Weekend in Review: Hunting for Gold, A Series Sweep and A Look Ahead

The Cubs are some kind of awful, but the Royals handled their business.

After the Royals took three of four from the Houston Astros, a really good team, there’s always a risk of letting down against a team like the Cubs. And the Cubs, in their current state, are one of the worst teams in all of baseball after the deadline, so a letdown was definitely possible. I don’t think the Royals played exceptional baseball this weekend either, but they were able to win all three games played and put up one of their best weeks of the season by going 6-1. Now they get rewarded for that by getting to go to Houston to play in a park much better suited to the Astros than Kauffman Stadium, but we’ll get to that at the end of his.

Four Gold Gloves?

When you think of the 2021 Royals, you’re probably not thinking about great defense, though it does seem like they’ve stabilized some. They have seemed to get considerably better since the break. Some of that is simply not having Jorge Soler in right field. some of that is simply not having Hunter Dozier at third as much and some of that is guys like Nicky Lopez and Whit Merrifield getting more comfortable at shortstop and second respectively. Both have mentioned in the last week or two how it took a little time to get comfortable there. Merrifield spent most of the spring in right field while Lopez spent it mostly at second and with the Adalberto Mondesi injury, they both had to shift.

According to Fangraphs, among players with 500 or more innings at their position, Lopez came into play yesterday ranking fifth in the American League with three defensive runs saved. However, he ranked at the top in terms of total defensive value and led by quite a bit actually. At second base, Merrifield led all second basemen with 13 DRS, three ahead of Marcus Semien. He ranked second behind Semien in defensive value. Those two have been so good up the middle that it’s actually a little surprising to me. I don’t think either will win a gold glove because it’s not all a statistical competition, but they both should be finalists and both have a shot.

I mentioned four at the top and you’ve probably already figured out the other two are Michael A. Taylor and Salvador Perez. Taylor’s 17 DRS are six more than the second most. Myles Straw is lapping the field in defensive value, so he’d be the chief competition for Taylor. The numbers aren’t kind to Perez, but I think he has enough of a reputation with his caught stealing numbers that he has a real shot to take the award. I actually think Taylor and Perez will win at their positions. So yeah, they have a shot at four and by all four of their up the middle players. It’s not that I’m advocating for Lopez to play shortstop when Bobby Witt, Jr. is up in the big leagues, but there’s at least an argument to be made that the best defensive alignment when he comes up is Witt at third and Lopez at short. I wouldn’t move Witt for Lopez personally and I hope they don’t, but if you’re talking about putting the best defense on the field, it’s can at least be argued.

The Games

I think the Cubs absolutely made the right decision when they traded all of their upcoming free agents (and then some) in a look toward the future. It doens’t make their current brand of baseball any easier to watch, though. That’s a pretty bad team on the north side of Chicago. They are now 4-18 since the deadline. They probably dismantled that roster a little too late to make a run at the top pick in next year’s draft, but a top-five pick is pretty likely.

Friday - Royals 6, Cubs 2

This one ended up being pretty fun even though it started a bit slow. Brad Keller continued his run of solid pitching lately with a really nice start and used his slider quite a bit again, but I actually didn’t think it was a great pitch for him. He did get four whiffs on 12 swings. A 33 percent whiff rate is very good, but he also only got 12 swings on 40 sliders. He did have eight called strikes, so maybe I’m being a little harsh on it, but I was really impressed with his four-seamer in this one.

He threw 39 of them and got 19 swings, eight whiffs and five called strikes. I loved the placement of them.

If you’ve read me at all, you know how much I love a high fastball. A few of those were a little below where I’d like them and a better team might have had some trouble on them, but overall, it was a great pitch. His velocity topped out at 97.9 MPH, which was his second hardest thrown pitch this season. He got a ton of weak contact on it and he supplemented that with what I thought was his best sinker of the season. The Cubs had an average exit velocity of 76.5 MPH on four balls in play on the sinker.

He ended up throwing six innings, striking out eight and walking just one while allowing two runs and one earned. It was fantastic. He’s been rolling since he’s been getting swings and misses and strikeouts.

David Lesky @DBLesky

Keller had that game in Boston where he walked five and didn't strike anyone out. Since then: 48.1 IP 43 H 21 R 18 ER 50 K (24.8%) 18 BB (8.9%) 3.35 ERA Hmm...it's almost like striking guys out is good.

I might be on to something with that last line. But it was 2-0 Cubs before the Royals got going and it was almost 3-0. With runners on second and third and two outs, Ian Happ hit a single to right field.

You can see that Ryan O’Hearn threw behind Happ and ended up getting him out. Originally, the call on the field was that the run scored and it was 3-0, but the Royals challenged and the replay showed that Rafael Ortega didn’t quite get his foot down before Happ was tagged out.

The Royals immediately started to play some home run derby after that with Perez leading off the top of the fourth.

Fun fact about this home run is that the pitch was barely a foot off the ground, making it the lowest pitched ball hit for a homer by a Royals player since 2015.

Then Emmanuel Rivera batted with one out in the fifth and hit his first big league home run.

That home run led to the obscure and mostly pointless stat that he’s the first player to get his first big league hit at Fenway and his first big league home run at Wrigley in the same season. It’s cool for him, but I don’t know about that one.

Then it was Salvy again in the sixth.

Two batters later, it was Andrew Benintendi.

And after Perez left the game from getting beat up all day long, Cam Gallagher connected for his first of the year in the ninth.

Did I mention the wind was blowing out? That was five solo home runs, which set a team record. Oh yeah, they also scored on a squeeze. And the trio of Richard Lovelady, Jake Brentz and Scott Barlow threw three shutout innings with one hit allowed to go with five strikeouts and no walks. It was a Royals winner.

Saturday - Royals 4, Cubs 2

Kris Bubic was special in this one. He came out of the gate and got Ortega to start the game before walking former Royal Frank Schwindel. But from that point forward until Mother Nature intervened, Bubic had some of the best stuff you’ll see out there. He got the next two in the first. Then he got the Cubs 1-2-3 in the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth. The clouds, though, they were angry that day, my friends.

Ultimately, the game ended up being delayed. The tarp was put on the field before a single raindrop had fallen. And it was taken off the field 34 minutes later before any significant rain fell (or any rain, depending on who you ask). Bubic was interrupted in the midst of a no-hitter for a rain delay and no rain fell. I understand that the delay was due to lightning, but I think Mike Matheny wondering after the game if they’d have done the same if a Cubs pitcher had a no-hitter is a fair question. But I’m over it and you should be too because the important thing is that Bubic looked amazing.

And going back to that start against the White Sox when he struck out all those batters with the fastball, he was doing it with increased velocity again. He topped out at 95.8 MPH with it, which was the hardest pitch he’s thrown all season. The Cubs ended up going 0 for 6 on his fastball with two strikeouts. They also went 0 for 6 with two strikeouts on his curve. His changeup was the pitch used for his lone mistake and the Cubs went 1 for 8 on that with five strikeouts, so it was a really good pitch. And the mistake came after the rain delay.

Bubic’s changeup is the pitch that should make or break him, though I think what we’re seeing is that if he can keep that velocity up that it might be a bigger key for him. Still, that changeup was nasty on Saturday afternoon.

These locations were generally quite good. One of those in the middle of the plate is the one that Patrick Wisdom hit out of the park, but this is another example of a bigger fastball helping to allow him to make a couple mistakes. But just six of 23 were even within the zone.

For the most part, he had the Cubs completely off-balance with that changeup. I mentioned he threw 23. He got 14 swings and nine whiffs. They were only able to even foul off two and did hit three in play, including the home run, but take a look at some of these swings:

We can mock the Cubs all we want, and their offense is atrocious, but what Bubic was doing out there would have shut down literally every team. And to do that after the worst start of his career is something that is very impressive. His changeup is so freaking good, but it will get left over the plate. The lesson that I hope has been learned is that if he can throw harder than he’s averaged this year, then he needs to.

On pitches thrown 93 MPH and harder, opponents are 1 for 22 this year. That’s a .045 average. On fastballs 92 MPH and softer, opponents are 29 for 106 (.274). So it’s not just the changeup that increased velocity helps to pick up. It’s a fantastic pitch when thrown a little harder.

You will never be able to talk me out of the fact that he would have completed the no-hitter without the delay, but still, another outstanding start for a young Royals starter, which is really the most important thing.

The offense was pretty stagnant for the Royals outside of the top of the order. Merrifield and Lopez picked up six of the nine Royals hits. Lopez stole two bases and Merrifield stole home once as part of a double steal. Two of the other three hits came from Benintendi, who had a great series, and the other was from Taylor. The offense didn’t need to do much, and they didn’t, but they did do just enough.

Sunday - Royals 9, Cubs 1

This was a methodical beatdown from the Royals offense. Alec Mills took the mound for the second time against his old team and threw seven pitches in the first. It seemed like it would be similar to last year’s seven shutout innings, but when he came out for the second, it all started. And again, it didn’t really feel like much of a dominant game, in spite of the score, but they just kept scoring runs.

They put up one in the second on a Hunter Dozier RBI single, but then the team couldn’t score another with runners on second and third and nobody out. They put up two in the third after Merrifield and Lopez singled (of course) before a Benintendi double drove them both home. But they left Benintendi on second with just one out. Two singles started the fourth. One scored on a Merrifield sacrifice fly and the other on a Lopez RBI single.

A single from Benintendi and a double from Carlos Santana started the fifth inning and then a Dozier double drove Benintendi home before a Taylor sacrifice fly brought Santana home with no more damage. In the sixth, the Royals changed things up and got a leadoff single from Merrifield and then a walk from Lopez. A passed ball moved them up. Then a Benintendi sacrifice fly scored Merrifield and a Santana single scored Lopez. And that was it.

That’s nine runs on 16 hits in the end (they had some other rallies that didn’t go anywhere in the final three innings) and it just never really felt like they were doing much. It was a day with the wind blowing in, so a home run was unlikely. They just kept putting runners on and moving them around without ever having a big inning but ended up with a huge game offensively. Seven of the eight non-pitchers had at least two hits. Perez, the Royals best offensively was 0 for 5 with three strikeouts. Baseball is weird.

Carlos Hernandez had it easy with all that offense, but he set a career high in pitches, innings and was generally good enough to handle a bad offense. He didn’t seem to have especially great control, but his overpowering stuff was enough. He ended up going seven innings with one run allowed on four hits. He struck out eight and walked three. The only run came because of a miscommunication in right-center between Taylor and Dozier. He’s been good lately.

David Lesky @DBLesky

You knew it was coming. Here are Hernandez's last five starts: 30.2 IP 23 H 7 R 7 ER 7 BB 22 K 2.05 ERA I like that.

They’ll certainly take that. He got whiffs on all five of his pitches, which is fun for me to see. His four-seamer was really good, getting six of his 15 whiffs on 15 swings. His curve was one that kind of surprised me. He had six called strikes on that pitch. And yeah, he was kind of all over the place, but it also worked. Having his kind of velocity can make this a very tough game to hit when you see where everything went.

His changeup generally stayed down. His four-seamer generally stayed up. But he was kind of all over and around the zone all game, which is tough with his stuff. He was just very impressive and secured the win in the sweep clincher with one of the best games he’s had.

I also loved how he held his velocity. This is his 100th pitch, coming in at 97.2 MPH and blowing it by Sergio Alcantara.

In the series, Royals pitching was absolutely dominant against a lineup that you’d hope they’d dominate. They allowed five runs on 11 hits with 32 strikeouts and six walks. That’s a 1.33 ERA in the series. The bullpen allowed two hits in 7.2 innings with seven strikeouts and no walks. Those 11 total hits allowed in a three-game series is the fewest the team has ever allowed. That’s…quite good.

What’s Ahead

The Royals life gets a lot harder this week. They’ll head to Houston to face the division-leading Astros. Yes, they took three of four from them in Kansas City this past week, but the Astros are very good and the Royals still aren’t, in spite of their great week. Plus, the young pitching will get tested by pitching in front of that short porch in left field, so it’ll be interesting to see how Daniel Lynch and Brady Singer fare as the two young arms who will go in this series. And then they’ll head out to Seattle to face the Mariners who are hanging around in the playoff race in spite of having a terrible run differential. I’m not sure they’re a good team, but they’re a tough team to play. Plus, the Royals are still just 23-37 even after the sweep, so it’ll be a tough week, but we’ll have a chance to learn a lot about some of the young pitchers.