Weekend in Review: Royals Patience, a Series Win, Player of the Week and What's Up Next

The Royals played a wild series against a first place club and came out on top more than they didn't, which you'll take every time.

I can’t tell you if the Royals are going to make the playoffs, and I can’t tell you if they’re going to make any noise if they do. But I can tell you that nobody will want to play them in October. They showed once again that they are literally never out of any game. I’ll get to the recaps, of course, but boy are they a fun team to watch, particularly when the bottom of the lineup is getting into the action. They basically spent the weekend giving the Mariners nightmare fuel, starting with their massive comeback on Friday and ending with a comeback bid that fell just short yesterday. All in all, the Royals have shown all season long that they’re both resilient and relentless.

Those are great traits to have. It’s a long season and things aren’t going to go well for you all the time. It feels like they’re playing well enough now to say that they’re at least out of their slide that saw them lose seven of nine, but the truth is that they’re going to go through it again. I’ve heard Josh Vernier say this a few times on the postgame show, and I agree; it’s a good thing that they’ve got this experience to fall back on. That 2015 Royals team knew that nothing could keep them down because they’d gotten up before. This team didn’t know that two months ago, but time and time again, they’ve been hit in the mouth and gotten up and hit harder. Now they’ve got seven games left in this 26-game stretch (that became a 25-game stretch). I wanted 13-13 and they’re 10-8. Win three games this week and I find myself happy. Win two and I’m still probably fine. Win four? I’m going to be insufferable.

Royals Are Patient Even When Nobody Wants That

While JJ Picollo has proven to be very different from his predecessor in many ways, he has carried some of the loyalty we saw from Dayton Moore with him. Loyalty, on its own, is not inherently bad. Sometimes it can be detrimental in baseball. I’d argue that Picollo has struck the balance much better than Moore did, and you can see that in some of the moves over the past couple of seasons. But, still, he is not always as quick to make moves as we might like.

In some ways, that patience hasn’t paid off in 2024. But in other ways it has. I think there are three examples of the patience paying off so far, and maybe even a fourth, I guess as I think about it. But I want to talk about three veterans who many were ready to move on from, myself included. They are Nick Anderson, Hunter Renfroe and Will Smith. All of them have had rough starts to the season, but whether it’s just a few games, a little more than a few but still not a lot or more than a month’s worth, they’ve all turned things around in a way that might make them big parts of the Royals fortunes for this season.

Let’s start with Anderson. I mentioned this last week, but he threw the other day in the 8-5 loss to Cleveland and I noticed that it was different. He was relying on his four-seamer and curve over his sinker and the four-seamer was popping. He came back on Friday night and did a lot of the same things. The velocity was there. The spin was there. It was like watching a different pitcher. And then he pitched again yesterday and threw another scoreless inning with a strikeout and no walks. He was a little heavier on the curve, but the fastball velocity remained and he didn’t even throw a sinker.

Now in his last three outings, Anderson hasn’t allowed a run and has five strikeouts with no walks. Go back to his first two years in the big leagues, 2019 and 2020, and he combined to throw 81.1 innings with a 2.77 ERA and 136 strikeouts against 21 walks with 57 hits allowed. Compare that with what he did to start this year - 4.22 ERA, 13 strikeouts, 12 walks, 21.1 innings, 26 hits - and it’s like he’s a different pitcher. Well, he’s gone back to what worked for him back in his best days and he’s looked dominant. It’s three outings, but the early returns are excellent.

His bullpen mate, Smith, had an even worse start to the year. He’s still running out there with a 5.57 ERA for the season, but after he gave up four runs in an inning against Baltimore on April 19, he’s been a different guy. After facing and retiring one hitter yesterday, Smith has pitched in 16 games and thrown 14 innings with seven hits allowed eight strikeouts and three walks and has a 1.29 ERA. His fastball velocity appears to be pretty much back to what it was in the past and his slider has been pretty impressive. I don’t think I’d go as far as to put him back in the closer’s role, but he’s earned the extra opportunities.

And finally, Renfroe has turned things around in a big way. I’ve mentioned this before, but he sort of quietly has steadied his season. He needs to get legitimately hot to boost his season numbers, but he’s up to .201/.274/.367 now, which shows just how bad he was that those numbers represent an improvement. Still, he hit his low point of the season on May 11 when he was sitting with an OPS of .466. Since then, he’s hitting .306/.377/.565 with three homers and 13 RBIs, but maybe more impressively, just a 14.5 percent strikeout rate. Yes, it’s an arbitrary endpoint, but that’s 19 games over nearly a month of action. You have to start somewhere.

So I need to remind myself that sometimes patience is a good virtue to have. I’m not blessed with much of it, but the Royals are and it’s paid off for them with those three. The fourth is Nelson Velazquez, who seems to be in much more of a groove as well, but I wanted to focus on the veterans for now.

The Games

Friday - Royals 10, Mariners 9: Game of the Year?

Woo boy. This one was a doozy and a half. It started in about the worst way possible. Daniel Lynch IV was a disaster, almost from the start. He alternated balls and foul balls with the first batter, JP Crawford, and then got him to fly out on a really nice play by MJ Melendez in left field to start the game. But then he hit Dylan Moore, gave up a hit to Julio Rodriguez and hit Ty France. He was so close to getting out of it after a fly ball from Cal Raleigh had the Mariners with two outs, but he couldn’t put away Mitch Garver with two strikes and walked in a run.

Then it got ugly. Mitch Haniger doubled in all three runners on base. Victor Robles doubled in Haniger. Ryan Bliss hit his first big league home run on a four-seam fastball that was very hittable. He got Crawford for a second time, but it was far too late. The Mariners had scored seven and put the game away before the Royals even came to bat. And it sure did seem that way. Bryce Miller gave up a hit to Bobby Witt Jr. in the first, but retired the other nine batters through three. And then Lynch gave up an eighth run in the fourth inning.

But this the Royals we’re talking about. I actually figured they’d mount a comeback, but the deficit was too big to really matter. In the bottom of the fourth, Witt led off with an infield single. Vinnie Pasquantino walked, but Salvador Perez grounded out to put runners on second and third with one out. Velazquez picked up an infield single to score Witt and there were runners on first and third for Melendez.

That was loud. It’s funny because when the Mariners were scoring in the first, I actually did think to myself that I’ll bet Melendez homers and people call it garbage time and that it doesn’t matter. Sure enough, I saw a fair amount of that on social media. It’s mostly because social media sucks, but still. When this ball went out, I started to think about it and realized it’s 8-4 in the fourth. The Royals certainly are capable of overcoming a four-run deficit with five chances left.

The Mariners got one of the four back in the top of the sixth against Chris Stratton in his second inning of work, but the offense went to work again. Pasquantino singled and Perez walked. Then Velazquez walked to load the bases. Melendez grounded out to give the Royals the run back they surrendered in the top half and Renfroe hit a soft single to center that scored two more. Suddenly, that 8-0 deficit was cut to 9-7.

And it stayed that way until the bottom of the ninth due to some nice work from Will Klein and Anderson. And boy was the bottom of the ninth special. Nick Loftin had come in for Adam Frazier when the Mariners went to a lefty, so he was in his second plate appearance of the ninth and went to work. He ended up taking two very tough splitters for balls three and four before laying off a four-seamer to work the leadoff walk. Garrett Hampson, who is living right, hit a squibber to third that Josh Rojas threw away to put runners on second and third with nobody out. You can believe me or not, but that was the moment I knew they weren’t only going to extend the game, but they were going to win.

Maikel Garcia drove in a run with a groundout to make it 9-8 and then Witt did what superstars do.

He was home to third in 10.98 seconds, which is just stupid. It’s the second-fastest time on a triple this season. It was such a clutch hit with two strikes on him. Yes, Stanek hung the splitter, but Witt still had to do something with it. After a couple missed chances to extend a game on the last road trip, that was incredible to see. The Mariners predictably walked both Pasquantino and Perez and it was Velazquez’s time to be the hero.

Royals win. Wow. Just amazing.

Saturday - Royals 8, Mariners 4: A Workman-like Win

Compared to the two games around it, this one felt like a breeze. The Mariners took an early lead with a leadoff home run on the first pitch of the game, but Alec Marsh really settled down after that and ended up striking out six of the next eight batters. I was curious to see how he’d pitch in this one because his previous few starts had seen an adjustment from the league. Each of his last three starts had set a new season-low in swing percentage by his opponents.

The Mariners either just didn’t get the memo or they didn’t care or Marsh had adjusted. They did swing and 20 of his 41 four-seam fastballs and didn’t miss any of them, so maybe it was something Marsh was doing. I will say that he was really in the zone.

That’s the chart of a guy who knows he has good stuff and is tired of hitters just not swinging at anything. To be honest, it kind of hurt him once the Mariners adjusted, but it got him through the first time through the order pretty well. He got hit a bit after the lineup turned over, but the bullpen countered with four hitless innings that sealed the deal as the offense continued to do work.

This newsletter is long anyway, and this game was just sort of anticlimactic, so I’m not going to spend a ton more time on it, but I want to point out two things. The first is Adam Frazier’s at bat in the second inning after the Royals had tied the game in the bottom of the first. He took a called strike that was borderline at best for strike one. Then he took a changeup for a ball. Then he hit six consecutive foul balls before he finally got a pitch to hit. Here’s the chart for the plate appearance:

And here’s the result.

Yeah, I’d say that works. I didn’t realize this, but he’s hitting .309/.367/.491 now since his low water mark in early May. He’s not playing every day, so the Royals are putting him in a spot to succeed, but that more than works.

And the other thing is something good teams do. The Mariners scored two runs in the fifth inning to take a lead. The Royals countered with three. The Mariners scored one in the sixth to get back to within one. The Royals countered with two. They are doing the things we would lament that other teams did to the Royals. And they seem to do it nearly every night. The way they go about their business is impressive and the fact that they made an 8-4 win ho hum kind of shows that.

Sunday - Mariners 6, Royals 5: Not Quite Enough

The finish in this one is going to cloud the start, but this was a heck of a pitcher’s duel before the offenses got going late. George Kirby was outstanding, and I thought Matt Quatro put it best in his presser. He said that Kirby throws a bunch of strikes with elite stuff, and if he’s on, it’s tough to get much going. He’s right. You can’t try to outlast him because he’s just pounding the zone. If you’re not aggressive, he’s going to get through innings on 8-10 pitches. If you are aggressive, he might get through innings on 8-10 pitches. He’s a good pitcher and I think there’s a very bright future for him.

Cole Ragans was electric, though. He suffered the same fate as Marsh with a leadoff home run allowed to Crawford, but he also ended up striking out six of the next eight hitters. The difference is that he didn’t hit a wall like Marsh did. He ended up with one run allowed over six innings with nine strikeouts and one walk. I’m going to get into a bit of what he did yesterday, but I want to show his season stats first because I think he’s being a bit overlooked.

14 GS
79.0 IP
66 H
98 K (30.2%)
25 BB (7.7%)
3.08 ERA
2.30 FIP

He’s had two bad starts, and they were really bad, but even with that, he’s been everything the Royals had hoped he would be as their ace and maybe even a little bit more. He threw 107 pitches in his six innings, which was partially not his doing, and got 57 swings and 22 whiffs. That’s a bonkers percentage. His four-seamer was actually not great at getting the whiffs, but his changeup was WORKING. He threw 31 of them, got swings on 17 and whiffs on 11. No, that’s not a typo. They only put two changeups in play against him all game. His slider was nasty too with five whiffs on nine swings. All in all, he was getting tons of chase and tons of miss.

He was hurt by the umpiring, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. He had two different third strikes not called, which would have actually made him the second pitcher in Royals history to strike out 100 batters in his first 14 starts of a season. Zack Greinke in 2009 is the other, if you were wondering. The two missed calls ended up costing him 10 total pitches. You wonder a little if maybe he pitches the seventh with 97 pitches through six. I’d guess maybe not, but I suppose we’ll never know. And Will Klein did pitch the seventh and was rough, catching way too much of the middle of the plate.

With the score 3-1 heading into the bottom of the ninth, the Mariners turned to Mike Baumann after they’d used their closer in the eighth and he’s been dealing with a back issue. So Baumann had the task of facing Pasquantino and Perez before getting Loftin and maybe Melendez. He struck out both Pasquantino and Perez, though strike three to Pasquantino could have easily been ball four. It was borderline, so I don’t think it was quite as egregious as many made it out to be, but that came up big. Because after Loftin doubled for his first extra base hit of the year, Melendez was up in a big spot.

Whoa. That was mauled. And this bat flip.

Oh my.

Unfortunately, James McArthur just couldn’t get through the 10th inning. I’ve been a big supporter of his, but he just can’t seem to put hitters away. Admittedly, he did get a check swing that sure looked like the hitter went, but the call didn’t go his way and he sort of crumbled after that. I think McArthur is somewhere between a solid and a very good big league relievers, but maybe it’s time to try Anderson in that spot with how he’s going now.

It’s too bad, too, because the Royals countered with a big home run from Renfroe in the bottom half of the inning

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You never know if the events would unfold the same way, but so many close calls throughout the late innings went against the Royals. If any had gone for them, we’d probably be talking about a sweep. Still, I think we far too often are our own team-centric, which I understand. We think of things in a way of if the Royals won, it’s because they were great. If they lost, it’s because they did something stupid. Sometimes the other team wins as much as your team lost and I think the Mariners just won a game.

Player of the Week

The Royals had a 3-2 week since they had an off day and a rainout, but even with only five games played, they had a ton of candidates for this. Of course, there’s Witt, who hit .391/.417/.739 with four runs and five RBIs. There’s also Loftin, who hit .417/.533/.500 with a big double in yesterday’s game. But, and I didn’t expect I’d say this at any point this season with the way he started, Renfroe gets the love this week. He hit .412/.444/.882 with two homers, two doubles and six runs batted in. It was a big week for him as he looks like maybe he’s getting back on track.

This Week’s Action

It doesn’t get easier for the Royals. They are still at home, but they’ll welcome in the New York Yankees, who are just percentage points off from the best record in all of baseball. They did lose two of three to the Dodgers, but they have the best run differential in baseball and are pretty much an incredible team. They have some fo the biggest bats in baseball with Aaron Judge and Juan Soto and they have a nice supporting cast, though their lineup isn’t as deep as you’d expect. Their rotation has been outstanding, even with Clarke Schmidt out. Their bullpen is excellent. They also play great defense. The only thing they don’t do well is run the bases, but when you hit like they do, it matters a bit less.

Here are the projected matchups:

• Monday: Seth Lugo vs. Carlos Rodon

• Tuesday: Brady Singer vs. Marcus Stroman

• Wednesday: Opener + Daniel Lynch IV vs. Cody Poteet

• Thursday: Alec Marsh vs. Nestor Cortes

It’s nice that the Royals can run out some starting pitching that you can at least hope keeps up with a team like the Yankees. It’s a big test for every pitcher out there to have to get through the big bats, so we’ll see how they fare. I think there’s also a bit of a break that the Opener/Lynch game comes against the Yankees fill-in starter, though Poteet has a 1.72 ERA in three starts, so that’s no guarantee either. Even though they’re at home, a split would be just fine.

After the Yankees, the Royals head to LA to take on the Dodgers, who have the fifth-best record in baseball (the Royals are sixth). Like the Yankees, they do pretty much everything well and are also not quite as deep in the lineup as you’d expect with some of the names they have. Still, that’s an incredibly difficult series too, but the rotation does set up well with Cole Ragans, Lugo and Singer to go against Bobby Miller, Gavin Stone and Tyler Glasnow. It’s still tough, though.

One quick programming note. This series against the Yankees that starts tonight is big, but I may not have anything tomorrow. My wife’s birthday is today and she puts up with a whole lot because of what I do with the Royals during the season, but today is her night, so if I don’t have enough of a clue of what happened in tonight’s game, there may not be a newsletter tomorrow. That said, her biggest birthday wish is that you become a paid subscriber to Inside the Crown, if you haven’t already.