Perfection

It took over 100 games, but the Royals finally put everything together for a most wonderful night of baseball.

It’s damn elusive. Especially this season.

It took until the 101st game of the year, but we finally found perfection.

Yes, perfection. Everything about the Royals 12-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs was perfection. The home runs. The bloop hits. Capitalizing on the blunders by the opponent. The pitching. Some quality defense. Throw into the mixer the fact this game was played at Wrigley Field—I love watching games played at Wrigley—and you have, hands down, the best game of the year.

Mood:

Ten out of 10. Five stars. It was better than Cats. No notes.

I think we could get used to nights like this.

Let’s start at the top.

Things haven’t really improved for Jac Caglianone since his callup last month. He had a nice double in the win on Sunday in Miami that drove in two, but those moments have been far too infrequent. Since the first of July, Caglianone is hitting just .125/.208/.292.

But I will say he’s had some better plate appearances of late. Some. While he’s not walking all that much, the strikeouts are manageable. Yeah, he’s been aggressive up there, taking his hacks, but he’s not whiffing. Caglianone is still making some loud contact, even if the results haven’t been there.

On Monday, the results were there. Caglianone was offered a 1-2 curveball. His response:

That is effortless opposite field power. It was 106 mph off the bat at a launch angle of 20 degrees. It was probably a mistake for Cubs pitcher Ben Brown to spin three of those curves in the four pitches he threw to Caglianone. Cags was able to wait on that pitch, confirm it was hittable, and send it on a line into the basket in right field.

I remain convinced that if this rough start to his major league career doesn’t break Caglianone, he’s going to be a monster.

Bonus: He sent a guy into the basket to retrieve the ball. Not sure that’s been done before. Is that even allowed? Shades of Fountain Mom at The K a few years ago. Now we have Basket Bro.

You can’t beat moments like this at the old ball yard.

As we’ve been tracking Noah Cameron’s starts since his debut earlier this season, you know from my fixation on Game Score that he’s been amazingly consistent and amazingly good. The two hiccups on his resume to this point have come against the Yankees and the Dodgers. No shame in that. Both teams reside in the top three in run production. The third team? The Chicago Cubs.

Dodgers - 5.30 R/G
Cubs - 5.28 R/G
Yankees - 5.25 R/G

After the Royals jumped out to that early lead on the Caglianone home run, Cameron hit a bit of a speed bump in the bottom half of the inning. Carson Kelly went down and yanked a changeup out of the yard to tie the game up. With two outs and two on, Matt Shaw clobbered a similar pitch in a similar location to give the Cubs an early 4-1 lead.

We have to be honest in our assessments: In that moment, it did not look good. The Royals offense, while scoring seven in the series finale in Miami on Sunday, still does not inspire confidence. Couple that with Cameron’s struggles against the league’s better offenses and it had the makings of a long night.

But Cameron got right. He allowed just three singles the rest of the way. The Cubs were not able to trouble the rookie.

My favorite confrontations were Cameron’s final two on the night. This was against Dansby Swanson in the sixth.

The Cameron curveball absolutely flummoxed Swanson all night. I just love the sequencing here. Cameron will start a plate appearance with a curve, but it doesn’t happen too often. In this case, the first pitch was a bit of a hanger, but Swanson couldn’t pull the trigger. The second pitch was an elevated four-seamer up and in that Swanson fouled off. That set up the final pitch, a beatifully located curve.

That pitch…there…after an elevated fastball? That’s the definition of unhittable. It may also be the definition of unfair, but that doesn’t really bother me so much. Lordy, that’s just some beautiful sequencing.

Then came the battle against Michael Busch who has been Salvy-Hot (more on that in a moment) of late:

Cameron fell behind 3-1 and went four-seam, four-seam, both pitches down in the zone. Both were fouled off. That sixth pitch of the at bat was Cameron’s 100th of the night. He reached back for a little something as it was his fastest pitch since one he uncorked in the third inning.

After going low and hard on back-to-back pitches, Cameron shaved a little something off with an elevated cutter on the edge for a called third strike.

It was a pitching clinic from the rookie. It wasn’t his best outing of the season, but he made the proper adjustments after that second inning and got himself right. I did not expect that I would enjoy watching Cameron pitch as much as I have. He works fast, generally has some outstanding control and executes a plan. He is a delight to watch work.

As Cameron found his footing after that second inning stumble, the offense started to claw out of the deficit. After the Caglianone home run, Brown retired the next six Royals, three of them coming via the strikeout. It was setting up to be one of those nights that we don’t like to talk about.

Then, with two outs in the fourth…thunder.

Maikel Garcia hit a single. Not particularly notable at the time. Just another single. Except it was notable because it extended the inning for one Salvador Perez.

Since the calendar flipped to July, fewer have swung a hotter stick than Salvador Perez. The man is crushing both baseballs and the opposing pitcher’s will to live. Entering Monday’s game in Chicago, Perez was hitting .364/.407/.800 this month. He had hit six home runs, driven home 13 and scored 11 times.

He would improve all of those numbers on Monday.

Perez turned on a 97 mph four-seamer and launched it to the bleachers left. That cut the deficit to one. Even though the Royals were still behind, it felt as if The Captain had found a lifeline for his club. That home run was an announcement of sorts: This night would be different. The Royals were not going to go down without a fight.

Perhaps inspired by the power of Perez, the Royals seized the lead in the following inning. Nick Loftin led off with an infield single. With one out, Kyle Isble grounded a single to left. That brought up Jonathan India, fresh off a game where he broke a post-All-Star break mini 1-10 slump with a two-run double on Sunday. On this night, he dropped in another double. This one leveled the contest at four apiece. Game on.

There was still work to be done.

Witt, up now with runners on second and third with one out, hit a soft comebacker that Brown deflected. Had Brown fielded the ball cleanly, he would’ve had a shot at getting an out at home. Or he could’ve elected to get the sure out at first, knowing there was still plenty of game left. Those potential outcomes were off the table as soon as that baseball ticked off his glove. Witt legged out a single, the go ahead run scored and the Royals weren’t finished.

On the next pitch, Witt takes off for second. The throw from catcher Carson Kelly is errant and runs into the outfield. India, on third, makes his way home. Witt advances. It’s now 6-4.

And the scoring wraps when Witt races home on a wild pitch from Brown. Talk about manufacturing something out of nothing. In the span of four pitches, Witt dribbles a grounder and legs it out, swipes second, advances on an error and scores on a wild pitch. And the Royals score three times total to take the lead.

Baseball magic.

The Royals weren’t finished. John Rave launched his third home run in four games in the seventh. I have to be honest…I didn’t think he had this in his toolkit.

That ball possessed an exit velocity of 110 mph. The way it rocketed off the bat, I wouldn’t have flinched if you had told me it was even faster. Don’t get me wrong. I knew Rave could hit the ball out of the yard. He crushed 21 dingers last year for the Storm Chasers and had nine this year when the Royals called him up. But he had just looked so pedestrian in his plate appearances at the major league level. I wondered if we’d ever see that power.

Rave’s home run on Monday was almost three mph faster off the bat than his previous best exit velocity. And of Rave’s seven highest exit velocities since joining the big league club back on May 26, four of them have come since the All-Star break.

What in the world has gotten into Rave? From Anne Rogers, there are two things that changed for Rave in the last week:

Rave showed up to the visitors' clubhouse in Miami on Friday with a new number, having to switch from No. 26 to No. 16, with the return of the veteran Adam Frazier, who has worn No. 26 for most of his career and did so last year with the Royals.

…

It wasn’t the only thing that was different about Rave on Friday. He spent the All-Star break across the state in Clearwater, Fla., driving into Tampa for three of the four days to hit at the recently opened Driveline facility. Rave has spent the last two offseasons working with Driveline in Arizona, and he met up with two of the coaches in Tampa over the break: Travis Fitta, who runs the new facility, and Elijah Boyer.

…

“I get a little caught up with lunging toward the plate a little bit, so [I] worked on a coil into my back hip,” Rave said. “That kind of kept me in the zone a little longer. That’s going to be a focus going forward. And then once the game starts, just putting together good at-bats.”

That’s not a good look for the Royals equipment manager or their hitting coaches. I kid about the equipment manager. On the other hand, the hitting coaches…

I realize everyone has their personal hitting coaches these days. And Rave has worked at the Driveline facility in Arizona before. But in theory, this is what the Royals staff should be able to do…help players make in-season adjustments to their swings. Rave took the time to really work and incorporate a fairly substantial change. Why can’t the Royals pull a player aside who’s scuffling, give him some instruction for three days or so and get similar results?

Meanwhile, an inning later, Perez added another home run to his tally. The man is a god. I don’t know how else to describe him.

A couple of months ago, I was thinking that Perez wasn’t going to make it into the Hall of Fame. He’s a fringe candidate to me. Someone who needs to keep going for a couple more seasons. This year, despite hitting the ball hard and experiencing some rotten luck, I just didn’t think he’d be able to get back on any kind of productive track. It seemed like the end was near for what had been a really good career.

Now? How stupid was I to doubt the almighty Salvy?

That’s two more home runs on Monday. In his last 11 games, he’s hitting .421/.476/1.132 with eight home runs, 11 RBI and 13 runs scored.

And! And he’s making plays like this.

Seriously? The guy is 35 years old. He’s logged a million innings behind the plate. He’s a large human. He’s catching with one knee on the ground. And he jumps up, calls off his pitcher, barehands the ball, spins and fires a strike to first.

The man is amazing.

An underrated nice moment in the game happened in the final two innings as Andrew Hoffmann took the mound. He’s from nearby Joliet and had a massive number of friends and family at the game. After his rough outing on Sunday, it was nice to see him bounce back with a solid performance. He went those final two innings, allowing two hits and two walks, but prevented the Cubs from scratching out another run or two.

It is expected that the Royals will be calling up Rich Hill for the start on Tuesday. I would guess the corresponding move will be for the team to send Hoffmann back to Omaha. It was good to get him in that game and to have that moment with his people.

There was a great deal of excitement around the possibility that the Royals will select Rich Hill (full name Dick Mountain)* on Tuesday. When that happens, it will be Hill’s 14th team, tying him with Edwin Jackson for the honor of Mr. Immaculate Grid. At 45 years old, he will also be the oldest Royal to appear in a game.

*I ripped this off from Chad Finn of the Boston Globe. I shall continue to refer to the player as “Rich Hill (real name Dick Mountain)” the first time he is mentioned in a post.

Hill, as evidenced above, is a tremendous opportunity to remember some guys. Mike Petriello provides some further inspiration.

Stuff like this will always invite me into the rabbit hole. So I’m going to take it a step further.

Yes, in Hill’s debut, he was one of the relievers behind Greg Maddux, who made his major league debut in 1986.

In Maddux’s first major league game—a game that was suspended due to darkness because Wrigley Field did not have lights—Nolan Ryan made the start for the opposing Astros.

Ryan’s debut came against the Atlanta Braves in 1966, and Eddie Mathews was in the starting lineup. (So was Henry Aaron, but I’m tracking Mathews who was two years older.)

In Mathews’ major league debut (for the Boston Braves) in 1952 against the Brooklyn Dodgers, Preacher Roe made the start for Brooklyn.

Preacher Roe was born in 1916.

That’s just four degrees of separation.

Bring on Dick Mountain!