Royals live and survive in LA

The Royals drop two of three to the Dodgers with home runs playing a decisive role in all three games. And with that, this most brutal section of their 2024 schedule comes to a merciful close.

The Royals wrapped what can only be described as a frustrating series in Los Angeles. They outscored the Dodgers over the three games 10-9 but could manage only one win. It was competitive throughout (with the exception really of the offense on Sunday afternoon) and, in an alternate baseball universe, could’ve easily swung in the Royals favor.

No shame in losing two of three to the Dodgers. It just was close to being a much better weekend for the Royals. They close this brutal stretch of 12 games against teams leading their divisions with a 5-7 record. If you want to expand the net of what constitutes a “gauntlet” portion of the schedule, just prior to these two weeks the Royals also had series against the Twins and the Padres, two teams who hover around 50 percent in FanGraphs postseason odds. Let’s call everyone the Royals have played since May 27 a “likely playoff team.” In those 19 games, the Royals went 7-12. That’s six series total where they lost four, won once (against Seattle) and split against Cleveland when one of the three scheduled was lost to rain.

That’s a stretch of .368 baseball. That’s not good. Not at all. Yet I don’t think it ever felt like the Royals were playing bad baseball. Nine of those losses were by three runs or fewer. Included in their seven victories were three walkoffs.

This is why the first two months were so vitally important. They built a pad where they were 14 games over .500 and positioned themselves as early contenders. They emerge from this stretch nine games better than .500, still in second place in the AL Central and still in position for Wild Card number two.

Not too shabby, all things considered.

As I was taking in Sunday’s game against the Dodgers, a game the Royals would ultimately lose by a 3-0 scoreline, I was struck by how all three games in this series hinged on home runs. I thought that would be a thread that could be used to examine the series. I don’t normally “recap” the weekend (sometimes you get a bonus Saturday content!) but thought in this instance, that thread of home runs was worth revisiting.

Friday - Power from the bottom of the order

In the first game of the series in LA, the Royals jumped out to an early lead, courtesy of Salvador Perez. Perez, it should be noted, is in a home run drought. After bashing seven in his first 25 games of the year, coming into Friday he had hit just three over his next 43 contests. That’s translated to a .394 slugging percentage. Yet there he was on Friday launching an absolute bomb into the bleachers in left field to open the scoring with a three-run shot.

With the Dodgers only having the second-best mark in the National League, despite spending millions on Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto this past offseason and prior to that, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts and Will Smith and…you get the picture…the lineup they’ve rolled out this season is decidedly top-heavy. Some of that is to be expected. Look at the galaxy of stars that occupy the top four spots on any given night. Still, they seemed to have laser-focused on the premium players and neglected to tend to the lower half of their lineup. It happens to the elite, I suppose.

The seven, eight and nine hitters in the Dodgers lineup have hit a collective. 208/.274/.322 this season. That production isn’t the worst in the game, but with an 85 OPS+, it’s decidedly below average for that cohort. On a rare night when the opposition is able to tiptoe through the top of the Dodger order with limited damage, they generally have to like their chances simply because the bottom third is so unproductive.

Yet on Friday, the damage against starter Cole Ragans came from that maligned lower third. The first shot was fired from the number seven batter in the Dodger lineup, Miguel Rojas, who clubbed a two-run dinger in the fifth off of Ragans. Rojas entered the game hitting .269/.321/.413, which, in this era of depressed offense isn’t bad, yet he had homered just twice in limited playing time this season. Then, two batters later, the number nine hitter got into the act. Chris Taylor, who is having an absolutely abysmal season—his OPS+ is 2—launched one 396 feet for a game-tying home run.

It’s one thing when Mookie Betts beats you. But Chris Taylor? He entered play on Friday hitting .100/.196/.111. In 106 plate appearances Taylor had collected exactly one extra base hit. It was a double back on May 24.

The Rojas home run came on a four-seamer that was inside and off the plate. Not a bad pitch, except this one registered at 93.7 MPH, a decidedly un-Ragans like velocity. In fact, he averaged 96 MPH on that specific offering on Friday. Ragans, as he tends to do, was alternating between taking his foot off the gas and pushing the pedal to the floor with his fastball. He picked the wrong time apparently against Rojas.

The pitch to Taylor was a changeup that was located down, but in the center of the plate. It was only the second time in his major league career that Ragans has allowed a changeup to be deposited over the fence. It’s usually such a great pitch for him, playing off his four-seamer that comes in about 10 MPH hotter. Except against Taylor, Ragans didn’t really establish that separation. He went changeup, cutter, cutter and, for the fateful pitch, that change. The cutters were registering around 91 MPH so there was less velocity separation between the pitches Taylor saw. An easier adjustment.

The Royals were fortunate that the Taylor home run only tied the game at three. The problem is, if you let the Dodgers hang around the top of the order will likely find a way to get you. On Friday, the Royals held the Betts/Ohtani/Freeman/Smith quartet to a combined 4-16 with one run scored. All four hits were singles. Unfortunately for the Royals, two of them came in the eighth inning, sandwiched around an error from reliever Will Smith on a pickoff throw. The single from Freddie Freeman brought home Mookie Betts with the deciding run. The Royals dropped the first game of the series by a final of 4-3.

Saturday - Simply grand

I really attempt to keep this newsletter a hyperbole-free zone. An even-keeled, thoughtful take is always my goal. Keep that in mind when I write this: MJ Melendez might have had the most impressive plate appearance I’ve seen in a regular season game on Saturday in Los Angeles:

This is, as you undoubtedly know, the Melendez sixth inning plate appearance against Blake Treinen that resulted in a grand slam. It was a twelve-pitch battle.

Cutters up and a couple of sliders down. I’m not sure why Treinen didn’t mix in a couple more sliders among the 12 pitches he offered to Melendez. That’s generally a nasty pitch for him.

Well, I think I know why Treinen shied away from that slider. He was having difficulty spotting it close to the zone. It was, up to that point, an easy take for Royals batters. The reason the bases were loaded for Melendez was because Treinen walked three consecutive batters. The cutter to left-handed batters was really the only time he was around the zone.

Still…twelve pitches! After falling behind 1-2, Melendez spit on a slider in the dirt and then fouled off six consecutive pitches. Four were elevated on the upper reaches of the zone. There was the fifth foul that came on pitch nine, a cutter in on his hands which…Melendez was definitely in swing mode. The sixth straight foul—and 10th pitch of the at bat—was the lone slider that was finally located well.

That Melendez was able to foul it off was a key moment in the battle. From Anne Rogers:

“Once I foul off that slider, I'm out in front, then my confidence is through the roof,” Melendez said. “Like, ‘All right, I've seen pretty much all his pitches.’ So now it’s just a matter of, ‘Can I get something in the zone that I can put a good swing on it?’ That was a big point in the at-bat for my confidence.”

The slider also gave him a moment to recalibrate and it helped him lay off the next pitch, a cutter that rode inside.

The fateful 12th pitch was next. It was, as you can see above, the most optimally located of all the pitches for Melendez. In that swing mode, he wasn’t going to miss.

Damn, that baseball jumped off the bat.

Melendez is hitting just .094 on pitches in the upper third of the strike zone this year. It’s not a bad way to attack him necessarily, but I have to think that if nine of the 12 pitches he’s going to see in an at bat are in that general vicinity, he’s probably going to find a way to ultimately have some success if the final pitch creeps a little too far into the zone. Which is exactly what happened. I enjoyed this quote from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts:

“I didn’t expect a 12-pitch at-bat, and at some point, you have to change how you attack a player in an at-bat.”

At some point…

The baseball traveled 395 feet, which means in Dodger Stadium, it landed in the first row of the fans. It looks like it wasn’t exactly certain that it would leave the yard, but it was a no-doubter, a home run in all 30 ballparks.

At this point, I have no idea what to make of Melendez. After Saturday’s game, he had seven hits in his last 55 at bats. Yet four of those seven hits left the yard. And they’ve been BIG homers. Important blasts. Still, he’s hitting .127/.213/.346 in that span with a 55 wRC+. And he’s been playing some solid, and at times amazing, defense. And he’s a decent baserunner on those rare occasions he actually reaches. Yet he’s unproducitve with the bat and is going to fail to come through more often than not. Yet when he does come through it’s in spectacular fashion.

Baseball can be maddeningly confounding. Behind the Melendez grand slam, the Royals tacked on a couple of more runs in the later innings and ran away with a 7-2 victory.

Sunday - Beaten by the best

I just don’t think it’s realistic to expect that you can come through three games against Shohei Ohtani unscathed.

Ohtani, who came into Sunday’s game 2-7 in the series with two singles and a walk, hit a home run against Brady Singer in the third. He appeared to enjoy that moment so much, he hit another homer on the very next pitch he saw, this time in the sixth. Then Freddie Freeman decided he didn’t want to be left out of the action and jacked one three pitches after Ohtani’s second.

Three pitches, three solo home runs. A 3-0 loss for the Royals.

The sinker was left to Ohtani in the third. Bad location. That was always going to fly over the fence. The sliders were both down and in to the left-handed hitters and again, probably a suboptimal location given the count. As noted, one was the first pitch Ohtani saw in the sixth. The other, Freeman’s, was on a 2-0 pitch. Actually, going back through the data at Baseball Savant, both pitches were probably sweepers.

Overall, I don’t think Singer pitched poorly. He mixed in his four-seamer a ton, which is something we’ve been begging to see. With the sweeper that gives him a nifty little variation on both the sinker and the slider he will use as his primary pitches. If he’s going to abandon his change—he only threw that pitch twice on Sunday—it’s imperative that he mix in the four-seamer and the sweeper. Especially against a team like the Dodgers.

Ohtani just seemed incredibly comfortable against Singer. But he does that kind of thing to a lot of pitchers. Freeman will get his as well.

Meanwhile, Tyler Glasnow was cruising against the Royals. One of those instances where the hitters just have to tip their caps as they trudge back to the dugout, thankful that they only have to come up against him but once a year. Glasnow went seven innings, allowed just three hits and struck out nine. He needed only 85 pitches. It was domination of the highest order.

Odds and ends

The Bobby Witt Jr. over the shoulder grab for a double play in the seventh inning on Friday should only add to his legend.

We’ve seen Witt track into shallow left to make these plays for the better part of the last two seasons. It never fails to impress. Yet what was so incredible about Friday’s play was Witt’s presence of mind to throw to Nick Loftin at second base to turn the double play. There’s no way Witt catches the runner off first by making an off balance throw from where he was on the field. Yet, by delivering the ball to Loftin who basically made the double play pivot, Witt was able to speed the play along and catch Teoscar Hernández for the second out. Credit also goes to Loftin for being ready. Although I’m sure anyone who plays second for the Royals knows by now to expect the amazing.

We are so lucky to be watching this guy play ball.

Despite taking two of three from the Royals, this was a difficult weekend for the Dodgers. On Saturday, starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto left the game after two innings of his velocity being diminished. The initial diagnosis was right triceps tightness. That’s since been amended to a strained rotator cuff. The Dodgers don’t have a timeline for his return but manager Dave Roberts indicated that it would be some time before  Yamamoto would return.

Michael Grove, who came in for Yamamoto on Saturday, also hit the IL. His injury was classified as lat tightness.

The big blow came on Sunday when Royals reliever Dan Altavilla drilled Mookie Betts in the left hand with a 98 MPH fastball. The result was a fracture for Betts. While I write about the Royals, I’m a fan of baseball in general. That means I enjoy watching the best players perform night in and night out. Losing Betts is a problem for the Dodgers to be sure, but it’s a shame for baseball to be without one of its best players for what appears will be an extended length of time.

On the Royals injury front, Salvador Perez left Friday’s game early and sat out on Saturday with right knee inflammation. Of course he only missed a game and change. He was the DH on Sunday but you know he’s already bugging the team about letting him back behind the plate. He’ll probably start back there on Tuesday.

Michael Wacha, recovering from a fracture in his left foot is scheduled to make a rehab start in the Arizona Complex League on Monday. He could be back in the rotation by the time the Royals are in Texas at the weekend. With the day off on Monday, the Royals are skipping what was the number four slot, normally occupied by Wacha. The Oakland series will feature Alec Marsh on Tuesday followed by Ragans and Seth Lugo. Wacha could be on target to take the ball on his regular turn which would be Saturday.

Central Issues

Athletics 2, Twins 6
Athletics 7, Twins 8

Minnesota sweeps both the doubleheader and the series from the A’s. Thanks for nothing, Oakland. Carlos Correa hit two homers in the first game and and 5-10. Royce Lewis homered in both games. The hot and cold Twins are hot again. Ugh.

Guardians 6, Blue Jays 7

Ernie Clement put the Jays on the board with a two-run homer in the second but Cleveland rallied for two runs in the fifth to tie the game. After the first three batters reached for Toronto in the bottom of the frame, Daulton Varsho unloaded them with a grand slam. Four Blue Jay relievers held off a late Guardian rally to secure the one-run victory. Toronto took two of three from Cleveland.

White Sox 5, Diamondbacks 12

Christan Walker homered in the the first for Arizona and they never stopped. Walker and Jake McCarthy both drove in three in support of Jordan Montgomery who went five innings, striking out seven and allowing just one run. Arizona won the series 2-1.

As for the postseason chances from FanGraphs, I highlighted the date where the Royals began this brutal stretch of 12 games against first place teams.

Despite going 5-7, their chances actually improved! The Twins, based on the strength of their series against Oakland, are bearing down on the Royals in the standings and have solidified their position as a postseason favorite coming out of the Central. The Royals are hanging tough, but now that their schedule is set to finally ease up, will need to pick up the pace against Oakland, Texas and Miami before Cleveland comes to Kansas City at the end of the month for four games.