Great starting pitching can't solve everything

Cole Ragans continues to dazzle. Meanwhile, the offense slumbers, Salvy is hurting and the umpiring is questionable.

There is going to be plenty of focus on the umpiring behind the plate on Sunday. Were there some outrageous calls on balls and strikes, especially in the fateful eighth inning? Absolutely. Did those calls cost the Royals the game they lost 2-1? Absolutely not.

Chris Stratton, who has posted decent walk rates throughout his career at 3.6 BB/9 got the call for the Royals in the eighth. The first batter he faced was the slugger Pete Alonso. Alonso had already done some damage in this series, clubbing a home run on Friday and adding two more on Saturday. With the game scoreless, he’s the dude in the Mets lineup you approach with extreme caution. Stratton fed him a steady diet of sinker, all but one of which was in the zone. After getting a called strike on a fastball to push the count full, Stratton walked him on a sinker that bore too far inside.

As Denny says, it’s never a good idea to walk the leadoff hitter late in a tie game. You’re just asking for trouble. However, Stratton needed just three pitches to record two outs. One came on a sacrifice bunt to move Alonso up to second. The other was a flyout to center that didn’t advance the runner any further.

Stratton was about to work around that walk. Then things went haywire.

Jeff McNeil was the next hitter. He didn’t take the bat off his shoulder.

Stratton went slider, four-seam and changeup for his first three pitches. The slider and change were down and out of the zone. The fastball was right on the upper edge but was called a ball. That changed the shape of the plate appearance. The only strike was a 3-0 fastball that apparently was a courtesy strike or something. Otherwise, there’s a cluster of three pitches, all four-seamers, all in the exact same spot. Only one was called a strike.

Confounding to be sure. Maddening as hell. Maybe robot umps aren’t such a bad idea. Stratton still had a chance to get out of the inning. The next batter was Brett Baty. Another walk.

This one was entirely justified. Only one pitch was close to the zone and Stratton actually got that call to jump ahead 0-1. He squandered his advantage and now the bases were loaded.

Harrison Bader hit a little squibber down the third base line that Maikel Garcia couldn’t barehand. Even if Garcia picked it up cleanly, he would’ve had a difficult play to get Bader at first. It goes for an 80-foot single and the Mets had the first run of the game.

The bases remained loaded for the next batter, Brandon Nimmo.

Yeah, this is bad. It’s made even more egregious given that starter Cole Ragans got a couple of those calls on the corner earlier in the game.

That pushed the second run of the game across the plate and it turns out the walk provided the necessary insurance as Vinnie Pasquantino hit a solo home run in the top of the ninth.

A few of thoughts on what transpired…

First, the Royals have to do more on offense against José Buttó, who was making just his 10th major league start. They have to. To be fair, that changeup was filthy on Sunday. The Royals swung at that offering 11 times and whiffed on six of those swings. Still, Buttó is nothing special and the Royals could only scratch together two hits and a walk over his six innings. They struck out nine times. The Mets bullpen took it from there.

Second, you can’t assume that Pasquantino’s home run would’ve happened had it been a one-run game in the ninth. The game doesn’t work that way. At least I don’t think it does. It takes a large Jump To Conclusions mat to think that Edwin Díaz would’ve pitched Pasquantino the same way he did with a two-run lead than he would’ve had the lead been a single run. It was a 2-1 slider that caught too much of the plate. It wasn’t a good pitch. Had the adrenaline been going differently in a tighter game, who’s to say he makes that exact same pitch?

Third, as I go back and reread what I’ve written, it’s difficult not to point the finger at the home plate umpire. Bad calls change the completion of an at bat. A string of bad calls can impact an inning. And when two teams are evenly matched through seven innings, no one on the field can allow their concentration to drift. No one. If you want to blame the ump for this loss, go ahead. I won’t try to dissuade you.

I will say that I just have a difficult time moaning about the umpiring when one side can’t push a single run across the plate until there are two outs in the ninth inning. And walking the leadoff man late in a tie game is just asking for trouble. Yes, two of the walks later were brutal, but there were two in there that were entirely on Stratton. Stratton had his chances to get out of this mess. He was close to doing it. You don’t want the umpires impacting the game with these calls…so get some outs…score some runs.

The game was going to come down to the team that got a break to go in their favor. A bad call. A bleeder of a hit. On Sunday, that team was the Mets.

One thing I know for certain…If the Royals’ offense is going to go cold, I want Cole Ragans on the mound to counter that. The lefty may disagree with my sentiment—he’s probably the designated Royals hard-luck starter this season—but I’ll roll with the best because he’ll keep the team in the game, frozen bats be damned.

That’s exactly what Ragans did on Sunday, matching Buttó zero for zero. Ragans had a bit more action on the bases, but worked around any potential damage while striking out eight. It was a typical Ragans start. Here’s a fun fact: Ragans has held the opposition scoreless in two of his four starts so far this year. The Royals have lost both games. (Yeah…maybe that’s not really a “fun fact.”)

I thought Ragan’s best offering on Sunday was his curve. Just devastating swordplay.

Suppose the batter is looking for the heater, quickly picks up the spin to register it’s a curve, spots it up in the zone, and then it drops in like an uninvited guest. I mean what’s a batter to do? Grab a seat on the bench, I guess.

Oh, about that heater…

Ragans averaged 96 MPH on his four-seamer on Sunday. He hit triple digits on the above pitch, which was his 64th of the game.

This confrontation with Francisco Alvarez was beautiful in its simplicity. Changeups and fastballs.

There’s generally a 10 MPH separation from the Ragans four-seamer to his change. That’s plenty. For that last pitch, it came in 14 MPH faster and was elevated. Alvarez was doomed the moment the ball left Ragans’ fingertips.

I think Doc Gooden was probably impressed.

It hasn’t gone unnoticed because everyone pays attention to Salvador Perez, but let’s just say that the start to his season has gone somewhat underreported. Perez has had a hand in powering this Royals offense. Since going hitless in the first two games of the opening series against the Twins, the captain has crushed it, hitting .377/.400/.623 with four home runs and 15 RBI.

It’s not like he’s done something drastic at the plate to keep pace with these youngsters around him in the lineup. Perez’s chase rate remains gloriously abysmal at 51 percent. That’s actually up four percent from where he finished last year. Opposing pitchers are throwing more breaking pitches to him than in the past, which…why wouldn’t they? He’s making decent contact on those, hitting .281 on breaking balls, but with a .313 slugging percentage. He’s destroying fastballs this year at a clip of a .417 batting average and an insane .792 slugging percentage against.

Hell, his defense has been improved by the catching metrics as well. He’s been worth +1 Catcher Framing Runs this year, which has him ranked second on the Baseball Savant Leaderboard. Small sample size and all, still…given where Perez normally resides this is incredible. Last season Perez ranked 57th out of 63 catchers with a mark of -7 Catcher Framing Runs. The year before that he was 57th out of 60 with a total of -8. He’s been consistently poor in this metric since it was introduced. Given that there’s plenty of season remaining, he could very well see his value here drop. Still, it’s a positive to see him doing so well even if it’s only through two-plus weeks of the season.

The strong bat coupled with the improved defense has seen Perez accumulate 0.7 fWAR in his first 15 games. That’s the second-best total on the team, trailing only Bobby Witt Jr. at 1.4 fWAR. (Witt’s total is the second-best in the majors behind only Mookie Betts at 1.6.)

In the series against the Mets, Perez had homered on Saturday and drove in four runs in the Royals 11-7 romp. He also homered on Friday, providing the lone run in their 6-1 defeat. His ownership of the Mets goes back to his World Series MVP in 2015.

Sunday, he was 1-2 with a double before this play happened.

You can see Starling Marte make contact with Perez’s left leg, pushing it back as his right leg remains in place. The Royals are calling it a left groin and hip injury. After the game, manager Matt Quatraro said they thought it was a groin strain.

If I was writing this six years ago, I would say something about how nasty that looked and it wouldn’t be a surprise for Perez to miss a month or so as he works to get healthy. Now? I’ve seen Perez come back from just about everything. The man is a beast. I’m not saying it’s a guarantee or anything, but would you be surprised if he was in the lineup at catcher on Monday in Chicago? Yeah, me either.

So we’ll hope for the best. It would be a shame for both Perez and the Royals if he did need to miss any amount of time. The Royals need his bat, and apparently, his glove. When a player is doing this well, you just don’t want to see that kind of production derailed due to injury.

With the loss on Sunday, the Royals have now played five games out of 16 where they scored two runs or fewer. Their record in those games is 1-4. They’ve also played five games where they’ve scored 10 runs or more. Their record in those games is 5-0.

This may get a bit silly, but in the remaining games, the Royals are scoring an average of 4.2 runs per contest. That’s a rate below the league average. The Royals are kind of a feast-or-famine team when it comes to scoring runs, showing the ability to post in bunches while mixing in a healthy dose of offensive futility. When they’re not living in one of the extremes, they’re a slightly below-average team. As you know, the pitching has really kept this team in the mix through the first couple of weeks of 2024.

All that to say, they really need Perez in the lineup.