Walking Off on the Best

Putting a blown save on Emmanuel Clase is rare enough, but the way it unfolded was definitely a surprise.

When I first started Inside the Crown, my thought was that I would find something interesting about the game before, whether it was one moment, an inning or an individual, and focus on that. It’s kind of evolved since then to be what I hope is a different sort of recap than you find elsewhere. I’ll get to some other parts of last night’s game, but I want to touch on how unlikely last night’s bottom of the ninth inning was for the Royals against one of the best in the game, Emmanuel Clase.

To start, Clase entered the game having walked seven hitters all season. Yes, that’s right. Of the 209 hitters he had faced before Kyle Isbel stepped in there to lead off the bottom of the ninth, Clase had walked seven of them. Those seven hitters were Bobby Witt Jr., Josh Donaldson, Tim Anderson (intentionally), Daz Cameron, Anthony Rizzo, Aaron Judge and J.P. Crawford. Other than Cameron, all six of the others are far more accomplished than either Isbel or Drew Waters. And Clase walked them both. The only time he’d walked more than one batter in a game was against the Yankees and he walked Judge and Rizzo.

So the walks to start things were a surprise. He had walked the leadoff hitter three times previously. I guess in some ways, if he’s going to walk a hitter, he’s at least somewhat likely to do it against the leadoff hitter. But it’s obviously the first time he’s walked two in a row in a game. And when you add in the intentional walk of Witt to get to Salvador Perez (I’ll get to that), it’s the first time he’s walked more than two in a game and just the second time in his career. With those three walks, that means he increased his season walk total by 42.9 percent in one game. Against the Royals. What are the odds of that? I don’t know, but I’d be curious. It’s only the 12th inning all year where the Royals have walked three times, so it can’t be terribly likely.

The two earned runs he allowed were also the first he’d allowed since August 6 when he gave up one. That game was the first game he had allowed an earned run since July 6. And that game was the first game he’d allowed an earned run since May 17. And you know what that means, right? It means that he allowed as many earned runs in getting two outs against the Royals as he had since May 18. That’s a span of 43.1 innings with two earned runs allowed and then he matched that in 0.2 innings. It was just the third time all season he had allowed more than one run in a game. The last time was April 23 against the Yankees. The first time was April 11…against the Royals.

Does this mean the Royals have his number? Maybe a little? They did get a 10th inning run against him on Monday, which was obviously unearned because of the zombie runner to start the inning, but MJ Melendez got the RBI on a base hit that rolled basically through the same spot as his game-tying RBI single in the ninth last night.

It wasn’t hit as hard, but it still got the job done. And now against a pitcher who the rest of the league is hitting .136/.163/.185 against, the Royals are hitting .368/.458/.526 against him. He’s allowed 44.4 percent of his earned runs this year against them, walked 40 percent of his batters against him and given up 21.9 percent of hits against them. That’s all in eight percent of his innings this season. They’re an unlikely team to be giving a pitcher like Clase trouble, but it’s kind of fun when they’re the team causing the problems for one of the best when it seems like others are doing that to the Royals far too often.

Looking plate appearance by plate appearance, I thought they were doing a nice job against him. The first two pitches are a spot where Clase gets some swings and misses on that nasty cutter. He doesn’t get as many down in the zone, but these are close pitches for a young hitter to be taking against a great closer like him.

Waters took some close ones as well. Again, the cutters down don’t typically get the swings and misses, but they are close. And for a guy in his 51st career plate appearance, I’d say that’s impressive.

Nicky Lopez came up next and I almost don’t hate the bunt in that situation. With runners on first and second and nobody out and the top of the order coming up next, I get it. Lopez needs to put a better bunt forward, but I don’t hate it. I do find myself disliking it a bit more on a 2-0 count, but it sort of seemed like Clase may have found the zone a bit as the second pitch appeared to be a pretty obvious strike and one of the worst missed calls you’ll see.

Then of course, Melendez got the big hit that gave Clase his first blown save since May 9.

Now with runners on first and third, the Guardians made the decision to intentionally walk Witt. I tried to think about this from the perspective of what I’d do if this was the Royals. If Amed Rosario was coming up with Jose Ramirez on deck and the Royals walked Rosario, I’d be livid. But the rationale makes some sense. Clase gets a ton of grounders. When I say a ton, I might be understating it. His 64.5 percent groundball rate ranks fourth in baseball among pitchers with 50 or more innings. If Witt hits a grounder, the odds are that he beats it out and they can’t turn two. Facing Perez, that double play becomes much more likely. But still, Perez may have a subpar line this season, but he came into that plate appearance hitting .283/.316/.503 since coming off the IL with 31 RBIs in 37 games. He’s turned things around quite a bit.

In thinking about it that way, I don’t think I hate their move, though I still don’t think I would have done it if the roles were reversed. And, of course, Salvy did what Salvy does and made them pay.

It would have been more fun if he had hit the ball to the moon, but the 306 feet was enough to give the Royals a desperately needed win and yet another example of them sequencing their wins in the best way possible to give us an off day with a win to think about instead of another frustrating loss.

And it would have been frustrating because the pitching was outstanding. It started with Zack Greinke throwing six innings with just one run allowed. Then the bullpen pitched three more scoreless innings with a clean frame each from Collin Snider, Dylan Coleman and Scott Barlow. When you get that kind of pitching, you need to win the game. The bullpen now has a 2.59 ERA in September with a 27.9 percent strikeout rate and 7.7 percent walk rate and allowed half their runs in the first game of the month. Where was this unit then?

With Greinke, I found myself worried in the first that they had made a mistake in not giving him a rehab start before bringing him back to the big leagues. He needed 21 pitches to get through that first and that including walking Oscar Gonzalez, which is no easy task. I’d guess the number of walks issued by a pitcher with a walk rate below five percent to a hitter with a walk rate below four percent is pretty low, but that’s what happened. But the two hits and a walk in the first were followed by just four hits and no walks over the next five innings. No, he didn’t strike guys out and he didn’t get swings and misses, but the Guardians don’t strike out and they generally don’t swing and miss.

Greinke did what I love to see from pitchers. He threw strikes but left plenty of white space in the middle of the zone.

The only run he allowed actually may have been avoided had Waters broken correctly on the bloop single by Owen Miller (the number seven hitter, by the way, if you read yesterday’s newsletter you know why that’s interesting). The ball dropped just barely in front of Waters. It would have been close if he had broken in right away, but he didn’t, so the ball dropped and that was the run.

And the offense struggled too, but similar to the Waters break on that fly ball, I wonder if the game is different in the first if Witt isn’t caught stealing. He walked after Melendez started the game with a ground out into short right field. He was caught stealing before Perez and Nick Pratto followed with back-to-back hits. You never know what the game is going to look the same after a play, but it always looks bad when there’s an out on the bases followed by a hit or two. Maybe that puts Cody Morris on the ropes and instead of four shutout innings, he can’t find his way past two or three. We’ll never know now.

But we do know that the Royals stranded two in the first, one in the fourth, two in the sixth, two in the seventh and two in the eighth before coming through in that fun ninth inning to get a win. The win doesn’t cure anything. The issues still exist. But boy is it fun to get one when nobody expects it.