Furious George Kirby rediscovers ace-like form as Mariners thump Royals

Irritable and untouchable, George Kirby blissfully found his happy place Monday night.

“I like to be pissed off when I pitch,” the Mariners’ right-hander said after throwing seven shutout innings in a 6-2 victory over the Kansas City Royals. “If anything, that fires me up just to make that pitch even more fine on the corner. … I don’t know. I like it. That’s just part of my game. I like to be pissed off out there.”

Kirby scattered three hits — all singles — with no walks and six strikeouts in a dominant bounce-back performance, and Luke Raley and Ty France each hit a two-run home run to power the Mariners (23-19) past the Royals (25-18) in the opener of their three-game series before a crowd of 14,984 at T-Mobile Park.

The Mariners improved to 19-9 when they hit a homer and 17-3 when they score four runs or more.

“Really a complete ballgame,” manager Scott Servais said. “I’m really excited about our offense. Let’s start there — I normally don’t. I don’t want to ever take starting pitching for granted, but I thought our offense was on it right from the get-go tonight. And it was great to see.”

Raley hit a 432-foot blast off Royals starter Brady Singer in the second inning, and then promptly broke the team trident while celebrating in the dugout.

“The bottom fell off,” Raley said, laughing. “All I was doing was carrying it and it fell apart. Go back to the replay.”

Raley finished with his first three-hit game as a Mariner to continue a May resurgence in which he’s hit .375 with two homers and a 1.131 OPS. Even with the expected return of outfielder Dominic Canzone in the coming days, Raley is making a strong case for regular at-bats.

“He’s got huge power,” Servais said. “I [sat] down with him the other day, and you’re always trying to figure out how to reach players. And some guys need a pat on the back and other guys need a kick in the tail once in a while. There’s no reason to kick any of these guys in the tail with how much they care. They put the work in, and Luke Raley is right at the top of the list for me.”

Cal Raleigh was 2 for 4 with an RBI, and the Mariners finished with 11 hits — the seventh time in 11 games this month they’ve finished with a double-digit hit total.

Servais had remained steadfast that this Mariners lineup was better than what it showed through the first month of the season.

“I said to our team earlier today: This might be the hardest working team that I’ve had since I’ve been here as the manager,” Servais said. “Our guys, they do — they put in the time and the effort and they grind. You’re not always seeing the results you want to get, but if you keep doing that with the talent that we have, it’ll turn — and it’s starting to turn right now.”

Kirby had a sharp turnaround after a noncompetitive loss at Minnesota in his last start.

Over the past few weeks, Kirby had been pitching through what the team has described as a minor knee injury, and he had been limited to 88 and 70 pitches in his previous two starts.

On Monday, he huffed and puffed around the mound throughout the evening. He barked at home-plate umpire Sean Barber at one point. He barely bothered to stifle his annoyance at a teammate’s error, biting his glove in frustration.

He was as enraged as ever, and for him it was no coincidence he pitched about as well as ever too.

“George is angry some nights,” Servais said, “and tonight was the night.”

It was an uncomfortable start for Kirby on Monday night, too.

Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. hit a bloop single with one out, and after that Kirby did something he’s never done before in the majors — he hit two batters.

In 64 previous starts in his career, Kirby had never hit more than one batter in game. He had hit one batter total in his first eight starts this season.

But he hit the Royals’ Vinnie Pasquantino in the back foot with a wayward 1-2 curveball. Kirby thought he had struck out the next batter, Royals veteran catcher Salvador Perez, with an 0-2 sinker that was dotted on the outside corner.

Barber, the plate umpire, thought otherwise, calling the pitch a ball.

Kirby was visibly annoyed, and he didn’t seem to forget the missed call the rest of the night. He plunked Perez with a splitter five pitches later to load the bases.

But Kirby managed to escape by striking out Michael Massey with a 97-mph fastball, then got Nelson Velazquez to ground out to shortstop Dylan Moore to end the threat.

Kirby went on to retire the next nine batters in order, with a stretch in which he retired 13 of 14 Royals hitters. Only two batters reached during that stretch — one on catcher’s interference and one on an infield single.

“Vintage George,” Servais said.

It helped that Kirby reintroduced a new pitch — a new old pitch, that is — with a hard slider/cutter. It’s a pitch he’d thrown a few years ago in the minor leagues, and one he’d been tinkering with the past couple weeks.

Of his 101 pitches Monday, 18 of them were the slider/cutter.

“It wasn’t the best pitch tonight, but I think it’s something that could be worth throwing,” he said.

Raleigh scored on the Raley homer after he led off the inning with a line-drive double to right field.

In the third, Raleigh just missed a home run to straightaway center field — a 410-foot blast that went down as the longest single in franchise history after Jorge Polanco, the runner at first base, attempted to tag up on the play.

Julio Rodriguez scored on Raleigh’s single to make it 3-0.

Raley added an RBI single later in the inning to score Polanco and make it 4-0.

Polanco later left the game with right hamstring tightness.

France’s towering two-run blast to left field in the eighth inning pushed the Mariners’ lead to 6-2.

After the Royals cut the 4-0 lead in half in the eighth inning, Andres Muñoz came in for the final out of the inning, and then retired the side in order in the ninth for his sixth save.