Snatching Victory From Defeat

The Royals won a game on Monday in an eerily similar way to their loss on Sunday. Things have a way of evening out.

When the Royals lost on Sunday to the Rangers, it felt like one of the cruel moments of a 162-game season. They had their best in position to win and they just didn’t. So when the seventh inning began last night with the Royals down 2-0, there was a feeling that maybe the baseball gods would find their way to the Royals side. And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. A game where the offense was once again quiet (silent?) for the first few innings but came on late gave the Royals their 21st win of the season and made sure that a short losing stretch didn’t become a long one.

It certainly wasn’t easy, even though Cole Ragans pitched well enough that it could have been. The Royals ace went six innings and gave up just two hits while he struck out eight. Unfortunately, one of the two hits was really his only mistake of the night, but it was worth two runs on the home run he allowed to Gary Sanchez. Otherwise, he was about as good as can be against an offense that not only doesn’t swing much, but also doesn’t miss too much when it does. The Brewers entered the game with the second-lowest swing percentage in baseball and were tied for the 10th-lowest swinging strike percentage.

But Ragans had it working and was able to get 19 swings and misses, which was tied with Zack Wheeler for the most in baseball yesterday. The 19 whiffs are tied with Opening Day for his second-most whiffs in a game since joining the Royals (and his career). You could see the stuff was good from the very first batter, but as the game went on, it became clear that his changeup was otherworldly. It’s been a great pitch for him this year coming into last night. He’d allowed a .237 average and .316 SLG and the expected numbers were even better. He’d gotten whiffs on 43.6 percent of all swings.