Three Stories Give the Royals a Series Opening Win
The Twins may not be winning much this year, but it's still big to win the first game of a series.
Usually when watching a game, something stands out as the story. Maybe the starting pitcher dominates (or the opposite). Maybe a hitter takes over the game or the bullpen blows the game or a big inning gives the team a laugher of a win. But sometimes there are a lot of things to choose from, like last night. Those are the games that are the real team wins. Those are the games that bad teams don’t win. I’m not entirely sure winning them a team good, but it seems like the bad teams rarely do.
The Story Is Salvador Perez
What more is there to say about Perez that hasn’t been said before? He still hasn’t met a pitch he won’t swing at, but after a second consecutive multi-homer game, he’s now hitting .284/.312/.536 with 14 home runs and 38 runs batted in. Those 14 homers have him tied for fifth in baseball. He’s taken what he did last year and while he hasn’t quite lived up to the lofty numbers from the short season, he’s certainly putting together his best full-season campaign since maybe ever.
In the first inning, the Royals were down 1-0 and J.A. Happ put a fastball just off the plate away from Perez. I’m sure he was trying to hit the corner and either get a called strike one or a lazy fly ball off Perez’s bat. But what he got instead was an absolute rocket just to the right of center field.
Of course, hitting balls over the fence that he has no business swinging it isn’t exactly a new thing for him. Here’s every home run Perez has hit in his career before last night. There are plenty that pitchers probably thought were safe pitches.
That ball landed on the walkway in the outfield, which is a spot that not many balls land to say the least. It’s just another in a long line of impressive home runs from Perez this season.
So when you think about what he’s done this season as far as absolutely crushing balls, it’s clear that he’s in a different world than most of baseball. The 456-foot home run was his third longest of the year, behind one against the Indians and the walk-off he hit against the Blue Jays.
That homer tied the game. In the bottom of the fifth, he came to the plate with the game already tied after Kris Bubic just couldn’t quite escape trouble against the Twins. Happ tried a fastball away again, but this one didn’t get quite as far away and Perez was actually surprisingly late on it, but the ball just kept going and going and going until it landed in a fan’s glove over the right field wall.
It’s the 14th time in his career he’s homered in back-to-back games. Once he homered in four straight games. The most homers he’s ever hit in his back-to-back games before this stretch was two. So, as I said on Twitter, Salvy is on one and he is the story of last night’s game.
The Story is Kyle Zimmer and Scott Barlow
This story isn’t quite as involved, but this was one of those games that just needed someone to step up to stop the other team from adding on. It wasn’t that either team was putting together huge innings, but it seemed like just a slow bleed against both pitching staffs. I mentioned that Bubic just couldn’t quite put the Twins away, and when he started the fifth by allowing back-to-back doubles to Josh Donaldson and Jorge Polanco, you could see that he wasn’t likely long for the game.
After an error and then a popup from Trevor Larnach, Mike Matheny came out to get Bubic and replace him with Zimmer, who is back to being one of his firemen. Zimmer probably wasn’t exactly the choice I’d have made there because he isn’t the strikeout guy that Barlow is, but also Miguel Sano was due up and he’s on a bit of a strikeout binge as a hitter and it’s not like Zimmer doesn’t strike anyone out. Of course, Sano hit a sacrifice fly to tie the game, so Zimmer couldn’t strand both runners, but he did ultimately strand one after he got Ryan Jeffers to ground out.
For the season, Zimmer has inherited 13 runners now and four of them have scored. That’s not exceptional, but it’s still better than league average. He came back out for the sixth and threw 12 pitches. After having thrown just nine in the fifth, I kind of wondered if Matheny might stretch him out, but as you know, he went to Jakob Junis, who is not the story, though he could have been.
After Junis gave up the home run to Donaldson and the next story that I haven’t gotten to yet happened, Barlow came on in the eighth. If you’re not quite sure how good Barlow has been this season, let me tell you what he’s done lately. Since he had a rough go of it against the Angels in a blowout loss, he had appeared 20 times and given up runs in three of them. In 20.2 innings, he gave up 14 hits, struck out 32 and walked eight. His ERA was 1.31.
And yet, he might have been even better than that last night. In the eighth, he breezed through by getting a strikeout of Sano, a groundout from Jeffers and then he painted a corner in about the most beautiful way possible.
Then he came back for the ninth to get the save with the Royals leading by one and after getting Nick Gordon to ground out, he walked Kyle Garlick and was forced to face Donaldson who had two homers and a double at that point. He had a plan to stay on the outer edge and Donaldson did exactly what he needed him to do, hitting a ball right up the middle that Merrifield fielded before stepping on second and throwing to first to secure the Royals win.
The Story Is the Bottom of the Seventh
After Junis gave up that home run to Donaldson to tie the game, it was like we turned back to the clock to 2014. Well, sort of. The inning started with a walk from Carlos Santana and the 2014 Royals didn’t walk, so we’ll have to ignore that. Matheny made the call to pinch run with Jarrod Dyson. I’m not sure if it’s happened before, but I can maybe remember one other time Santana has been pinch run for late. It was risky because if they ended up needing his bat later, it would obviously be gone.
So naturally Dyson stole his fourth base in five attempts with Perez up to the plate. It sure seemed like we might see Perez continue to add to his story, but instead he popped up, which brought Tuesday’s hero, Andrew Benintendi to the plate. What happened next was some serious Royals Devil Magic.
Benintendi hit a very routine fly ball to left center. Center fielder Gilberto Celestino was playing in his second big league game and went over to make the catch while Dyson tagged up. Larnach drifted over too and I’m not sure if nobody called it, but the ball somehow dropped. Dyson ran to third and while Benintendi took a big turn at first, the throw came into second.
But because the throw was rushed, it was wild and went over Nick Gordon’s head and rolled toward first. And there went Dyson on a mad dash to cross the plate while the Twins tried to track the ball down.
If that’s not a 2014 Royals run scored, I don’t know what is. And then of course, the great relief performance from Barlow to close it out made it feel that way too, but seeing Dyson fly around the bases really brought back some memories.
So there you have it. Three big stories from one game. Without any of them, the other two wouldn’t matter. And in the end, the Royals found themselves two games above .500. It’s safe to say they’ve fully dug out of the hole of the 11-game losing streak and now have their sights set on burying the Twins and staying in a postseason race deep into the season.
Scott Barlow may very well be the team MVP to this point. He's pitched in nearly half of their games and the higher the leverage situation, the better he's pitched. What would the Royals record be if you replaced him with Tyler Zuber level production? The bullpen is thin already. Without Barlow, its a mess.
From his age 21-26 seasons, Salvy hit a HR every 29.4 AB. In his 27-28 age seasons, it improved to one in 18.2 AB. Since returning from the missed 19 season, he's hitting a HR every 14.4 AB. Not only is he hitting them more often, but he's also hitting them with career high exit velocities and distances. Its clear that he took that year and applied his legendary energy levels and work ethic and got functionally stronger as a hitter. Whether that is weight room work as he alluded to the other day or Mike Tosar found a way to unlock more bat speed, I dont know, but the exit velos don't lie. Sal is a way way more dangerous hitter now than he was earlier in his career- and thats a darn good thing since the Royals just gave him 80 million dollars. Most people thought this was not a particularly smart business decision and viewed it as payback to Sal for taking a team friendly contract early on and being a huge part of bringing a championship to KC. And it will turn out that way if Sal returns to being a league average hitter and ages out of being able to catch regularly. It appears however, that we might have a Nellie Cruz type of player. One who hits better in his 30s than his 20s. It does happen occasionally.....
I hope that the Royals track record of treating players well is starting to pay off. Last night, Tucker Bradley went 3 for 3 with a walk for QC. He's now hitting over .400 with a .1069 OPS, and that's without even hitting a single HR. His OBP is well over .500. He signed with the Royals because of the loyalty the organization showed to their minor leaguers during Covid.