It's Alive! The Royals Offense Wins a Game

In a bullpen game against one of baseball's best, the Royals offense had a great day.

Baseball doesn’t always make sense. Maybe it’s that baseball doesn’t often make sense. Whatever it is, when the Kansas City Royals, who started the day as the third-worst scoring offense in baseball on a per-game basis, are facing Logan Webb, you can chalk that up as a loss. Add in that the Royals are down a starter, so they were throwing a full-on bullpen day and, well, you might as well just save the trouble and not even play the game. Except for the fact that baseball doesn’t always make sense. And boy am I glad that it doesn’t because that was a fun game to watch.

While Webb is good, he came into action yesterday otherworldly at home. Before facing the Royals, Webb had made four starts at home. Here were the numbers:

28.1 IP
21 H
2 R
2 ER
26 K
7 BB
0.64 ERA

He had a 2.83 ERA last year in 101.2 innings at home. This is not new for him. He’d gone no fewer than 6.1 innings in a start at home this year. He gave up exactly one run in two of the starts and zero runs in the other two. He gave up no more than six hits in a start. And then one of the worst scoring offenses in baseball came to town and turned it all upside down.

Webb only was able to go to four innings because the Royals offense got him for six runs on 10 hits. Only three of the runs were earned because an error that preceded some two-out runs scoring, but those runs still count. The Royals were just hitting the ball hard against him all day long. He allowed 11 batted balls at 95 MPH or harder and six 100 MPH or harder. And the Royals weren’t missing on them. They went 8 for 10 with a sacrifice fly among those hard-hit balls. The Royals hit the ball hard and the ball found holes against a pitcher who is tough to find holes against.