Everything clicks...finally

Daniel Lynch shoved and the Royals bats kicked into some kind of overdrive, reaching base via 11 walks. It's a win!

Apologies for no newsletter on Tuesday. The Royals were off and I decided to take a day myself. After that lost weekend in Seattle, it felt like a thing to do.

Anyway, back on the BS as the kids say. The Royals rolled into the very literal Windy (and Cold) City on Tuesday night to square off against the struggling White Sox. While the South Siders are still the class of the Central, a host of injuries have hobbled the club and they’re not looking like the prohibitive favorites they were just a few weeks ago. The hunt is on.

Are the Royals part of that hunt? Their head-to-head series against the Sox this summer will go a long way to deciding that. A young, hopeful, upstart team needs to measure itself against the class of the division. Chicago comes into this series slumping, not unlike the Royals. Part of the 162 game schedule is the luck of catching teams at exactly the right time. With two teams having a difficult time scoring runs, it’s a huge advantage to the club that can find a way to win this series.

With White Sox pitchers unable to throw strikes, shaky defense and a Royals offense finally primed to take advantage of copious gifts, game one goes to the good guys. Oh, the pitching was on point as well. Mix it all together and you have a 6-0 shutout. The Royals snapped their most recent losing streak while the Sox dropped their eighth in a row.

Everybody walks

It was the smoldering dumpster fire of the White Sox pitching that finally set the Royals’ offense on fire.

In the sixth inning, they loaded the bases multiple times, walked four times, had three hits, cashed in two runs on productive outs and still left the bases loaded. You know what…I don’t think anyone really noticed. Everyone was drunk on the walks and the runs.

Despite one hitter who insisted on swinging not once, but twice on 3-0 counts with runners in scoring position (more on him lower in this edition), the Royals hitters exhibited some kind of patience against the Sox pitchers. None of them could consistently throw strikes.

Bobby Witt, Jr. got the proceedings underway with a very strong at bat. He swung and missed at a couple of sliders to fall in the hole 0-2. As mentioned on Monday, those are the types of pitches Witt has been struggling to handle in his nascent major league career. He had to know more sliders were coming, but he adjusted…took one off the plate, fouled off another and then went down to get a slider that caught too much of the dish for a leadoff double.

It’s just a nice adjustment from a guy who is looking like he’s getting on the right track. This is huge.

An Adalberto Mondesi bunt single (more on him shortly, of course), a sac fly, a pair of walks, a force out run-scoring hit into the outfield, another walk and a Carlos Santana two-run single kept the carousel of pain rotating. It was the most impressive inning we’ve seen to this point in 2022. A lot of strong plate appearances allowed the Royals to keep that line moving.

Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?

Overall, the Royals drew 11 walks. Eleven!

If that feels like a lot, it’s because it is. Especially for the Royals. This century they’ve drawn 11 or more walks in a game six times. And two of those games went extra innings.

It was the 19th time they’ve walked at least 11 times in a game in franchise history. And the free passes were evenly distributed—no Royal had more than two. Only Witt and Andrew Benintendi didn’t walk, but they both had two hits. This was a good game for the old OBP. The Royals team on base percentage jumped from .272 to 281.

With the bunt single in the sixth, that moved Mondesi to 4 for his last 32, dating back to April 14. In that stretch, he has 14 strikeouts and three walks. Get this…of his four hits, three have come on bunts. Three!

The one thing that never slumps with Mondesi (pardon the cliché), is speed. Despite the fact he has an anemic .176 OBP on the season, he’s still trying his damndest to cause havoc on the bases. He’s swiped five bases despite being on base only nine times. That’s amazing. And a bit disappointing. Imagine what he could do if he could put it together.

I know, I know…

We’ve seen the struggles of Mondesi before. And we’ve seen the injuries. On a frigid night on the South Side, Mondesi walked off the field with yet another ailment. After the game the Royals said it was left knee discomfort. He was checked out and, according to Mike Matheny, a little sore, but they didn’t find any damage. They will continue to do some tests.

While it’s all incredibly discouraging to see him once again leave the field with an injury, I am in no way going to be critical of Mondesi because of this. Put yourself in his position. You’re an athlete in the prime of your career and it’s just not happening for you. God, that has to be so taxing. You make a move for second or you jump back toward first and you feel something…just go. When Mondesi walked off the field, you could sense the dejection. The game can be so cruel, so brutal.

I would imagine Mondesi is out of the lineup today and probably tomorrow as the Royals close out the road trip. The team made it sound like he wouldn’t need a turn on the IL, but at this point who can say for sure.

If Mondesi is on the shelf for any length of time, the Royals have two options. One, they can recall Emmanual Rivera from Omaha. This is the option if they decide to keep Lopez at second and Merrifield in right. They would slide Witt over to his natural shortstop and give a long look at Rivera, who is mashing in Triple-A to the tune of .290/.389/.532 in 62 at bats.

However, I speculated early in the spring when it became obvious the Royals would open with Witt at third and Mondesi at short, it was because they wanted to just leave Witt alone and let him play third. If Mondesi needed a day off, they would rotate Lopez back over. That would kind of keep the pressure off Witt, defensively speaking and by not moving around, presumably keep things a little simpler. So I’m thinking they keep Witt at third, slide Lopez to short and Merrifield in at second. That gives Olivares an extended look and means the Royals would probably recall Kyle Isbel as the fourth outfielder. I would hope that given his second turn on the roster in 2022, he would get a few more innings to show what he can do. There’s a way to get both Isbel and Olivares into the outfield on a regular basis.

For the short term, it will be what we saw on Tuesday. Witt remains at third with Lopez and Merrifield up the middle. I sure hope Olivares gets the start in right, but with right-hander Dylan Cease going for the Sox in the matinee, would you be surprised to see Ryan O’Hearn in the lineup?

A slider most foul

Daniel Lynch needed 55 pitches to get the first nine outs of the game. If you hadn’t watched the game and read a sentence like that, you’d think that Lynch perhaps struggled. I can see that. Except he didn’t. Not at all, allowing just one hit and a walk against three strikeouts in the first three frames.

It’s just that there was two epic at bats. One against Jose Abreu in the first lasted 12 pitches. Another in the third against Andrew Vaughn went 10 pitches. That’s 40 percent of Lynch’s pitches in the first three innings coming in just two plate appearances.

White Sox hitters were foul ball machines. They fouled Lynch off 22 times in the first three innings. It was a mix of sliders down and fastballs. Most were in the zone. A few were fought off.

With the wind and the temperature, it was a tough night to hit. Sox hitters did their darnedest to spoil some good pitches from Lynch. Really, he had everything working in the first three innings and looked sharp. He had five whiffs on the slider to go along with nine fouls. He also had a swing and miss on this beaut of a change.

He didn’t record a swing and a miss on his four-seamer until the fourth inning. AJ Pollock couldn’t resist the high cheese.

It’s what we’ve wanted to see on a consistent basis. The high 94 mph heat combined with a biting slider along with a change with arm-side run. Lynch had it all working. The beautiful thing was if he made a mistake like a hanging slider to Jake Burger in the fourth, there was no way it was leaving the park. It was that kind of brutal hitting night. Everything favored the pitchers and Lynch took full advantage.

Hey! Here’s a swinging strike on a slider to Tim Anderson. Just for fun.

Had he not had those aforementioned lengthy battles, maybe he could’ve gone another inning. Maybe. But he was in command all night and had a fresh bullpen backing him up. This is the Lynch who commands the highest ceiling of the 2018 draft class of collegiate arms. It’s still super early and the Royals track record in this area isn’t great, but this is an exciting and promising start.

Six innings from Lynch with a career-high seven strikeouts. Only two hits and two walks. That’s total dominance. Even with the foul balls.

Overall, Lynch showed his usual mix: Four-seamers 44 percent of the time, followed by 35 percent sliders and the change at 17 percent. He recorded 12 swings and misses—mostly on the fastball/slider—and finished with a 22 percent CSW%.

The offensive outburst and the Mondesi injury may garner the loud headlines (hell, Lynch is my third header here), but the outing of Lynch is low-key the most important development of Tuesday’s ballgame.

Unsmart baseball

I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Allow me to rewind myself and set the stage.

Dallas Keuchel, while allowing gobs of baserunners in the early going in 2022, doesn’t really ever scuffle with his control in a very limited sample size. With a career 2.7 BB/9, he never really has. His issue is more hittability. Yet he had a difficult time finding the zone in the top of the second. With one out, he surrendered Hunter Dozier’s first free pass of the year. With two outs, he walked Adalberto Mondesi, who would rather play in subzero temperatures without a ski mask than accept a base on balls.

That brought up Michael A. Taylor. Keuchel continued to search for the zone, falling behind 3-0. And then, this…

My god. It wasn’t even a good pitch! On the edge, it probably would’ve been called a strike. Maybe not. Who knows? Not us. Because Taylor swung at a 3-0 pitch after Keuchel walked two of the previous three hitters!

Why in the world would Taylor, a career .239/.293/.385 hitter, be swinging on a 3-0 count when the pitcher has signaled to everyone in the yard he’s having a difficult time throwing a strike? It’s just not smart baseball.

These were the things that used to frustrate me with Ned Yost’s teams. Yost just seemed to sit on his hands and let his players play. There’s something to be said for that, but if they insist on making poor decisions…step up and prevent that from happening. Lordy. A major league manager really shouldn’t have to throw a take sign on in that situation because what the hitter should do is breathtakingly obvious. But maybe the mastery of the obvious is a challenge. I don’t know.

I do know I like to watch smart baseball. I didn’t see that in the second inning.

As if to double down on this section, Taylor did it again! He swung 3-0 in the fourth inning with a runner on second! On another borderline pitch in almost the exact same location.

Lordy.

Central issues

• Tigers 4, Twins 5

I can’t describe how this game ended. You just need to see it for yourself.

MLB @MLB

A wild walk-off in Minnesota!! 😱

• Guardians 1, Angels 4

Mike Trout did Mike Trout things against Treston McKenzie and the Guardians. Trout homered and drove in three. Cleveland has now lost five in a row.

Up next

Wednesday’s game time has been moved to the afternoon due to the weather forecast in Chicago. So, day baseball for all the degenerates! That’s us! Zack Greinke gets the ball for the Royals while the Sox will counter with Dylan Cease. First pitch is now scheduled for 1:10 CDT. Still, game time temp is forecast to be 39 degrees with a 12 mph wind.