas City starters Kyle Davies (1-3) was just as blunt in his assessment, after giving up all four of the home runs.
"I got my butt kicked tonight," he said. "I'm the reason we lost the game."
All four homers were solo shots. Shin-Soo Choo and Carlos Santana hit back-to-back homers in the first, Grady Sizemore homered to lead off the third, and Shelley Duncan started the fourth with a home run.
Despite the bad numbers, Yost didn't think Davies pitched that poorly.
"All four homers they hit were pitches that were in pretty good spots," Yost said. "He didn't pitch as bad as the line showed, but he sure paid for it."
Davies was more critical of his outing.
"There's no excuses," he said. "I have to get more swings and misses. I couldn't stop it."
Davies allowed eight runs and nine hits over 3 2/3 innings. The right-hander had yielded only one homer in 26 innings over his first five starts.
The Indians blew the game open with a five-run fourth.
The Royals have dropped nine of 11 since starting the season 10-4 and open a nine-game homestand today against Minnesota, another division team that is struggling. Kansas City is 9-5 at home, but that doesn't guarantee the results will get better.
"It doesn't matter," Davies said. "We've got to turn it around. We've got to pitch better. We've got to hit better. We've got to do everything better."
Fausto Carmona (2-3) allowed two runs in seven innings as the Indians earned their 10th straight home win. The Royals didn't score until the seventh when they trailed 8-0. Billy Butler drew a leadoff walk and took third on Francoeur's double, and Wilson Betemit followed with a two-run double to make it 8-2.
Matt Treanor blooped a one-out single to right in the third for the Royals' first hit. He went to third on a double down the third-base line by Alcides Escobar.
Carmona then got leadoff man Jarrod Dyson to ground to first baseman Matt LaPorta, who threw home. Santana ran Treanor back toward third base and applied the tag as Escobar took third and Dyson went to second. Carmona then struck out Melky Cabrera.
Yost tried to find a bright spot before his team packed up to fly home.
"They beat us," he said. "We didn't beat ourselves. We didn't walk guys. We didn't throw the ball around. We didn't misplay balls. We didn't have horrible at-bats. They're rolling. Take your hats off to them and move on."
Notes: Francoeur is batting .365 (23-of-63) during his hitting streak. ... Treanor, who was in a 0-for-21 slump going into the series, had three hits in seven at-bats. .. Davies dropped to 3-6 against Cleveland. ... Royals 2B Chris Getz, in a 3-for-15 slump, did not start. He was replaced by Mike Aviles