Weekend in Review: Could Have Been Worse in the Rockies

It took a big win for the Royals to avoid a sweep against a bad Rockies team, but not all the news was bad.

This has been a tough team to watch for awhile now. Even in their 5-2 week last week, they struggled to put away a bad Marlins team before they got up for a big series against the Guardians. Then this week, they lost two of three to a Rays team that had been surging before they headed to Colorado for what you could only assume would be a get-right type of series. This is what I wrote on Friday morning:

Now the Royals finish their pre-break schedule on the road, starting with three in Colorado. If you want the offense to keep their confidence up, they’re headed to the right place. The Rockies pitching staff is dead last in ERA in all of baseball by nearly a full run. Amazingly, in spite of their home field, they are only tied for sixth in home runs allowed. Their strikeout rate of 16.6 percent is the lowest in baseball by 2.7 percent. Their walk rate is the sixth-highest in baseball. And the three games the two teams will play are all in Coors Field. There is a double-edged sword here. It’s a spot to get right, but it’s also a spot that if you don’t, oof, it can feel pretty rough.

A double-edged sword, indeed. I’ll get to the details in the review of the games, but they scored just three runs in the first two games before their explosion in the third game to avoid a sweep. That’s just not what you want against one of the worst teams in the league.

On the bright side, they are by no means finished. They’re just a game and a half behind the Red Sox for the third Wild Card spot and they have six games left to play against them. They also have six games left against the Twins, who are ahead of the Red Sox. And they have four games left against the Astros, who are directly behind them in the standings. Plus, they have seven more against Cleveland even. I can’t tell you if the Royals are going to make the playoffs. If you asked me right now, I’d say they won’t. But they certainly will have an opportunity to make their own waves along the way.

Hey Now, Four are All Stars

It’s always nice to see guys you root for recognized for their excellence. And yesterday the Royals saw four of their own get selected for the 2024 All-Star Game that takes place next week. I don’t think any of them were true surprises with Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans picked as just one of three starting pitching duos to make the team (the Braves and Phillies also had two starters) and Salvador Perez and Bobby Witt Jr. selected as reserve position players.

Three times in franchise history have they had five representatives and this is the third time they’ve had exactly four. I think there’s a small chance they could add a fifth with injury replacements and Brady Singer’s strong overall numbers, but there are a couple of things in his way. The first is that I think there are a few other pitchers between those selected and him. The second is that he is scheduled to start the final game before the break, which would make him ineligible to pitch. Maybe that actually makes him more likely to make the team because the league knows they can name him and then move on to someone else as well. Who knows?

I thought that tweet shows how cool what they’ve put together is. Four guys were all brought in different ways. Perez is the old guy who is now making his ninth appearance and was signed by the team more than 17 years ago. Witt is another homegrown talent, but was taken in the first round just five years ago. Ragans was acquired at the deadline last season for a rental reliever, which looks like one of the best hauls in awhile on a deal like that. And Lugo was a free agent signing brought in to bolster a starting staff that needed a lot of help.

All four have taken very different paths, but they’ll all get a chance to take the field in Dallas next week wearing those ugly uniforms. Seriously, just bring back teams wearing their own uniforms. That was the best part of the game! Anyway, while the Royals are generally trending in the wrong direction on the field, I do think these selections highlight something I’ve been saying about them for awhile. They have the stars on this roster, for the most part. What they need are guys to supplement those stars. Two bats who can fit in the 5-8 spots in the lineup and two relievers who can push everyone down two pegs would do wonders for this club.

And I suppose even with 40 percent of the rotation selected to the All-Star Game and one more a potential injury replacement, they could probably use a starting pitcher too given the volatility. But even so, I really believe these four show that this team is more in need of good role players than any stars to help give them a push for the final 70 games of the season.

The Games

Friday - Rockies 4, Royals 2: Another Botched Replay

It felt like maybe things would be okay at the start of this game. They didn’t get their leadoff man, but Witt doubled and Perez drove him in to give the Royals a first inning run and a lead that they haven’t had much of lately. They scored another run in the fourth after a walk to Freddy Fermin, Nick Loftin reaching on an error and a fielder’s choice from Garrett Hampson. That’s not the sexiest run in the world, but it’s a run. The Royals led 2-1.

Wait, 2-1? If you’re reading this, you know where the one run came from, but I have to give you a little bit of drama in the writing. In the bottom of the third, Cole Ragans gave up a long fly ball to Michael Toglia. As Dairon Blanco drifted back to the wall, he timed his leap well and should have caught it if not for two hands that came out of the stands to block him.

It was called a home run on the field, but the Royals immediately asked for the crew chief review. With more and more replays shown, it became clearer and clearer that the fan reached over the wall and interfered with the play. This picture shows the same story:

And yet, when they came back from the review, the call stood. Un-freaking-believable. For the second time in a week and both times with Ragans on the mound, a home run that easily should have been reversed with replay was not. I’ll ask the same question I asked last week. What’s the point of even having repay if obvious calls like this one and the foul ball last weekend aren’t going to be overturned? It’s just ridiculous at this point.

I think the bad call changed the whole tenor of the game last week. I don’t think this one did that, especially considering the Royals came back and scored the next half inning. But it doesn’t change the fact that it was a brutal call and another one that put a run on the board that shouldn’t have been there against a Royals team fighting for every single run. They’re having a tough enough time lately that they don’t need to have to play against their opponent on the field and the replay crew in New York.

I thought Ragans was very good. It takes a special pitcher to give up two runs on five hits with eight strikeouts over seven innings and make you wonder if he could have been better, but that’s what happened in this one. He lost command a few times throughout, but he was nasty. He had 22 whiffs, which came two starts after the 26 he had against Miami and was tied for the second-most in his career with a start about a month ago against the Mariners and last September against the White Sox.

But the offense didn’t hit enough, especially in Colorado, and the bullpen reared its ugly head. John Schreiber came in and did what he’s done far too often for more than two months now. He gave up three hits and walked a batter and gave up two runs. Here are his numbers in his last 24 games since the start of May:

20 IP
31 H
18 R
16 ER
16.8% K
9.9% BB
7.20 ERA

Woof.

He was bailed out by Walter Pennington in his big league debut. With runners on second and third and just one out, Pennington struck out Nolan Jones and then got Toglia to ground out. His reward was being sent back down the next day, which I don’t fully understand, but he’s on the 40-man roster now at least.

The Royals did have a shot against a terrible Rockies bullpen. Fermin and Loftin both singled against Jalen Beeks who was on to get the save, but Hampson was trying to bunt them over, even when the count went to 3-0. He eventually swung at ball four and both Blanco and Maikel Garcia made outs to end the threat and end the game. That’s a bad loss.

Saturday - Rockies 3, Royals 1: Who Can’t Score at Coors?

Facing Austin Gomber would surely be the cure to what ailed the Royals offense, right? WRONG!

Gomber ended up going seven innings with just one run on six hits allowed. It was just the fourth instance of a Rockies pitcher going seven innings at home, joining Kyle Freeland from Friday’s game, himself against Houston in April and Ty Blach against Cleveland in May. The only highlight was Vinnie Pasquantino, who had a few good swings against Gomber, but unfortunately didn’t have them with runners on base. In the sixth inning, he continued his hot stretch of hitting.

Even with just a 1 for 5 day on Sunday, Pasquantino has hit .340 with a .585 SLG and 13 RBIs since the start of the last homestand. Since breaking a pretty long home run drought at the end of May, he’s hit .284/.333/.493 with eight doubles, a triple, six home runs and 26 RBIs in 35 games. I know there’s been a lot of talk that he needs to do more or whatever, but he’s been back to being one of the more productive bats around for awhile now. I’ve been a bit surprised to see the lack of walks lately, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see those come back soon.

Lugo, like Ragans was pretty good. Also like Ragans, an outing of six innings with five hits allowed and two earned runs being pretty good says more about the pitcher than anything. He gave up an unearned run when Maikel Garcia made a pretty interesting error prior to Lugo allowing a home run. The error was from Garcia throwing the ball in the dirt intentionally because the sun is always in the first baseman’s eyes in the early inning on throws from third and deep short. Pasquantino muffed the hop and he said after the game that he was responsible. I agree with him, but it’s a tough play all around. The third run and second earned run came after a bunt single and a stolen base.

I was actually a bit surprised with how much Lugo used his curve in this one. The altitude really impacts pitches like his curve, but he still threw it 18 times and with great results. He had six whiffs on 10 swings. Overall, the Rockies swung and missed 15 times against him and in an outing where I didn’t think he looked especially great, he pitched well enough to win and the offense just didn’t support him.

Sunday - Royals 10, Rockies 1: That’s More Like It

Facing a pitcher making his big league debut had many Royals fans bracing for the worst. And that’s fair. This was their fifth big league debut starter they’ve faced this year. The first one, Spencer Arrighetti, got rocked. But Nick Nastrini, Jonathan Cannon and Valente Bellozo combined for an average game score of 60, which is not what you want. So it’s perfectly reasonable that Tanner Gordon gave fans some nausea when it was announced he’d be making the start.

The first inning did nothing to ease that concern, but in the second, the Royals used some well-placed contact to get the first three batters on with the third hit, a single from Fermin, scoring their first run of the day. After a flyout from MJ Melendez, Garcia, hitting eighth did something he hadn’t done since May 17.

That’s a nice swing and he probably took advantage of the thin air some, but more of that and we could see him get back on track pretty quickly. One swing scored as many runs as the Royals had scored in the previous two games and gave them their biggest lead they’d held in a week.

The offense didn’t do much else against Gordon for awhile. After Garcia’s home run, he retired the next 13 and 15 of the next 16. But then Melendez stepped up and continued his hot hitting.

Two things can be true here. Even when he’s succeeding, it just doesn’t look smooth for Melendez. But, on the other hand, he’s hitting .293/.369/.483 in his last 20 games. I know that 20 games isn’t that much, but you can’t get to 30 before you get to 20. It has to start somewhere. He’s still striking out more than you’d like, but it’s a generally manageable number with a walk rate above 10 percent in this time. It’s encouraging, if nothing else.

That started the Royals actually getting to the Rockies bullpen for the first time in this series. They got two in the eighth with a Witt infield single, a Pasquantino single and then a Michael Massey RBI single. A wild pitch moved the runners up to second and third and Fermin hit a sacrifice fly to get them their seventh run.

Then in the ninth, Garcia walked (he went 2 for 3 with the walk…good sign?), Kyle Isbel grounded into a fielder’s choice and Hunter Renfroe walked. Up came Witt.

There was a time when I had to write about Witt not pulling the ball for power. That time is in the past. Now he’s an All-Star. Very cool.

Singer was excellent again. He wasn’t bad against the Dodgers on June 16, giving up three runs over six innings, but that outing was the one that ended the six-start stretch that saw his ERA rise by more than a run. In the now four starts since, he’s given up one run in all of four of them. In total, he’s thrown 24.1 innings in his last four starts with a 1.48 ERA. He’s allowed 17 hits with eight walks allowed and 20 strikeouts.

I appreciated the conversation early in the game from the broadcast that Brian Sweeney had mentioned. The thin air makes pitches that go north-south a bit tougher to execute, so he backed off the four-seamer a little bit, and that makes sense to me. But what got me excited is that he still threw it and it was used quite effectively to set up the rest. And boy was his slider fantastic. He threw 43 of them, but just 14 were in the zone. Of the other 29, he got swings on 15 of those with nine whiffs. He got three more whiffs on the slider in the zone.

I absolutely still have some concerns about Singer. His stuff has still backed up quite a bit in the last two years which leaves his margin for error pretty thin. But I can’t argue with the results. He’s now made 18 starts and given up more than two runs just five times. He’s given up zero or one in 11 of those outings. That’s impressive and something you certainly can’t argue with.

The end of this game gave us a glimpse at Kris Bubic, the reliever. I’ll say this with the caveat that he pitched the ninth inning of a nine-run game against a bad team. But he gave a glimpse of what could be with him out of the bullpen. His fastball sat 93-95 at the top of the zone and above and he got three whiffs on eight swings. His changeup looked as good as it looked before the injury. The spin rate on his fastball was up significantly from when we last saw him. If he’s throwing that velocity in that location out of the bullpen, he might be a legitimate answer for this team down the stretch.

Player of the Week

With it not being a great week, there are really only so many candidates. Pasquantino, last week’s co-winner, didn’t have a great week, though he did have three RBIs, I guess. Fermin had a monster week with a .500 average, but he only came to the plate 16 times and all he hit were singles. Melendez had a pretty good week himself with a .313/.353/.563 line, but, like Fermin, it was probably a few PAs short of real consideration. The answer, as it is so often, is Witt. He hit .500/.500/1.000 (that’s clean looking) with three doubles, three homers, seven runs scored and seven RBIs. That’s a heck of a week.

The Week Ahead

This is kind of a weird one. Since they’ve gone to the schedule where everyone plays everyone, the rivalry series is the only interleague series that’s a home-and-home. In it, both teams play two games at each other’s park, but they’re not set up as a four-game series. Instead, it’s two sets of two games, and for the second straight year, there are some weird off days around it. This week, the Royals are off today and Thursday with two in St. Louis in the middle on Tuesday and Wednesday. It would have been great to play the Cardinals a few weeks ago, but they’ve found their footing now.

With their win against the Nationals yesterday, they’re 47-42 and in second place in the NL Central. After a loss on May 11, they were 15-24, so some simple math shows they’re 32-18 in the last 50 games, which is pretty good. They’re kind of the reverse Royals. Both are in a similar spot, but they’ve gotten there in very different ways. They’re getting there without Paul Goldschmidt or Nolan Arenado hitting particularly well. Instead, Willson Contreras, Alec Burleson, Brendan Donovan and Masyn Winn have done the job offensively. On the mound, Sonny Gray has been great and Kyle Gibson has been way better than expected. Here are the matchups for the two games:

• Tuesday: Michael Wacha vs. Andre Pallante

• Wednesday: Alec Marsh vs. Sonny Gray

Pallante was called up on May 29 to start for the Cardinals and has a 3.34 ERA in seven starts since then. I’m not sure that even accurately shows how good he’s been. He gave up five runs once and six runs once and has given up three total in the other five starts. This will be a challenge. We all know how good Gray is. That’s a challenge too. The mostly silent offense needs to get loud for a few days.

After they leave St. Louis and have another day off, they’ll head to Boston to face the Red Sox with a chance to bridge some gap between them. The Red Sox are playing exceptional baseball right now and get a head start to keep up their winning with Oakland visiting for three. On the plus side, the Royals will have their top three starters ready to go for the series against Kutter Crawford, Josh Winckowski and Brayan Bellow, but that’s a tough series with how well they’ve been playing. It’s a tough week before the break, but an important one if they want the games after the break to mean as much as they’ve meant to this point.