Weekend in Review: Trouble on the Bases, a Series Win and More

It turns out winning all the games but the last one is better than losing all the games but the last one.

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What a difference a week makes, huh? At this time last week, we were breathing a sigh of relief that the Royals had somehow managed to win the finale on a terrible road trip and of a terrible weekend series. A week later, they lose the finale, but it was such a successful week that it doesn’t feel like all that big of a deal. Baseball is such a long season that it really is a game of runs. The idea is to make your good runs longer than your bad runs, and every team has a bad run. You remember the Dodgers? You know, the superteam that was poised to win 120 games this season and started 8-0? They won their last two over the weekend, but three straight losses made them 8-10 since their 8-0 start.

So yes, the bad happens to every team. It’s how a team responds. The Royals lost six in a row. They responded by winning six in a row. The loss yesterday ended that streak and dipped them below .500 again, but for a first response to a troubling stretch, that’s encouraging. The offense obviously needs to get it going for them to be able to sustain anything more than a good week here and there, but the pitching is certainly good enough to keep them in games while they work toward the offense figuring things out. There were actually some pretty good signs this week, even with it ending in a series they scored just seven runs (against an excellent pitching staff).

I’ll get to this more in the player of the week, but we did see some signs of life. I mentioned this last week, but they’ve started to get some runners on. They’ve had 10 or more base runners in seven of the last 10 games. Salvador Perez appears to have gotten going after a slow start that some of the metrics indicated was a bit of misfortune. I think Vinnie Pasquantino has looked more comfortable, though the results still aren’t fully there. Jonathan India, having moved back in the box a bit (I mentioned it on Kauffman Corner this week) has looked better and looked better over the weekend. They’re still not driving the ball at all, so I don’t think it’s fair to say they’re close, but I also see the outline of an offense that might be getting somewhere.

Baserunning Issues

One of the problems this team is having, though, is that they sort of stink on the bases right now. That should be a hallmark of a team that has some of the fastest players in baseball (and the slowest, if we’re being honest) and also isn’t much for hitting the ball over the wall. A lot of it is issues stealing bases. They’ve stolen 20 bases in the first 29 games, which isn’t terrible. They’re tied for 16th in baseball, so they should be higher, but it could be worse. But they’ve been caught 12 times, most in baseball and tied with the Mariners, who have stolen 35 bases.

Maikel Garcia is the biggest culprit. He’s just three for eight this season. Some of that is getting picked off and thrown out at the next base, but some of that is a traditional caught stealing. He went 37 for 39 last year. India is 0 for 2. Kyle Isbel is 0 for 1. Drew Waters is 1 for 2. What’s really wild is that if you remove the three fastest guys on the team - Bobby Witt Jr., Tyler Tolber and Dairon Blanco - they’re an absurd 4 for 13. The other three are 16 for 19, which is fine. Witt accounts for all three caught stealing, but his 8 for 11 is much better than what we saw last season.

I don’t know what’s happening. Coming into play yesterday, stolen base success rate was on par with what we saw last season. I have noticed that it seems like catchers make incredible throws against the Royals that I simply don’t see when watching other teams. There may be some bias from my eyes on that. It’s led me to wonder if the Royals are tipping when they’re going to be stealing to allow the opponents to set their catcher up better to throw. Or it could simply be that they’re picking absolutely terrible pitches to run on.

Baseball Savant has some incredible base stealing metrics these days, and one of them allows you to watch video of most steal attempts. I say most because they’re missing some, but there is video of 27 of the 32 attempts. Maybe the others are pickoff caught stealing? I honestly don’t know, but it’s a big enough sample that I found it very interesting because of the 27, 22 of them were on four-seamers, sinkers or cutters. So, in other words, fastballs. And 16 or 17 of them (depending on how you feel about pitches down the middle) were theoretically on great pitches to throw on. That doesn’t mean they were all caught stealing, of course, but that’s a lot of bad pitches to run on. It feels a little odd to me.

I’ve seen some thought that maybe the Royals don’t get enough of a lead, but I think they do. Sure they could maybe get a bit farther, but the guys who are stealing bases are out to decent leads and Garcia is out to a similar lead than the one he’s getting this year. I will say that he isn’t getting the secondary lead he did last year, so maybe that’s part of it, but I just keep coming back to them running on the worst possible pitches. It’s starting to become so much of a trend that I really think the Royals are doing something to dictate to the opponent that they’re about to run. Whatever it is, it’s getting very frustrating and I might dig into this even more if it continues.

The Games

Friday - Royals 2, Astros 0: Seth Lugo At His Best

The start to the season for Lugo was fine. He wasn’t pitching like a number two starter, but he was fine. In his last two starts, he’d gone 6.2 innings and kept the Royals in the game in games the offense just didn’t care to be a part of. But he hadn’t looked like the guy who finished second in the AL Cy Young balloting yet this season. That changed on Friday night, and you could tell it from the first batter of the game. He was in command and that didn’t change at any point until maybe the eighth when he got hit a little bit, but didn’t allow any damage.

The overall line - 8 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 8K - is enough to tell the story, but I was starting to wonder if he was going to be more of a 3/4 starter this season before this. Now I believe he can repeat what he did in 2024, at least to some extent. I love the pitch start for Lugo. He threw 10 different pitches.

I mean, come on, you can’t beat that. I also love comparing the pitch mix with previous games because, for example, he used his sinker the third-most in his last start against the Tigers. He threw five pitches more often than the sinker on Friday night. One of the things about Lugo that I think is really underappreciated is that he has an ability to figure out what’s working and figure it out quickly. With an arsenal like he has, that’s maybe bigger than anything because when you have 10 pitches, they simply aren’t all going to be working the way you want them to work.

And his cutter wasn’t great on Friday. He didn’t throw it much. His changeup got hit hard the two times it was put in play. He didn’t throw it much. He relied on a four-seamer and a slurve along with a slow curve. And where he got the Astros was in their passivity. They looked at 25 called strikes in this one. Since moving back into the rotation in 2023 with the Padres, he’d gotten more than 25 called strikes just three times in 64 starts before Friday night. All three were last year. It tied the season-high for called strikes in an outing with Taijuan Walker, Ben Brown and Sonny Gray.

Freezing hitters can sometimes be as impressive as a swing and a miss and Lugo had the Astros guessing and guessing wrong all night long. He didn’t allow a hit until there were two outs in the fourth and never dealt with more than one runner in any inning. The eighth, as I mentioned, was a little bit more difficult for him. He gave up a hard single to Victor Caratini, but then was living right as Cam Smith hit a 105.9 MPH grounder right to Witt, who started a double play. Then a hard lineout ended the inning. So it was time for him to leave the game, but what a game for him.

The offense didn’t give him much against Hayden Wesneski, who was very good, but they gave him enough. There’s nothing exciting about it, but it works. A sacrifice fly by Isbel in the fifth got the Royals on the board and a sacrifice fly by Hunter Renfroe in the sixth gave them a little padding. Renfroe’s sacrifice fly was almost a three-run home run the pitch before, but it was just foul and he had to settle for one RBI instead of three, but it was enough to give the Royals what they needed. Lucas Erceg threw a perfect ninth for his first save of the year.

Saturday - Royals 2, Astros 0: The Pitching Does it Again

Framber Valdez is very good, and the Royals looked like they had him on the ropes in the first inning. India walked and Witt doubled to put runners on second and third with nobody out for the meat of the order. A Perez popout was followed by a Mark Canha sacrifice fly to bring home one run, but that was all they’d get. It felt like a huge missed opportunity to get Valdez in big trouble early, before he settled in. Luckily, Michael Wacha had his best start of the year as well.

He wasn’t quite as good as Lugo, but he went six shutout innings with four hits allowed to go along with six strikeouts and two walks. I’ve been curious about the pitch mix for Wacha this year. It’s the same six pitches as last year, but he’s throwing his sinker less and his cutter more. In this outing, he threw his cutter just 10 percent of the time. The nine he threw matched the number of curves he threw. Some of that is how he’s feeling that day, like Lugo, but I wonder if maybe he’s putting the cutter toward the back of his pitch mix again, as he did last season. He just seemed to be able to locate it better and that’s been kind of an issue for him to start the season that is a bit surprising. He just hasn’t located well.

The star for him, though, was his fastball. His velocity was up a full mile per hour and he maxed out at 96.3 MPH. We’ve seen that plenty of times before from him, but not much this year. The Astros had a lot of trouble picking it up, fouling it off quite a bit, taking a few and only putting one in play all night. All in all, I wouldn’t say it was a masterful performance, but it’s the sort of game we saw from him so many times in 2024. And the sort of funny thing after these two starts is Lugo’s ERA is down to 3.08, within shouting distance of last year’s 3.00. Wacha’s ERA is down to 3.38, slightly up from 3.35. Things generally get to where they’re supposed to be over a long season. There’s still plenty of time left, but that caught my attention.

And the bullpen was almost perfect even without Erceg available to pitch. I thought it was very interesting that Steven Cruz got the seventh, given his lack of experience in leverage roles. It was just 2-0 at this point, but Cruz pitched a 1-2-3 inning. The bottom could fall out between now and Hunter Harvey’s return (which seems close-ish as he’ll likely be on a rehab assignment soon), but it’s hard to envision him going back to AAA. He’s earned his spot at the big league level. Then it was John Schreiber. He gave up a two-out soft double to Isaac Paredes and then an infield single to Jeremy Peña that probably would have been the end of the inning if he didn’t reach his hand out to try to stop it. But with first and third and two outs, he made a pitch.

You want to talk about increased velocity? That was 94.8 MPH from Schreiber to get Christian Walker. It was tied for his third-hardest pitch thrown as a Royal. He’s thrown two at 95.2 MPH and one of them was in this game as well. His average velocity was up 1.6 MPH for this one. I don’t know if he was amped up for an eighth inning leverage role or what, but his average four-seamer velocity of 94.6 MPH was the highest he’s had in a game since 2022.

And if you were looking for more drama from Carlos Estevez in a 2-0 game at home like we saw Tuesday, you weren’t going to find it. He needed just six pitches to end the game in a 1-2-3 ninth that was punctuated by an 87.9 MPH changeup that Caratini swung through. It was a pretty quick performance for a guy who has actually really been pretty great this season, but I feel like people are leaning on a couple of outings that weren’t entirely his fault.

He’s now pitched 12 times. He’s gone 1-2-3 five times (once came in a two-inning outing), which might be a touch low, but he’s also only allowed one runner in an inning four times. People point to his walks and the game against the Rockies was bad, but outside of that, he’s allowed just three walks that weren’t intentional. Most of the trouble he’s been in this season has been created by a runner on second in extra innings. Those have been the times he’s been asked to intentionally walk hitters as well.

The strikeouts are lower than I expected, but it’s sure looking like Tuesday was a lot more one bad outing than a sign of anything because outside of that game (and outside of intentional walks), he’s allowed seven runners in 12 innings. That’s a 0.58 WHIP. He has a 22.9 percent strikeout rate and 6.3 percent walk rate. Yes, you want more strikeouts and that game does count, but I think a lot of the perception for him is that he’s intentionally walked some guys in a game that the commissioner decided a runner on second without throwing a pitch was a good idea.

The pitching was the story, but there was an offensive highlight against a very tough pitcher in Valdez. Pasquantino finally pulled a ball that didn’t go onto the concourse in foul territory.

I don’t think he’s magically fixed, but that was much better. I actually noticed earlier in the at bat that he fouled a sinker back and it looked like much calmer than he had been. I wonder if he’s starting to find that timing a little bit. It’s not there just yet, but hopefully it will get there soon. The overall numbers for Pasquantino will have to get recalibrated because of how long this start has lasted, but I do think he’ll get it going eventually and this was a good sign because that’s a pitch that would have been very easy to yank foul as he’s done so many times this year.

Sunday - Astros 7, Royals 3: Bubic Just Didn’t Have It

From the first batter of the game, it was easy to see that Kris Bubic’s command wasn’t what you want. It happens. His stuff is good enough that he could still get 10 whiffs in five innings, but he wasn’t getting the Astros to chase and he was putting pitches in some spots he simply didn’t want to. Even with that, it was one big mistake to one big hitter that really changed the course of the game.

In the third, he gave up a hit, but the big mistake before the BIG mistake was that he walked Paredes on four pitches. One of them was probably a strike, but he was dancing around the zone and seemed like he wasn’t willing to give Paredes a fastball. Against Alvarez, who has struggled in a big way himself this year, he got ahead with a sweeper that ended up in a spot I didn’t like, but then left a sinker at 91.8 MPH in a spot that just about any hitter would salivate over, and Alvarez didn’t miss it. Just look at this location.

You can’t go there. It happens, but you can’t go there. Alvarez hit it 436 feet to center, probably making some people scatter on the walkway behind that center field batter’s eye and it was 3-0 Astros. I will say that Bubic battled through it. He got the next two hitters and then had a 1-2-3 fourth. He gave up a couple more hits in the fifth that led to a fourth Astros run, but got out of that (and smartly worked around Alvarez in this one). So the overall line wasn’t good with four runs on five hits allowed in five innings to go along with three walks, but I thought he showed a lot of ability to go out there and compete without his best stuff.

The bats just simply weren’t there again. But one thing I want to mention is the bullpen usage here and I’ve said this before, but it’s probably my one real criticism of Matt Quatraro. I think most of what’s said about him is unfair and hindsight driven. But I also think that he is too willing to go to low leverage relievers in spots where the game doesn’t call for it. My theory, and I want to be clear it is only my theory, is that he had such a rough bullpen for the first year and a half of his tenure that he is so careful to not burn relievers, so trailing in the middle innings means hoping a bad reliever keeps it close, but knowing that if he doesn’t, it’s okay because he needs his ace relievers for a lead.

The problem is that I see far more pitchers he should trust now than he had before. So to go to Chris Stratton in a 3-0 game feels like a move you make when you have two good relievers, not four or five (and two of the three you maybe don’t trust so much are Angel Zerpa, who was very good last year and Jonathan Bowlan, who just hasn’t pitched much in the big leagues so he may end up trustworthy).

With an off day today too, I think I would have much preferred to see Schreiber again in the sixth inning or maybe Cruz rather than going to Stratton, who did what he does best and gave up runs. Now, I actually thought Stratton looked the best he’s looked all year. But he still gave up two runs on three hits in an inning. By the time he left, it was 6-1 and that was that. Zerpa gave up a home run as well, but the game was irrelevant by then. So I’d like to see Stratton DFAed when Harvey comes back, but until then, he’s not the move down by only two or three.

And speaking of Bowlan, he looked outstanding in two innings, needing just 20 pitches. Sure, it was garbage time, but everything I saw in Arizona from him and everything I’ve heard about his work in Omaha looked like it was on display.

One thing I want to point out is India. I said it earlier, but I’ll say it again. On last week’s podcast, I mentioned that he was way up in the box from previous seasons. I noticed on Saturday night that he had moved back some. I checked the numbers and, yep, he’s moved back. I looked back to game two of the doubleheader on Thursday and it looks like it started then. In the four games since then, India is 4 for 12 with a double, four walks and four strikeouts. It’s an interesting development.

Player of the Week

When you win five of six, there are bound to be more candidates than when you lose six of seven, and that’s true this week. There are really four candidates, in my mind. Had Bubic pitched well yesterday, he might have been up there too because he would have two good starts, but he struggled, so he was out. Instead, I saw it as one pitcher - Lugo - with eight shutout innings to go along with three bats - Waters, Perez and Witt. Perez hit .400/.429/.650 with five doubles this week. It was so nice to see him get going, though I’d still love to see him hit the ball over the wall some. Witt hit .348/.407/.478. As the third best offensive week, that’s pretty good. But Waters earned it. He had a huge week, hitting .381/.409/.810 with two doubles, two triples and a home run. He’s still swinging and missing a bit more than you’d like, but it’s working for him right now.

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The Week Ahead

The Royals hit the road again, and that hasn’t been kind to them so far this year. They’ve really only had the one real road trip as their first one was just one series in Milwaukee, but they’re 3-10 on the road, nonetheless. It’s great that they take care of business at home, but they need to take care of business at least a little better away from Kauffman Stadium. They’ll start by heading to Steinbrenner Field in Tampa to take on the Rays, outdoors for the first time due the hurricane destroying the Tropicana Field roof. The stadium’s dimensions match that of Yankee Stadium, so it should be a bit of a hitter’s paradise. It hasn’t played quite that way overall with a .723 OPS that’s in the top half of the league, but not nearly as high as some other parks.

The pitching matchups for the series, starting tomorrow, are:

• Tuesday: RHP Michael Lorenzen vs. RHP Taj Bradley

• Wednesday: TBD (maybe/hopefully Cole Ragans) vs. RHP Drew Rasmussen

• Thursday: RHP Seth Lugo vs. RHP Shane Baz

The Royals are hopeful that Ragans will be able to go on Wednesday, but they’ve already set Lorenzen as their Tuesday starter. If he can’t go but just needs another day or two, I would guess they simply push Lugo to Wednesday and Wacha to Thursday since the off day allows them to work on regular rest, but it’s probably noteworthy that Noah Cameron threw just 30 pitches on Saturday and may be an option on Wednesday as well, if the Royals need to put Ragans on the IL for his groin strain.

In Bradley, the stuff is there, but the results just haven’t been this year. He has a 5.08 ERA and while the FIP is a bit better, he’s just not getting the job done. I thought it might be his new home park, but nope, he’s been better (still not good) there than on the road. His four-seamer looks like it should be better than it is, but it gets hit. His curve is the pitch that he maybe should lean on more moving forward. I could see him giving the Royals fits because their offense isn’t what you’d call good right now, but I could also see him being a good guy to get right against, though if his splitter is working, we’re going to see a lot of swings and misses.

Rasmussen has been excellent this year with just 17 hits allowed in 25.2 innings. He’s striking guys out and limiting walks, just as he showed before he got hurt in 2023. He’s a good pitcher when he’s on the mound. He has a cutter that’s been insane this year. Opponents are just 2 for 30 against it with two singles. His four-seamer has been almost as good. If you get to him, it’s probably on the sinker, but he isn’t getting hit hard at all on that pitch. The stuff doens’t overwhelm you, so there’s a possibility of a bad start here and there, but, again, he’s a good pitcher.

And the series wraps with Baz, who has broken out this year. He has a 2.45 ERA in five starts with 36 strikeouts and nine walks in 29.1 innings. His stuff jumps of the screen when you watch him with a live fastball to go along with a curve that gets tons of whfifs, a changeup that does too and a slider that used to be one of his top pitches but he’s struggled with his year, so he isn’t throwing it at as much. He was good last year, but he’s taken a big jump this year and if the Rays are going to get to where they want to go, it’ll be on his back, among others.

After Tampa, they had to Baltimore. Baltimore is a mess right now. They currently sit in last place in the AL East at 10-17. They’re not really hitting. They’re definitely not pitching. There are rumors of clubhouse unrest. I still think Rocco Baldelli should have top odds as the first manager fired this season, but Brandon Hyde is gaining on him. And Mike Elias might be going soon too given the way they didn’t address the pitching with the venture capitalist owner apparently willing to open the checkbook. The Orioles are an extremely talented team, so this could be one of those situations where you’re catching them at the right time with a chance to take the season series after already winning the series in Kansas City.