Brady Sang and Bobby Played the Hits

Bouncing back is a heck of a quality in a team and this one needed it in the worst way.

Washing away a bitter taste is always welcome, and after Tuesday night’s truly ugly game, we were treated to a fantastic pitcher’s duel between two of the best pitchers in baseball since the break. Brady Singer came into the start with a 1.88 ERA in six starts and Zac Gallen came into it with an even better 0.92 ERA in his six starts. And the matchup lived up to the billing with both starters trading zeroes through four innings. Singer made a mistake in the fifth, but the Royals offense, which I’ll get to, worked Gallen enough that he was done after six and then they did their thing for what seems like the first time in forever.

I’ve talked a lot about sequencing here, and this is another example of the team sequencing things right. If they had won last night’s game on Tuesday and Tuesday’s game had been last night, we’d be stuck with the thought of that one through an extra day because of today’s off day. But instead, we get to think about Singer shoving yet again and improving his numbers both since he’s been back from Omaha and from the break. I’ll start there because they’re fun. Here’s what he’s done since he’s been back in the big leagues:

18 GS
111.1 IP
94 H
114 K (25.7%)
28 BB (6.3%)
2.99 ERA

And since the break:

7 GS
45.1 IP
30 H
51 K (29.3%)
11 BB (6.3%)
1.79 ERA

The Royals are now 8-2 in his starts since the start of July and 16-26 when anyone else starts. He is most certainly the Royals ace and he’s pitched well enough for me to feel good about just saying he is an ace. Or at least a legitimate number one starter. As a programming note, I am going to talk Singer extension tomorrow with some numbers I’m still in the process of putting together.

I thought the Diamondbacks had a fantastic plan against him last night, which makes his outing even more impressive. They didn’t seem to want to wait around and let him get called strike after called strike. Josh Rojas started the game with a single on the first pitch. They fouled off 15 sinkers, which is the most foul balls he’s allowed in a single game on that pitch this year and tied for the most in his career. And while he’s struggled some with command lately, it felt like the sinker was mostly back where it belonged for him.

When he’s on the corners and out of the middle, that’s when he’s successful. And there’s plenty of white space in the middle of that zone. And even though the Diamondbacks had a plan of attack against him, he still had 15 called strikes with the sinker, which is fifth most in a game this season, so nothing to sneeze at.

And that sinker is a pitch I mentioned on Twitter in the first inning. With two strikes, Emmanuel Rivera took an ugly swing at a slider that was absolutely never a strike. The sinker is the reason why he did that. Singer throws both his sinker and his slider about the same percentage of the time with two strikes. So where the sinker starts off the plate and slide away, often his sinker will start at the same spot and tail back over the plate. If Rivera is up there and has decided he’s not going to let that sinker catch him looking and he doesn’t pick up the slider spin right away, it’s so easy to see how he could take that swing and come up empty.

Just look at the first pitch in that at bat:

And then compare that to the strikeout.

He missed the target on the first pitch, but it started at the same spot as the slider. My favorite pitch of the night, though, was a called third strike to Ketel Marte in the fourth. It was actually another sequence that got me smiling. The strikeout was the best, but it was set up by a changeup that was located well enough to work.

This sinker up worked because it’s both nasty and Singer had changed Marte’s eye level drastically.

That’s the beauty of what Singer is able to do with his two primary pitches when his changeup is there to just give hitters a different look. I didn’t think his slider was great in this one. It caught the zone quite a bit, including his only punished mistake of the game, a home run by Daulton Varsho. It just hung in the middle. But I thought he used that changeup well enough to keep the Diamondbacks off the scent of the slider, so he could afford to make a mistake or two. It’s like I always say. If you’ve got other pitches working, you can make a mistake. If you don’t, those mistakes are going to get crushed.

With two off days around the series with the Padres that starts tomorrow, I’ll be curious to see how the Royals handle the rotation. Zack Greinke went on the IL yesterday, so he’ll miss at least two starts. They can work around that with the days off, but I’m curious if the Royals want to push Singer a little and keep him on his regular rest or if they give him at least an extra day and maybe two. I’d opt for the extra day, but we’ll see how that goes.

Singer was able to get a win for two reasons. One, he went deep into the game. He went at least seven innings for the seventh time this year and at least six for the 12th time and the ninth straight. His 12 starts of six or more innings is tied for the eighth most by a Royal in a season since the start of 2018. His seven starts of seven or more innings is fourth in that time and just one behind both Brad Keller and Jakob Junis in 2018 and two behind Keller’s 2019. But they also got the win because of the offense, which hadn’t contributed much of anything in about a week and a half.

It’s easy to look at Gallen’s line of six innings with no runs allowed and think it was just another bad day for the Royals offense. And it sort of was. But they worked him for three walks which tied a season-high and he threw 95 pitches. It was really likely a seven-pitch at bat from Michael A. Taylor that ended in a pop fly that cost Gallen the seventh inning. If he had been at 90 pitches, I’d bet he’d have come back out. But at 95, the Diamondbacks weren’t going to risk anything with their best and he was done.

And it started right away once the Royals had rid themselves of the Gallen conundrum. Kyle Isbel singled and stole second. Then he moved to third on a Hunter Dozier sacrifice fly and came home on a safety squeeze from Nicky Lopez. Drew Waters picked up his second career hit on a line drive to center that sent Lopez to third when MJ Melendez picked up a big hit for what seems like the first time in an eternity for the Royals with an RBI single. It really hadn’t been that long because they got a couple big hits in Monday’s win, but it felt good. And that brought Bobby Witt Jr. to the plate.

There are a couple of thoughts I have on that home run. Coming into last night, there had been 2,793 changes thrown in that general zone. Only 16 were hit for home runs. Only four were hit more farther than 400 feet and the farthest before last night was hit 412 feet. To be able to take that swing and hit that ball that far is truly amazing. Witt is such a special talent. I thought he could use a day or five off and instead, he put in some work and since Friday has three homers, two doubles and a triple. The home run wasn’t even his hardest hit ball of the night. He smoked one to center that Alek Thomas played exceptionally well that could have easily been another extra base hit.

I’ve been trying to figure out what’s been different for Witt over these last few games. His swing looked slightly different, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I watched that home run. Sometimes it can be difficult to see things from different camera angles, but we have the advantage here of knowing that Witt had a monster series in Minnesota in May when he went 7 for 14 with six extra base hits in the first three games of that series and then struggling in Minnesota last week. So we have the same camera angles. Take a look at this swing from Witt during that series in May.

Now look at his front shoulder at the point of contact.

Now look at a foul ball he hit on a middle-middle pitch.

And here’s his front shoulder still from that one.

Some of it is due to a different location, sure, but he’s not able to use that arm to generate the power that he can generate with his swing. It’s almost like the front arm is lagging a little bit, which leads to a lot of things, including a lack of power (just one extra base hit in 17 games) and a lack of exit velocity. And that’s an area where he excelled before his hamstring injury. It’s obviously a subtle difference but there’s certainly a difference. Just for comparison, here was his point of contact from his home run on Tuesday night on a pitch in a similar spot to the one right above.

I also see much more balance from the top hand and the back shoulder in these swings as well, but they obviously all work hand in hand. My question, and one that I don’t think we’ll ever find out, is if his mechanical issues that were present for a bit that have now been fixed had anything to do with his injury. As we well know, any injury can have a ripple effect everywhere else. The important thing is that he’s back on track and now we can start thinking about numbers again with him.

He leads the team with 18 home runs. That puts him six off the rookie record set by Bob Hamelin in 1994. He’s already sixth in team history, but is just one away from Eric Hosmer in 2011 and Mark Quinn in 2000. He’s tied with the great Ken Harvey for eighth with 64 RBI. I don’t believe he’ll be able to catch Carlos Beltran, who has the team rookie record with 108, but Kevin Seitzer at second with 83 is well within reach. The top three spots for stolen bases are probably going to be pretty tough. Witt has 24 and Pat Kelly is third with 40. But Jarrod Dyson has 30 in fourth and that seems not only doable, but likely.

So my question then becomes if he can get to 30 steals, how likely is it he can get to 30 home runs? He would need 12 in the team’s final 36 games. Given that he’s hit 18 in the team’s first 126, I’d say it’s not likely, but with his swing back in a groove, I think there’s a non-zero chance. It’s not much higher than zero, but it is possible. I wouldn’t run to your local sports book to bet on it, but if he can go on a little run over the next few days, you never know. The Padres will throw out Joe Musgrove, Yu Darvish and Sean Manaea. All are good, but all are known to give up some homers. Maybe he gets two more and then can get two more in the White Sox series. Then we can talk about 30/30.

Wherever he ends up, I’m just glad to be seeing him swing the bat well again because the Royals desperately need that bat working. And when it does and they get a performance like they got from Singer, well that’s just a lot more fun than the alternative.