The Comeback Kids Strike Again

A terrible outing from Kowar was erased when the Royals resiliency popped up once again.

Yesterday was quite a day at Kauffman Stadium, huh? It started with the Royals announcing that Dayton Moore was promoted to president of baseball operations and JJ Picollo to general manager and it ended with a crazy baseball game that took a long time to finish. I’m going to get to all of it, but let’s get started with the game.

As you know, I’m always excited to see one of the Royals young starters, but this one wasn’t enjoyable. It started from the first batter and didn’t get better. When Josh Harrison walked up to the plate, he took a first pitch strike and that might have been the highlight of the evening for Jackson Kowar. Okay, that’s not true, he did strike one batter out, but it was an absolute disaster any way you slice it. That first batter scored, as they always do. Starling Marte doubled on the first pitch of his at bat and then a pair of sacrifice flies scored the two runs before a strikeout of Mark Canha ended the first inning.

In all, Kowar threw 39 pitches and only 18 for strikes. He was fastball heavy and it just wasn’t good. He threw 26 of those, got 12 swings and just one whiff. The other 11 swings were made up of seven foul balls and one ball in play. His changeup got a couple swings and misses on three swings but he just couldn’t locate that pitch at all. He threw three sliders and two curves. Neither touched the zone. It was really bad.

It sort of looked like he had a decent changeup but when nothing else is working, what are you going to do? In the end, it was Kowar’s third start out of five when he couldn’t even complete two innings. After the game, Mike Matheny mentioned that he just seemed out of whack and I agree. When it was all said and done, Kowar went one inning with five runs allowed on three hits. He walked four and struck out one. His ERA is now 11.50.

But luckily for Kowar, the Royals have been resilient all season long and after Ervin Santana bailed Kowar out of the second but gave up a run in the third and needed to be bailed out by Joel Payamps, the offense went to work and flipped the script on this game.

And it started with one of the biggest stories of this game, Kyle Isbel. He drove in the game-winning run on Sunday and started the Royals third inning rally last night with a double to right field. He put a great swing on the ball and hit it hard to the wall. Whit Merrifield’s single drove him home and then Salvador Perez’s single drove Merrifield home. An Andrew Benintendi double got Salvador Perez to third and a Carlos Santana walk loaded the bases for Adalberto Mondesi to ground into a fielder’s choice.

The lead was cut in half.

In the bottom of the fourth, Hunter Dozier led off with a long home run to left center.

Dozier is now 5 for 16 in his last five games and four starts. All five hits have gone for extra bases. That’ll definitely work at the bottom of the lineup.

Joel Payamps stayed on for a second inning, and while it didn’t go as poorly as Wednesday’s game in Baltimore, he did give up another run to give the A’s their three-run lead back. The Royals were scoreless in the fifth, but the sixth inning was the magic time.

It started with a one-out single from Kyle Isbel. This one wasn’t hit quite as hard, but he still put a good swing on it. Merrifield picked up his third hit to move Isbel to third and then Lopez picked up his third hit to score Isbel. Lopez stole second, which makes him 20 for 20 this year. And that’s when Perez did his thing.

Yes, he did it again. He has just been so clutch for this team all season long. It’s honestly approaching some ridiculous levels. It was his 23rd home run of the season that either tied the game or gave the Royals the lead. I don’t know how many more ways we can describe this, but his 43rd home run of the year put him five away from Jorge Soler’s team record for a single season. It put him within two home runs from Mike Sweeney’s 197 for second in team history. The three RBI gave him 109, which is the most in all of baseball. Can he get to 50? I’m certainly not going to predict he can’t.

The Royals had their first lead and then did what good teams do. They tacked on. A Ryan O’Hearn walk, which was his fourth time on base in September. Dozier moved pinch runner Edward Olivares to second with a weak groundout and Isbel was up again.

That’s the first home run of Isbel’s career. He’s making good on an opportunity that could end at any time when Taylor comes back. It’s really great to see for a guy who hit .292/.383/.510 in his last 298 minor league plate appearances. Now, after going 4 for 7 with a home run, double and walk in his two big league games, he’s hitting .317/.364/.463 in the big leagues this year. He’s putting good swings on the ball, having great plate appearances and actually has looked pretty good in center field. I don't know if he’ll have enough speed to stay there long-term, but I think he can absolutely play the position for a couple seasons.

Josh Staumont got the A’s 1-2-3 in the eighth and while Scott Barlow struggled with control, he was bailed out by a double play ball from Yan Gomes and then got Mark Canha to fly out. It was their eighth win this season where they trailed by at least four runs at any point. It’s a good win, and it was a good spoiler win as well as it took the A’s out of second place and they are now 3.5 games out of a Wild Card spot.

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Crown Jewels

Dayton to President, JJ to GM

When Alec Lewis tweeted that the Royals had scheduled a press conference for 2pm to discuss some organizational things, it was pretty easy to put the puzzle together to see that the Royals were promoting Dayton Moore to president and JJ Picollo to general manager. It’s a move that a lot of people have though would happen for a long time and finally did. It’s also a move that honestly disappointed me a bit when I first heard the news, and I’m not exactly sure how I feel about it at this very moment.

I’m excited to see what Picollo can do as the general manager of this team. He has really embraced the analytics over the last few seasons and has been the person over the growth of the Royals new player development system. At this point, we obviously can’t know what kind of general manager he’s going to be, but new blood is a good thing and I’m very curious to see how he handles the early days of the off-season. He has a lot of questions to answer. I talked about Benintendi in the Weekend in Review and he’s probably playing himself into it not being a question at all, but beyond that, it’s what to do with Merrifield, how to fill center field and how to best fill in the rotation.

But my biggest concern is that Moore is still around. Whatever you believe about Moore, whether you think he’s a great GM, terrible or something in between, 15 years is long enough to have one person in a position. I have some very real questions about how much power someone can have in their position when the guy who had done it for 15 years is still around. And my concerns grew when Soren Petro asked about the organizational structure.

The first answer we heard was one that made it seem like this is a change in name only and nothing would be different. Moore answered that he would still have final say on big decisions. I understand that the president of baseball operations should have final say, but I just feel like it doesn’t afford Picollo the opportunity to truly do the job. And that’s without even getting into the fact that Moore’s history is one that isn’t easily evaluated.

Yes, he won two pennants and a World Series, but they’ve also working on his 11th losing season in 15 years. Yes, the farm system has run completely dry at times, but he’s also built the best farm system basically ever and has now built it back up to a top-five system in baseball. He’s seemed against analytics and has started to kinda sorta embrace analytics. It’s complicated, and I maintain that new blood is important. While Picollo is not new blood, I think he’s different from Moore, so that qualifies. But, again, I’m worried that Moore around will hamper that.

But as the press conference went on, I feel like there was a slightly different vibe. Moore mentioned that he’d thought about this before and didn’t want to do it. He said that a few times. But John Sherman used the term “best practice” as this setup with a president and general manager both and it got me wondering if this was something forced on Moore. Sherman talked about wanting Moore in a leadership role to work with the organizational culture and all that. And that’s a great spot for him. And then Moore himself mentioned that Picollo would be the one in charge of the day-to-day.

So I’m hopeful that this is about putting Moore in a position to be in charge of the wellbeing of the franchise while Picollo gets the chance to be in charge of the actual team on the field. We’ll see, of course, but that press conference left me with basically the same concerns I had about the idea before it was even realistic, but with some hope that maybe it won’t be an issue.

Downtown Stadium

The other main topic of conversation from the presser was Sherman talking about downtown baseball. The deal is that whatever helps the organization make the most money will be the move they make. If that means staying at the Truman Sports Complex, they’ll stay. But, well, that’s not what will make the team the most money, so they’re going to move. It may not end up being downtown, but there will be a new stadium at some point in the next decade or so and it will be in a different location.

I understand the love of Kauffman Stadium. For one, there’s history. Next season will be the 50th season of the stadium. It’s hosted two All-Star games, four World Series and 38 playoff games total. It has parking for days that allows for tailgating and a generally easy in and easy out. A downtown stadium would change a lot of that, depending on the location. For a long time, I was very against the downtown park. I still have so much nostalgia and love for the ease of Kauffman Stadium that I hope they can find a way to make the most money from staying, but a downtown stadium would also be very cool, provided there’s some infrastructure improvements. There wasn’t much news on anything regarding the stadium, but I am extremely interested to see the ideas that come out over the next few months and years.