Reliever Joakim Soria finds his groove in a Royals season that’s still taking shape

This is not unlike predicting the rest of the movie based on the first part of the opening credits, but the most important part of the second Royals game of the season may have been the ninth inning. By then, they were already down in a game they would soon lose.

That’s when Joakim Soria came in, needing just 13 pitches for three convincing outs, each earned on a different pitch — slider, changeup and fastball. If there was any worry about Soria’s rocky season debut on Sunday — and there shouldn’t have been, but if there was — then maybe this can calm those frivolous fears.

On Tuesday, he was calm, efficient and cold. This was the Soria that Royals fans remember from his days as an All-Star closer here — even down to it coming in a 2-0 loss to the Mets, actually.

Two days earlier, he gave up three hits and two walks and three runs while getting just two outs. On Tuesday, it was no hits, no walks, no runs and two strikeouts while getting three outs.

“Maybe a little bit,” Soria said when asked if he made a mechanical tweak between appearances. “Maybe a little bit of concentration.”

This is not a column about Soria. Not entirely, anyway. This is a column about what we can possibly know about a 162-game baseball season that is now two games old. If this season were a person, it would still be in diapers. If this season were a puppy, it would not yet be house-trained.

Every year around this time, the baseball world fills with overreaction. After the Royals’ opener on Sunday, at least in some circles, Soria was the unwitting example. There was worry about whether he’d lost it, what his struggles would do to the bullpen. Sometimes, when all we have is a microscopic sliver, it’s easy to forget how big the whole picture is.

It’s easy to forget the value of a deep breath.

The Royals lost on Tuesday, which means the dream of a perfect season is now dead, and beyond that, what exactly can we know at this point?

“You get a good two weeks under your belt, and then you can start looking at numbers and maybe they start to show a bit of a trend,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “But right now, it’s hard to do.”

This is timely as the Royals finish the celebration portion of their schedule. These two games were less baseball than showcase, and the Royals earned each of those cheers and smiles. But before they left the ballpark, they talked about looking forward to a more normal routine on Friday.

These two games made for an entirely bizarre few days. No teams had ever opened against each other the season after meeting in the World Series. Both games were preceded by elaborate ceremonies — the flag going up on Sunday and the rings handed out on Tuesday. A day off in between, and now two more off-days before the next game. That’s a basketball schedule.

On Friday, real life begins. The gold-lettered jerseys and hats will be packed away. No more hype about a World Series rematch, no more talk about Noah Syndergaard’s 60-feet-6-inches line and, most importantly, no more plate appearances against his 100 mph sinker or 94 mph slider.

“This stuff is really, really cool for our fans, and our fans are very, very special to us,” Yost said. “We wanted them to be part of this celebration, but for us, yeah ... our focus is playing and winning baseball games. The other stuff that goes with it, it’s fun that our fans can enjoy it, but now it’s time to get into the grind.”

The grind is where good teams in general, and the Royals in particular, typically thrive. The grind is a day game after a night game. The grind is 10 games in 10 days in three cities and two time zones, which is the stretch that begins against the Twins on Friday at Kauffman Stadium.

General manager Dayton Moore likes to wait 40 games before making judgments about his team. That’s part of why the annual firing of Royals hitting coaches always happened around Memorial Day.

Players have to take a different view on it, one that aims to forget everything in the past and think about nothing in the future. It’s only about that day, or that inning, or that pitch. Third baseman Mike Moustakas said he might “look up” sometime after the All-Star break to see where the team is in the standings, but even then he’ll be remembering there are a lot of games left.

We are still in that awkward stage of the season, then, when there is more energy and anticipation than results.

All of which brings us back to Soria. He has pitched in 446 games over nine big-league seasons. He’s been on playoff teams and 97-game losers. He’s pitched in All-Star games and rehab games. He has, in other words, seen most of what there is to see in Major League Baseball.

This isn’t the first time he’s been hit around in one game, and then dominated in his next.

“There was a lot of difference in my command,” he said. “Today, I had command. The other day, the first game, I didn’t have the command that I’m used to.”

The Royals have been at their best when the season is old enough to manage the path from highs to lows and back. The Royals have been at their best in the part of the season that begins on Friday.

This story was originally published April 5, 2016 at 8:24 PM with the headline "Reliever Joakim Soria finds his groove in a Royals season that’s still taking shape."