So Much Happened in an Unlikely Royals Win

They had solid enough pitching, comebacks, clutch hitting and some truly terrible base running. And too many bunts.

There are some games that the story of the game pops out and makes it very easy to focus on something. And then there are games like last night where there were so many different stories that could be the focus that it’s tough to find exactly where the main story comes from. Sometimes it’s the end result that gives the guidance, but other times there simply isn’t one thing that made up the game. When one is as back and forth as last night, that’s often the case, so yeah, there is a lot to talk about here.

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Hernandez Wasn’t Quite as Good, But Was Still Fine

Carlos Hernandez took the ball after three very good starts, two against the White Sox and one against the Yankees, both teams big tests for a young starter. The Astros, though, presented a different test entirely. While they struggle a bit with high velocity, they also don’t swing and miss and they’re willing to wait for their pitch. I always believe that Hernandez has good enough stuff that all he needs to do is throw strikes and he can have success.

The Astros, though, put that to the test. Hernandez went six innings and didn’t walk anyone, but that lineup is seriously relentless. He gave up a leadoff double to Jose Altuve and ended up giving up a single to Yordan Alvarez to drive him in, but he did get his first strikeout, which was also his last strikeout, as it were. He was pitching to contact and getting pretty quick outs, getting the Astros 1-2-3 in the second, 1-2-3 in the third and got a double play after a leadoff single and then got Yuli Gurriel to ground out to end the fourth.

He started the fifth by making a mistake to Aledmys with a fastball on the inner third and up. With his velocity, I think that’s a pretty decent bet to be a good pitch and get in on the hands of someone, but Diaz isn’t just anyone.

Coming into the game, on pitches 95 MPH and harder in that spot, Diaz was 7 for 12 with two homers and two doubles. So yeah, that was a mistake.

He then got himself in trouble by hitting the number nine hitter and then watching the lineup turn over for a third time. It was quick once it started happening against him too. Altuve singled, then Michael Brantley singled to score Jake Meyers, who was hit by the pitch. Hernandez only got out of the inning with a really nice back throw from Salvador Perez on a wild pitch.

In the sixth, he gave up a long home run to Carlos Correa that was a mistake to, well, anyone. But then he worked his way through the sixth with no more damage and came out for the seventh, gave up a single on a good pitch and then balked by dropping the ball while on the rubber and that was it.

It wasn’t as good as his other performances, but he really managed his pitch count, didn’t walk a single batter and was generally effective outside of a couple mistakes that a lesser time might not have taken advantage of. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t need to get better, but this was a really good learning experience for him. He had just three whiffs and nine called strikes. I thought the shape of his pitches looked good. You can see where each of his pitches ended up. Kind of right where you’d expect outside of a few fastballs that ran a bit too much arm side.

His velocity was down and he was fortunate that some of those batted balls didn’t find grass. But he didn’t have a ton going on and he found his way to get through six and allow four runs against a really good team. It was enough to give his team a chance to win the game.

Salvy Remains Clutch

Is there anything more we can say about Salvador Perez that we haven’t already? Outside of the short season last year where he only played 37 games, 2021 is the best year of his fantastic career. You already know he has the 14th 30-home run season in team history. But he just added another chapter to the fantastic book he’s writing this season.

Before we get to the clutch, let’s talk about the walks. In the bottom of the third with the Royals up 2-1, he led off the inning and didn’t let Jake Odorizzi take advantage of his inability to take pitches. He actually worked his fifth walk of the month of August, which is noteworthy because that’s two more than he had all season in 2020. It’s noteworthy because it’s only the second month of his career where he’s walked at least five times. The first time was seven and a half years ago. I don’t know if it means anything. As I said on Baseball Tonight last night, a lot of it is probably because there’s no real threat behind him in the lineup, but give him credit for actually taking the pitches.

Okay, now let’s move ahead to the clutch. The Royals had just lost a 5-4 lead with a two-out hit in the top of the eighth and the first two batters of the bottom of the eighth went down quickly against Yimi Garcia. But Whit Merrifield and Nicky Lopez both singled, which brought up Perez.

Now a quick interlude for a mistake on the Astros part. With runners on first and third and two outs, they let Lopez walk into second base for his third steal of the game. If you’re going to do that, you really need to walk the Royals best power threat. Ideally, you shouldn’t let that happen, but they did and it put runners on second and third.

Garcia tried to put a pitch too far outside for Perez to hit, but I think we all know that pitch doesn’t exist.

And there it is. Now in late and close situations, he’s hitting .280/.345/.560. In high leverage spots, he’s hitting .294/.329/.603. In the seventh inning and later, he’s hitting .280/.313/.536. You get the idea. He’s been fantastic in the clutch. Does clutch hitting actually exist? I know the sabermetric thought is no, but I do really believe that some players are better than others at not letting the moment get the better of them. Perez is one of those players, and it’s been a big help for the Royals this season.

STOP BUNTING

Okay, now that we’ve talked about a lot of the good stuff, I just have to rant here about the bunts early in the game. In the first inning, the Royals had Whit Merrifield on second with nobody out and Lopez bunted him to third with the score 1-0. Merrifield was then thrown out at the plate on a ground ball by Perez (I’ll get to this later). In the second, Andrew Benintendi singled and Ryan O’Hearn doubled him home. So he’s on second with nobody out and Michael A. Taylor bunted him over and then O’Hearn was thrown out at the plate on a ground ball by Hunter Dozier.

I can’t even express how much I hate bunting in the early innings of an American League game. Really, I hate bunting in the early innings of any game, but especially an AL game and especially against the Astros, who score the most runs per game of anyone in all of baseball. The saying is that if you play for one run, you won’t score any and in both instances where the Royals bunted with nobody out, they ended up not scoring that runner.

It isn’t that sacrifice bunts are always a bad idea. They’re great with certain hitters at the plate at certain times in a game. Say the home team is up in the bottom half of extra innings with their runner on second and nobody out and the game is still tied. I buy a sacrifice bunt there. But not in the first and second innings against the best offense in baseball by runs scored.

Take a look at the run expectancy matrix according to Fangraphs.

With a runner on second and nobody out, the Royals could be expected to score 1.068 runs. With a runner on third and one out, that drops to 0.865. The math just doesn’t work. Really the only situation where it doesn’t hurt their run scoring much is going from first and second with nobody out to second and third with one out.

Sure, it’s always situational, but those bunts had me screaming from my couch last night.

Atrocious Base Running

Maybe I wouldn’t have been so upset by those bunts if not for some better base running. It was on both sides, but I’ll get to the Astros in a minute. The Royals run the contact play quite a bit and it seems to not work…quite a bit. I will say that there’s a bit of a bad beat phenomenon at play here probably where you don’t really remember the times it worked but always remember the times it didn’t, but the Royals also got thrown out at the plate twice after their silly bunts.

They have now been thrown out at the plate 14 times this season, which is tied for second most in baseball. I know that if a runner even flinches a little bit when the contact play is on that the play is no longer the contact play. But I have to wonder if that’s actually not the worst thing. If they wait a second just to track the ball quickly, they can determine if it makes sense to come home. With the infield in, it’s generally either a bad decision to break home or the ball gets through, so I don’t really see a harm in this.

You certainly can’t just take what happened after a situation and assume it would have happened, but we also can’t know it wouldn’t have been the same. In the first, had Merrifield held at third, he wouldn’t have scored based on what happened next. But in the second, O’Hearn getting thrown out at the plate was followed by back-to-back singles by Emmanuel Rivera and Merrifield. Maybe the game isn’t quite so tight if they score that run and maybe another.

But it wasn’t just those outs at the plate. Carlos Santana made a brutal mistake on the bases after a double in the fifth inning. Benintendi was up next and hit a ground ball back to the pitcher, but Santana was just caught in no man’s land and ended up getting thrown out at third. I’m not really sure how that happens.

The Astros weren’t innocent at all. I already mentioned Brantley getting picked off in the fifth, but in the seventh, after Chas McCormick advanced to second on a balk, he got thrown out at third on a ground ball to Lopez. I’m not really sure how that happens either.

But the worst of it came in the top of the eighth. When Diaz singled to score Taylor Jones with the tying run, he rounded first as the throw came home but was cut off. And he just…froze. He didn’t try to get into a rundown, he didn’t try to force a throw, nothing. He just stood there. The Royals tagged him out to end the inning, but it seemed awfully weird to me that he wouldn’t try to get the Royals, a team that clearly struggles with fundamentals at times, to at least make a throw or two to get him.

Struggling Hitters Turn it On

There isn’t much more to add here, but it was nice to see Santana pick up his first multi-hit game since the end of July and Dozier hit his first home run since July 8. While Santana is still working to climb out of the massive hole he’s dug himself, he does have hits in three straight games with a double in each of the last two, so that’s something. Here’s a look at his double last night that was almost a home run:

As for Dozier, he’s now hitting .279/.350/.421 since June 28, which is 160 plate appearances. Is that enough? Maybe not, but that certainly works in the bottom half of a lineup. Here’s his big home run:

And this doesn’t have anything to do with anything else, but Whit Merrifield was a struggling hitter until a couple days ago and made a really nice play in the ninth to get the inning to two outs, so let’s end on that note because it was a really good one.