Weekend in Review: Rough Approach, Splitting the Weekend, Player of the Week and More

The Royals lost the series but split the weekend, even if it felt like it was much worse than that.

Welcome to the first Weekend in Review of 2025. If you’ve been along for the ride for awhile, you know that Mondays are the days I review the weekend and it’s also the day that is free for all. So if you’re not a paid subscriber, you can read every last word in this masterpiece (it’s not a masterpiece). For those new to Inside the Crown, I like to look at a bigger picture issue and then look at all three games (two in this weekend’s case) in a little broader way than I generally do for the other games and then I’ll give a player of the week and talk about the upcoming week.

This weekend, even including Opening Day, sort of highlighted the issues that had Royals fans concerned coming into the season. The outfield has been a problem, both offensively and defensively. The lineup depth has been tested with guys not firing on all cylinders to start at the top. And the reality is that the rotation needs to be better than it was in the first three games for the Royals to be able to compete throughout the season. I think this is a good team. I’m certainly not going to let three games change my opinion.

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But also, if you’re looking for a reason to be pessimistic, they gave us plenty this weekend. I think everything evens out as we get into the swing of things. The Royals are really in the thick of the season already with just one off day between today and April 20. I guess the days of all sorts of April off days are over.

Drastic Difference in Approach This Weekend

The Royals have never been a team to sit back and take a lot of pitches, but the Guardians may have shown this weekend that it may be their M.O. throughout 2025. All three Royals starters in the series struggled to get deep into games because they just threw a ton of pitches. That was due to two things. One, they couldn’t get swing and miss, giving up tons of foul balls in deep counts. The other is that the Guardians simply didn’t chase. Their chase rate this weekend was 19.5 percent, which is kind of absurd. They had the fifth-highest chase rate last year, higher than the Royals, and didn’t make any moves of note other than getting rid of a few of their good players, so that’s interesting.

This brings up two questions for them. One, is this an aberration? Any offense, even the Royals, can have a good weekend of taking pitches. And two, is this more because of Royals pitching or because of their approach? I tend to believe it was both, but I’d lean to give more credit to the Guardians than blame to the Royals. It isn’t like they were missing horribly all weekend. Here’s the heat map from the three-game set. Yes, they missed, but everyone misses.

I think Cleveland just did a great job of not swinging the bats. Look at their heat map of pitches they swung at:

The Royals tried to work on the right-handed side of the batter’s box a lot of the series and Cleveland just wasn’t having it.

On the flip side, the Royals did what they’ve done for years and swung at a lot of pitches. They chased 30.2 percent of the time and that number was only as low as it was because they had a pretty good game yesterday, chasing just 18.8 percent of the time. Now, the good news is that maybe they figured something out because they made an adjustment. They did feel a bit jumpy the first two games. And the at bats looked a whole lot more relaxed yesterday even if they didn’t do much damage at all. But still, it was very clear the approach was different. Just for comparison, let’s look at where the Guardians threw their pitches:

And where the Royals swung:

It’s pretty clear here that the Royals were enticed up. We saw so many swings on fastballs up in the zone and above it. I’m actually not as concerned looking at this heat map of swings. It sort of felt like they were spending the entire series swinging at pitches that were just off the plate, but they did a decent enough job if they can lay off the high stuff.

I guess the point here is that I’m going to be watching that chase rate very closely throughout the season. If it’s up around 30 percent again, they have a problem. But if they can show an approach similar to the one they had yesterday, I think the results will come. Cleveland showed that with an offense that still didn’t impress me much that if you don’t let the pitcher dictate the terms, you’ll score runs.

The Games

Typically, there’ll be three games to break down in this spot as there aren’t too many off days throughout the season on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday. In fact, the Royals are scheduled to play every single one of those days the rest of the season. Rainouts happen, of course, but we’ll be talking about three games here more often than not.

Saturday - Royals 4, Guardians 3: The Captain’s Special

After a pretty lackluster finish on Thursday, the Royals seemed to carry that rough energy into the game on Saturday. Seth Lugo just didn’t have any kind of command or control going. He walked three batters, something he did just four times in all of 2024. He went more than five innings in all four of those starts as well and lasted just five innings in this one. It wasn’t for lack of pitches. He threw all nine. But he just wasn’t in the zone at all.

You can see so much missing arm-side for him. That can often be something mechanical, which is good news because it’s a relatively easy fix. But still, you’d love to see him work the glove side a fair amount more to get in on the hands of the eight lefties the Guardians threw out there against him. Maybe he was trying to stay away from them and that was all part of the game plan, but you can see how he handled lefties last season.

No, he didn’t come in on this as much as I expected to see, but this doesn’t feel like the game plan as much as a lack of command. But, to his credit, and this was a theme all series, he gutted through it and kept the team in the game. Credit to the Cleveland hitters, too, for not chasing much of anything. I’m still not convinced they’re an especially good offense, but they do seem to have an excellent plan at the plate.

Nothing was easy for Lugo. He faced four batters in the first, six in the second, five in the third, three in the fourth and four in the fifth. This was a game that Salvador Perez took over because things could have been a lot worse for Lugo without him, both behind the plate and at the plate. Starting behind the plate, Lugo actually faced just five batters in that second inning because Perez used his arm to get him out of trouble. On an 0-2 pitch to Steven Kwan, with runners on first and third, Brayan Rocchio took off, and Perez made a great throw to nab him at second and end the inning. With how Kwan hits against the Royals, who knows how that inning goes if he gets a chance to hit with runners on second and third?

Then in the third, Lugo was in more trouble. He walked the first two batters and then gave up a one-out sacrifice fly to Carlos Santana. On an 0-1 pitch to Nolan Jones, Jose Ramirez took off, and Perez caught him as well to end that inning. Maybe the innings go the same way without the caught stealing, who knows? But what we do know is that twice with two outs, the Guardians tried to steal to get a runner in scoring position, and twice Perez caught him. Perez’s ability to catch runners stealing has kind of quietly diminished. He’s caught just 20 of 111 runners over the last two seasons. That does coincide directly with some of the new rules, so it’s not all him, and a lot of times, it’s on the pitcher more than the catcher, but if he can get back in a caught stealing groove, that’s huge for the pitching staff.

And offensively, it was all Salvy until the late innings. Down 2-0 in the fourth, Jonathan India had an outstanding at bat, finally singling on the 11th pitch. He moved to second on a wild pitch and third on a groundout by Vinnie Pasquantino, but he was sitting there with two outs and Gavin Williams dominating the Royals offense. It’s not always the hardest hit balls because the captain came through with a bloop single to center (on a pitch you’d really like to see him drive, but I digress). That made the score 2-1. Sometimes when the offense is flailing, just getting on the board is enough.

Down 3-1 in the sixth, Perez did it again. Kyle Isbel singled and India walked to put runners on first and second with nobody out, but Bobby Witt Jr. and Pasquantino failed to come through again. With runners on first and third and two outs, Perez came through again with another soft single to score a run to make it 3-2. Neither swing was great. Neither ball was crushed. But both produced a run. So he ended two innings with his arm and he drove in two runs with his bat. It’s at least reasonable to say that a 3-2 game after six could have been a lot different without Perez.

Then the seventh came and the Royals did what they seemed to do so often in 2024. They went to work. It wasn’t a rally. It was just Maikel Garcia.

Garcia can just be so frustrating because you see swings like that and it’s just so hard to figure out why he can’t do it more often. That said, the story is the same this year as last year. If he can pull the ball in the air more consistently, he can be more than a piece the Royals move around strategically. Good teams have a couple of guys with an edge. Garcia has an edge. The potential is there. Let’s see if he can harness it this season. If he can, the forecast changes a bit on this team, I think.

In true infomercial fashion, I can say this - but wait, there’s more! Cavan Biggio singled, and Dairon Blanco stole second as a pinch runner. As seems to have been the case so much the first three games, the next two hitters didn’t come through, so the Royals were needing a big hit with two outs and they had their best at the plate. Witt hadn’t looked good to start the year, but superstars are going to superstar.

His timing still seems to be way off, but he was able to get it done there and give the Royals the lead with another in a long line of big hits we’ve seen from him over the years now.

After that, the Royals bullpen did what they hoped they’d see a whole lot of and Lucas Erceg and Carlos Estevez got the job done. Of note, Estevez, averaged 95.8 MPH on his fastball, which is huge news after what he did in spring training after coming back from his back issue to start the spring. That’s huge for the team.

Also of note, and it needs to be mentioned, Daniel Lynch IV showed why the Royals like him so much in the bullpen. He came in and was able to work multiple innings on just 23 pitches and keep the game right where it was to let an offense that looks like it might be relentless once again go to work and get the job done. And he was rewarded with a win for his efforts.

Sunday - Guardians 6, Royals 2: One to Forget

The Royals finally got to see Tanner Bibee, who was supposed to pitch on Opening Day but instead spent the game testing out the hotel restrooms (presumably). My guess is they wished the Guardians would have waited a day to get him back out there because he was really good. Nothing felt right in this one.

Michael Wacha suffered from really rough command and control, just like Lugo. As I mentioned, the approach from the Guardians was elite, so maybe the opposing offense deserves a lot of the credit, but Wacha just felt a touch off. Even early on after India walked to lead off the Royals half of the first, Witt swung through a 95 MPH fastball up and India was caught stealing. we didn’t know just yet that things were going to get ugly because the very next batter was Pasquantino who tripled after Nolan Jones went through the bullpen gate trying to catch a line drive. Sadly, that was the lone highlight until the Royals did a little damage against the bottom of Cleveland’s bullpen.

Wacha battled through four and only gave up one run, but he only struck out two while walking four batters. He wasn’t quite as arm-side heavy as Lugo, but didn’t come in on lefties at all either.

So maybe that was a plan after all. If it was, I don’t like it. Or maybe it was two starters who just weren’t quite there yet with their command.

Sam Long and Chris Stratton, the two guys who I don’t think had their spots locked up until the roster was decided on, both struggled. Long for the second time in the series and Stratton for the first time. They each gave up two runs in their outing. John Schreiber got his first work of the season and he gave up a run in 1.1 innings and then Hunter Harvey had another perfect inning. It was just ugly.

Then it got really ugly in the bottom of the ninth. With nobody on and two outs against Emmanuel Clase, India was up. Clase threw a slider that hit the high and outside corner of the zone for strike one. Then he threw a four-seam fastball under India’s chin. And then threw a cutter at 98.9 MPH that drilled India in the ear flap of the helmet. India held his face and looked like he was in a combination of a rage and pain and walked off the field immediately.

Two things come to mind. The first is that the four-seamer he threw before the cutter was the 47th he’d thrown in his career. That’s out of 4,458 pitches. Of those 47, four were up and in to a righty. It’s also noteworthy that Clase has a career walk rate of 4.7 percent and had hit five batters in his career before yesterday. I don’t know if there’s beef between him and India from India’s time with the Reds or if that was intentional (they say it wasn’t, but of course they say it wasn’t), but it was highly suspicious to me. We’ll see if that festers when the Royals head to Cleveland in a couple of weeks. Let’s hope India is okay. Initial tests indicate he is, but you never know.

Player of the (Short) Week

None of the starting pitchers pitched well enough to be considered. Witt went 3 for 13. The best pitching was two innings out of the bullpen, so it was really down to three guys for this. India had a solid debut with a .429 OBP in his first three games. But he only had a few singles. Garcia looks great with a double yesterday and the home run Sunday. Gotta love what he’s done. But the winner this week is Pasquantino who hit .333/.500/1.000. He had two walks and struck out once. He homered, doubled and tripled in the three games. It’s a much better start to 2025 than what he did in 2024 when it took him two weeks to get an extra base hit and an RBI.

The Week Ahead

The first full week of the season begins with the Brewers opening the home portion of their schedule, so it’ll be another day of pomp and circumstance for the Royals and getting introduced on the baseline before the game. So keep in mind that the first one starts at 1 central because of that today. the Brewers are coming off an absolutely brutal start to their season in New York where they were absolutely bludgeoned in the final two games of the series, giving up nine home runs and 20 runs on Saturday and 12 runs and four more home runs yesterday. The Royals lineup is not the Yankees lineup, so they’ll probably breathe a sigh of relief, but these things do have a way of snowballing, so you never know.

Here are the probable pitching matchups for the series:

• Monday: LHP Kris Bubic vs. RHP Elvin Rodriguez

• Tuesday: RHP Michael Lorenzen vs. TBD (Maybe Chad Patrick?)

• Wednesday: LHP Cole Ragans vs. RHP Freddy Peralta

We’ll get to see the return to the rotation for Bubic, who looked really good in his final spring tuneup, so that’s something interesting for the first game. He’ll face Elvin Rodriguez, who is somehow only 26 years old (in his age-27 season) but started his professional career in the Angels organization in 2015. He pitched in parts of two seasons (2022 and 2023), but was absolutely lit up in 2022. He pitched last year in Japan and was excellent in 88 innings. He doesn’t strike many out, but has a decent enough feel for pitching. In his only extended action, he averaged about 93 on his four-seamer and backed it up mostly with a slider and a changeup. He was throwing a bit harder this spring and has since added a cutter. He feels like a pitcher who should be hittable. We’ll see what that means.

It’s hard to say who will be starting on Tuesday for Milwaukee, but Patrick is listed as the long man in their bullpen, so I suppose he’s maybe the most likely as they’re still trying to get some guys back from injury. He gave up two runs in his only inning of big league action on Saturday. He was the International League Pitcher of the Year in 2024, but the stuff is sort of pedestrian. He throws a cutter, a four-seamer, a changeup, a sinker and a slider. He gets whiffs, so maybe the stuff is better than it seems on video, but he also can definitely get hit by the home run ball. I won’t spend too much time on him in case he doesn’t get the start, but he seems the most likely, I think.

And the finale is a matchup of Opening Day starters with Ragans going against Peralta. It sure looked like Peralta would be a future ace after his great 2021 season, but he’s been much more mid-rotation starter with fantastic stuff since then. His ERA+ the last three seasons is 113, 112 and 114. That’s a very valuable starter, but not an elite one. Still, he gets a ton of strikeouts and throws strikes, which has been a bit of an issue for Royals hitters in the past and kind of was an issue all series against the Guardians, so this could be a tough one for them.

After the series in Milwaukee, the Royals are off Thursday and back home for three against the Orioles. It’s looking like Lugo, Wacha and Bubic against Dean Kremer, Tomoyoki Sugano and Cade Povich. Baltimore put up some serious runs in their first series against the Blue Jays and they’ll have something to play for in revenge after the Royals swept them out of the playoffs last season. It should be a good series and the Royals should have chance to get something done against the back of their rotation, looking like they’ll miss the Orioles top two starters.