Weekend in Review: A Few Days Off Will Be Good

Maybe a bit different format this week, as we head into a four-day break from the Royals.

I’ve already talked some about the baby Royals since they started their series on Thursday against the Blue Jays with a very fun win, but even though they lost all three games over the weekend, I think there was quite a bit they can take away from that series to feel good about over the next few weeks and months. You never want to be in the business of moral victories, but when you’re playing a team fighting for their playoff lives on the road without two-thirds of your regular roster, there are moral victories whether anyone likes it or not.

We got to see the big league debuts of Nick Pratto, Nate Eaton, Michael Massey, Freddy Fermin and Maikel Garcia. We saw three first big league hits and two first big league home runs. Pratto and Eaton saw a splitter from Kevin Gausman on Thursday night that they’ve never seen before in the minors; I can just about guarantee you that. And all of these players had valuable big league experience offered to them that they likely wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. While all have been sent back to the minors as of yesterday afternoon, they have a different understanding of the big league game and what they have left to do to be successful long-term big leaguers. I’ll get to each of their performances here in a bit, but I saw plenty out of a couple of these guys, in particular, to warrant them staying with the big league team. That obviously isn’t happening, but as I tweeted yesterday, the future in the Royals lineup is bright.

The Draft

I’m not going to spend a ton on the draft because the Royals only made 10 percent of their picks yesterday, but I have to say that I was happy with their haul on Day One. In Gavin Cross, they got a well-rounded player who has played center field reasonably well in college and will likely shift to a corner and be a good defensive outfielder. But that’s not why he was drafted. He can hit. I was very hopeful for Cam Collier as the pick since he was surprisingly there, but the fact that Collier lasted all the way to the Reds at 18 makes me wonder if there were some money issues with Collier.

And Cayden Wallace was their second pick at 49. He’s a good athlete who has played third base and outfield in college and I’ve talked to people who believe he can stick at third. He has big power and a hit tool that could use some work, but he’s got a good enough base that I think he can get there. When he does make contact, he hits the ball very hard. I like his swing, so I think a lot of the issues he has is based more in his decision-making, which we’ve talked quite a bit about being the bread and butter of the Royals hitting development.

I also was happy to see who was on the board at 35, where the Royals would have picked had they not traded that pick for Drew Waters, Andrew Hoffmann and C.J. Alexander. The Braves took a high school pitcher, but that doesn’t matter. Justin Campbell, Jordan Beck and Connor Prielipp were probably the most likely Royals picks based on the board and I think I prefer Waters and Hoffmann to any of them. The extra slot money would still be nice, but the way the draft shook out, I think I like the Royals trade even more.

The Post-Break Clubhouse

The next few days are the calm before a potential storm. We’ve talked so much over these last few days about the message sent by the 10 players who made a choice that stopped them from playing with their team this past weekend. They might have even won a game on Saturday if some of them were with the club. But what’s done is done and the past can’t be altered. People in that clubhouse have expressed their frustration, though, so it’s going to be an interesting situation when they get back together after the break. I know there are some who just want the Royals to move on from everyone who didn’t go to Toronto. That isn’t going to happen, for a number of reasons. I still have my questions about how they can come back from the break with Whit Merrifield on the active roster given what he said. As I wrote on Friday, I think it’ll mostly take a couple of days, but the rest of the team will be fine.

Still, there’s no doubting the fact that the atmosphere in the clubhouse and the dugout has been questioned throughout the season and this pending weekend could have been at least part of the reason. Now that it’s past and it’s no longer a looming issue, does that change anything? I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s a question that I’m looking forward to finding the answers to. If this is a lingering issue, will there be changes? Which leads me to thinking about trades because the deadline is just two weeks and a day away.

Does it make it more likely that the Royals do shop someone like Michael A. Taylor or even Hunter Dozier. It’s easy to wonder what their market is, but they are still the same player they were before this weekend. Maybe they’re slightly less attractive to an AL East team, but also the only team from the East the Blue Jays host more than once is the Orioles and they likey don’t factor in to the trade discussions with the Royals.

In fact, not including the Orioles, the Blue Jays host playoff hopefuls in 14 of their final 32 home games. Three are against the Yankees in late September in a series that will likely not matter. Three are against the Guardians, who I don’t think match up with the Royals. Five are against the Rays in mid-September and three are against the Red Sox in late September/early October. I think the Rays series hurts the Royals because there could have been a match there. And I think the Red Sox series isn’t ideal because I think there were some matches there. But the rest I don’t think are that big of a deal. And for everyone worrying about teams going to Toronto in the postseason, they’ll likely be the road team in their first five postseason games given that the Wild Card round is now only in the location of the higher-seeded team. And that’s if they even do make the playoffs.

All that is to say that there are impacts here, assuming players aren’t willing to change their mind on getting vaccinated, but probably not as huge as some teams would want the information leaked to seem. The Yankees can absolutely say they’re out on Andrew Benintendi, for example, but if they believe he’s the missing piece, a three-game series when they’re playing backups anyway isn’t going to change their minds on him. It may certainly negate some value, which stinks, but it won’t stop them from acquiring him. I don’t care what any national reporter says. So now we wait to see what happens. I would imagine the rumors start to fly a little faster after the draft and the All-Star Game ends tomorrow.

The Games

This is where you’ll see a huge difference in this week’s Weekend in Review. I’m going to make some points, but I’m not going to break down anything but Kris Bubic’s start yesterday because this weekend was about getting through it more than anything and I’ve got a lot to say about the young guys.

Friday - Blue Jays 8, Royals 1

Zack Greinke was as bad as I had feared he would be and only lasted four innings. It was nice to see Carlos Hernandez back in the big leagues with his velocity back going, but he just wasn’t very good, though I did like his splitter that he only threw a few times in the game, but got three swings and two whiffs on it. I’d like to see some more of that in his work in Omaha. We’ve seen what it’s done for Gausman. I still have faith that Hernandez can be a big leaguer in some capacity, but he has plenty to work on in Omaha.

The good here is the blowout allowed the Royals to get Bobby Witt Jr. a couple of innings off and gave them a chance to get Massey, Garcia and Fermin into their first big league games to get the shine off before two of the three got a chance to start on Saturday afternoon.

Saturday - Blue Jays 6, Royals 5

I do want to talk about this game a little bit too actually because it was one of the more intriguing games of the year. Daniel Lynch couldn’t get through the fourth, and that proved to be a big problem, but we now know that he was placed back on the 15-day IL. Because of the break, it’s really only 10 days that he’s going to have to miss, which is nice, but if he can’t get those blisters under control, it’s going to feel very familiar to Royals fans who remember that from the Jeremy Affeldt days.

If the Royals said this and I missed it, I apologize, but I have my doubts that Lynch would have made this start under normal circumstances. He threw 13 sliders all game and only seven in the first three innings. His total of 17.1 percent sliders was significantly down and the third lowest percentage of sliders he’s thrown in a start in his career. It seems to me that a cut on his finger probably impacted that. It sure would have been nice to have Brad Keller able to be out there to allow Lynch a chance to not have to make this start.

But the Royals young offense did some nice things throughout the game. After flirting with home runs on three separate occasions on Friday, Vinnie Pasquantino had a couple of hits (including a big one I’ll get to) and we got to see Massey pick up his first two big league hits in addition to showing off his glovework at second base.

With the game tied after four, the Royals did what I always clamor for them to do. They used their best and didn’t save anyone for a situation that may never come. So they threw Taylor Clarke in the seventh, Josh Staumont in the eighth and Scott Barlow in the ninth inning. It kept the game tied to get to the 10th inning where they had some heroics from Pasquantino.

That’s just a mammoth home run. The Manfred Man was Brewer Hicklen on second base and he was in danger of being stranded on third after a Witt strikeout, but Pasquantino just showed off his power to give the Royals a 5-3 lead.

Here’s the situation, as we now know it. After throwing twice on Monday and then on both Wednesday and Thursday, Barlow was only good for one inning. People were screaming about it on social media because he only threw 11 pitches. On the surface, I totally get it, but that’s a lot of work for him and the “only” 11 pitches would be fine if he had to throw six or seven more in that inning, but the up and down adds to it. What this tells me more than anything is that they aren’t seriously considering trading Barlow, which is kind of disappointing, but it’s another issue for another day.

So with Barlow done and having been used to even get them to that situation, their bullpen options were Amir Garrett, Jackson Kowar, Joel Payamps or Collin Snider. They obviously chose Payamps, which worked about as well as an unplugged refrigerator. We’ll never know if any of the other options would have worked, but it was an uninspiring list to say the least. It sure would have been nice if Lynch could have gone more than 3.2 innings. Or if he wasn’t healthy enough to be counted on, if Keller could have gone. Or if they had Dylan Coleman available in the bullpen for the 10th inning. Lots of what ifs, but I can’t say I have a huge problem with how it was handled if Barlow truly was unavailable for two innings.

Sunday - Blue Jays 4, Royals 2

Bubic pitched his best game of the year. By game score, it was actually the second best game of his career. He completed seven innings for the third time ever. He completed a start with zero walks for the third time ever. And he did both of those things in the same game for the first time ever. I am interested to see if this strike throwing becomes a trend. In his last start, he threw 99 pitches and 69 strikes, which was very nice. But he also threw 55 strikes in his final 74 pitches. Then yesterday, against a very scary lineup, he threw 92 pitches and 60 strikes. I’m curious what changed.

He was on the attack with all of his pitches. His fastball was in and around the zone.

We didn’t see a single changeup sail on him as we do sometimes.

And his curve seemed like he was putting it where he wanted it most of the time.

This was a nice outing for him and it would have been even better without yet another defensive miscue from Witt, who could have started a pretty easy 6-4-3 double play to get them out of the third inning. A run scored on the error and then another on a sacrifice fly to the next batter to tie the game. That inning started with two infield singles to third base that there was absolutely nothing Massey could have done.

I thought Bubic was getting better as the game was going on too. After that inning, he gave up just one more hit and did hit a batter, but he was really painting corners throughout his outing. Now since he’s been back from AAA, here’s what he’s done:

David Lesky @DBLesky

Bubic after coming back from AAA: 9 GS 48 IP 53 H 26 R 21 ER 41 K (18.9%) 23 BB (10.6%) 3.94 ERA Not all especially great, but perfectly acceptable at the back of a rotation.

I said it in the tweet. That’s a back-of-the-rotation arm, but one that you’re not terribly worried about. And if this new strike throwing of his is for real, I’m very excited to see what he can do in the second half of the season.

The lone highlight offensively for the Royals, unless you love bloop RBI singles (they still count, but come on) was Pratto getting his first league bomb off Jose Berrios in the second inning.

That was quite a poke. It’s too bad the offense couldn’t do anything else the rest of the day and that Alejandro Kirk could get his hands in fast enough to get that Wyatt Mills slider out of the yard to give the Blue Jays the win. If you want to complain about bullpen management, I’d point to this game more than Saturday, to be honest. Unless Staumont or Clarke were unavailable, there’s no reason Mills should have been that guy in the eighth.

How’d They Do?

Okay, now this is the fun part. I want to look at all the young players and talk a bit about their weekends in Toronto because that’s what made these games more compelling for fans.

Nate Eaton

I knew Eaton had a good arm, but I didn’t know how good. I also didn’t realize quite how quick he was. In my head, I envisioned someone a lot like Merrifield, who could play some infield and some outfield and could probably handle center in a pinch, but I think he can do more than that in center after seeing him. Maybe it wouldn’t last for long out there for him, but to me, he seems a bit like a souped up Merrifield who can play a few more positions.

His home run on Thursday night was a special moment and while I think there’s some work to do, he had some very impressive plate appearances against tough pitching and showed me that he not only belongs, but will be back relatively soon. He’s a guy who needs to be added to the 40-man roster this year, so I think he’s solidified that with his performance this weekend.

Stats: 2 for 12, 1 HR, 2 RBI

Brewer Hicklen

We didn’t get to see much of Hicklen other than a couple of ABs and as a pinch runner and in the outfield. He got thrown out on the bases in a pretty ugly fashion. I think the Royals see Hicklen as organizational depth and they treated him as such, but he was rewarded for some of his work in the minors. I still like him as a fourth outfielder who can crush lefties, but I’m not sure if they see it that way.

Stats: 0 for 2

Freddy Fermin

Fermin has been thought of as an energy guy and someone teammates love. I think the Royals wanted to reward him too and he got into a couple of games. I wouldn’t be too surprised if he resurfaces in the big leagues sometime, maybe with the Royals, maybe not. I didn’t know a ton about him, but I appreciated him scooting down the line on Saturday to avoid a double play that allowed him to score a run on a Witt single later that inning.

Stats: 0 for 7

Maikel Garcia

I’m a little surprised we didn’t get to see Garcia a bit more than we did. We saw a ton of him in spring training, but there isn’t much to go on here. He made a nice play at shortstop and had one at bat. Not much to go on here, but based on things I’ve heard, they have high hopes for him still.

Stats: 0 for 1

Michael Massey

I wanted to see more of Massey, but he did get to start the final two games, once at second and once at third. Defensively, he made a tough play look fairly easy at second and didn’t look out of place at third at all. But his bat looked good. He didn’t appear overmatched at all and was able to pick up two hits on Saturday and then another yesterday. And he hit the ball hard! I’ve said this before, but a scout told me earlier this year that he believes Massey is a difference-maker. I personally have my doubts in that because I think a difference-maker gets on base more than Massey likely will or has big power and I don’t think he has big power. But I do think he can be a nice hitter in the two-spot or the seven-hole in a big lineup and is a very good defender.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with Merrifield over these next few weeks, but if he’s moved, I think the lineup probably gets a bit better with Massey in there than what we’ve seen on the whole from Merrifield this year. Massey still has Nicky Lopez and Emmanuel Rivera to contend with for playing time even after a theoretical Merrifield deal, but I was very impressed with him this week.

Stats: 3 for 8

Nick Pratto

I’d have kept Pratto in the big leagues after his weekend. He played a very good first base all four games and after a rough one on Thursday against Gausman, he showed he could hit at the big league level as well. He had two hits each on Friday and Sunday and even in taking the 0-for on Saturday, he didn’t seem like he was overmatched by big league pitching to any extent. And his one strikeout was in an at bat where he took three pitches and none were in the zone. Defensively, maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see, but it sure seemed like the infielders were firing throws a little more confidently because they felt good he’d reel them in.

In a way I get the logjam, for the moment. With Pasquantino hitting the snot out of the ball and Hunter Dozier still there along with Ryan O’Hearn, where’s the spot. But also, just DFA O’Hearn already. You rewarded him for his availability with four starts in Toronto and now it’s time to say thank you. I imagine that Pratto will be back sooner than later, but I wish I could say he’ll be in the lineup on Friday against the Rays.

Stats: 4 for 14, 1 2B, 1 HR, 1 RBI

Sebastian Rivero

We’ve seen a decent amount of Rivero, so there isn’t much to say that’s new. He’s very good behind the plate, but I don’t know that he’ll ever even hit as well as Cam Gallagher.

Stats: 0 for 5

Angel Zerpa

I talked a ton about Zerpa in Friday’s newsletter and while he was pretty lucky, I was impressed with how he attacked. And I actually had forgotten how recently he’d pitched, throwing two innings on Monday against Detroit before going five on Thursday. He’s now pitched three times in the big leagues and given up just one run in 12 innings. I think he needs a bit more seasoning, but I’m impressed with him and feel kind of silly for putting him on my possible DFA list a couple of weeks ago.

Stats: 5 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 2 K, 2 BB

So the overall numbers were sort of blah for these guys, but for many of them, it was that opportunity to get a taste of the big leagues that they wouldn’t otherwise have had. I came away from the weekend feeling very confident that Pratto and Massey are at least close to ready and that Eaton can be a contributor, though I don’t quite know where. Would they have won a game or two more with their regular cast and crew? I think it’s very possible, but they chose to not travel with their team, so we’ll never know and we got to have some fun watching the baby Royals for a few days.

What’s Next

The break has arrived. I’m going to take a little break here. My plan is to take tomorrow and Wednesday off (I’ve planned that before, so we’ll see how that goes) and then look back at the first “half” on Thursday and maybe do a mailbag on Friday. We’ll see how I feel. Then the Rays come to town. They’re always tough and they’re having another good season down in Tampa.