Three Up, Three Down: Can anybody here hit?

Zack Greinke twirls another gem and the offense remains AWOL.

With all the action in the majors taking place in the afternoon, the Royals and Blue Jays had the stage all to themselves on Wednesday night. They provided us with a pitcher’s duel, with the Royals coming out on the losing end by a score of 3-0.

I call it a pitchers duel because it was a low-scoring game. Habit. Yet, given the Royals’ anemic April bats, I may be giving Toronto pitching a little too much credit.

The Royals were limited to two hits. They were shutout for the third time in six games. Their record stands at 1-5.

Those are some brutal numbers.

Not a lot is going right these days, but we are so lucky Zack Greinke pitches for the Royals.

Rob Friedman @PitchingNinja

Zack Greinke shaking his own pitch off...throwing a Fastball for a K...and then being very impressed by his pitch calling. 😂

You’ll recall from earlier Wednesday that in Greinke’s first start of ‘23, he threw a first-pitch strike 65 percent of the time. That was right in line with his rate last season and what he’s done throughout his career. In his start on Wednesday, he was even better, offering a first-pitch strike 80 percent of the time. Eighty percent!

No wonder he had such a successful night. The two swinging strikes down and away were curves offered to Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the third in back-to-back plate appearances. Greinke allowed seven hits and a walk against four strikeouts in his six innings of work. Only a botched double play when Bobby Witt Jr. rushed a throw on the turn prevented those from being six shutout innings.

It was, as Dave Holtzman noted, the 169th game of Greinke’s career where he’s thrown at least six innings and allowed either one or no runs. Breaking it down further, he’s had 53 of those starts for the Royals. They are 36-17 in those games, which is just incomprehensible to me.

Even with the limited offensive production (again), the Royals still had some brief opportunities. They put the first two runners on in their half of the third and saw the inning end on a hit and run where MJ Melendez scorched a ball to right field that was turned into a double play. They got a leadoff walk to open the fourth. No runs. They got a leadoff walk to open the fifth. No runs.

And let’s not sugarcoat this…the Royals were missing some meatballs from Jays’ starter Alek Manoah, especially with runners on base.

Just as an example, let’s look at the pitch chart against Bobby Witt Jr in the fourth inning with a runner on first and one out.

Taking the first pitch…fine. Get a sense of what you’re up against in that plate appearance. But then to take that second pitch right down the chute? Man. And then to strike out on a foul tip on a fastball up and out of the zone. It’s just a poor plate appearance. Again, not to pick on Witt because this is the kind of thing going on up and down the lineup in the season’s first week. It’s just poor situational hitting that’s ultimately unproductive.

Aside from that brief moment in the third, there wasn’t a single point in Wednesday’s game where I thought they had a chance to string some action together. Frustrating that they couldn’t back up Greinke.

At home for the game, I tuned in to Bally Sports Kansas City’s alternate, “Royals All-Access” broadcast. We give Bally Sports a ton of (deserved) grief, but this was a unique and interesting way to consume a broadcast. Joel Goldberg was the host and did his usual solid job keeping the conversation going, interviewing the usual suspects of Royal broadcast guests. Bob Kendrick was looped in via Zoom and was his usual engaging self. Vice President, Assistant General Manager/Research & Development Dr. Daniel Mack was enlightening talking about how the Royals are currently utilizing analytics with their new coaching staff. Director of the Royals Hall of Fame Curt Nelson is a walking, talking encyclopedia of Royals history who I always find interesting. The picture-in-picture made it easy to follow the action on the field while listening to the conversations. The one nit I’d like to pick is that Goldberg and his guests didn’t react to the action on the field enough. There was some opportunity to get some unique analysis that was missed. It was a good enough broadcast to hold my interest. I’d like to see some more of this.