Weekend in Review: Tough Roster Calls, A Split and the Week Ahead

The Royals rocked the Cardinals early on Friday, couldn't quite come back on Saturday and then had a bizarre Sunday off day.

I was fortunate enough to watch the first couple of innings of Friday night’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals right in the heart of Cardinals country. Well, maybe not quite. I wasn’t in St. Louis, but I was in Springfield driving through on my way for a weekend in Branson. And let me tell you, friends, watching the Royals walk three and hit a batter in the first without giving up a run and then scoring nine runs in the first two innings while watching a restaurant full of angry patrons was strangely satisfying. Maybe it wasn’t so strange, but whatever it was, it was a lot of fun. Now, I’m glad I wasn’t there on Saturday, but I’ll still continue to enjoy that experience.

The weird day off on Sunday was one of the issues with the new schedule where everybody plays everybody. From what I understand, the Royals and Cardinals series in St. Louis was supposed to be played on a Tuesday and a Wednesday. The issue was that the Monday before it was Memorial Day and the Cardinals wanted the Memorial Day gate. So they moved the Wednesday game to Monday and the result was the Royals having back-to-back days off. Fast forward to this and the Royals agreed to the move by giving them a weekend gate against the Cardinals. The problem is that a weekend series is three days and a four-game home-and-home season series is only two games on the back end. And thus, no game yesterday, which was just odd.

Making Roster Decisions Hard

On the off-day, the Royals made a move that kind of surprised me. They reinstated Drew Waters from the bereavement list, which wasn’t a surprise. The corresponding move was optioning Edward Olivares to AAA. That caught me off guard a bit. But then I started thinking about it and I guess it shouldn’t have. This is a bit of a domino effect here, but with Waters going on the bereavement list, the Royals called up Nelson Velazquez. It would have been easy to just send Velazquez back, but then he went and hit two homers in two games with three hits.

I don’t think it would have been a huge issue or anything had they sent him back to AAA, but it’s also tough to do that and when he was in the leadoff spot on Saturday after Garcia’s injury, I kind of had a hunch he wasn’t going back to the minors just yet. So then you look around. Samad Taylor could easily go to AAA, but he’s the only guy on the roster who can play non-first base infield and outfield. Plus, he’s already not playing very often. Dairon Blanco could go too, but he’s worked well as an extra outfielder. Adding Waters back to a group of guys who need to be playing every day makes it tough.

They could have sent MJ Melendez down if this was a month ago, but he’s continued his second-half run. He’s hitting .283/.336/.535 in 107 plate appearances. A guy with his pedigree playing like that can’t be sent down. You want to talk about sending the wrong message? That’s it completely. How about Kyle Isbel? He’s the best defensive outfielder on the roster and is hitting .323/.328/.500 with a strikeout rate of 18.5 percent in his last 18 games. I think the lack of walks could lead to a downturn, but it’s tough to send him down too.

So then what you’re left with is Olivares. He’s obviously a poor defender and has hit just .263/.311/.368 since the break. He and Velazquez share a lot of the same roles on a team, but Velazquez has a carrying tool, his power, that Olivares simply doesn’t have. This is why I was so surprised when the Royals didn’t trade Olivares for basically whatever decent return they could have gotten for him. I know teams were interested in him and I think they made a mistake in not taking a bit less than full value, but there are also worse things than having depth.

These guys making it tough for the Royals to option them is a trend, at least on the offense, that we’ve been seeing lately. Many of the decisions the Royals have had to make this year were pretty easy. Franmil Reyes wasn’t working. Send him down and then DFA him. Hunter Dozier wasn’t working. DFA him. Jackie Bradley Jr. had served his value and he was no longer needed. DFA him. Nate Eaton struggled so much to start the year. Option him. You get the idea. Now the decisions are getting tougher and that’s a good thing for this team. I hope there are more very difficult decisions soon, and there should be, because I still think Tyler Gentry needs a shot. I just don’t know where it comes from.

Some Weekend Observations

Angel Zerpa Needs Work

The Royals promoted Angel Zerpa in 2021 as a 21-year-old who had pitched one game in AAA. He came up and threw five innings with no earned runs and just one walk. His mid-90s fastball and an ability to both throw strikes and throw them fearlessly was something that intrigued the organization and began intriguing fans. He pitched well in limited action in the big leagues last year and hurt himself covering first base. It cost him about a month and a half. He came back as a reliever and threw 6.2 hitless innings but with four walks and no strikeouts.

Move to this year and he missed the first two and a half months of the season. He pitched well on a rehab assignment in AA before ending up in AAA where he wasn’t striking batters out and was walking guys. He made his first big league appearance in a two-inning scoreless outing. Since then, he’s thrown 7.1 inning with nine runs on 11 hits allowed and just three strikeouts. I have to say, it doesn’t work.

The command isn’t there anymore. The velocity is fine, but he isn’t getting whiffs on his slider and his fastball just seems more hittable. He wasn’t helped by his defense on Friday, but he got hit and allowed the Cardinals to get back into the game. I’m in no way saying that Zerpa isn’t going to figure things out. But what he’s shown right now is a part of killing time until they find guys who can actually be part of the future. He just needs to get back to that attack mode and maybe figure out what’s going on with his slider.

Power on Display

This is a weekend in review, but this goes back a much longer way than this weekend. On Friday, the Royals hit three home runs in the second inning. And they were fun to watch. I mentioned I was surrounded by Cardinals fans, so they were especially fun. It started with some easy power from Velazquez.

Man, that’s an easy swing.

Three batters later, Bobby Witt Jr. continued his amazing resurgence with a bomb to left to drive in three more.

That’s also an easy swing.

I want to take a brief interlude to talk about Witt and his ridiculousness every chance we take. His season line is up to .273/.313/.482. He now has a 112 wRC+. His strikeout rate is below 20 percent. His BABIP isn’t inflated. He has a wOBA of .338 and is still underperforming the xwOBA by 30 points. His defense has been great. He needs to add a few more counting stats, but I have a fact that will blow your mind if and when he gets there, so stay tuned. Oh, and since June 1, which is 265 plate appearances ago, he’s hitting .313/.356/.531 with a 139 wRC+. By fWAR, he’s tied for the 11th most valuable hitter in baseball. This is real.

And then two batters later, Salvador Perez hit his first home run since July 24.

Fast forward to Saturday night with the Royals down 3-0 and Velazquez came up to do it again with a runner on first base.

I really think that’s a swing we’re going to enjoy watching even if it does result in a few more swings and misses than we saw from Olivares.

So that’s four more home runs in two games for the Royals and they’ve been on a rampage (relative for them) since the break. They have 37 in 28 games. That’s tied for 14th in baseball with the Dodgers. It’s more than the Blue Jays, Rays, Yankees, Mets, Orioles and a bunch of other teams. In August, they have 18 of them, which is tied (also with the Dodgers) for ninth in baseball. But it’s not just home run power either.

The Royals isolated slugging percentage (ISO, slugging percentage minus batting average) is .191 as a team since the break. That’s sixth in baseball. They also have 53 doubles and 10 triples. Who would have guessed that consistently putting runners in scoring position would lead to scoring some runs? And, hey, look at that, they’ve scored 133 runs in 28 games which is 11th in both total runs and runs per game in all of baseball. This is one of the more intriguing storylines to me because if the hitters have bought in and can do things that other actually good offenses do, they might just have something.

Ragans Didn’t Have it

For the first time since acquiring him for Aroldis Chapman, Cole Ragans simply didn’t have it on Saturday night. He’s not going to win much walking four guys in five innings, but I appreciated a few things about his outing. He just couldn’t really locate and then it felt like he was punished for them disproportionately. I don’t it actually was out of proportion, but it sort of felt that way. I think he tried to work around it by throwing a lot of changeups.

For the first time as a Royal, he threw more changeups than fastballs. It was a good pitch for him, so I totally get it. His fastball was just not quite there. His slider still worked very well for him with nine whiffs on 14 swings and he got called strikes on his curve. But the fastball just wasn’t there for him, which will happen. That’s a good learning experience for the lefty. And I think there’s a chance that this outing could be one of the more encouraging runs in the big picture because he’s had it easy since joining the organization. The stuff has been there and so has the command. This was the first start it just sort of wasn’t.

But he battled and gave the team a chance to come back. If it wasn’t for some terribly timed double plays, including one to end the game, they actually may have. If he can keep using that slider well and figuring things out if and when his fastball isn’t there, I think Ragans will be just fine. He still got 15 swings and misses on 43 swings and had the Cardinals chasing pitches. He simply needs to be at least a little closer to the zone than he was in order to get even more chases moving forward. I’m still excited to see what he can do in his next start, whether that’s against Seattle on Thursday or the Cubs on Friday afternoon.

The Week Ahead

The Royals are back in action tonight with four games against the Seattle Mariners. It should be a fun showdown series between Witt and Julio Rodriguez, two of the top three prospects in baseball heading into last season. Rodriguez had the better rookie year and got the massive contract, but Witt has been a bit better this year. Any time you can see two of the most talented players in baseball on the same field, it’s a good time to watch some baseball.

The Mariners were sort of in no-man’s land a few weeks ago. They were under .500 as recently as July 19. They were just four games over .500 and in fourth place at the trade deadline. But since falling a game under with a loss to the Twins in mid-July, they’re 16-5 and are just a game and a half behind the Blue Jays for the final Wild Card spot. They’ve done it with a pretty good offense since the break, but their pitching has been the real catalyst. They have a 3.50 ERA in that time, which ranks second-best in baseball. Their team strikeout rate is the best in baseball in the second half and their walk rate is fifth-best. They’re a good and complete team.

And the Royals will see nothing but elite arms. Emerson Hancock, Logan Gilbert, Luis Castillo and George Kirby are the four starters the Royals will face. Hancock is currently the fifth-best prospect in the Mariners system according to Baseball America and sixth-best according to MLB Pipeline. He made the jump from AA and had good results in his first start, though he did walk three and strike out three in five innings against the Padres. As for the rest, expect lots of strikeouts and not many walks, which pretty much fits with the entire team. The Royals will counter with Brady Singer, Jordan Lyles, Alec Marsh and probably Zerpa, though I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if that shifted to Ragans at some point.

After that, they’ll play three 1:20pm CDT games in Chicago in a trip to Wrigley to take on the Cubs. They turned things around before the deadline to become buyers in a way and added one of their former prospects, Jeimer Candelario who has hit like crazy since joining them. They also have Cody Bellinger hitting like an MVP again and some really nice supporting pieces on their offense. They’re expecting to get Marcus Stroman off the IL to round out their pitching staff and have Justin Steele pitching like an ace as well. That said, they’ve had some rotation issues. Maybe the Royals will get to see Jose Cuas with runners on to see if they can do to him what he gave up with the Royals.