The starting pitchers have done their job; over and over again they’ve put the Royals in a position to win and Sunday’s game was no exception. Even though Luis Mendoza did not appear to have his best command, he still threw six innings and gave up two earned runs—that should be enough for the Royals to win a ball game, but Kansas City still lost to the Oakland Athletics, 4-3.
Most hitting philosophies have two parts: 1.) Before two strikes, get your pitch. 2.) With two strikes, get the ball in play. Failure to do either one when it mattered cost the Royals the ball game. The Royals put together three very good at-bats to start the second inning: Salvador Perez singled, Mike Moustakas saw nine pitches and walked, then Jeff Francoeur did the same. The Royals had the bases loaded, nobody out and Oakland A’s starting pitcher, Tommy Milone, on the ropes. Someone was up in the pen, Milone’s pitch count was already alarmingly high—the Royals appeared to be one hit away from chasing the A’s starting pitching and getting a shot at their middle relievers, the weakest part of any bullpen.
According to the guys on TV, James Shields has now gone at least eight innings five times and hasn’t won any of those games. Some of that can be explained by match-ups: number one pitchers tend to face other number one pitchers—at least early in the season—so the lack of run support for Shields isn’t surprising considering who was pitching for the other teams. But this game appeared to be a mismatch: James Shields against Jarrod Parker. Parker had an ERA over 6.00 coming into the game and Shields is one of the best pitchers in the league. James not only pitched eight innings, he struck out nine, only walked one, gave up just two runs and still didn’t win.
If a pitch bounces on the way to the plate umpires make a big deal of throwing the ball out of play, but then someone hits a three-hopper to short, the shortstop bounces the throw to first and the ball goes right back to the pitcher. That ball is scuffed and nobody says a word—unless it’s the pitcher. The guy on the mound, the guy who just got an early Christmas gift, is the most likely person to take a scuffed ball out of play.
Everybody loves the big pitching match ups—your ace faces their ace, number one against number one—but those games are tossups and either team could win. Then there are the games you should win and can’t afford to lose; not if you’re going to put together a winning record. This was a game the Royals should have won and they did. When you face a team that’s 15 and 24 and they’re using a fill-in starting pitcher with an ERA over 11.00, it’s an opportunity—the Royals needed to win this game.
Coming into this game Royals pitcher Jeremy Guthrie had a string of 18 starts without a loss—that string got snapped by four home runs. Albert Pujols, Howie Kendrick, Josh Hamilton and Mike Trout all took Jeremy deep. Guthrie also walked three, struck out none and gave up five earned runs—not a great night.
If you were concerned about the Royals recent 1-6 stretch, but woke up this morning feeling better because they beat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Southern California 11-4, remember this:
Sunday against the Yankees, Royals starter Ervin Santana threw 102 pitches — and three of them cost him the game. In the third inning, Santana threw a slider up in the zone to Robinson Cano, and the Yankees second baseman hit it over 400 feet.
Sunday against the Yankees, Ervin Santana threw 102 pitches—three of them cost him the game. In the third inning Santana threw a slider up in the zone to Robinson Cano, and the Yankees second baseman hit it over 400 feet. Unfortunately, the right field bullpen gate is more like 375 feet from home plate, so Cano proved he can hit a homer in Kauffman Stadium and drove in two runs at the same time.
Coming into this season the Royals appeared to have Gold Glove candidates at catcher, third base, shortstop, first base, left field and possibly right field. Coming into this game the Royals had the worst fielding percentage in the American League.
The game got away in the sixth inning, one of the hardest innings in baseball. It’s not the first time I’ve pointed that out to readers, but ever since former Royals catcher Jason Kendall pointed it out to me, I see it all the time: the starting pitcher is running out of gas in the sixth or seventh (another hard inning) and hasn’t gone far enough to hand the ball to the most dominant relievers at the backend of the pen—the set-up man and closer.
Jeremy Guthrie threw six innings and gave up one run—another quality start for the Royals. So far the formula seems pretty simple: if you have good starting pitching, it’s harder to have long losing streaks. Having a good bullpen doesn’t hurt either; Aaron Crow, Kelvin Herrera and Luke Hochevar supplied three more scoreless innings to back up Guthrie’s start. If I counted right (it’s late and I’m tired), so far this season the pitchers have held opponents to less than three runs 14 times in the first 31 games.
In a 3-3 game Royals reliever Tim Collins walked Adam Jones to lead off the bottom of the eighth inning. Bad move on two counts, may be three: leadoff walks are the worst kind (the opposition has all three outs available to move the runner around the bases), Jones can run a little bit (averaging 13 stolen bases a year) and Collins takes a while to get the ball to home plate (Tim’s got a pretty big leg kick). If Jones stole second, the Orioles would have the winning run in scoring position and three outs to get it home.
OK, you’re Ned Yost and you’re managing the Royals; the score’s 1-0 going into the top of the ninth and your starter, James Shields, has pitched brilliantly, but he’s thrown 102 pitches and is about to face the two, three and four-hole hitters for the fourth time. The No. 2 hitter, Jeff Keppinger, was hitting .143 off Shields at the start of the game and is 0 for 3, the No. 3 hitter, Alex Rios, started the game at .311 against Shields and is also 0 for 3 and the four-hole hitter, Adam Dunn, started the game at .077 against James, but has walked, lined out and struck out.
The Royals won this one 6-5 in 10 innings. I made so many notes I don’t know where to start, so I’ll start at the beginning.
Turns out the only guy who had a real shot at preventing Jeremy Guthrie from throwing a complete game shutout Saturday night was Ned Yost. The moment came in the eighth inning: Guthrie had a 2-0 lead, two outs and two runners. The second runner was the problem—it brought the winning run to the plate, so Ned Yost went to the mound.
Once again the Royals were rained out. (Man, I’ve written that way too many times already this season.) In the meantime here’s an interesting conversation I had with Royals outfield and base running coach, Rusty Kuntz. We were talking about playing 162 games and the effort required to make it through such a grueling schedule. What Rusty had to say may surprise you.
Alex Gordon was chapped, Eric Hosmer thought it was ridiculous and Jeff Francoeur wanted to keep playing. With the Royals up 1-0 the game was stopped after the top of the fourth inning. If it had been the top of the fifth, the game would have counted. Players said the conditions were bad, but if they were going to play in bad conditions for four innings, why not five?
Alex Gordon was chapped, Eric Hosmer thought it was ridiculous and Jeff Francoeur wanted to keep playing. With the Royals up 1-0 the game was stopped after the top of the fourth inning. If it had been the top of the fifth, the game would have counted. Players said the conditions were bad, but if they were going to play in bad conditions for four innings, why not five?
When it comes to pitching, fans and the media often focus on starters and closers—middle relievers are often ignored. But if you want to understand what happened in this game, you’ll have to focus on the performance of two middle relievers: the Royals Bruce Chen and the Rays Jake McGee.
In the bottom of the sixth inning the Tampa Bay Rays were up 2-0 and had two outs. Rays starter Alex Cobb had given up four singles, struck out five, got two outs on fly balls, 10 outs on groundballs and seemed in complete control. But then Eric Hosmer doubled on a 79-mph curveball, Lorenzo Cain singled on an 80-mph curveball, Mike Moustakas homered on an 86-mph changeup, Jeff Francoeur doubled on an 86-mph changeup, Salvador Perez singled on an 85-mph changeup and Elliot Johnson ended Alex Cobb’s night when he singled on an 86-mph changeup.
The Royals were shutout, lost the game 9-0 and afterwards were talking about Ubaldo Jimenez and how well he pitched.
At 1:10 on Sunday the Royals played what may have been there best game of the year, beating the Cleveland Indians 9-0. At 7:10—six hours later—the Royals played what was definitely their worst game of the year, losing to the Indians 10-3. That score can’t even begin to explain everything that went wrong. The Royals had an E5, an E3, an E4, a passed ball, a walk, a hit batter, a mental mistake on the bases and probably should have been stuck with an E6 and an E9 as well.
Before Sunday’s game one I asked Billy Butler how Cleveland’s Justin Masterson would pitch him. Most of the time hitters know what the pitcher will try to do—it then becomes a game of execution. If Billy knows Masterson is going to try to get him to hit a sinker into the ground, the real question is whether Masterson will keep his sinker down. If Masterson leaves one up, can Billy execute a good swing and hit it hard while keeping the ball in the air?
