The Royals run themselves out of a chance to win the opener

Baseball is back. So is frustration. A double TOOTBLAN!

It was shaping up to be a perfect day. There was great weather. There was cold beer. There was baseball.

There was an early lead. There was an exceptional performance on the other side of the diamond. There was a moment of baserunning madness. There was a late rally.

And there was an Opening Day loss as the Royals fell to the Guardians 7-4 in 10 innings.

I guess the lede could be that the Royals blew a 3-0 lead, but that’s the sort of thing that happens in baseball. The Guardians chipped away and capitalized on their chances. The Royals, once behind, mostly squandered theirs.

I thought Opening Day starter Cole Ragans looked good. He was not as dominant as we’ve seen in the past, but for a first start of the year, it was solid. He went five-plus innings, surrendering five hits and two walks. He only struck out three. Cleveland did their damage against Ragans via productive outs. A liner to right in the fourth that was misplayed by Hunter Renfroe into a triple was cashed in via a sacrifice fly. A double and a walk to open the fifth were pushed up 90 feet on a sac bunt. The lead runner came across on another sacrifice fly.

It was just that kind of day where the Guardians found a sliver of daylight and punched through.

While Ragans wasn’t dominant in his start, he still brought a very impressive changeup. It was a real swing-and-miss offering.

Through the first two innings, Ragans threw five changeups and got four swings and four misses. That’s how I define filth.

It’s such a tantalizing offering, especially when he locates it low in the zone. Opposing hitters are geared up for the heat and then when they take a rip, the ball just isn’t there. A little dip, a little arm-side fade and a lot of nasty.

Ragans’ four-seamer was clocking 95.4 mph on Thursday. The cambio was 84.8 mph. That 10 mph or so of separation is the good stuff.

Ragans' day ended in the sixth, after he allowed a leadoff single to Carlos Santana. The first man out of the bullpen was Angel Zerpa. Zerpa had a great spring where he didn’t allow a run in nine innings. But as you know, spring training performance doesn’t mean a thing once the games start for real. Zerpa was reminded the hard way as his first pitch of 2025 was deposited into the fountains.

One pitch.

It actually wasn’t a bad pitch. A 97 mph heater on the inner half. Kyle Manzardo was just obviously ordained to join the long line of players who had a mega Opening Day against the Royals. The lineage goes back to George Bell dropping three nukes on Bret Saberhagen in ’88.

Manzardo tripled (the aforementioned gift from Renfroe in right), homered and doubled. He also walked, scored twice and drove in four.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Royals were still trailing by the score of 4-3. Against setup man Hunter Gaddis, Cavan Biggio did precisely what he is supposed to do as long as he’s on this roster: Draw a walk. It was a good plate appearance, too. He fell behind 0-2 on a pair of low sliders. With a, let’s say, expansive strike zone on the day, trying to hit while behind in the count was an extremely dangerous proposition. Gaddis isn’t necessarily a strikeout pitcher, at least not by the standards set in today’s game. Last season, he whiffed just under 24 percent of all hitters he faced. What Gaddis does well, is control the zone. His walk rate of five percent last year was elite. Among 169 relievers on Fangraphs leaderboard, it was tied for the 14th-best walk rate last year.

But Biggio is Biggio. He was up there trying to get on base. If there’s anyone you want up in that situation—leading off a later inning with the team down a run—it would be Cavan Biggio.

Biggio is immediately lifted for pinch runner Dairon Blanco. Blanco takes off on the first pitch and swipes second. I’m so glad he didn’t wait around for Kyle Isbel to bunt. Bunts are generally counterproductive, and when you bunt over a guy who can steal a base, that feels doubly counterproductive. Counter-counter productive, if you will.

Isbel, though, isn’t done squaring around. He bunts on the next pitch in an attempt to get Blanco to third. It’s a hard bunt and to the right of Gaddis. Gaddis, who throws right-handed, had to shift his momentum to get the ball and, for a split second, thought he had a play on Blanco at third. I think he did. Gaddis thought about it, though, and ultimately fumbled the ball. A sacrifice and an error put runners at the corners and nobody out with the top of the order coming up.

The Royals were cooking.

Jonathan India, making his Royals debut, jumped ahead 2-0, took a borderline strike and then shifted into swing mode. On the seventh pitch of the plate appearance, he rolled over on a slider down and away and grounded it to third.

Then, all hell broke loose.

It was as if the pent-up energies of a baseball-less winter were unleashed all at once. Everyone was trying to do something. No one was thinking. It was a disaster.

To start, Blanco broke for home on a contact play. That’s not something you generally see with no outs. The contact play is used when there is one out. I’ll let manager Matt Quatraro explain:

First and third, nobody out…it’s not a true contact play, but the rule of thumb is if it’s a hard ground ball that’s a double play ball, you go to the plate. Blanco, in retrospect, he should just keep going so they only get the one out. That’s the reason you go on a hard hit ball, you know they’re going to get one instead of two.

As with most of Quatraro’s explanations, this makes all kinds of sense. The Guardians are not going to let Blanco get home without a play. He’s the tying run in the bottom of the eighth inning. That’s what attempting to turn a double play would do. Had Blanco held, it’s an easy twin-killing and the rally would be on fumes. So he went.

Q notes that Blanco should’ve kept going and run into the out. I’m not going to disagree with the manager, but I don’t think it’s a huge deal that he stopped and went back to third. He was a dead man as soon as he broke for home.

The real issue with the play was Isbel wandering off of second while Blanco was in that rundown.

Isbel’s job in that situation is to anchor himself to second. He does not need to advance. Especially if the rundown is happening literally around the bag where he is trying to advance. It’s just a breathtakingly dumb baseball play.

The Guardians executed their end of the play to perfection. Catcher Bo Naylor chased Blanco back to third and flipped the ball to José Ramírez. The throw was a little high, but not too far off target.

Ramírez took about four or five steps before laying the tag on Blanco. As you can see, he was about a third of the way down the line.

I suppose Isbel, seeing Ramírez chasing Blanco toward home, thought, “Right, now I can go and get to third.” Maybe. It’s just an incredibly high-risk play.

Look at where Isbel is shortly after Ramírez makes the tag.

That’s the definition of no-man’s land. Which is the worst place to be.

When Isbel reached on the error from Gaddis, the Royals had a win probability of 62.7 percent. After the double TOOTBLAN (a double TOOTBLAN!), it was 25.8 percent. That was a costly brain freeze.

The Royals, channeling the spirit of last season’s team, wouldn’t roll over so easily. Vinnie Pasquantino, who launched a three-run bomb in the third, doubled down to right to open up the ninth. He was lifted for a pinch-runner: Freddy Fermin. Just another indication that any baseball game can go completely off the rails.

Salvador Perez kept the line moving with a single that got Fermin to third. Pulling a page from the Guardian playbook, Michael Massey lofted a sacrifice fly to right to knot up the score at four.

They had a chance to walk it off after a Maikel Garcia infield single with Mark Canha at the plate, but he whiffed on a 100 mph cutter from Emmanuel Clase. Clase, who finished third in the AL Cy Young award balloting last year, blew just three saves in all of 2024. So, a minor victory?

A couple of other Opening Day notes:

• How good was it to see Pasquantino hitting? A home run and a double was the perfect way to kick off his 2025 season. Carrying that hamstring strain, he didn’t look super comfortable rolling into second on his ninth inning double. Hopefully, that was more of him just not being exactly fleet of foot. I can relate.

• I didn’t see it, but would’ve loved to have gotten the official sprint speed on Bobby Witt Jr.’s infield single just ahead of Pasquantino’s home run. Dude was flying down the line.

• India did not look especially comfortable playing third base for the first time in his big league career. He looked like a guy who needs more time. It didn’t help that the Guardians tested him early and often. I just can’t help but think that this is going to be a short-lived experiment.

• Renfroe was pretty much a defensive disaster in the outfield. In addition to misplaying what should’ve been a double from Manzardo into a triple, he also took an ill-advised route on Steven Kwan’s go-ahead double in the 10th.

• The high-leverage bullpen arms looked strong as Lucas Erceg, Hunter Harvey and Carlos Estévez combined for 2.2 innings of hitless baseball, striking out two.

• It’s good to have baseball back.