Royals drop series finale to Rangers

Even with the loss, 2021 is off to a good start.

It turns out the Royals will not go undefeated in 2021. It also turns out that the offense isn’t going to hang double-digits on their opponents in every game. Who saw that coming?

Despite Sunday’s loss, positives abounded as the Royals lifted the curtain on their 2021 season.

Before we look at the overall outcome of the series, let’s take care of some housekeeping with what happened on Sunday afternoon at The K.

The Key Play

Nate Lowe Crushes One

Win Probability Added: .262

Nate Lowe likes the ball down in the zone. That’s where he makes his best contact and it’s also where his power resides. Singer naturally tries to keep his slider down in the zone.

In this instance, it was almost a perfect storm in favor of Lowe. With two on and two outs in the fourth, Singer did deliver a 3-1 slider down in the zone, but Perez set his target away, on the outer third. It started out a little inside so it broke over the inner half of the plate. That’s not exactly Lowe’s happy spot, but he put it…ahem…into the fountains to give the Rangers the lead.

The next inning, Singer’s afternoon completely unraveled. Unable to effectively locate the strike zone, the righty issued three consecutive free passes to juice the bases before Isiah Kiner-Falefa chased him from the game with a two-run single.

There’s absolutely no chance you can spin the above pitch chart into a positive. It’s ugly. The result was it was the third time in 13 career starts that Singer failed to complete 5 innings. And a rough start to his 2021 in general.

The starting pitching has been…uninspiring

Coming into 2021 the Royals starting pitching was probably the largest unknown. It remains that way. And you hate to accentuate the negative when a team is off to a 2-1 start. Especially when they have a history of dreadful Aprils.

Still, it’s difficult to ignore. Through three games, the starters have thrown 10.2 innings and struck out 19.3 percent of the Rangers batters they faced. They also walked 12.3 percent. That’s highly suboptimal. It should also be noted that in each of the three games, they stumbled early and put the Royals in a hole. Twice they dug out of that hole. And while after Salvador Perez’s home run in the sixth cut the lead to 6-2 and, honestly after the first two games, another comeback felt possible, that’s an unfair expectation and burden to put on the batters.

Let’s rewind ourselves for a moment. While the starting pitching overall hasn’t been good, there have been some positives. Mike Minor wobbled early but was able to steady himself and keep the Royals in the game. He was the beneficiary of the offensive juggernaut behind him and was able to go six innings and 93 pitches. Singer also, at times, looked good. He recorded a 70 percent ground ball rate and whiffed five Ranger batters. But as you saw above, he really lost his control in the fourth inning which doomed his 2021 debut.

Now let’s see what Danny Duffy can do in his 2021 debut.

Meanwhile, the bullpen has been lights out

The obvious reason the Royals have been able to overcome their suboptimal starting pitching has been the offense. Duh. But the true heroes may just be the bullpen who in games one and two, held the Rangers at bay long enough for the offense to do their thing. The offense didn’t exactly show Sunday, but the bullpen sure did.

5.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 SO

That’s Jake Brentz coming in and squelching a potential disaster in the fourth followed by Jakob Junis, Kyle Zimmer going three and Wade Davis closing out the game surrendering a home run.

Sunday was the second time in Zimmer’s major league career he threw three innings in an outing. I’ve long felt that Zimmer was the kind of guy who could go multiple innings so if the Royals are going to use him this way, this could be a major development for the bullpen. The only question after an extended appearance like that is how long will it take Zimmer to recover? Last year he was given about two and a half days of rest between outings on average. Though, that includes a stretch where he went 10 games without an appearance. Still, towards the end of 2020, Zimmer would routinely need three days between relief outings. Naturally, he’ll need more time after the longer appearances. But it is encouraging after throwing 15 pitches on Opening Day coming on in relief of Brad Keller in the second that he was able to go three innings three days later.

Likewise, it was good to see Junis coming out of the pen on back-to-back days. Although I still feel that the addition of the cutter could ultimately have him back in the rotation sooner rather than later, he is going to establish himself as a weapon out of the bullpen.

We’ve seen some fantastic bullpens in Kansas City and some that weren’t so hot. This one is shaping up more along the lines of the former which bodes well.

The offense is cruising

The Royals’ offense exploded for 28 runs in the first three games. Yes, part of that can be chalked up to facing a Rangers’ pitching staff that is decidedly not good. And they did score only three runs on Sunday. But good teams need to capitalize when facing inferior opposition. That’s what we saw from the Royals’ bats in the first series of 2021.

With Whit Merrifield and Michael A. Taylor off to scorching starts, it’s not difficult to see how the Royals are using what has the makings of a balanced lineup to score runs. Add in Jorge Soler’s power and Carlos Santana’s on-base ability and the lineup is as-advertised in the first three games.

Andrew Benintendi is off to a slow start in his first three games but has provided the Royals with a couple of defensive highlights. Perez is back to giving away at bats by chasing pitches well off the plate, but you hope he doesn’t get too carried away and can reclaim some of 2020’s offensive mojo. He did hit his first home run of 2021 on Sunday, which was the lone offensive positive from the game.

The Royals aren’t going to average over nine runs a game this year. Just like they won’t be averaging seven runs against all season. But we saw enough positives in this opening series to counterbalance the negatives and carry the optimism forward to the first road trip of 2021.

Up Next

The Royals are in Cleveland today for their home opener. Danny Duffy gets the start against Logan Allen. First pitch is at 3:10.