Many happy returns

Mondesi returns to the Royals lineup and Keller throws his best start of the season. We only had to wait eight weeks!

If pitching truly is the currency of baseball, Tuesday’s tilt in St. Petersburg was probably worth one bitcoin. Apparently, that’s a lot of cash. So if you follow my strained metaphor…there was some really fantastic pitching!

First, let’s get the most important thing out of the way. With a 2-1 victory, the Royals nabbed their seventh win in their last 10 games. After enduring that brutal 11-game losing streak, they have found true equilibrium at 23-23. This is really strange given that about two months into the season the Royals in 2021 have been defined by some intense swings. A hot start yields to a brutal stretch which brings us back around to…a decent stretch of competitive baseball.

It hasn’t been dominating baseball by any means, but it’s gotten the job done. The Royals have scored 40 runs in their last 10, winning seven. The pitchers have limited their opposition to just 29 runs. Tuesday’s starter Brad Keller has been instrumental in three of those victories, starting with that victory in the first game of the doubleheader in Chicago two weeks ago Friday that snapped that brutal streak.

With the Royals back at .500 and with the return of Adalberto Mondesi coinciding with what looks like a return to form from Keller, it’s like we can finally press “play” on 2021.

Keller remains on the rebound

In nine starts prior to Tuesday, Keller had yet to throw one that could be considered a gem. His best outing came in start number three where he went 5.2 innings and allowed one run. He’s been on a better path of late, doing enough in each of his previous three starts to keep the Royals in the game.

Start number 10 was his best one of the 2021 season.

The Rays stacked their starting lineup with eight hitters who would hit from the left side. Keller went to his slider 33 percent of the time on Tuesday. That’s a little less than we saw in his previous start where it was his featured pitch 41 percent of the time, but it was extremely effective. Keller enticed 17 swings on the pitch with six whiffs. Of those six swings and misses, three were for the third strike. All were boring in to left-handed batters. A true put-away pitch.

Here are the sliders where the Rays batters swung on Tuesday. It’s interesting that the ones that are in the middle could only be fouled off.

Four sliders were put into play from left-handed batters. One was hit for a single. But even those sliders were in a position where minimal damage could be done. They’re just beautifully located.

It was a pitch to savor. Witness the strikeout against Francisco Mejia in the fourth.

A couple of other things stood out from Keller’s mix of pitches. First, he threw the fewest four-seamers percentage-wise of any of his starts in 2021. Along with the increase in sliders, it’s a trend he has continued over the last three starts. He instead relied on his sinker more than in any previous start.

But the big news was his change-up. It’s normally a pitch he’ll feature around 5 percent of the time in a normal start. On Tuesday, he threw 10 change-ups. He got three swings with one miss and four were called strikes. It’s a small handful of pitches, but a 50 percent CSW% rate is illustrative of how effective the change was for Keller.

He was able to keep the pitch low in the zone. No left-handed hitter is going to do damage on that. The only one that was elevated in the zone was to the lone right-handed hitter in the Rays lineup, Yandy Diaz, in the 6th on a 1-0 count. Diaz took it for a called strike.

It was a unique mix of pitches from Keller. He will occasionally offer the sinker more than the four-seamer, according to Statcast. But he’s never thrown so few recorded four-seam fastballs in a start while incorporating his change the way he did on Tuesday. The next chart is just from 2021, but it’s a nice illustration of how he altered his mix from what would be considered his usual approach.

It worked. Overall, Keller recorded eight outs via the ground ball and five in the air. He also had seven strikeouts. Ji-Man Choi seemed to be reading the ball well out of Keller’s hand. He laced a pair of lineouts to second—both times the fielders were positioned perfectly. Those were two of the three hardest-hit balls against Keller. The lone hard-hit ball that went for a basest was off the bat of Taylor Walls in the second. That was a ground ball that didn’t leave the infield. Indeed, each one of the hits Keller surrendered was ground ball singles.

Is Keller back? Tuesday was certainly his best start of 2021, one that reminded you of exactly how he pitched in 2020. While I’ll need a little more to declare that Keller has rediscovered his mojo, the blend of pitches and the results indicate he’s certainly on the right track.

Matheny’s bullpen blueprint

As Alec Lewis wrote this week in The Athletic, there is quite a bit of forethought that goes into who Mike Matheny summons from his bullpen. They mix data, availability and a bit of predictive analysis to anticipate potential matchups that would be positive ones for Royal relievers. On Tuesday, Matheny alluded that there were a couple of relievers who were unavailable. Who? Scott Barlow threw 23 pitches on Saturday and 23 again on Sunday. He was probably off-limits Tuesday. So too was probably Tyler Zuber who threw 24 high-stress pitches on Sunday after being part of that seventh inning fiasco on Friday.

That meant Jake Brentz was first out of the bullpen in the eighth. He absolutely shoved, capping off the eighth inning with this beautiful sequence. First, the Pitching Ninja sword on a wicked slider.

Then pure smoke at 99.7 mph.

That was tied for the third-fastest pitch Brentz has thrown all year. He uncorked three of 99.7 mph or faster in his last appearance on Saturday against the Tigers. He’s clearly feeling it right now.

Matheny kept Brentz in to open the ninth. Again, this is some nice managing the situation and not some reliever-by-number strategy. Left-handed hitting Joey Wendle was up and the Royals and Matheny figured they would let him hit before going to the right-handed hitting Randy Arozarena to pinch-hit for Walls. It went exactly according to plan. After Brentz retired Wendle on a ground ball, Kyle Zimmer came on for the two-out save. After jumping ahead 0-2, he walked Arozarena but recovered to get Francisco Mejia to ground into a game-ending double play.

The Royals missed Zimmer big-time while he was sidelined. With the bullpen depth continually tested, it’s nice that he’s returned fully healthy to give the Royals and Matheny another trusted option in the relief corps.

With Brentz and Zimmer on Tuesday, the bullpen blueprint worked to perfection.

Mondesi finally makes his 2021 debut

As previously speculated on this little slice of bandwidth, Adalberto Mondesi did in fact travel to the greater Tampa area and made his long-awaited 2021 debut. He went 2-4 with a pair of doubles—one from each side of the plate.

Rich Hill “attacked” him with elevated fastballs in his first plate appearance. After watching the first one up and out of the zone for ball one, he fell behind 1-2. Hill went back up and out of the zone and got Mondesi to chase for strike three.

In the second plate appearance, it was more elevated fastballs. Mondesi was ready. It was basically the same pitch sequence as the initial PA—first pitch elevated up for ball one, second pitch centered high in the zone. The difference? Mondesi didn’t miss the second pitch this time.

Hill stayed elevated against Mondesi in their third battle, but this time mixed in a curve, a slider and a sinker. And all from a different arm angle. No shame in whiffing against that.

Mondesi’s best plate appearance of the night came against Pete Fairbanks in the ninth. Batting from the left side, he fell into a quick 0-2 hole, fouling off a slider down and away before swinging and missing at one low in the zone. He fouled off a tough 96 mph heater on the inner half to keep the count 0-2 before spitting on a couple of sliders out of the zone. Neither was a particularly good pitch, but it was still a good sign that Mondesi, who owns a 29.7 percent career strikeout rate and again, was making his 2021 debut, didn’t offer. Finally, on the seventh pitch, he got that hanging slider and yanked it into deep right field for his second double of the night.

Even though Mondesi’s hits didn’t lead to runs, it didn’t matter. It was a good start from a player the Royals sorely missed.

The lineup was a little quirky given the Royals were facing the lefty Hill so we didn’t get to see the full domino effect of Mondesi in the lineup immediately. Jorge Soler still started in right and Whit Merrifield was at second as usual. They also gave Salvador Perez another night off behind the plate and went with Cam Gallager. The purpose was to keep Nicky Lopez out against the lefty. (You figure Ryan O’Hearn will see very limited action now that Mondesi is back. So with Soler required in the field, using Perez as the DH allowed them to keep the lefty O’Hearn on the bench.) Once Hill was out that’s when we finally saw most of the projected 2021 defensive alignment—Lopez at second and Merrifield in right. We were only missing Perez behind the plate.

While Merrifield had a terrific defensive game at second on Tuesday, the Royals’ defense is stronger with the alignment we saw late on Tuesday.

Quite the breeze

The Royals swung at 55 pitches from Hill on Tuesday. They missed on 25 of those swings. Most of them elevated fastballs. This pitch chart of the Royals’ swings and misses against Hill is bonkers.

It’s not accurate to say something like “The Royals didn’t deserve to win” or something, given the performance (or lack thereof) at the plate. That minimizes the contributions of Keller and a bullpen that limited the Rays to a ton of soft contact, at-’em balls and just one run. It was just a semi-old fashioned pitcher’s duel. It was fun to watch.

Hill just underscores you don’t need triple-digit smoke to survive and thrive in this game. A pitcher who can locate and show different angles can be just as effective. Everyone wants to crush an elevated fastball. Launch angle opportunity and all that. But Hill just kept Royals hitters swinging and missing at that offering all night long.

Central issues

• Cleveland 4, Tigers 1

Aaron Civale goes eight innings of six-hit, six-strikeout ball and limited the Tigers to just one run. Cesar Hernandez and Jordan Luplow both homered for Cleveland.

• Orioles 4, Twins 7

Rob Refsnyder drove in two on a pair of doubles and a home run and Mitch Garver and Alex Kirilloff also doubled twice. The Twins have their first three-game winning streak since the first week of April.

• Cardinals 3, White Sox 8

The Sox jumped on Cardinal starter Jack Flaherty for five runs in the first two innings thanks to some shoddy defense and some uncharacteristic wildness from Flaherty himself. He walked just two, but one came with the bases loaded and he also uncorked a run-scoring wild pitch for good measure. José Abreu hit his 10th home run of the year and had four RBI.

Look who’s the hottest team in the Central over the last 10 games.

Up next

The series continues in St. Petersburg with Mike Minor getting the start for the Royals. He was the starter in that game from last Friday that we don’t want to write about anymore. Tyler Glasnow will start opposite him for the Rays. First pitch is scheduled for 6:10 CDT.