The wrecking crew

The Royals destroy the Astros with a nine-run first inning, putting the finishing touches on another series sweep and a perfect 7-0 homestand.

It started with a single. And then another. And another.

Three batters into the game and the Royals had a 2-0 lead. Maikel Garcia, who has been struggling of late—he has three hits in his last 23 at bats coming into Thursday—opened the game with a nice liner to center field. Bobby Witt Jr. grounded one back through the box. Garcia sprinted to third and when Alex Bregman couldn’t handle the throw, Witt rolled into second. Instant pressure.

The next batter was the previous night’s hero, Vinnie Pasquantino. Pasquantino collected a career-best five RBIs on Wednesday after not plating a single run in his first 11 games of the season. Well, he’s officially locked in now. He, too, drove one back up the middle for a single. This one brought in two runs.

The rout was on.

With one out, MJ Melendez hooked a knuckle curve down the right field line for a double. He’s the only Royal to reach base in every game this season. The two-bagger meant that once again there were runners on second and third. Continuous pressure.

That brought up Nelson Velázquez. I feel as though with the offense motoring along the way it has in these first two weeks, I may not be focusing enough on the exploits of Velázquez. He entered Thursday’s game hitting .343/.395/.600, good for an 184 OPS+. He’s actually been pulling the ball a bit more this year than in the past, but that’s probably just small sample noise. What isn’t noise is his controlled approach at the plate and willingness to go the other way when he sees a strike, but can’t get around on it. The power is to the pull side, the singles are to the opposite field.

I’m not a huge fan of how Statcast is plotting these base hits because they’re rather inconsistent. That cluster of singles between first and second aren’t infield hits. They’re grounders that have gone through the infield. The point, though, remains. Velázquez is showing some tremendous bat control to run with pitches to the opposite field.

His single to right made it 3-0. Bonus: Velázquez went to second when Kyle Tucker launched an ill-advised throw to home. The Astros were already starting to crumble under the pressure.

Maybe that’s why the Astros pulled their infield in for Nick Loftin. I don’t know…Outs were already a scarce commodity for them at that point. Starter Hunter Brown was scuffling. Maybe trade a run for an out.

Instead, Loftin went after the first pitch, grounded it back up the middle and drove in two.

At this point, it was 5-0 and the Royals weren’t even close to being finished.

Perhaps not wanting to be the guy responsible for the second out of the inning, Freddy Fermin battled. And battled. It was the only time in the inning that attack mode wasn’t happening. Brown fell behind 2-0 but got back on equal footing. Fermin spit on an elevated knuckle curve to run the count full. After fouling off two more, Fermin pulled a belt-high curve on the ground into left.

Kyle Isbel pulled a grounder to first and was the second casualty of the inning. Loftin and Fermin advanced to third and second, respectively. The pressure was constant.

The Royals batted around for the second game in a row, the fourth time in this homestand and the fifth time overall this season. I think I expected this offense to be improved from last year, but my optimism was certainly edged with a dose of caution. The second-half output from 2023 was promising and could certainly be a platform for improvement, but we’ve seen and said those kinds of things before.

The difference is, I believe, the Royals finally have young players with the proper pedigree. These aren’t fringe guys. These are mostly dudes who have had successes throughout their professional careers. As General Manager JJ Picollo said about last season, it was about evaluation. Another difference is the coaching is much improved from the past. Alec Zumwalt and Keoni DeRenne have been with these guys for some time. It’s a symbiotic relationship as the coaches know how to relay the information to the hitters and the hitters respect the coaches. It’s maybe been a bit slow to develop, but he progress is evident. It was evident in the second half last year.

This was the moment the Royals bats really stepped on the accelerator. Garcia lined another back up the middle. That brought in Loftin and Fermin to push the score to 7-0 in favor of the Royals. Witt went with a hanging curve on the outer edge and lofted it into the jet stream howling out to right. Opposite field bomb and two more runs.

Pasquantino and Salvador Perez both turned on the first pitch to single. Melendez walked to load the bases. Brown’s day was done.

Look at the locations of the pitches the Royals put in play for hits:

Brown was throwing a lot of belt-high secondary pitches just begging to be crushed. A chart like this underscores how locked in the Royals were in the first inning. Mistakes were made. Mistakes were punished. The Royals batters did what they were supposed to do to those pitches with ruthless efficiency.

It was swift. It was devastating. It was breathtaking in its totality. The Royals offense is kicking ass. No mercy.

Innings like this were made for Baseball Savant.

The first three balls in play were at an exit velocity greater than 105 MPH. That’s foreshadowing, my friends.

I also greatly enjoy the fact that both of Witt’s hits in the inning had the exact same exit velocity. About 350 feet difference in distance, but still. This kid is an absolute freak.

And check the expected batting averages. Very few of those hits were cheapies. Loftin’s grounder up the middle and through the pulled-in infield was the base hit with the lowest xBA. The average xBA on the base hits was .665. The average exit velocity was 95.6 MPH. I cannot get over how this was just a complete shellacking.

These are not your trash can Astros. Nor are they the Dusty Baker Astros. Time marches forward. Dynasties—even those attained through nefarious means–cannot last forever. These Astros are off to their worst start since 2013—a year they lost 111 games. Their rotation is in shambles, devastated by the injuries to José Urquidy in spring training and then Framber Valdez earlier this week. Justin Verlander is on the IL.

This may be the byproduct of covering this game for so long, but I tend to have a great deal of empathy and concern for a player like Brown, who was overmatched from the first pitch, yet was left to eat it due to circumstances beyond his control. He ultimately threw 40 pitches in the first. It’s April. He’s made 41 major league appearances. There’s no way he should’ve been allowed to throw that many pitches in an inning at this point in the season. Yet Houston manager Joe Espada clearly felt as though he didn’t have a choice. Brown’s teammate Spencer Arrighetti absorbed a much more thorough beating just the night before, requiring 43 pitches to get through the third inning where the Royals also batted around.

Brown became the first pitcher in the history of the game to start a game, fail to complete one full inning and allow 11 hits. This game never ceases to blow my mind.

I revel in the collapse of the Astros and celebrate the relentlessness of these Royals. Yet, I can still feel some concern for some of these young arms. Houston is going to need to get it’s act together to protect some of these guys. And fast.

The inning concluded when Espada finally pulled Brown and went to Seth Martinez. Martinez has probably been Houston’s best reliever thus far. He struck out Velázquez on a sweeper just off the edge. It’s striking looking at the pitch plots on Gameday for Brown and Martinez. Brown was all over the place and especially in the middle. Martinez threw six pitches to Velázquez and they were all really well located low and away.

The final tally for the Royals in the first:

• 11 hits - 9 singles, 1 double, 1 home run

• 1 walk

• 9 runs

This is what the box score looked like at the end of the inning:

For those of you who have been following this team for a long time, let me jog your memory a bit. The 11 hits in an inning tied a team record. The last time they did that was on August 23, 2006, against Cleveland. Like Thursday, that offensive outburst also happened in the first inning. They were good for ten runs in that frame. However, their lead at the end of the inning was 10-1 as they allowed a run in the top half.

When I saw that date, and that opponent, something clicked. I knew exactly what happened. As you can imagine, it wasn’t a pleasant memory.

They would go on to lose that game in 10 innings by a score of 15-13.

Nobody refers to that time as the good old days. With reason.

I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with this…

Insane. Just completely insane.

I really don’t know what else to say. This Royals team is fun. On multiple levels.

Brady Singer was the starter and, not that this mattered so much after the first inning, he was not particularly sharp. The Astros seemed to be in attack mode in the top of the first—Jose Altuve doubled on the game’s first pitch—but that sort of went out the window. Still, Singer had to deal with quite a bit of traffic on the afternoon. He had two runners on in the first, the bases loaded in the second, allowed a home run in the fourth and had two more runners to deal with in the fifth.

All told, Singer required 87 pitches to get through his five innings. It felt like a lot of work. It would’ve been nicer if he had been able to complete a couple more innings, but he at least had the luxury of knowing those runners after the first didn’t mean that much.

The bullpen put the finishing touches on another series sweep and a perfect homestand at The K. I think I may start referring to Jordan Lyles and Matt Sauer as The Cleanup Crew as they seem to be the guys to close out these blowouts.

Both teams in this series collected 34 hits. The Royals tallied 28 runs. The Astros, eight. The Royals now lead the majors in run differential at +39.

What a game. What a series. What a homestand.