Two Heroes Give the Royals an Unlikely Win
A big homer in the ninth and some big strikeouts in the 10th pulled in a bigger-than-it-should-be April victory.
When Jesse Hahn’s 2-2 slider to Adam Eaton flattened out and the longtime Royals nemesis hit a two-run homer to give the White Sox the lead in the eighth inning, it sure seemed like the Royals would fall below .500 and lose another game to the team many believe is the best in the AL Central. With Liam Hendriks on the other side waiting to come in with his 1.79 ERA and six home runs allowed in 110.1 innings between 2018 and 2019, it would be a tall order for the Royals to come back in this game.
Enter Carlos Santana.
Hendriks relies heavily on his fastball. He threw it 70.8 percent of the time last season and had thrown it 88.4 percent of the time this year before yesterday. So of course he started the inning off with two fastballs. The first was at the top of the zone and Santana swung through it. The next was higher and Santana, with his outstanding eye, took it. So it was 1-1 and it looked like Hendriks was doing the smart thing and keeping fastballs up to Santana. Why is that the smart thing? Well, since 2017, Santana has hit .210 with 11 home runs in 246 plate appearances as a lefty ending on fastballs up in the zone or just above it.
At the bottom of the zone? Woo boy, don’t go there. He’s hit .325 with nine home runs in 162 plate appearances. So the moral of this story is do not give Santana a fastball down in the zone, especially when he’s hitting left-handed.
Whoops.
In the span of a few seconds and 405 feet, Santana erased the mess that was Jesse Hahn’s second straight disastrous outing and gave the Royals new hope. That home run was interesting as well because of where he hit it. That was the 176th home run of his career as a lefty and only 10 have been hit closer to the left field line than that one. Take a look at this spray chart. Yesterday’s (using the Kauffman Stadium overlay) is the one sitting right on top the 410 listed.
It was exactly what the Royals hoped for when they signed Santana as a free agent heading into this season. Santana’s career line in high leverage before yesterday was .261/.388/.451, better than either medium or low leverage. He’s a professional hitter who can do damage to any pitcher at any time, including one of the best closers in all of baseball.
But that wasn’t enough to get the Royals to victory. The bullpen, which I still think is really good, had allowed two runs in four innings (Both were off Hahn, I don’t feel like talking about him yet, okay? Just give me some space on that.). They’d walked four and struck out five and Greg Holland had to face the heart of a good lineup. He had a bit of an advantage in getting Nick Williams third because Williams had pinch run previously, but after walking Jose Abreu (the fifth from the bullpen...this is a problem), Holland coaxed a double play and then a lineout to end the inning.
After the Royals used the extra innings rule that I really hate to get a run across with two bunts and no hits, they turned to a pitcher who I really didn’t expect to see in this game.
Kyle Zimmer being up in the second inning of the game because Mike Minor was struggling so much is likely a big reason why he didn’t pitch in the middle innings of the game when Mike Matheny was going through the bullpen in the middle innings. Managers don’t like to get pitchers hot, sit them and then bring them in hours later. But after going through so many relievers, the options were Zimmer or Jake Brentz, a rookie with all of two big league innings. He’s pitched well, but we all remember the Randy Rosario experience from last season. I don’t think Matheny wanted to go through that again.
So in comes Zimmer with a runner on second and nobody out and a one-run lead. Of course, the first man up was Adam Eaton, noted Royals killer. If you weren’t feeling a walk-off home run, I don’t think you can really call yourself a Royals fan. But Zimmer doesn’t care about the history between Eaton and the Royals. Not one bit. A bunt was obviously what Eaton was aiming for, but Zimmer’s fastball is a tough one to bunt. Eaton has been a good bunter for his whole career, but he couldn’t get it down in this one.
Honestly, I don’t especially like the thought behind pitching Eaton down when he was trying to get a bunt down. Yes, you’ll gladly allow a hitter who has handled the Royals so well to give up an out, but also that puts the tying run on third with less than two outs, which has nothing to do with Zimmer’s effectiveness, but, hey, it’s a silly rule. Zimmer did miss his spots a little bit and got lucky that Eaton couldn’t get the bunt down on a fourth pitch that was actually sort of a perfect pitch to bunt. At that point, though, there were two strikes and Eaton wasn’t going to risk a foul bunt, so Zimmer could get back to pitching his game rather than avoiding a bunt.
He muscled up and overthrew what was the hardest fastball of his inning at 95.1 MPH for a ball. At 3-2, you don’t hate the idea of losing Eaton and putting a force at any base. Zimmer’s slider has been such a good swing and miss pitch that I think that or another fastball up in the zone made sense here, but he didn’t throw a fastball. He threw his 13th curve of the season and he badly missed his spot, but it still ended in the strike zone. That might have been the biggest pitch of the 2021 season to this point.
Also, you just have to leave Eaton tossing the bat thinking it was ball four and then getting rung up.
With that out of the way, he was on to Zack Collins who took the first pitch right down the middle that he’s probably still thinking about. That was the last pitch that made me hold my breath because that’s when he went to work. Take a look at this at bat and the pitches he threw. That’s just a pure clinic of how to handle an inexperienced young hitter dead set on making something happen. Keep it away and let him try to yank it.
It didn’t take long to dispose of Nick Madrigal after Collins and the Royals had won a game they had no business winning after the way they had blown the lead in the eighth inning. The old adage of teams winning 54, losing 54 and the middle 54 being what makes the difference is an interesting one, and this was one of those games in the middle 54. Their game on Wednesday against the Indians was one as well, so the Royals are 1-1 in those at this point.
So there you have it. Two heroes, one win that feels way bigger than an April win should and a much better feeling heading into a homestand that will tell us a lot about this team.
Other Notes:
Jesse Hahn Needs Some Time in Lower Leverage
Last season, the Royals had a really solid bullpen but their best reliever was Hahn. He threw 17.1 innings and gave up just four hits. He walked 12.3 percent of hitters, but you can do that when you’re as difficult to hit as he was. Plus, his 29.2 percent strikeout rate ranked in the top 30 percent of all relievers with 10+ innings. The point here is that he was really, really good. So far this season, he has not been really, really good. His command has been a disaster, and his curveball spin rate that was elite last season has been down from last year. There were a lot of calls yesterday to simply release him. Obviously that’s not happening, nor should it, but it’s time to give Hahn some time in lower pressure situations.
It’s a complex situation, but there’s some blame to go beyond Hahn in yesterday’s game as Mike Minor’s inability to pitch past the fourth caused the game of bullpen roulette, but that doesn’t mean that Hahn is anywhere near good enough right now to be in pressure situations. If the Royals are going to do anything this season, Hahn being somewhere close to the dominant force he was last season is vital. It’s important to get him right. For whatever it’s worth, I had no real issue with the way Matheny handled the bullpen other than that I’d have probably left Josh Staumont in for another inning, but he was in a situation where he didn’t have a ton of options given that he likely didn’t want to pitch Zimmer at all and wanted Holland for the ninth.
Update: Hahn has been placed on the 10-day IL with right shoulder impingement syndrome. That actually explains quite a bit.
Big Homestand
I mentioned above that the homestand is a big one for what this team can be. You can check out the preview of the Angels series starting today on Royals Review a little bit later, but 10 games against the Angels, Blue Jays and Rays is definitely not a walk in the park. All three teams have playoff aspirations and all three teams are ahead of the Royals right now in talent, and given their propensity for terrible starts to the season, this is a big group of games. They sit at 4-3 right now. If they can even go 5-5 or better on this homestand and then face the Tigers and Pirates, they could head into another set of tough games against the Twins, Indians and White Sox in a pretty good way.