Weekend in Review: A Schedule Break, Series Loss, Player of the Week and the Week Ahead

The Royals lost a series to the Dodgers, but it didn't feel like one team was significantly better than the other.

And exhale. The Royals just finished a stretch that was originally 26 games and was shortened to 25 games that I believed would be a defining stretch. The first six were against the Tigers and Rays, neither of whom are over .500, but they’re no slouches. After that, they faced the 2023 AL Central champ, an extremely talented Padres team and then had four straight series against first place teams, which might be a record. Within that stretch, they went 12-13. No, it’s not great, but it’s certainly nothing to be upset about. They went 5-7 in the four series against first place clubs and I’d say the biggest lesson we learned is just how good the Yankees are.

The Royals hung with the other teams. They split two games with Cleveland. They took two of three from Seattle. They lost the weekend series to LA, but did so scoring 10 runs in three games and allowing nine. Moral victories count about as little as anything in the standings, but I don’t think you can walk away from these last few weeks with any thoughts other than that the Royals can hold their own. No, they’re not the best team in baseball, but (and I’ll make this point in a second), with their upcoming schedule and the position they’re in leading up to it, I think I’ve reached the point that I’ll be upset by the result if they don’t make the playoffs.

Their record against winning teams is a constant talking point, and, again, they need to win some games and not just be competitive, but they’ve been very competitive. They lost four of six to Baltimore, but were outscored by two total runs. Again, they’ve split their two with Cleveland. They took two of three from Milwaukee. They split the season series with Seattle. They’re +21 in run differential against the Tigers, who had playoff aspirations coming into the season. They swept the Astros, who last missed an ALCS the year after the Royals led them to a scandal involving trash cans.

I don’t know what the next 89 games will bring, but this is a good team. Are they good enough to win a World Series? I don’t know. Probably not as currently constructed. But they’re good enough to get to the dance, and there, anything can happen.

A Friendlier Schedule Awaits

It’s been a grind for the Royals. While they have only played 29 of 71 games against teams currently .500 or better, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a tough schedule overall. The Blue Jays were supposed to be good. The Rangers won the World Series. I mentioned the three against the Astros and the Padres and the Tigers with their aspirations. They’ve played another 22 against those teams. And we know about their recent run of games. It’s about to turn.

They have 24 games left before the break and nine of them are against teams .500 or better. Five of those nine are against the Red Sox and Cardinals, who have flirted with .500 all season long. The Red Sox have been as many as five over, but since a loss on May 7, they’ve not been more than two over .500 or more than two under .500. The Cardinals are actually currently pretty hot, having been nine under .500 as recently as May 11 and have fought back to .500, but I still wouldn’t categorize them as a “good” team. The only “good” team the Royals play in this next stretch is Cleveland and that’s at home.

But it goes beyond the next 24 games. After the break, they open with 16 straight against teams currently below .500. Then they have a stretch against Boston, St. Louis and Minnesota, but then get six more against sub-.500 teams. They end their season with 12 against sub-.500 teams and a Braves team that may have nothing to play for in the final three games of the season. I mentioned this in a comment on Friday, but things are set up exceptionally well. I’ll break it down here if you didn’t see the comment.

They have 89 games left. Within that are:

• 18 against the worst of the worst (CHW, COL, LAA, MIA, OAK)

• 45 against teams in that vague area around .500 (ARI, BOS, CHC, CIN, DET, HOU, PIT, SFG, STL, TBR, TEX, WSN)

• 26 against good teams (ATL, CLE, MIN, NYY, PHI)

But, of the 45 against teams in the vague area, 28 of those could look much more like the games against the worst teams because they come after the trade deadline. If those teams decide to sell, they could be looking at shells of their current roster. There is a flip side that if they buy, they could look much better, so I’m not really factoring that all into what I’m going to lay out there for records, but keep it in the back of your mind at least.

They’re currently 12-2 against the worst of the worst. Let’s say they should go 13-5 in those games. File that away.

They’re currently 17-11 against teams that they either have to left to face in the middle or teams they’ve already finished their season series with. Let’s say they go 24-21 in those 45 games, which is pretty far off their current record in those types of matchups.

Before you even get to the 26 left against good teams, they’ve added 37 wins to their current 41 banked. I’d argue they need 88 wins to make the postseason, and I’d also argue the six-seed will be better than the five, if you want to start that conversation today. That means they need to 10-16 against the good teams, and keep in mind that three of those could be against a Braves team playing for nothing.

Look, they have work to do. I can’t deny that. Had they gone 15-10 in this stretch, they’d be sitting in amazing shape and we’d probably be a lot less worried about how they’ll play when it matters most. But they’ve done some great work to get to this point. Now they need to clean up and bank some more wins against the teams they should be better than and hope they can make the upgrades they need at and before the deadline.

The Games

Friday - Dodgers 4, Royals 3: The Offense Slumbered and the Bullpen/Defense Lost it Late

This was a game of home runs until Will Smith, the pitcher, took over for the Royals. Then, it got sloppy, and the sloppiness determined the game. But for the first three innings, it was a pretty good pitcher’s duel between Gavin Stone and Cole Ragans. Both pitchers faced just nine batters in three inning with the Royals having the only base runner.

Then in the top of the fourth, the Royals struck as the lineup turned over. A Maikel Garcia single and Vinnie Pasquantino walk gave Salvador Perez a chance to do something it felt like he hadn’t done in awhile - absolutely unload on a baseball.

I know what the data said and maybe it’s right, but if you had told me that went 470 feet, I’d have bought it. That was absolutely crushed. And boy did he need it badly. Perez went 2 for 5 with an RBI on May 21 against the Tigers, but between that day and the day before this one, he was hitting .183/.310/.282 with just three RBIs in 20 games. So to get three on one swing felt pretty big. And it was. For about one inning.

I’d almost prefer to say that Cole Ragans made mistakes like we’ll see from Brady Singer in Sunday’s game, but I honestly don’t think he did. I guess I don’t know what’s better. Still, that’s not to say Ragans was perfect. He did get through seven innings with a pretty reasonable pitch count, but I thought his stuff looked good enough, but not great. Maybe it’s a patient Dodgers lineup, but he just didn’t get the chase he usually gets. His changeup was good, but not great and usually it’s great. I thought he could have used his slider a bit more maybe.

In the bottom of the fifth, he gave up an infield single to Andy Pages, which brought up Miguel Rojas. On the fifth pitch of the at bat, Ragans put a fastball in and off the plate to him, but Rojas got his hands in and hit it 390 feet for a two-run home run. Then two batters later, he put a changeup at the bottom of the zone to Chris Taylor, who was 9 for 91 this year at that point, and it was hit 396 feet for another home run.

Here are the two pitches:

Okay, the changeup was probably two inches too high. I’ll buy that as a slight mistake. On pitches inside to him from lefties, though, he was 8 for 43 prior to that one. I think it’s a good spot and I think Rojas simply beat him, which is both comforting and frustrating. The spot to Taylor, while probably a bit of a mistake was also a pitch in a spot that Taylor hadn’t had a ton fo success. Prior to that home run, he had a .257 average with a .425 slugging percentage in his career against lefties and was 0 for 5 this year there. The previous two pitches to Taylor were cutters up and he wanted to go down to change eye level. I get it. It didn’t work and the game was tied.

But in the eighth, Smith came on in a tie game. He gave up a one-out single to Mookie Betts. It wasn’t hit hard, but it was hit in a good spot. And he made the mistake of trying to pick off Betts in a spot where he should have been focused on the two batters he was really there to face - Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman. It was both a bad throw and a ball that Pasquantino should have been able to either catch or at least block. The error went to Smith. And after he got Ohtani to pop up, he gave up a soft single to Freeman on what I thought was actually a good pitch. So the Dodgers scored four runs on three swings on pitches that I have maybe a slight complaint on one. That’s baseball.

If the offense had stepped up a bit more other than one swing from their captain or Ragans had gotten a changeup an inch or two lower or Pasquantino had stretched another couple of inches or Smith had thrown the ball a couple of inches closer to the bag, we’d be having a different conversation. Again, I’m not sure if it’s frustrating or comforting that it’s just one of those losses that could have gone either way. Regardless, the one thing nobody can take away is that Bobby Witt Jr. made one of the best plays on a popup I’ve seen.

It reminded me a very little bit of the crazy play Alcides Escobar made in Houston in early 2016 when he ranged into center field to make a sliding catch and popped up to throw back to first for a double play. I think Escobar’s was a bit better, but the ability for Witt to turn and find Nick Loftin was crazy. And honestly, Loftin being there and ready was an underrated part of that play too. So at least we have that from this game.

Saturday - Royals 7, Dodgers 2: MJ Melendez Did a Thing

Look, Seth Lugo was solid, but he’s not the story here. The story is very simple. It’s the sixth inning in general, but mainly this at bat from MJ Melendez.

Wow. A lot of things stand out to me, and I’m going to tell you about them before I get to the big one. The first is the obvious of 12 pitches. Treinen had just walked three of the last four hitters, but he struck out Adam Frazier on three pitches right before Melendez came up. He did it on two cutters and a nasty slider. So Melendez was ready for the cutter. He took the first just above the zone. But when the second came in, he was ready for it and fouled it off. He got beat on a cutter up by the first one to get to 1-2, but he really went to work.

He laid off the slider Frazier couldn’t. Then he fouled off six straight pitches. This is the thing that gets me, maybe even more than the total at bat. In complete swing mode, Treinen put a cutter in on him. Maybe it was so far in that he had no choice, but he took it to get to 3-2. With the bases loaded and a one-run lead, Treinen knew he had to throw a strike and he put a cutter where he put the first one Melendez swung at and boom.

The result makes the at bat incredible. It would have been great no matter what. But I’m really glad that it was more than just great. Melendez had another hit in the third game and went 2 for 4 in this one after going 1 for 2 with a walk on Friday night. That’s a 4 for 9 series with a walk and two strikeouts, including the biggest hit of maybe his career that you just saw. I’ve been in the crowd shouting that he needs to be figuring things out in AAA, but I’ve been told the Royals are seeing it work outside the games and it just hasn’t gotten there in the games. Maybe this is the weekend it started getting there.

The Royals tacked on two in the seventh and it was a relatively easy win and the 10th of the year for Lugo, who is now just the second Royals pitcher since Jason Vargas won 18 games to win double digit games in a season. The other was Singer in 2022 when he won 10. I know pitcher wins are whatever, but that’s the sort of thing you still look at when the numbers are a bit outrageous, and I’d say 10 wins before the halfway mark is outrageous.

I thought Lugo was just generally solid. He gave up two runs over six innings. I don’t think he had especially good stuff, but he got some borderline calls to help and that’s what you want against a good lineup, even one that’s struggled a touch recently. This was a good win.

Sunday - Dodgers 3, Royals 0: Sometimes You Just Get Shut Down

There really isn’t much to say about this game. Tyler Glasnow was outstanding in seven dominant innings and the Dodgers bullpen didn’t give anything up. Sometimes a pitcher is just really good and that’s all there is to it. The most disappointing thing here is that the Royals were both shut out and didn’t get an extra base hit. It was only their second time they didn’t score a single run and the first time all season they didn’t get an extra base hit. So that’s a pretty big bummer on both fronts.

Singer was pretty good. The line of three runs over six innings is a quality start line against a really good lineup, but I think he was better than that. He made three big mistakes and the Dodgers didn’t miss them. It sort of underscores the issues with Singer that I’ve had, though, and it’s just that because of his below average stuff and inability to mess with hitters with more pitches, he just can’t make those mistakes, particularly against good hitters.

Singer allowed just five hits over his six innings, but three of them were solo home runs. Here is where the home run pitches were:

The two sliders were the back-to-back home runs in the sixth inning. You just can’t make that sort of mistake if a hitter is able to sit on a pitch. And you especially can’t make those mistakes to Ohtani and Freeman. Otherwise, I really did like what Singer was doing out there. You can see that he was really using the four-seamer and tried to use it up.

It worked pretty well. The Dodgers weren’t ready for it a lot of the time. He threw 25 of them and took 10 of them for strikes. They actually only swung at four, missing one, fouling one off and putting the other two in play. His sinker was surprising in how it works. Usually he gets a lot of called strikes, but in this one, other than the Ohtani mammoth home run, he got a bunch of weak contact and not a ton of called strikes. But his best pitch was a slider that got a lot of action. He threw 39 of them and the Dodgers swung at 29, but what was crazy is he threw 20 of them outside the zone and the Dodgers swung at 14 of those. They fouled off a bunch, but it worked for him other than the two he hung.

He seemed to have a better plan in this one and if he can continue to do that and not face guys like Ohtani and Freeman back-to-back in most lineups, I’ll feel a lot better about him moving forward. It’s kind of weird that in an outing he gave up three home runs, I’m more positive about the guy, but I liked the way he pitched if he can clean up the mistakes a little bit.

Player of the Week

It was another tough week for the Royals, going 2-5 against the team that I think is the best in baseball and the team that is arguably the most talented. And man, there aren’t many choices for Player of the Week this week. Freddy Fermin was crushing it before his 0 for 3 yesterday with two strikeouts. Perez had a pretty good week with that big home run on Friday night, but his 0 for 4 yesterday kind of wrecked that. Pasquantino had seven walks and just two strikeouts, which is good. But ultimately, it’s the guy we always fall back on - Witt. He hit .393/.433/.500 with three doubles, three runs, four RBIs and two stolen bases. At some point, Steven Kwan with a .398 average is going to have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, but until then, Witt leads the big leagues in hitting, which is pretty incredible.

The Week Ahead

I know I just wrote about how the schedule lightens up considerably, but I think this week might be a bit tougher than it looks. They head to Oakland first, and the A’s just got swept by the Twins, including in a double header yesterday. They’re now 9-31 since they reached .500 at the 34-game mark with a 20-4 win over Miami. Included in that is a sweep at the hands of these very Royals. But something about going to Oakland is weird, especially with so fans in the stands at their games these days. It’s just a different vibe and it makes me wonder if teams get a little spooked. The A’s are 15-20 at home compared to 11-28 on the road, so maybe there’s something there.

The Royals are the better team. I just have a weird feeling about it. Here are the projected pitching matchups:

• Tuesday: Alec Marsh vs. Hogan Harris

• Wednesday: Cole Ragans vs. Luis Medina

• Thursday: Seth Lugo vs. Mitch Spence

On paper, this is a Royals sweep. I follow baseball and prospects and all that extremely closely. I honestly wasn’t sure who Hogan Harris was before I looked him up. Once I saw that he faced the Royals last August, I actually did remember him vaguely. He’s been solid for the A’s with a 2.49 ERA, but he has a pretty generic crafty lefty repertoire. his four-seam fastball actually does get more whifs than you’d realize and hitters have had some trouble with it in terms of results, but the expected numbers are really bad. His curve has been the opposite while his changeup has been a big weapon.

Medina is more of a power arm with a four-seamer and slider leading the way. The slider has been effective enough, but he’s allowed too many runners. And the Royals saw Spence in Kansas City. He’s actually been pretty solid for the A’s with a 3.69 ERA as a starter. It’s a little more difficult in reality than it looks on paper, and I don’t think they have to sweep to feel good, but they do need to win this series.

Then it’s on to Dallas to face the world champs. The Rangers took two of three in Kansas City in May, but the Royals blew the last game when they were leading 2-0 late. The pitching matchups are a bit more difficult if they go as planned with the Rangers throwing out Nathan Eovaldi, Max Scherzer in his season-debut and Dane Dunning against Brady Singer, Michael Wacha if things go well in Arizona today and Marsh. While the Rangers haven’t been especially good this year, I have some concerns about that series too. Still, it’s a good chance to get back on track with a winning week.