Weekend in Review: A BIG Series Win Renews Hope

They couldn't get the sweep they *really* needed, but the Royals handled the Guardians to get back in the race.

What a difference a week makes. I know this is the Weekend in Review, but I want to reflect on the entire week for a second. After the Royals finished their toughest stretch of the season, I think we all assumed they’d find their way back in the win column a bit more with a week against a bad A’s team and a struggling Rangers team. They went 1-5 and got swept for the first time all season. They didn’t have their best series of the year against a bad Marlins team, but they did win two of three and that prepared them for their weekend against one of the best teams in baseball, at least by record, the Guardians.

They won on Thursday night with some great relief work and timely triples, but one win wasn’t enough. And, if we’re being honest, a split wasn’t enough either. They opened the series nine games out of first place and if they had finished the series there, I wouldn’t feel especially good about their chances in the division. By winning two of three over the weekend and three of four total, they got it to within seven games with still seven to play against Cleveland later in the season. Is it likely that they’ll overcome those seven games? I’d say no. But it’s certainly a lot more possible than nine and certainly more possible than 11 or 13, which it could have been if they continued to play this weekend like they played last week.

11 Big Games Before the Break

The All-Star break comes two weeks from today, but the Royals have some big games to play before then. The Tampa Bay Rays come to town for the final three games in this homestand, and that’s a huge series. The Royals took two of three from them in Tampa in May, and the Rays are four games behind the Royals in the Wild Card race. They can either bury Tampa this week or they can open the door for them to come back to the race. A sweep doesn’t end their chances, of course, because there’s still plenty of time, but if they can push them to seven back, that would be big. I’ll get into the matchups at the end of today’s newsletter.

Then they start a kind of odd road trip where they play eight games in three cities over 10 days. They travel to Colorado first, and while the Rockies aren’t good, Coors Field is a weird place to play. Then they get an off day and then it’s two against the resurgent Cardinals followed by another off day. Then it’s three in Boston against the team currently closest to them in the Wild Card race. The interleague games don’t have a ton of impact on their playoff chase outside of just wins and losses being important, but I think they’re underrated in the difficulty of their schedule over these final two week before the break.

As long as the Royals don’t fall on their faces, they’re going to head into the break either in a playoff spot or close enough that it doesn’t take much to dream on. But they’re big games, and a lot of that is because of the head-to-head record importance. They currently hold a season series edge over the Rays, but they need to win two of three in order to clinch that. This is their first shot against Boston, but winning the season series against them would be huge as well. You might recall that there is no longer a 163rd game if two teams are tied for a playoff spot. The first tie-breaker goes on head-to-head record.

The Royals are in really good shape there actually with the teams behind them.

Here are the standings behind the Royals with their games behind KC:

Red Sox - 1.5
Astros - 3.5
Rays - 4.0
Blue Jays - 7.5
Tigers - 8.0
Rangers - 8.0
Angels - 9.5
A’s - 17.0
White Sox - 23.0

The A’s and White Sox are toast, but if they did the craziest thing ever and went nuts, the Royals hold the edge over both of them and need just one more win against the White Sox to clinch that. The Royals are 3-1 against the Angels, so they need to win one of three against them in their August series. The Rangers have won the season series, and they’re scary in that they’re obviously the champs and could turn it on. The Royals need to finish 3-4 against Detroit to clinch that series. They won the series against the Blue Jays. They’re up on the Rays and this week is big because of that. They’re 3-0 against Houston and need to win one of four in their series against them at the end of August. And then there’s those Red Sox who they haven’t faced yet.

They’re also 4-2 against Cleveland now, which doesn’t matter yet, but you never know. I’m not going to get into all the tie-breakers beyond the head-to-head record, but it’s important to keep that in mind and that’s why some of what they have left before the break is so important for them.

The Games

I’ll get to all the details, but I think it’s wild that the Guardians had not struck out 10+ times in more than back-to-back games this season before this series. The Royals, who have had some issues getting strikeouts, picked up double-digits in all four games of the series.

Friday - Royals 10, Guardians 3: Four Home Runs Fuel a Blowout

It feels like it had been forever since the Royals had a game like this one. Their last double-digit game in terms of runs came in that crazy comeback against the Mariners three weeks earlier. The last time they had as many hits as they did in this one (13) was four weeks earlier in their 11-8 loss to San Diego. The last time they hit more than three home runs was March 31. It was a really nice offensively breakout that was easy to wonder if it would ever happen again.

After Alec Marsh gave up a home run in the first to Jose Ramirez, the offense started to go to work in the bottom of the second. It began with Salvador Perez leading off the second.

What a freaking blast. I was at the game and the crowd was just waiting to go nuts, and sometimes even if it’s just a solo home run that ties a game early, a gargantuan home run does it. It’s nice to see that Perez might be starting to heat up again because he’d been in a funk for awhile. I suppose it’s easy to say it’s not coincidence that it matches up with Michael Massey’s return, but Massey wasn’t even in the lineup in this one.

Immediately following Perez, Hunter Renfroe showed that he was still picking up where he left off before the injury.

That pitch was sort of a Salvy classic even with it being a pretty clear ball. But Renfroe was able to get to it and hit it hard the other way. It sort of felt like this one just kept going. Including hits on Saturday and Sunday, Renfroe is now hitting .300/.382/.556 with eight doubles and five home runs since May 12. That’s 28 games and 102 plate appearances, which isn’t a massive sample, but it’s getting bigger and bigger and looks more and more like he’s finally doing what the team was hoping he’d do when they signed him.

We all know that the Royals offense had been having issues scoring in multiple innings. That’s why the third was so important for them. They scored two in that second inning, but then came back in the third with a one-out single from Maikel Garcia and a stolen base that led to an intentional walk of Bobby Witt Jr. after the count had moved to 3-0. Vinnie Pasquantino came up in an RBI spot and I think we all know what happened next. He doesn’t miss at home in those spots. He drove in the run with a single to right. Perez singled home Witt on the next batter for the second run of the inning and MJ Melendez singled home a third run.

In the fourth, Kyle Isbel continued his hot hitting.

Like Renfroe, this pitch was not a strike, but he went down and got it. And, like Renfroe, the ball just seemed to keep on carrying for a long time. I didn’t think it was going to get out, but it sure seemed to be gaining steam as it flew out. With a 1 for 3 game on Saturday (he sat on Sunday), Isbel finished June hitting .309/.339/.545. That will certainly work.

A Freddy Fermin sacrifice fly in the fifth scored the seventh run for the Royals, and meant they scored in four consecutive innings. What does that mean in relation to what they’d been doing? They’d scored in five of their previous 56 innings and scored in four in a row. And they’d score in a fifth inning, the eighth to match those five innings in one game. One scored on a wild pitch and then the final home run of the game came off the bat of Pasquantino.

That got them to 10 runs and made the game Royals bullpen-proof.

Marsh was good, but he wasn’t the story in this one, even if maybe he should have been. He made a mistake in the first, but ended up going six innings with just that one run allowed to go along with five strikeouts and two walks. He threw six times in June and had a 5.68 ERA, which is obviously not good. It’s interesting that his two best starts were against two of the best teams in the league - the Yankees and Guardians.

In this one, I think he was probably a bit lucky to have the results he did. He didn’t get many chases and didn’t get many whiffs. But his fastball did seem to cause Cleveland some issues. They took 12 of them for strikes and didn’t really get great contact on most of their batted balls. Maybe I’m not giving him enough credit there. Regardless of the underlying numbers, he made the big pitch when he needed to make the big pitch and the results were absolutely there. I’m being tough on him because the Royals have reached the point that we should be more critical. I’d just like to see a little better on the whiffs, but it’s also tough to get too upset at those results.

Saturday - Guardians 7, Royals 2: What’s The Point of Replay?

This one was marred by umpiring and reviews, which is a shame. Cole Ragans wasn’t sharp, but he probably deserved better than the the results of being unable to complete five innings and giving up five runs. He gave up a run in the first, and that didn’t surprise me. I could be way off here, but Ragans is someone who prepares down to the minute, and the pregame ceremony to honor Bo Jackson as the 30th member of the Royals Hall of Fame made the game start a few minutes late. I believed that if he could get through the first, he’d be fine.

After he gave up a run in the first, it looked like I was right. He walked a batter in the second, but got a double play and only faced three hitters. He struck out two in the third in a 1-2-3 inning. And in the fourth, he struck out the first two batters and started the third 0-2, but then just struggled. He couldn’t get Andres Gimenez to chase any of the next three pitches. Then he did get a chase on a fastball up, but Gimenez hit it for a single. Then, he put a 2-2 slider in a very bad spot to Jhonkensy Noel.

Phew. The ball hooked foul at the last second. Sure they called the 115 MPH rocket a home run, but surely replay wo…

What? They said the call stands? Are you freaking kidding me? I know that I rag on umpiring, probably a little too much, but this was absurd. You can clearly see the ball go behind the pole! I was there as a fan and my seats looked pretty much down the left field line. I was probably 425 feet away from the foul pole, and I thought it was clear that the ball hooked in front of the pole. Erich Bacchus, the third base umpire and probably 170 feet closer, saw differently and ruled it was a home run. Matt Quatraro was out of the dugout asking for a review before Noel was even at third base.

So they looked and they looked and they looked. And they still got the call wrong. And it changed the momentum of the game entirely. I know that these guys are professionals, but when the failsafe fails, it’s hard not to think as a player that you might be playing against two teams and find yourself dejected. Ragans was clearly upset and, if he was pitching better, he might have used that to dominate. But he wasn’t quite right. He also was hurt by his defense with Melendez taking a bad route on a rocket from Ramirez that ended up leading to three more runs for Cleveland in the fifth and the game was pretty much put away.

The Royals did get a couple of runs early on a couple of solo home runs. It was Pasquantino in the first:

And then it was Massey in the second:

And that was it. It was a pretty rough game to watch after such an exciting start with the Hall of Fame induction. But at least there was still one more.

Sunday - Royals 6, Guardians 2: Seth Lugo is Incredible

I don’t know if you can accurately express just how good Lugo has been all season, and this one was right up there with his best. In his 18th start of the year, he went six or more innings for the 16th time. It was his 14th quality start. It was his 10th time allowing one run or fewer. It was his 14th time allowing two runs or fewer. Just an absolutely outstanding outing for the veteran who seems to be getting better as the season is going on.

What’s so impressive about this one is that it was his third double-digit strikeout game of the season. And, as I noted above, the Guardians just don’t strike out much. They entered the series as the fifth-toughest team to strike out in baseball. They are prone to chasing a bit, but they don’t swing and miss that much and they started the weekend with the lowest CSW% of any offense in baseball. In the four games, Royals pitching had a 28.7 percent CSW%. For reference, the Braves are best in baseball at 29.1 percent.

Lugo himself was at 31.2 percent, which is excellent. As usual with him, it’s kind of easy to see how he did it.

I’m just not sure how a hitter is supposed to have any idea what’s coming next. You’ve got fastballs mostly up, but also peppering all quadrants of the zone. You’ve got some curves that start high and end as strikes and others that look like hangers and end low. He has changeups at the bottom of the zone mostly, so there’s something to look for, I guess. But then there’s the other four or five pitches (in this one it was only four more). It’s just nearly impossible to guess right.

His changeup was a monster for him in this one. I don’t really remember it being this good in any start, but he got seven whiffs on it in 11 swings and a bunch of chases from Guardians hitters. I had to look it up because you know I did and his season-high for changeup whiffs before yesterday was three, though maybe it’s worth noting that it came in his last start before this one. He did get six changeup whiffs on July 5 of last year, so this is a new career-high.

The Royals offense wasn’t the juggernaut it was on Friday, but they scored in the first on a Perez fielder’s choice. Then Freddy Fermin and Garrett Hampson hit back-to-back doubles in the second. In the fifth, Dairon Blanco bunted his way on, got to second on a sacrifice bunt and third on a steal for Witt. Witt didn’t hit it quite as hard as we’re used to, but he still got it down the left field line for an RBI triple. And of course Pasquantino got him home next to make it 4-0.

Finally, the Royals needed just a bit of insurance to make the game bullpen-proof and Pasquantino and Perez teamed up to get it. Pasquantino singled for his third hit of the game and Perez did his thing.

Sam Long struggled a bit and gave up two runs, but it didn’t really matter. The Royals had taken three of four from the first place Guardians and got themselves back into both the division race and a playoff position with now less than half a season to play.

Player of the Week

There are so many options this week after basically none last week. Six hitters had at least 15 plate appearances with a wRC+ of 100 or more this week. Renfroe hit .364/.440/.682 with two homers and a double. Perez hit .296/.321/.667 with three home runs and seven RBIs. Kyle Isbel hit .333/.375/.667 with a home run. But it wasn’t just hitters this week. Both Ragans and Lugo had two starts this week and with Ragans not having great numbers on Saturday, he’s out, but Lugo went 12 shutout innings with six hits allowed and 18 strikeouts against three walks. The hitter I didn’t name is Pasquantino, who with three more hits yesterday had a .407/.414/.778 with three homers and nine RBIs. I honestly can’t decide between him and Lugo, so it’s a tie this week.

The Week Ahead

I mentioned that the Rays are coming to town, and while they were struggling when the Royals saw them in Tampa, they’re playing much better now. They’ve won eight of 11 to get back to .500 and get back in the race. And they will miss the top two starters, Ragans and Lugo, so that’s helpful for them. Now, it’s not like the rest of the Royals starters haven’t been plenty good at times, so it isn’t like the Rays can put it into cruise control. With the Rays, you just wonder when the offense is going to break out. They’ve been mediocre to bad this year, but guys like Randy Arozarena and Yandy Diaz are going to break out eventually. Diaz has started to already.

Here are the pitching matchups:

• Tuesday: Zack Littell vs. Brady Singer

• Wednesday: Ryan Pepiot vs. Michael Wacha

• Thursday: Zach Eflin vs. Alec Marsh

All three of these Rays starters can pitch, but all three can be beaten. In Littell and Eflin, they’re going to throw strikes. Pepiot is going to get strikeouts. Littell can be hit, but he does a nice job of not getting destroyed by the hits. Part of that is the lack of walks, but some of that is probably some good fortune, so that could shift for him at any time really. Eflin is good and is coming off an excellent start against Washington, but he hasn’t found the consistency that he showed through most of last season. The Royals need to take two of three here. They need to take advantage of being at home and make a move to start to put away a legit competitor.

As I mentioned, they move on to Colorado in the next series. I don’t have much concern about the offense in Coors Field, but I do worry a bit about what Lugo might look like knowing he probably can’t rely too much on that curve. As it stands right now, the Royals will face two lefties in that series, which seems like less of a big deal with Renfroe actually hitting now, but there’s just something about this series that has me a little concerned. The Rockies are one of the worst teams in baseball, so the Royals absolutely need to take advantage of them.