KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Since he was about 11 years old, Royals rookie pitcher Jakob Junis has taken pride in his emotional stability.
He's not the type to let a shellacking _ like the one in his last appearance against the Indians on Friday, when he gave up four runs in 21/3 innings of relief _ bother him, and much less a pair of back-to-back singles.
"I've been getting compliments on that since I was in fifth grade," said the 24-year-old of such stability. "I don't see that changing any time soon."
Throughout his seven stints at the major league level this season, Junis has endured his share of disappointment.
But in his last three starts for the Royals, who fell, 3-2 to the Rockies on Thursday at Kauffman Stadium, he's shown flashes of brilliance. Junis owns a 2-0 record and 1.86 ERA in that span, including Thursday's no-decision in which he matched a career-high with seven strikeouts in 51/3 innings.
He's bounced back after allowing 22 earned runs in 33 innings through his first six starts, something Royals manager Ned Yost complimented him for after the loss the Royals endured.
"Very impressive to me. The way that he goes out and competes, he does it kind of like a dead fish," Yost said. "You don't ever see an emotion in him. He doesn't get too high, too low. He just goes out and executes pitches."
Asked after the game if he'd received that kind of praise before, Junis lauged.
"I don't know what that even means," he said.
Still, the fact remains that despite Junis' efforts, the Royals could not pull off a three-game sweep of the Rockies. A two-run homer off reliever Mike Minor in the eighth inning snapped the Royals' three-game winning streak.
Behind in the count 3-2, Minor threw Rockies first baseman Pat Valaika an 83 mph breaking ball in the middle of the zone. Valaika turned on the pitch and pulled it into the porch above the Royals' bullpen in left field, giving the Rockies a one-run lead they wouldn't give up.
"I just hung it, it didn't have a good break on it and it didn't have good spin," Minor said. "It was kind of one of those cement-mixer kind of things. Not much depth to it. I wanted it down, not to necessarily bounce, but just a quality pitch and I left it up."
The mistake seemed insurmountable for the Royals, who left seven on base and went 0 for 1 with runners in scoring position on Thursday.
Royals outfielder Melky Cabrera tried to start a rally in the bottom of the eighth, reaching base on a leadoff single. But he remained stranded when Rockies reliever Mike Dunn struck out the next three batters.
"Today was one of those things where there wasn't a ton of offense going on all day," Brandon Moss aid. "... One pitch, you can't really do anything about that. It happens. We scored both of our runs on one pitch, too. Sometimes that's just the way it goes."
Before that, Junis limited the Rockies to one run. He'd thrown 71 pitches through five innings before allowing the first two hitters of the sixth to reach on a single and double.
Scott Alexander relieved Junis with one out, allowed one run (charged to Junis) to score on a Raimel Tapia shot into left field, and then induced a double play that kept Junis in line for what could have been the sixth win of his career.
By all appearances, the Royals were on track to head to Cleveland with a four-game winning streak. Whit Merrifield injected some energy into the Thursday afternoon crowd with a leadoff home run in the first inning.
Then Moss led off the second with a home run of his own, yanking the first pitch of his at-bat into the right field corner.
But that was all the offense the Royals could muster in the finale of a series, a series that had Eric Hosmer mashing a walk-off homer off former-teammate-turned-Rockies-closer Greg Holland _ who ended up earning his 77th save at Kauffman Stadium on Thursday _ and catcher Salvador Perez sparking hope in the Royals' fight for the playoffs.
After Saturday's loss to the Indians, MLB.com's postseason projections ranked the Royals behind the Twins with a 17 percent chance of making the playoffs. That number jumped to 32 percent after Wednesday's 6-4 victory, wiggling the Royals ahead of the Twins, who closed out a series against the White Sox late Thursday.
The numbers are arbitrary, of course. As the Royals travel for another three-game set against the American League Central-leading Indians, the line graph predicting the Royals' fate will continue to fluctuate.
"It's just a matter of luck of the draw," Yost said. "Colorado was hot, hot, hot, and they've cooled off here lately. Luckily, we caught them at a time when they were cool. There were teams that have caught us when we were cool and they were happy. There's teams that have caught us when we were hot and they weren't so happy. So you just go play them."
