Finally! The Royals break the skid and edge closer to the postseason

It wasn't necessarily an offensive outburst, but it doesn't matter. It's a win and that's all that counts.

“We didn’t come this far just to come this far.”

Those were the words of Bobby Witt Jr. just moments after Lucas Erceg punched out Joey Gallo with the tying run on third base. It took ten innings, nine of which were scoreless, to break the skid and actually win a damn game. But a win’s a win, you know? Especially in the last week of the season when you’re hanging on for dear life. It’s not important that the Royals could’ve hung a crooked number in the first and gotten the monkey off their back. It doesn’t matter that they came close to scoring multiple runs in the fifth. All that counts is that lone, sweet, precious run that scored in the top of the tenth. That one run is worth one win. That one win is worth one massive game in the standings.

It doesn’t have to be pretty. It only has to work.

“We didn’t come this far just to come this far.”

It was, in just 10 words, a perfect summation of the Royals’ current state of affairs. After being in a postseason position for most of the summer, and now with Tuesday’s 1-0 victory in 10 innings, they are tantalizingly close.

The Tigers won in the afternoon, 2-1 over the Rays. News flash: Tarik Skubal is good.

The Twins have now fallen two games off the pace after a 4-1 defeat to the Miami Marlins at home. Bailey Ober was dinged for all four runs in the second inning and the Twins had their opportunities, but just couldn’t get the big hit to sustain an inning. Sounds familiar but I am loath to commiserate there.

So let’s check the all-important Wild Card standings:

There are five games to play and I’m frankly exhausted by all the permutations and calculations that go into this. It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. Again, the Royals are really in second in these standings, as they’re the owners of the tie-breaker over the Tigers. The Twins and Mariners are lurking but are running out of time. This is a very attractive situation for the Royals.

The win was worth around 15 percentage points for the Royals according to FanGraphs playoff odds. The Twins’ loss saw their chances almost cut in half—in half!—from 52 percent to 28 percent. Yes, Tuesday was seismic.

If the Royals go 3-2 down the stretch, the Twins would need to go a perfect 5-0 to equal the Royals and grab that spot. If the Royals go 2-3, Minnesota would have to finish on a 4-1 kick. The Royals still need to take care of business, but Tuesday’s win was huge. Enormous.

The magic number is down to four.

A massive game needs a massive performance and the Royals got that from starter Cole Ragans. Ragans gave the Royals six innings of three-hit baseball. He struck out six and wasn’t as sharp with his command, walking three. Part of this was a byproduct of facing a Washington National lineup that doesn’t exactly brim with thunder, but Ragans never felt like he wasn’t in control of the moment.

Still, and I really, truly hate to be the guy to bring this up, but Ragans’ velocity was down. Like, way down. The lefty did have that mid-season run where his average four-seamer dropped below 95 MPH. He recovered some of that velocity of late, with six of his previous seven starts before Tuesday topping that average of 95 MPH. Yet against the Nationals, Ragans average four-seamer was coming in at 93.4 MPH. That’s not just down, that’s alarmingly down. And it was that way across the board. His slider, his change, his curve…everything was down a couple of ticks.

At this point in the season, there are so many data points (starts) that it can be difficult to read. I think you can see the dip in velocity from his start against the Tigers last week and Tuesday’s. He’s had similar drops from start to start, but that was the slowest he’s been all year.

Below are his raw numbers from his start:

I dismissed Ragans’ previous drop in velocity as just general fatigue. This…I’m not so sure. It’s quite a bit more extreme. It’s troubling. Yet it was a cold night, a wet night…So we can hope that the weather was something of a factor.

The way the season will wrap, Ragans is the tentative starter for Sunday’s season finale. Hopefully, the Royals will have their postseason spot secure so they can push his start back to the first or second game of the Wild Card round and give him a couple extra days of rest.

I made an appearance on ESPN Wichita radio on Tuesday with Shane Dennis, where we obviously discussed the recent offensive ineptitude. I stated that it was going to be important for the Royals to hang a crooked number early against the Nationals. If that could happen, it would get the boys to relax a bit and they could just play their game.

It almost came to pass.

The Royals loaded the bases in the first…with nobody out. Tommy Pham reached on an error. Bobby Witt Jr and Salvador Perez followed by singles. That brought up Yuli Gurriel with a chance to put up that crooked number just four hitters into the game.

Instead, this happened:

That’s a liner at 105.4 MPH off the bat. It was the second hardest-hit ball of the game. It had an expected batting average of .640. A batted ball, with that exit velocity and launch angle, is a hit more often than not. In this case, not only was it not a hit, it was worth two outs to the Nats.

Unreal.

If I was thinking an inning with multiple runs would get this offense cooking, I didn’t imagine anything like that. After Freddy Fermin grounded back to the pitcher to end the inning, it was like adding 20 sandbags to the back of the offense already unable to bear the weight of expectations. It was as bad an outcome as you could imagine.

The Royals had another bases-loaded opportunity in the third. An infield single from Pham followed by walks to Witt and Gurriel and the sacks full for Fermin. Again…bupkis.

This was getting old.

There were more chances. Runners on the corners in the fourth with two outs. No runs. Dairon Blanco pinch ran for Hunter Renfroe after a single in the sixth. Blanco swiped second and was then…thrown out trying to steal third. They put a couple more runners on after that and…nada.

The seventh, eighth, and ninth innings were uneventful with the Royals going down in order.

I don’t know which was worse.

The breakthrough—oh, the glorious breakthrough!—came in the tenth. Thanks to the dreaded Manfred Man. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I truly dislike the Manfred Man occupying second base in extra innings. I stand by my statement but do appreciate its presence in the game that probably allowed most of us to keep our fingernails intact for at least another week.

The first batter up was Pham. I continue to question his utility on this roster, especially as a leadoff hitter. In this situation, his charge will be to move the runner. Anything less is a failure. I abhor the bunt as much as the Manfred Man, but damnit, sometimes it’s not only necessary, it’s required. If you have a runner on second, nobody out, you have to get that runner to third for Witt.

Pham, you will not be surprised to learn, failed to advance the runner. The guy didn’t even square to bunt.

That brought up Witt. He topped a 1-1 splitter that was center-cut to short. Not a great swing, given the count and the pitch, but at least it was in play. In real time, I’m hoping he can bust down the first base line to snag an infield single, moving the Manfred Man (Kyle Isbel) to third. That seemed like the best-case scenario in a week where everything has gone wrong. Because of this, I did not allow myself to imagine the best-case scenario.

I absolutely did not anticipate an error.

“We didn’t come this far just to come this far.”

Hey, whatever works. Luck is often the byproduct of opportunity. In this case, Witt put the ball in play. That was all that was needed. The threat of his speed, coupled with the inability of shortstop Nasim Nuñez (who made that grab in the first of Gurriel’s liner to save at least one run, maybe two) to cleanly get the ball out of his glove made this happen. An errant throw and the ball getting away from the first baseman allowed Isbel to come around with that sweet, precious run.

In the spirit of the last week, a walk to Perez advanced Witt to second with one out and the Royals failed to add another run. Oh, well.

How did this ballgame end? With an exclamation point and a primal scream of relief.

Erceg capped a fantastic night from the bullpen. It was a cavalcade of southpaws: From Ragans to Kris Bubic to Sam Long to Angel Zerpa. The bullpen ganged up to throw four innings of two-hit ball. They had to be on point to give that offense the opportunity. It wasn’t convincing or overwhelming, but as I said at the start, it doesn’t matter. It’s a win. And it’s probably the most important win of the season.

Oh, quick shout out to the Royals fans who filled the seats behind the third base dugout. What a pick-me-up for this team to have a contingent like that rooting them on…willing them to victory. It was reminiscent of Chicago in 2014 when the Royals locked up their first postseason spot in 29 years.

Good times.

There was quite a bit of injury news from the club on Tuesday. The team will activate Michael Lorenzen on Wednesday and he will make the start in place of Alec Marsh. Lorenzen had missed time with a strained hamstring. Lorenzen threw 3.1 innings in a rehab start with the Storm Chasers on September 13. Since then, he’s thrown a pair of simulated innings at the end of the last homestand. It will be interesting to see how short that leash will be pitch-count-wise for Lorenzen.

Meanwhile, the Royals announced that relievers James McArthur and Hunter Harvey will both be shut down for the season. McArthur is dealing with a stress reaction in his right elbow. Harvey, who came over in a deal with the Nationals just ahead of the trade deadline, has been on the shelf with back tightness since early August.

Here are the probable pitchers for the rest of the series against Washington:

Wednesday at 5:45 p.m. — RHP Michael Lorenzen vs. LHP DJ Herz
Thursday at 12:05 p.m. — RHP Michael Wacha vs. LHP Patrick Corbin

Brady Singer will get the start on Friday with Seth Lugo going on Saturday. With a little more of that luck though, the Royals can clinch a spot as early as Thursday, rendering the series with the Braves not quite as important. I would imagine if the Royals can finish this off before Saturday, Lugo’s start would be pushed back to the Wild Card round.

After all of that…after all of that!…the Royals remain in a very good place.

“We didn’t come this far just to come this far.”