Washout

The Royals fall in a rain-delayed game to the Rays.

There’s something you should probably know about me. I’ll use a relevant analogy to explain.

Rain:Brady Singer::Late night baseball:Me

In other words, we are of the same mind when it comes to lengthy baseball delays.

The Royals dropped the first game of their three-game series against Tampa on Tuesday night by a 5-1 scoreline. The game finished around 12:15 on Wednesday morning. Or so I heard. It sounds like if you were one of the few who stayed around into for the conclusion, the Royals were handing out ticket vouchers for a future game. Good on them. Small things like that go a long way.

It was probably the best Singer’s slider has looked in a start this season. He was snapping it off to both left-handed batters…

And to hitters from the right side…

Singer recorded 10 whiffs on the slider, 15 overall. That’s his second-highest swing-and-miss number in a game since his 2024 debut back in March. Both those sliders above came across at 84 MPH. I still think that Baseball Savant is having difficulty discerning the Singer slider from his new sweeper. Not sure how many sweepers he offered on Tuesday, but certainly some of those sliders were of the sweeper variety.

It wasn’t necessarily smooth sailing as he had traffic on the bases in the first two innings, and required 28 pitches to navigate the second inning. I think what makes the 2024 version of Singer different from the pitcher we’ve seen in the past is, that he’s able to dance around potential difficulty. Where a couple of baserunners in the past would perhaps lead to an unraveling, Singer now keeps cool and doesn’t let the bad times snowball. As the Royals PR department points out, Tuesday was the 10th time this season Singer has gone at least five innings and allowed one run. That’s tied for most outings like that in the majors with his teammate Seth Lugo. That’s keeping your team in the game.

The lone run against Singer came across in that second inning on a wild pitch. It was a four-seamer that he yanked inside. Normally, not an issue but Salvador Perez was set up on the opposite side of the plate. And even at 92 MPH, Perez couldn’t move fast enough to get a glove on the pitch. Singer had difficulty commanding that four-seamer on Tuesday. He threw it 10 times and recorded only two strikes on the pitch, none of which were called.

Still, he did grind through to keep his team in the game. He was at 88 pitches when the rains came so he probably wasn’t going to go much longer. It wasn’t the best Singer start of the year, but it was good enough. Sometimes, that’s just fine.

You can’t go too many games without the bullpen having a bit of a moment. With Singer out of the game once it resumed, John Schreiber gave up a two-out double in the sixth that plated a run. Then Chris Stratton surrendered a two-out double that scored two in the seventh. The eighth belonged to Carlos Hernández who danced around a bases-loaded, one-out situation. Then Nick Anderson closed out the evening by allowing a leadoff home run in the ninth to Brandon Lowe. Overall the Royals bullpen went four innings. They collectively allowed six hits, three walks and four runs.

To review: The Royals got better than solid starting pitching and then the bullpen folded. And to cap off the familiar refrain from these 2024 Royals, the bats were fairly silent.

Bobby Witt Jr. did his thing, homering off a low sweeper in the sixth to make it a 2-1 game. Witt has been on a bit of a power outage of late. That was only his second home run in the last 25 games. MJ Melendez collected three hits. He’s now 15 for his last 45. Simple math alert! That’s a .333 batting average.

And…that’s pretty much what you got from the Royals’ offense.

There was this moment from CJ Alexander:

That’s his first major league hit. I think I’m as relieved as Alexander that it finally happened. It’s been a bit of a struggle for him since he joined the team. Nice that he could get that out of the way.

Central Issues

White Sox 6, Cleveland 7

The Guardians jumped out to a three-run lead in the sixth on a Tyler Freeman home run. The Hapless White Sox showed a little fight, tying the game up an inning later on a Luis Robert Jr. single that plated two. The game remained tied until the ninth inning when the Guardians walked it off on a Bo Naylor sac fly. Have you seen the replay? Robert makes the catch in center, probably has little chance to get the runner at home but still puts the ball in his pocket. Not a good look. But these are the White Sox.

Tigers 3, Twins 5

With the game tied at three in the seventh, Byron Buxton hit a double, went to third on a wild pitch and then scored on an infield chopper. Royce Lewis left the game in the sixth with what the Twins are calling left groin tightness.