Royals Turned One Into Won

Things weren't perfect, but the Royals actually won a game, so they've got going for them, which is nice.

Everything is fixed!

Fine, it’s not. In fact, there are still more problems with this team than we can count quickly, but a win makes things feel a little bit better, if only for a bit. Yesterday, the Royals sent out one of their young pitchers in a huge season to face a struggling (and injured) lineup and he did what you’d expect someone of Daniel Lynch’s pedigree to do.

He was efficient and he was good. The line itself was impressive:

7 IP
1 H
0 R
2 BB
2 K
78 Pitches

I was a bit surprised to look at the number of strikes he threw and saw only 47. Watching the game, it kind of felt like he was ahead a lot more than that. I guess that’s because he either threw a first-pitch strike or could a first-pitch result against 16 of 23 batters. It’s kind of amazing what starting 0-1 can do compared to 1-0. I know I’ve written this before, but coming into play yesterday, hitters hit .261/.382/.445 after the count starts 1-0 compared to .216/.264/.345 after 0-1. It is just so important to get ahead that you can only throw 60 percent strikes (which is still fine, by the way) but have the game Lynch did.

I think a big reason for just two strikeouts was that the Tigers were not letting Lynch get deep into counts. He only even got to two strikes on seven of the 23 hitters he faced and he ended up retiring six of the seven with only a walk mixed in on those. That’s a very interesting dynamic that I wonder if we start to see from other teams against Lynch. If he’s going to be in the zone, he’s a pitcher teams can take advantage of if the fastball isn’t getting elevated enough.

As I’ve written so many times, his fastball is a weapon, but only when he throws it up in the zone and just above it. A team can do quite well against Lynch if they attack his fastball early if he misses his spot even by just a little bit. To be honest, I think he was a little bit too in the zone with the fastball.

I’d like to see the reddest part of the heat map pressing closer to the top of the zone, but he did a nice job with it. I think he’s done a really nice job of it this year on the whole. Here’s his fastball heat map from his first few starts before yesterday this year:

And here’s 2022:

It’s easy to see why it got hit hard last year. It actually has been hit hard this year on the whole, but a lot of that was his last start against the Reds where he found himself catching too much of the plate.

But there’s another reason why teams want to attack Lynch early and it’s because he now has a legitimate swing and miss pitch that’s been consistent for him and it’s his changeup. He’s throwing it more than ever and last night was no exception.

Out of his 78 pitches, Lynch threw 40 fastballs, 28 changeups and just seven sliders and three curves. I remember marveling at his slider at times over the last two seasons and even seeing the curve look like a pitch that can get a swing and miss. And, by the way, the swing and miss is still there on the slider. It wasn’t yesterday because he threw so few, but his whiff percentage coming into last night on the slider was 30.8 percent. The changeup, though, is a difference-maker now and I find myself looking forward to seeing that more than his slider.

For the season heading into last night, he had a 45 percent whiff rate on the changeup. He proceeded to get nine whiffs on 19 swings on the changeup again last night. It’s just a really good pitch and one that can help to mitigate some of the damage on his fastball.

I mentioned that I didn’t love his fastball location last night, but even with that, he got the Tigers to go 0 for 11 against it. Look, this isn’t the best lineup in the world, but they scored six runs on Monday night and had averaged more than five per game in their last 11. It’s also the third time they’ve been shut out in their last 12 games, including last night, so there’s a way to look at it any way you would like to. Still, I think a lot of the reason the Tigers had so much trouble with that fastball is because of the changeup.

I think he’s still trying to find the slider because, even with all the whiffs, it’s been hit hard. I don’t have any reason to think this other than just wondering out loud, but I do wonder if a shoulder issue could lead to the slider taking a little more time to come back. I guess we’ll keep an eye out for it because with the emergence of his changeup, if he can add back the slider to it’s effectiveness of, say, 2021, we could see Lynch fulfill every last inch of his promise. If he can’t, well, what we saw last night is a big league starter even if it’s not someone who you give the ball to in game one of a playoff series.

And now he needs to build on that. I’ve been impressed by him now in four of his five starts and in his worst start, he still gave seven innings. As Bobby Witt Jr. said a few weeks ago, you either win or you learn and I hope that last start before this one was a learning experience for Lynch that he used to help this start. So we’ll see. That’s what this year is about.

If he can stay healthy, he should have 17 or 18 more starts before it’s all said and done. If 14 of them are like the four solid to good starts, I’ll feel good about Lynch. If 12 are, I’m not sure how I’ll feel. If 10 or fewer are, I’ll think it’s time to see the bullpen for Lynch. So far, though, he’s had a solid enough showing with last night as a highlight.

Offensively, it sure seemed like the Royals were missing opportunities and they were. But I also think the bigger issue was that they just weren’t good at all in this one in particular. Sure, they left six on base in the first four innings with two each in the first, second and fourth, but they did it with two walks, a hit by pitch and four infield singles.

Of the four singles, three of them were probably actually errors. Again, that’s not to say leaving guys on base and running into outs isn’t something to be concerned with/upset about, but it’s also not like they were knocking the cover off the ball and then struggling in the big spots. The Tigers just stopped kicking the ball.

I think the offense found themselves caught a little in between against Michael Lorenzen. He came into the game with the 17th-best walk rate in baseball among pitchers with 60+ innings and third-highest percentage of pitches in the zone. But I think the Royals were also trying to work the count against him because they didn’t think he would be able to put them away. That led to three called third strikes and a couple others that were swinging but came from letting the count get deep. I haven’t watched a lot of Lorenzen, but I thought his changeup was about as good as I’ve seen it this year and in the last few in the handful of times I’ve seen him pitch.

A great example of the approach that just didn’t work against him was in the very first inning. Witt, who has had a nice resurgence since leaving the leadoff spot, but particular in June, has been working on being more patient early in counts. It’s paid off quite a bit. But he took a hanging slider for the first pitch to put him down in the count. Remember the difference between 0-1 and 1-0? Some of it might have been that he was only going to swing at a fastball, but he has to be ready to pull the trigger on a pitch that fat.

He didn’t get another good pitch the whole at bat and ended up striking out on a good sweeper. The end result was an example of the pitcher executing, but it could have been a different at bat if the batter punished him earlier in the count. This isn’t to pick on Witt because he worked another walk later in the game and I thought generally had some solid plate appearances, but I think the approach was just a little bit off the entire game.

On the bright side, Maikel Garcia continued to earn his spot in the lineup every day. After homering on Monday, he had three of the team’s six hits. He’s now hitting .310/.359/.466 in June while continuing to play fantastic defense. With Witt hitting .308/.366/.424 in June (the power will come, I’m convinced), you’re starting to feel pretty good about the left side of the infield. Both are playing good defense, both are hitting. Like Lynch, let’s see it for the rest of the year, but it’s a good start. We need to start seeing more stories like these to have a little hope of anything, but it’s nice to have these to begin.

Minor League Promotions

The Royals continued to move some guys up a level in the minors, as I suspected they would. Yesterday, it was announced that Jonathan Bowlan and Christian Chamberlain were promoted to AAA, Chandler Champlain and John McMillon to AA and David Sandlin to High-A. Of those, Bowlan was the one with numbers that may not indicate he deserved it, but his strikeout and walk numbers were so good that I have no problem with giving him a shot at a higher level, given his 40-man roster status.

So now the Omaha rotation suddenly has prospects. Alec Marsh went five innings with seven strikeouts and one walk while allowing just one run on four hits last night. He’s joined by Bowlan and Anthony Veneziano. The bullpen is now featuring Will Klein, Chamberlain, Dylan Coleman and Jonah DiPoto. I think it’s fair to question whether or not any of these pitchers will ever be good enough, but I’ll take guys who have a shot to be part of a long-term solution.

Add in that Ryan Yarbrough is rehabbing now in Arizona and Brad Keller is likely to get to a rehab assignment soon and Angel Zerpa is back pitching in AA and suddenly there are at least some options, if nothing else. I personally think Keller might be the most important pitcher for the Royals over the next five or six weeks. He isn’t going to get many big league starts before the deadline, assuming he makes it back, but you’d be surprised how desperate teams are for pitchers sometimes.

You never know what you’ll get back sometimes too. The Nationals got Lane Thomas, now hitting .290/.340/.491 for a washed up Jon Lester. Of course, there was some Cardinals magic and he pitched well down the stretch, but give Keller six starts where he’s flashing 95 and getting a ton of grounders and you’d be surprised at the number of teams who would offer up something.

Again, I don’t know if there are any solutions among this group, but you at least have some options starting to emerge to take a look at down the stretch. I’d love to see Bowlan and Marsh and Veneziano get 30-40 innings each this season at the big league level. Veneziano will need to be added to the 40-man roster after the year and that seems likely to happen anyway. Bowlan and Marsh are on it, but may find their spots precarious if the Royals get a chance to see what they can do and aren’t impressed. It wouldn’t surprise me too much if we see a five-game stretch with those three plus Lynch and Brady Singer and that’s a lot more interesting than Zack Greinke and Jordan Lyles and a bullpen day.