Weekend in Review: Avoiding the Sweep, the Trade Market and More

The Royals are in a tough stretch, but they continue to not let things get too far out of hand, which is the mark of a good team.

The tone of this Weekend in Review still probably isn’t going to be what some of the past ones have been this season, but it changed quite a bit in the span of 16 pitches yesterday afternoon. I’ll get to the details here when I get to the game recaps, but it all goes back to that sequencing I write about so much. Had yesterday’s game happened on Friday and Friday’s game yesterday, we’d be going into an off day with an absolutely terrible taste in our mouths.

Now? There’s hope. Maybe a big walk-off win gets the Royals out of their current doldrums. At the very least, it’s a win to dream on instead of a bad loss. So if they were going to lose two games and win one and have them all happen the exact way they did, I’ll take it in the order it happened.

And by coming back yesterday to win that game and avoid fourth consecutive loss, they did another thing I write about so much - limited the damage. I think so often about the 2013 Royals. I can only imagine how much I’d think about them if they didn’t end up doing what they did in 2014 and 2015. But that team went 86-76, which included an 8-20 May and an eight-game losing streak in that month. If they could have just gone 14-14, including one of those being a win on the last day of the month against Texas, they’d have actually made the playoffs that year. This isn’t about what could have been, but, again, limiting damage.

The Royals just finished their first losing week of the season, which is remarkable that it took until now. But instead of being on an eight-game losing streak, they’ve lost six of eight. It’s still bad, but it’s not horrible. Now, you can’t win one out of every four games and call a victory, but teams go through tough stretches. The Braves are 7-11 in their last 18. The Dodgers lost five in a row ending just last Sunday. The Orioles lost six of nine in mid-May. It happens to pretty much every team. The good ones limit it. Now, the Royals have some holes to fill, and that’s why all eyes will be on them and the trade market.

The Evolving Market

Hey, look at that, what a perfect segue! The trade market is a very interesting one this season. I wrote about it last week after Thursday’s rough loss, but I continue to hear that there could be two waves of trades, with one coming sooner than later. And more importantly and relevant to the Royals, it sure sounds like they are active and motivated. Those are two buzz words, so I guess they can be taken with a grain of salt, but everyone I talk to says they hear the Royals are talking a lot. I say that not to defend or protect the organization or whatever, but to let you know that they know they have needs and they’re working to fill them.

Whether you agree with what I think is happening or not, it does appear they want to maintain a level of mystery around some guys in AAA who they think can help them to go get who they need. One of those guys is Drew Waters. There have been tons of calls for him to come up from fans for weeks now. And I get it. The outfield offense stinks. The overall offense doesn’t, at least on the surface, but the outfielders have been terrible. So why not call up a guy who had had big league success and is hitting well in AAA? I just think they don’t want to expose him at the big league level. Are they losing games because of it? I don’t think you could argue they were, but maybe on a losing stretch they are. I really don’t know.

So Waters has been out of the Omaha lineup for the last two games. If there’s an injury, I haven’t heard anything. I did talk to two people in the game who haven’t heard if a trade is close or not, but they wouldn’t be surprised because of the fact they hear of the Royals constantly. But there are some teams who make sense for Waters, particularly those who are already obvious sellers. The Marlins, A’s, Angels and White Sox all could use a switch-hitting outfielder with upside who can play center.

The Marlins could offer Tanner Scott/Calvin Faucher/Andrew Nardi and/or Bryan De La Cruz. The A’s could offer Austin Adams and/or Brent Rooker. The Angels could offer Hunter Strickland/Carlos Estevez and/or Taylor Ward. The White Sox could offer Michael Kopech and/or Tommy Pham. There are other options out there. I’m just throwing some names of relievers and outfielders. All those deals could make sense with Waters as either the centerpiece or a big part. The point here is that the market might be evolving quickly. I won’t be too surprised if nothing happens, but if something pops in the next couple of days, that won’t floor me either.

Here’s the good news on the trade front. The Royals have some needs for sure, but none of their needs are among the most costly. Bullpen arms aren’t cheap necessarily, but they generally don’t take a huge prospect haul. They don’t need stars in the lineup. They need guys to lengthen it. Those don’t take a huge prospect haul. And if they look to add to the rotation, they don’t need stars either. They just need good depth there. All of that is affordable in terms of prospects. I know people keep saying the Royals don’t have the ammunition to get a player they need, but their needs only require what the Royals absolutely can afford.

The Games

Friday - Padres 11, Royals 8: A Thousand Papercuts Were Almost Bandaged

This game ended up being more important to the future than the present for a couple of reasons. The first came on the fourth pitch of the game when Luis Arrez hit a 90 MPH ground ball off Michael Wacha’s left foot. Wacha couldn’t get the out, and while he stayed in the game, we found out yesterday morning that he would be placed on the IL with a fracture of his foot. It seems like they don’t see it as a long-term issue but wanted to be sure he didn’t mess with his mechanics, but it’s still a loss for a rotation that has been carrying the team.

His performance knowing that he had a fracture was actually more impressive than the line, which was solid enough. He went 5.1 innings with two runs on five hits allowed, but to do that with a fracture in his foot is kind of incredible. Good on Wacha to get as far as he could in that situation. The only trouble he really got in came in the sixth when he walked Ha-Seong Kim with one out and then gave up a single to Arraez, a double to Fernando Tatis Jr. and a single to Jurickson Profar. Tatis bailed out the Royals a bit on Angel Zerpa’s second pitch.

Man, that’s some bad baserunning. But also, nice job by Bobby Witt Jr. to keep under control on that throw and keep it low. I think there’s a decent argument that Witt should have yielded to MJ Melendez, but I also wonder if Tatis would have gone had Melendez caught that ball. That was the play that kept the Royals in the game and then the bottom half of the inning unfolded basically exactly as the top half did.

It started with a one-out walk to the number nine hitter. Maikel Garcia singled and Witt singled home Kyle Isbel. Vinnie Pasquantino hit a ground rule double that actually ended up a bad thing because Witt would have scored if it had stayed in play, but after an intentional walk to Salvador Perez, Nelson Velazquez got Witt home with a sacrifice fly to give the Royals the lead.

After a scoreless seventh, all hell broke loose. Here was the Padres eighth inning, starting against John Schreiber:

Arraez singles
Tatis singles
Profar singles
James McArthur replaces Schreiber
Cronenworth singles
Manny Machado singles
Donovan Solano singles
Jackson Merrill singles
Will Klein replaces McArthur
Luis Campusano strikes out
Kim singles
Arraez singles
Tatis strikes out
Profar singles
Cronenworth doubles
Machado lines out

That’s nine runs on 11 hits with 10 of them singles. This is the issue with a bullpen that gives up a lot of contact. After the game, Matt Quatraro spoke and noted how unlikely it is that all of them would fall. He’s not wrong, but it’s also not like they were a bunch of soft singles. Tatis hit his at 109.6 MPH, Cronenworth’s first hit was 103.6 MPH. Merrill’s was 101.1 MPH. Kim’s was 10.0 MPH, Profar’s second hit was 109.6 MPH. Eight of the 11 hits had an expected average of .400 or higher. Just an incredible display of ineptitude.

The bottom of the ninth was almost worse for the Padres. It started with Velazquez continuing his hot hitting.

That’s just such an easy swing and to hit the ball that far is really impressive. He continues to round back into the form we saw last year. A one-out single from Garrett Hampson was followed by a single by Hunter Renfroe. Isbel almost grounded into a double play to end the game, but he beat it out to keep things alive. Garcia, Witt, Pasquantino and Freddy Fermin (who entered to give Salvy an inning off) singled. The score was 11-8 when Velazquez came up for the second time and he took a good swing.

So. Freaking. Close. That’s a home run in 21 out of 30 parks, but Kauffman Stadium was not one of those parks, obviously. The Royals were that close to one of the most amazing comebacks we’ve seen.

But here’s the second part that had a longer-term impact. Before Fermin came in, the Padres, who entered the inning leading by eight, had to turn to their closer. He only threw five pitches, but he got warm and had to make competitive pitches in a save situation that was actually probably more stressful than many others. Boy I sure hope that wouldn’t come back to bite the Padres later in the series.

Saturday - Padres 7, Royals 3: Wasted Opportunities

This game had three things happen that caused them to lose. The first is that Alec Marsh had his second straight rough game and wasn’t good enough. The second is that the Royals offense didn’t do enough in their opportunities to actually come back and tie the game or take the lead. And the third is that the bullpen continued to leak oil. All of it worked together.

Marsh had similar struggles in getting swings and misses as he did against the Twins on Monday. He only got seven, but a lot of it is that they just didn’t swing that much against him. He threw 80 pitches and they swung just 30 times. That’s the lowest percentage of swings against Marsh in a game this year. The second lowest was the start against the Twins. The third-lowest was the start before that one. The league might be getting something on Marsh. It’ll be interesting to see how he responds.

When they swung, they generally did good things. His pitch chart isn’t terrible.

Yeah, too much in the middle, but there are some good pitches they simply didn’t swing at. They only chased 18 percent of the time. When they did swing, they didn’t miss. They put 17 balls in play and averaged 96.6 MPH on the exit velocity. I’m not sure what the answer is here, but if the book is out on him and it’s to just not swing, well, that could be a problem moving forward.

The offense was all Pasquantino on his bobblehead day. After Marsh gave up a home run to Tatis in the top of the first, he got a pitch to drive and he drove it.

With the game tied in the third, Pasquantino drove in the Royals third run to give them a 3-2 lead. Marsh would give that up, though, and then Nick Anderson gave up two more in the top of the ninth and the Royals just didn’t have any ninth inning magic. Though they did face Robert Suarez because he was warmed up when the score was 5-3 and they decided to use him anyway because he’d have probably been shot anyway given his warmups. I wonder if that would hurt them later.

Sunday - Royals 4, Padres 3: Snagging Victory from Defeat

Cole Ragans was really good in this one. I wouldn’t say great, but I would say really good. The Padres did a good job not swinging as much, but it wasn’t anything different than we’ve seen all season long. He got 14 whiffs, including seven on his four-seam fastball. Though I will say they swung at 28 of 49 of them, which means they made contact on 21 of them. Was it intentional that he was filling up the zone this much?

Hard to say there, but worth watching moving forward for Ragans. I thought his changeup wasn’t great, but it was good enough and he had one of his best pitches of the game on his last pitch, which feels like a bit of a trend with Ragans. With the score tied 1-1, there were runners on first and third with two outs for Cronenworth. He started him with three fastballs. The first was a called strike and the next two were taken outside the zone. Ragans turned to his slider and got a whiff on the first one. He went back to it for the second.

Now, I love this pitch because the slider before that was a bit farther outside and way lower. I don’t know if Cronenworth would have triggered there if the slider was as far out of the zone as the first one. But because he put it closer yet still far enough off the plate to get a whiff, he got the big one. It was a long inning, though, which chased him after six instead of the seven it looked like he might be able to go.

In the eighth, the Royals turned to Angel Zerpa, who has been great this year. He was not great yesterday. He gave up an infield single and then made a terrible pickoff throw that ended up allowing Tyler Wade to get to third. A single up the middle scored the leading run to make it 2-1. Another infield single put two runners on with nobody out and Machado singled him home to make it 3-1. This is when the Royals turned to their struggling closer, McArthur to get them out of trouble and he legitimately saved the game.

This is a situation that is nearly impossible to win. The Padres had runners on first and third with nobody out. McArthur got a ground ball to Witt who gunned down Merrill at the plate for the first out. Then Cronenworth lined out and Kim grounded out. McArthur couldn’t get out of bases loaded and nobody out on Friday, but he got out of this one on Sunday and it allowed the Royals to have a chance when combined with Will Klein pitching a 1-2-3 ninth.

Remember how Suarez pitched on Friday and Saturday. Their closer who has allowed two runs on 13 hits in 26 innings this year wasn’t available. So they went with Yuki Matsui instead. He gave up a single to Pasquantino and that brought up Perez, who had one of the most impressive plate appearances I’ve seen from him.

Down 0-2, Perez went to work in a way that he never has really done before this season. Matsui correctly tried to get him to chase twice more on a splitter after he got a whiff on the first he threw. Pitch 3 and 4 are those splitters, and I think there’s a chance that if he threw the first one where he threw the second one, that the game would have been very different. But because the second splitter was nowhere near the one he swung and missed at, it allowed Perez to lock back in. He ultimately worked the walk, which brought up Velazquez to pinch hit.

WOW! I will admit that I sort of felt like something big was going to happen there. I actually thought he was going to hit a walk-off home run and he did come pretty close. That triple was hit hard and would have been a home run in 18 ballparks. Just a great swing on a ball that, again, showed that he’s looking like the Velazquez from 2023. Nick Loftin came on and finally got a slider in the middle that he could lift and he did for a sacrifice fly to give the Royals a win they needed so badly.

Now they head to an off day and a big week on a high note and there’s hope that they can snap out of their funk with that sort of win. In a week where they trailed late so often and mounted a number of comebacks that fell short, they really needed one to come through and this one did.

Player of the Week

In a bad week, you’d expect the choices to be pretty slim here, and they are. They only had five hitters with a wRC+ of 100 or better this week and one of them was Garrett Hampson with nine plate appearances in seven games. On the pitching side, only two pitchers threw more than six innings and one of them was Marsh with a 7.50 ERA. Ragans was the other and he had a fine week with 11 IP, 13 K, 3 BB and a 2.45 ERA, but I still wouldn’t call that the player of the week. No, the two real candidates were Witt, who hit .355/.375/.387 with four more runs scored and six more RBI and Pasquantino, who hit .391/.375/.739 with two homers, two doubles and eight RBIs. Yes, the OBP is below the batting average because of another sacrifice fly that hurts his OBP, but he’s the player of the week.

The Week Ahead

This is the biggest week for the Royals since…July 31, 2017? That year, they were in a playoff position at the deadline and headed to Baltimore seven games over .500 and just two games out of first place. It did not go well, so we can ignore the rest, but this is a big week.

They get the chance to travel to Cleveland to see the Guardians for the first time in 2024, which is crazy. The Guardians sit at 39-20 with a +78 run differential. The Royals are four games behind them, though their run differential is pretty similar at +74. The Guardians offense is a little like the Royals only their floor is probably higher. They have Jose Ramirez, Josh Naylor and Steven Kwan, now that he’s back, leading the way. Andres Gimenez has been solid enough. The rest have been middling to bad. Actually, that’s not fair. They also have David Fry, who at 28 has suddenly become one of the best hitters in baseball. He’s hitting .355/.493/.636 in 140 plate appearances. No, those aren’t typos. No, I don’t get it.

Their rotation as a whole has been okay even with Shane Bieber out for the year. But they’re getting generally good work from Tanner Bibee and Triston McKenzie while Ben Lively is inexplicably putting up legitimate numbers. Good teams find these random guys and these random guys put up great years. The real strength, though, is in their bullpen. Emmanuel Clase is dominant this season. Hunter Gaddis throws strikes. Nick Sandlin has been very good. Tim Herrin has been excellent. Cade Smith has been excellent. Scott Barlow has been probably their weakest link and he has a 4.07 ERA with 33 strikeouts in 24.1 innings. This is a legitimately good team. Here are the matchups for the games:

• Tuesday: Seth Lugo vs. Triston McKenzie

• Wednesday: Brady Singer vs. Logan Allen

• Thursday: Daniel Lynch IV vs. Tanner Bibee

The Royals currently sit four games out. I’d obviously love them to be one game out when the series is over, but I sort of feel like they’re in good shape if they just get a win here. I don’t know if that’s a bit of a loser’s mentality or not, but they’re not going very good right now, so it sort of feels like they just need to gut through this stretch. If they come home to Seattle and are five games back or closer, I’ll be satisfied. I’d love three, though, if not one.

I’m not going to spend much time on the Seattle series, but that’s a big one too. The Mariners continue to play some good baseball and are a tough opponent and the Royals look like they’ll have to face Bryce Miller, Luis Castillo and George Kirby, though there are no easy gets in that rotation. It’s a big week for the Royals. They’re now 7-6 in the first 13 of the 26 games I wanted to see 13-13. That means they have to win at least six of the next 13 while they’re not playing well. This is what good teams do, though, so we’ll see how they fare.