Weekend in Review: The Posnanski Book, Another Sweep and the Week Ahead

The return of football all weekend really makes it feel like the Royals season is over even though it has been since mid-April.

It is very difficult to lose 100 games. I’ll forgive you if you don’t believe me given that the Royals accomplished that on September 10 with 18 games to go. And for the seventh time in the last 22 seasons, which is quite an accomplishment. Maybe it’s not as hard as it used to be. There have been four teams with 100+ losses in each of the last three full seasons and the season prior to that featured three. The gap between the good teams and the bad teams is as wide as it’s ever been, and while it would be easy to position it as a “haves” and “have-nots” situation, that’s simply not the case.

That’s not to say that spending doesn’t help you win a little easier. It’s just that it’s no guarantee. The top three payrolls in baseball belong to the New York Mets (65-77), the New York Yankees (71-72) and the San Diego Padres (67-77). Money undoubtedly helps to cover mistakes and to fill in gaps where there are gaps, but it doesn’t guarantee success. The third-lowest payroll belongs to the Baltimore Orioles, the team with the best record in the American League and the second-best record in baseball. The fourth-lowest belongs to the Tampa Bay Rays. They have the second-best record in the AL and are tied with the Dodgers for third-best in baseball. The Reds, Marlins and Diamondbacks are all either in a playoff spot or within a game and a half. They’re all part of the bottom 10. The Brewers, Mariners and Twins are also all currently playoff teams if the season ended today and they’re in the bottom half.

So yes, money helps, but being smart helps more. The good news for the Royals is that losing 100 games doesn’t mean they’ll be terrible forever. One of those 100-loss teams I talked about over the last few years is the Orioles. Another is the Diamondbacks. Yet another is the Reds. The Rangers and Marlins have also lost 100 or more games in a season since 2019. We’ll see. I don’t think there’s ever been a more important offseason in the history of the Royals. That doesn’t mean that they can figure everything out and win big in 2024, but what they do this winter will determine if they can win big with Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino, Cole Ragans, etc. or if the current core will need to be used to start a new rebuild. No pressure, JJ!

Joe Posnanski is Incredible

I don’t actually have a ton of insight on Friday night’s game (though I did watch through it later because I’m here for you) because I had the pleasure of attending a great event sponsored by Rainy Day Books to hear

Joe Posnanski

talk about his newest book, Why We Love Baseball. Man, what a fun night. To add to the joy, he was joined on stage by Mike Schur. If you don’t know who that is, you might be familiar with The Office, Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and many others he’s written for and/or created. So yeah, it was a cool night.

The first thing I’ll say is that if you ever have a chance to hear Posnanski speak, do it. If you’re a baseball nerd like I am (and probably you if you’re still following the Royals at this point in the sports calendar), he’s like us. But if you’re a writing nerd and a baseball nerd, it doesn’t get better than Posnanski. The way he tells stories is just so captivating that you get lost in it and when the moderator pops his head out to say there’s time for two more questions or 10 more minutes, you find yourself having not realized that you’ve sat there in silence for an hour and a half hoping for at least 10 hours more. Then to add to that Schur, who is Posnanski’s good friend and podcast-mate and an all-around hilarious guy, it’s a really cool evening.

I can’t recommend the book enough. This event was on a Friday night after a tough week. And it’s now Monday morning, so there’s been roughly 56 hours between me arriving home with my new book and me writing this. I’ve probably gone through 40 percent of it because it’s just that intriguing. And keep in mind, that’s 56 hours with some football to watch and, oh yeah, a baby to take care of, so that tells you how good of a book it is. I will always recommend anything he writes, but this one is particularly great. I loved The Baseball 100 as well, but I’m just finding myself drawn into this one even more.

And as Schur said on Friday night at the book talk, only Posnanski can write a book about the top 50 moments in baseball history as an explainer to why we love the game and include 108 actual moments. Anyway, I could go on and on, but it was such a cool opportunity to get to be there and I can’t recommend the book enough.

The Weekend’s Takeaways

The Royals got swept, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some interesting things we can take away from another bad weekend of baseball.

Injuries Suck

The worst part of the weekend came from Friday night’s game, which I wish I hadn’t gone back to see Austin Cox get hurt. That looked ugly. We’re going to get information on the extent of it today I believe, so by the time you read this, it may be out, but it sure looked like an ACL injury which likely destroys at least most of next season for him. And that’s too bad because while he didn’t look amazing, he was certainly a serviceable arm for this club with room to grow out of the bullpen. Plus, he’s a nice story.

For him, you hope the rehab process isn’t something that takes away from his growth this season. For the Royals, they need to find another lefty who can take his place going into next season if the news is what we all fear it is. There are plenty of options at least, but they all have varying degrees of warts. Daniel Lynch may not be someone the organization can trust to start. Maybe the fastball pumps up in the bullpen and he can become something. Anthony Veneziano has been a starter, but he certainly could be a high-octane reliever if released in short doses. Evan Sisk, Walter Pennington and Christian Chamberlain could all be interesting options. There are free agent options too going into next year. It’s just a tough blow.

And less impactful long-term, but tough to see for now is the injury to Freddy Fermin, which seems like it’ll end his season as well. He has a fractured finger on his right hand. If that’s it, he’ll end the year with a .281/.321/.461 line and played good enough defense that you feel like the Royals can actually trade Salvador Perez this winter and not be much worse for the wear on the field. I don’t think what Fermin did was a fluke after what he’s done in AAA the last two seasons and what he did in winter ball before this season. I think there’s a better-than-decent chance he comes back next season as the starting catcher.

When he went on the IL, the move to replace him was interesting for two reasons. For one, they called up Tyler Cropley over Logan Porter, which had people curious for about a day. Now, the word has come that Porter is going to be called up today and Cropley likely will be DFA’d after one day of big league service times. We don’t know the real answer of why, but I’ve seen plenty of guesses that make a lot of sense that Porter didn’t have a passport ready and the team was in Canada. So that’s pretty simple. The Royals are in Toronto starting April 29 next season for three days. I’d recommend all Royals minor leaguers have their passports with them wherever they are that week.

Porter is an interesting callup because he’s probably not a long-term answer, but he’s also been a rare patient hitter for this organization since he joined the organization in 2018. He’s a good story and deserves at least a few weeks of big league pay if not an audition to see if he can be a piece on next year’s roster. But what I found more interesting is they could have easily shifted MJ Melendez back behind the plate and called up Tyler Gentry, who is way more interesting as a prospect. But they didn’t. Some of it is that Melendez hasn’t caught in months, but I also see it as a pretty strong sign that he’s done behind the plate, as he probably should be.

Carlos Hernandez Needs to Let It Go

This is not the entirety of what’s plagued Carlos Hernandez since the trade deadline, but I also don’t think it’s simply a coincidence that literally half of the runs he’s allowed since the trade deadline came after a bad call. What do I mean by that? Well first, let’s talk about the bad calls. Both came on missed check swing decisions by a first base umpire.

The first was in Boston when he should have ended the inning by getting a check swing strikeout, but instead walked the batter because the first base umpire was checking his phone or something. The next batter hit a game-winning grand slam. The second was Friday night when he appeared to get George Springer on a check swing, but walked him too because the umpire was counting the tiles in the rolling roof. From there, the Blue Jays went off and took control of a game the Royals were leading.

So why am I so convinced that this is a bit of a mental issue? Well, for one, I’m guessing here because I haven’t talked to Hernandez about this. I want to make that clear. But for another, I have heard multiple times from multiple people that the reason they didn’t have him starting even when he was pitching so well is that there was concern about his ability to stay focused with four guaranteed days off. The bullpen is more unpredictable. It doesn’t allow for mental mistakes of wandering off. But if there’s concern over a pitcher’s mental makeup to start, I think it’s fair to have concern about something that seems to pop up more often than you’d like.

The stuff is still just fine. No, that’s not right. The stuff is still great. His fastball is popping in the upper-90s with big movement and big spin. The slider still looks good from a stuff perspective. His command has just been absolutely horrible and I’ll probably look even more into this moving forward, but the command seems to back up even more when faced with adversity. That doesn’t work when you’re a high-leverage, late-inning reliever. Maybe that’s just not a role that will work for him. Maybe he’ll figure it out and it will eventually. But I feel better about Taylor Clarke in a leverage role right now than Hernandez and that shouldn’t be the case.

Many will argue the Royals missed the boat in trading him. And, as with all these conversations, I’ll maintain that we can’t know that without knowing the offers. Hernandez can be as filthy as anyone and he’s under team control through 2027. If the offers weren’t there, I’m fine with them not moving a guy. Sometimes it comes back to bite you. Maybe he can figure out some of his issues and be even better than he was before the deadline next year and come back strong. Maybe this is simply a matter of wearing down and he needs to figure out a better way to get through a full season. I don’t know the answer, but I do know he needs to let it go when he gets a call against him.

Young Starters Showed More Promise

It wasn’t all bad this weekend. Alec Marsh was the bulk pitcher after Collin Snider opened on Friday night. He went four innings, struck out six and gave up just three hits while walking two. That’s solid. He relied heavily on his curve, which is something we’ve seen from him more recently, but I also thought it was interesting that we saw more horizontal break on his four-seamer than he’s had in the past. And kind of by a lot. His sinker and changeup moved horizontally more than they had as well, which would make sense if he’s made some sort of adjustment there.

He was getting plenty of swings and misses with eight on 25 swings. You’ll take that. He had 15 called strikes, including six on his curve and five on his fastball. You’ll take that too. Marsh pitched to a 4.10 ERA in August with 32 strikeouts in 26.1 innings. He struggled against Boston in a start where he just couldn’t find his command, but then came back with another nice outing against the Blue Jays. Maybe Marsh will require an opener to be successful. His best outings have generally come with an opener in front of him. But that’s actually fine with me if that’s the role he’s going to have moving forward. I feel comfortable putting his name in pencil on the 2024 pitching staff somewhere. He’ll need to continue to earn his spot until he shows more consistency, but his ability to get strikeouts has been nice and he seems to be generally learning.

And Cole Ragans was great again yesterday until things unraveled in one of the weirdest ways I’ve ever seen. First the good. He got 16 swings and misses on 49 swings, which was the ninth time in nine starts that he had double-digit whiffs. It’s also the eighth-straight start in which he had 13 or more and the third-straight he’s had 16 or more. The guy is a whiff machine. His fastball was averaging just under 98 MPH again with big spin and big movement. His changeup was nasty. His cutter looked good. The Blue Jays could not hit him.

Unfortunately they didn’t need to because his command and control both were a little spotty all game, but the sixth was just something crazy. After getting Bo Bichette to strike out, he walked Vladimir Guerrero Jr. with two outs. It seemed like he was just being careful and looked fine. He had Davis Schneider down 1-2 with a really nice series of three pitches before he completely lost his footing and went down while the ball sailed to the backstop. He looked fine on the next couple of pitches and actually there’s an argument that he threw strike three and it wasn’t called because of a tight zone. It was borderline, so I’m not going to get worked up, but look at pitch seven.

It could have been called and then there would be no conversation. But he completely lost the zone to Alejandro Kirk throwing two more wild pitches and allowing two runs to score to end his scoreless innings streak. Matt Quatraro and the training staff came out multiple times. Ragans kept telling them he was fine and he finally threw a warmup pitch, but there’s definite worry. First of all, there are people saying Quatraro put Ragans at risk. No he didn’t. The training staff was there too and the Royals have a very good training staff. Second of all, it sounds like Ragans is fine, but you have to worry that there’s something in his head now.

Maybe it’s just the mound in Toronto, but that was worrisome to end another excellent start. The walks are crazy after that run in the sixth with two outs, but I’ll maintain the headline is that he had another big strikeout game and allowed just one hit. He’s now allowed seven hits in his last four starts. All eyes will be on his next start, but it’s still just crazy that the Royals got him for a rental reliever.

One Defensive Gem

I have to put this in here because Michael Massey and Witt are an incredible duo up the middle.

Oustanding.

The Week Ahead

The difference between the good and bad teams is pretty large. But the Royals get to start their week against a bad team, the Chicago White Sox. They took two of three from the White Sox last week in Kansas City and the Royals will see two of the three pitchers they saw at Kauffman Stadium. Dylan Cease struggled and has now struggled a couple of times against the Royals this year. Touki Toussaint did not struggle, but I think he’s a guy who might have trouble with a team seeing them twice in a row. So there’s that. Then the Royals will get Mike Clevinger, who has generally been excellent against the Royals, but did give up three in six innings earlier this season.

If you’re interested in watching some bad baseball, check out this series. I think the Royals are the better team than the White Sox at this point, which is saying something very bad about them. It doesn’t mean the Royals will take the series or anything, but I do think they’re better. It looks like the series will be Brady Singer, Jordan Lyles and Marsh in some fashion for the Royals against the White Sox three listed above.

They’ll come home after an off-day Thursday to take on the Astros, who the Royals are not better than. They have figured things out and are playing great baseball right now. They’ll get the A’s before they head to Kansas City, so a nice warmup for playing an awful team. As it stands right now, Zack Greinke, Ragans and Singer will face off against Cristian Javier, JP France and Framber Valdez, which feels like the Royals actually have the edge once, so that’s nice.