The Royals do just enough, but it's plenty against the White Sox

Vinnie stays hot. Seth continues to offer quality. The Royals are still rolling.

It should be required that anytime someone writes about the White Sox, they don’t use Chicago as the identifier in front of the team name. An adjective is needed. Something like “the hapless White Sox.” Maybe “the woebegone White Sox.” It could be something as simple as “the doomed White Sox.” Or, perhaps my favorite. “the wretched White Sox.”

Seth Lugo dominated the way that Seth Lugo will dominate an overmatched lineup. Vinnie Pasquantino continues to have the hot bat. And that was all that was needed as the Royals beat the wretched White Sox by a 2-0 final. The Royals have won 11 games this year. Five of those victories have come against the team that has settled into permanent residence in the basement of the AL Central.

As I noted in writing about Pasquantino’s breakout performance last Wednesday where he went 3-3 with a career-best five RBI, he started the game with a -2 wRC+, a decidedly not good mark. Here we are, less than a week later and Vinnie is hitting .255/.344/.473 with a 131 wRC+. That’s not your basic turnaround. That’s a strap yourself to a rocket ship and blast off turnaround.

That’s not what was the most impressive thing about his performance on Monday. After the game, Joel Goldberg interviewed him on Bally Sports Kansas City. Goldberg asked about the resilience of the team, and how they don’t seem to get down after difficult defeats like the one they experienced on Sunday. Here was Pasquantino’s reply:

We’re a good team. That’s what it is. It’s not a bounceback. We’re just a good team. We’re not going to fall into these mental traps of we went on a streak of seven in a row or we lost this many in a row. We’re a good team. We expect to come out every night and compete.

Frame that and hang it in the clubhouse.

When Pasquantino is right, he’s right. The Royals are a good team. That’s been obvious through the first couple of weeks of the season. They do compete. Aside from the first game of the current road trip where they lost 6-1 to the Mets on Friday, this team has been in the hunt every game this year. That alone is impressive. That they’ve found a way to collect their share of victories in the close ones while pulling out a few blowouts along the way demonstrates the growth we’ve seen from the younger players along with the steadying influence of a mostly veteran starting rotation. They not only expect to compete every night…They expect to win.

(I do think it’s kind of funny that while insisting they don’t fall into mental traps of winning and losing streaks, Pasquantino hit the number of their longest winning streak thus far square on the nose. They may not focus on such things, but they are most definitely aware.)

It’s only April and Pasquantino’s quote is going to be difficult to top. The Royals are lucky to have a guy like him in the clubhouse.

When I write that Lugo “dominated” the wretched White Sox, it’s not in the modern sense that a starting pitcher dominates. He didn’t light up the radar gun. He didn’t strike out 10-plus batters. He just goes out there, induces weak contact and mostly flummoxes the opposition. It’s incredibly fun to watch.

On Monday, Lugo went seven innings, striking out four while allowing just four hits. He pitched only two clean innings, but was able to prevent any kind of damage with a getting that weak contact or a timely strikeout or a double play. The wretched White Sox only got one runner to second all game, that was on a stolen base after a one-out single. Lugo got the next two hitters to fly out. Threat over.

I have to wrap it here for today as time is short. There’s plenty more to discuss but the bottom line is currently this: The Royals are 11-6. They have two more against these wretched White Sox. We’ll see if Brady Singer can match his rotation-mates again.