Weekend Thoughts: The Bullpen Is Quite Good

It could be the biggest strength on a team with an offense that looks pretty legit.

There are a lot of things we can look at from the first weekend of regular season baseball. The starting rotation was bad. The offense was good. The defense was largely very good. But I want to look at the unit that could be the biggest strength for this team all season, the bullpen. 

Looking back to last season for a minute, the Royals bullpen was probably a bit underrated. Their 3.84 ERA was the eighth best in baseball. Their 4.30 xFIP was 10th best. Their strikeout rate was sixth best. And while some might look at strand rate as something that is a little more luck driven, their strand rate was fourth best in the game. And I think they got better this season while they were on display in full force during the first series of the year. 

Let’s take a look day-by-day.

Opening Day

After Brad Keller couldn’t make it out of the second, I thought Mike Matheny made a good move knowing that they would need someone to eat up three or four innings at some point in going with Kyle Zimmer to get out of a jam in the second inning. With runners on first and third and the Rangers having scored a run to get the lead back that they’d blown in the bottom of the first, the Royals needed either strikeouts or a ground ball. And that’s why I loved the move to Zimmer. He struck out 30.5 percent of hitters in 2020 and had a ground ball rate of 50 percent. After walking the first batter he faced, he struck out two.

Look at Zimmer just filling up the zone against an overmatched hitter for the third out. Pure power to put away Leody Taveras.

Then came Carlos Hernandez, who struggled early. It was as if he needed to get his issues out of the way before he could flash some pure dominance. The first four hitters he faced reached and things looked ugly, but then he turned it around as if he could on a dime. His strikeout of Nick Solak was a thing of beauty. He got swinging strikes on a 97 MPH sinker and an 82 MPH curve. Then he missed just off the plate with a curve and tried to bury one before going back with the pure power up and in and got a swing and miss on 98 MPH cheese. Close it out with a double play and that’s the inning.

From there, it was six up, six down with four strikeouts. Because you deserve it, here’s the last pitch of his outing to David Dahl.

This outing won the Royals the game. And I don’t just say that because he got the win, but without Hernandez’s work in this game, I’m not sure anyone would have stopped the Rangers bleeding, but Hernandez restored some order to the game and by the time a new pitcher came in, the Royals had a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

It wasn’t totally smooth sailing the rest of the way, but I think some of it was Matheny trying not to use every single reliever they had. Jesse Hahn’s stuff looked sharp, but he had some trouble with command. Scott Barlow was awesome for an inning, but ran into trouble when he came out for a second. And then Greg Holland cleaned up Barlow’s mess, but struggled when he came back out. Which brings us to Wade Davis.

With two on and one out and one run in, the Royals led 14-10, but in that sort of game, you can never be too careful, so Matheny pulled the current (and old) Royals closer for the old Royals closer. And what did Davis do? Oh no big deal. He just threw eight pitches to two batters and struck out as many as he did all spring. Davis, in the two at bats, threw five fastballs with velocities going 93.5, 94.9, 94.9, 94.1 and 95.0. That’s noteworthy because the last time he threw a pitch as hard as even the softest of the five was a first pitch ball to Paul DeJong on September 12, 2019. It was impressive. 

The total numbers weren’t amazing for the bullpen, but they don’t win without the unit teaming up: 7.2 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 16 K (!), 7 BB

Game Two on Saturday

This one was a much more traditional bullpen game because Mike Minor gave the Royals six innings and even with some struggles, he was able to keep the team in the game before turning it over to a much more traditional bullpen game. By the time the bullpen came in, the game was 10-4 Royals, so they just had to hold a big league, but, you know what? They did it. 

I was so impressed by Jakob Junis in spring training, striking out 10 and not walking anyone in seven innings, and in his first relief outing, he didn’t give any reason to believe that was a fluke. His new cutter was on display as he threw it five times in his 16 pitches. I thought it looked a little better in spring from what I saw on television, but it was good in this one anyway. The big thing that caught my eye was a big boost in spin rate. His fastball averaged 91.9 MPH, which I would have expected more given the move to the bullpen, but the spin was way up on it and was up on his slider as well. He has a chance to be a devastating weapon out there. 

Jake Brentz was up next for his big league debut and after getting his first hitter out, control problems crept up, which will be something we talk about throughout the season with him. He hit 99.5 MPH on a pitch and averaged 97.6. From the left side, that’ll certainly play and we’ll hear more from him in a minute. Jesse Hahn bailed him out with a fastball with crazy movement to strand his runners and take the game to the ninth.

And Josh Staumont closed it out as the most surprising no strikeout game for any reliever in the bullpen after what we saw from him in 2020. He needed just nine pitches with his first two coming in at 100 MPH hour and handling the Rangers in the ninth pretty easily to give the Royals their second win.

Bullpen totals: 3 IP, 2 H, 4 K, 1 BB

Game Three on Sunday

The offense couldn’t bail out another poor start, but another poor start did give the bullpen a chance to shine once again with Brady Singer unable to make it out of the fourth. While Brentz needed Hahn to bail him out on Saturday, he bailed Singer out on Saturday, though he did allow an inherited runner to score before he struck out Joey Gallo with just an average run of the mill 99 MPH fastball. 

Then came Junis to pitch in back to back games for the first time in his career. And yeah, no problem. He gave up a hit to the first batter, but got a strikeout with his cutter and then retired the next two hitters no problem. This may seem like a sort of whatever outing that doesn’t mean much, but going on consecutive days can be a really difficult thing for a starter turned reliever and for him to be able to handle that could be huge for this bullpen. 

Zimmer came in to play the role of Hernandez in this one and he was absolutely nails, going three innings on just 34 pitches and striking out two batters and allowing just two base runners. His breaking balls looked especially sharp. They accounted for both his strikeouts. What he did in this game showed the Royals have at least three different pitchers in him, Junis and Hernandez who can go multiple innings when needed, which is huge for a bullpen. He gave the offense a chance to mount a third straight comeback, and it’s not in any way his fault that they didn’t. 

Davis came in to pitch the ninth and gave up a home run, but the encouraging thing about the outing was that he was pretty consistently above 93 MPH with his fastball. I’d love to see more 94 and 95, but if he’s at even 93, that could be enough to make him another key contributor in this bullpen.

Bullpen totals: 5.2 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 4 K, 1 BB

For the weekend, the bullpen threw 16.1 innings, allowed 11 hits and struck out 35.3 percent of hitters they faced with a 2.20 ERA. They did walk too many, so that’s a concern, but this series displayed everything the Royals have. They can get you in the short inning situations with guys like Staumont, Barlow, Holland, Zimmer and Hahn. They can stretch guys out as I mentioned above. And they have some serious velocity with three different guys who can touch 99 and a few others who can get to 96 or 97. That’s a well rounded bullpen that should help the Royals to win some games. It’d just be nice if the rotation doesn’t make them work so hard moving forward because it’s pretty tough to require a bullpen to get 16 outs every night, even for ones as potentially good as the Royals unit.