A Great Start and Great Timing Lead to a Royals Win

Kris Bubic, Vinnie Pasquantino and Bobby Witt Jr. all did just what they needed to do for the Royals.

Someone should tell the Royals that it’s okay to play a laugher occasionally, especially when they’re on the West Coast and they’re getting everyone’s heart rate up late at night. But such is life as a struggling offensive team that also has some of the best pitching in baseball, I suppose. Close games are the norm and maybe the rule for this team, so we’re having to learn to live with them almost every single day. As long as the end result is like last night, I think most Royals fans will make that tradeoff even if it does mean a few more gray hairs than when the season began.

Last night was another intense and competitive game for the Royals in one of the best pitchers’ duels we’ve seen this season. Coming in, it looked like it had the potential to be that and neither Kris Bubic nor Robbie Ray disappointed. For the Royals offense, it’s a little difficult to credit the opposing pitcher, no matter who it is, because of how bad they’ve been, particularly lately. But Ray was absolutely outstanding for the Giants. I honestly don’t remember the last time his control was as sharp as we saw last night. Is that because he wasn’t afraid to throw in the zone? Maybe, but he threw 57 percent of his pitches in the zone, which is way higher than his 44 percent zone rate coming in.

And the Royals offense struggled. They had just six hits with five of them singles. The only extra base hit was a double by Bobby Witt Jr. as the second batter of the game. While the Royals didn’t capitalize on a chance to maybe get one or two across with the baserunners he allowed, I think the ineptitude was a lot more about the opposing pitcher than about their offense. At least for one game. It’s tough to make a distinction when the offense has struggled against everyone, but sometimes the opponent is just better and that’s what they dealt with in Ray last night. I’m going to come back to a couple of things there soon. But speaking of better, Bubic was even better than Ray.

The final line is impressive:

7 IP
2 H
0 R
5 K
3 BB

But it doesn’t even tell the story of how good he was. He carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning and lost it on a ground ball that Michael Massey absolutely should have fielded. It was originally ruled an error and then changed to a hit, which I still maintain is kind of ridiculous. Ultimately it didn’t matter because Bubic gave up a clean hit, but the official scorer in San Francisco was on his way for a minute to being on par with Willson Contreras among recent public enemies in Kansas City. But you want to talk about in control? Bubic absolutely was that.