Weekend in Review: Royals Not as Good as the Best

The Royals weren't completely overmatched or anything, but the Brewers were clearly the better team this weekend.

The Weekend in Review is free for everyone every week during ht eseason. If you’d like to get every newsletter, read all the analysis, comment on everything and be eligible for giveaways, become a paid subscriber today!

Some series are bigger tests than others. The Brewers have won the National League Central four of the last five seasons and went 86-76 while finishing in second place the other year. They are a fantastic team, arguably the second-best team in the National League behind the Dodgers. That’s a good litmus test for where the Royals are, as they believe they can be the best team in the American League Central this season. Overall, they lost two of three, which is a pretty easy way to say they aren’t as good as the Brewers. But I didn’t think it was a drastic difference between the two teams at least. By run differential, they were dead even over the three games even.

But you could see where the Brewers hold the edge. Their offense is more relentless even though the Royals actually have the lowest chase rate in baseball. They do more damage. They run the bases better. They’re a better defensive team. I can see a path where the Royals are there, maybe even sooner than later because there are a lot of traits in the Brewers that I do see in the Royals. The Brewers just do it better and did it better this past weekend. And I will say that with tiebreakers in baseball today, I’d rather lose a series to an NL team than an AL team.

I’ll get to it in the week ahead down below, but they get Cleveland the White Sox this week. Then it’s Detroit and the Yankees next week. Then it’s Baltimore and the Angels. Then the Athletics. Then the Mariners. Then the Guardians and Tigers again. I’m not saying that all of those teams are going to factor into tiebreakers, but a lot of them will, so hopefully the Royals have gotten things to where they can start putting it together and win some series against teams they hope to be toe-to-toe with at the end of the season.

Kauffman Corner

Make sure you watch or listen to this week’s Kauffman Corner. Soren and I talked a lot about the bullpen, the offense, the rotation depth and a ton more, so check it out right here or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Games

Saturday, Game 1 - Brewers 5, Royals 2: Avila’s Struggles

After a rainout that featured next to no rain (this isn’t the first time it’s happened), the Royals had their first doubleheader of the season on Saturday. Nothing really changed for them as Luinder Avila was called up to start in place of a sick Michael Wacha. He just stayed up to start this one, and, well, it wasn’t pretty. Sometimes the final line doesn’t tell the story. In this case, though, it kind of did.

3 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 4 K

The Royals believed this spring that Avila is a starter. I’ve never seen it with him. I do, however, believe he can be a very good reliever. Well, his first big league taste of starting gave me a point in favor of my belief and took a point away from the organization. He just couldn’t really do anything that he wanted to do. He only got four swings and miss. The Brewers, who don’t chase much, didn’t chase much. He struggled with first pitch strikes. And he got hit hard.

There isn’t much to say, really, other than that it was just a bad start. I mentioned this on the podcast, but his curve is his best pitch and when you’re starting, it’s tough to use a curve as your most-used offering. He did throw 15 of them and they didn’t work for him, so maybe it’s not the best argument, but I just don’t see how it will work with him, even though he does have four pitches (a fifth, if you count a changeup he threw once). Now, he was called up to start because they had a need and he was available, but they didn’t send him down after, which I thought was interesting. That means he’ll be in the bullpen. I hope they use him as a short-inning reliever and not in Bailey Falter’s role.

The good news on the pitching side is that a much-maligned bullpen got a chance to save some face. Daniel Lynch IV, Alex Lange, John Schreiber and Steven Cruz combined for six scoreless innings with just two hits allowed and eight strikeouts. Seven of those eight came from Lynch and Lange, who bounced back really nicely from brutal outings on Wednesday night in that terrible weather. And we got the joy of getting to see this incredible play from Lynch.

I have never seen a play like that before. Lynch is a heck of an athlete. It did look like he might have been hurt on the play, but it seems like he’s really fine now, which is a plus. But to be able to recover and then dive and make the tag is just ridiculous. Good on Lynch.

Offensively, it was a slog against Chad Patrick before they were able to get Aaron Ashby a little bit and then got shut down by Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill. They did have some good at bats against Megill, but Vinnie Pasquantino ended the game watching a 98.1 MPH fastball down the middle. Hitting is hard. Pitchers are great. Sometimes a guy gets caught looking at a pitch they shouldn’t because they were sitting on something else. I would guess that Pasquantino didn’t think he’d get a third straight fastball. But he did, and it ended up being a bad look as he was the tying run but couldn’t get the bat off his shoulder.

Saturday, Game 2 - Royals 8, Brewers 2: The Bats Shine

The beauty of baseball is there’s (usually) a game the next day. The beauty of a doubleheader is there’s a game just a few hours later, and that was the case on Saturday. I wouldn’t say the first game was a “bad” loss, but it wasn’t any fun. It’s always nice to see a team show an ability to come back from a game like that, and they turned the page really quickly. They got Logan Henderson to start and then he was going to be relieved by Brandon Sproat, and they got to both of them.

In the second, Salvador Perez walked and Jonathan India singled to bring up Carter Jensen in his first start since the oversleeping incident. I have no idea what happened there, and there’s no reason not to believe what the organization is saying, but it sort of felt like it was more than just oversleeping based on the lack of playing time. Maybe it’s just a bad coincidence that Jensen hadn’t started off the year well, but whatever it was, he came through in this first at bat with a double to right field to score both Perez and India.

With the game tied 2-2 into the bottom of the sixth, the Royals had their second huge sixth inning of the homestand. Who else to start it but Perez with one out?

That’s his second of the year and 305th of his career. He’s just 12 away from tying George Brett now. I’m not saying it’ll happen this week or anything, but Perez goes on some home run binges. It could be just a few weeks before Brett is number two in team history.

After Jac Caglianone struck out (and lost a challenge in the process), the Royals gave the Brewers a taste of their own two-out medicine.

India singled
Jensen singled
Isaac Collins singled to score India
Kyle Isbel singled to score Jensen
Maikel Garcia doubled to score Collins
Bobby Witt Jr. intentionally walked
Pasquantino reached on an error to score Isbel
Wild pitch scored Garcia

Now, it wasn’t a great inning for Caglianone because after the wild pitch, they intentionally walked Perez and then Caglianone made another out. It’s never fun to go 0 for 2 in an inning.

But that was all the Royals would need. They turned to Eli Morgan, their 27th man for the doubleheader and he took it the rest of the way, giving up just one hit and one walk in three scoreless innings with five strikeouts. Since he went three innings, he earned a save, which was the second of his career. His first came pitching the bottom of the 10th in Oakland in 2023 in a 12-11 final. He was really impressive, though, and with his work and the inning from Nick Mears, the bullpen for the day looked like this:

10 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 13 K, 4 BB

That will, as they say, play.

Sunday - Brewers 8, Royals 5: The Stars Didn’t Star

This was a frustrating one. The Royals never led, and it somehow felt like they had no shot but were one swing away all day long. Kris Bubic came out and was just not great to start. His command in the first was iffy. As I’ve said too many times, the Brewers do a great job of grinding out at bats. I mentioned this on the podcast, but Bubic likes to live above the zone with his fastball and below it with his changeup. The question becomes if you try to make them play your game or if you try to beat them at theirs. I don’t know what Bubic was trying to do in the first. He just felt a little bit off. You can see it in the pitch chart.

The fastballs were probably a little higher out of the zone than he would have wanted, but the ones in the zone were a little too good. His slider wasn’t terribly competitive. His changeup wasn’t really a factor. It’s frustrating because he got the first two outs on eight pitches, but then struggled with the zone before giving up a triple after a poor dive decision by Nick Loftin in left and then a home run that made the decision not matter.

He was really better after the home run. He struck out eight over the final 4.1 innings he pitched and gave up just one more run. Overall, he had his fastball working with 12 whiffs on 29 swings and then six more called strikes. It was impressive to see the Brewers struggle with it. His changeup was pretty good and his sweeper was there too. He didn’t have the start to his start that he wanted, but I thought he rebounded nicely and gave the team a chance to come back and a chance to win.

The offense did some work. In the third, Garcia put them within a run.

That was one that you just knew off the bat from the sound. I said in the headline for this game that the stars didn’t star, but just know that wasn’t about Garcia. He had another hit later and another RBI and he’s now hitting .333 with a .910 OPS powered by a .425 OBP out of the leadoff spot. He is not the problem or even problem-adjacent.

The issue came in the middle of the lineup. Pasquantino wasn’t the problem in this one. He had one hit with Witt on second where Witt ended up getting thrown out at the plate. I actually didn’t have a problem with the send. The Brewers needed to execute perfectly and they did. I thought Witt may have turned a bit wide at third, but I’m probably always sending one of the fastest players in baseball on a hit like that. And then Pasquantino did come through with two RBIs in the seventh against Angel Zerpa. So he’s exempt from the conversation for this one.

But Witt’s slow start has continued. He still doesn’t have an extra base hit through nine games. The batted ball metrics continue to paint a prettier picture than the results, but he’s had some rough moments over the last few days. He couldn’t do anything with a two-out first pitch in the fourth and hit a lazy fly ball. Then in the seventh, he was caught looking before Pasquantino came through with his single. He got a hit in the ninth, but it wasn’t enough.

Perez had a double and was stranded, but also left Pasquantino on second in the third and couldn’t drive home the tying run from scoring position in the seventh inning. Caglianone had a rough series with another hitless today. He ended up going 2 for 10 with two walks in the series. None of it is horrible by itself, but the stars didn’t do the job quite enough, and it extended to the pitching staff.

Bubic wasn’t great, and we’ve talked about him, but Matt Strahm and Lucas Erceg were theoretically fresh for this one, and neither one did enough to keep the Brewers down to give the bats a chance to come back. Strahm got hit hard in the top of the seventh, giving up two runs to give the Brewers a 6-2 lead. It all started with a leadoff walk. Then down a run in the ninth, Erceg came on and gave up two runs of his own. Back-to-back doubles with one out got one home and then he walked a batter and gave up a single on a ball Lane Thomas probably should have caught but didn’t to score another run.

All in all, Strahm and Erceg didn’t lock it down while some of the offensive stars didn’t do enough to get the job done. It’s hard to win when that’s happening, and it’s even harder to win against a really good team playing well. Ultimately, what they had just wasn’t enough. It also doesn’t help when Tyler Tolbert comes into the game as a pinch runner and then gets promptly picked off. I wouldn’t be too surprised if we see Michael Massey activated today, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Tolbert is the move for him when that happens.

Player of the Week

It was actually a pretty solid week overall for the Royals offense. They scored 32 runs in six games, so they averaged 5.4 per game. Of course, they also scored 26 of the 32 in three of the six games, so it was pretty feast or famine. But that still means they had some success. Collins had a really nice week, hitting .333/.455/.556 with a homer and a double. Garcia had a great week, hitting .391/.444/.609. Cole Ragans had a really nice start on Thursday afternoon. Noah Cameron did a nice job on Wednesday night in tough conditions. But none were the player of the week.

I don’t know that I’ve ever selected this player before, but Isbel takes it home. He hit an absurd .563/.563/1.000 with two homers, five runs, five RBIs and two stolen bases. In a week of pretty quality offensive performances overall, nothing beats Isbel’s week.

The Week Ahead

It’s a weird travel week for the Royals as they head to Cleveland for three, starting tonight and ending Wednesday with an afternoon game. Then they’ll come home to face the White Sox for four. Cleveland is off to a good start at 6-4 after splitting a doubleheader with the Cubs yesterday. And they’re doing it pretty much you’d expect a team that uses Devil Magic to do it. Their run differential is -4. They have one of the worst overall offenses in baseball with a wRC+ of 85. So far, they’re not running the bases particularly well or playing especially good defense. But they’re pitching, and that keeps you in games.

The projected pitching matchups:

• Monday: RHP Michael Wacha vs. RHP Tanner Bibee

• Tuesday: LHP Noah Cameron vs. RHP Gavin Williams

• Wednesday: LHP Cole Ragans vs. LHP Joey Cantillo

Bibee is off to a decent start to his season with a 4.00 ERA in nine innings over two starts. He’s striking guys out, but also walking too many. Williams is off to a great ERA start, but he has a 20.0 percent walk rate in 12 innings, so that could be problematic. And Cantillo has been solid, but also hasn’t gone deep into games. I honestly have no idea how this matchup will look. The Royals offense now takes pitches and works counts, so pitchers who struggle to throw strikes will at least be up against a roadblock, but the pitching has been excellent for Cleveland.

And then they’ll come home to a still bad, but better White Sox team that just swept the Blue Jays. Their pitching is suspect at best, but they do at least have some better arms in the bullpen. The starting pitching was something I thought would be a problem, and it has. The bullpen hasn’t been good at all. I’m also not completely sure they can hit, but they do have some legitimate power. Munetaka Murakami has hit some home runs. Colson Montgomery has too. I think there are others who can hit the ball over the wall. They’re just inconsistent. But sometimes that inconsistency skews positive for them, so this isn’t the gimme series it once was.

A little note: I’ll be in and out today, so I may not get to the comments as much as usual.