Weekend in Review: Missed Chances, Missed Games and Another Monster Debut

What could have been a big sweep ended in disappointment on back to back days.

There’s sometimes a belief that if you’re expecting to be a good team that you should never lose to a bad team. I will say that good teams should absolutely beat teams more often than not, but as we’ve talked about so many times, there are three tiers of 54 games. In one tier, you’re always going to win those games. That was Friday. In one tier, you’re always going to lose those games. We haven’t seen one of those since the last game of the Tampa Bay series. And then there are those middle 54, of which the Royals played three both on the homestand and in this series. They went 1-2.

The other element is that games within the division should be different. And that’s especially true when you play seven of nine games against one team because there becomes a familiarity that changes the formula. That’s not to say that the two losses over the weekend that I’m going to get to soon were ones that you should just shrug your shoulders and move on, but to remind you that it’s hard to win baseball games and it becomes even harder to win games against teams you’ve dealt with a lot.

Mondesi’s Maladies

There’s a lot of frustration in Kansas City with Adalberto Mondesi. And let me tell you something - I get it. The guy missed 45 games to start the season, made his much anticipated debut and then all he did in the first seven games back was hit .360 with three doubles and two home runs. He made some great plays at shortstop and showed off his speed at times. But it was short lived as he strained his hamstring on the great defensive play on Monday night. On Tuesday, the Royals said he felt better, which was great news. On Thursday, they said he might play. Then he sat on Friday. And on Saturday. And then he was finally placed on the IL yesterday.

The roster management, to me, was atrocious. But Mike Matheny was on MLB Network Radio yesterday morning and said something that made me think that they at least had a method to their madness. What he said was that his timing was so good that they were hoping to get him back sooner than later. That made me believe that they thought the roster spot they were essentially wasting was less important than the thought that he could be back a little quicker than a 10-day stint would have allowed. Again, I don’t agree with it, but at least I sort of understand where they’re coming from.

Of course, they ultimately had to put him on the IL and because the callup was Edward Olivares and they had just sent him down on Thursday, they had to make the retroactive date on Friday, which means he won’t be able to come back until June 14th when they come home to face the Tigers. That’s a full two weeks since what will be his last game. Will he need a quick rehab stint? Will they give it to him? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I can tell you that no matter how frustrated you are with Mondesi, the Royals absolutely need him. And everyone involved is frustrated too.

The Games

I’m going to try to be a little more brief than I was last week because that went WAY too long. Of course, brevity is not my strong suit, so we’ll see how it goes. It was a series split, of course, but they lost two of three over the weekend in spite of an absolute explosion at the start of the first game. Let’s get to it.

Friday

Woo boy this was a fun one to start. After Brad Keller had a bit of a shaky first, he had to sit for awhile. Here’s what happened:

Whit Merrifield singled
Carlos Santana walked
Andrew Benintendi doubled (Merrifield scored)
Salvador Perez singled (Santana and Benintendi scored)
Hunter Dozier walked
Kelvin Gutierrez struck out
Jorge Soler reached on catcher interference
Michael A. Taylor singled (Perez and Dozier scored)
Nicky Lopez singled (Soler scored)
Merrifield homered (Taylor, Lopez and Merrifield scored)
Santana walked
Benintendi flied out
Perez reached on an error
Dozier struck out

You got that? That’s 14 batters, nine runs, six hits, two walks and a lot of happy people in the stands. Matt Shoemaker has always had trouble with the Royals, which is kind of interesting remembering that the Royals were in talks with him early in the offseason. You often see teams go after guys they struggle with, not guys they handle well. But either way, he had one of the worst first innings you’ll ever see. You don’t see a lot of good pitcher results here.

And the Royals had one of their best. Their nine runs was the second most in team history. Merrifield became the first player since Rickey Henderson in 1980 to have two hits, including a home run and a stolen base in the first inning. It was seriously crazy. That home run was quite an exclamation point.

The second started with four straight men reaching and four more runs scoring. At the end of two innings, the score was 13-0 Royals. They entered the game with a -13 run differential for the season and had wiped that out by the end of two innings. Of course, the game wasn’t over even though it was, but I want to touch on a couple things.

Brad Keller was…okay. The numbers had some good. His five strikeouts and no walks in five innings continued a trend of getting strikeouts. He’s now struck out 35 in his last 33.1 innings over his last six starts. But he had a 13-run lead and still needed 86 pitches to get through five innings. With that kind of lead, I wish his command had been better and he’d been able to go six or seven innings. But again, the results were mostly there in the box score.

I didn’t love that he only had four swings and misses or that the average exit velocity on the batted ball was 95.8 MPH. His slider just wasn’t there after it had been for a little while. Of course, there were extenuating circumstances that he had to sit a long time both between the first and second and the second and third. That can play a role. I just think he needs to be better.

I was going to touch on Tyler Zuber walking two batters in his scoreless inning, but he was sent down before Sunday’s game when Josh Staumont came off the IL, so I’m not going to spend much time on him, but I do want to mention that this has to be the end of the line for Wade Davis. He allowed two more homers and while he’s been around the zone well enough, he just isn’t effective enough to be in a big league bullpen. I’m not entirely sure how he keeps surviving.

But that’s not the story in this one. The story was the offense and it continuing to perform at a high level and get the team’s fifth straight win.

Saturday

While the Royals had crushed Shoemaker in the past to another pitcher they’ve actually handled surprisingly well in Jose Berrios. And he looked good early. I’m going to get back to the Royals offense in a minute, but I want to talk about Mike Minor because this start was just odd.

His changeup was awesome. He had seven whiffs on it in 17 swings. But he also had trouble with his changeup. He gave up three hits in nine at bats that ended on it, including a home run. He gave up an absolute rocket double to Nelson Cruz on it and a home run to Kyle Garlick on it.

His fastball had been so good, but he just couldn’t get the Twins to chase it up, only getting one swing and miss on it. He left one up to Ryan Jeffers and it ended up 435 feet away from home plate for the Twins first two runs of the game. Just look at how juicy this was.

And his slider was fantastic. He allowed just one hit all day on it and while he didn’t get many swings and misses, he got a ton of weak contact. But the one hit was a blast off the bat of Miguel Sano that gave the Twins a 5-4 lead.

He’s giving the Royals the innings they need, which is great. In his last five starts, he’s gone 31 innings and he’s actually been solid. He’s allowed 26 hits while striking out 36 and walking just eight. Even with the three home runs allowed in this one, he’s allowed five during this stretch, which is perfectly acceptable. And his ERA in this time is 3.77. The reality is that the Twins are going to hit home runs and I think a lot of the Minor criticism is unwarranted. Maybe I’m too easy on him, but I think he’s finally turned into what the Royals were looking for when they signed him.

Now, let’s talk a little offense. They did a nice job of coming back, scoring two in the bottom of the second after the Twins got their first two. And then, the clutch man of the last few weeks, Benintendi stepped up to the plate with Lopez on second. This inning was looking like a very frustrating one as Lopez started the inning with a double and then didn’t move an inch with both Merrifield and Santana failing to advance him. On a 2-0 pitch, he went to the top of the zone to give the Royals their first lead of the game.

You know that they wouldn’t hold it, of course, but I want to talk about the fail that was the ninth inning.

It started with Kelvin Gutierrez ripping a double off the wall in center and then being pinch run for by Jarrod Dyson. On a Soler groundout, well, I don’t honestly know how to describe this, so I’ll just show you.

The play was challenged and Dyson was safe at second, but what was he even thinking there? He’s the tying run on second base, already in scoring position and he was putting himself at a big, big risk there. I’m just not a fan of that decision.

And then Taylor hit a line drive to short and the contact play was on. The ball was caught, so Dyson was doubled up and that was that. At first, I was upset with Dyson for the end of the game, but I think I’ve gotten over that because it was the contact play and the ball was hit harder than I thought, but that was some terrible base running on the play before that ended up working out.

Sunday

This one was probably the least eventful of the game, but there were a couple things to touch on here. I’ll start with Brady Singer because I’ve been kind of hard on him lately after some hiccups in his last few starts. I still maintain that as he made his 24th start of his career that he isn’t any different than he was in his first start, but that’s another story for another day that I tell far too often.

The good news from yesterday is that Singer’s slider was WAY better than it has been for a bit. He got nine swings and misses on it and the contact on it was very weak. The bad news is that his sinker continued to not do enough for him. He only had three swings and misses on it and when it was hit, it was hit pretty hard with an average exit velocity on it of 95.3 MPH.

The big moment for him came in the top of the fifth after the Royals had just evened up the game at one. He walked the first batter and then gave up an infield single and a bunt single. This is the definition of getting dinked and dunked, but given his issues with runners in scoring position, it was fair to wonder if he was going to have a meltdown. With Alex Kirilloff up, he had a tough plate appearance, but finally went to his slider after a bunch of sinkers that he couldn’t get a whiff on. This was perfectly placed.

Then he had to face Sano, who had smoked a double earlier to drive in the Twins first run and had homered in two straight games. I think it’s safe to say Singer wasn’t going to throw him a fastball.

But hey, it worked, and Singer was wiggling his way out of it. Until he was feeling his slider a little too much and he hit Trevor Larnach to force in the second run for the Twins.

Honestly, there’s not a lot more to say. He didn’t use the changeup at all in this one, in spite of the Twins running four lefties out there. At some point, he either feels comfortable using it and he needs to use it or he needs to find a third pitch. Maybe it’s a big curve, maybe it’s a splitter, but whatever it is, he needs something else.

Not to pile on Dyson, but he made another mistake in the bottom of the third in this one. After Bailey Ober had sufficiently flummoxed the Royals for the first two innings, Dyson and Cam Gallagher led off the third with back-to-back singles. Down by one, a bunt from Lopez was obvious. And no matter what you think of sacrifice bunts in the third inning (I hate them), it wasn’t the absolute worst play with Lopez’s offensive ability and the top of the order up next.

The problem was this happened.

At first I thought the runners must have been moving on the pitch, but Dyson just took off on contact. Now, the first mistake is that it was a terrible bunt from Lopez, but Dyson cannot just start running. Gallagher followed Dyson and it was one of the easiest triple plays you will ever see.

The Royals ultimately did tie the game with a triple from Merrifield that should have probably been a single and a two-base error and then a clutch single from Benintendi, who ended the six-game homestand hitting .375/.400/.750 with two homers and 11 runs batted in.

But that was kind of it for the offense. When Carlos Santana combine to go 0 for 7 (and 0 for 15 in the last two games), it’s tough to sustain offense, especially with guys like Soler and Dozier absent even when they are playing.

They did have an identical chance in the ninth to the day before when Merrifield doubled to open the bottom of the ninth, but he didn’t even move off third. That was sort of the story of the two games to end the series. Two huge chances to at least tie the game and nothing.

Another Big Ol’ Debut

After the game yesterday, Mike Matheny announced his starter for tonight’s game against the Angels. While we thought he might get the nod last weekend in Minnesota, we finally will get to see Jackson Kowar make his big league debut. It’s fair to be a little less excited now because of the way Daniel Lynch’s debut went, but Kowar is having a monster year in Omaha. He’s made six starts and has gone 31.2 innings with a ridiculous 18 hits allowed, 41 strikeouts and 10 walks.

With Kowar, you’ll see a big time fastball that can touch the upper-90s and a truly outstanding changeup. His curve is the work in progress and it’s been good quite a bit this season, so he’s made big progress on it. On the fastball/changeup combo, think Chris Paddack of the San Diego Padres. But if the curve is there, that has a chance to take him to another level. Now he gives the Royals their fourth pitcher from the 2018 draft class to make a start this season. If all goes well, they’ll do it every year for awhile. I’m very excited for this debut.

The Week Ahead

The Royals head to the West Coast for the first time since September 2019 and it just feels like they have trouble out there. The first three in Anaheim are against an Angels team without Mike Trout and without Shohei Ohtani on the mound, so they have that going for them. But Justin Upton is getting hot and they can still really hit, so even though they can’t pitch, it’ll still be a tough series. And then a weekend in Oakland is something that will be a big test for this team. The A’s can play. They lead the AL West by a game and you know they’re always going to be competitive. I would honestly be satisfied with a 3-4 week and a return home at .500.