Never count them out

Between another dominant Ragans start and the clutch bat—and hustle—of Velázquez, the Royals continue to fight.

Whew. This edition of the newsletter was going to have a very different vibe. After dropping the first two games of the series against the San Diego Padres, the Royals were three outs away from getting swept. At home. Coming off a 1-3 showing in Minnesota earlier this week.

What a difference a triple makes.

The Royals rallied for three in the ninth inning on Sunday, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and salvaging a 4-3 win in their brief three-game homestand. A 2-5 record over the last week isn’t far off from what was potentially a 1-6 stretch, but it feels miles better. For real.

The seeds of Sunday’s walkoff 4-3 win against the Padres were planted in the ninth inning of Friday’s blowout defeat.

You will undoubtedly recall that Friday’s series opener was absolutely bananas. Michael Wacha and Dylan Cease engaged in a straight-up pitcher’s duel for five innings. The duel ended when both starters had to face the lineup the third time through. The Padres drew first blood, knocking Wacha out after four consecutive batters reached, with two runs scoring. The Royals answered immediately with four batters of their own reaching in a row to tie the score, also knocking Cease out of the contest. They pushed ahead on a sac fly.

The game erupted into full-blown insanity in the eighth inning as the Padres collected 10 singles. Ten! Oh, and a double because Jake Cronenworth is a contrarian. It was just hit after hit after hit. Coming on the heels of an underwhelming trip to Minnesota, you could be forgiven if you began entertaining dark thoughts at any point in that eighth inning. For all the talk of “keeping the line” moving, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a line move quite that efficiently.

At the end of the inning, the Royals were down 11-3. The only thing keeping the crowd around was the postgame fireworks. And maybe have a chance to get a look at Weird Al Yankovic.

But something happened. These 2024 will not go quietly. Even when down eight runs with three outs to go. Nelson Velázquez homered to leadoff the ninth. Then the Royals did their own singles train, stringing together five hits around a couple of ground outs.

After Vinnie Pasquantino got in on the action, the Padres had no choice. They had to bring in their closer, Robert Suarez, to get the final out.

Suarez didn’t have an easy go of it. Freddy Fermin singled to bring home two to cut the deficit to three runs. That meant Velázquez, the man who opened the floodgates with a home run, would bat again in the inning but this time as the tying run. He lashed a fly ball to the warning track. According to StatCast, the baseball traveled 385 feet. It would’ve been a home run in 21 of 30 ballparks. In Kansas City, at Kauffman Stadium, it was just a loud third out.

I enjoy history. I’m not so sure I enjoy that kind of history.

Saturday featured no such theatrics. The Padres got on the board in the first on a Fernando Tatis Jr. home run. Vinnie Pasquantino answered, on his bobblehead night, with a two-run dinger of his own to put the Royals ahead. The Padres tied the game in the third and Pasquantino, clearly having gotten the memo that you are to perform when honored with a bobblehead, pushed the Royals ahead once again, this time with a single.

Sadly, starter Alec Marsh just couldn’t keep the Padres down. An inning later, Ha-Seong Kim clubbed a bases-loaded double that gave San Diego a lead they would not relinquish.

While the Royals were finished scoring runs on the night, they still refused to go quietly. Pasquantino also added a double to his hit collection and was then just a mere triple away from the cycle. The moment arrived in the seventh as he came to the plate with the sacks full and the Royals trailing by two. You will remember that just a couple of weeks ago, Pasquantino laced a triple down the right field line in a similar bases loaded situation. It was his first career triple. It was also his only hit this season when batting with the bases full. (He was 1-6 with two sacrifice flies.)

Alas, there would be no cycle for The Pasquatch on Saturday.

Yet once again the Padres turned to their closer to see out the victory. Suarez started warming up when his club still held a two-run lead in the ninth. By the time he entered, San Diego held a four-run lead. Suarez needed 18 pitches to record his three outs.

This neatly sets the stage for Sunday.

As the game started, it became readily apparent that starter Cole Ragans was going to be doing Cole Ragans-type things. After a one out walk to Tatis, he got Jurickson Profar fishing for a slider and then punched out Manny Machado on a 97 MPH fastball on the inside corner.

The Royals are fortunate that they have a pair of stoppers in their rotation in Ragans and Seth Lugo. Lugo was the guy who stopped the bleeding of the three-game losing streak from earlier this week. They’d need Ragans to stop another three-game skid. And Ragans was certainly up to the task, leaning heavily on that four-seam/changeup combo. He spun the slider a few times to pad his swing-and-miss account. He racked up a total of 14 whiffs on the afternoon and generally kept the Padres off balance.

This is the aforementioned slider to Profar in the first.

The lone blemish came in the fifth on a two out double from the number nine hitter José Azocar which was followed by a single from that pesky Luis Arraez. Arraez was gunned down by Freddy Fermin as he tried to take second on the throw home, ending any kind of threat San Diego hoped to mount. God, I love Freddy Fermin.

The challenge for Ragans was navigating the sixth as the Padres would be sending the heart of their order up for the third time against the Royals ace lefty. Except one of the things that have made Ragans so good, especially this year, is how he gets stronger as the game unfolds. This year, opposing batters are hitting just .207/.303/.278 against Ragans when they see him for a third time. That’s good for an OPS+ of 58. Damn, that’s impressive.

With both starters out of the game and the score knotted at one apiece, it became a bullpen game. Gulp. This isn’t a scenario that’s favored the Royals. Especially in the last week. If you want to judge a pen by its fWAR, the Royals haven’t been New York Mets bad. Royals relievers posted a 0.1 fWAR over the previous seven days compared to the Mets at -0.5 fWAR. But if you’re looking at ERA…woof. The Royals bullpen posted an 8.24 ERA in a stretch that saw them lose five of seven. That’s the worst in the majors over that stretch.

So it goes that after a successful outing from John Schreiber in the seventh, Angel Zerpa can’t get a damn out in the eighth. Four consecutive singles. Two runs. You could be forgiven if you had flashbacks to Friday’s eighth inning. It’s a bad trip. Yet there was James McArthur picking up his bullpen mate by coming in and cleaning up the mess. Three up, three down and no further damage. The bullpen in general is unsteady, but there’s potential somewhere in that mess.

The Padres had another ninth inning lead to protect. However, because they had to use Suarez in the previous two games, he was unavailable. Likewise for newcomer Jeremiah Estrada who has emerged as a setup man extraordinaire. Instead, San Diego turned to Yuki Matsui.

Pasquantino gets things going. After swinging and missing at some high heat from Matsui, he goes down and lines a slider over the heart of the plate into right field for a single.

That brings up The Captain, who sees a steady diet of splitters and four-seamers. In fact, the first two pitches Perez sees are splitters. The first one is in the zone and fouled off. The second one is down and Perez can’t resist. He goes fishing and comes up empty and is in a 0-2 hole.

If you want to get Perez in any kind of count, it’s 0-2. (Yes, the same could be said for any batter, but this is especially true for Perez.) After he falls behind with two strikes, he hits just .177/.196/.296 with a 29 OPS+ in his career. He’s 71 percent worse than the average major leaguer throughout his career when he falls behind in the count 0-2.

Plus, entering Sunday’s game, Perez had drawn just 12 walks in his career when the first two pitches go against him for strikes. That covers 899 plate appearances.

Make it 13.

Hell yeah, he batflipped a walk. The Captain is badass.

This brings up Nelson Velázquez. You’ll remember that he came this close to hitting a game-tying dinger in the ninth on Friday which would’ve capped an improbable comeback. On Sunday, he didn’t homer. He just did the next best thing: A bases-clearing triple to tie the game. Yes, a triple.

This is insanity. We all know The K leads the league in outfield acreage, but that’s not normally a place where triples are hit. Not unless you’re Bobby Witt Jr. This is where we need to give Velázquez a ton of credit. He was busting it out of the box. Watch this GIF for how he motors to second and never breaks stride before wheeling it to third. This is a dude who was thinking triple out of the box. I repeat: He was thinking triple out of the box.

From Anne Rogers:

“When I hit it, I knew it wasn’t a homer,” Velázquez said. “It was a line drive. So I said, ‘Man, I have to run.’ I was thinking I’d stay on second, but I said, ‘You have to go to third. You have to put that run 90 feet away.’"

Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.

Velázquez hustles to third where Nick Loftin is ready to bring him home on a game-winning sacrifice fly. The Royals second walkoff of the season. The Royals go 2-5 in a brutal week but continue to fight and scrap and overcome. No one knows how this season is going to turn out, but we can be fairly certain that the Royals are going to be hanging around and mixing it up, making their opponents and rivals in the AL Central sweat. Relevance is some kind of fun.

Central Issues

Twins 4, Astros 3

Houston native Simeon Woods Richardson went 4.1 innings in his homecoming, allowing home runs to Victor Caratini and Alex Bregman before exiting with a 3-2 deficit. From there, Jose Miranda took over. He tied the game up with a home run in the sixth and put the Twins ahead in the eighth with a run-scoring double. The Twins took two of three from the Astros.

After the game, The Athletic’s Dan Hayes reported the Twins would be sending Edouard Julien to Triple-A to make room for the return of Royce Lewis. After a fine rookie campaign last year, the Minnesota second baseman is hitting just .207/.309/.371 with a 95 OPS+.

Tigers 8, Red Sox 4 - 10 innings

A seesaw affair in Boston as the Sox took a 3-0 lead after three innings only for the Tigers to plate four runs of their own in the middle innings to grab the lead. Rafael Devers homered in the eighth and the game went to extras. In the tenth, Andy Ibáñez doubled home the Manfred Man and Javy Báez followed by plating two with a single. Carson Kelly finished things off with a double to provide the final margin.

After the game, The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen reported the Tigers would be sending Spencer Torkelson to Triple-A to call up prospect Justyn-Henry Malloy. Torkelson, the top pick of the 2020 draft is hitting .201/.266/.339 with a 69 OPS+.

Nationals 5, Guardians 2

The bottom of Washington’s lineup combined for five hits and four runs scored against Cleveland starter Carlos Carrasco. Jake Irvin went six innings and allowed two runs. Three Washington relievers closed out the victory with three scoreless innings. The Guardians took two of three from the Nats.

White Sox 3, Brewers 6

The Hapless White Sox were swept by the Brewers. Then again, the Hapless White Sox are swept by pretty much everyone these days. They’ve lost 11 in a row. Really, the only thing to note from this one was Tommy Pham getting thrown out at the plate trying to tag up on a shallow fly ball to left in the eighth. He took exception to the Brewers’ celebration and…started shadowboxing. Then after the game Pham seemed to want to mix it up with the Brewers and…his third base coach.

I don’t know how much longer Pedro Grifol survives. It’s too bad. I encourage you to watch the entire sequence. The whole thing is a clown show. I mean the whole thing.

Ok…this edition is running a little long, so I’m going to leave it here even though there’s still plenty rumbling around my brain about this team. The Royals are off Monday, though, so that will be a good opportunity to empty the old notebook ahead of an important series in Cleveland starting on Tuesday. There’s Wacha’s injury, Isbel taking a beating, the bullpen, the looming trade deadline and an important—and difficult—portion of the schedule ahead and so much more.

Meanwhile, if something’s on your mind, drop a note in the comments and maybe we can discuss. Not a mailbag necessarily, but tomorrow is going to be a bunch of smaller topics so I figured I’d throw it out there. One last thing for today…I’d ask that if you’re enjoying this newsletter you’d help spread the word. June would be a nice month to bump up the subscriber count a bit so I was thinking that I’d mention it a few times over the next couple of weeks. Kind of like a pledge drive, but without any financial commitment on your part. Just a subscription. Maybe send a copy to your Royals friends or post a link somewhere on the socials. Any amount you can help spread the word about the newsletter is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading. Until tomorrow…