That wasn't worth the wait

A little rain delay is nothing to Cole Ragans who turned in another dominant performance. Maikel Garcia homered again. And the bullpen threw it all away.

The Royals waited five hours for the game even to start. Once it did, Cole Ragans was dominant. Salvador Perez picked up a couple of RBIs with a three-hit night and Maikel Garcia hit another home run, his third of the season after hitting four all of last year. They chased starter Corbin Burns after 5.2 innings. They held a 3-0 lead going into the bottom of the eighth.

Then it all fell apart.

For the second time in three nights, the Orioles plated the deciding runs in the ninth inning, walking off the Royals in the most crushing fashion. The damned bullpen. They did this.

The win probability chart should come with a content warning.

I’m sorry you had to see that. For those of us who watched in real-time, we can attest to the brutality of the situation. Even with a whiff of inevitability, it wasn’t easy to witness.

There’s a difference between a game that is a must-win and a game you have to win. A must-win is one of those games that’s super important before the first pitch is even thrown. There are very few of those in baseball that aren’t incredibly obvious like an elimination game. Or in the playoffs in a seven-game series after a team has lost the first two. Maybe a regular season game where a slumping team is hanging onto postseason aspirations.

Then there’s the “have to win” game. Those develop as the game is happening. That, I believe, was Wednesday’s game in Baltimore.

It starts out as a potential high-quality pitching duel between number one starters. Corbin Burnes is a bona fide ace. From 2021 to 2023, his ERA of 2.94 was seventh-best among starters and his FIP of 2.92 was fourth. He was one of three pitchers to accumulate over 15 fWAR, totaling 15.5. He trailed only Zack Wheeler and Kevin Gausman among starters. Burnes won the Cy Young award in ‘21 and picked up down-ballot votes in each of the next two years. He’s been an All-Star in each of the last three seasons. The guy is as good as they come.

Cole Ragans doesn’t have that kind of pedigree, but if he can stay healthy, you can certainly see his career playing out in a similar fashion. He has that kind of potential and has, in a short burst since joining the Royals rotation last year, delivered some amazing performances.

Even in April, this is a tasty match-up. It’s foolish to try to predict what will happen in any ballgame, but this is the kind of tilt you watch thinking the smallest of margins will factor into the outcome. Both pitchers can dominate. Will either blink?

It wouldn’t be Ragans. He was spectacular against the Orioles. Through six innings, he allowed just one baserunner—a one-out double to Adley Rutschman. Even the pitch Rutschman hit was a good one. It was a 1-2 slider well beneath the zone. It’s a pitch designed for the swing and miss. Except Rutschman somehow got under the offering and flipped it into the left-center gap. (I thought MJ Melendez in left had a shot at cutting the ball off to keep Rutschman at first, but that  didn’t happen.) It was one of those tip your cap moments to the hitter who had no business putting it into play, let alone getting it into the air.

Other than that, the Orioles couldn’t touch him. They had one hard-hit ball all night against Ragans—a lineout off the bat of Ryan Mountcastle in the fourth that was 108 MPH off the bat. The only other hitter who put one in play faster than 90 MPH was Gunnar Henderson in the sixth.

Ragans got 15 swings on his change, ten of them completely missed the baseball. Like this beauty to Jorge Mateo to close out the fifth.

The slider, which has been an absolute weapon, wasn’t so much on Wednesday, probably because of the nasty weather. Ragans threw the pitch 10 times and got eight swings without a miss. Oriole batters fouled off four and put four in play, but again, they simply couldn’t do any damage against the slider or any other pitch in the Ragans’ arsenal.

For the “have-to-win” game the Royals ace came through with a fantastic performance against a great offensive team.

Meanwhile, Burnes was far from sharp. He really scuffled in the first inning when the Royals sandwiched a Salvador Perez run-scoring single around doubles from Bobby Witt Jr. and Melendez. Twenty-seven pitches were required for Burnes to record three outs.

Burnes wobbled for the rest of the evening. He surrendered another single in the second, three singles and another run in the third, a single in the fourth and another in the fifth. All told, the Royals touched Burnes for nine hits. As the broadcast noted, it was the first time Burnes allowed nine hits in a game since July 30, 2021. In fact, it was just the fifth time in his career that Burnes has allowed nine hits in a game. (He’s never allowed more than nine.)

Hell, let’s just go all Stathead crazy here. Burnes also struck out just three Royals on the night, a low number given that he’s posted a 10.8 K/9 over the last three seasons. So if we take the nine hits and three strikeouts as the baseline, Wednesday was just the third time in Burnes’ 168 career appearances that he’s allowed nine hits and struck out three or fewer. The previous two times came in back-to-back starts in 2019, a year where he made four starts all season and finished with an 8.82 ERA.

A byproduct of all the traffic on the bases was that he couldn’t go deep in the game. I was a bit surprised Brandon Hyde sent him back out for the start of the sixth inning. Burnes was at 87 pitches through five frames of work.

For our “have-to-win” update, the Royals made the Orioles’ ace sweat. He didn’t have a horrible outing by any stretch, but he was far from his best.

Now a note about the offense. I’ll give credit to Burnes for not allowing this game to get out of hand. It’s slightly insane for the Royals to put runners on base all night against him but to come away with only two runs. That’s what aces do…They limit damage even on nights they’re not at their best.

How about Garcia? Three home runs in six games after hitting four in 123 last season.

I thought the sequence from reliever Mike Baumann was ill-advised. After starting Garcia with two offspeed pitches to open the at bat, he pumped in three straight four-seamers, the last one being a 3-1 pitch. I’ll use MLB’s Gameday graphic of the pitches so you can better see the sequencing.

Baumann doesn’t want to walk Garcia to open the inning, but once he fell behind 3-1 and delivered two consecutive four-seamers, he was kind of boxed in. Baumann’s secondaries weren’t locating really well in the previous inning and the earlier pitches to Garcia. So he went fastball again and this happened.

That’s such a pretty swing. Controlled violence. And it went opposite field! I love the home run but an opposite field number? Oh hell, yes. That’s a sign of legit power.

Circling back to our “need-to-win” status, while against a lesser pitcher, the Royals could’ve plated a couple more runs, they were still in control with a three-run lead in the eighth inning. The Royals’ win probability entering the bottom of the eighth was 87 percent.

Sigh.

For the second time in three games, the bullpen gave this one away. It’s early, but given how poorly the relievers have performed as a collective, it doesn’t feel like a stretch to say this is going to be a theme throughout the season.

James McArthur, who was so dominant last September, not allowing a run in 12 appearances that month, has now allowed runs in each of his first three appearances in 2024. He was key in the seventh inning, coming in for relief of Ragans with one out after the starter walked the first two batters of the inning. A groundball fielder’s choice and a strikeout extinguished that threat. It still looked promising.

Granted a clean inning to start the eighth, things didn’t go as well. A single and a double put runners on second and third with no outs. After McArthur recorded an out, he gave way to lefty Angel Zerpa. A sacrifice fly plated one run. A Rutschman single scored another. A fantastic throw from Hunter Renfroe in right cut down Rutschman trying for a double which possibly prevented further damage. If Renfroe isn’t hitting (although he recorded his first hit of the season on Wednesday) at least he impacted the game with his arm.

Will Smith…man, I know it’s been a week of baseball but the guy just doesn’t have it. Maybe it was the weather which was poor, but Smith’s slider was flatter than usual and his fastball was down in velocity by almost three MPH. When he’s clocking 90 MPH, that’s not a good sign.

Of course, it didn’t help that Smith started out his night walking the first batter he faced. On four pitches.

It was downhill from there. The knockout blow was delivered by James McCann who turned on a low, 90 MPH four-seamer and drove it into left to score the tying and winning runs. Walkoff. Gut punch.

Given the circumstances outlined above, Wednesday night evolved into a “need-to-win” game. The Royals played well for the first seven innings against a quality starter on the other side and set themselves up for the win. And then they lost.

Manager Matt Quatraro isn’t the type to continue to insist that a certain player has to fill a certain role, performances be damned. No, I expect that’s the last we’ll see of Smith in the ninth inning of a close game for at least a few weeks. Maybe months depending on if anyone steps forward. That’s the issue confronting Quatraro at the moment. No one in the bullpen has distinguished themselves in the season’s first week. The team’s bullpen ERA was 6.75 in the first five games, which ranked them 25th out of the 30 teams. After Wednesday, their ERA jumped up to 8.04.

That they’ve only thrown 15.2 innings this seasons—the fewest in the league—is a testament to the quality of starting pitching we’ve seen. That they’ve done this much damage in such a limited amount of time is highly concerning.

They ran into a pair of starting pitching buzzsaws to open the year against Minnesota. Since then, with the combination of the offensive production and their starting pitching, they should’ve reeled off four wins in a row. Instead, they’ve lost two of those four in heartbreaking fashion. Quatraro and his staff need to rethink their bullpen usage, and maybe even the personnel themselves.