Script Flipped

The Royals were stymied for seven innings and then turned a deficit into a lead and ultimately a win, which felt...weird.

For seven innings when the Royals hadn’t scored and didn’t seem like they were going to, it was almost a comforting feeling. Losses are bad, but losses that should be wins just feel a little bit worse, so losing a game that was never theirs to win is almost…nice when your team is 14 games under .500 before Memorial Day. But the Royals can never make it easy. They were determined to make this one stressful and it would be easy to understand if you were pretty sure they were still going to lose. I know I was. But, they persevered to actually win a big league baseball game for the first time since last Wednesday to snap a season-long losing streak at six games.

Let’s dive in and start with the offense, which has actually played a lot better over the last week or so. This was something I tweeted on Wednesday:

David Lesky @DBLesky

Just looking at some #Royals offensive ranks within MLB in the last week: AVG - 5th xBA - 3rd SLG - 4th xSLG - 2nd wOBA - 5th xwOBA - 4th HR - 5th Maybe it's coaching. Maybe it's a total coincidence. Either way, I thought we could use *something* positive right now.

If you include last night when they weren’t great offensively, it’s now:

AVG - 7th
xBA - 5th
SLG - 6th
xSLG - 4th
wOBA - 8th
xwOBA - 6th
HR - 9th (there’s also an off day where a couple teams could leapfrog them)
Doubles - 6th

I added doubles because the tweet didn’t have room for them, but that’s the Royals game more than home runs, I think.

They still aren’t scoring a ton of runs, but they’re doing a much better job of hitting the ball. I wrote the other day about how much better they’ve been doing in pitches in the heart of the plate and all that and it just feels like the plate appearances are more focused. I say that because when the offense is going at least decently, it’s a lot easier to accept when a pitcher is just on his game. I think Devin Smeltzer was mostly the reason for the struggles last night because he was just sharp.

The Royals were only able to muster two hits and a walk against him in seven innings. And he threw just 80 pitches in those seven innings. His changeup was his carrying pitch, and that’s probably not a huge surprise because they came into the game hitting just .209 with a .269 SLG against lefty changeups. It’s quite possibly their biggest weakness. Smeltzer has a good changeup and I thought it was about as good as it’s looked. That’s not to say that it was all him, but I thought he located extremely well and got a little lucky like in the second when Carlos Santana ripped a ball at 111 MPH that Gio Urshela caught and then Emmanuel Rivera hit a ball at about 107 MPH that was a groundout.

He threw first pitch called strikes to six of the first seven hitters, which had the Royals swinging early and while they had three hard hit balls on four put in play on the first pitch, but none were hits. With his pitch count so low, I was a bit surprised that Rocco Baldelli pulled him, but it also makes some sense. He hadn’t thrown more than 79 pitches in a game in either the majors or minors and after he almost struck out Hunter Dozier looking to end the seventh, he did give up a hard-hit single to him and then his command seemed to slightly slip, so I get it. But Tyler Duffey just didn’t have it and the Royals made him pay.

I thought the plate appearances they gave were excellent, even the outs. Carlos Santana, for all his faults, still does such a great job of managing the zone and he seemed to guess wrong on the final pitch, but Duffey needed six pitches to get him out. Then after he dropped a curve right in the zone to Rivera, he threw three more that were out of the zone and Rivera was just waiting for that pitch and got one in the middle again that he hit hard for a single. After a Nicky Lopez flyout, it got even better.

Ryan O’Hearn pinch hit for Brewer Hicklen and Duffey went back to the curve and it looked like O’Hearn was specifically waiting for the pitch. Like Rivera, he got one in the middle and didn’t miss it. You’d love to see him drive the ball a little more, but he hit it very hard and got it over the second baseman for a hit. The Royals had their first runner in scoring position of the night.

Whit Merrifield took a sinker just off the plate for a ball and then was hunting that curve just like everyone else. It wasn’t quite center cut, but he put a great swing on the ball and drove it to center.

Andrew Benintendi worked his second walk of the game, again hunting seemingly hunting curves and that brought Bobby Witt Jr. to the plate.

I have to say that I question Duffey’s pitching acumen. Or maybe it’s Gary Sanchez’s game calling. Either way, what a mistake. Witt didn’t look good on two sinkers to start the at bat, whiffing on both. Duffey put a third one a little too much in the zone and Witt fouled it off before he tried to go to a curve for the strikeout, but buried it. Then, for some reason, he went to the curve yet again and Witt drove it to left for a double.

That’s all the offense would do, but we know it was enough because they got a win. Now let’s go back to the very beginning and talk about the pitching got there for the Royals.

I thought Daniel Lynch was very good. This game was sort of reminiscent stuff-wise of his start against the Cardinals way back in April. But this time he didn’t make the same mistakes that led to the home run issues. His slider was just bonkers good, getting 11 whiffs, which was three more than any other start. His 44 percent whiff rate on it was his highest of the season, and something that’s very interesting is his next two highest were his last two starts. And that slider being so good helped his fastball.

On the fastball, he had his third-highest whiff rate of the year at 22 percent with four whiffs. The reason I think the slider was so helpful is that I don’t think his command was especially good with the fastball.

He caught an awful lot of the zone. Three of his four whiffs were up in the zone with it, but I really wish I was seeing more white in the middle of that zone. But on those fastballs in the middle, the Twins only had one relatively soft single and a double that probably could have been a single if Lopez could have handled a good throw from Benintendi. He also got four outs on fastballs that the Twins generally would crush. But the threat of the slider helped that fastball work.

His location was generally fantastic on it.

Yes, he made a couple mistakes in the zone, but he gave up just two singles on the slider and made countless big pitches with it.

I’m not sure if he wasn’t feeling his changeup or if he just wanted to keep using the slider because it was so good, but it was kind of weird to me because I felt like it was a good pitch for him. He did give up an RBI single with it, but I thought it was on a good pitch that Ryan Jeffers just earned. Either way, it was a really nice bounceback for him after his rough start his last time out against this same team.

The Royals made it through the sixth with some help from Collin Snider stranding another runner and then the seventh with Josh Staumont getting the job done, but the feeling of dread returned in the eighth.

Joel Payamps, who has been absolutely nails in a bridge/long relief role got a crack at that inning. And he immediately threw a great pitch that was grounded softly to Rivera, but Rivera couldn’t handle it. It was scored a single. Then he got the ground ball that he needed. But it was hit up the middle with no defender there. So there were two on and nobody out. And then he didn’t get a fastball quite far enough in and Luis Arraez slapped it to left. After the Royals scored three runs to take a lead, their best reliever of late was about to give it away before even recording an out.

But Mike Matheny, as he has done consistently, went to Scott Barlow when the team needed it most. Barlow threw one pitch in the zone to Jose Miranda but got him swinging. Then Nick Gordon pinch hit and Barlow didn’t throw a single pitch in the zone. But he got him swinging. And he then he threw the perfect slider to Max Kepler.

He may as well have come out tied up with a key hidden somewhere because I have zero clue how he escaped, but it was impressive. The problem, of course, is that they still needed to play the ninth and he needed 15 pitches to get those three outs. He hadn’t pitched since Sunday, but Matheny had a decision to make and it was to have Barlow available today or lose him for a game and maybe two. I think he made the right call given the desperate need for a win.

It worked. He got a bunch of soft contact even though he found himself in trouble with a soft infield single and a harder but still not hard hit single from Sanchez in the bottom of the ninth. But on a 3-1 slider to Urshela, he grounded into a forceout and that was that. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a win and those are something to be cherished.

Not to go all Rex Hudler on everyone, but baseball can be a game of confidence. Sometimes it takes a bloop single to get a hitter going. Sometimes it takes three rocket shot line drives that turn into outs to get a pitcher going. And while there were close calls, the Royals bullpen protected a lead. Maybe that can help. And with the offense looking generally better and the rotation featuring at least four guys you feel sort of good about, maybe they can string some wins together. The likelihood is that it doesn’t matter because of the ridiculous hole they’ve dug themselves, but it would be nice to see some competent baseball at least.