Three Up, Three Down: Going down swinging

Royals hitters are striking out at an alarming—and record setting—rate, a reliever gets torched and their unique outfield shift claims its first victim.

It was a promising start to the series opener in Texas, but things quickly went off the rails in every way imaginable. By the time the disaster ended, the Royals struck out nine times in a row, Dylan Coleman had a miserable outing and Nate Eaton pitched a scoreless eighth.

The Royals lost to the Rangers by a score of 11-2. It was as ugly as you would think.

While the Royals took two of three from the Giants over the weekend, the wins covered up a disturbing development on the offensive side. Yeah, yeah, yeah…they’re still not scoring enough runs, but in the series their strikeout-to-walk ratio was obscene. They whiffed 28 times in the three games and walked twice. I can do that math without a calculator. It’s a 14:1 SO:BB ratio. That stinks.

Monday’s effort wasn’t an improvement. Not when Rangers starter Andrew Heaney went on a punchout spree the likes of which we haven’t seen in the American League very often. The lefty whiffed nine Royals batters in a row, tying the AL record.

Doug Fister set the AL record back in 2012. Against the Royals. Naturally. It was tied by Tyler Alexander in 2020 pitching for Detroit against the Cincinnati Reds.

Entering play on Monday, the Royals had struck out in 25.7 percent of their plate appearances, good for the 6th worst rate in the majors. After those nine strikeouts in a row, plus three more on the night, that will surely continue to inflate.

Through the first week and a half of the season, the Royals bullpen has been like iron. That’s to say it’s been stable. As in, no movement between the big leagues and the minors (or the IL).

That should change.

Dylan Coleman is having a rough start to the season. The latest came on Monday as he endured a 36-pitch outing where he threw only 15 strikes, walking four. He also allowed two hits. And all those runners eventually touched home once Jose Cuas came in to finish the job.

This is a rough pitch chart.

I mean, this isn’t difficult to figure out the issue. His four-seam velocity has been down all season, averaging a tepid 94.5 MPH after working at 97.4 MPH in 2023. After not pitching for four days, his velocity was up a bit from his first four outings as he touched 96 MPH on the first four-seamer he uncorked against the Rangers. By the time he reached pitch number 34, it was down to 92.6 MPH.

If Coleman isn’t feeling right, he needs to hit the IL to get right and build up the arm strength that he clearly doesn’t have at the moment. If it’s just a performance issue, he needs to take a trip to Omaha to sort through whatever the issue is. Coleman can be a weapon in the Royals bullpen, but the only way that happens is if he rediscovers that missing velocity and cleans up his extreme command issues. He’s always going to be a guy who walks four to five batters per nine. You live with that if the fastball is electric enough to pair with the sweeper/slider he’s throwing.

Man, that was tough to watch on Monday.

Apparently, the Royals are the only team in baseball that is deploying the outfield shift when certain left-handed pull hitters come to the plate. Banned from placing three infielders to the right side of second base, in certain situations against certain hitters, they pull in their right fielder and deploy the center and left fielders in what are normally the outfield gaps. Prior to Monday, they had done this 19 times. The rest of the league hadn’t done it…at all.

That’s kind of surprising to me because the data is there and teams experimented with this alignment in spring training.

Anyway, on Monday the Royals recorded their first 9-3 putout on a Corey Seager ground ball to shallow right field.

I expect to see the Royals continue to use this. Eaton is a perfect fielder to use in this alignment given he has a cannon for an arm. (He topped out a 95 MPH when he took his turn on the mound in the eighth.) I’m not sure the Royals can be considered innovators in using this alignment, but they are the only team gutsy enough to try. That’s something. On a night when the Royals lost by a score of 11-2, it’s about the only thing that went right for them.