Third Time's The Charm
For the third straight night, the Royals got an early lead, but this time they held on.
If anyone tells you they have baseball figured out, that person is someone to never trust. Last night, the Royals were up against Cristian Javier, who was on a serious heater. In his previous two starts before last night, he threw the first seven innings of a combined no-hitter against the Yankees and then gave up just one hit against the Angels. So that’s one hit in 14 innings and he had 27 strikeouts with just one walk in that time. So naturally, the Royals, owners of the fourth-fewest runs per game in baseball coming into the game and the sixth-fewest home runs, went to work early.
Before I get to that, I think it’s important to note that Javier’s work doesn’t only apply to his last two starts before last night. He’d allowed more than two runs in a game twice. He hadn’t allowed multiple home runs in any game all year. Getting to him isn’t just noteworthy because he’d pitched so well lately, but really all year.
And Whit Merrifield immediately got to him.
That ball had an expected batting average of .130. Coming into the game, there had been 2,627 home runs hit in 2022. Only 37 had a lower xBA than Merrifield’s home run. That ballpark is a joke, but both teams get to play there and the Royals finally took advantage of it.
After Javier walked Andrew Benintendi, he was able to strike out MJ Melendez and Vinnie Pasquantino. But Hunter Dozier wasn’t about to let the inning end.
Okay, this one wasn’t exactly crushed, but it would have been a home run in all 30 parks at least. And what’s especially fun about it, to me, is that he was fooled badly on the previous pitch. It was a 2-0 slider, and the third straight slider that Javier had thrown in that at bat. It was pretty clear that Dozier was looking for the four-seam fastball and he pretty clearly didn’t get it. But the very next pitch, he did get it and he didn’t miss it.
The Royals scored three in the first against Javier. He had given up three first inning runs all year coming into the game. You already know about the games with more than two homers and the games with multiple runs. It was a pretty unpredictable and unlikely first inning for the Royals against a good pitcher.
With one out in the second inning, Emmanuel Rivera, getting a rare start, took his shot.
That was another fastball to a right-handed hitter. Righties coming into the game were 9 for 75 with one home run against Javier’s four-seam fastball. Royals hitters were 3 for 3 with three home runs against it the first time through the order. He eventually would get a right-handed Royals hitter out with the fastball, so they ended up 3 for 4 with three home runs against it, which is honestly just crazy. Dave Holtzman had a couple of great stats during the game.
That one got me looking like the blinking guy gif. But this one might have made my head explode.
This is a team that scored 14 total runs in the first three innings of games in April. To see this turnaround early in games is quite impressive.
The Royals offensive output in the early innings shouldn’t be terribly surprising lately. In the six games on this road trip, the Royals have put up 23 total runs in the first four innings. I think that lends itself well to the idea that the Royals are much more prepared with Alec Zumwalt in charge than they were with Terry Bradshaw. I’d like to see them do a better job of tacking on. I don’t want to blame an offense scoring runs too much, but also if they could have continued to tack on better than they have in this series, they certainly don’t lose on Monday and maybe not Tuesday.
This was before yesterday’s game, of course…
…but that’s impressive. What this offense has been able to become is something we should be more appreciative of given where they were earlier in the year. Now including yesterday’s game, they’re averaging 4.7 runs per game since the admittedly arbitrary endpoint set here. It was the date of the first game after they were shut out twice in a row, so the numbers change some if you push it back even a day, but this offense is not the problem right now other than the fact that they generally can’t keep up with the pitching staff’s general ineptitude.
I mentioned this on Twitter the last two nights, but the Royals have been almost comically bad in situations where the offense has really done enough to win. Even with the win last night, they are now 19-20 in games where they’ve scored four or more runs. Nobody else is below .500. Only the Reds are at .500. The third worst team has a winning percentage of .614. The league, including them, is 973-342. That’s a winning percentage of .740. If the Royals had the league average winning percentage, they’d be (drumroll, please) 40-40.
Can you imagine a world where this particular Royals team is 40-40? They’d be 3.5 games out of a playoff spot, but I don’t think any of us would particularly care about that other than the excitement. Just doing what the average team does when their offense puts up four or more would have the city at least talking about this team in a positive way.
I thought Brad Keller was pretty much fine and better than his final line. This series has been a bad combination of an Astros offense that is both very good and relentless and a pitching staff that is beyond incompetent in addition to being woefully underprepared, but Keller did a decent job and gave the Royals another chance to get a win. He didn’t give up much hard contact with just five hard-hit balls against him. But the Astros made his walks hurt and they utilized soft contact to get the job done.
In the second, he walked Alex Bregman and got a lazy fly ball off the bat of Kyle Tucker that was kind of a weird play.
I think Benintendi needed to call Rivera off there, but it was a tough play either way and that was a single. Keller limited the damage a bit by getting a double play, but then Jake Meyers doubled home the Astros first run on a ball Rivera probably should have fielded at third. After a 1-2-3 third inning, Keller got the great Yordan Alvarez to hit a lazy fly ball that just went where he never hits it. Benintendi couldn’t get there and it was a double that traveled 242 feet at 84.6 MPH. When you get that kind of batted ball from Alvarez, you’re thankful, but in this case it was a double. Another walk to Bregman was followed by Tucker hitting a ball that he couldn’t have rolled through the infield any better at 82.5 MPH. Then another run scored on an RBI groundout that inning.
And when Keller was brought back for the sixth, which was a decision I wanted to hate but simply couldn’t because of what the bullpen has done, he looked like he might get through it with just allowing three runs. But he left a fastball just a touch too much over the plate that Aledmys Diaz hit just over the short porch in left. The ball was hit at 93.7 MPH and only traveled 343 feet.
It wasn’t an especially good pitch, but the Astros used their ballpark well here. Look, the game is the game, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.
Keller’s slider is interesting to me because it’s still not quite right, but it’s been better lately and he was able to get some whiffs on it yesterday. But what’s interesting is that it’s looked a little more curve-ish lately with some additional vertical break and less horizontal break. That remains a mechanical issue that I have no faith in the Royals to figure out, but something that is at least fixable and we know it is because Keller has had to fix it before. I still wish he’d use his fastball up a little bit more, but he was throwing it harder than usual at least.
But with that home run to Diaz, the game was turned over to the Royals bullpen, which used to be so comforting. Jose Cuas worked hard to give up the lead in the sixth with a single and two walks allowed after he relieved Keller with two outs, but he got Mauricio Dubon to ground out to end the inning.
Dylan Coleman was good with a 1-2-3 seventh inning, even though he gave up a couple of hard-hit balls. And Taylor Clarke did a nice job in the eighth, getting the Astros 1-2-3. Maybe we should talk a bit about Clarke, who is a reason to credit the Royals coaching staff for once. You might remember he started the year on fire, posting a 0.75 ERA in his first 12 games without allowing a walk. But then things went haywire and he had a 10.80 ERA in his next 11 games and if I didn’t know that was right, I’d say the ERA was too low.
But after his perfect eighth last night, he’s been fantastic since. He’s allowed two runs on five hits in 12.2 innings with 14 strikeouts and two walks. I don’t know exactly what they did, but it’s worked. He’s throwing hard with a good changeup and a solid slider. I’m a little concerned about counting on him in a big role for a good team, but he’s under team control through 2025, so the Royals might have found a useful piece for a future bullpen, even if he’s not the eighth inning guy or anything like that once the bullpen is at full strength.
Then it was Scott Barlow in the ninth. He gave up the game-winning home run on Monday, but was put in a pretty rough situation. Last night, he had it working. His fastball was humming at an average of 95.8 MPH and his spin rates were WAY up.
Whatever he was doing was working. He did give up a one-out single but got two strikeouts and then a weak groundout to Jeremy Peña that left Alvarez on the bench and gave the Royals a much-needed win in a series they probably should be looking to sweep this afternoon but, instead, will hope to split against Justin Verlander with Kris Bubic on the mound.
Great work, David! I didn’t get a chance to watch the whole game. I understand a lot better and wow, Dozier!
On May 11, Gabe Speier was the Royals starter and pitched two innings. That was the one and only time ALL YEAR LONG, after the first time through the rotation, that a Royals starting pitcher had an ERA under 4.
But "Cal Eldred is doing an excellent job."
Thanks for letting us know that, Dayton. We could never have figured it out on our own. We all feel so incredibly reassured now.