They Threw It, They Caught It...And They Hit It Just Enough

The Royals formula worked to perfection on Wednesday night.

For the second straight night, the Royals beat the Minnesota Twins in a way that seemed pretty mundane. On Tuesday night, they rode the long ball and excellent relief work. Then last night, they rode a very good starting pitching effort and more excellent relief work. They only scored two runs, but they only needed one, so really you could say they were twice as good offensively as they needed to be. I’m going to get to the offense in a bit because that’s worth mentioning, but the story was the story from all the wins so far this season.

I wrote early last week that the Royals had a formula that will win them games they probably shouldn’t win. I think I’ve written that again since then and I’m writing it yet again because they just keep doing it. If you can turn it over to a bullpen that goes five or six deep and catch seemingly every ball that’s put into play, it can cover up for a lot of other deficiencies. And when the starting pitching gives five shutout innings on top of it, well that’s a darn near unbeatable formula.

I was very excited to see what Daniel Lynch would do after his last outing in St. Louis. The results were bad with six runs allowed on three home runs in five innings, but the underlying numbers were intriguing for me. I was hopeful he’d be able to follow that up with similar swing and miss stuff but better end results. He didn’t quite deliver. The swing and miss wasn’t there like it was last start, but that was okay because he wasn’t giving up much in the way of hard contact.

The numbers here are generally fine. He did use the slider a lot last night, after seeing Amir Garrett show what it could do against this offense. I thought his changeups were really good, but he didn’t break them out too often because I guess he didn’t think he needed them, and the results pretty much showed that.

In the end, he gave up four hits over five plus innings and showed that he could throw any pitch in any count and even without swings and misses, he got some super awkward swings throughout the night.

That slider absolutely ate up Gary Sanchez and led to one of the softest non-bunts you’ll ever see.

After getting beat up by his changeup against the Cardinals, giving up five hits in six at bats including a double and a home run, he came back and I really liked the way it looked. He did give up a soft single and walked a hitter on the pitch, but he got Carlos Correa to pop up in a big situation using it and just generally was quite good with it.

I thought Lynch was a victim of the offense just not doing enough and Mike Matheny confirmed that in the postgame. If they had a bigger lead, he’d have been given a chance to work around the trouble in that sixth inning that started from a leadoff single, but with just a 2-0 lead, every pitch was stressful and the Royals bullpen is on fire right now.

So they went to Collin Snider with a runner on first and nobody out. He had a fairly long battle with Gio Urshela, but on the seventh pitch, he hit a ball hard right to Nicky Lopez, who flipped to Adalberto Mondesi, who then threw to first for the double play. Just like that, the Royals new fireman had put out a small fire. He did walk his first hitter of the year, but came back to get another ground ball from Sanchez to end the sixth inning. That’s two more grounders, which pushed his ground ball rate to 61.5 percent, behind only Gabe Speier in the current Royals bullpen.

Then it was on to Jake Brentz, who I advocated for moving to a lower leverage role given his issues. You might recall that I thought he looked a little better on Tuesday night but still couldn’t get out of his inning. And Matheny was obviously a bit skeptical, with Dylan Coleman warming up behind him. But boy was Brentz good. This was first half 2021 Brentz. He threw 13 pitches with nine strikes, pounding the top of the zone.

That’s a pretty pitch chart. He had three swings and misses, all on fastballs up in the zone, which is clearly a point of emphasis for the Royals, even if they aren’t finding success with that yet. If they can get Brentz right, this bullpen goes up another level.

After Brentz, Matheny flipped the script from the last couple games and went with Josh Staumont. It was likely due to the spots up in the order. Scott Barlow gets the leverage at bats and if those are in the seventh, eighth or ninth, it doesn’t seem to matter. But with 9-1-2 due up for the Twins in the eighth, that was Staumont’s time. And after struggling with his control on Tuesday, he was nails last night. He threw 12 pitches and nine strikes and ended his outing on a just ridiculous note, first by giving Correa this fastball:

And then ending it with this ridiculous curve:

Come on, that’s just not fair. Staumont handed the ball to Barlow who threw 14 pitches and nine strikes and even with a hit in there, the Royals third double play of the night ended things and gave the Royals their first winning streak of the year. Yes, three games is a streak. Two is just a trend.

But as good as the pitching was, the defense continued to do its thing. Errors are generally pretty stupid because official scorers have gone completely soft, but at some point, a certain number of consecutive errorless games becomes a legitimate talking point and the Royals are up to 10 to start their season. But it’s not just that they’re handling the plays they should. It’s that they’re making just about every play.

It started early. Jorge Polanco started the game with a single to left and that brought Correa to the plate. He hit a soft grounder to Mondesi’s right (another great pitch from Lynch) and Mondesi made this look easy.

But it wasn’t easy. It’s not only how fast Mondesi turned to throw to second to get the lead runner, but the way Lopez made the turn and got that throw to first was something special.

In the second, Sanchez hit a very soft fly ball to right that I thought from my seat was going to fall in and be a bloop hit, but Whit Merrifield just kept on coming and before you knew it, he was in a slide and made a heck of a running catch coming in.

In the third (yes, it was every inning early), Ryan Jeffers hit one of the few hard hit balls off Lynch that looked like it was destined for left field, but there was Bobby Witt Jr. to cut it off and make a very quick pick and then turned the other way to throw to second to get the lead runner.

The rest of the game was just more solid defensive play, but the Royals defense is putting on quite a clinic out there each night.

The Royals seem to have two-thirds of this down pretty well to start the year.

It’s The Hitting The Ball Part Where They Need Help

The Royals have scored more than three runs in a game three times. They have yet to be shut out, which is a bit of a surprise. But they’ve now won games scoring one run, two runs, three runs twice and four runs. They’re 5-3 when they score four or fewer runs this season. Last year, they went 22-73. The point is that they seem to have some pitching this season that they didn’t have last year. But it would sure be nice if not every single pitch was high leverage for them throughout the entire season.

Last night, they struggled once again to get runs home when they had scoring chances. They got the first two on in the first and only scored on a double play from Witt. Then in the fifth, they got two straight singles to put runners on first and third with nobody out and Mondesi laid down a beautiful bunt for a base hit to score a run. But even then, they had two on and nobody out and didn’t score again. At least they took advantage of those chances. They went down in order in the second, third, fourth, seventh and eighth. The only runner they had in the sixth was a two-out single. So if they hadn’t scored in their two real chances, we might still be watching baseball right now.

I remember asking the question after the first month if the Royals were good or simply lucky to have a good record. In my heart, I wanted them to be good, but they were running a bit on smoke and mirrors to get to that 16-9 start. I think their 38-35 second half was much more sustainable than the 16-9 start. But now they’re 5-5 and they’re scoring an anemic three runs per game.

Even with allowing 27 runs over a two-game stretch, they’re only allowing 4.4 runs per game. What does that tell you? They don’t need to hit like the Dodgers to win some games. It would be nice, but you have to feel like if this team can put up four or five runs on any given night that their pitching staff (led by the bullpen) will turn that game into a win. I’m not saying I’m getting 2014 Royals vibes from this team or anything, but it sure does feel like four runs will be the magic number for them a lot of nights.

As the weather warms up, I’m guessing the pitching will take a bit more of a beating, but they’re throwing strikes with a walk rate that ranks 11th best in baseball and they’re one of the few teams where pitching to contact isn’t the worst thing because of the defense behind them. They just need some runs to support them. The fact that last night was the first time this year a Royals starter has left a game with a lead is an indictment on those bats.

But all that said, they’re not going to average three runs per game all season. Even the worst offense last year averaged 3.76. And the Royals averaged 4.23 per game. That number was 4.41 after the break. I think this offense is as talented or better than what we saw in that second half, so you have to assume more is coming, but it’s nice to be able to get some wins while they wait.