Derek Shelton trusted his pitcher. Wil Crowe didn’t justify that trust.

The result Tuesday night on the first day of June was the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 10-5 loss to the Kansas City Royals (27-26) at Kauffman Stadium.

The Pirates were 8-20 in May, have now lost three games in a row and have reached the one-third point of the season with a 20-34 record that projects to 60-102 if you care to do the math.

Crowe appeared in control early in the game while seeking his first major-league victory in 11 starts. He struck out three batters and allowed only one hit outside the infield.

But those three innings were just a tease. Staked to a 4-1 lead in the fourth, Crowe couldn’t stand prosperity and unraveled quickly.

Salvador Perez’s two-run homer in the fourth, his first of two in the game, left the bat at 112.6 mph, triggered the Royals’ rally and cut the Pirates lead to 4-3.

Michael A. Taylor led off the fifth with a triple, Crowe walked Nicky Lopez and surrendered an RBI single to Whit Merrifield to tie the score, 4-4. Another walk loaded the bases.

There were no outs and Crowe was struggling, but Shelton stayed with his rookie starter. The next batter, Andrew Benintendi, hit a grand slam to give the Royals an 8-4 lead that the Pirates never threatened.

”We didn’t execute a pitch. I thought we were going to execute a pitch,” Shelton said. “We tried to go up and away with a fastball, and it was a fastball down and in. It got hit out. In retrospect, probably should have made a move. But at the time we didn’t do it.

“Yeah, we were giving him an opportunity. It ended up getting hit hard. It was one of those things that it just didn’t work out.”

Crowe left the game without retiring a batter in the fifth. He gave up eight hits, two walks and eight runs, swelling his ERA to 7.26. That followed an outing May 26 against the Chicago Cubs in which he allowed five hits, two walks and three runs in 1⅓ innings.

“The pitch to Benintendi, we were trying to go up,” Crowe said. “Slipped a little bit on my land, missed down and in, kind of his nitro zone. Really, two pitches (including Perez’s first homer) that kind of came back to haunt me. The location of those pitches, you execute them and you don’t have to worry about it.”

Asked about Shelton allowing him to pitch to Benintendi, Crowe said, “It showed a lot of what he thinks of me and what he thinks I’m capable of. I thought I was in control of the situation. I made a bad pitch.”

Crowe said he felt much better Tuesday than he did against the Cubs.

“My last outing was out of the norm,” he said. “I didn’t feel great at all in that one. I felt kind of like an out-of-body experience. This one, I actually felt really good.

“That was the worst part about it. I’m working to take that next step and I’m working really hard. I know it’s in there. I know I can be the dominating guy that I believe I can be.”

Despite the sudden deficit, the Pirates didn’t go down quietly.

In the sixth, they scored a run on a throwing error by Royals starter Brady Singer and Adam Frazier’s second double of the game (his MLB-leading 19th). Before that, however, Shelton was ejected by home-plate umpire Dan Bellino after questioning a third-strike call on Michael Perez.

“I thought the ball was down. He didn’t. He ejected me,” Shelton said.

After Frazier’s double, Will Craig walked to load the bases. Then, with two outs and Bryan Reynolds at the plate, Kevin Newman appeared to score the second run of the inning on a wild pitch by reliever Kyle Zimmer. Reynolds checked his swing and tried to get out of the way, but Bellino called him out for interference, ruling he impeded catcher Perez’s ability to make a play on Newman.

Bench coach Don Kelly was running the team at this point. Shelton received an explanation, but he wasn’t satisfied with it.

“The explanation that we got was that Reynolds should have stayed in the box on it,” Shelton said. “My interpretation of the rule — and I will check further on this — is that he has to vacate the box because of the fact that if there is a play at the plate, he cannot be in the way of the pitcher coming in for a play.

“The second thing I question is there was never an attempt on Newman on that play. The attempt the entire time was on Reynolds on the check swing.”

Instead of lunging toward home plate to tag Newman, Perez tagged Reynolds, but the inning ended on the interference call.

The Pirates scored three times in the third inning on an RBI single by Reynolds, who was serving as the designated hitter for the first time this season, and sacrifice flies by Gregory Polanco and Ben Gamel.

The Pirates’ Perez drove in a run with a double in the fourth inning, his fourth consecutive game with an RBI.

Left fielder Ka’ai Tom left the game after he was hit by a pitch in the third and was replaced by Craig.

“It’s something we’ll re-evaluate (Wednesday), having the off day,” Shelton said. “He got flushed up pretty good on the bottom part of the hand, had some discomfort when he tried to swing. So, we just felt it was better to get (Tom) out of the game.”

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