When It All Comes Together

Every so often, even in the worst of times, everything just seems perfect.

I don’t want to alarm anyone but the 2023 Kansas City Royals haven’t exactly been fun to watch. But the beauty of baseball is that anything can happen on any given day. And sometimes, a 7-23 team can take the field against a 20-9 team and if you didn’t know which team was which, you would assume the records were reversed. That’s what happened last night when the Royals pitched their first shutout of the year and handed the Orioles their first shutout of the year. It wasn’t a flawless game, per se, but it was the cleanest game the Royals had played all season long. And they did it in every facet of the game.

It started early. And when I say early, I mean the fourth pitch of the game to Cedric Mullins. A 1-2 sinker caught a little too much of the zone and Mullins hit a ball hard on the ground down the first base line. Nick Pratto showed why he’s up and playing.

The broadcast mentioned that a play like that could set the tone, and while I often disagree with just about everything we hear from Ryan and Rex, I think they were right. Greinke ended up throwing nine pitches in the first to get the Orioles 1-2-3. He threw nine more in the second, working around a one-out single. Then he threw eight in the third with two strikeouts, including one of former Royals great Ryan O’Hearn. He worked around a two-out single in the fourth with 11 pitches and got through the fifth on seven pitches.

You can do the math, but you don’t have to. That’s 44 pitches in five innings. He was in prime position to maybe throw a Maddux (that’s a shutout on fewer than 100 pitches, if you didn’t know). And yet, Taylor Clarke found himself warming up in the bottom of the fifth inning and was put into the game in the sixth inning. But why?

Matt Quatraro has taken a fair amount of criticism, which isn’t surprising given that the team is still on pace for just 42 wins even after a win. But I think this was his biggest decision in an absolutely brilliantly managed game. It’s easy to say that because they won, but I at least tweeted that I liked the decision to pull Greinke before Clarke even threw a pitch in the sixth inning. The decision was met with the typical criticism on social media, which is understandable.

Greinke had thrown five shutout innings and averaged fewer than nine pitches per inning. He had three strikeouts, threw 12 of 17 first-pitch strikes and threw 33 strikes on the whole. He had seven whiffs and only gave up five hard-hit balls. And yet, on a team with a bullpen that could be running on fumes soon, he was gone. And I absolutely loved it. It’s a move that would have never been made 20 years ago, would have rarely been made 10 years ago and has never really been made by a Royals manager. And it’s all about a lineup seeing someone like Greinke a third time.

There aren’t a lot of situations where you can get your starter through five and not have him face a single hitter more than twice, but last night was one that Quatraro took full advantage of. Every pitcher other than the exceptions face issues when seeing a lineup for a third time. For pitchers who don’t have elite stuff, it’s even more risky. Coming into last night, Greinke allowed a .740 OPS the first time through, but that jumped to .891 the second time through and 1.000 a third time. Add in that the Orioles can hit and if you can avoid Greinke seeing a lineup a third time, you do it. If we’re being totally honest, Greinke is a candidate to work with an opener (Amir Garrett in front of him would be really fun), but I don’t see that happening.

So Greinke gets pulled and then it’s just a matter of the bullpen doing their jobs. Clarke was great in the sixth and I absolutely loved the usage of Aroldis Chapman in the seventh inning. While it became a blowout, when Chapman came in, it was 2-0 Royals and the middle of the Orioles order was due up. Quatraro could have used Chapman in the eighth, as he has done all season, but if all went well, the eighth inning could have been the bottom of the lineup. So he used his best weapon against the more dangerous part of the lineup. It worked out well that the offense tacked on, but nobody could have known that would happen.

And the other thing that I think is worth noting is last night was the first time the Royals had repeated a lineup all season long. And no, that doesn’t mean it’s the first time they used the same lineup on back-to-back days; it was the first time they’ve used a lineup twice at any point. Why wouldn’t they have, though? The pitching staff was terrible on Tuesday, but the offense hit four home runs and looked actually pretty good. So the Royals ran the same lineup out.

It didn’t look great early with Kyle Gibson matching Greinke’s zeroes for three innings on a similar economy of pitches. The Royals did have one scoring chance early with Nick Pratto doubling and Michael Massey blooping a single to left, but Kyle Stowers made a brilliant throw to get Pratto at the plate. I saw some people asking if Pratto was loafing, but I don’t think he was. I think he just isn’t fast and the throw was outstanding.

It wasn’t until the fourth when the Royals broke through against Gibson for the first time on a Vinnie Pasquantino home run.

I’d like to interrupt the discussion of the game to talk about Pasquantino briefly. He had two more doubles after this home run and he’s now hitting .292/.380/.549. He has 15 walks, 16 strikeouts and 17 extra base hits. His 152 wRC+ ranks 18th in all of baseball. He’s a monster on the field, but he’s also been everything the Royals have ever wanted off the field. Pasquantino has been the spokesman for the Royals troubles this season and he is basically saying all the right things. Is he an elite defender? No. And there’s some risk in signing a first baseman/designated hitter long-term, but I both can’t imagine he requires something that hinder the team and believe he would sign something as well. They need to get that done yesterday.

Okay, back to the game. Remember Quatraro’s decision to pull Greinke? It’s not often you get to see the other side of that. I mentioned Gibson was economical. He threw 48 pitches to get through the first 18 batters. Then the lineup turned over for a third trip through and Gibson remained in the game. Here’s what happened:

Bobby Witt Jr. grounded into a forceout
Witt stole second
Pasquantion doubled, Witt scored
Salvador Perez lined out
MJ Melendez flied out
Edward Olivares grounded out
Pratto singled
Massey singled
Maikel Garcia hit a sacrifice fly
Kyle Isbel doubled, Massey scored
Witt tripled, Isbel scored

The Royals were 5 for 18 the first two times through the order. They went 5 for 9 against Gibson after that and broke the game wide open. I think Orioles fans likely wished their manager had the same move the Royals manager did. It’s not something you can do every day, but if the situation allows for it, why not? The Royals lineup that has lacked depth all season long, showed something we don’t see too often with this group. The six through nine hitters went 8 for 14 with two doubles, three runs scored and two runs batted in. They got the job done with both Perez and Olivares going hitless. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I believe this offense has the core in place but they need at least two hitters to step up to get the lineup some length. Last night, that happened.

In the end, the Royals offense scored six runs on 13 hits. They had six extra base hits which tied a season high. It was the first time all season they’d scored six or more runs in back-to-back games. And maybe more amazing than any of that, they did it without drawing a single walk or striking out. There are some really fun nuggets about that.

• They’re the second team this season to go a whole game without striking out. The other team to do it was, of course, the Orioles.

• It’s the 82nd time in team history that they haven’t struck out in a game. The last time it happened was 2017. Of those 82, 62 of them came in the first half of the franchise’s existence, meaning only 20 have come since 1997. They’re now 51-31 when not striking out.

• It’s the seventh time in team history they’ve had no walks and no strikeouts. The last time they did it was August of 2003 in a 5-4 win. They’re now 5-2 in those games.

• While this number seems high, consider the context. It’s the 1,423rd game in the history of baseball where a team didn’t walk or strike out. That goes back to 1901. It’s only the 107th time in the expansion era (since 1961) and the ninth time since the league expanded to 30 teams in 1998. The last team to do it was the A’s in 2014.

I think it’s worth mentioning that the offense has quietly kind of been better since facing Shohei Ohtani. I wrote in that Weekend in Review about the former player who once told me that facing an elite pitcher can get a team on track and, well, maybe that’s what has happened here. In 11 games since then, they’re just 4-7 but they’ve scored 50 runs (4.5 per game) and have hit .262/.321/.444. They’ve scored five or more runs in that stretch five times. Hey, it’s a start.

A win like this doesn’t really change anything, but boy does it feel just a little bit better to see them win the way they did. It shows they actually are capable of doing it, so there remains a little hope that they can put together a stretch of competent baseball. It may all come crashing down again today with the series finale against Grayson Rodriguez, but for a few hours, we got to experience and actually fun game and feel good about the team, even if just for a bit.