Sacrifice Flies and Tightrope Walks

Another Royals win after a tough loss makes me think this team might be pretty darn tough.

Nobody gets more excited about productive outs than veteran broadcasters. I don’t know what it is, but boy do they love an out that moves a runner 90 feet. I’d much rather an out be productive than unproductive, so I guess I agree that it’s not at the bottom of my list of likes and dislikes, but sometimes I feel like they prefer the grounder to the right side with nobody out than the hit that actually scores the run. Either way, there are some productive outs that we can all agree are better than simply “not the worst thing a hitter could do.” And the Royals offense yesterday was built on productive outs everyone enjoys - sacrifice flies.

I think there’s an art to the sacrifice fly, though some of it depends on what the pitcher is willing to give a hitter. Still, with a runner on third and less than one out, there are a handful of things a hitter just can’t do. They can’t strike out. They can’t hit a ground ball right at someone. They can’t hit a popup. Everything else, generally, is productive in these situations. So the ability to lift a fly ball deep enough to get a runner home is a legitimate art form. The Royals offense painted a picture yesterday, at least for their first three runs.

There was some luck involved in the first inning. Maikel Garcia did not swing at the first pitch, but he did line a double down the line to start things off. Bobby Witt Jr. was next up and hit it hard and high, but it was catchable. Catchable doesn’t mean it would definitely be caught, especially not when Royals double agent Blake Perkins is out there. Perkins took an odd route to the ball and slipped and couldn’t get to the ball, so Witt was able to get his 11th double of the season. It will look weird in the game log that a Witt double only got Garcia to third, but he was tagging to go to third if and when the ball was caught, so he wasn’t able to score.