Will someone please wake up the offense?
Another lackluster showing with the bats, Andrew Benintendi is sidelined with a rib injury but it looks like Soler is starting to finally power up.
I’ve written before about a “complete Royals win.” You know of which I write…the line moves, there are productive outs, a few timely hits and it finishes with shutdown bullpen… Sometimes it all comes together in a victory.
Monday night’s game against Detroit was a complete Royals loss.
A clunker of a starting pitching outing put the team in an immediate hole. The offense couldn’t buy a hit with runners in scoring position. And they failed to capitalize on a situation that seemingly any other team in baseball would’ve been all over. A final score of 10-3 highlighted almost everything wrong with this team in its current state of slumpiness. (I believe I just invented a word. It fits. Yes, this Royals team is all about the slumpiness.)
It was a slow-motion debacle of squandered opportunities and missed chances.
It was the worst loss of 2021.
Punchless offense
Do you feel like pointing fingers? Does blame need to be assigned? While there’s plenty to go around, let’s begin with a dreadful offense that couldn’t hit its way out of a paper bag. They were handed a golden opportunity by a starter who left early, giving way to an over-taxed Detroit bullpen that isn’t very good to begin with and the Royals could only hang three runs on the board.
The Tigers bullpen was dangerously thin coming into this series. They got shellacked on Saturday against the White Sox where starter José Urena lasted only 1.2 innings. They had not one, but two position players throw in that game. On Sunday they ran with a bullpen game where they got 2.2 innings from Kyle Funkhouser to open the game and followed that up by using five relievers behind him. All told in the previous two games, the Tigers went to their bullpen 11 times.
Their bullpen ERA of 5.18 is the worst in the AL. When starter Matthew Boyd exited the game with an apparent injury in the top of the third, this seemed to present the Royals offense with an excellent chance to get back in the game. They were trailing only 4-0 at the time.
But the Royals have problems on offense and those problems run deep. Witness…
Second inning
Jorge Soler leads off with a single and moves to second on a one-out Kelvin Gutierrez single. But a pair of ground ball outs ends the inning.
RISP: 0-2
Third inning
With one out, the Royals string together back-to-back singles from Whit Merrifield and Carlos Santana. Merrifield advanced to third on Santana’s hit. Boyd exits the game at this point. Salvador Perez strikes out swinging and Jorge Soler pops out.
RISP: 0-4
Fourth inning
The Royals score! A little two-out action! Hanser Alberto doubles down the left field line to bring home Edward Olivares from first. But Michael A. Taylor grounds out to end the inning.
RISP: 0-5
Fifth inning
A little more action here from the top of the order. Merrifield walks and advances to second on a wild pitch. Santana grounds out but Merrifield goes to third. Hey, a productive out! Perez singles to bring him home.
I didn’t know that was still allowed.
Soler doubles off the top of the right field wall. He’s starting to finally come alive. Hunter Dozier draws a walk and the bases are loaded with one out. They fail to score when Gutierrez strikes out swinging and Olivares grounds out.
RISP: 1-9
Sixth inning
A one-out single from Taylor and a Merrifield double put runners on second and third. Santana, who’s been scuffling, strikes out. Back-to-back walks plate a run but the inning ends when Dozier pops out.
RISP: 1-11
Seventh inning
Gutierrez leads off with a double. He doesn’t move.
RISP: 1-14
It’s just complete futility. The Royals are now 2-38 with runners in scoring position going back to the ninth inning of Thursday’s win against Oakland. According to the Royals’ Media Relations department, this was the fourth time in franchise history they collected 14 or more hits in a game and scored three or fewer runs in a nine inning game. You know what? They’re not wrong.
It’s kind of wild it happened twice to the 1977 team. Apparently, even the greatest teams in franchise history can experience this.
Back to present day, the Royals have now lost nine of their last 10 and have been outscored in those games by a tally of 61-27. They haven’t even held a lead since last Thursday.
Just a complete offensive collapse.
Andrew’s rib
You may have noticed a name missing from the above roll call of offensive ineptitude. That would be Andrew Benintendi, one of the most productive hitters on the club. This news was unexpected, but the Royals placed Andrew Benintendi on the 10-day IL with a hairline fracture in a rib on his right side. Apparently, he was injured playing a ball off the wall on Sunday in Oakland. Perhaps it happened here:
Consult Web MD all you want…I don’t think you’re going to uncover anything from the broadcast footage. Mike Matheny didn’t really shed any light as to when it occurred.
“It really happened in Oakland when he made a throw. Ball bounced off the wall. Felt something at the time…felt pretty good. But when he got up this morning it really locked up on him. He got an x-ray done and there was a hairline fracture.”
Benintendi of course missed most of the 2020 season with a strained right ribcage. So same area, but a different injury.
This hurts because Benintendi has played decent defense in left and has, after a slow start, become one of the more consistent hitters in the top third of the Royals’ lineup. Through 60 games he’s hitting .283/.340/.429 with a wRC+ of 112. He hasn’t become the doubles machine that Dayton Moore predicted when the trade was unveiled, but he’s been plenty good at the plate. He’s even brought along some oppo power.
His Statcast metrics (exit velocity, barrel %, hard-hit %) are all up or keeping pace from his 2019 season. He’s not flashy, but he’s a solid ballplayer, the kind that winning teams use in strategic places. His absence will only hurt a lineup battling inconsistency and, as you saw above, currently scuffling for production.
He’s heating up
I was desperately trying to find a pun for the subhead about Soler getting hot. But I’m bad at puns. Instead, just read the subhead as the announcer from the NBA Jam arcade game—a mix of excitement and anticipation for what’s to come.
Yes, the Royals’ offense is terrible right now. But Soler does seem to be emerging from his extended nightmare of 2021.
As noted above, he rocked a double off the wall in right that missed leaving the yard by inches. It was a rope, hit at 107.7 mph with a launch angle of 21 degrees.
Soler has been hitting the ball hard like that all year.
Those are solid numbers. And how many times have you seen him hit a home run and think that that was the moment where he was potentially turning his season around? (Answer: Six. The same number of dingers he’s hit for the season.) But there was one moment besides that laser off the top of the wall that gave a flicker of hope that this could be the real moment where Soler goes on a power binge. It was a called strike.
Note the situation in the gif. It’s the sixth inning, one frame after he laced that double. The bases are loaded. (The Sonic Slam inning!) He’s ahead in the count 2-0. And he spit on a pitch that wasn’t in a location to his liking.
It was some crazy plate discipline given the situation. Hell, scroll back and look at the location of the pitch he hit for that double. Same spot. Both 97 mph fastballs. Normally, Soler is swinging out of his shoes at that. But he took it and worked a walk.
In 26 games in the month of May, Soler had 10 games where he struck out multiple times. Overall for the month he had 33 strikeouts (a 32.3 percent rate) and seven walks (a 6.9 percent rate). Flip the calendar to June and in 10 games he has yet to whiff multiple times in a game. In fact, he’s drawn more walks (six for a 14.3 percent rate) than strikeouts (five for an 11.9 percent rate)!
Since that time, he’s raised his OBP by 24 points and his slugging 29 points. Monday was the eighth time all year he had more than one hit in a game. And the four times he reached tied a season-high. (He had two hits and two walks on Opening Day.) Soler dug himself a deep hole to start the season, but it’s possible he’s finally getting going.
Another Keller clunker
The Royals defense—or lack thereof—certainly didn’t help the cause. But neither did hitting the leadoff batter with the first pitch of the game. Or a succession of seeing-eye singles. Brad Keller delivered another clunker start when the Royals desperately needed some quality.
As noted above, the Royals were in a four-run hole before they even took their first hacks. And with the offense sputtering along, the game was finished almost before most of the crowd had settled into their seats.
Keller was struggling with his fastball location, missing with the sinker too far down in the zone and catching far too much of the middle of the plate with the four-seamer.
The home run to Willi Castro was on a hanging change that you can see by the green dot middle-middle. And after the weekend in Oakland, we all know what a major league hitter can do to a change in that location. It was the first time an opposing hitter left the yard against a Keller change this year.
But if that was the only damage, it would’ve perhaps been ok. But that first inning…That’s a tough way to open a game.
Injury update
I sensed a tinge of exhaustion from Matheny when he was asked about how Adalberto Mondesi was doing with his hamstring.
“He’ll be doing some more work today. So we’ll get a little better idea. Each time we give him a little bit more, we get a better idea of what that timeline might look like. Seems to be coming along well.”
With the retroactive time baked in, it’s been 10 days so Mondesi is now officially available to come off the IL. I honestly have zero feel for what’s happening here. We’ve gone from running him through drills the day after the strain occurred because he could be ready to go to running him through drills to try to get an idea of a timeline for return. Of course, I understand Matheny’s reluctance or wariness when it comes to talking about the injury. If he says Mondesi is close in a way he did a couple of weeks ago, and he’s not back in the lineup within a day or two, it’s the manager who’s going to get roasted. The Royals are just typically guarded when it comes to any kind of injury. And as I’ve written before, they do themselves no favors when it comes to Mondesi updates.
Meanwhile, Danny Duffy is nearing a month on the shelf since he landed on the IL with a forearm flexor strain. Here’s what Matheny had to say about that injury.
“He’s throwing a live session today (Monday). And Mondi will be there. So give both of them a little opportunity to turn it up just a little with the intensity.”
I’ve lost track of how many live sessions Duffy has thrown at this point. He was reported to be throwing from 90 feet “with some intensity” on June 1. He played catch with Josh Staumont on June 5. We know he threw on June 10. Since then…silence. Until now.
Normally, when a pitcher is getting close, the team will indicate he’s getting ready to go on a rehab assignment. Usually, it’s something like “this week” or “before we leave for our next road trip” but there’s a general timetable there. With Duffy, there hasn’t been any indication that he’s close. Maybe we will hear more after his Monday session.
Central issues
Orioles 3, Cleveland 4
José Ramíez comes through again for Cleveland, collecting two of his team’s five hits, including a run-scoring single to open the game in the first and a run-scoring double to cap the scoring in the sixth.
Prior to the game, Cleveland placed starter Shane Bieber on the IL with a right shoulder strain.
Rays 5, White Sox 2
Starter Tyler Glasnow left after four innings with right elbow inflammation, but the Rays powered to victory on the back of three home runs. Two of them came off Sox starter Lance Lynn who allowed three runs in six innings.
Twins 3, Mariners 4
Kenta Maeda returned from the IL and threw four innings of one-run ball striking out seven, but the Minnesota bullpen couldn’t hold the lead. Jake Bauers broke an eighth inning tie with a home run. Minnesota has lost nine of their last 13.
Up next
Will the bats produce with a runner in scoring position? Will a Royals starter record a quality start? It’s up to Mike Minor for the latter, who looked very good in his last outing in Anaheim. He faces Casey Mize. Oh, the intrigue! First pitch is scheduled for 7:10 CDT.