Three Up, Three Down: The Royals bats find the nitro zone

The spring training hangover is finished as the Royals' offense discovers its spark in a 9-3 rout of the Blue Jays

The Royals will not go 0-162 in 2023.

If I can level with you for a moment, I’m not sure that was really within the realm of possibility. It just felt like it was.

After the Royals bats slumbered through the opening weekend of the season, the offense posted in a major way on Monday. There were singles. There were doubles. There was a dinger. There was even a triple. And a couple of stolen bases as well. Throw those ingredients into the blender and you come up with a smooth 9-5 win over the Toronto Blue Jays.

And the first managerial victory for Matt Quatraro.

You surely had heard all the Statcast metrics about the Royals hitting the ball hard in the first three games of the year with nothing to show for it. Hard hit, soft hit…none of the contact was dropping for the offense. The Royals entered the game with a BABIP of .159, the lowest in the majors. I only point that out because, thanks to the small sample size, it was basically a random variation. The tide was going to turn at some point. It had to.

It just so happened offense switched on against the Jays on Monday. Every Royal starter—except for Nate Eaton hitting ninth—collected at least one hit. Every Royal starter—except for Eaton and Kyle Isbel—scored at least one run. The offense that had been slumbering through the first three games of the season broke out of it in a big way.

The Royals posted three runs in the first. Don’t you think that let everyone in that dugout exhale? Early runs are always good. On Monday, they felt necessary.

Do you think Vinnie Pasquantino is itching to hit? In each of his first three at-bats, he was uber-aggressive, swinging at the first pitch. The catch is, Blue Jays starter Jose Berríos didn’t feel like altering his approach, throwing a slurve to open each at bat. After back-to-back flyouts in each of his first two at-bats, Vincenzo laced that third slurve down the line in right for a run-scoring double. He was first pitch swinging again in his fourth and final at-bat of the night. He finished 1-4. These were the only pitches he saw on Monday.

Meanwhile, MJ Melendez has just looked lost at the plate in the first three games. And, to be honest, there were a couple of plate appearances on Monday where he was kind of overwhelmed. Yet he was still able to steady himself to pick up a first-inning double and a sixth-inning dinger (into the fountains!) to push the Royals’ lead at that point to 9-1. Hopefully, that will get him on track. His swing was a thing of pure beauty.

At 113.2 MPH off the bat and 443 feet of carry, that was Melendez’s hardest-hit and furthest drive of his career.

With the right-handed Berríos on the mound for the Jays, Matt Quatraro opted to stack the lineup with left-handed bats. That meant Salvador Perez and Edward Olivares got the night off. So imagine for a moment those two joining a lineup with Melendez, Witt and Pasquantino starting to cook.

I’m imagining more nights like this one.

To this point, I’ve been a fan of just about every rule change implemented. The one change where we had yet to see an impact in Kansas City was the byproduct of the larger bases, which was supposed to promote the stolen base. Part of the issue was the Royals just didn’t generate much traffic in the season’s first three games. Still, it’s a little odd that if the league is going to start hitting the afterburners with more frequency that the Royals had been sitting it out—even if it was the season’s opening weekend. Stolen base attempts through the first 50-odd games of 2023 had almost doubled from the previous year, jumping from 43 to 84 this year.

The Royals finally got their first stolen base of the season courtesy of Bobby Witt Jr. in the bottom of the third. It didn’t amount to anything as he was stranded on second.

They got another steal in the sixth as Nicky Lopez nabbed second. He scored on the Melendez home run.

I understand we’re still in the “getting to know” phase with new manager Matt Quatraro, but I hope he turns the boys loose on the bases. There’s plenty of speed on this roster that they can leverage to their advantage with the larger bases.

Besides, running is fun.

Brady Singer, who probably would’ve gotten the Opening Day nod if he hadn’t taken a World Baseball Classic detour, sure posted like a number one starter on Monday.

He went only five innings (76 pitches) but set the order down three times. He walked three, which isn’t what you want. What was perhaps the most impressive part of his start was how he navigated around a bases-loaded and nobody out situation in the fifth. He rolled up Keven Kiermaier on a tailor-made 4-6-3 double play for the first two outs and then got George Springer on another grounder to end the inning. He was throwing with a seven-run lead at that point, but he really needed to put that potential rally down. Mission accomplished.

It was the usual game plan for Singer. Sinkers up, sliders down. The two-seamer showed a bit of tail and he was locating it really well. The slider was a nice compliment to that.

If I’m going to pick at a nit, it’s this…where was the changeup? He has to have watched the Brad Keller start from Sunday where he showcased six pitches total, including his new curve that was his most frequent offering. Singer threw just a single change, holding it until he faced Kiermaier with the bases juiced.

The pitch count was a bit low, but after that turn in the WBC where he barely saw any action, he’s still building up from spring training. That, and in typical Singer fashion, he made a bare-handed attempt to grab that Springer ground ball to end the fifth. After the game, Quatraro said it was more the pitch count that was the impetus behind getting him out of the game after five.

A good first start from Singer. A good first win for the Royals and Quatraro.