Looking Back on a Stressful End to a Sweep

Never easy, but the Royals have their first four-game road sweep in more than 20 years.

The Royals own the best record in all of baseball and obviously lead their division. But they certainly don’t make it easy on people watching the games. Yesterday was another example of a high stress game the whole way that they actually never trailed. It started with Brad Keller, who has had everybody on edge with how bad he’s been to start the year, and while it ended quietly, the two relievers before the end gave us plenty of reason to worry.

I always like to check out the win probability chart before I get into things like this.

So at least there’s some basis for feeling like this one was in doubt. It was up and down for awhile there.

Let’s start with Keller because he’s been the topic of so many conversations during the start of the season for a team that has had a pretty smooth go of things. His overall line looks…fine.

6 IP, 8 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 4 K

And maybe it wasn’t really as much of a tightrope walk as it seemed but we were just more on edge than usual because we’re so anxious for a good start from him. Of the eight total hits he gave up, four of them were from the five pitches that were hit at 75 miles per hour or slower. That indicates at least some level of bad luck. Of course, the other four were in 10 at bats where the ball traveled 95 MPH or harder. So that indicates some good luck. Man, I don’t know.

What I saw was command that was generally better than what we’ve seen in most of his starts, but also still not especially good. The two walks were both in the first, so he really limited that damage, which was a good sign and, like other Royals pitchers in this series, he got the Tigers to swing and miss. In the interest of fairness to Keller, here’s his swinging strike chart from yesterday’s game:

Once again, living on the edges. That’ll get it done, especially against a bad offense that is also struggling. There were two pitches above that had me holding my breath. One was the slider sitting in the middle of the plate but not quite low enough and the other was that four-seam fastball that caught just a bit too much of the zone for my liking. But otherwise, these were some good pitches.

But all that said, I really didn’t like the way he used his slider. He just was too much over the plate, which is a function of poor command.

Look at all those pitches that if he was facing a better offense would have been hit hard. As it was, the Tigers couldn’t do much with it, but even a bad lineup that is a bit better than this like the Indians he’ll see next time out will likely do more with so many sliders catching so much of the plate. There was one, though, that I thought might have been his best of the season:

And then Mike Matheny made a rare bullpen decision I’ve disagreed with this season when he didn’t pull Keller after the fifth. Of course I was so dead wrong that it isn’t even funny. Keller had a 1-2-3 inning that included the center cut slider I was worried about above as strike three on Niko Goodrum, a beautiful two-seamer that got a weak groundout and then another center cut slider that was hit hard but to center field for the 18th out he recorded of the game.

So it was a stressful six innings, but maybe something for him to build on. I noted early in the game that he seemed to be in his head, overthrowing pitches. Some success isn’t the worst thing, even if the methods to get there aren’t terribly sustainable. Then he turned it over to the bullpen and they decided to see who could cause the most stress to those of us watching.

Sometimes Scott Barlow just completely loses the strike zone. It’s sometimes a couple pitches, maybe a couple batters or maybe a full inning. In this one, the timing was awful. Walking Robbie Grossman happens. That’s his value on offense. And he took a couple really inviting fastballs in the plate appearance. But the next guy up, Harold Castro, is both not as patient and Barlow just pitched poorly. After two first pitch strikes, I’m honestly not sure what he was doing.

Then up comes Miguel Cabrera, who could be hitting .129/.250/.258 and I’d still be scared of him in a big situation. With two on and nobody out and a one-run lead, Barlow raced out against him like he did Castro and was ahead 0-2 on two really good pitches. Then he bounced one and Cal Eldred wasn’t about to watch this show again, so he came to the mound and from that point forward, Barlow was good to go. So credit to Eldred, which I don’t give often. This pitch ended Cabrera’s at bat:

That could have easily been a two-run deficit back a couple years ago against Cabrera, but not yesterday.

Then it was two called strikes and a nasty slider to end Jeimer Candelario’s dream of tying the game. Then a foul ball off the bat of Willi Castro followed by two curves down that he swung over and that was that. After Eldred went to the mound, Barlow threw seven pitches, got four swings and misses and had three strikeouts to end the inning.

Greg Holland came into the game in the eighth and instead of walking the first two guys, he upped the ante and gave up a leadoff triple to Akil Baddoo, who had been hitless in the series. The Royals truly are living right, though, because literally another six inches farther and the game is tied, but instead the ball bounced off the top of the wall and Baddoo had a triple. He was on third with nobody out for Niko Goodrum.

Four pitches later, Baddoo was on third with one out for pinch hitter Wilson Ramos. Holland, in full on slider mode, surprised him with one up that he swung through. And then he put a beautiful one down and on the corner and Ramos misjudged the spin and hit a ball out in front of home plate that couldn’t advance the runner.

Now Baddoo was on third with two outs for Victor Reyes. And this is one of those plate appearances that you can do some mean things to players on struggling teams because Holland started Reyes off for a fastball. He put a slider swing on it. Then he threw a slider down that started where the previous fastball ended up. Swing and a miss. Then he missed in the dirt. The fourth pitch was a mistake. It was a slider that spun, but again, Reyes was trying to do more than just drop a ball onto the outfield grass and he swung through it for strike three.

A relatively quiet ninth inning from Josh Staumont, who is apparently the new closer, gave the Royals the four-game sweep on the road for the first time since May of 1999. To give you an idea of how long ago that was, Bobby Witt, Jr. was still 13 months from being born. Nearly 22 years to wait for another four-game sweep and the pitching was the absolute story.

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Crown Jewels

Bullpen Starting to Set

The Royals started the season with five pitchers getting one save each before Holland became the first Royals reliever to pick up a second save. After that, they went to Staumont for the save on Friday night, which with a Matheny bullpen (and I mean this in a good way now) may or may not have meant anything. But then move ahead to yesterday’s game and there’s Staumont on the mound to pitch the ninth inning. Was it simply that he thinks Staumont was the best pitcher he had left to face the top of the order? Maybe so. That’s the group Barlow was brought in to face. Or maybe Matheny just likes Staumont and his upper-90s fastball and usually nasty curve in that ninth inning.

In my opinion, I like the idea of a flexible bullpen, but I only see a couple guys in Barlow, Tyler Zuber (who has been really good since coming back) and maybe Jake Brentz (also really good) as pitchers who can get ready in a hurry. With guys like Staumont, Kyle Zimmer, Holland and Wade Davis, I think they need a little more lead time. So I’m good with those guys knowing which hitters they’re going to likely be used against, but I really like the idea of the situation dictating when the reliever comes into the game. Of course, managers fall into patterns, so I fully expected someone to end up in the ninth inning role, but I’m very curious moving forward if Staumont stays there or if this was just a matter of where they were in the lineup.

Playoff Dreaming

It might be a little early to start really thinking about the playoffs, but when you follow a team that’s won just a bit more than 37 percent of its games over the last three seasons, a 14-7 start is enough of an excuse to start hoping on October baseball. I like the Fangraphs playoff odds and when the season started, the Royals were sitting at 8.9 percent with a final record projection of about 78-84 (I say about because it’s really 77.7-84.3). Now, their final record projection is up to about 83-79 with playoff odds jumping to 26.5 percent and they’re ahead of the Twins in projections even. That’s a heck of a jump in just under four weeks.

For the first time in years, the Royals are actually getting out ahead of things, which is important. If you figure it would take 90 wins to take the second wild card (and maybe it’s more, maybe it’s less but this is a round number), they’ll need to finish 76-65 to get there. Think back to a season like 2017. That team started slow for a number of reasons, but they were 7-14 through 21 games. They would have needed an 83-58 finish to the season just to get to 90 wins. That’s a pace of 95 wins for a full season. The Royals this year just need to play at an 87-win pace. Can they do it? I don’t know, but it’s fun that they’ve put themselves in a position where we can at least be talking about it.