You Really Can't Predict Baseball, Huh?

The Royals had no business taking last night's game from the Rays, but, well, here we are.

The Kansas City Royals entered their game against the Tampa Bay Rays last night with a record of 20-54. That’s a 44-win pace and that includes rounding up on the wins. The Rays entered the game at 52-25. That’s a 109-win pace and that includes rounding down on the wins. The starting pitching matchup was Shane McClanahan vs. Jose Cuas. McClanahan entered the game at 11-1 with a 2.12 ERA in 89.1 innings. Yes, he alone had 55 percent of the wins of the Royals. The game was over before it started.

But for one night it wasn’t. It doesn’t mean much. It might at some point, but it probably won’t. But that also doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun to watch as the Royals continued to do what they’ve really done all year and kept pushing even when they were pretty clearly overmatched. I said it the other day and I’ll say it again. That’s a huge credit to their leadership.

After stranding a runner in scoring position in the top of the first, Cuas came out as the opener for the Royals and struggled immediately. He gave up a single to Yandy Diaz and hit Brooks Raley. Randy Arozarena lined a single to right and then advanced to second on a throwing error by MJ Melendez. A run was in. Cuas got Isaac Paredes to hit a fly ball, but that scored the second run for the Rays. Arozarena ran the Rays out of the first by getting doubled up on a fly ball to center that he had no business tagging on, but the damage was done.

The Rays generally don’t lose when they score first. They generally don’t lose when they score in the first. And they generally don’t lose when McClanahan is on the mound.

But the offense was putting some good swings on a very good pitcher, which was a welcome sight. They hit some rockets in the third inning. Dairon Blanco tripled when Arozarena got caught by a bad hop on the turf. And Maikel Garcia, hitting leadoff, made the Rays pay immediately.

After Garcia’s single, Bobby Witt Jr. walked (again!) and Salvador Perez struck out, which brought up Melendez. We know about the Melendez error in the first. He made another ugly one in the second when he just flat out dropped a fly ball and then compounded his mistake by kicking the ball after he dropped it when he could have gotten a forceout. So he had some motivation. And he came through.

Melendez has had so much trouble in so many ways this year, but every so often, you see him get back to basics and just go with a pitch. I know I’m beating a dead horse or whatever, but someone who hits the ball that hard and has shown the kind of prodigious power when he gets into it is someone who I struggle to give up on. I’m honestly not convinced he couldn’t benefit from a few weeks in Omaha, but I still believe there’s a middle of the order bat in him. Whether it ever comes out consistently is another story, but it’s hard to ignore the metrics.

This is when the game settled down. Austin Cox gets all the credit in the world for that. He came in to relieve Cuas in the bottom of the second having faced 28 batters in his big league career with 26 outs recorded and he hadn’t allowed a single hit. He got the fly ball that Melendez dropped and then got two flyouts to end that second. He struck out Luke Raley to start the bottom of the third and then got Arozarena on a flyout to set the big league record for most batters faced to start a career without giving up a hit.

He ended up getting to 39 hitters before giving up a hit to Diaz. He gave up another to Arozarena but the Royals had some of that good luck I wrote they hadn’t had much of and Diaz fell down on the hit and ended up getting tagged out to end the inning. When it was all said and done, Cox, in the bulk role, had a very nice game.

He threw 53 pitches, which is the most he’s thrown since May 31. I think he probably could have given one more inning. I actually didn’t realize he’d thrown 92 pitches that recently, but I also thought Matt Quatraro made the right move after Cox started getting hit a bit in the fifth inning. Still, he did some really good things throughout his start.

He used his fastball exceptionally well, throwing 24 of them, getting 14 swings and a ridiculous eight whiffs. That’s pretty consistent with what we’ve seen from him in his handful of outings so far. He came into the game with. a 40 percent whiff rate on the fastball in spite of it being well-below average in velocity and spin rate. He’s a case study in location being king.

A few got too much of the plate, but most of the time, he found himself getting the Rays on fastballs up. There is a danger to someone with his profile, and I suspect he’ll get beaten at some point soon enough, but the stuff is definitely a tick below most of what you see around the league. Guys who rely so heavily on location can be successful and can even be successful more often than not, but there are certainly days where the command isn’t quite there. Luckily for the Royals, that day was not yesterday.

I do think, like Daniel Lynch, his changeup allowed for his fastball to miss the few times that it did. He didn’t get the whiffs on it that Lynch did the other day and he didn’t even get many swings on it as it was out of the zone a lot, but it gave the Rays something to think about. And then he hit them with a cutter that got four whiffs on nine swings as well. I was a little surprised to see him throw 10 of them considering he’d thrown 10 total in his previous outings, but it generally looked pretty good for him.

Unfortunately for the Rays and McClanahan, he had to leave after 3.2 innings with a lower back injury. But fortunately for me, that means that the two lefties had the same number of innings pitched so we can do a side-by-side comparison that is totally unfair, but at least fun for Royals fans for one night.

So there you have it, Cox is better than McClanahan. It’s hard to argue with evidence like that.

Maybe that’s not true, but what I think is absolutely true is that Cox has earned an opportunity to make a start the next time this spot in the rotation comes around. Actually that’s not necessarily a big deal, but I’d like to see him continue to get bulk innings to lead to a start potentially. The next time through lines up against the Guardians who have a very balanced lineup in terms of handedness, which doesn’t really provide a huge benefit to the opener. But either way, I want to see more innings from him.

The Royals got a strong sixth from Carlos Hernandez when Drew Waters opened the seventh inning by turning on a fastball on the inner third on the first pitch he saw.

You can forgive Robert Stephenson for thinking he could sneak that pitch past Waters. In his career (as small of a sample as it is), Waters came into the game hitting .214 with no extra base hits as a lefty on fastballs on the inner third. But he was ready for this and showed off the big-time power he has. While the swing and miss is pervasive in his game, I don’t think anyone would argue what kind of power he can flash at times.

I said this a couple of times in the last few days, but Waters is so interesting to me because he really is a good defender and can get hot. Through 20 games last year, he was hitting .182/.286/.309. Then he went on a tear for 10 games, hitting .394/.460/.879. Maybe that’s just the type of hitter he is. And that’s really okay if he’s hitting at the bottom of a lineup. It’d be great to be able to count on him to be a middle of the order bat or even someone at the top of a lineup, but the kind of power he’s displayed in the bottom third is really interesting, especially if you can take advantage of the surges.

But, in Royals fashion, they gave it back immediately. Taylor Clarke, who is seeing his trade value drop every game, gave up a home run to the very first batter he faced. Then he gave up two singles, a sacrifice bunt and a two-run single to Arozarena. That’s not what you want. He couldn’t even finish the inning, having to yield to Nick Wittgren.

But, also in Royals fashion, they don’t quit. They started the top of the eighth against Jason Adam with back-to-back singles. An Edward Olivares grounder moved the runners to second and third, but Nick Pratto struck out swinging as a pinch hitter. Samad Taylor showed more patience with a walk and Waters got to play the hero once again.

This at bat was one that got my attention. It started with two called strikes. The first pitch was in a location that you’d think would be hittable, but I wonder if he wasn’t looking for the changeup. The second was just a nasty sweeper that came back over the plate. He had an easy take on a fastball that sailed and then didn’t overswing on the ball he ultimately hit for a single to tie things up. The swing decisions from him last night make me wonder if one of those hot streaks is coming. It’s a good time for him with Kyle Isbel getting closer to a return.

Aroldis Chapman did his job with a dominant inning. He struck out the side on 15 pitches. He’d had some command problems the last couple of times out, but he came out throwing his slider, which I thought was interesting. He had a couple called strikes and was able to get the Rays in swing mode. That took the Royals to the ninth where Garcia led off with a walk and then stole both second and third. The second steal put Witt in kind of a bad spot because he took the pitch for strike two and ended up striking out, but that gave the Royals a real chance.

After a Perez strikeout put the Royals in danger of blowing it, Melendez hit a chopper to first that Diaz decided to flip to the pitcher rather than taking it to the bag himself. It was a terrible toss, the ball fell to the ground and Melendez was safe with an infield hit to give the Royals a 6-5 lead. Scott Barlow worked around a one-out single in the ninth and struck out two to get the Royals the win. Out of 25 series played this year, it’s just the fifth where they’ve won the first game.

Does this game mean anything in the long run? No, probably not. But you never know what sort of thing will help turn things around in at least some way. The number of people who don’t watch this team every day who can’t understand how they’re so bad is interesting to me. The general consensus is that they see the talent and can’t figure out where the disconnect is.

There are legitimate reasons why this team is 21-54. Generally in these conversations, I mention them and it’s understood, but there is talent on this roster and you have to start somewhere. So when it’s all said and done, we probably don’t remember this game. But on the small chance that things do turn around, maybe this was the game that started that. You never know, I guess. Stranger things have happened. You know, like the Royals beating the Rays.