It would be weird to watch the Royals and not completely lose your mind

The offense goes back into hibernation, the bullpen implodes again and the Royals waste a fine start from...Jordan Lyles? Madness, indeed.

The Detroit Tigers hit the All-Star break with a 39-50 record. In a normal baseball division, that would make them toast. In the Central, they were 5.5 games out of first.

Detroit’s president of baseball operations, Scott Harris, gave a radio interview where he acknowledged that, despite their record, the Tigers may not be sellers at the trade deadline.

“If we get hot out of the break, it’s going to change our approach to the trade deadline. We are going to be responsive to the way the team is playing heading into the deadline and we’re going to try to make the best decisions we can for the organization.”

The subtext I read into the quote was, “We have some ground to make up for sure, but have four games against the Royals before the deadline.”

That’s what watching the Royals in 2023 will do to you.

Jordan Lyles gets a metric ton of crap, and a lot of it is deserved. Entering Monday’s game, the Royals were 1-16 in games he starts. Eighty-six pitchers have made 15 or more starts this season. Lyles’ average Game Score of 44.8 ranks 80th of those pitchers. It’s not what you want.

Yet against an offense that rivals the Royals for the worst in the majors, Lyles turned in his best outing of the year. He threw six innings, allowed just three hits, walked one while striking out four and kept the Tigers scoreless. I’m going to lay this out in the simplest way possible:

If Jordan Lyles is giving you six shutout innings, you really should be winning that baseball game. You need to be winning that game.

Alas, these are the 2023 Royals. If you remember from yesterday’s edition, I’ve decided to distill these games into their three most basic elements. The starting pitching? Check. The offense and the relievers? Not so much.

The offense on Monday was provided by Freddy Fermin. The dude had three knocks, drove in a run and scored another. The runs were gifted to them, though. After MJ Melendez singled with one out in the fourth, he advanced to second on an errant pickoff throw. Fermin drove him home and went to second on the throw to the plate that had a chance to nail Melendez, but came in a bit too far up the third base line. Fermin then scored on a Nick Pratto single.

Hey, take what the other team gives you. And the Tigers certainly put those runs on a plate for the Royals, thank you very much.

There was quite a bit of defense on display on Monday. Most of it came from Detroit. There was this sublime double play the Royals turned in the second.

That was about the prettiest turn you’ll see. It wasn’t all bad on Monday. Just from the seventh inning on.

Things got weird in the seventh when that dude Fermin led off with a single and went to second on a throwing error. Pratto walked to give the Royals runners on first and second with nobody out. Hey, the Tigers are trying to gift another run! In many cultures, it’s considered rude and impolite to refuse a gift. Also in smart baseball circles, it’s dumb to ask a player to bunt who clearly has no idea how to do it.

Maybe I’m being unfair to Drew Waters here. Maybe he’s some kind of bunting savant. Although I’m uncertain how we are supposed to know that, considering he’s never attempted a sacrifice bunt in over 245 major league plate appearances. According to Baseball Reference, he’s never laid down a successful sacrifice bunt in his entire professional career.

Hey, you don’t have to trust the numbers. Sometimes numbers lie.

Sometimes they don’t.

I badly wanted to gif the first two pitches of this at bat. Badly. The videos aren’t live yet, so you’ll just have to trust me when I write that Waters had no business trying to get the first pitch down, a cut fastball running up and in. It looked like Waters had never been asked to lay down a bunt in his life. Someone who was comfortable bunting would’ve pulled the bat back. Someone uncomfortable (i.e. Waters) would decide they were going to push at the pitch no matter the location. That’s exactly how that first pitch vibed.

Somehow the next pitch was worse. Waters squared, missed and was hit in the leg by the pitch. Since he offered at it in a misguided attempt to get that sacrifice down so instead of taking first base and loading the bases, it goes down as a swinging strike. (Technically, it’s a “missed bunt.” Semantics, you know.)

By this point, he was all but rung up. A courtesy swing at a pitch that would’ve hit a spectator in section 420 mercifully ended the at-bat. Have you ever seen a three-pitch strikeout like this?

I’ll answer that question for you…No, you have never seen a three-pitch strikeout like that.

Good managing is about putting players in the best position to succeed. As we know from watching the 2023 Royals, success is never guaranteed. When the manager asks a player to do something they’ve never done before…That’s not a recipe for success. Frustrating.

So now we come to the pièce de résistance, the bullpen. Carlos Hernández handled the seventh in heroic fashion. Taylor Clarke’s eighth inning did not go as well.

A leadoff double to Akil Baddoo telegraphed danger, but Clarke got a pop-out and a strikeout to edge close to escape. Then he hit a batter and walked another to load the bases. When that happened, you knew exactly how this would end.

Matt Quatraro summoned Jose Cuas. There is nothing a writer loves more than to slam the manager post-game for bullpen maneuvers that fail to work. Yeah…I’m not going to do that. Because who, exactly, is he supposed to call on? Nick Wittgren? Max Castillo? Dylan Coleman? Cuas is not a good choice in that situation, but I’m not sure any of the other denizens of the bullpen inspire the requisite confidence to put out a late-inning fire. There are only arsonists out there.

The only acceptable answer would be Scott Barlow, but he’s the Royals’ number-one trade chip at this stage and should be treated with a certain amount of care. Barlow has gone more than an inning only three times this season. Could he have done it? Certainly. Should he? I’m with Quatraro here.

The Royals are skidding toward 110-plus losses. Sometime, in the next couple of weeks, they are going to get even worse when they subtract Barlow from the bullpen. Monday’s loss was an indirect result of the Aroldis Chapman trade. Had the Royals held on to the lefty, they would’ve won that game. I believe that with all my heart. The rest of this season is about preparing for the next one. That means shuffling players to get the best return possible. Chapman netted Cole Ragans who turned in a fine debut for the Royals over the weekend. The hope is Barlow will bring a slightly larger haul. That means the team has to be judicious in how he’s used over the next couple of weeks. Big picture stuff.

While it can be maddening to watch this team implode on the regular, the wins and losses don’t matter all that much anymore.

I don’t do a lot of pop culture in this space, but have you watched The Bear on Hulu? I hope you’ve watched The Bear on Hulu. It is, quite simply, a tour de force of television at its best. Everything about that show is supremely on point. The writing. The casting. The acting. The directing. The soundtrack. The editing. (Oh my god the editing.) It’s dizzying and breathtaking and sensational. I thought the sixth episode from Season 2 was among the best I have ever seen. Then I watched the seventh episode. It’s simply perfect TV.

For today’s headline, I borrowed a quote from season one. I substituted “the Royals” for “a restaurant” and having worked at both places, the locations are absolutely interchangeable. Fitting.