Pitching and Defense

The Royals won a pitcher's duel on Tuesday by taking advantage when the opposing defense invited them in.

Sometimes you win, sometimes they lose. As with everything in life, the truth is probably in the middle more often than people want to admit. But if you’re a Twins fan, I think you probably feel like last night’s game skewed a bit more toward the losing part than the winning part for the Royals. And, sure, there’s a lot of that in this game, but the reality is that taking advantage of opportunities is a part of winning. And when it was all said and done, the Royals had the best pitcher between the two teams and the best and most talented player between the two teams and that was kind of enough.

It was another chilly night at Kauffman Stadium, which seems to be more impactful than at other parks. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I feel like you see other cold games and some runs come across and the ball doesn’t seem to die quite like it does in Kansas City when it’s below 60. That could be entirely anecdotal, so let’s not pretend like I know what I’m talking about, but that’s how it seems to me. And sure enough, between both teams, there were just 17 hard-hit balls. I guess that’s not all that surprising with all the balls not in play from a really fun pitcher’s duel, but at one point, the hardest hit ball of the game was a Kyle Isbel groundout to end the third.

But again, maybe it was the pitchers. Cole Ragans vs. Pablo Lopez lived up to the hype that it probably should have gotten. This is a Royals newsletter, so you’re not really so interested in the Lopez side other than why the Royals can’t hit him, but Ragans was brilliant. His fine line:

6 IP
4 H
1 R
11 K
0 BB
18 Whiffs

He did it on 96 pitches. He still has yet to go beyond six innings in a start this year, but he’s getting better each and every time out. He now has a 2.81 ERA in 16 innings over three starts. His xERA is 1.86. His strikeout rate is 35.8 percent. His walk rate is just 6.0 percent. It’s very early, of course, but we went into last year wondering if he could do it for a full season. It’s not that nobody thought he could, but we just didn’t know until we knew. Now we need to know if he can do it again. The early returns are excellent.

Just like his last start, Ragans struck out seven through three innings and he did it on a relative economy of pitches. Against Milwaukee, he had 46 pitches through three innings and last night, he had 44. I’ll repeat what I said then that it’s another example that the strikeouts aren’t what gets you as a pitcher. It’s everything else around them. The difference is that he pretty much only had his fastball last week. Last night, he had a lot more going for him.