The Captain Steers the Ship

Some power, some speed and a big win to start the series for the Royals with Salvy leading the way.

Do you ever watch a game and think that it belongs to another season? Last night just had the feeling of a game that was torn from the pages of 2024 rather than what we’ve watched this season. The Royals scored early, but then fell behind, but then came right back almost immediately. It was the sort of thing we got used to last season and then have almost completely been forced to forget about this season.

Don’t lie. When Matt Shaw’s three-run homer went over the wall in the bottom of the second to make it 4-1 Cubs, you thought the game was over. It’s okay to admit it. This is a safe space. I know I was pretty convinced it was. This offense hasn’t given us much of a reason to believe that they have the chops to come back from that. Of course, they did come back from a 5-0 deficit on Friday night in Miami. So maybe, just maybe, they’re starting to come around. I can tell you that whether or not they are, last night was certainly fun to watch after months of some baseball that hasn’t exactly been the most entertaining.

After losing the first two on the road trip, the Royals can afford maybe one more loss. That’s a tall task given that the Cubs came into play last night as the best team in the National League and the second-best team in baseball, at least by winning percentage. But this is the wall the Royals have backed themselves into and it’s what they’re facing. So to come out and fall behind 4-1 sure felt like a season-defining game. But credit to those bats, and particularly credit to Salvador Perez, who has found the fountain of youth lately, because they got the job done. But also, credit to Noah Cameron, who I’ll get to shortly, because he got rocked in the second and turned his outing around to get through six strong.

It wasn’t the first home run of the day. I’ll show you that in a minute. But Perez’s first home run of the day was one that I think is one of the biggest hits of the season for the Royals. I’ll paint you the picture if you don’t remember exactly how things were going for the Royals. Obviously the Royals fell behind 4-1 after the Cubs scored four in the second inning.

But the third was kind of brutal. John Rave struck out swinging and didn’t look good doing it to lead off. Then Kyle Isbel took two pitches to fall to 0-2 and hit a lazy fly ball on a middle-middle changeup for the second out. And then Jonathan India swung at the first pitch for the second straight at bat (what???) and hit a lazy fly ball. After the Cubs answered the Royals jab with a nasty right hook, the Royals looked dazed (I don’t know much about boxing, so that may have been terrible, but you’ll live).

So when Bobby Witt Jr. struck out on a pitch nearly in the dirt and Vinnie Pasquantino chased a curve that wasn’t a strike to ground out for two outs to start the fourth, the Royals were in a very bad spot. But Maikel Garcia lined a single to right and the captain stepped up.