Walking to a loss
The Royalcoaster was compacted into a single game. Royals pitchers walked almost everyone. And Colby Wilson drops by for his weekly takes with thoughts on a possible Bobby Witt Jr. promotion.
Royals pitchers walked the tightrope all night Tuesday in New York. Loads of pitches, tons of walks…And ultimately, too many runs. On the 200th and final pitch of the evening delivered by a Royal hurler, Greg Holland dropped a curve low in the zone to Luke Voit. Voit lowered the barrel and launched it to left, plating Tyler Wade with the walkoff run. The final: Yankees 6, Royals 5. Baseball cares not for mercy.
This was something of a normal contest (walks aside) until things went completely haywire at the end. And things most definitely went haywire.
Your daily Ryan O’Hearn appreciation section
I mean, why not make this a feature of the newsletter? His effort at the plate on Wednesday was pretty much a carbon copy of what we saw on Tuesday.
O’Hearn opened the scoring for the Royals with another short-porch dinger. A Yankee Stadium special.
The exit velocity on his dinger was 93.8 mph. It had an xBA of .070. I don’t know, man. Baseball can be weird. But when you’re hot you’re hot. And when you’re hot and batting left-handed at Yankee Stadium, you’re shining just a little brighter.
In the ninth, he was handed the unenviable task of facing Aroldis Chapman with the bases juiced and two out. Say what you will about Chapman (and you won’t be wrong), but the guy has been murder against left-handed bats. Entering Wednesday’s game, lefties had just one single in 17 at bats against him, a .059 BA, with 10 strikeouts.
Yet O’Hearn was able to drop another go-ahead infield hit.
That one left the bat at an absurd 31.8 mph. The Royals gave up the lead faster than that ball was hit. But I digress…at least O’Hearn is enjoying his stay in the Big Apple. He’s now 4-9 since his recall with two home runs and five driven in. Going back to May 27—his final game prior to his demotion—he’s homered in three consecutive games.
Speaking of which, Colby Wilson has a few more thoughts on O’Hearn in his weekly feature…
Three take Thursday
My goodness, is it already time for America’s best-loved weekly Royals segment? It’s Thursday, and I have Takes, and it must be so!
Take One: This is Ryan O’Hearn’s Lastest, Bestest Chance (Probably)
In other eras, Ryan O’Hearn is probably in his second or third season as a big-league regular, with a batted-ball profile that would make Steve Balboni nod his head solemnly in approval. Before advanced analytics, 25 homers and 80 RBI were numbers that people were fond of their first basemen for having.
In this era, Ryan O’Hearn is Ryan O’Hearn—a fun guy to have around when he’s hot and an albatross when he’s not. Presently, he’s hot—he’s been back in the bigs two days and clubbed two homers, continuing the torrid pace he’d been on in Omaha. The other shoe will likely drop at some point; O’Hearn is best enjoyed by not pondering too terribly long what it will look like for him and the Royals when that day arrives.
We’ll always have this.
Cool, he homered off Gerrit Cole! On a belt-high changeup to one of the shortest right field porches in the league. Whatever. You are whatever your results say you are for a given day.
O’Hearn is nearly 28 years old and frankly, we’ve seen this before. He’s too good for Triple-A, he’s not quite good enough to garner first-base/DH at-bats at the big-league level and there’s just too much talent approaching the big club to continue hoping that he’ll become a part of the future.
And yet, somehow, he still has at least one option year to go. I didn’t believe this at first until Craig confirmed it over Slack. They could do this dance again in 2022 if they so desired. There is no need for that. Trade him to a contender looking for a bat. DFA him if it comes to it. He could become a minor deity in South Korea or Japan, the spiritual successor to Tuffy Rhodes if everything breaks right. But he’s driving anybody who watches this team regularly insane his flashes of occasional dominance mixed with prolonged droughts that would cause concern in the Sahara. Put us all out of our misery here. Let him go drive another fanbase crazy.
Take Two: Pitchers are gonna get real creative disrobing for the umpires
What a wild sentence to write about baseball in 2021. But it’s true.
Max Scherzer and Sergio Romo are the harbingers for what is gonna be a weird summer ritual of players dropping hats, gloves and in Ramos’ case, trou for the boys in blue in order to be compliant to the latest in Rob Manfred’s never-ending sojourn to make baseball unrecognizable. This is not Royals-centric, but it will make for fascinating viewing, and if Manfred has ever been committed to anything it has been his willingness to sell his own family members if it meant eyes on the product.
But consider Brady Singer—someone who may not have graduated from the Max Scherzer School of Red-Assery, but has at least enrolled in a few classes and may have rushed a fraternity. The single worst thing that ever seems to happen to Singer is getting removed from a game—his shoulders slump, his face contorts and everything in his body language screams, “This sucks, please don’t remove me from this game even if I don’t have it or have already thrown 115 pitches.” As someone you hope becomes a rotational horse, that’s great—as an umpire greeting this dervish of emotion, you’re probably more apprehensive. Yes, this is partially an excuse to share the video of him letting Angel Hernandez have it.
Every team has a Singer, or multiple Singer’s, and as the dog days drag on, exasperated bemusement is going to give way to anger. Someone is going to make Romo dropping his pants look like a genteel response; someone is going to cross a line, and finally give Rob Manfred and MLB what it has always wanted: a professional baseball player flashing his after-dark trio to a ballpark full of paying customers.
Take Three: Aside from “because it would be fun,” there’s no real reason to see BWJ or Asa Lacy in the bigs this season
This is not me being Scroogy McBuzzkill—BWJ might be a top-three player on the Royals right now, today, this very minute, if he were suddenly dropped in Kansas City and granted regular playing time. When you consider Whit Merrifield has fallen off a cliff (metaphorically), Adalberto Mondesi can’t stay healthy, Andrew Benintendi has been inconsistent or hurt and the less said about Hunter Dozier the better, you wouldn’t have to twist many arms to consider him a top-two player in the org at all levels right now.
Ditto Lacy, albeit minus the proven organizational pedigree and plus the fact that the contemporaries the Royals drafted in the years preceding him are in the, “Oh crap, nobody is ready yet and there’s a decent chance their collective confidence craters if we don’t do something,” stage in their careers and it’s not hard to envision, if meaningful September baseball wound up being played, him being a part of it. But it would also take Singer, Jackson Kowar and Daniel Lynch performing at a considerably better rate than they’re presently presenting to envision that kind of baseball being anything more than a pipe dream.
It seems like Lacy and Witt have been The Prospects Who Were Promised since Mike Matheny was in short pants, but that’s really not the case—Lacy has nine starts at High-A Quad Cities, all this season, and Witt had his climb up the organizational ladder interrupted by The Uncertain Times that defined 2020. And yes, Witt looked pretty good during his time at the Alternate Site and yes, he’s been very good bordering on transcendent this season at Northwest Arkansas. Sign me all the way up for this twice a week for the next two decades.
There’s no rush to this. Lacy just turned 22; Witt just turned 21. We can pine for a future when Lacy is striking out a dozen a night and Witt is the leading vote-getter for the All-Star Game. And it will (hopefully!) be a great and glorious future. But unless there’s something specific those guys would come to Kansas City to do this season—like pursue a pennant—then let 2022 remain the timeline.
—Colby Wilson
The return of Duffy
It was generally a positive return for Danny Duffy, who worked two innings and threw 42 pitches. He lost command of the fastball, missing up and out of the zone in the second inning, especially to Giancarlo Stanton to start the frame. Perhaps he got squeezed a bit in walking Gleyber Torres, who spit on some really good pitches.
Overall, Duffy threw 21 strikes, which in the grand scheme isn’t great, but coming back from a long layoff without a rehab start is understandable. Of those 21 strikes, 10 were on swings and misses from Yankee batters—six on the four-seamer and four on the change.
Any disappointment would stem from Duffy not being able to get just a little deeper into the game. Prior to the start, Duffy said he had thrown two innings in a live, simulated game and had thrown 40 pitches in his final test before returning to the rotation. He thought he would be able to stretch it out to 55-60 pitches. After the game, Matheny said Duffy was removed purely based on pitch count.
In a way, his command issues set the tone for the Royals for the rest of the night.
Walk away
Let’s start with the positive. (I know, how is that even possible?) Kyle Zimmer didn’t walk a batter in his inning of work.
There. That’s it. That’s your positive.
Royals’ pitchers combined for 11 walks against 10 strikeouts on Wednesday. It was the 14th time in club history that they walked at least 11 batters in a nine inning game.
If you’re looking for a sure-fire guarantee for a Royals loss, have them walk 11 or more batters in a game. They simply made things more difficult for themselves than it should have been. That it was as close as it was and decided on the last pitch of the evening is more an indictment of an inconsistent Yankee offense than anything else. After going 0-10 with runners in scoring position on Tuesday, New York followed that up with a 2-6 performance with RISP. It just so happened that one of those hits came in the bottom of the ninth.
Wednesday’s performance was just more of the same from a Royals’ staff that continues to issue free passes with abandon. They have the third-highest walk rate in the majors.
Cardinals — 11.5%
Reds — 10.8%
Royals — 10.3%
Angels — 10.1%
Cubs — 9.9%
This is a massive issue for this staff and the problem is equally distributed between starters and relievers. The starters rank fourth in baseball in walk rate. The relievers are third. I’ll have a few more thoughts and numbers on this in a future edition.
Central issues
White Sox 4, Pirates 3
The Sox finally catch a win, breaking a five-game losing streak. Leury García hit his first home run of the season and Tim Anderson added two hits at the top of the order while Yasmani Grandal drove in two. A total team effort as it were on the offense.
Cardinals 2, Tigers 6
In the second start of his major league career, Matt Manning went 5.2 innings, allowing just two runs. Are pitching prospects supposed to be able to do that. Asking as someone who’s watching a ton of Royals baseball.
Jonathan Schoop went 2-4 with three RBI to lead Detroit on offense. He has to be a leading trade candidate as the deadline approaches.
Up next
Matinee baseball in the Bronx! Brad Keller takes the ball for the Royals against Jamison Tallion. First pitch is scheduled for 12.05 CDT.