Powering through

The Royals return home and claim a much-needed victory behind a trio of home runs and a dominant Cole Ragans outing.

Finally. Finally, the Royals backed up a solid outing from their starting pitcher with some runs. It wasn’t a lot of runs. You certainly wouldn’t characterize it as an outburst. Yet three solo home runs were more than welcome. The Royals added another run and rode a filthy Cole Ragans to a 4-1 win over the Miami Marlins on Monday night.

It was a bit of a statement in a string of games where the Royals have lost ground in the Central and surrendered their cushion in the hunt for the playoffs. Runs at any time are always welcome. These runs on Monday were needed in the worst way.

Before we get to the offense, let’s open with a dominant night on the mound.

Not only did Cole Ragans absolutely shove on Monday night, he overmatched, overwhelmed, and flat-out dominated the Miami Marlins. The lefty recorded a whopping 26 swings and misses on the night, the most in a start in his career, by far.

The four-seamer, averaging 96 MPH, was explosive.

It really is a deceptive pitch to a lefty. Sounds strange, but I swear it looked to me that this pitch was more or less gliding along, like someone was rolling downhill in a car while in neutral. Then…BAM! The ball somehow picks up speed the last third of the way. Punching that accelerator to get a little extra oomph. I know this isn’t how physics works, that’s just how it looked to me. Explosive.

Ragans recorded seven swings and misses on the fastball.

Then, there’s the always dependable changeup.

It’s such a ridiculous swing that I considered not using this as a GIF, but then I thought that’s the point of the pitch. It has to be a goal of Ragans: Make hitters look like they don’t know what they’re doing. It has tremendous fade from a right-handed hitter. Imagine, gearing up for that 96 MPH heater, starting your swing and realizing that, not only are you way early, the pitch is going to run away from you. That’s what’s happening in the above GIF. It’s a perfect pitch because Brayan de la Cruz swung and missed. That’s the point.

Ragans threw 28 changeups and got 10 whiffs.

Let’s not forget about the slider.

I don’t think there’s a hitter alive that connects with that pitch. Ragans picked up an additional six swings and misses on this pitch.

So not only did Ragans post a career-high with his 26 whiffs, it was the most any pitcher has had all season.

It was also the second-most by a Royals starter since the Statcast era began in 2008. Ragans now trails only Danny Duffy who picked up 35 whiffs against the Rays on August 1, 2016. Since the Royals haven’t thrown a no-hitter since 1991, that Duffy start remains the gold standard for me in, at least as far as 21st century starts go. Ragans isn’t there yet, but I don’t doubt that, health permitting, he’ll post a start like that at some point in his Royals career.

Finally, here’s that chart you’ve been waiting for. All the swings and misses from Ragans by pitch type:

Exploding fastballs up. Sliders down and in to righties. Changeups on the edge and in the zone. An array of filth.

While Ragans obviously brought his “A” pitching game, as we know all too well, that doesn’t matter much if the bats can’t show some support. While writing about the offensive ails on Monday, I really should’ve gone out on a limb and predicted that, if anyone would get the bats going, it would be Vinnie Pasquantino. Yeah, it’s obvious in hindsight, but the guy just brings a strong “F this, I’ll take care of it” vibe to his game.

That’s Pasquantino going down and golfing a cutter 385 feet out of the yard to give the Royals their first run since Friday in Arlington.

It was the third—and obviously final—cutter in a row starter Roddery Muñoz offered. All were located in a similar spot, down and in to Pasquantino.

It’s how you can tell that The Pasquatch was locked in for this at bat. He took that first pitch, the four-seamer down. Easy. He then watched the cutter that bored just a little too far inside. The third pitch was fouled off. The fourth was in close to the same location. Not great sequencing from Muñoz. Great hitting from Pasquantino.

If this homer caused a ripple of relief to cascade around the stadium—a run!—the next pitch unleashed a deluge.

That’s The Captain yanking a slider 406 feet into the front row. Unlike the cutters to Pasquantino, I don’t think Salvador Perez is supposed to do that to that particular pitch. If Vinnie brings the “F you” vibes, Salvy compliments it with the “I got your back” energy.

Two pitches. Two runs. Damn, did this team need that.

The Pasquantino dinger ended a stretch of 19 games without a homer which was the second longest stretch of his career. The Perez home run snapped a 0-17 run. Yeah…that sequence was the equivalent of an offensive primal scream.

We can’t forget the third home run of the night, courtesy Hunter Renfroe in the sixth. It may have been my favorite of the bunch.

At this point, Muñoz was ahead 1-2. He delivered a four-seamer that can only be described from his perspective as a mistake. From Renfroe’s side, it was perfection.

For Renfroe, who had been heating up prior to landing on the IL with that bruise on his foot, it was his first hit in the three games since his return.

Ahead of the game, the Royals made a flurry of roster moves, including optioning Nelson Velázquez to Omaha. Velázquez experienced quite the power outage earlier in the season but picked things up with an important home run in Seattle in mid-May. That homer got him going a bit and he ended up adding six to his account over the last half of the month. However, since the start of June, he’s gone ice cold again. In 50 PAs this month, he’s hitting .122/.240/.171. His lone extra-base hit was a triple.

Yeah, maybe Velázquez is a scapegoat for the recent offensive struggles, but the Royals simply cannot afford to give away this many empty at bats. Something has to change. In Velázquez’s place, the Royals selected CJ Alexander from Omaha. Alexander, who came to the organization in the Drew Waters trade with Atlanta, was hitting .323/.369/.555 for the Storm Chasers. He made his major league debut on Monday at third base, with Maikel Garcia sliding over to second.

To make room for Alexander on the 40-man, the Royals designated Jake Brentz for assignment. You have to feel for Brentz, who has just been unable to make it back from Tommy John surgery.

In other moves, Michael Massey was activated from the IL. He will DH for now as he’s not completely ready for action in the field. That limits how the Royals will use their roster and lineup, so it will be interesting to see how Quatraro moves things around with a permanent kind of designated hitter. The Royals also placed Adam Frazier on the IL with a thumb sprain. It happened on the field in Texas on Saturday. Frazier is reportedly hopeful it will be a minimal stay on the sidelines.