Inside an 11-Game Losing Streak

It's not easy to lose that many games in a row. It takes some real effort.

It’s hard to believe that just under two weeks ago, the Royals held the best record in baseball and were perched atop the American League Central. It started as a fairly innocent loss to the Twins in a series that didn’t have a single competitive game among the three. It happens. Then there was an anticipated big league debut, some umpiring meltdowns, some meltdowns from the team over the umpiring meltdowns and then it’s just been a lot of bad. So let’s see exactly how the Royals have gotten to this point.

Offense

The offense has been quite offensive, so they at least have that going for them. In 11 games, they’ve scored just 33 runs while hitting .226/.307/.332 as a team. Sadly, the average and OBP haven’t been that far off from league averages during this stretch, which is a bigger issue in baseball, but the slugging percentage is pretty terrible. They’ve hit six home runs and half are by Hunter Dozier, who hasn’t had a hit in his last 31 at bats. Where’s the power?

Outside of Dozier, the home runs have come from Jorge Soler, Salvador Perez and Whit Merrifield. Carlos Santana doesn’t have one, in fact he doesn’t have a single extra base hit during these 11 games. Ryan O’Hearn, who for some reason is in the lineup every game against righties, doesn’t have one either. He does have one double, so there’s that. Joining Santana in the no extra base hits club are the following: Michael A. Taylor, Sebastian Rivero and Cam Gallagher. So one guy who the Royals thought was going to turn a corner and two backup catchers. Yikes.

Some of it is absolutely bad luck, but now that the Royals broadcast has brought it up, it’s something they’re going to glom onto for weeks, if not the whole season. Dozier, Jarrod Dyson and Hanser Alberto all have xBAs at least 50 points higher than their actual average during this streak. So do Rivero and Gallagher, but they only have nine at bats between them. Of course, they’ve also been pretty atrocious with runners in scoring position, hitting just .177 with a .344 SLG. Here’s where some luck has come into play as they have an xBA of .209 (still horrible), but an xSLG of .446. I’ll buy that they’ve hit into some bad luck in some bad situations.

Really they just haven’t had as many extra bases as they should have based on the expected stats. When they barrel a ball, they’re getting hits about as often as they should. You could argue they could have one extra hit, but that’s just arguing for the sake of arguing. But on barrels, their team SLG is 1.773, but their xSLG is 2.503. I’d say that qualifies for some bad luck. It’s the sort of thing that will likely even out over time, but it hasn’t evened out over the last couple weeks.

Of course that doesn’t show how often they’re simply swinging through the ball with runners in scoring position. They’ve whiffed on a whopping 18.4 percent of pitches with guys on second and/or third. The league average for the season is 13.3 percent. Overall, they’ve swung and missed a bit more than league average on the whole, but to jump that high with runners in scoring position tells me they’re pressing badly, which I completely understand.

Here’s some numbers for the hitters during this stretch. If there are children around, please don’t show them this. They’re very impressionable.

If this was the only problem the Royals have had over the last 11 games, you could almost see how they could be on an 11-game losing streak. But, alas, it’s not.

Pitching

This whole streak started off with another in a line of brutal starts for Brad Keller. His defense let him down, but he was hit hard by the Twins and gave up seven runs nearly two weeks ago. Only two were earned, so his ERA looks actually fine recently, but he got hit hard. Then the Royals made a decision that I will actually defend as making sense in the big picture but people didn’t like it from the start and it turned out they were right.

The Royals called up Daniel Lynch to make his big league debut and they sent Jakob Junis to the bullpen. Was this the catalyst for the streak? I don’t think so, but the timing doesn’t look great. Junis had been fine as a starter. He had a 3.80 ERA in four starts, but most of that was from one bad inning against the Rays. He only allowed one home run in 21 or so innings and the new cutter looked the pitch that would revitalize his career. Why I think the Royals decision makes some sense from high level is that Junis was getting hit very hard and they felt that the combination of Lynch starting and him in the bullpen gave them the best chance to win with Kyle Zimmer on the IL and the bullpen looking thin.

While they were obviously wrong, their thought process checks out to me. Lynch hadn’t relieved before professionally and they wanted him to come up in a spot he was more comfortable. Junis both had relieved (albeit briefly) and had success in that role. Plus, he only threw 25 innings last season and was likely going to need a break in the rotation at some point regardless. So I get it, but man did it not work. Lynch was fine enough against the Indians but Junis gave up five that very night to put the game out of reach.

Then the next night, it was the same story. The Royals led in the middle innings and the bullpen blew it. Then the next night, the same story with the Royals leading late and then blowing it. Of course, that was the Angel Hernandez game, which I’ll get to shortly, but after that horrible sixth inning against Cleveland, the wheels truly fell off for the team, but the pitching didn’t really hit a low until Saturday night. In fact, if the Royals offense could have put anything together on Thursday afternoon or Friday night, we’d just be talking about a bad stretch of baseball instead of a soul crushing losing streak.

But starting Saturday night, things got ugly fast. Lynch had The Start that I assume most won’t forget for a long time. Tipping pitches or not, the White Sox were all over everything he was throwing. He couldn’t make it out of the first. Luckily, after Tyler Zuber ended the threat, Kris Bubic came in and showed why he should have been the one making those starts. But Sunday was just as bad and then they gave up eight to the Tigers on Tuesday before finally settling down a bit as a staff and losing in a more respectful way.

The pitching, as whole, has been bad in this stretch. They have a 6.40 ERA in 95.2 innings with more hits than innings pitched and a walk rate of 10 percent. They’re averaging about 15 runners on base per nine innings. If you were wondering, nope, not good. The bullpen, while pretty bad in that Indians series actually hasn’t been as bad since. Overall during the streak, they have a 5.24 ERA and 4.32 xFIP, so it could be far worse for them.

Zuber, who has been called on to put out fires left and right with Zimmer out hasn’t been good, but Josh Staumont gave up a few runs in one appearance during the stretch and Junis has allowed back breaking runs in two of his four appearances and just a regular run in one other appearances. In total, here are the bullpen’s numbers from the streak:

In all honesty, it looks better than I expected. But man, can you imagine how bad things would look without Bubic and, of all people, Ervin Santana? Anyway, if the bullpen isn’t as horrible as I was expecting, that means we need to talk starters. A 7.48 ERA and 4.98 xFIP with Lynch’s start actually is better than I thought, but also terrible. They’ve averaged about four innings per start, which is really putting a terrible strain on the bullpen. Nobody has been good, but only Lynch has been truly bad. The saving grace for this staff is that they aren’t giving up home runs on top of everything with just two allowed in their 49.1 innings from the starters. Here are the stats that could be far worse:

Keller had a really nice game against the White Sox and he goes up against them today as well. It’s probably not a great sign that Lynch has the most starts of the group and is where is on innings, huh? A bad Duffy start was bound to happen. He’s still had really solid peripherals. Singer was bound to get roughed up somewhere along the way, though I’m surprised it was in Detroit. And Keller was bound to perk back up at some point, though I’m surprised it was against the White Sox.

This, as a whole, is pretty much the anatomy of how you get to an 11-game losing streak. Slumps happen with position groups. Sometimes you won’t hit, but the pitching picks the team up. Sometimes you won’t pitch, but the offense will grab a couple games. Right now, neither side is picking up the other, and it’s getting ugly.

Miscellaneous

I was going to mention the defense, but outside of Soler’s adventures in right field and Taylor struggling inexplicably in center, it hasn’t been terrible like it was before when they were actually winning games. Obviously you can make an argument that yesterday’s game would have gone differently and there was a missed double play in the Indians series that changed things, so maybe there is a point to go into more detail here. But I want to actually talk about some outside forces that don’t really have a metric.

Things were going poorly for the Royals, but it hadn’t torpedoed yet last Wednesday against the Indians. When Matheny, Singer and Cal Eldred all got tossed by attention magnet Angel Hernandez, I didn’t see things turning the way they did. The offense didn’t score until late in the game on Saturday after that brutal inning. Am I sure there’s a correlation? Absolutely not. But do I think there’s something there? I sure do. Am I going to stop asking myself questions? Unlikely.

I just feel like this team got defeated at that point. They’d already blown two leads and it felt like the calls made in that sixth inning were leading them to a third in a row. I think we sometimes forget these are human beings playing the game and I can absolutely see a scenario where the start of that series absolutely punched them in the gut. That’s not an excuse for what followed because they’re paid quite handsomely to absorb that punch and move on, but they don’t become robots.

The good news is that this streak will end. Maybe today even! I’m not going to predict it because I’ve made enough bad predictions to last a lifetime, but they will eventually win a game. Maybe they jump all over a pitcher in the first and end up winning a laugher. Or maybe they have some of the most dumb luck, mid-2000s Twins hits ever in a row and score to win a game late. I don’t know how it’ll happen, but it’ll happen. And they’ll probably win three or four in a row again. Maybe even five or six.

This streak goes beyond the numbers. The numbers define the streak but at some point, even big league players find themselves doubting. That’s why developing with wins is more important than I allowed myself to believe a decade ago. Right now, they’re not beating anyone without some good fortune. With four against the White Sox, they might need some extra.

Thanks for indulging me on this longer than expected journey through a longer than expected losing streak. I have some very expert advice here for the Royals if they choose to accept it: Hit better, pitch better, field better, win some games. It’s that simple!