Royals Rookies Rock as Team Topples Toronto

It wasn't a normal day, but it was a good day.

Nothing about yesterday was typical. Absolutely nothing. When we typically are waiting to see what lineup Mike Matheny puts out that night, we were waiting to see what roster he would have to work with. And then when he put out the lineup, it was one that likely didn’t exactly inspire much confidence given both the lack of experience in there and their opponent in Kevin Gausman. We didn’t even know who the starting pitcher would be until just about three hours to game time. That’s not to say the Royals didn’t know, but it’s not typical to be in that position.

And then when the game started, I don’t know, it just felt different. It felt like an exhibition. It was a big league game where the Blue Jays charged big league prices and everything. And the Royals even started things off with five players who were on the roster already before all these changes. But it just didn’t feel normal. And yet, it was a game that counted in the standings. In the end, 14 Royals took the field and eight of them were rookies. A couple of the other players - Edward Olivares and Jackson Kowar - aren’t technically rookies, but Olivares came into the game with 304 career plate appearances and Kowar with 43.2 career innings, so it’s not exactly like they were brimming with experience. In fact, Nicky Lopez’s 1,446 plate appearances coming into the game were the most of any Royal in the lineup.

We eventually found out that one of the rookies, Angel Zerpa, would be taking the mound for the Royals against a high-powered Blue Jays lineup, and things didn’t start great for him.

He walked the first batter on four pitches. He then got a double play but gave up a single and another walk before ending the first inning. From that point on, he generally felt pretty much perfectly in control. He threw eight pitches in the second and five in the third. He needed 12 pitches (and a nice play from Nick Pratto) to get through the fourth inning before he finally kind of hit a wall in the fifth.

He gave up a homer on a slider that I didn’t think was actually a terrible pitch. But he gave up a one-out single and with a 2-1 lead after the Royals had scored twice in the top half of the inning, he needed to get Vladimir Guerrero Jr. out. He threw a slider in the same spot he threw the home run slider to Matt Chapman and Guerrero hit the snot out of the ball, but it was right to Bobby Witt Jr. at shortstop to end the fifth.

The final line was good, not great - 5 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 2 K - but for someone who has spent the year at AA and had all of seven big leagues under his belt, that can’t qualify as anything less than spectacular. I’ll tell you what I loved about it, and the broadcast pointed it out. He wasn’t afraid. He came inside with his fastball a lot.

Of the 35 he threw, I count 20 of them on the inner third (or roughly there). That takes some courage to throw a fastball in there as a young lefty in your third big league appearance against that particular offense. He was pretty lucky on it with no swings and misses, nine balls in play and a 98.7 MPH average exit velocity on it, but it worked for this outing. And I also think that a small zone that I feel like most umpires don’t have would have helped him quite a bit. He only had five called strikes on the fastball, but there were four more that would have been close enough for a lot of umpires.

When he needed a swing and miss, the slider was the pitch. He threw 19 of them, got seven swings and three whiffs. So it wasn’t like he was getting a ton of them, but there was one very ugly swing in particular.

But after he finished his fifth inning, the Royals had 2-1 lead and a pretty fresh bullpen. Taylor Clarke hadn’t pitched since Monday. Wyatt Mills had thrown eight pitches since Sunday. Joel Payamps had a day off on Wednesday (but did throw 27 the day before that). And even Jose Cuas had a day off. But Matheny went with Kowar, who had given up eight earned runs on 10 hits in his last 5.2 innings. It was kind of back to feeling like it was an exhibition game. And immediately Kowar gave up a double down the line.

But then he showed why the Royals are going to have a hard time quitting him. He did Bo Bichette dirty with a three-pitch strikeout ending with this pitch.

Then it was Teoscar Hernadnez’s turn to face the wrath of his changeup

And a routine grounder to third ended that threat. Kowar came back in the seventh and got some weak contact the entire inning. If you don’t believe me, here are the exit velocities of the four batted balls: 71.9 MPH, 55.2 MPH, 41.7 MPH and 78.0 MPH. This is the issue with Kowar. The swing and miss stuff is there. The stuff to absolutely eat up hitters is there. He just needs to throw strikes. And when he does, it’s magical.

I’m not sure if they’re going to give up on him as a starter or not, but they absolutely should not give up on him entirely until they let him let it eat out of the bullpen for at least a few months. There’ll be hiccups, but if it works, they will have a lockdown late-inning reliever. He’s that impressive.

And then a couple boring veterans got big outs in the eighth and ninth to secure the win, but let’s talk about how they got their runs because that’s even more fun than Zerpa and Kowar.

But I should be clear. It was not a well played offensive game by the Royals. Olivares reached base in all four plate appearances and the only time he didn’t get thrown out on the bases was the time he was lifted for a pinch runner. And then the pinch runner got thrown out on the bases. Nicky Lopez, who had the quote of the night got caught stealing also. In all, the Royals had 14 base runners and five of them were thrown out on the bases. To add insult to injury, the next Royals hitter got a hit in three of those instances. With some better running, a 3-1 win could have easily been five or six runs.

But they got just enough done. The big inning was the fifth when Nicky Lopez lifted a double over the head of Gurriel. He moved to third on a sacrifice bunt by Sebastian Rivero and then scored on one of three hits by Olivares. He was then thrown out at second trying to advance, which hurt because Witt came up next and did this:

That was just the third home run of the year off Gausman who also walked multiple hitters for just the fifth time in 17 starts. While it was pretty quiet for awhile, with the score 2-1 in the ninth, Nate Eaton came up to the plate.

Okay, first of all, how cool is that? That’s a heck of a story to get your first career hit in your first career game and have it be a home run. And it gave the Royals some much-needed insurance. Second of all, that bat flip. I love it. Plus it was the 10th pitch of the at bat! And then his interview with Joel Goldberg after the game, he said that he could hear his mom cheering and screaming in the stands and, boy, it got a little dusty in my house. Just a very cool moment.

In the end, the Royals rookies went 6 for 22 with two home runs, two runs scored and a walk while throwing five innings of one-run baseball. Not too bad.

The win was great, but there’s an elephant in the room, and it’s the issues in the clubhouse. I mentioned it in yesterday’s article, but then Sam McDowell wrote a very good article about it.

“(A) few of us,” one player wrote in a text message, “are (ticked).”

Dayton Moore spoke to Soren Petro about the Whit Merrifield comments and said, “I was disappointed. Truthfully I was disgusted.”

There’s plenty more out there if you want, but I think Lopez’s comments after the game yesterday threw as much shade as was necessary.

Lynn Worthy @LWorthySports

Nicky Lopez on the win tonight in Toronto: “It was just an unselfish win.”

As I wrote yesterday, I don’t care what you believe. It doesn’t matter. Neither does what I believe. But if the clubhouse feels the way it seems like it feels, that’s going to be a big problem when they’re able to get back to full strength a week from today. In my opinion, I think almost all the players who missed the series can get back in good graces if they choose, but I sort of question if Merrifield can.

He and Cody Tapp on 610 Sports recorded a conversation last night that you can hear at 10:30 today (or probably find it in podcasts if you’re reading this after that) to see if maybe he can redeem something, but I heard enough yesterday even beyond what was reported to honestly wonder if they can even continue with him on the team. There’s a lot of fences to mend. It doesn’t mean that can’t happen, but it’s going to be very tough.

And honestly, I think it gets tougher the more this group wins in Toronto. They may lose the next three and never look like they even belong on the same field, but if they play the same way for the next three that they did last night, the topic isn’t going away and it’ll be a very interesting story to follow over the next week or so.

I want to take a second to thank all of you for the discourse in the comments yesterday. There were only a couple of comments that went against what I asked. I’ll say in a different way than I did yesterday that this newsletter is about baseball. Sometimes other areas intersect, but I want to keep this baseball-only as much as possible, so I’m going to continue to ask people to refrain from vaccine and Covid-related arguments in the comments. Like I’ve said, there are plenty of places for those arguments. This isn’t one of them. Thanks to all my incredible subscribers and readers for keeping this a baseball space!