Strategic Mistakes Lead to Tough Loss

A game they tied in the ninth became a loss that was all too predictable.

Let’s get one thing straight before we talk about what actually happened last night. The story of the game was how good Tyler Glasnow looked. It’s fair to doubt the Royals offense, but Glasnow was at the top of his game last night with his slider especially nasty and his fastball not far behind. The Royals struggling offense has been able to get some of the better pitchers over the past few weeks, but Glasnow was just too much for them.

That they were even in a position to tie the game in the ninth was a testament to Mike Minor gutting through five innings with less than stellar command and then a fantastic effort from Greg Holland and Scott Barlow and a scary-ish outing from Josh Staumont that still had the right results. I’m going to get to all of that, but I really want to focus on the end of the game first because that’s where I have plenty to say.

And I just have to applaud Andrew Benintendi for his home run in the ninth inning. I mean, first of all, it’s a game-tying home run in the ninth, so that was pretty great, but he had hit three balls in the first two games of the series that were unequivocally robbed by the center fielders on the Rays. He was inches away from having three doubles in the series before that at bat in the ninth, but instead, he was hitless in the series before that at bat. That was absolutely huge.

Okay, now let’s get into it. First, I hate the extra inning rule. I know that it’s a pretty polarizing discussion as many actually like what it’s done for the game, but I just can’t get behind it. It’s sort of like the seven inning double header games to me. It counts the same in the standings, but it’s a different game than is played outside of those situations. I’ve tried to wrap my head around it and I just can’t get there. And now the Royals have played five extra inning games out of their 107 games since the start of the 2020 season. I’m not sure if this is a quirk, an oddity or something in between, but all five have been on the road.

Of the five, they have started it with a sacrifice bunt three times. One other time, Adalberto Mondesi was caught stealing before Nicky Lopez could bunt (and you know he was going to) and another time, Ryan O’Hearn and Mondesi struck out to start the 10th. Last night was the first time the sacrifice bunt was successfully put down and the Royals didn’t score. The first two times, they played for one run and scored one run and then held their opponent in the bottom of the 10th to win.

But last night was different. I really believe it was a series of incorrect decisions that led to the Royals not scoring. And maybe it wouldn’t have been any different. The Rays ended up scoring the winning run with one out, so even if that run just tied the game, they still would have had runners on first and second, or maybe even third, with one out. But I can’t say I agree in any way with how that inning was managed.

Let’s take it step by step.

Pinch run for Jorge Soler with Michael A. Taylor

I’m in on this. Even if you believe the Royals have to have Soler’s bat, which has been mostly non-existent for most of the season, he wasn’t due up for nine batters and Taylor’s speed should help the Royals to get at least one run across. So far, so good.

Sacrifice bunt with Adalberto Mondesi

I don’t think I hated this move as much as a lot of people did, but I definitely didn’t like it. While Mondesi was only in his second game of the season, he can do things that not many players can. We saw him double from both sides of the plate last night and he was one of the few to get a hit off Glasnow. The only reason I didn’t hate the move was that Mondesi is a very good bunter and he had a chance to get a hit on it. And to his credit, he put down a perfect sacrifice bunt. He just had a chance to do more.

Let Jarrod Dyson hit/pinch hit with Ryan O’Hearn for Nicky Lopez

I’m combining these two because I would have handled this in one of two ways. First, if Dyson was going to hit, I would have done exactly what the Royals did against J.P. Feyereisen last week and doubled up on the bunting. Last week they squeezed successfully against him to push across the lead run when he was with the Brewers and I think they should have done that again if Dyson was going to be at the plate.

Ultimately, he had an unproductive fly ball that Taylor could have scored on had he known that Kevin Kiermaier would make a bad throw, but you can’t anticipate that. So then there was the mistake of pinch hitting for Lopez with O’Hearn. I obviously don’t think very highly of O’Hearn, but in that situation, the Royals needed someone who was likely to make contact and could make something happen. If I need a single, I’m absolutely taking Lopez over O’Hearn.

BUT!

If the Royals were going to use O’Hearn in the game, the time for the guy who was most likely to hit a lazy medium depth fly ball was with a runner on third and less than two outs. And sure enough, when O’Hearn did come into the game, he hit a ball 294 feet to center. There’s obviously no guarantee that he would have done the same thing a batter earlier, but had he done that, the Royals would have pushed across their second run and had a lead heading into the bottom of the tenth.

I just think the inning was managed particularly poorly and I haven’t felt that very often with Mike Matheny since he took over. It was disappointing, but the results of the top of the inning made it so that I was not surprised at all.

This doesn’t feel like a game that was ever a win for the Royals, so I don’t find myself particularly upset about it, but I also feel like they had a chance to really steal a game. This definitely falls into that middle 54 category and would have been a nice one to have heading into a series finale day game today. I hope the next time they’re in the same situation that they go about things differently.

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On the plus side, Royals pitching was outstanding for the second straight night. Maybe I’m overestimating the Rays offense, but they’re certainly not a bad offense by any stretch of the imagination. And Royals pitching has allowed three total runs to them in two games. I would say that’s a positive. It started with Minor who was equal parts dominant and maddening last night.

He struck out two in the first, three in the second and one in the third. All six were within the first time through the order. The only out that wasn’t a strikeout in that first time through was a popup by Randy Arozarena, who swung at the first pitch of the bottom of the first and popped it up. So it was pretty clear the stuff was good. In fact, he threw a changeup to Yandy Diaz to strike him out that actually caused me to miss a couple pitches to Austin Meadows because I kept rewinding the television.

But after that first time through, it was a real grind for him. He did strike out nine, but he walked four in those five innings. One of them led to the Rays first run. You can see that he was a bit all over the place.

But I think that’s what helped to make him so difficult to hit. These are all the swings and misses (15 total).

In all, he had 19 swings on his fastball and nine whiffs. That’s huge for him because that’s what made the Royals believe in giving him two years and then the fastball was not good to start the season. He’s found it again, though. In his last four games, he has 31 strikeouts in 23 innings and a 4.30 ERA. The ERA isn’t great, but the strikeouts absolutely are.

Still, all the outside the zone pitches and, yes, the strikeouts ran his pitch count up to the point that he could only get through five innings, which proved to be an issue because the Royals choices for the tenth inning were likely Tyler Zuber, Wade Davis, Ervin Santana and Jakob Junis because I’m assuming Kyle Zimmer isn’t working back-to-back days just yet and the rest of the top bullpen guys had already pitched the sixth through ninth.

The guys who already pitched, though, were very good. Greg Holland worked a pretty easy sixth, walking just Mike Brosseau, who walked three times in total. Then Scott Barlow came in and threw eight pitches to get three outs, including two strikeouts. If we look back at this point, I think Matheny would say he would have left Barlow in the game for the eighth had he known the game would turn out the way it did. But Barlow has thrown a lot. The Royals have tried to stay away from him when they can lately just to give his arm a bit of a break. He threw 23 pitches on Saturday and Sunday each. And given the situations he works, it’s been a lot of high stress pitches. So an easy inning was one that I think Matheny was happy with. It just didn’t work out in the end.

Next up was Josh Staumont who, according to the great Jeffrey Flanagan still working sources, has a bit of a tired arm.

Jeffrey Flanagan @FlannyMLB

Hearing that Josh Staumont is dealing with a bit of tired arm, nothing serious. Expected from his increased workload this season. Likely why he didn’t appear last night even after the off day. Something to keep an eye on, though, especially tonight.

Which, I mean, we kind of suspected when he was throwing 93 the other day. What I didn’t expect after seeing that tweet was to see him in the game. And he was once again throwing 93. He did max out at 96.2 MPH, which was better than that game the other day, but it’s a bit concerning to see the guy you hope can get to 102 averaging just 94.3 on his fastball. He was able to get through the inning on only 11 pitches, which is great, but didn’t have a single swing and miss. I’m officially concerned about Staumont, if you were wondering.

And the ninth was for Jake Brentz, working his second game of the series after total domination on Tuesday night. It wasn’t quite as pretty for him last night as game one, but after a couple walks put him in trouble in the bottom of the ninth that was reached because of Benintendi finally hitting one where he couldn’t get robbed, he absolutely overmatched Brett Phillips and then got a weak ground ball back to him from Kiermaier to end the inning.

Then you know what happened in the tenth.

All in all, you have to be happy with the pitching but hope for both more innings from the starter and the bullpen depth to allow Matheny some better choices once he’s through his top tier.