This wasn’t the performance the Royals needed from Yordano Ventura, but it’s just one game

Yordano Ventura literally wears the strength of his fastball on his arm, the flames from a baseball tattooed on his left forearm pointing toward home plate with every pitch.

When he is right, the radar gun pops into the upper 90s. The best hitters in the world are stuck cheating to hit one of the game's hardest fastballs which leaves them vulnerable for silly and weak swings on a sometimes great curveball. When it works, he has been known to punctuate those strikeouts by miming a large set of cojones.

He wears that fastball velocity something like a superhero's cape, and when it is not there, he is left exposed, minimized from a supreme talent to a second-year ballplayer who could not rise to the moment. When his velocity dipped in July, he was so ineffective the Royals tried to demote him to the minor leagues.

When it dipped in Game 3 of the World Series, he was shelled and visibly flustered in what eventually became a 9-3 loss to the Mets here at Citi Field on Friday. He could have essentially ended the series by pitching the Royals to a win. Instead, the lead shrinks to 2-1, the Mets given new life and swagger to trash talk the Royals through postgame comments.

"I don't know why," Ventura said through teammate Christian Colon, who translated from Spanish. "I just noticed when I came in, I saw the radar or looked at some video. I feel great. Felt great out there. I don't know why my velocity was down."

It was a curious time to come up limp. Ventura had a fabulous rookie year, highlighted by a shutdown performance in Game 6 of the World Series. The Royals rewarded him with a $23 million contract and the opening day start, and when Ventura was ineffective and regularly inciting on-field drama they wondered if it was all too much for him. He seemed to find the right balance between emotion and focus toward the end of the season and — along with Johnny Cueto's reluctance to pitch on short rest — earned the Game 1 playoff start.

But he's regressed back to unpredictability since. Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard's stupid posturing after throwing up and in to Alcides Escobar on the first pitch will largely overshadow that the Royals missed a chance to all but clinch a world championship because Ventura was not good enough.

The velocity is the most obvious thing. His fastball was in the mid- to upper-90s to the first few batters, but fell three to five miles per hour by the second, third and fourth innings. When Royals manager Ned Yost wondered if the chilly temperature bothered Ventura, it was more a grab at possibilities than anything based in substance.

Drew Butera, the backup catcher, said he assumed most of those pitches were cutters until watching them on video and seeing the lack of movement. So much of Ventura's persona depends on fastball velocity, it's strange to see him stripped down without it.

"He just wasn't sharp," Yost said.

It was more than the fastball velocity, too. His problems were not just physical.

The first six pitches he threw were all fastballs. Nothing to break up rhythm. The sixth fastball came in at 96 mph, and left David Wright's bat at 103, not landing until it had cleared the left field fence by 30 feet or so. If that was the last mistake Ventura made, the Royals may have been able to salvage the game.

But in the top of the third, he hung a curveball — a curveball — in an 0-2 count against pitcher Noah Syndergaard. The pitch got what it deserved, a sharp single to right, and then Ventura put a fastball down the middle that Curtis Granderson slammed into the right field seats for a two-run homer.

In the next inning, the mental gaffe was even worse. With runners on second and third, Michael Conforto hit a chopper to the right side of the infield. The first day of spring training this year, all 30 teams worked on pitchers covering first base in this situation. They did the same the year before, the year before that, and the year before that. They will do this again next spring.

Ventura, in the noise and chaos of a World Series game slipping away, froze. Hosmer expected Ventura to be covering, and could not beat Conforto to the bag. The Royals trailed by two. After one more batter, Yost brought in Duffy, to face Syndergaard. The bats stayed cool, Franklin Morales bombed, and the Mets breezed.

"My instinct was to watch the ball right there and kind of just look at Hoz and see if he was going to go home or something, and just got caught watching the play," Ventura said.

"You could tell he was starting to get a little flustered," Yost said. "Started losing his focus and concentration at that point. That's why we made the move."

Ventura is capable of dominating starts and stretches, but also prone to severe letdowns. Maybe he'll grow out of that. For now, the Royals just lost a game in which they gave him two leads, and he blew both.

This does not have to be a big deal, of course, the same way that Johnny Cueto's disastrous start in Toronto did not define the ALCS. The Royals are still in the better position here. Teams with 2-1 leads after three games end have won the World Series 67 percent of the time. The big picture, then, has not changed.

Before this World Series started, there was good reason to believe the Royals would win. They are the more complete team, more balanced, and stronger in the bullpen, which takes on more importance in the playoffs. That remains true.

Before this World Series started, there was good reason to believe the Mets would not go quietly. They have a quartet of terrifically talented starting pitchers, and enough power to be dangerous. That remains true.

The Royals are still in the power position of these playoffs. They lead two games to one, the Mets needing to win three of the last four to keep the parade from going through downtown Kansas City.

But Ventura's steady stream of mistakes — along with a concerning dip in velocity on that fastball after the first inning — exposed the Royals' greatest weakness and the Mets' greatest advantage. The Royals simply do not know what they'll get from their starting pitchers, and with the exception of Cueto, that is truest of Ventura.

It was the second time this postseason that Ventura had not completed even four innings. In five starts, he has stunk twice, been OK twice, and been pretty good once. That is less than trustworthy, more the volatile first 4 1/2 months of his season than the final six weeks.

In the big picture, this is far from major trouble for the Royals. They could still end the series without playing another game in Kansas City, or give themselves two chances to pop champagne at home by winning one of the next two here in New York.

But it is the continuation of a somewhat troubling trend for the Royals, with unpredictable starting pitching. Ventura lines up as the Game 7 starter, if the series were to go that long.

Chances are that it won't. But seeing the Royals' biggest disadvantage against the Mets exposed is a reminder that they will have to earn this championship.

This story was originally published October 30, 2015 at 10:53 PM with the headline "This wasn’t the performance the Royals needed from Yordano Ventura, but it’s just one game."