Mental and Physical Errors Doom Royals

The Royals defense has been so good for the last couple months, but it cost them yesterday.

If you’ve watched a Royals game over the last month or two, you’ve surely heard them talk about the defensive runs saved and how they went from a huge liability in the first half to a positive in relatively short order. A lot of that has been because they’re so good up the middle, but some of it has been some stabilization in right field without Jorge Soler out there many nights. But even with the improvements, there are still issues and they came up big yesterday in the rubber game of the series with the A’s.

It was only one inning, but it was enough to give the A’s enough to get the win and keep their heads above water in the race to the postseason. It started with another leadoff walk and then a hit batter, but Daniel Lynch, who I’ll get to in a bit, coaxed a ground ball out of Starling Marte with a run in and runners on first and second and nobody out.

This is the sort of mistake we saw from Whit Merrifield early in the year when he was struggling so much defensively. And it’s a rare one from him. He just didn’t realize how far away from the bag Nicky Lopez was and they didn’t record a single out. This happens to every team and is one of the things about the shift that can be a bit of an issue for teams, but that’s something Merrifield absolutely has to know.

After Lynch got deep in the count against Matt Olson before having to leave the game (I swear, I’ll get to him, calm down), Merrifield’s first mental error was erased as Olson lined out to him and he threw first to get Marte. So ultimately, as Alex Trebek would often say on Jeopardy! when all three contestants would miss a clue, no harm, no foul. But the harm was about to really hit hard.

After a Mark Canha walk, Jed Lowrie came up to pinch hit for Khris Davis. As a side note, I find the A’s willingness to pinch hit in any inning to keep the platoon advantage for that spot fascinating. They pinch hit for Lowrie later in the game with Yan Gomes, which ended their pinch hitting because you can’t take your backup catcher out of the game. Anyway, Lowrie is up against Joel Payamps, and Payamps gets him to hit a solid but playable ground ball to first.

This is an inexcusable error for two reasons. For one, Ryan O’Hearn simply has to make that play. You might remember his OPS+ from yesterday’s newsletter in September. It was -9. If you are going to be that anemic with the bat, you better be able to play the easiest position on the field. I understand that no spot is easy, but first base is absolutely the easiest. And he got a basic ground ball that would have ended the inning and booted it. It would have been 2-1 Royals and that would have been that. I’m going to get to O’Hearn as well, so sit tight.

But the other issue here is another absolute brain fart from Merrifield. He was in the right position to field the ball after O’Hearn kicked it and picked it up in plenty of time to throw to first to still get Lowrie. Just look at where the runner is when Merrifield picks up the ball:

He wasn’t even looking at first base here. O’Hearn wasn’t far off the bag. To his credit, he got back to the bag to receive the throw. Payamps was there as well, but Merrifield threw back to third for some reason. I have no earthly idea what was going through his head, but that’s two big-time mental errors from him this inning. One was erased, the other led directly to a run. And then Chad Pinder singled home two more and the A’s had all four runs they’d get all day and that was enough.

Ultimately, though, that never would have happened if a big league first baseman was able to field a ground ball hit directly to him. I don’t think I’ve made much of a secret about my disdain for O’Hearn as a player. He was fantastic offensively when he came up in 2018 and had a lot of us believing he might actually be what Olson has become for Oakland. But he struggled in 2019 and the Royals chalked it up to bad luck (it wasn’t). Then he struggled in 2020 and they chalked it up to more bad luck (it still wasn’t). And he’s been terrible in 2021.

What gets me is he’s been terrible for three seasons and has gotten so many opportunities, including time in the outfield while guys like Edward Olivares and Ryan McBroom, who may or may not be anything, don’t get near the run that he has. I understand lefty bat vs. righty bats and all that, but if there’s one thing I want to see from the JJ Picollo era is a little bit less of a leash on players who have already proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they just aren’t it. It’s very frustrating to watch O’Hearn as often as we’ve had to without really getting to see if someone else could be better.

And look, it isn’t all on O’Hearn or Merrifield. The Royals had their chances and failed. They stranded two in the first, one in the fourth, two in the sixth, two in the seventh and two in the eighth. Then Jake Brentz came in to keep the score where it was to hopefully get it to you know who and he was as bad as I’ve ever seen him. He hit a guy, then walked a guy on four pitches, then threw a couple wild pitches and then gave up a rocket double. So yes, they lost and the game would have been totally different without that play in the third, but it set things up to make the game a difficult one to win.

The one guy who did something was, of course, Salvador Perez, who homered because it was a day that ended in “y.” He came up in the first inning with Lopez on first after a walk and hit the second pitch 428 feet into the seats in left-center.

It was his 45th home run, which tied Johnny Bench’s big league record for home runs hit in a season by someone who has played at least 75 percent of his innings as a catcher. That’s a bit of a roundabout way of saying that he doesn’t have that many as a catcher. He now has 15 as a DH in 33 games and 30 as a catcher in 113 games. So he’s not at the record for catchers, and he likely won’t get there, but to tie Bench for anything is miraculous. It was his 24th home run that either tied the game or gave the Royals the lead.

How crazy is that number? The Royals have only had 40 season of 24 home runs period. That’s an indictment on the lack of power in the history of the franchise, sure, but to have that many that changed a game is just special. It’s been a special season for Salvy. His next home run will move him to second in team history. Three more will make him the second player in team history with 200 home runs. Four more will give him the team single season record. And five more will make him the Royals first 50-home run hitter. I wouldn’t bet against all that happening.

And as for Lynch, he left in the third with calf tightness. He came up a little lame after a 2-2 pitch was outside the zone. He got removed from the game, and ended up giving up three runs with just one earned in two plus innings. It was a bad time to have to leave with an injury after Jackson Kowar went one inning on Tuesday and Carlos Hernandez only went four on Wednesday. Everything came back and just showed it was a cramp that Lynch even said he could have pitched through, but the Royals were right to be cautious with a young arm. It just hurt that they got so few innings from their starters in this series.

I thought that Lynch’s outing was getting to be sort of interesting. He seemed to be having an awful lot of trouble getting his fastball down, like Hernandez on Wednesday, but found some really good success with both his slider and his changeup. First, take a look at his fastball locations:

I mean, that just doesn’t work. If it wasn’t way up, it was just right down the middle. But it was nice that he was able to go to some secondary pitches to look like he was sort of getting the job done. He used his slider to get him out of the first inning. This one was a double play ball from Olson:

And this one got Mark Canha swinging:

This changeup in the second to Khris Davis was pure filth:

And then this one to Sean Murphy had him off balance and he hit a weak fly to left:

But things fell apart for him in the third and then they fell apart for the team and they just couldn’t put it back together before a ninth inning that nobody will want to remember. And that was that. The game was lost, the series was lost and, at the end of the day, the Royals are now a loss or a win from either the Yankees or Blue Jays away from being officially eliminated from the postseason. Sure it’s been a foregone conclusion for quite some time, but it still stings a tiny bit when it becomes reality.