First an Explosion, Then an Implosion

The Royals fireworks started fast, but they ran out of their M-80s early and the bullpen imploded late.

While you (or your loud neighbors) were waiting until dark to set off fireworks, the Royals offense decided that they were going to get started early and indoors at that. Since scoring 12 runs against the Angels in that crazy game in Anaheim, the offense had been having some issues. They had scored just 35 runs in the next 10 games and four or fewer in eight of the 10. But on Sunday, they popped seven against the Tigers and they started their series against the vaunted Astros and their staff by hitting the ground running.

They scored two in the first, two in the second and one in the third to take a 5-0 lead early. Their first inning wasn’t exactly highlighted by loud booms, but they got a walk from Andrew Benintendi, a soft single from Bobby Witt Jr. and a hard single from Vinnie Pasquantino to bring Hunter Dozier to the plate. He hit a grounder through the vacated hole from the shift at 75.3 MPH, but the first two runs scored.

In the second, it was more of the soft stuff, but the runs still count. Michael A. Taylor hit an infield single and then went to third on a Whit Merrifield double that was hit hard, but not that hard. They both came home on a Benitnendi two-run single.

And then the first firework popped off in the third when MJ Melendez, fresh off a much-needed day off, turned on a fastball up and in.

It really felt like that ball went farther. I guess that’s the phenomenon of the upper deck shot. But I’m sure that was a weight off his shoulders after his slump over the last few games.

He did it again in the eighth to give the Royals a little insurance.

But ahead of that home run and after Jake Odorizzi was pulled, the Royals offense shut down for a bit, and that’s important here. I noted on Twitter that the Royals not scoring in the next four innings was at least partially to blame for the Astros coming back. I know they did score six runs and, yes, that should be enough. I’m not saying the offense even deserves a sliver of the blame that the bullpen does, but I think it’s fair to say that against that team in that park, it would have been helpful to score a few additional runs.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened on this road trip. They lost on Saturday when they scored early but then had their last 17 hitters retired before Joel Payamps blew the save. Again, I’m not piling on the offense because the bullpen deserves, I don’t know, 99 percent of the blame. I’m just pointing out that sitting on a lead hurt them again. It shouldn’t have. The runs scored should have been enough. But it did.

But that’s because the bullpen couldn’t throw strikes. Again. It’s a trend that I honestly can’t figure out how it hasn’t led to the dismissal of their pathetic excuse for a pitching coach, at the very least. Wyatt Mills, who gave up a run in the seventh was left in to face one hitter. He was sort of being used as a righty specialist to face Jeremy Peña. And he walked him. I have to say that I can’t blame Eldred for Mills after Mills hasn’t even been in the organization for a full week, but I’d like to. That brought in Amir Garrett to get the game to the ninth.

I loved the trade for Garrett at the time because I thought he was a guy who could figure out some of the control issues that plagued him last year and get back to being a reliable lefty in the back of a bullpen. Well he hasn’t. If anything, they’ve gotten worse. He walked two batters and then gave up a two-run single to put Taylor Clarke, who has been very, very good for a bit now, in a difficult situation. Just look at Garrett’s pitches.

That’s a guy who didn’t even give his team a shot. He’s now walked 18 batters in 20 innings. His ERA is up to 6.75. I know the fire he shows is great, but the actual results are far too detrimental to the team. It’s time to just DFA the guy. It’s not like they spent much to acquire him. It was Mike Minor. At the very least, he cannot pitch in a tight game in that situation.

Clarke actually made a nice pitch when he came in, but Yuli Gurriel did a good job of going with it and tied the game with a chopper up the middle. Clarke did get out of it without giving up the lead, but the Astros are just too good and Scott Barlow made a bad pitch to a great hitter who Jonathan Heasley handled quite well and that was that. Barlow really should have just walked Alvarez after the count got away from him, but he threw a slider that just didn’t get where he needed it to get.

That bullpen blowup stings even more because of an outstanding bounceback outing by Heasley. He was on quite a run of good starts that looked like it was going to continue in Anaheim until he walked two batters and gave up a bomb to Shohei Ohtani. He then followed that outing up by not being able to get out of the fourth against the Rangers. But facing the other team in Texas, he got back to looking like a potential long-term solution. He ended up with six innings with two runs allowed, and while I wouldn’t have let him go that long, the results were outstanding against an offense as good as the Astros have.

It started with three perfect innings, but I have to admit that I was concerned. I mentioned this on Twitter, but in the first inning, Heasley needed a reasonable 15 pitches, but he showed the Astros all five of his different pitch types. Why does that matter? Generally, pitchers like to “save” a pitch or two for when the lineup turns over so they have something new to show a team when he faces them a second time. But that’s the benefit of an offense as good as this one. It puts the pitcher on the attack from the very first pitch. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s also nothing new to show them.

So he gets through the first three obviously totally unscathed and then gets Jose Altuve to start the first. But then he gave up a hard single to Jeremy Peña and walked the next two batters. In my opinion, this would have been the game if the bullpen was remotely competent. With Kyle Tucker up, a 5-0 lead could have very easily become a 5-4 lead. And it honestly almost did. Tucker just missed it and lined out to right field, which scored a run, but then he got Yuli Gurriel to fly out to right and he only gave up one run. I want to break that down just a little bit because I don’t think it’s totally fair to say that Tucker just missed it and not give Heasley the credit he deserves.

Heasley threw two changeups to Tucker in that plate appearance. The first was taken for a ball. That’s noteworthy because he had doubled up on his changeup just twice all game. But what he does actually do a fair amount of the time is throw it on the first two pitches of a plate appearance. He’d done it 15 times previously this year, which means he’d started a hitter with two changeups about 7.5 percent of the time. Assuming Tucker was aware that he might see it twice, it was about location and movement. The first one was in the dirt, but the second faded just enough away from Tucker that he couldn’t quite get all of it.

I know it’s weird to praise a pitch that resulted in a ball hit 102.4 MPH that drove in a run, but if that ball is in another two inches, it’s gone. If that’s a fastball, it’s probably gone. You can see that he shortened his swing just a bit. So that’s a good pitch selection. If you want to be a little critical, it would have been nice if it faded just a touch more and he popped the pitch up, but that pitch allowed him to make a slight mistake and only allow a run. Plus, he hit his target perfectly.

His fifth inning was his own doing. He gave up a weak single to Mauricio Dubon and then sent him to third with a bad pickoff throw. That mattered because Altuve got him home with a two-out infield single. Weak contact scored the run because of an error. Heasley has to be smarter than to make that quick throw to first with a four-run lead, but all-in-all, you have to like what he showed.

After using his slider just three times in his last start, he threw it 18 times in this one. He gave up three hits in five at bats with it, but two of them were the soft singles in that fifth inning and I’m glad he was throwing it again. Probably his most impressive work was against Alvarez, the man who came into the game with the best wRC+ in baseball, 198. He did walk him in that fourth inning, but he struck him out in the first.

And in the sixth when I didn’t even think he should have been in the game.

I’d like to see more swings and misses, but the Astros lineup is so good that I’m not going to complain about giving up two runs on three hits in six innings at their home park. I’m a bit concerned about some of his curveball locations as I’m not entirely sure it’s sustainable to leave so many in the plate like this:

Sometimes that’s the result of a good pitch mix. I say this a lot, but the pitches that set up some that would often be considered a mistake allow those pitches to not be mistakes. For example, one of those in the middle was in a bad spot to Alvarez on the first pitch. And for some reason, hitters just can’t seem to do anything with those. Coming into the game, Heasley had thrown 24 curves in the zone on the first pitch. Hitters were 1 for 4 with a sacrifice fly, two swings and misses, one foul ball, 15 called strikes and one ball that was a bad call. Should hitters be prepared for the first pitch curve the way they should be prepared for the doubled up changeup? Absolutely. But to this point, they’re not for whatever reason.

The pitch that was so intriguing to me for Heasley in this one, though, was his fastball. Coming into the game, Heasley had allowed a .300 average with a .650 SLG on that four-seam fastball. The Astros came into the game hitting .263 with a .507 SLG on four-seamers and that slugging percentage jumps a bit at home to .528. This seemed like a terrible pitch to throw. Some of it was luck, but the Astros went 0 for 8 against Heasley’s four-seamer. They hit a few hard for sure, averaging 94.8 MPH on the exit velocity, but that’s a pitch that was surprisingly Heasley’s friend.

One thing I just realized I was finishing this up and putting the gifs together is that Heasley went from the stretch the entire game. He’d been a windup guy in the past. I don’t know why that didn’t hit me until after the game, but that definitely helped him stay in the zone, as it does for many pitchers, so it’ll be interesting to see how he pitches in his next start.

There are no moral victories. But with wins and losses long past irrelevant in 2022, seeing a game like that from Heasley and Melendez getting off the shneid were great signs. Pasquantino with more quality plate appearances was great. Benintendi continued to boost his trade value. The things that mattered were good. For the most part, the things that weren’t were things that don’t matter in the long-term. The bullpen issues are some combination of personnel and the people in charge of it, and that’s going to need to get figured out sooner than later if the Royals even want to begin to think about thinking about contending. But at least there were things to build on. Thank goodness for small favors, I guess.