Royals pound Miley, D-backs to take opener in a rout: By The Numbers

Cliché as it may sound, the Major League Baseball season is in fact a marathon not a sprint.

Clunkers — be it at the plate or on the mound — are bound to happen over the course of 162 games.

That Arizona Diamondbacks starter Wade Miley endured one Tuesday night, however, was somewhat surprising.

Heading into the interleague affair with the Kansas City Royals, Miley was sporting a 4-1 record with a 2.45 ERA in his last six starts.

Those numbers meant little to Ned Yost’s squad, who promptly knocked Miley around with a pair of three-run shots through the first 4.2 innings.

And even after Miley was lifted with the bases loaded in the top half of the fifth, the Royals still managed to inflict pain on the 27-year-old as Nori Aoki smacked his first career grand slam off of rookie reliever Bo Schultz.

When it was all said and done, Kansas City left Chase Field with a rather crooked victory, 12-2.

Here’s a look back at the 10-run rout by the numbers:

2:

Mark Trumbo knocked in the evening’s first run with an RBI single in the first. The D-backs left fielder also added a double in the eighth giving him five multi-hit performances in his last nine games.

5:

For the fifth time this season, Miley allowed more than two home runs in a contest.

His last such performance came on June 12 against the Houston Astros — a 5-4 loss.

5-2:

The Royals are 2-7 in their last nine games against the D-backs, however they’ve won five of seven at Chase Field.

6:

Royals starter Danny Duffy, who allowed one run over five innings, entered play Tuesday with only 2.3 runs of support per start.

In fact in his last six starts, Kansas City produced a grand total of 14 runs — only three less than Tuesday’s output.

10:

Miley’s 10 earned runs were a career-high — besting a previous outing to forget back on June 30, 2012 when he allowed eight in a 10-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers

11:

To put Miley’s night in perspective, the left-hander had allowed 11 combined earned runs in his last 40.1 innings of work.

117:

Aoki became the 117th player in to hit a grand slam for the Royals and the third to do it this year — joining teammates Alcides Escober and Omar Infante.

4/13/2011:

The last time Arizona lost at home by 10 or more runs was April 13, 2011, when the Royals’ neighbor just down the I-70, the St. Louis Cardinals, handled Ian Kennedy and Co. by a final of 15-5.