Royals achieve liftoff in Space City

The Royals jump to an early lead against the Astros and the bullpen does enough to lock down the victory.

Normally, players wait until I write something negative about them before they reverse course. It’s a power that I’ve had almost since I started writing about this team. For the most part, I’ve steered clear of openly criticizing the play of Michael Massey to this point. Why wait? Great question. After all, Massey’s fWAR entering the week was a miserable -0.7, the fifth worst among qualified hitters.

But I was thinking about writing about Massey. I was thinking about writing that the Royals needed to address this issue with haste. I was thinking that playing Massey every single day—and hitting him sixth in the order!—was an untenable position for a team with October aspirations.

Apparently, my powers now extend to not only my words but to my thoughts as well. Spooky!

Monday’s 7-5 victory over the Houston Astros was almost (not quite, but almost!) the Michael Massey game. For the first third, it was.

In the second inning on Monday evening, Massey laced a low changeup over the fence in right field for his second home run of the season. It was a missile, leaving the bat at 106 mph and with a launch angle of just 21 degrees. You may recall from a post last week, in the aftermath of the Royals unleashing a home run barrage in Baltimore, that a baseball dispatched at that speed and angle does not stay in the air for long. Indeed, it got just 56 feet off the ground at its apex and landed on the other side of the wall in about four seconds.

In that game in Baltimore where the Royals clubbed a franchise-record seven home runs, Massey’s homer came on a swing clocked at just 67 mph. You can probably tell from that GIF that Massey’s swing was quite a bit faster, registering at 75 mph.

Perhaps Massey is getting into something of a swing groove. Massey has shown signs of life of late. Since the calendar flipped to May, he’s collected 11 hits and has raised his batting average by about 30 points with about a 50 point bump in his slugging percentage. He didn’t collect another hit on the night but did draw a walk. Notable because that was only the fifth time all season he accepted a free pass. Small steps.

The Massey home run uncorked the offense. Momentarily.

With two outs the Royals went double, single, triple and single to plate three more runs. Kyle Isbel got the fun started with his double which was followed by a typically grind-y plate appearance from Jonathan India.

Perhaps a bit fortunate he didn’t get rung up on pitch seven. Pitch eight was just as good, a cutter in on India’s hands. But the Royals leadoff man was able to flare one to center to keep the rally alive. Witt tripled to right-center (the man remains a marvel) and immediately we shift to Cycle Watch. Pasquantino capped the scoring with a grounder up the middle, just to the right side of second base.

Massey may be a drag on this lineup (currently), but I doubt he’s going to finish with a negative fWAR. He’s dug himself quite a hole offensively that will be difficult to get out of, but I continue to rate his defense. FanGraphs, as of this writing, does not. Hence the negative fWAR.

Then there are plays like this.

This was about 91 mph off the bat of Isaac Paredes, but it was placed for a base hit to center. The bases were loaded at the moment. The Royals were playing Paredes to pull the ball on the infield, but for Massey to even get to the ball was ridiculous. For him to actually glove the ball and prevent it from going into the outfield was insane.

And then to have the wherewithal to roll over and flip the ball to a streaking Maikel Garcia to start what was a 4-6-3 double play was just bananas. (Bobby Witt Jr. was in the lineup as a DH.) Yeah, he didn’t lead Garcia with the throw, but it was delivered at a perfect height that allowed Garcia to easily transfer to his right hand for the throw.

And Garcia…are you kidding me? A shortstop by trade, with Witt on this team, he doesn’t play the position at all anymore. He logged 22 innings at the spot last year. Prior to Monday, he had played three innings at short this season. For him to make that play is all kinds of nuts.

At the moment, it was simply a nifty play while the Royals held a 7-0 lead in the third. Ahhhh…as the Astros fought their way back into the game, this play loomed rather large.

This was the Royals lineup on Monday with their OPS+:

India - 79
Witt Jr. - 152
Pasquantino - 79
Perez - 82
Garcia - 138
Massey - 42
Biggio - 63
Waters - 100
Isbel - 93

That’s two guys well above average, one guy who’s exactly average and then there are six who have been…bad.

Here’s another way to look at that lineup. On FanGraphs, there are currently 28 qualified players who have a negative fWAR. Four of those players (Massey, India, Pasquantino and Perez) were in the starting lineup on Monday.

And then Massey hit his home run, India went 3-5 with a pair of RBIs and a run, and Pasquantino was 2-5 with an RBI.

Oh. Garcia was 0-5. That comes on the heels of a 1-12 performance in the series against the Red Sox over the weekend.

I don’t really have a point to this except that baseball is a wondrous pastime.

The Astros feature quite an imbalanced lineup with Yordan Alvarez their only left-handed hitter, but he’s on the IL with a hand strain. That leaves Victor Caratini as the only man who will hit from the left side and he’s a switch hitter. So Caratini was the lone bat in the Houston lineup on Monday with the platoon advantage against starter Michael Wacha.

This is how Wacha pitched the eigth right-handed hitting bats.

When I see a chart like this, I think the pitcher was on point with his command. Most everything is on the outer half of the plate against righties. The four-seamer and cutter are higher, as you would expect, and those are meant to get a swing, so they’re a little more centrally located. But if Wacha was missing, he was missing away, in a spot where the Astros couldn’t hurt him if they swung the bat.

Indeed, Wacha didn’t get many whiffs on the night. Only six on 40 total swings, a lowly 15 percent. That’s not normally his game, but he was down by about five percent on his seasonal average.

These were all the strikes for Wacha on Monday night.

You can see a handful of those elevated four-seamers and cutters were put in play. Those were the ones the Astros hit the hardest. But Wacha’s secondary pitches were hardly bothered. The average exit velocity on his change and slider was around 78 mph.

Wacha ran into trouble in the seventh as the Astros started aggressively attacking his elevated cutter. Two doubles (one was on a low curve), a single and a sac fly finished his night at 6.1 innings with eight hits and two walks along with just three strikeouts. He was charged with two runs.

It wasn’t an exceptional performance by any means but one that we shouldn’t be surprised by. It was a veteran effort.

The bullpen is always a source of interest—and angst. I’m continually intrigued by how Matt Quatraro uses his relievers.

With both John Schreiber and Steven Cruz warming in the seventh, Quatraro opted for Schreiber with one out, a runner on first and the top of the Houston lineup coming up. Schreiber has been a guy Q has leaned on this year as something of a fireman. This wasn’t really a true fireman situation, but it was getting close. And it’s generally not a good thing if your team blows a seven-run lead. Schreiber has the third-highest average Leverage Index among Royals relievers at 1.467. (aLI is, according to Baseball Reference, the average pressure the pitcher saw in a game. Anything above 1 is considered high pressure.)

Schreiber got out of the inning on two strikeouts, while walking one.

Up next was Cruz. Cruz has featured often since his recall from Omaha, appearing now in 14 games. Quatraro has handled him carefully, though, with nine of those appearances coming in low-leverage situations. Cruz’s aLI is 0.762 and when he started the eighth inning on Monday, it was again in a low-leverage situation.

Cruz, though, struggled. Really, it was a total team effort as there was an error from Drew Waters and a wild pitch mixed in around a single a double and a hit batter.

That turned the game into what Baseball Reference would term a medium-leverage situation. In came Lucas Erceg. Erceg, the eighth inning guy in close games, has the second-highest aLI on the team at 1.548. He allowed his inherited runner to score for the first time this season, but shut the Astros down.

With the Astros chipping away at the Royals lead, this was now a high-leverage situation, which meant it was time for the closer, Carlos Estévez. Of Estévez’s 18 appearances this season, 11 have come in high-leverage situations. He generally makes things interesting, and in this case, he allowed a leadoff single from Jose Altuve. From there, though, he was nails, shutting down the Astros and securing the Royals victory. Estévez leads the team in aLI at 2.299. That’s what happens when your offense doesn’t score a ton of runs and your pitching staff holds the line. Close games translate to high leverage. And Estévez and Erceg have been coming through more often than not.

Here’s a list of Royals relievers ranked by aLI:

Carlos Estévez - 2.299
Lucas Erceg - 1.548
John Schreiber - 1.467
Daniel Lynch IV - 1.181
Angel Zerpa - 0.999
Steven Cruz - 0.762
Taylor Clarke - 0.300
Chris Stratton - 0.119

I think Q knows what he’s doing when going to his bullpen.

Central Issues

Red Sox 2, Tigers 14

Are the Tigers a juggernaut? People are asking. They jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first on the back of a Gleyber Torres home run. Detroit then added nine in the third on four walks, five singles, a double, a HBP and a home run. It was a lot.

I think the Tigers are a juggernaut.

Brewers 0, Guardians 5

Ben Lively started and went three innings, and was followed by four relievers who combined to shut out the Brewers. José Ramírez hit a single in the fifth and promptly swiped second and third. Ramírez now has 11 steals on the season. After a pair of walks, Gabriel Arias cleared the bases with a double. Cleveland tacked on a run in the sixth and another in the seventh for the final margin.

The four hottest teams in baseball reside in the AL Central. And the White Sox can claim the pope! Miracles for everyone!