Weekend in Review: Chapman Traded, A Series Win vs. LA and the Week to Come

This is the second Weekend in Review of the year where the Royals have won more than they lost.

The Kansas City Royals are 4-3 against the Tampa Bay Rays and Los Angeles Dodgers this season. If that doesn’t tell you anything about the randomness of a small sample, I’m not sure what will. The Royals, surprisingly, have gone 7-8 in their last 15 games since their 10-game losing streak finally snapped. I think it’s fair to say they’ve played better baseball, though obviously it hasn’t all been good, but they’ve looked a lot less hopeless.

Not for nothing, but if they win seven of 15 the rest of the year, they’d end up with 61 wins. You know how I always say how hard it is to lose 100 games? This team started 18-51 and simply playing at a 76-win pace for the final 93 games puts them awfully close to avoiding 100. Now, I don’t expect them to continue to win seven of every 15, but I do think we’ve seen that they can at least be a bit more competitive. And that’s true even against the best competition.

Chapman to the Rangers

The Royals started their weekend by beginning the trade season pretty early with a move of Aroldis Chapman to the Rangers in exchange for Cole Ragans and Roni Cabrera. The June 30 trade was just three days later than them beginning their trade season last year when they moved Carlos Santana. My initial reaction to this trade was that I hated it, but as is true with every deal, there’s some regression to a middle ground as time passes.

Let’s start with Ragans. He was picked in the first round in 2016 out of high school by the Rangers and pitched pretty well as a 19-year old in low-A. But he had some elbow issues in spring training the next season and was slated for Tommy John Surgery. About 14 months later, he felt the same pain throwing a bullpen session and needed a second surgery. That’s not what you want. And then in his recovery, the 2020 season happened, so he missed all of 2018, 2019 and 2020 since there was no minor league season in the latter year. He looked great in high-A in 2021 but struggled a bit at AA to start the season.

But he was excellent there to start last season and found success in AAA as well before he got bumped to the big leagues. He wasn’t great there, but he had some moments and entered this season in the Rangers bullpen on the back of them spending literally $100 million on their rotation. Before the trade, they had sent him back to AAA to get stretched back out to be a starter. The other interesting thing that happened was he added velocity. He did it by putting on weight and doing some mobility work to help him throw harder. I was pretty sure that a good chunk of it was his move to the bullpen. He averaged 92.1 MPH last year and 96.1 MPH this year.

But the great thing this year is that we have access to minor league data and he threw 66 pitches in his last start in AAA, his third since getting sent down, and he still averaged 95.7 MPH. That changes the calculus a bit on him. I was able to talk to someone in the Rangers organization about Ragans and he glowed about him, but recognized the Rangers were trading from a position of strength for a spot of very real need with Chapman. He highlighted the changeup, which is a very good pitch for him but mentioned his curve and how it can be a dominant big league pitch.

Ragans pitched for Omaha yesterday in his fourth start since being sent back to work his pitch count up. And it couldn’t have gone better through four. He had five strikeouts, 10 whiffs on 31 swings and was throwing mid-90s with incredible spin on the revamped fastball. But, keep in mind he hadn’t been starting all year and the wheels fell off in the fifth. He ended up giving up quite a bit, so there’s something to keep an eye on, but I’m willing to see if he can keep it going a little bit longer once he’s actually got his arm prepared for that. One thing I’ll say is that cutter has to go. It isn’t a good pitch.

He also had something interesting to say about Roni Cabrera. What he said was that most guys you trade who haven’t even gotten to full-season ball are guys you may see climb the ladder but likely aren’t more than depth players. A very small handful are Yordan Alvarez or Fernando Tatis Jr. He believed in the odds on Cabrera not being them, but that he was the one they didn’t want to give up.

He didn’t say it specifically, but I got the impression that the concession for not trading one of the pitching prospects in their system was to include Cabrera in the deal. He did say they talked about a handful of prospects, so to settle on someone with big league experience sort of makes me think that’s what happened. I don’t know if that’s actually the case as he didn’t say it directly, but I found that interesting. Cabrera is exactly the sort of player people were eager for the Royals to be targeting in trades, and now they’ve not only targeted him but acquired him, so we’ll see how that goes.

Timing is a funny thing. When the Royals signed Chapman in late January, you'd take this deal for him 100 times out of 100. Then he came out and showed he was throwing 100+ and looked like a dominant arm and the expectations began to grow. I think a prospect in the 8-12 range and then someone 20-25 made sense. What I don’t buy is the concerns over his walk rate or history suppressing his market because we didn’t hear any of that before the trade.

I still don’t love the trade. I’m a big fan of Tekoah Roby, but if he’s one of the prospects they didn’t want to move, what can you do? You might argue they should have waited, but there’s also a big risk in waiting. Could they have picked up Cole Winn and, I don’t know, Max Acosta? Maybe! But I’d rather get a young lefty who has increased his velocity as much as he has and a young player like Cabrera. So I’ve come around some on it and I’m very interested to see what Ragans can do because I assume he’ll be up and starting pretty soon.

The Games

Friday - Dodgers 9, Royals 3

I was very excited for Alec Marsh to make his big league debut. Stuff-wise, he’s very different than Royals prospects we’ve seen come up in the past. He has a big fastball with a profile that we haven’t seen from many other pitchers in the big leagues at all. He can throw a good changeup and a good slider and a good curve. Yes, a pitcher with four pitches and an actually above average fastball. It feels like a dream.

But Marsh has run into two problems as a minor leaguer - walks and home runs. And those are the things that’ll get you out of games (and the league) faster than anything. So when his fifth pitch was hit 422 feet by Mookie Betts, well, it wasn’t terribly surprising. Some of that is that Betts is just another world lately. That was his fifth leadoff home run in June alone and his ninth of the season. He’d been on fire and I was impressed that Marsh settled in to get the next three hitters, including his first big league strikeout.

What I liked about his outing is that the stuff was present. You could see how the slider would get whiffs. He got three on nine swings. The changeup was really good too with four whiffs on 11 swings. I thought he leaned a little too heavily on that changeup, though, and it led to some hard contact when it didn’t drop as much as he had liked. I’d like to see four or five of the changeups he threw become sliders the next time out.

He is certainly not the first pitcher to get beaten by Markus Lynn Betts and he won’t be the last. He got hurt by a changeup against him the second time and then a fastball got too much of the plate a third time. So he gave up four runs in his first four innings and three of them were Betts RBIs. He was given a shot to go five, but gave up a triple that may or may not have been correctly assessed. Will Smith hit a fly ball down the right field line. It hit the chalk, but it was called foul. So Drew Waters stopped playing the ball. Then the Dodgers challenged, it was called fair and they awarded Smith third base.

I think it’s at least reasonable that he could have gotten there, but I also think Waters could have easily played that ball and held him to a double had the umpire not basically told him to stop. Smith was on third and when Amir Garrett came in and gave up a fly ball, it was the fifth run of the night for the Dodgers. As we all know, just because something happens after a play doesn’t mean it would happen if things were different. But we also only know what actually happened and Garrett got two fly balls, walked a batter and got a groundout. If Smith was placed on third, I think there’s a pretty good chance he wouldn’t have scored. So that’s too bad that Marsh got charged for a fifth run.

There comes a time very quickly where the results matter more than anything, but I think for a big league debut against a relentless offense that you look at the stuff and hope for better results in the future. If they don’t come, they don’t come and that can be evaluated later, but for a first act with a fairly short lead time, I at least see a path for Marsh to be a good big league starter and fairly quickly. We’ll see him on Wednesday in Minnesota.

The offense, once again, didn’t do enough, but they did get to Bobby Miller for three runs in 5.2 innings. You want to talk big league stuff and Miller has it for days. I thought the Royals approach was actually solid against him and they got him out of the game early-ish to get to a Dodgers bullpen that has struggled this year. They didn’t get to that bullpen in this one, but I was pretty pleased with the approach even if the results were more fine than good.

Saturday - Royals 6, Dodgers 4

What a weird game. It started in a rain delay with the sun shining, but then the skies opened up and it was right to start in a delay. After Daniel Lynch had a tough but scoreless first, the Royals offense started things pretty quickly.

Facing Julio Urias in his first start off the IL, Maikel Garcia got things going with a line drive double. That was the last time the Royals would hit the ball hard in the inning. And it was fun. Here’s how the rest of the inning went:

Bobby Witt Jr. single - 68.5 MPH
Salvador Perez single - 63.8 MPH
Nick Pratto walk
Edward Olivares sacrifice fly - 72.3 MPH
Matt Duffy hit by pitch
Samad Taylor sacrifice fly - 84.2 MPH
Drew Waters single - 71.5 MPH
Dairon Blanco strikeout

So the inning ended with the Royals scoring five runs on four hits with an average exit velocity of 77.7 MPH. Remember my comment about a lack of good luck for this team? Not all of the soft hits were good luck, but some certainly were.

They were also super aggressive on the bases. They stold three bases on Friday, which is a trend for this team lately, but they also were incredibly aggressive on fly balls. Witt scored on the Olivares sacrifice fly…to the second baseman. Only his insane speed allowed him to score. But the real crazy one was Perez on the Taylor fly ball. It was only medium depth right field, so when I saw him barreling down the line, I thought it was a huge mistake, but he made an incredible slide.

That would have ended the inning if he was thrown out, so it was certainly risky, but I kind of support those risks against a team like the Dodgers. The Royals aren’t better than them or likely even comparable with them, so they should push the envelope. That’s easy to say when it worked, but I’d like to think I’d have liked it even if it didn’t. That allowed Waters to drop a single in to score two more and the Royals had enough to win the game.

It didn’t seem quite like it would hold up in the second, though. Lynch got hit a bit, giving three of the five runs back immediately, which is of course a big issue for this team all season long. At 5-3, it sure felt like this game was heading for a 12-7 loss, but give credit where it’s due to Lynch and he settled down to give the Royals five innings that he really had to grind through.

Lynch was hurt by the Dodgers complete unwillingness to chase, but that’s something else he’s going to have to learn. I don’t think he had his best stuff to start, but then facing a team that is so relentless doesn’t help things. I’m really curious when we’re going to see his slider come back to full effectiveness because while he didn’t get hurt on it at all, it also didn’t provide a whole lot other than a different look (which is valuable!).

I thought his changeup was, once again, excellent, so if the slider does ever come back, we’re looking at something very impressive, but he’s kind of relegated to being a two-pitch pitcher. But credit where credit’s due, he got through five innings with just those three runs from the second allowed and he left the game with a chance to win and that’s exactly what happened.

The Royals bullpen was sharp too. They got a very strong sixth inning from Carlos Hernandez. Taylor Clarke was hittable again with his fastball causing the trouble for him. He had to be bailed out by Scott Barlow, who came in with the Royals up 6-4 in the top of the eighth with runners on first and second with two outs and Betts coming to the plate. Barlow walked Betts (which I was fine with) and got Freddie Freeman to ground out to end the inning. A 1-2-3 ninth later and the Royals had a win.

Sunday - Royals 9, Dodgers 1

This was the best total game of the season for the Royals. I know there aren’t a ton of options in this realm, but they played their most complete game. I thought they put together some great at bats, the pitching was excellent, the defense played well and they ran the bases extremely well. Even without the most talent, they can win some games if they can keep this up.

It started with Brady Singer, who I mentioned last week had a good game and you can’t have two until you have one. Well, now he has two. He ended up going seven innings and allowed just one run on four hits. Maybe of more note, he was finally not getting hit all over the yard like he had been this year. The Dodgers didn’t square much up against him and it’s because his command was considerably better than we’ve seen it in quite some time. I thought he really continued the work from his last couple of innings the other day against Cleveland.

Am I ready to say he’s back? Uh no. Even with one run on eight hits over 13 innings in his last two starts, he’s still struck out just seven and walked five. There’s a lot to like, but still some work to be done. I’ve written about both Lynch and Singer with their lack of strikeouts that the opponent had something to do with it. The Dodgers don’t swing at many bad pitches, but they do strike out some, so the walks are understandable but the strikeouts were on Singer yesterday.

Still, his slider was working really well yesterday. He had 12 swings and misses on it in 28 pitches. That’s his most of the year and just the second time he’s had double digit whiffs on it. It isn’t just that it was his best slider of a bad season either. It was the third-most whiffs he’s ever had on his slider in a game. That’s very impressive and a very good sign moving forward.

On the changeup front, two registered for him. If we take what he and the Royals say at face value, there are some sinkers that were actually changeups. I think, at most, you can add three sinkers to the list. I struggle a bit here. He needs to throw the changeups, but also if things are going fine without it, does he actually need to throw a pitch that isn’t one of his two best that much? It’s a tough question to answer. I tend to believe that it doesn’t need to be thrown that much, but also I don’t trust that he would have thrown it if he needed it.

Either way, I said last week that I’ll feel a lot better about Singer shutting down the Dodgers than I did about him shutting down the Guardians and that fact remains true. And now he’s done it twice in a row, which is huge for him. It looks different than last year and I’m not sure how I feel about it, but here are his last 10 starts:

56.0 IP
57 H
16.9% K
9.1% BB
3.54 ERA
3.75 FIP

I don’t know what to make of the lack of strikeouts mixed with the solid ERA/FIP results, but I guess it’s time we start to look at this as more of a long-term thing. This isn’t the two/three starter we saw last year, but it’s at least someone who can help a big league rotation.

He was helped quite a bit by an offense that did everything but hit the ball over the fence. It was the bottom of the order that ultimately did the job for them. Drew Waters, Kyle Isbel and Nicky Lopez went a combined 6 for 12 with five RBIs. Four of those came from Lopez, who came into the game with seven on the season. Then when the lineup turned over, it was Maikel Garcia, who was 4 for 4 with two RBIs of his own.

The rest of the lineup other than Freddy Fermin got into the fun with hits and I thought a couple of young players were worth mentioning. Witt had just one hit, but he also had an interesting stat line. He drove in a run with a single, had a sacrifice bunt and had a sacrifice fly. Oh and he walked too. You don’t see that too often. It’s just the 67th time in big league history that combination has happened in a game. It’s a weird one and means nothing, but that’s always fun to see something rare.

I mentioned the baserunning. I was especially impressed by Isbel scoring from first on Lopez’s double in the fourth inning.

Yes, he was in motion, but the whole thing was just perfect. Lopez going hard to second forced the throw and Isbel never stopping was just great.

I also really appreciated a change in approach from Witt with two strikes where he recognized that contact mattered more than anything with the infield in and speed on third base. So he just stuck the bat out.

Since the start of June, Witt has hit .295/.348/.391 with a 7.6 percent walk rate and a 15.1 percent strikeout rate. I want to know when the power is going to come back, but sometimes a hitter needs to break things down and start to add back in some elements of their game. Hopefully we start to see him drive the ball again soon, but the .348 OBP and the lack of strikeouts has been really encouraging.

In this particular game, the Royals just kept piling on, which they haven’t done much and it led to a series win against one of baseball’s good teams. It may not happen again this year, so we should savor this while we can.

The Upcoming Week

The Royals head to Minneapolis this week to take on the Twins for the third time this year. The Royals are 1-6 against them, having been swept to start the year and then they lost three of four at the end of April. That end of April series was where things briefly turned around for the offense, I think. They fought hard and handled some pitching that they struggled with to start the season. They’ll see Joe Ryan, Kenta Maeda and Pablo Lopez and counter with Austin Cox, Zack Greinke and Alec Marsh.

The nice thing about throwing young guys out there to start most days is that most days have something to follow. The Twins will swing and chase enough that I think you can look at the results much closer for a guy like Marsh and maybe even Cox. They both should be able to get some swings and misses that a team like the Dodgers is just tougher to get, especially for pitchers in their first few big league innings. So there’ll be some additional evaluation there. After the series in Minnesota, the Royals will head to Cleveland for the first time. As of now, the matchups are scheduled to be:

Jordan Lyles vs. Tanner Bibee

Daniel Lynch vs. Aaron Civale

Brady Singer vs. Gavin Williams

Zack Greinke vs. Shane Bieber

We just saw what Cleveland can do. They make contact, but they don’t hit for much power. We also saw them run the bases recklessly. If we see the fundamentally sound team we saw yesterday, who knows what they can do? If we see the team we saw from most of the year, we know what they can do. Either way, like I said, it’s more fun to watch young guys than old guys and it’s nice to see the team continuing to get younger.