Weekend in Review: The Anatomy of a Brutal Sweep, Walks Picking Up and the Week Ahead

Yes, we have to look back because I decided last week this is a new feature and I can't give up on it now.

The Royals sure do have a flair for the dramatic, huh? It’s not just every team that can go from having the best record in baseball at the start of the week to being under .500 and a full 3.5 games out of first by the end, but that’s what an 0-7 homestand will do for you. It’s not pretty, but there is some good news that I’m willing to share with you right this very second as I was able to get my crystal ball out of the shop for just one question. You ready?

They will win again.

I know it seems far fetched, but at some point, they will not only win again, but they will win multiple games in a row. And they’ll probably capture people’s attention with it. It won’t be today. They have an off day, which is probably a good chance to regroup, but it will happen. I can absolutely, unequivocally guarantee it. Let’s talk about the weekend because there were some interesting things at least.

Wasted Weekend

There’s a lot to get to from each game, so I’ll go through the high level stuff here.

Friday

As you know, we treat Brad Keller starts around here as high stress, edge of your seat viewing. It didn’t start that way, but when he gave up five runs before his first out of the season, it’s sort of turned into that. Personally, I’ve found myself going frame by frame with 2020 and 2021 Keller to see what I can find different. What I’ve found is nothing too interesting outside of him maybe his body being a bit more open on his slider this season.

But what I also found is that he looked a lot more like 2020 Keller on Friday night, and while the result wasn’t good because the offense couldn’t plate a run, the long-term ramifications of that could be huge. He still relied mostly on his four-seamer and didn’t throw the slider all that much, but it was so much better when he threw it. He had nine swings on it and five whiffs. It did get hit hard when it got hit, but that’ll happen with a slider.

But it wasn’t just his slider. His fastball was back moving in ways that actually got swings and misses and even his sinker got the White Sox to swing through it a few times. The end result was 16 swings and misses, which is the second most he’s ever had in a game. He had 19 against the Pirates in September of 2018.

He still made mistakes that led to him allowing three runs in six innings. You can see below where the pitches were that the White Sox hit, but I have no issue with the two on the edges and the slider down location wasn’t horrible, though I wish it had slid a bit more.

There’s a lot wrong with what I’m about to say, but I have a feeling a lot of Keller’s issue is in his head, so sometimes goodish results are important. And in his last three starts, Keller has a 3.86 ERA, which is not indicative of much given that he’s allowed five unearned runs in that time. But he also has 13 strikeouts and just four walks in 16.1 innings in that time. Baby steps.

I’d also like to note that while the offense didn’t score a run, they did handle Carlos Rodon pretty well. For a guy who had allowed 25 hits all year, getting five off him is a decent night. Of course, three were Salvador Perez and they just can’t sequence their hits at all right now, which can lead to extended offensive slumbers, but they hit a guy who nobody else has been able to hit.

Saturday

Oof, do we have to? This was one of the least fun Royals games of the last five seasons, and there are plenty of those from which we can choose. There was some excitement in the stadium as Daniel Lynch was set to make his second big league start. And it really started pretty innocently. Tim Anderson hit a ball through a hole. It wasn’t hit terribly hard, but it found a hole. But then Nick Madrigal singled. And then the fireworks started.

It went like this, with exit velocities included:

Single - 88.6
Single - 95.9
Double - 104.6
Walk
Forceout - 62.9
Sac Fly - 100.2
Double - 100.4
Triple - 91.3
Home Run - 97.3
Single - 73.7

They weren’t all rockets. In fact, the triple wasn’t even considered a hard hit ball. Both of Anderson’s hits had an xBA of under .500, so either could have easily been outs. In fact, Garcia’s triple had an xBA of .190. It was a combination of hard hit and luck, and it led to Lynch unable to make it out of the first. I’m only going to say a couple things about his outing because I have a great outing to discuss, but there was some talk that he was tipping pitches. And he may have been. In fact, he probably was based on some of the video evidence, but here are his pitches from the first inning:

While he was wild against Cleveland, tipping pitches or not, he was in the middle of the plate way too much in this one. That has to change if he’s going to make another start, which, by the way, would likely be against these same White Sox in Chicago. Though he did only throw 34 pitches if they want to give him a shot against Detroit in the next series and push Keller back to Chicago.

But the star of this show was Kris Bubic. It’s not the best situation for evaluation as it was truly garbage time before the Royals even came to the plate, but he came in to start the second inning and was the guy we saw at times last season. He threw 71 pitches, which was obviously a season high after two short relief outings.

His curve looked phenomenal and hitters agreed, whiffing on it four times out of eight swings. The three balls in play were pretty soft contact. The same is true of his changeup and honestly his fastball. He gave up an average exit velocity of 84.4 MPH. You might argue the White Sox weren’t taking the extra base, but they weren’t getting any base off him. It’s not like big leaguers aren’t going to be trying to at least put bat on ball with good contact no matter the score, so I was incredibly happy with this performance. It was a terrible game, but just swoon over this changeup for a bit.

I may get more into this tomorrow (I haven’t decided yet with an off-day today), but Bubic deserves a start from what he did. He showed something last season, finishing with a 2.96 ERA with more strikeouts than innings and more innings than hits allowed in his last five starts. I’d love to see him get another long look soon.

And special mention here for Jarrod Dyson who hit a ringing triple late in the game and showed off some wheels before scoring the Royals first run since Wednesday even though it felt like longer.

Sunday

This one started off so promising with Whit Merrifield doubling to left center followed by an Andrew Benintendi single, but Salvador Perez’s double play wiped the threat away. He did get Merrifield home with it, but it went from a potential big inning against Lucas Giolito to a blip. After that, Mike Minor came out and the White Sox put up three runs in the blink of an eye and they were off to the races again.

I thought Minor looked pretty good against Cleveland in his last start, and I didn’t feel like he was looking horrible in this one either. His command is what really hurt him. He hit Jose Abreu on an 0-2 pitch to start the inning and then struck out Yasmani Grandal on a nasty knuckle curve. Here, take a look to remember the good times:

But then Yermin Mercedes tripled on a pitch that didn’t quite get in far enough and then Michael A. Taylor made a terrible decision to dive on. That’s partially on Minor, but not entirely because Taylor completely botched that ball. And then he lost rookie Andrew Vaughn, again after starting 0-2 on him. He tried to go in on him and down, but he just couldn’t get Vaughn to chase. The next batter was Leury Garcia and he hit a sacrifice fly that ended up resulting in another run because Taylor threw all the way to the plate and allowed Vaughn to move up to second.

A Danny Mendick single found some grass and scored Vaughn from second when he should have been on first. This is a bit like when a good member of the bullpen struggles. It just feels over when one of the few elite defenders on the field does something like that.

He struggled some more in the second and they ended up scoring more runs, but with the Royals offense the way it was, they just didn’t have much of a chance. Thankfully I was celebrating my wonderful mother and sisters who are mothers, so I didn’t get a chance to see the end of the game, which was probably good for my health, but I did want to talk about the offense.

There might be signs of life. I’m going to get to some walks in a minute, but first they actually hit the ball hard yesterday. Of the 12 balls hit 100+ MPH yesterday, 10 were by Royals hitters. They went 1 for 10 on those balls. Many of them should not have been hits, but the xBA on them was .485. They hit .100. They barreled three balls that were outs.

We’ve seen this before from the team when they couldn’t buy a hit on a hard hit ball, but what happened after that was they broke out in a big way offensively. They go to Detroit next and the Tigers are not good, so at least that’s a good opportunity for them.

Walk This Way

The last two games of the series, I thought, were better from an offensive standpoint. The results obviously weren’t there, but I thought the plate appearances were mostly better than what we’d seen since the middle innings on Wednesday. And Carlos Santana is a big reason for that. He walked twice in each of those last two games and now has 24 walks to 21 strikeouts for the season. He’s tied for sixth in baseball in walks, which is kind of crazy to say about a Royals player. With 24 walks in 33 games, he’s on pace for about 117 walks.

The team record for walks in a season is 122 by John Mayberry in 1973. Darrell Porter had 121 in 1979 and Mayberry had 119 in 1975. Those are the only three season with more walks than Santana is pacing for right now. He has been absolutely everything the Royals have expected since really that first game of the season when he worked three walks. Take a look at this graphic from the indispensable Baseball Savant:

It’s seriously unreal how well he controls the strike zone. Now, I’m not entirely sure he isn’t a double agent as he’s hitting .043/.154/.043 with three walks and five strikeouts against the Indians and .312/.435/.548 with 21 walks and 16 strikeouts against everyone else. But even so, he’s been a great signing for the Royals and should be a big help next year as well in the second and final year of his deal.

Looking Ahead

While it may seem like all hope is lost, remember what my crystal ball said above. They will win again. Today, they have a day off, which is probably needed for both the team and the fan base. It would not surprise me to see some moves made as I think they’re close enough to Dayton Moore’s magical 40-game mark that he won’t feel like he’s overreacting to a smaller sample. My advice is to send Ryan O’Hearn down, bring up Edward Olivares and let Jorge Soler DH full time again. But that’s another story for another day.

They get the Tigers for three in Detroit. You might recall, though it seems a lifetime ago, that the Royals were just in Detroit and just swept them in a four-game series, They didn’t play great, but they got the wins. Had they had even a below average homestand and gone 3-4 (which, they probably should have won at least two, if not three against Cleveland, let’s not forget that), this would be a series they could be looking at to pad their lead. Instead, they’ll be rooting for the Cubs and Twins to take care of the Indians and White Sox respectively and get some games back.

They need another sweep. I don’t know if it’ll happen or if they’re even capable of it right now, but if they want to stay relevant, they need a sweep.

And then it’s off to Chicago, starting with a double header on Friday and then two normal games on Saturday and Sunday. This is a big week for the team. If they can get back on track and take four of seven, they get to next Monday at .500 and have five games against a very injured Brewers team followed by the Tigers. If they can’t handle the Tigers in Detroit and get stomped again by the White Sox, things will be looking dire. No pressure!