Another late-inning stumble

It would appear the bullpen is starting to crack under the pile of innings it has been asked to deliver.

Cleveland does not possess an offense of quality.

That’s not sour grapes after what just happened. That’s just fact. They were no-hit in the second game of their doubleheader against Tampa on Wednesday. They came into the series opener against the Royals losers of nine consecutive games. Their collective OBP is .295 which ranks 29th out of the 30 major league teams. Their slugging percentage of .393 is 20th. They can pepper a few home runs (as we certainly saw on Thursday), but that’s kind of the extent of their productivity. Their current lineup features José Ramírez and Franmil Reyes and seven other guys of below average production. Combine everything from the bats and you have an OPS+ of 84. That’s second-worst in the majors and 16 percent below what would be a league-average output.

Yet there was Cleveland on Thursday, storming back in the late innings. A three-run dinger in the eighth…A three-run dinger in the ninth. Ballgame.

There are all kinds of losses. Lord knows we understand this in Kansas City. There are games where you’re just rolled as we saw in the finale of the last road trip in Boston. There are games where it’s a spirited back and forth and you just come up short at the end. We also saw that earlier in that series against the Red Sox. Then there are games like Thursday. The bullpen is running on fumes and the Royals drop the opener to Cleveland 7-4.

The blast off Barlow

In the 87th game of the season, Scott Barlow took the ball for the 41st time. Only four relievers in the majors have appeared more often than Barlow. This comes a year after he pitched in 32 of 60 games. Mike Matheny leans on Barlow unlike any other reliever in his stable.

Fatigue can manifest itself in different ways. Naturally, we turn to velocity to see if we can spot a trend…or a steep drop from the norm. Then we pivot to spin rate. Or break. The thing is, with Barlow, nothing in the data seems out of the ordinary. He’s just missing his location.

Barlow, like so many effective pitchers, spots his slider down and away from right-handed batters.

He missed his location against Roberto Perez in the eighth.

This comes 24 hours after Barlow was brought into a game with a runner on first and no outs where he promptly allowed a pair of singles and a double to give up the lead in the series finale against the Reds. Over the last two days, Barlow has faced 12 batters. They’ve touched him up for two singles, a double, a pair of walks and a home run. It was the singles and double that impacted him on Wednesday. On Thursday it was the walks and the dinger.

This doesn’t mean Barlow is awful. Or that he’s regressing to some sort of mean. This is simply a stretch of ineffectiveness most likely due to the fact he’s been used a ton. Matheny needs to shelve Barlow for the rest of this series. With the All-Star break coming up, it’s an opportunity to give him an entire week off. That’s unlikely to actually happen, but it would be nice if he could come out for the second half after an extended period of rest.

The homer off Holland

Greg Holland has appeared in 37 games in 2021. That puts him on pace for 67 appearances over the entire season which would be just one off his career-high set all the way back in 2013. In June, eight of his 12 appearances came on one or no days of rest. He’s still been mostly good, but the outings where he’s allowed a run have increased over the last three weeks or so. In his previous 10 appearances before Thursday, Holland had allowed seven runs in 9.2 innings with three home runs. So now it’s 10 runs in 10.1 innings with four dingers in his last 11 outings. Not what you want.

Since his return from Tommy John surgery in 2016, Holland has struggled to find consistency for an entire season. He will have stretches where he’s lights out. And then he will have an extended series of outings where he just flat struggles. He saved 23 consecutive games for the Rockies to open the 2017 season, but really scuffled in August of that year with a 13.50 ERA over 9.1 innings in 11 games where he allowed three home runs. He was brutal in St. Louis in the first half of 2018, but found new life after a trade to Washington. In 2019 for Arizona, he didn’t allow a run in his first 11 appearances, then over his last 11, his ERA was 11.42 with 11 walks before he was DFA’d and released.

It would appear that Holland has entered the phase of the season where he’s going to be struggling.

As Royals Farm Report noted on Twitter, the home run happy zone for Franmil Reyes is up and in. Reyes had hit 13 dingers prior to Thursday. His heat map does indeed show a preference for elevated pitch on the inner half.

Break it down even further, and eight of Reyes’ home runs prior to Thursday have come off fastballs. Here’s the heat map for the fastballs Reyes has deposited over the fence.

Here’s where Holland delivered the fatal pitch:

The outcome was ordained once the fastball started tracking up and in. Reyes saw a similar pitch out of the zone just previously. This was just in a better location for him. Ballgame.

Just ahead of the Reyes walkoff, Holland was ordered to intentionally walk Ramírez. It was kind of a “pick your poison” situation. Ramírez, a switch hitter, hits with more power from his left side, but is less of an on base threat when he bats from that side. Overall though, he’s a better hitter when he’s up there left-handed. The flip side is Reyes does a ton of damage against right-handed pitchers. A reverse platoon split.

Let’s play “You’re The Manager.” You have first base open with two outs in a tie game in the bottom of the ninth. The two most dangerous bats are the next hitters up. Here are Ramírez’s splits this year:

And here are Reyes’:

I’m generally averse to the intentional walk, so I probably would’ve rolled the dice and faced Ramírez. But damn, if this situation didn’t just set up perfectly for Cleveland.

The rest of the bullpen pitched well

It’s not surprising that Jake Brentz who last pitched on July 3 was effective in his inning. Nor was it remarkable that Josh Staumont who threw 17 pitches on Tuesday would similarly be effective. It’s not a stretch to see that Barlow and Holland, who threw 22 and 21 pitches respectively on Wednesday would struggle. The balancing act Matheny must perfect in the season’s second half is bullpen management when his starters aren’t going deep into ballgames and while trying to win as many games as possible. He may need to turn to his second and third tier of relievers in higher leverage situations than he would prefer.

It’s not like you’re dealing with the 1999 Royals bullpen here. This remains a talented relief corps. But you’re not going to get the best out of that talent if they’re running on fumes. And that’s what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks.

There were a few positives

I don’t want to ignore some of the good things we saw in Thursday’s loss.

Starter Danny Duffy pitched well, going five innings. He got into a spot of difficulty in the third but was bailed out by a 4-6-5 double play. Yes, a 4-6-5 double play. He needed 77 pitches to navigate five innings though. It would be nice if he could give the Royals a regular six with an occasional seven or eight inning appearance. I know, I know…it’s probably asking far too much.

It looks like Hunter Dozier is starting to warm up. Two hits on the night with a double and a home run and he’s hitting .262/.313/.426 over his last 67 plate appearances. I chose that arbitrary endpoint because that came on the heels of an 0-4 performance against Boston on June 19 where he was at the nadir of his offensive production, hitting .145/.217/.323. Since then, he’s upped his 2021 totals to .174/.241/.348. So…progress!

With his first multi-home run game as a Royal, Carlos Santana tied the game in the ninth with his second blast of the night. His first home run of the night was career hit 1,400.

Central issues

• Tigers 3, Twins 5

J.A. Happ danced around eight hits in his seven innings of work while striking out eight. Miguel Sanó tied the game wth his 15th home run of the season in the seventh and Max Kepler scored the go-ahead run on a wild pitch later in the inning.

Up next

Brad Keller tries to finish the first half strong. He will face Triston McKenzie. First pitch is scheduled for 6:10 CDT.