It's offensive! The Royals are swept by the A's
We never say things can't get worse, but it seems like this Royals offense is edging toward baseball oblivion.
After the Royals offense put on yet another torpid display on Saturday, the players convened for a meeting. While Royals legends were in town Friday for the Hall of Fame induction of Alex Gordon, it seems that Raúl Ibañez was not present at Saturday’s meeting. The offensive malaise remains unbroken.
The result on Sunday: A late 3-2 loss at the hands of the Nomadic Athletics. When these A’s pulled up into Kansas City, they had lost 13 consecutive road games. They leave Kansas City with a sweep.
The Bell Axiom of never saying things cannot get worse is most certainly in play.
Anytime the Royals hold a players-only meeting, one cannot help but flash back to the get-together Ibañez convened in Chicago in July of 2014. Then, the Royals were coming off a lackluster display against the Red Sox and had dropped the opening game in a series against the White Sox. They stood at 48-50, in the midst of a four-game losing streak, and their season was literally on the brink at that moment.
Ibañez’s message was simple: That team was better than their record. The response? The Royals won 22 of their next 27 and took over the lead in the AL Central for a moment. You know the rest of the story.
It’s difficult to imagine a similar impact from Saturday’s meeting in Kansas City. It’s not a given that this team, currently standing at 34-38 is better than their record. Not given this lineup. This team simply does not have the juice to sustain any kind of offensive attack. Rallies start and then promptly sputter. On the rare occasions where the line does move, this offense is incapable of turning that into anything substantial. The Royals were shut out twice on this just-completed homestand. They scored two runs two other times. They scored 11 times total over the six games. This offense is not good enough.
What needs to happen? A new hitting coach? A new hitting philosophy? New hitters?
I’ve written before that I don’t know what a change in coaches does for a team, other than when a team has sunk so low, someone usually has to be sacrificed for the sins of a terrible offense. Maybe Alec Zumwalt is the sacrificial coach. Maybe Keoni DeRenne or Joe Dillon. Perhaps that would appease some of the unhappier corners of the internet, but I just don’t see where the improvement comes from.
Does a new coach get Royals batters to perform better with runners in scoring position? Someone is going to have to explain to me how that happens.
The Royals have come to the plate 674 times with runners in scoring position this season. That is, believe it or not, right at the league average when it comes to measuring opportunity. However, they have scored just 176 times once runners are in scoring position. By comparison, the Texas Rangers have plated 179 runners from scoring position, but they have done so in almost 90 fewer plate appearances.
The Royals offense is an exercise in inefficiency.
Overall, with runners in scoring position, the Royals are hitting .222/.280/.311. Their OPS+ with RISP is an abysmal 63, meaning they are producing at around 37 percent worse than an average team in a similar situation.
You do not need this newsletter to tell you this is not good.
It’s not just when the Royals have runners in scoring position that they turn into offensive pumpkins. With a runner on any base, the team hits a collective .233/.292/.330, good (or should I say bad) for a 73 OPS+ which is, yes, the worst mark in baseball.
Overall, though, the Royals hit .249/.302/.367. That’s an OPS+ of 88.
I started looking at all of this, not because I am a baseball masochist, but because I thought that surely, there was a pattern somewhere. Something weird would pop up to help explain what we’ve all been watching with increasing dread since late March. And yet, I cannot make sense of these numbers.
The Royals went 2-5 with runners in scoring position on Sunday. Not bad from a percentage standpoint. Not good enough from an overall number.
With this offense, if it’s not one thing, it’s something else.
I will note that the A’s went 0-4 with runners in scoring position on Sunday. Yet they won. And that’s because they hit two home runs. The Royals do not hit home runs.
The Royals have a lofty fly ball rate of 41 percent, which is the fifth-highest in the majors. They have an HR/FB % of 5.8 percen,t which is the lowest in the majors by a long shot. This team’s power is not even of the warning track variety.
Back to the hitting coaches. I’m not so blind to the fact that this is a performance-based business. Coaches (and managers and front office staff) are hired to be fired. Sometimes, a statement must be made.
To be clear, I am not advocating for said statement. I do know the Royals put as much emphasis on the science of hitting as they do the science of pitching. The pitching side is working. The hitting side is not.
Maybe an offering of rum and a cigar to Jobu would help.
It seems like there’s something in every loss that sets people off. (I’ll share one of mine from a particular loss further down. You can probably guess.) Sunday, it was manager Matt Quatraro pulling starter Noah Cameron after five scoreless innings, where he was at 83 pitches.
From Anne Rogers:
Not all pitch counts are created equal, and Quatraro felt that Cameron had labored through his 83 pitches. Plus, the Royals preferred the right-on-right matchups with Schreiber and were confident in their very well-rested back-end of the bullpen.
When the A’s lineup flipped over for a third time, Lawrence Butler laced a two-out double. The next batter, Jacob Wilson, saw six pitches before Butler was gunned down attempting to steal third base.
That meant the right-handed hitting Wilson was up the next inning with fellow righties Brent Rooker and Austin Wynns coming behind in the order. Cameron shows the ball late in his delivery, making it deceptive to hitters and changes speeds well. He throws five pitches and split all five almost equally through his five innings of work. He’s tough to barrel, yet I still can’t shake the feeling he’s surviving on some smoke, some mirrors and plenty of guts. Some of the mystery fades after a hitter sees Cameron for a third time. And the leadoff hitter in the sixth, Wilson, would’ve basically been seeing Cameron for a fourth time.
This is baseball in 2025. Get five or six innings from your starter and get him out. Eighty to 100 pitches and then it’s bullpen time. I’m not especially a fan of this, but this is the way the game is played.
It doesn’t help when your two-run lead evaporates in the space of three batters.
Cameron has some gaudy times through the order splits.
Dig a little deeper using Savant, and it sure looks like Cameron has had some luck on his side as he’s gone deeper into ballgames.
These stats are before Sunday, but they’re useful because they’re what Quatraro and his staff had at hand during the game.
Cameron is legit the first two times through the order. He’s had tremendous success the third time through, but the expected stats carry a bit of a red flag. His expected batting average goes up 75 points, his expected on base percentage increases by 130 points and his expected slugging percentage bumps 55 points. This does not inspire confidence to unleash Cameron deep into games.
The Statcast data backs that up. Seeing him a third time, opposing hitters start to punish Cameron. He’s dodged trouble to this point, but I don’t see this as something that’s sustainable.
With a rested bullpen and a day off on Monday, it made sense to get Cameron out before the sixth inning. Especially given the scenario I outlined above about where the A’s were in their lineup.
When things are going bad, good process never ends with good results.
It’s been a while since we convened in this space. (Not by design.) So I missed the opportunity to make my displeasure known when Maikel Garcia laid down a bunt on a 2-0 pitch in the eighth inning of a tie game, a little over a week ago against the White Sox. My reaction at that moment is unchanged despite the distance from that event: It was the dumbest thing I’ve seen the Royals do this season and for quite some time.
I will note that in the aftermath of that failed bunt attempt, the Royals immediately collapsed, surrendering five runs in the bottom of the eighth to fall to defeat. Since that game, the Royals are 1-8.
Since the Royals tried to play for one run, they have scored 2.3 runs per game.
Karma is swift and unrelenting.
Nice to read you again, Mr. B. Was worried. Hope all is well. We need you.
Sorry, but can't escape the feeling something is rotten in the state of this team. They have no fire. Saturday was like watching an episode of The Walking Dead.
Unfortunately, the current state of ineptness highlights just how fortunate last year's team was.
The unreal RISP success, the nearly complete health of the rotation, Bobby going bonkers.
We saw the collapse of the offense when Vinnie went down in late August. Bobby started to fade and everybody else just quit hitting. September was gruelling and painful to watch - just like now.
Am in nearly complete despair: there's little to no help in Omaha and I don't see JJ making a trade until Ragans' shoulder heals (if it does). The only trade bait is one of the promising catchers and/or
a current member of the rotation, IMO. Sell at the trade deadline, I believe, is the best position.
I really thought what happened the rest of that eighth inning was sufficient karma for bad decision-making. But Garcia bunted again yesterday. IN THE THIRD INNING. WITH THE RUNNER ALREADY OUT OF A DOUBLE PLAY OPPORTUNITY. It was the only out Springs got in the first four batters he faced that inning. Sure would have been nice to see if the team's best hitter so far this year could have helped make that a bigger inning.