Weekend in Review: A Sweep, A Horrible Trade and the Week Ahead

The Royals had a great weekend on the field and then ruined all those vibes with one of their most asinine trades yet.

The Royals opened the weekend without a single sweep or a three-game winning streak all season. They were facing the Minnesota Twins, a first place team (hey, they are in first place no matter their record!) that had won nine of the first 10 games of the season series against them. The fact that they closed the weekend with a three-game sweep, ending the drought on both of the first two things mentioned might be the most inexplicable thing to happen this season. Winning a series against the Dodgers is in the same ballpark, but either was pretty improbable coming in.

And, you know what? It’s okay to be happy about wins. The Royals are now on pace for a 48-114 record. Yep, still garbage. But they also spent the weekend showing why I thought they at least had a shot to be respectably bad rather than historically bad. It was nice to see for once. I think a lot of the good vibes were killed not long after the finale yesterday and I’ll get to that in a bit, but I want to talk about this weekend first for once because I think a sweep of a first-place team that had been a killer to the Royals is worth celebrating in a season where we haven’t gotten to celebrate much.

The Weekend

Whether the Royals are swept as they usually are or do the sweeping, which they (almost now) never do, the results matter a lot less than the individual stories. So again, I’m not going to go through each game individually as much as I’m going to dig in to what the individuals did in the games.

Witt’s Wonderful Weekend

That was fun to watch for Bobby Witt Jr. For the weekend against the Twins, he went 9 for 14 with a double, a triple, two home runs, four runs scored, nine runs driven in and a stolen base. He’s the fifth in team history to have nine hits and nine RBIs in a three-game stretch. We’re getting into the “making up scenarios” territory here, but he’s the only Royal in team history with nine hits, nine RBIs, four extra base hits and a stolen base in a three-game stretch.

It all started Friday night, which was pretty cool. It didn’t need to be. The Royals carried a lead into the ninth and Scott Barlow struggled again. This isn’t the point of this section, but what I said about Taylor Clarke a few weeks ago holds true still. A couple of bad outings don’t change things. When it becomes a long-term pattern they do. As of Saturday, I still haven’t talked to anyone who thinks Barlow’s value is demonstrably different than it was a couple of weeks ago, but I also haven’t spoken to everyone in the industry, so who knows? But what his blown save did allow for was the heroics in the bottom of the 10th on Friday night.

After the runner placed on second as part of the worst rule in sports scored in the top of the 10th inning, the Royals trailed 5-4. They got their own silly runner, and it was Kyle Isbel, which you’ll certainly take as far as speed goes. Facing the hard-throwing Jhoan Duran, Drew Waters struck out. Isbel made a gutsy move and stole third. That was followed by a Nicky Lopez walk and then he was allowed to steal second, which seemed really odd to me given that his run not only mattered but was, well, everything. Anyway, he’s on second and Isbel is on third when Maikel Garcia walks to load the bases. I want to point out that Garcia and Lopez both had outstanding plate appearances to work that walk.

So Witt steps to the plate against Duran who came into the game having thrown 125 pitches at 102 MPH or harder and has topped out at 104.8 MPH. That’s a lot of fastball. And then there’s Witt, who came into the at bat with a .107 average and one extra base hit against pitches 97 MPH or harder in 28 at bats. Yep, two singles and a double and then 13 strikeouts against elite velocity fastballs. It was a mismatch. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t looking ahead to the next batter.

When Duran started Witt with a curve away that Witt flailed at, I was really looking ahead. But to Witt’s credit, he took the next one that was in the dirt. Then he swung through a fastball at 101.3 MPH and took one that nearly hit him at 101.9 MPH. It was the fifth pitch, the 101.9 MPH fastball on the outer edge that he fouled off that made me think he had a chance. Duran maybe thought the same thing and tried another curve, but Witt didn’t swing at that.

It was sort of the situation everyone dreams out. It was 3-2 with the bases loaded and a chance to win the game. Duran went with his best pitch and Witt, well, take a look.

What a swing. And hey, how about that bat flip?

How do you get your hands in so quickly to be able to get the bat head out and pull 101.8 MPH just off the plate? Amazing! But it really is more amazing than you might realize.

I took a look at all pitches in that spot to right-handed batters. This year, on pitches 95 MPH or harder, just eight home runs have been hit on pitches there. Up the number to 96 and it’s three. Up it to 97 and it’s one. Yep, Witt on Friday night. Up it to 100 and nobody had ever hit a home run on a pitch in that spot (in the Statcast era) until Witt did it on Friday night.

Then on Saturday, he starts the game by taking a pitch high and tight enough that his helmet came off. Two pitches later, he hit a ball 392 feet into the left field bullpen.

Little did we know that he was just getting started on Saturday too. It wasn’t as dramatic, but he picked up two more singles and then came up big in the bottom of the seventh. And it was needed. He ended up hitting a triple off the right-center field wall that scored a run. Unfortuantely he didn’t get to bat again because the way he was going, I was sure he’d get another double to actually finish the cycle. Yesterday he picked up a single in his last at bat, which was kind of boring but it topped off a great weekend for the kid who was struggling to the point that people were wondering if he should be demoted.

Now he’s hitting .303/.341/.505 and playing very good shortstop defense since the start of June. In those two months, he has the 16th highest fWAR in all of baseball and is within a win of everyone but Shohei Ohtani, who just doesn’t count. It’s a very impressive run with a sample that gets bigger every day.

Look, I don’t know if he’s going to be a good regular, a star, a superstar or what. But I do know that what he did this weekend is something that only special players do. Will he ever reach the full potential? I don’t know, but the full potential is something amazing that I hope we get to see.

Isbel Clicking

It’s interesting to see how players progress throughout the season. I’ve always felt like there’s more in Kyle Isbel’s bat. Maybe I was blinded by some adjustments and the results coming at the end of the 2021 season, but whatever it is, I’ve been wrong basically since then. But it sure looked like he was finding something right before he got hurt. He had back-to-back multi-hit games and had just hit his first home run of the year in the game he had the hamstring injury.

He hit well on his rehab assignment and then was hitless in his first three starts back and hit .111/.143/.148 in his first nine games that included eight starts. But since then, and yes this is arbitrary, he’s hit .321/.345/.571 with three home runs and, more importantly, a 17.2 percent strikeout rate. That also includes five doubles in 58 plate appearances to go along with two steals. When you consider how good he is defensively in center field, you start to see a path to Isbel being an answer.

I think he’s on a hot streak right now, sure, but even if he hits .250/.290/.410 or something like that, with his defense, there’s a place for him. And this weekend, we got to see a lot to like on display. On Friday night, he hit the first home run the Royals have hit against Sonny Gray in nine years.

He’s definitely shown more power lately. I think you can see a path where he’s a 12-18 home run bat in the big leagues. It’s no guarantee, of course, but you can see it in swings like that one. And then on Saturday, he put together an excellent game in the stat sheet, going 4 for 5 with a double and two big RBIs. I want to talk about that at bat where he got the two RBIs because the Twins had brought the infield in and Bailey Ober was doing everything he could to absolutely eat Isbel up with changeups.

And it was working. He swung at the first below the zone and missed. He swung at the second in the zone and missed. But he shortened up his swing and hit a soft single through the drawn-in infield for two RBIs. I know this is somewhat results based because if he had hit it a few feet closer to shortstop, it would have been an out without a run scoring, but for a guy who looked bad on the first two changeups and has had his share of getting rung up with two strikes, I loved the approach.

There are times when a strikeout means the same thing as any other out. With the infield in because there’s a runner on third, a strikeout is the second-worst thing that can happen behind a double play. Simply putting the ball in play allows for something to maybe happen. And sometimes, a 67.6 MPH dribbler gets through to score two runs. Another soft single to center followed by a hard double in the eighth got Isbel to four hits and was another marker in his improvement that I’m curious to keep an eye on for the final 55 games.

Singer Looked Sharp Enough

Friday also was the night that Brady Singer continued his march back to rotation relevance. He went five innings, gave up two runs on four hits with 10 strikeouts and two walks. I don’t care how poorly the Twins played this weekend. He had 16 whiffs on 28 swings on his slider. That’s pretty special. They only put two balls in play on that pitch. It was outstanding. Those 16 whiffs on the slider were the most in his career, tied only by his great start last year when he came back to the big leagues.

I thought the sinker looked as good as it had all year as well. He didn’t get any whiffs on it, but that’ sokay. It’s a pitch he gets called strikes on and he had 13 of them out of 38 thrown. Now, I think the zone was very generous for him, which is something I don’t remember ever saying about a Royals pitcher. He also threw 11 changeups out of 104 pitches. And it was useful!

He got five swings on the changeup. One was a whiff, and it was a good pitch. Two were foul balls. And then the other two were soft contact. The Twins sent out a lineup against him that consisted of seven guys batting lefty and Singer had to use that third pitch and use it early. He threw it on the second pitch of the first at bat against a lefty and while it was a ball, I think it set the tone. I also thought it got more effective toward the end of his outing. Assuming he isn’t dealt, I want to see more of that when he faces a Mets lineup that could throw a similar number of lefties at him.

And now since May 11, here are Singer’s numbers:

14 GS
80 IP
86 H
67 K (19.3%)
26 BB (7.5%)
5 HR
4.05 ERA
3.54 FIP

You would like to see more strikeouts, and he does have 19 in his last two starts. But he’s back to not walking guys and he’s certainly not giving up home runs. There’s a lot of value in the starter above. Maybe he’s not the guy we saw in the second half, but I think it’s fair to say Singer can be a part of a competitive big league rotation. Now we’ll find out if he’s in the Royals plans or in someone else’s plans.

Let the Trades Begin

The weekend began with an ominous article in The Kansas City Star, which I think wasn’t as bad as it seemed but also certainly wasn’t good. The article mentioned the “gray area” the Royals felt they were in. I’ll call a spade a spade. I think it was clickbait in a way. The Royals don’t feel like they’re in a gray area. They’re sellers and they know it. What JJ Picollo was mentioning as the gray area was the return for some of the players they might like to deal. Teams who are buying want to give up a different type of player than the Royals want to acquire.

The issue is the type of player the Royals want to acquire. Picollo has mentioned this in the past and mentioned it again. This was his quote in the article:

“When you have guys on major-league teams and you’re trading them for three or four minor-league prospects and years of control, that’s really not the direction we want to go in. So we’re a little bit in a gray area right now when it comes to that type of player.”

Oof. I do think it’s important to note that he walked it back a bit later in the article.

“I think we can add anywhere,” he said. “You want to add (to) your own farm system, you want to add to your major-league team. We have more of an interest based on the core of our team right now that we think is our future, to adding pieces that will help put that team together. That’s our preference.”

“But if there’s a deal out there that makes us feel like this is going to help us long term, I don’t think we can ignore it either. So we can go either way.”

Okay, so that got a little bit better. Not a lot, but a little bit. And I think that I understand where he’s coming from, at least somewhat. He sees a core at the big league level being led by Witt and Garcia and probably Vinnie Pasquantino. I think he’s hopeful that someone from the rest of the guys can step up and be a part of that. If you keep Salvy, that’s five guys for your 2024 lineup and four guys for the lineup the next four or five years. So sure, add to that.

And if you’re dangling Player A to other teams and one team offers you a low-A guy with top-25 prospect upside but another team offers you a AA player with top-35 prospect upside, I’m fine with going with the more polished player. Floor matters too, absolutely. But I hate the idea of being gung ho about adding to a team on pace for 114 losses. There should be nothing redeeming about this club that makes you think you need to add to it. It’s fine if you want to build around a player or two. Get them signed and do that. But don’t pretend like you’ve got some core that you’re sure is going to emerge in 2025 or whatever becuase you don’t. Maybe it does end up happening, but you’ve been given no evidence to that point.

So whatever. It’s still about what they do. The weekend comes and goes and the Royals sweep the Twins and all feels good. Until about 5:10. That’s when the trade news broke. The Royals traded Nicky Lopez to the Braves. Okay, makes sense. And in return, they got Taylor Hearn. Okay? I wonder what else was with him in that deal because Hearn was just DFAed by the Rangers and then traded to the Braves for cash. The Royals could have picked him up then, so surely there was more. Oh, no, there isn’t. Okay then. Rage time.

Only I didn’t rage. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I didn’t think the trade was horrendous. I did. And I still do. And I probably will later today and tomorrow too. It’s that I’m trying something where I give myself a little time to think things through. Nobody needs my analysis immediately and if you do, I’d recommend not because my analysis is no better or more important than anyone else’s. But I saw the thoughts from others and I nodded along with all of them. And then after a couple of hours (and maybe a cocktail) passed, I had figured out my thoughts on the trade.

It blows.

But there are layers.

Lopez came to the big leagues in 2019 and he stank offensively. He was somehow worse in 2020. Then in 2021, it clicked. I worried that it wasn’t sustainable, but for one magical year, Lopez hit .300/.365/.378. He played outstanding defense, mostly at shortstop, and helped Salvy get to 121 RBIs by being on base in front of him an awful lot. But then, he went back to the guy he was in 2019 and 2020 last year. And this year has been better, but outside of being willing to take a walk, he’s pretty much a zero offensively.

Through it all, though, he played great defense. And lately he’s picked up some time in left field and even at first base. I think you can win a championship with Lopez on your roster and I think you can even win a championship with Lopez in your starting lineup if your team has a bunch of thumpers. But he’s also a guy you maybe don’t miss that much on the field.

He has value in the clubhouse, but I think his value on the trade market wasn’t terribly high. Which makes it tough to make a bad trade involving him.

And yet, the Royals did.

In a vacuum, this trade doesn’t move the needle much for me other than being confusing as all hell. I don’t really get it, but it’s also very meh. I appreciate the desire to open up playing time for a guy like Samad Taylor and/or clear the second base job for Massey. I think Lopez was a non-tender candidate after the season. But why are you trading for Hearn to do that? Go get Robert Gonzalez or Maximo Maria or some other random name I just learned about a minute ago who we’ll never talk about again.

Don’t go get a lefty reliever, who does have an interesting story but isn’t very good and requires a 40-man roster spot! It’s not that they don’t have plenty of space on the 40-man and actually had an open spot. It’s that Hearn does NOTHING for the 2024 Royals or beyond. So why?

But also, again, if you wanted Hearn so bad, JUST MAKE THE MOVE FOR CASH WHEN HE WAS AVAILABLE FOR NOTHING! It just makes absolutely no sense to me, but I guess it makes sense that it doesn’t make sense or something like that.

Ultimately, this trade essentially has zero importance in itself. And if it stays that way, whatever, I guess. But if this is a sign of what’s to come this deadline, just don’t trade anyone. Limp to the end of the season with Barlow and Hernandez at the back of the bullpen, then replace the whole front office and start over. That’s fine at this point. Because if this is an indication of what this deadline is going to look like, these guys just aren’t it. I have very strongly believed that Picollo is different than Dayton Moore for a number of reasons. I still do. But to think this was a trade that needed to be made makes me wonder if different might even be worse.

Maybe there’s more to the story that we don’t already know. Maybe there’s a bigger picture move in store. Maybe some team liked Hearn but didn’t have the roster spot for him and he’s a sweetener. But I’m going to go ahead and say that’s not likely. If it is what’s going on here, then well, I was wrong. I’ve been wrong before and I’ll likely be wrong again.

I have been what I think has been the voice of reason with this team this season, but if any trade for a 32-75 team involves trading only for a player who is older than, say, 25, and has less than four years of control, it’s simply the wrong trade. We’ll find out how it plays out. I hope I’m wrong, but I just don’t think I am.

And now we wait to see what’s next on the trade front. If I had to put a percentage on Barlow getting moved, I’d say it’s like 95 percent. In fact, let’s do that. These are all based on conversations I’ve had with people around the game and then add in a totally made up number, but this is what the people want to see:

Barlow - 95%
Garcia - 2%
Hernandez - 20%
Lyles - 25%
Olivares - 45%
Perez - 25%
Singer - 35%
Yarbrough - 40%

I think if I had to bet, I’d say that Barlow and one or maybe two others go. Now excuse me while I go scour the recently DFAed list to figure out who the return will be for them.

The Week Ahead

I’ve rambled on long enough, but it should be an interesting week for the Royals. They welcome the suddenly dealing Mets to town. They’ve just traded Max Scherzer. They might trade Justin Verlander. Who knows who else could go? Jose Quintana is the scheduled starter tomorrow night, but you never know now. I think we can safely say we’ll see Francisco Lindor, Francisco Alvarez, Brandon Nimmo and Pete Alonso, but other than that, your guess is as good as mine. The Royals will send Zack Greinke, Alec Marsh and Singer to the hill this weekend against a team that should be a lot better than it is. Teams tend to get right against the Royals, this past weekend notwithstanding, so we’ll see how it goes.

Then the National League champion Philadelphia Phillies are next as the Royals travel there. They got off to their trademark slow start and were seven games under .500 on June 2, but they now sit seven games over .500 and are just a half-game out of the final Wild Card spot. Nobody is catching the Braves, but they’re only a game and a half behind the top Wild Card spot, so they’re in a pretty good position. It looks to be a pretty boring pitching weekend for the Royals as it stands now with Lyles, Yarbrough and Greinke, but I think two of those three might be dealt for a hot dog vendor before tomorrow.