Riding That Royalcoaster Again

Brady Singer flirted with a no-hitter, but the bullpen imploded and forced the bats to play hero.

For about two hours last night, I was thinking of headlines for a Brady Singer no-hitter. “No-Hit Wonder” popped into my head. A few others mentioning something about singing and no hits swirled too. Then he gave up a hit and I was definitely going with “One-Hit Wonder.” Then he gave up a second hit. And then he hit a batter. And then Carlos Hernandez came in and the game started to go up in flames and suddenly, none of it mattered. To me, that's a real shame because Singer was brilliant last night. To paraphrase something Josh Vernier says a lot, it was a game where the stars were the stars.

Let’s start with Singer because he was on one. I thought it was interesting because it really seemed like Ryan Lefebvre was feeling it as early as the third inning. Singer struck out Mike Ford with a nasty slider down in the zone and the way Ryan made that call was very clear that he could tell something good was happening. Baseball is weird like that because to start the second, Dominic Canzone (our villain) hit a line drive to shortstop. Bobby Witt Jr. had to leap to catch the ball. It wasn’t a great catch, but it wasn’t routine either and I had a strange thought enter my head about how that could be very important later. Sometimes you can just sense things.

As we all know, Canzone singled with two outs in the seventh inning and robbed us of the joy of watching everyone mob Singer on the mound. He ended up with a pretty but not historic line of:

7.1 IP
2 H
2 R
2 ER
8 K
1 BB

You will take that every time out and the fact that seeing any numbers next to hits and runs is a disappointment is an indication that it was a great start. What was so great? He simply had it working. Let’s dig in to how his sinker and slider play so well together. Take a look at this strikeout of Julio Rodriguez in the top of the fourth inning:

You have to be wondering how Rodriguez couldn’t pull the trigger on a pitch in a spot where he’s hit .348 with a .630 slugging percentage this year. It’s because of the threat of the slider. This is where that pitch is probably 15 feet from the plate:

Now look at the next batter, Eugenio Suarez, and the swing he takes on a slider:

It’s not perfect tunneling, but look where this slider was as it was approaching the plate:

How do you make a decision on that? One of those pitches went right into the zone while the other dove so far away that the batter had zero chance. That’s what happens when you’re doing what Singer has been doing lately. When the hitter has to make a decision about whether the ball is going to tail back into the zone or dive so far out of the zone that they look silly, you’re going to find some trouble. And even if they make the right decision and swing on the sinker, there's a decent chance the indecisiveness will lead to weak contact.

It all goes back to the most basic tenets of pitching. Yes, throwing 100 by guys is great, but ultimately the goal is to change timing and change eye levels. It helps when you can do that with elite stuff, but Singer really isn’t possessed with that elite stuff. Don’t get me wrong, the stuff is good, but at least rated, his Stuff+ is just 87 where 100 is average. He has to do it with this sort of tunneling and movement that keeps hitters guessing. And he’s good at it!

His pitch chart really shows that he was putting the ball where he wanted it.

You might see some pitches that theoretically caught too much of the zone, but when the two main pitches are working, you can make those mistakes. Plus, I’ve noted this before, but do you see that empty spot right in the middle. He did throw some pitches in the middle of the plate, but he also avoided some happy zone. I love seeing only a slight intersection of the sinker and the slider on a chart like this.

Now we’re starting to get into a similar territory with him that we did last season in looking at his last “n” games. I’m going to break down a few stretches. This one is following the start where his ERA spiked to its highest point of the year, near 9.00:

102 IP
96 H
83 K (19.5%)
29 BB (6.8%)
3.62 ERA
3.41 FIP

This one is since the last time he finished a day with his ERA above 6.00 and was following three starts that weren’t great:

59 IP
47 H
49 K (20.9%)
12 BB (5.1%)
3.05 ERA
3.08 FIP

And then this is since the break:

41 IP
26 H
39 K (25.0%)
6 BB (3.8%)
2.85 ERA
3.05 FIP

They’re all arbitrary. For the season, he still has that 4.91 ERA (though he does have a 3.89 FIP. He’s still given up more than a hit per inning and still has an xERA because of the quality of contact he allowed earlier this year of 4.94. I think I may have written this last week or maybe the week before, but I do wonder how Singer starts a season with a “normal” spring after dealing with the lockout in 2022 and then the World Baseball Classic in 2023, but I think the Royals need to at least have a plan in place with him before next spring.

If you don’t think he’s a guy you can count on for five to seven more years, you gauge value. If you do, you try to sign him. If you’re in between, I’d err on the side of moving him. I’m certain they explored some trades for him at the deadline and nothing materialized in the end. Will they go back to that or will they come to him with a five year, $60 million deal? I’m not sure if that’s enough, but if they think he’s a mid-rotation starter and they want to lock that in, I suppose I’m fine with it. I just need them to have a plan and figure out the best solution.

Unfortunately, the whole story wasn’t Singer and two other stars who I’ll get to because the Royals bullpen continued to struggle. And the first to struggle is one who has been surprisingly bad for the last few outings, Carlos Hernandez. I know the response is going to be a lot of grunting about trading relievers when you can, but you all probably know by now that I’m not an advocate of trading to trade and I’m not sure the offers were good enough for the value Hernandez offered at the deadline. I’m also a little confused by his struggles.

Okay, not confused. He’s simply not locating. The stuff is absolutely fine. Going back to the day of the deadline, he’s given up eight runs on seven hits in 4.2 innings with five walks. He’s still getting strikeouts with seven. He’s still getting swings and misses. The stuff is fine. Last night, he averaged 99.2 MPH on his fastball, his slider moved and he got eight whiffs on 18 swings. The problem was that when he missed, he was missing in a bad spot and let two of Singer’s runners score and then gave up two of his own. It’s not what you want to see, but I don’t find myself terribly worried about him.

The guy who I’m still not sold on is Austin Cox. He is absolutely a bulldog and I’m fine with giving him that ninth inning opportunity, but he walked two guys and while only one technically came around to score, a fielder’s choice that eliminated one of the walks did score. You have to throw strikes in the late innings and he and Nick Wittgren combined to walk three batters in that ninth inning to give the Mariners the lead in a game that they were probably chalking up to a loss with five outs to go. They need to figure something out because this team is obviously incredibly resilient, but to throw away a 5-0 lead and do it regularly is demoralizing.

Thankfully, as I said before, the stars were the stars and it helped the Royals get the win. It started in the first inning. After Maikel Garcia extended his hitting streak to a Royals rookie record 16 games and Witt had an infield single, Salvador Perez came up with one out.

That’s an old school Salvy blast. I thought, though, that it was really interesting how Logan Gilbert pitched him. That splitter Salvy hit out was the second two-strike pitch he saw. The first was a fastball down the middle. With two strikes, he’s seen 170 pitches in the zone this year and 86 of them are either sinkers or four-seam fastballs.

I made a point during the game to note that the fastball went against the old grain against Perez with two strikes. I just want to clear up here that I was wrong. In 2021, he saw 252 pitches in the zone with two strikes and 126 were four-seamers or sinkers. So pitchers apparently just want to get beat by a guy who will swing at a slider that ends up in the first base dugout. You do you, opposing pitchers. You do you.

The Royals loaded the bases with two outs against Gilbert in the second and couldn’t cash in. That included two more singles from Garcia and Witt, for whatever it’s worth. Then Gilbert went to work. He’s a good pitcher. I thought the offense had a nice plan against him and got him out early with that plan, but not before Witt hit his most difficult home run yet.

He circled the bases in 14.3 seconds, which is just stupid fast. It’s the fastest inside-the-park homer since 2017 and just insane speed. When you realize that he slowed up at first because he thought the ball would be caught, it gets even more impressive. I think he’d have made it even if Rodriguez didn’t struggle to pick the ball up at the wall, but that certainly helped too. These are very selective stats, but he’s now the 21st player in MLB history to have 22 homers, seven triples, 22 doubles and 34 steals in a season.

He also started the rally in the bottom of the ninth with his fourth hit of the game. Since he was moved out of the leadoff spot in late May, he now has 26 multi-hit games that includes four three-hit games and four four-hit games. He’s hitting .313/.352/.548 since that move and .323/.364/.548 since the start of June. Let’s just look at since he was moved out of the leadoff spot. That’s 305 PA. It’s half of a season. He has a 17 percent strikeout rate and is on a 30 double, 30 homer, 42 steal pace. There have been 12 players to ever put up those three counting stats in a full season.

I’m going to write something about what it would look like to lock him up long-term sometime soon. I’ve mentioned this in a couple of comments that it’s not impossible by any stretch. It may not be probable, but there are some interesting factors involved like the length of the deal. I really believe it needs to either cover just one or two free agent years or like eight free agent years. There isn’t an in-between at this point. They haven’t missed the boat, but the number has gotten a whole lot bigger.

Back to the game because that’s another newsletter for another day. The Royals, of course, finished things the way only the Royals can. Michael Massey lined a single to right after Witt’s leadoff single and that got Witt to third. Samad Taylor pinch ran for him, which was a wise move because he stole second. It was their 40th steal since the break, which leads all of baseball. And that was important because the Perez sacrifice fly that tied the game also moved Taylor to third. Dairon Blanco had come into the game for defense for MJ Melendez, so you knew what was coming.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Put speed on third and Blanco at the plate and the Royals are getting a run like 99 times out of 100. I mentioned this with Soren Petro yesterday afternoon, but it really feels like this season started with a team that wasn’t built the way Matt Quatraro (and probably JJ Picollo) wanted. They’ve massaged the roster all season long and now you’re starting to see a team that can play some defense, they can hit some home runs and they can run. They need pitching. There is no doubt about that. But they’re starting to be pretty fun in spite of it and last night was no exception even if it should have never been so stressful.