Big home run energy not enough to secure a victory

Jorge Soler shows promise hitting second. Danny Duffy continues in the hybrid role. Josh Staumont is relying on his curve more than usual. And a look ahead at Tuesday's starter Brad Keller.

Different city. Same result.

On the back of three home runs, the Royals blasted out to a 5-1 lead against Garrett Richards and the Red Sox on Monday night. By the time Whit Merrifield touched home plate, they were done scoring for the night.

It wasn’t enough.

The Red Sox hit four home runs, including two from Hunter Renfro, his last off Josh Staumont giving Boston the lead. By the time the baseballs stopped sailing over the fences, the Red Sox had done enough to secure victory, 6-5. It was the Royals’ sixth loss in a row. They are now 1-6 on their road trip.

That’s a helluva lead to the newsletter. Let’s dive in.

Batting second: Jorge Soler

I adore when Matheny fills out a lineup card that contains a surprise. It gives everyone something to talk about in the buildup to the game and it becomes outstanding fodder for the newsletter. Monday’s gift was the bump of Jorge Soler to the second spot in the lineup, behind permanent, etched-in-stone leadoff man Whit Merrifield.

What? Soler hitting second? Does Matheny even look at the stats? Soler is horrible!

Damn if I don’t hate that I sound like I’m defending this franchise whenever they wander outside of the box for something like lineup construction or bullpen management, but again…I can completely see the method to Matheny’s madness.

For starters, Soler is actually getting on base a little more these days. Don’t laugh. It’s true!

Here’s how the Royals’ regular hitters have performed for the entire season, through Sunday.

Soler, according to wRC+ is the second-worst hitter on the team (with over 200 plate appearances). Actually, he’s tied with Michael A. Taylor for second-worst. That’s an extremely poor showing. There’s no way to explain it away. Soler has been abysmal in 2021.

But! Like I noted earlier, he’s been doing…a little better?

Over the last 30 days, Soler has posted a wRC+ of 95. I mean, that’s still below average and definitely lagging in how the Royals need him to perform, but it’s something. Although it’s not like Soler set the bar high to begin with.

The other thing to note, look at Soler’s walk rate in the two tables posted above. He’s really upped his walk rate over the last month of games. In the last 30 days, Soler is walking more than Carlos Santana. I wasn’t aware that was legal. Or possible. He’s also dramatically cut down on his strikeouts.

Sticking with the table from the last 30 days, Soler posted a 32 percent strikeout rate along with an 8.2 percent walk rate in the 49 games he played prior. In other words, he’s doubled his walk rate and sliced his strikeout rate by almost a third. That’s quite a transformation from a hitter like Soler.

He’s accomplished this by closing a hole in his swing.

In April and May, Soler missed on 15.3 percent of his swings. Here are the pitches he whiffed on in April.

There’s a healthy dose of misses of four-seamers up in the zone along with sliders and assorted offspeed low and away. It looks like he also missed a few fat sliders from time to time.

Here’s his chart for May.

More of the same on the elevated fastballs and the down and out sliders, but he was whiffing on four-seamers just outside of the zone. This is the whiff profile of a struggling hitter trying to swing his way out of a slump.

Now look at his swings and misses from June.

Goodness. This is some kind of change. He’s completely stopped missing the high pitches. And fastballs? He’s consistently making at least some kind of contact there. After striking out 10 times on fastballs in April and 12 times in May, he’s cut that way down. Soler has only struck out on fastballs three times in June. And guess what he’s going to see a steady diet of while he’s hitting behind Whit Merrifield, who just happens to get on base at a healthy .328 OBP and attempts to steal in over 16 percent of his opportunities? Welcome to your best-case scenario, Jorge Soler!

That was Soler’s first plate appearance on Monday. Notice where that four-seamer was located just off the outer edge of the plate. That was a pitch he was whiffing on back in May.

It was more of the same as Soler led off the seventh inning against reliever Hirokazu Sawamura. This time the fastball was elevated.

Again, that’s a pitch that Soler was missing in April and May. That’s a nice, level swing where he brought his wrists up to drive the ball to the opposite field. That’s the direction all four of his plate appearances went on Monday. He didn’t hit the ball hard—only one of his balls put in play, the groundout in the fifth—was classified as hard-hit at 99 mph, but that wasn’t what he was trying to do on Monday. As the number two hitter in the lineup, it was all about contact. And that’s exactly what Soler did.

The question is, will it stick? Will this help Soler finally get his 2021 on track? There’s no way to say for certain. Besides, it feels like almost every time he has hit a home run or collected two knocks in a game, I’m writing something like maybe Soler is finally starting to find his swing. But what I do know is we’re at the point where the Royals have to try something, anything to get him going. The increase in walks and the downturn in strikeouts is a positive, but he still needs to do better than the 95 wRC+ we’ve seen in the last month of games.

The Duffy Hybrid

The third outing of Hybrid Danny Duffy didn’t go very well in toto, although it was a difficult night to form any kind of conclusions. The temperature was hot and the ball was jumping. Duffy himself surrendered a season-high three dingers, but that’s going to happen to lefties at Fenway in those conditions.

Duffy didn’t rely on the four-seamer as much as he did in his last start—again given the conditions and where he was pitching, probably a smart move—and he was holding his velocity at just a little above 94 mph. He threw a few more changeups and curves than his previous start. Following his outing, Duffy said he felt strong and that the ball was “electric” coming out of his hand. I can’t completely disagree, even if he coughed up those dingers and struck out only two.

Hunter Renfroe barreled a change over the monster in the fourth. That followed a Xander Boegarts double on a belt-high 3-2 fastball.

Duffy required 49 pitches to get through three innings. His velocity was still strong going into the fourth, but he began missing with his location, catching far too much of the zone on the double to Boegarts off the four-seamer and the change to Renfroe.

Duffy finished his night at 62 pitches, or about the same amount he combined in his previous start and his Friday relief appearance on his bullpen day. I imagine if he pitches again on Wednesday—in what would be his scheduled bullpen day—he would once again be limited to about an inning and 15-20 pitches.

It’s still too early to render a verdict on Duffy in his “hybrid” role. He made a couple of suboptimal pitches in the game and was punished. But he said he felt strong and the ball was lively coming out of that left arm. We still need more data on this experiment. That’s assuming the Royals will continue to stick with it. We will presumably have another outing to dissect on Wednesday.

Steering into the curve

Josh Staumont threw two innings in relief on Monday. He threw 24 pitches, 12 of them were curves. We don’t see that too often from Staumont, where over half his pitches in an outing are curveballs. It was just the third time this year he’s thrown 50 percent curves, all of them coming in his last five outings.

The curve was the pitch that Renfroe hammered for this tie-breaking home run.

Not a poor pitch given the circumstances, and it had a ton of movement. Except as the broadcast pointed out, Renfroe has been feasting on offspeed pitches in 2021. On the curve specifically, he’s hitting .313 with a slugging percentage of .688. Two of his five hits against the curve have left the yard.

Still, an interesting mix of pitches from Staumont on Monday. The fastball velocity was averaging 95 mph, down a tick from his 2021 average velocity. He threw just three sinkers at an average of 94.9 mph, down almost 2.5 mph from his typical delivery in 2021. Is the increase in curve usage a response to the decrease in fastball velocity?

In the dirt

It feels like I’ve been chronicling Brad Keller and his proclivity to bounce pitches all season. Keller, who starts Tuesday against the Red Sox, has thrown 96 pitches in the dirt in 2021. That’s the most in the majors. Percentage-wise, he trails only Blake Snell in most pitches thrown in the dirt. (Defined as either balls in the dirt or swinging strikes (blocked) according to data collected at Baseball Savant.) Here are the top five.

Hey! There are some Cy Young award winners on the above list. They also generally have outstanding sliders in their pitching tool kit. There’s nothing predictive about a starting pitcher’s success here. It’s just an interesting list given that Keller (along with Garrett Richards and Snell) is struggling.

In Keller’s last start against the Yankees, he bounced 19 pitches. Upon a search of the Baseball Savant database, I discovered that no pitcher has put more balls in the dirt in a game in 2021. Keller’s dirtball performance in New York last week stands alone.

In fact, those 19 pitches in the dirt are the most in a game going back to 2008.

A well-timed pitch in the dirt can be effective. But 19 in a single outing? Almost one-fifth of all pitches thrown? Something wasn’t right for Keller. There were a lot of sliders in that mix as you would expect, but a handful of sinkers and changeups as well.

The above gif with the changeup is a nice reminder that not all pitches classified as balls in the dirt bounce ahead of or on the plate. Some, like the pitch above almost reach the catcher.

Let’s see if he corrects himself in his start on Tuesday and bounces a little fewer pitches.

Central issues

• Cleveland 13, Detroit 5

It seems like every time I write up a Cleveland victory José Ramírez is featured prominently. This one is no different as he clubbed his 17th home run of the season and drove in five. He also singled and doubled. The 13 runs and 19 hits for Cleveland was a season-high output.

• Twins at White Sox — Postponed

With the Twins rained out and with the Royals loss, Kansas City is now officially in last place in the Central.

This isn’t going so great.

Up next

Keller will try to get the Royals back in the win column. He squares off against Nick Pivetta. First pitch is scheduled for 6:10 CDT.