Why has the Royals’ rotation, studded with All-Stars, sputtered out of the gate?
Searching for a word to sum up the Royals’ starting pitching through three games in Kansas City on Major League Baseball’s season-opening weekend?
Try this: inefficient.
For the Royals’ top two starting pitchers, staff ace Cole Ragans and No. starter Seth Lugo, uncharacteristic would also apply. Neither developed much rhythm in respective first starts of the year during KC’s three-game series against the defending AL Central-champion Cleveland Guardians at Kauffman Stadium.
Ragans lasted five innings in his opening day start, throwing 83 pitches. The left-hander struck out three and walked two. Last season his 29.3 strikeout percentage ranked second in the AL to eventual Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal (30.3).
Lugo, the 2024 Cy Young runner-up and Royals innings-eater — he compiled a team-leading 206.2 last year — threw 86 pitches Saturday. He walked three and struck out four, taking a no-decision as the Royals won 4-3.
Last season the right-handed Lugo averaged 6.2 innings per start.
The most recent iteration of the Royals’ starting-pitching inefficiency arrived Sunday in the form of series-finale starter Michael Wacha. The KC right-hander went just four innings, throwing 87 pitches.
He took the loss in the Royals’ 6-2 defeat, with a final line of one earned run allowed on four hits and four walks with two strikeouts.
“It was a tough one,” Wacha said. “Just think back to all the walks and kind of falling behind guys. Definitely plenty of stuff to work on going into this next one. Pitch count got too high there, forced the bullpen to cover a lot of innings there, which I’m definitely not a fan of.”
Cleveland forced Wacha to pitch around traffic and work out of tense situations with runners aboard. The 33-year-old big-league veteran, pitching his second season with the Royals, had no clean innings.
“I pitched with a lot of traffic there, for sure,” Wacha said. “Whenever you got guys in scoring position, guys on base, even if you don’t have your best stuff, you’ve got to figure out a way to limit the damage and make pitches whenever you need to. And I was able to do that for most of the game.”
In the second inning, Guardians first baseman and former Royal Carlos Santana led off with a double and Wacha put right fielder Nolan Jones on base with a five-pitch walk. Cleveland catcher Bo Naylor flew out but advanced Santana advance to third, and third baseman Gabriel Arias lofted a sacrifice fly to bring him home.
“It was a struggle for him,” manager Matt Quatraro said of Wacha’s outing. “Relatively easy first (inning), then his pitch count got real high in the second. Just seemed like he couldn’t quite get that outside corner that he was going for.
“They were patient, they made him work,” Quatraro added of Cleveland’s lineup. “He kept it at one run, which was impressive with all the base runners. But at the same time, that was close to 90 pitches in four innings.”
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Quatraro noted that it was an easy call to pull Wacha after the fourth inning, given that pitch count. And Wacha’s afternoon was emblematic of the issue Quatraro faced with his starting pitchers throughout the series.
“Some of that’s my decision. I could have left those guys in,” the manager said. “Maybe they get through six (innings) and they still have quality starts. So it’s not all on them, but at the same time, they weren’t as efficient — or sharp, I should say — the first two days as they normally are. But it’s the first start of the year.”
And Wacha spoke for the Royals’ starting pitching staff in saying he knows they need to pitch deeper into games.
“That’s our goal,” Wacha said. “We know we’ve got it in us, and it’s up to us to make those adjustments from start to start and continue to get back out there, attacking the zone and working deep into those games.”
Next to take the mound for the Royals is left-hander Kris Bubic. The No. 4 pitcher in the KC rotation will get the start on the road Monday in Milwaukee against the Brewers. First pitch is set for 1:10 p.m. Central Time.
