Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now

The Royals had very few chances to score and they did the worst possible thing they could when they had those opportunities.

There are two schools of thought when you’re a team struggling to score some runs. The first is that you have to force the issue. Make the other team make a throw and see what happens. The other is that you can’t let the few base runners you do get be thrown out on the bases. There is no question that outs are precious. In nine innings, you only get 27 of them to do your damage with. It’s a big reason why I hate sacrifice bunts in most cases. The Royals may or may not say they value all their outs, but the evidence shows they don’t value them enough.

Let’s get this straight first. Joe Ryan was absolutely dealing yesterday. He was taking advantage of a big strike zone (that generally went both ways, so no big deal) and getting swings and misses with a nasty slider and a fastball that moves in ways you don’t typically see. When you combine that with an offense that’s either bad, struggling mightily or both, well, you get what he did yesterday over the course of six shutout innings. And that makes it all the more important to not waste the few chances you get.

Ryan retired the first eight batters pretty easily. The first runner of the game for the Royals came on a two-out single by Michael A. Taylor. I wouldn’t call this a something to get upset about necessarily but brand new leadoff hitter Nicky Lopez couldn’t keep the inning going, so that was that.

The issue came the next inning. Whit Merrifield, owner of three hits in his last 30 at bats after yesterday, struck out swinging to start the inning. Then Andrew Benintendi hit a ball that I thought was gone off the bat.

Now, this was also some bad luck that the Royals were playing in this park on this day (though I guess how bad can the park luck be when it’s your home park?) because:

Would it dong? @would_it_dong

Andrew Benintendi vs Joe Ryan #TogetherRoyal Triple 🏇💨 Exit velo: 104.2 mph Launch angle: 31 deg Proj. distance: 389 ft This would have been a home run in 29/30 MLB ballparks. Only Kauffman Stadium would've held this one in. MIN (1) @ KC (0) 🔻 4th

It obviously wasn’t a homer, but Benintendi got into third base with one out and Salvador Perez up next. Perez, coming into the game, had the 32nd highest fly ball rate among qualified hitters since the start of 2020. And he has had the 14th longest average fly ball distance since the start of that season as well. The odds were with the Royals there with Joe Ryan also definitely a fly ball with a big league rate above 50 percent, ranking 17th among pitchers with at least 30 innings since the start of last year.

So the stage is set and on the first pitch, Perez lifts a slider to center where Nick Gordon, an infielder, sets up to make the catch. And then made an absolutely perfect throw to the plate.

Here’s the thing. I get it. Ryan looked filthy and the Royals offense is truly offensive to the eyes. When you combine those two things, you wonder if there will be another chance to score. Vance Wilson got a lot of flack for this, but I think he saw that as the best chance for the Royals to score. My problem with it was Gordon’s set up. It was perfect. He came in on the ball and was ready to make the throw to the plate with all of his weight behind it. It’s easy to say this having sit back with the chance to think about all of this, but I don’t think I’d have sent him there.

The problem is that the Royals, offensively deficient for years, just continue to make outs on the bases. Again, there’s a difference between trying to make something happen and giving away outs. Last season, the Royals were tied with the Yankees for the most runners thrown out at the plate. They were fourth in getting thrown out at second and a more palatable 16th in getting thrown out at third base. I get that their modus operandi is to be aggressive and that will lead to outs on the bases, but if they’re going to play every game within two or three runs (which they won’t, but it feels like it), they can’t be giving outs away like this.

Andrew Benintendi is probably not fully at fault for this one, but he’s an adventure on the bases. Last year, he was thrown out at home three times, at second four times and at third once. In his rookie year, he was thrown out at second five times and at third four times. He feels like someone who should be a good base runner, but he struggles with it.

Then in the fifth, Bobby Witt Jr. was up in his new spot in the order - seventh - and had just a fantastic plate appearance. He found himself down in the count 0-2 (for the 13th time already) and fought back to work a walk. He laid off a couple good sliders and spoiled one too. So there he is on first base with two outs with all his speed.

And he got picked off.

I don’t know what Adalberto Mondesi would have done next. Nobody does, obviously, but we know that he’s a player who can turn it on and look like a Hall of Famer at the drop of a hat. I get it. The rookie was trying to make something happen and I appreciate the effort there, but you simply have to be smarter than that.

And then we go to the ninth where Michael A. Taylor worked a leadoff walk. And immediately, the Royals were ready to give away one of three remaining outs. Lopez is a usually a very good bunter and getting someone in scoring position seemed wise, but also Lopez was a .300 hitter last year and heading into this one was hitting .367. He had shown enough that he moved all the way to the top of the order within the first 11 games. I’m not saying that I think Lopez is a great hitter, but I also have said that if a hitter tells you what he is, believe him in regards to Mondesi, so maybe we should start believing Lopez and let the guy swing the bat. The result was bad, but the process was worse.

In all, the Royals had five men on base the entire game. Two of them were eliminated on the bases and one of them went from a promising one on, nobody out situation to one that was tenable for the Twins to get through. The other two were two-out hits that were followed by nothing. That’s no way to go through life.

Greinke Gutted It Out Again

Is it better to be lucky or good? The correct answer is both, but I’ll take lucky, I suppose, if that’s the only alternative. Remember after his last starts when I told you that he had five or fewer whiffs in just 11 of his last 76 starts? And that two were in his first two starts of the year? Well add a third because he got two swings and misses all game against the Twins offense. Those two whiffs were tied for the fewest he’s had in a start since the start of 2019.

Let me take this a step farther. He’s thrown 72 pitches with two strikes. He’s had 37 swings on those two-strike pitches. And he’s had one swing and miss. Coming into play yesterday, only four pitches had thrown more than 100 pitches with just one swing and miss with two strikes on the batter. One is Greinke, another is Carlos Hernandez, so that’s not great. The other two are Julio Urias, which is honestly a big surprise, and Zach Davies which is less surprising.

But here’s the thing. Greinke keeps getting outs. Sure he took the loss, but his ERA is 2.25. He’s gone 16 innings in three starts and has given up four runs on 16 hits. He’s only walked three batters. And yeah, he gave up some hard contact, but the average exit velocity against him was 88.5 MPH and he made the Twins put some funny swings on balls.

In some ways, I’m a little confused about the lack of swing and miss. The Twins seemed to be ready for the big curve. They saw 20 of them and took 13 with 10 of them finishing outside the strike zone.

You can see that it wasn’t great, but I think there are a few there that probably should have gotten a swing. I don’t know if the pitch is so slow that they can pick it up quickly or if they’ve figured out some sort of tell that it’s coming, but they handled that pitch quite well.

And I keep going back to the slider because of Greinke’s comments after Opening Day wanting to throw it more. It was good for him yesterday. He got his only two swings and misses of the day on it and Carlos Correa had a couple of good swings on it (that resulted in three outs total), but I liked the way it looked for him. Maybe we’ll see more of that pitch moving forward, but who knows at this point? It’d be great to see more of this:

Ultimately, I obviously love the way he pitches. He throws strikes and he gets so much out of what he has out there. But at some point, the contact is going to give him some problems, so hopefully he can find something that allows him to get a few more whiffs.

Your Daily Bullpen Love

This has to just be a recurring section here in the newsletter. The Royals trailed basically the whole game, so when Greinke was pulled, they moved to their “B” bullpen. It started with Gabe Speier, who hadn’t gone since that blowout against Cleveland. He threw a scoreless inning with the help of yet another double play by the defense behind him.

Then it was Taylor Clarke. I did not like that signing when they made it, but he has much better stuff than I realized. It seemed like he was laboring just a bit, but he gave two more innings without walking a batter, which goes back to spring training where he didn’t walk a batter. Where does Clarke rank in the bullpen hierarchy? He’s behind Scott Barlow, Jake Brentz, Amir Garrett, Collin Snider and Josh Staumont for sure. I think he’s also behind Dylan Coleman. That puts him seventh? This kind of stuff from your seventh best reliever truly is elite bullpen territory. Just look at this pitch:

And speaking of Coleman, he got the ninth. After a leadoff walk, he showed off what he can do. He averaged 98 MPH with his fastball, topping out at 99.1. He got an ugly, ugly swing on the slider from Sano to get him swinging.

What do you do with that pitch? It’s at least in the bottom of the hitting zone for a long, long time before the bottom drops out. I know Sano isn’t tough to get swinging, but that is true nastiness from the Royals fifth or sixth bullpen option.

Their overall ERA is down to 3.88. Their njkERA (no Jackson Kowar) is down to 2.72. They haven’t allowed a run since April 14 when Brentz gave up two to the Tigers. Since then, they’ve gone 19.1 innings with a 31.3 percent strikeout rate and 9 percent walk rate. Going back to the game against the Cardinals, the bullpen has a 0.69 ERA with a 30.1 percent strikeout rate and 8.6 percent walk rate. They had a rough two days to end that Guardians series, but what they’re doing is incredible and seems to be sustainable too.