Back to the basics for the Royals

The starting pitching looked good all weekend, but it took until Sunday before the bats—led by Bobby Witt Jr.—and the bullpen—meaning Scott Barlow—came to life.

On Saturday afternoon, I settled in to catch a couple of baseball games of that soak-the-fan ritual known as the “day-night doubleheader.” (Two games for the price of two!) At the top of my list of things to follow in the first game was the outing of Alec Marsh.

Among myriad prospect hounds, Marsh is knocking on the door of the Royals’ top 10. (Given the current state of the farm system, that may not necessarily be a positive statement, but still…) The ERA in Double-A Northwest Arkansas in 2022 and 2023 isn’t anything to look at. However, the guy has the ability to miss bats. A good thing, if you’re a pitcher. The metrics and peripherals are there, even if the results are not.

Against the Rays in the lid-lifter of the season’s second half, Marsh did not disappoint. He threw five innings and recorded 15 swings and misses en route to 11 strikeouts. Perhaps even more impressive than the punchies (and those were seriously impressive) was the fact he walked just a single batter. Walks have dogged Marsh throughout his professional career.

The only blemishes against Marsh on the afternoon were a pair of dingers. Jose Siri yanked a slider that didn’t slide enough to left field in the third while Francisco Mejia went down and golfed a changeup to right in the fifth. Marsh’s avoidance of the base on balls (along with generally limiting hard contact) meant both homers were of the solo variety.

While Marsh was good on Saturday afternoon, the bullpen, tasked with keeping the game close, most decidedly was not.

When Marsh exited the game, the Royals were trailing 2-1 thanks to a Bobby Witt Jr. solo home run. While Taylor Clarke was strong in his inning of work, striking out two, Collin Snider came in and couldn’t locate within the zip code.

His first 13 pitches were out of the strike zone. I don’t need to indicate which ones were from the chart above. It’s irrelevant when the chart looks like a blindfolded dude firing paintballs at a random target.

I think my favorite thing about the whole game was the fact Randy Arozerena came to the plate five times on the afternoon and in four of those PAs, swung at, and put the first pitch in play for an out. Against Snider, Arozerena looked at four pitches out of the zone.

Any hopes the Royals had for a comeback were dashed in those 13 pitches. All three batters Sinder walked scored. The Rays tacked on one more in the ninth for the final 6-1 margin. Marsh deserved better.

This game got me thinking in the most basic of ways. (I know!) Baseball, in its essence, can be stripped down to offense, starting pitching and relief pitching. To win a game, teams generally need at least two of those three categories to click in some fashion. In game one on Saturday, they got the starting pitching, but the offense was still on the All-Star break and the bullpen spit the bit.

Game two was a virtual repeat. Cole Ragans, making his Royals debut, was throwing 99 MPH heat and limited the Rays to a single run over five innings. He actually exited the game with a 2-1 lead, which in itself was somewhat surprising because again…the Royals’ offense was still on the break. Jose Cuas did his part with a shutdown inning but Jonathan Heasley needed just two batters to allow the Rays to tie the game. Carlos Hernández untied the game for the Royals, allowing a two-out Luke Raley single which scored Harold Ramirez from second. Dylan Coleman then provided the insurance run for Tampa.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. The starting pitching did the job again. The bullpen and offense did not. That was the story on Saturday.

Before we move on, a note about Ragans: His fastball velocity was up a tick and his other pitches were similarly a little hotter. His spin rate was likewise up across the board. I would expect results like this coming from a starter transitioning to the bullpen. Except Ragans Statcast data from his time in Texas was exclusively from pitching in relief. These bumps aren’t supposed to happen when going from the bullpen to the rotation. Color me intrigued.

Staying with the Statcast metrics for a moment from Saturday’s game, Ragans had an impressive 25 percent whiff rate on 11 swings and misses but recorded only 12 called strikes. Still, he was getting plenty of chase, especially on his changeup and cutter. The Rays weren’t really squaring him up at all. His average exit velocity was 81 MPH. Only four of the 15 balls in play against him were considered hard hit.

It’s still extremely early days, so it’s a bit silly to render a verdict on the trade, but the start is extremely promising. It’s a potential triumph of the analytics department, along with the scouting staff to find and identify key attributes that Ragans’ possesses that will take to the Royals’ pitching methodology.

Saturday’s day-night doubleheader sweep may have been more of the same when it comes to the bare wins and losses, but the outings from Marsh and Ragans showed that there’s promise in the system. I am nowhere close to popping the champaign and declaring the system healed. There’s too much rot and there hasn’t been enough time to fix everything. It’s premature to say a corner has been turned. What I do think we can say is that the Royals are identifying guys who can help and making adjustments to players already in the system. It’s not going to be a quick fix, nor is it going to be simple and straightforward. But you can see some progress. As the team careens toward the franchise record for losses in a single season, that’s kind of important.

Revisiting my basic breakdown of a ballgame (offense, starting pitching, relief pitching), the Royals finally put all three on display on Sunday afternoon in the series finale. Powered by the continued of Witt, along with his supporting cast of Drew Waters and MJ Melendez, the Royals knocked six extra-base hits (including three dingers) and plated eight runs. The Royals had scored exactly eight runs in a game once this season—and lost. Remember what I was saying about those basics? Yet Brady Singer locked down the Tampa bats for seven innings. Yeah, he went eight and that was the frame where the Rays touched him up for four runs, but then Scott Barlow made his second-half debut and closed out the victory with a one-two-three inning.

Offense. Starting pitching. Relief pitching.

If the offense is going to find any kind of consistency, Witt will be the leader. And he’s been leading over the last month or so. When the Royals opened a homestand against the Cincinnati Reds on June 12, Witt contributed offensively with three walks in five plate appearances. Maybe something that night clicked, because ever since that moment, he’s been on a helluva tear.

29 G, 126 PA, 34 H, 7 2B, 2 3B, 6 HR, 7 SB

That, on the surface, it a decent month of games.

The rate stats confirm.

.309/.368/.573

Wowza. Plus, there’s this:

7.9 BB%, 18.3 SO%

Both the strikeouts and walks are trending in the right direction. Even though a 29-game sample isn’t large enough to draw any kind of conclusions based on walk and strikeout rates, in Witt’s case, they’re not wildly divergent from his 2023 rates. Just a bit better. I think that’s encouraging that this isn’t just some kind of abnormality in his approach. He’s making adjustments and those adjustments have worked across the board.

I’ll flashback to my last edition of the newsletter for this nugget on the recently departed Amir Garrett:

There was the requisite angst over the Royals uncoupling from a reliever with a 3.33 ERA, but under the surface that 7.4 BB/9 is just a value-killer.

Say what you will about the Royals, but they’re not mind-numbingly stupid. They’re not DFA’ing a reliever with a nifty ERA and a 10.4 SO/9 if they hadn’t shopped him around previously and found no interest. Contenders need relievers. They don’t need relievers who throw first-pitch strikes 48 percent of the time and have a 27 percent CSW%.

So it was unsurprising there wasn’t a team that would claim the lefty on waivers. So the Royals released him on Saturday and will now be a free agent. I’m sure someone will pick him up (now for the pro-rated major league minimum salary with the Royals on the hook for the rest), but I would be surprised if he played a role on a contending team.

It was always worth a shot. It just didn’t work out.

On Friday, the Royals activated Angel Zerpa from the 60-day IL and assigned him to Omaha. He made six outings on rehab from a shoulder injury he suffered in the spring, all starts. His numbers over his last four outings (all in Triple-A, including Friday after he was activated) are a bit gaudy, undone by walks and then leaving some meaty pitches in the zone. Friday against Indianapolis, he was touched up for seven runs in 2.1 innings on seven hits and three walks.

Still, as a member of the 40-man, he’s another guy we can expect to see in Kansas City at some point in the second half. Although it would be good to see Zerpa stitch together a few successful outings before that call comes.

To make room for Zerpa on the 40-man, the Royals transferred Josh Staumont to the 60-day IL and later announced he would undergo thoracic outlet syndrome surgery. That’s…not good.

As outlined in the Washington Post, there are two distinct types of reasons one would need TOS surgery. Vascular is when a clot forms which causes swelling in the arm. Rehab for a vascular TOS is generally around two months with an estimated 90 to 95 percent of players making their way back to a mound. Merrill Kelly had this procedure. The other kind is a bit more daunting. Neurogenic TOS surgery is when the pitcher has nerve issues that lead to tingling and numbness in the hand. Recovery time for that procedure is not unlike the recovery for Tommy John surgery and has only about an 80 percent success rate. This is the surgery Stephen Strasburg underwent in 2021.

We will have to wait and see the procedure Staumont undergoes. Hopefully, it’s the vascular one and he can get to rehabbing soon. Either way, it looks like his season is over.

Snider was optioned back to Omaha ahead of Sunday’s game. Again, the Royals are constantly looking to keep that bullpen fresh so if you have an outing where the strike zone is just a suggestion that’s easily ignored, Omaha is your next destination.

Max Castillo was recalled. Fine. Let’s see what he has this time around.

Speaking of Omaha, Brad Keller had another rehab outing for the Storm Chasers on Sunday. It was awful. Again

He faced eight batters and recorded one out. He walked three and allowed four hits and was charged with six runs. Keller actually threw strikes (20 of his 36 pitches), but still…On a team desperate for pitching, we have probably seen the last of Keller.

Finally, Salvador Perez left Sunday’s game with “left hamstring discomfort.” After the game, the Royals said it was a strain and The Captain would undergo further testing to determine the severity.

I’m going to wait this one out because it’s Salvy. The dude looks wrecked just about every other game and still gets back behind the plate and grinds. It’s probably not the best thing that he doesn’t get some time off now and again. (He certainly looked rejuvenated after the All-Star break, even though he traveled to Seattle and played in the game.) Maybe there’s an IL stint. Maybe he misses a couple of games. Maybe he’s in the lineup on Monday. Nothing would surprise me.