Weekend in Review: Up and Down Offense, Series Wins and More

The Royals are a winning team for the first time in way too long, and there's reason for hope.

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The last time a newsletter came out while the Royals were at least at .500 was April 21, 2022. the only reason it was that late in the season is that the season started a week late due to the lockout. And here we are on April 8, 2024 and we’re back. The Royals had to take at least three of four from the White Sox for me to take them seriously and they did what they needed to do. Obviously things change throughout the season, so that’s not to say that I wouldn’t take them seriously later. If, say, they handled the Astros and Mets this week and went 4-2, I’d probably be back on board, but for a team that has a chance to be in a tight division race, we’ll take it series-by-series.

The starting rotation continues to go absolutely nuts. This stat from the great Nick Kappel is just crazy for me to fathom.

I know they’ve been great. I know they’re doing things beyond even the wildest of expectations that the front office and coaching staff had. But to do something no other team had ever done is bonkers. It’s easy to wonder how much the White Sox played into it, and they absolutely did because that offense might be all-time bad, especially without Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert Jr., but they did it against the Twins and Orioles too. Different seasons, sure, but the Orioles were seventh in runs per game last year and the Twins were 10th. Those are not bad offenses. The weather has also helped, but these starters are for real.

I know there will be some who look at that and will respond with, “And they’re only 6-4?” And my answer is that yeah, it’s disappointing they haven’t won more games, but this is a team that went 56-106. I know it’s a different year and expectations aren’t based on that, but I think it’s okay to celebrate a victory even when it isn’t leading to as much as you might expect.

The Bats Are a Little Confusing

The Royals offense scored exactly one run in each of the first two games. They’ve scored 42 runs in eight games since, which is 5.3 per game. But exactly half of the runs have come in two of those eight games. So what do we make of this Royals offense? Are they good? Bad? Somewhere in between? If you’ve been reading me for any length of time, you know the answer is probably that it’s somewhere in between, but we don’t just settle for that around here.

First let’s look at the batted ball quality. The Royals lead baseball with an average exit velocity of 90.8 MPH. They hit the ball hard when they hit it. They have three more barrels than anyone, which means they have three more than the Dodgers. Their barrel percentage of 11.5 percent is highest in the majors. And their hard-hit rate is sixth-highest in the majors. None of that means an offense is good, but as I said last year, you’d rather hit the ball hard than soft.

But what I also wrote about last year when the Royals were hitting the ball hard and not scoring is that if you’re rarely making contact, the contact a team does make means very little. The Royals could do a better job, but they’re not horrible. Their contact rate is middle of the pack. They do swing at pitches outside the zone way too much, but that’s nothing new for this team. So why are they averaging 2.9 runs per game outside of the outlier big games and 3.2 when you remove the two highs and the two lows?

It’s kind of luck and bad sequencing. They have two regions in the lineup that have struggled with runners in scoring position and they happen to be in just the worst possible areas. The first is their two and three hitters. “But Bobby Witt Jr. hits second?!?!” Yes, he does. He’s also 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position and 1 for 10 with men on base. He’s 13 for 30 with nobody on. Vinnie Pasquantino has struggled all year. He’s 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position and 2 for 16 with men on. But is that likely to continue? I’d argue not.

In his career with runners in scoring position, Witt has hit .306/.330/.513 before this year and .279/.319/.471 with runners on. Pasquantino, before the slow start this year, is a career .260/.385/.404 hitter with runners in scoring position. He hit .292/.407/.458 in those situations last year. With men on, he’s a career .274/.367/.425 hitter before this year. After 10 games, track record matters a lot more than a very small handful of plate appearances. Those two have proven in the past they’ll be fine.

My concern does come from the bottom of the middle (or the top of the bottom) of the lineup. Maybe it’s already flipping some, but Hunter Renfroe and Adam Frazier in the six and seven spots has been trouble with Salvador Perez and MJ Melendez on in front of them a lot. Renfroe did finally hit his first home run of the season yesterday, but neither he or Frazier have really taken advantage of opportunities. I’m not sure if that will turn around or not, but I do think that if it doesn’t, the Royals will work to reconfigure the lineup some (they have already with Velazquez hitting about Renfroe recently) or change out the pieces.

And in some ways, even with the highs and lows, you look at the big picture and it already works. The Royals rank 11th in baseball in wRC+ at 110. Taht’s really good. They’re 12th in average, fifth in slugging percentage, second in isolated slugging percentage. They run the bases well. They’re bottom half of the league in strikeouts. The only thing they haven’t done well, relative to the league, is walk, but that’s nothing new. It doesn’t hurt as bad when you hit for power and they’re second in baseball in home runs. I think the offense is fine and has a chance to start scoring runs if their main cogs actually start driving them in.

Breaking Down the Games

Friday - Royals 2, White Sox 1

The White Sox started a guy who I had hoped the Royals would go after in Erick Fedde. He went to South Korea for a year, pitched extremely well, changed some things and got himself two years and $15 million. In his first start against the Tigers, he showed some good and some bad, striking out seven in 4.2 innings but allowing two solo home runs and throwing 96 pitches. On Friday, I thought he was better than the line might indicate. He struck out four and walked two with six hits allowed in five innings and gave up just the one run.

What I really liked was the Royals approach against him. He throw more than half his pitches outside the zone and Royals hitters only offered at 13 percent of the non-strikes. That’s the lowest total of the year for them against any starting pitcher. Is that a reflection of Fedde’s stuff? Maybe. His sinker was okay with maybe more velocity than expected, but not a ton of movement. His splitter was the Royals chased the most, but they still only offered up on 21 percent of those. All in all, he just couldn’t get the chases he’d need to be more successful and ended up throwing 91 pitches in five innings with just three whiffs.

That allowed the Royals to get into the White Sox bullpen and, in those cases, you know they’re eventually going to be able to get something done against someone who comes out. In this case, it was Michael Kopech, who I think makes so much more sense as a reliever given his struggles in the rotation. Kopech showed his plus plus stuff out of the bullpen, but ultimately fell victim to walking Salvador Perez, which is just a bad idea for any pitcher.

Dairon Blanco pinch ran, stole second and then MJ Melendez had a great plate appearance against a steady diet of four-seam fastballs. If Kopech mixes in a single slider, things might be different, but he didn’t and it wasn’t. Melendez singled to give the Royals a 2-1 lead and then led to what I think might be one of the more defining moments for Matt Quatraro as manager in his season and a week and a half.

I’ll come back to Brady Singer and another outstanding start in a minute, but after Chris Stratton worked a scoreless eighth, the ninth belonged to Will Smith in basically the exact situation I didn’t want to see him in, against the middle of their lineup. He struck out Yoan Moncada but he gave up a double to Robert that turned out costly for the White Sox since he got hurt on it. Then he walked Kevin Pillar. Here’s where the defining moment happened. Quatraro had seen enough. He went to James McArthur, who closed it out on two pitches, getting a double play and that was that.

I don’t want to read too much into that situation because it made perfect sense, but that told me that Q was going to give Smith one more shot, but he wasn’t going to get a long shot. And when he blew it, he was done. I wouldn’t have given him that chance, but I appreciate that Quatraro was ready to move and then did move.

Back to Singer, boy was he good. He gave up just a run on two hits in 6.1 innings and threw only 72 pitches. He again was heavy with his slider, throwing it 30 times with his sinker 21 times and his new four-seamer 17 times. He got three swings and misses on it, but you can see below how that and the sinker can play off each other so well.

He’s got the sinker for the bottom of the zone and the four-seamer for the top. The two pitches, when they’re both working, allow him to miss in the middle a little bit more. One of his issues last year was command and missing in a bad spot with his sinker. With a different movement profile, he can get away with mistakes a lot more than he could in the past. That’s the value of another pitch even if it doesn’t get a single out. I really liked what I saw out of him in this one and the Royals walked away with a win to get back to .500 for the first time in nearly two years.

Saturday - Royals 3, White Sox 0

This was kind of a similar game to Friday night with not a ton of scoring. The wind was a little crazy and you got the feeling pretty early there wouldn’t be much offense. Chris Flexen pitched for the White Sox. He’s the type of pitcher who you know you can hit, but it just doesn’t always work with a guy like him. When he locates, he’ll have his occasional good games. He’s the exact pitcher who will have like six good starts a year out of 25-30 and people will point to those starts as to why you don’t have to throw hard to be good.

Sure it’s possible, but most nights aren’t like Saturday night for Flexen. He was in or around the zone all night, gave up some hard-hit balls but nothing really happened for the Royals offense against him. Some of that goes back to the sequencing issue they’re having, which I do think gets worked out over time, but some of it is just the random variations during a typical baseball season.

The Royals did, however, eventually get to him. Salvador Perez singled on a ball to the wall (that absolutely should have been a double, he was watching it, then did not exactly book it down the line). Next up was Melendez, who was an absolute monster all series.

Okay, let’s discuss the elephant in the room. That ball was not a home run, though it was called one. I don’t know how in the world the White Sox didn’t ask for a review. Maybe I was way off in calling for Pedro Grifol as manager. But either way, it was another missile off the bat of Melendez as he’s been hot to start the season after being hot to end last year. The Royals need at least three bats they can count on every day with two or three others they can hope to cycle in day to day. Melendez has the talent to be one of those three.

The Royals scored another after getting a bloop single from Maikel Garcia to score a third and that was enough for the bullpen. In this one, Nick Anderson was entrusted with the eighth and Stratton with the ninth. Both came out of it without allowing a run. But they got to that point with another just absolutely brilliant start by a member of their rotation.

Michael Wacha was just so freaking good. He had everything working, but I think his four-seamer was what surprised me a little bit. He threw 34 of them and his velocity was up a touch, but the White Sox just didn’t see it coming. I don’t know if it jumped on them a bit more than expected because it was coming in harder or if it was just not the pitch they were looking for, but they took 11 of them for strikes. He also used it so well to set up other pitches. Twice against Andrew Vaughn, he threw one with two strikes that was way up that set up another one down.

In the fourth inning, he was able to get the strikeout with it. In the seventh, he got a foul ball, but it goes back to one of the things I’m looking for this season and it’s competitive pitches. The Royals last season threw way too many pitches that were just a complete waste of time. I haven’t seen that this season. Wacha ended up with eight strikeouts, one walk and just three hits allowed. I’m not sure if he’d have thrown seven shutout innings against a better offense, but I’m not sure he wouldn’t have. This was the game that got them three in a row and that’s what I needed to see from them.

Sunday - Royals 5, White Sox 3

And yet, I got greedy. After getting the first three, I could have been satisfied with three of four even if they had lost yesterday. And I would have been. But boy did I want that sweep. The problem for the Royals is that Garrett Crochet was going for the White Sox and he was very good for them in his first two starts and came out in this one looking every bit the part of an ace. I was skeptical (and still am) of him in the rotation because of injury issues, but he’s a big guy and looks like he can handle starting.

He has a fastball that sits 96-97 and can touch more. He has a slider that is just absolutely nasty. And I liked his cutter. I wonder if he shouldn’t throw more of them after seeing it yesterday. He did a great job on Royals hitters, who just couldn’t quite get it going against him. It wasn’t that they weren’t making solid contact. In the first, they had two hard-hit balls. They were hitless through four with some solid contact, but he got swings and misses when he needed them.

Then in the fifth, they finally broke through. A Nelson Velazquez single started things and then Hunter Renfroe finally came through.

Boy did he need THAT!

Freddy Fermin followed with a soft double, but Garrett Hampson and Garcia couldn’t get him home to tie the game, but the Royals were within one, and I had the feeling that if they could get one or two off Crochet and hold the White Sox down to the three runs that Alec Marsh (I’ll get to him) gave up, they could find a way to win against the White Sox bullpen. I’m not going to take too much credit given how the first three games of the series went, but, yep, that’s exactly what happened.

The White Sox went to the Deivi Garcia well again, and he started his outing against Velazquez, just like Thursday night. And just like Thursday night, Velazquez started things off with a walk. Unlike Thursday, Melendez got to face Garcia and he connected.

Ironically, the White Sox asked for a challenge on this one and not Saturday’s, but in the end, both were home runs. Both gave the Royals a lead they wouldn’t give up. And both showed there’s a difference between the two teams this season that wasn’t there last season. Plus, just look at the emotion. This team has some juice.

That’s the reaction for a home run on April 7 against a team destined to lose 105+ games. This team is feeling it right now.

Will Smith got the eighth with a 5-3 lead, and it was the part of the lineup that I wanted him to get (the bottom), but a close game in the eighth is one that I probably wouldn’t have used him in yet. He gave up a single to lead off the inning on a weakly hit ball by Lenyn Sosa, but got the next three outs with no issues. His fastball velocity remains a problem, though, and he hardly even went to his slider, throwing just two of them. I don’t know what to make of his pitch mix, but there’s something not right.

McArthur was good in the ninth, even if he gave up a hit and a walk to pick up his second save. It sure seems like he’s the closest thing the Royals have to a closer now, so that’s at least interesting.

Alec Marsh didn’t look great in his second start and might have paid even more dearly against a better club. He only walked one, and a lot of that came because he basically wasn’t going to give in to a walk when he got to three balls, but his command just wasn’t there in this one. You might recall in his start against Baltimore there was a big hole in the middle of the plate. He filled up the middle of the plate in this one.

There are certainly worse things than throwing strikes to a bad team, but it was the number of times he missed the target that had me realizing he didn’t really have it early. And if not for Yoan Moncada either not being 100 percent or just being lazy and not running out a double in the first, he’d have given up at least one more run. Credit to him to limit the damage as much as he did, but he wasn’t great. And that’s okay!

Fifth starters are inherently the worst a rotation has to offer. To have someone like Marsh who actually has the upside to do what he did earlier in the week in Baltimore is worth it. And I think this start showed some real growth for him. Last year, he may have walked five and imploded. This year, the damage was limited. Yes, Angel Zerpa bailed him out a bit in the fifth, but he didn’t have much and he almost made it through five. In the end, it was the worst start of the season for the Royals, but 4.2 innings and three runs last year would have almost been cause for celebration. I’m not convinced Marsh keeps the job all year, but I’m not going to throw in the towel because of this one game, especially when the Royals got the sweep with it.

Player of the Week

I think Witt will win this award more often than anyone else, but this week, the honor goes to Melendez, who probably didn’t have the absolute best numbers of any Roayls hitter, but he did put up maybe the most important at bats of the whole week. In all, he hit .286/.347/.810 with two doubles, three home runs and seven runs batted in. He had the go ahead RBIs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and punctuated the eight-run inning on Thursday with a two-run homer. He’s also now hitting .279/.359/.516 with 16 doubles, 3 triples and 13 home runs in 290 plate appearances. That’s a 650 plate appearance pace of 36 doubles, 7 triples and 29 home runs. That, friends, will play.

The Week Ahead

After a day off today, the Royals will finish their homestand with three against the Astros, who have had a rough start to their season. You might remember that the Royals made life very difficult for the Astros last year by winning five of six in September as they ended the year tied with the Rangers at 90 wins. It’s fair to say the Royals are catching the Astros at a good time with their bullpen still sorting some things out. The matchups are:

• Cole Ragans vs. Cristian Javier

• Seth Lugo vs. Hunter Brown

• Brady Singer vs. J.P. France

At this point, you feel confident in any Royals starter against anyone else, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a tough outing here and there. The Astros offense is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s not as deep as it once was. Would it surprise me if regression hits for both teams? Absolutely not. But it also wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the Royals continued to pitch extremely well and took two of three. If they can get the road trip at 8-5, they’ll definitely be feeling good about themselves.

Because after the homestand, they head to Queens to face the Mets who are both not good but also are better than they’ve played to start the year. The Mets offense just hasn’t hit, but I have a hard time looking at Brandon Nimmo, Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso, Francisco Alvarez and others and believing they won’t hit, at least occasionally. Their rotation is a question mark, but they have Edwin Diaz back in the bullpen and some good arms. I’m not saying the Royals shouldn’t beat them if they believe they’re good. I’m just saying the Mets are better on paper than they’ve played.