A Game Like We've Never Seen Before

First it was a pitcher's duel and then it was a back and forth battle.

The saying goes that you’ll see something new every time you watch a baseball game. Sometimes you have to stretch to find that something new. Maybe it was a different wrinkle on a pitch or a guy stealing a base you didn’t know had it in him. Last night, there was no stretch. Somehow, Salvador Perez walking twice in a game for the first time since May of 2017 was not even close to the weirdest thing we saw. And it was such a weird game that it’s super easy to forget about Carlos Hernandez and the amazing work he did to start to the game. I’ll get to him, don’t you worry.

But first, I think it’s worth mentioning that this Royals team may not be especially good, but you can’t argue that they aren’t resilient. Let’s start with this.

Stats By STATS @StatsBySTATS

The @Royals are the first team in the modern era to erase a deficit in the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th innings in the same game.

Wow. Okay, yes, it would have been nice if they could have found a lead at any point, but that’s seriously a crazy stat. The Yankees blew saves in the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth innings, which tied a record for the most blown saves with the Astros from a game in 1995 against the Cubs. Unfortunately, the Yankees didn’t blow a fifth after they scored three in the 11th inning, so the Royals lost the game, but you can’t say there wasn’t action late in the game.

This line score is something you simply don’t see every day.

Six scoreless followed by runs in every inning for the next five. I’m sure there’s a way to look it up to see if that’s ever happened before, but I’m going to assume it hasn’t and just leave it at that. Take a look at the win expectancy chart. It’s a doozy too.

You don’t see ups and downs quite like that too often.

And it was just weird in general all game long. I promise I’ll get to Hernandez, but I want to talk about the weirdness of the seventh inning when the scoring began. Hernandez got in on Aaron Judge’s hands and got him to hit a soft liner that got over Emmanuel Rivera’s head for a double. It was hit 81.9 MPH. Of his 102 hits this year, only 11 of them were hit softer than that. Only one extra base hit was hit softer. Then Joey Gallo hit a soft grounder up the middle that hit the bag. The ball was hit 75 MPH, which was softer than all but 10 of his 76 hits this season.

Then a mistake on a sinker gave the Yankees their first run and the game went from low-scoring battle to a back and forth fight every single inning. The outcome stank, but the game itself was pretty fun. It took four hours and 52 minutes to be decided and the Royals fans left unhappy, but the only part of the game that really matters moving forward is something to smile about.

Yes, that’s right. It’s time to talk Hernandez.

Of all the young Royals starting pitching, Hernandez is the one who has been talked about probably the least. He’s a different type of story. Most international signees are inked at around 16 years old. Hernandez was 19. He’s struggled to stay healthy and we all know that he hadn’t pitched above low-A before pitching in the big leagues last year. I’d never really considered him a long-term starter because I thought he would just struggle too much to stay healthy. But he’s really shown something over his last few starts to make me think I was wrong and he has a chance to actually be one of the best of all the young guys.

He did a few things that impressed me last night. The first is that he didn’t have it going on in the first inning. He walked Brett Gardner after a long battle. Then on the eighth pitch to Giancarlo Stanton, he caught too much of the plate with a fastball and Stanton hit a ball 122.2 MPH. That is not a typo. It was an absolute rocket. The mound took a bit off the ball and Whit Merrifield fielded it to start a double play. And from that point forward, he was really, really good.

He had to work around a triple in the second, but it really didn’t seem like the Yankees were even that big of a risk to score. After the triple, he retired 11 straight before giving up a single to Tyler Wade in the sixth, but he immediately got a double play. Then we talked about the seventh inning for him, which Josh Staumont came in and nicely bailed him out to keep his line at just one run allowed. And now over his last three starts, he’s been fantastic.

David Lesky @DBLesky

The book is now closed on Carlos Hernandez. Here are his last three starts: 17.2 IP 11 H 2 R 2 ER 4 BB 13 K 1.02 ERA I think the #Royals are cool with this.

I’ve said this numerous times, but the upside with Hernandez gets unlocked when he throws strikes. The control has come and gone in the past and you can see those four walks in 17.2 innings shows that he’s really controlling the zone well. His stuff is so good that he doesn’t need to worry about the command. Even in the zone, he can be so difficult to hit with the movement he gets and the velocity he throws up there.

What I love about Hernandez is that he actually has pitches to choose from. He obviously throws the big fastball and sinker, but he can see what’s working from his changeup, curve and slider and focus on one or two of those. It’s a great tool to have because if you think about a pitcher like Brady Singer, he has nowhere to go if something isn’t working. Hernandez doesn’t have that issue. There may be days when nothing works, but he’s given himself a nice margin for error.

Here are his pitches from last night:

And here are from his last start against Chicago:

That’s impressive that he has a feel for what is working and not and what the opponent will have the most trouble with. He went with the hard stuff far more often against the Yankees and was really fantastic. And you know that I love seeing this chart of his four-seamers with all those up in the zone.

Hernandez’s breaking balls are really fun. They make me giggle sometimes and he had a really good curve to Luke Voit in the second with DJ LeMahieu on third base with one out.

In the end, it was a huge outing that was the most important thing to come from a crazy game that was entertaining to the last pitch.

Ultimately, we can look at little decisions like Greg Holland over Domingo Tapia or Ervin Santana in the 11th or using Barlow in the 8th instead of letting Jake Brentz work through things, but the reality is that the things that matter for the future, which is what the rest of this season is about almost exclusively, are the things that are worth our attention. A great start from Hernandez is absolutely worth our attention. Nicky Lopez really figuring out how to handle the bat is worth our attention. Emmanuel Rivera with two outs is worth it. Edward Olivares with a pinch hit single is worth it.

And yes, Daniel Lynch starts are worth it, and we get one of those tonight.

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Crown Jewels

Veterans Not Pulling Their Weight

I’m not sure if this makes me a hypocrite to bring this up after saying what does and doesn’t matter, but I’m okay with it either way. Whit Merrifield and Carlos Santana are absolutely killing this team offensively. I’ve mentioned Merrifield quite a bit, so I’ll start here with Santana. After the Royals lost to the Twins on May 2, he was hitting .280/.387/.516. Since then, he’s hit .211/.327/.339 in 361 plate appearances. It’s even worse since the break - .159/.240/.239. That just doesn’t work. He’s still working his walks, yes, but the Royals need more than that and at some point, they’re going to have to find it elsewhere, which is really tough for me to say because I loved the Santana signing for the different approach he brought to the team.

Merrifield isn’t hurting the team quite so much because he’s really turned it on defensively and on the bases, but I think we all know that his bat just hasn’t been good enough for quite some time. I maintain that Merrifield needs a day off, but that won’t happen at least until he breaks the Royals record in a few days, but I also can’t imagine they’ll sit him right after that either. I mentioned back before the deadline that the Royals roster is pretty hard to piece together with both Merrifield and Santana on it in 2022, but their struggles put some wrinkles in that. They could still move Merrifield, but if Santana doesn’t pick it up because it’s tough to see someone taking on his $10 million price tag in 2022.

Bullpen Roulette

The Royals bullpen is one that’s sort of tough to figure. They have big time arms. Barlow is very good. Staumont has shown he can be very good. Brentz has such big stuff that he has a chance to be an electric reliever. They’ve got other good arms too. Richard Lovelady has shown flashes. Tapia has looked like he might be a solid middle relief piece. But they’re just not quite good enough to be counted on every single day. I noted on Twitter on Sunday that the bullpen started to falter a bit as soon as the rotation stopped giving innings. Before Hernandez’s start last night, the last Royals starter to go more than five innings was Kris Bubic on Tuesday. And now they had to get through 4.1 very stressful innings in last night’s game.

There are a lot of complaints about Holland on social media. And, look, I get it. He hasn’t been especially good for awhile now. I would not be surprised after his outing last night if he ends up on the IL. It’s certainly not a hard and fast rule, but seeing him throw 96 and 97 in that 11th inning last night with some sliders in the low-90s got me wondering if he knew something and was just airing it out. I really want to see the Royals get a look at Dylan Coleman, but Joel Payamps, who they picked up a couple weeks ago from the Blue Jays is intriguing as well. Daniel Tillo was activated from the 60-day IL yesterday and could be an interesting name to watch too. I think it’s time to spin that wheel, though, because they need some arms after the last few days.