Throwing one away

The Royals commit four errors and drop one to Detroit. Plus, they've played the last few games with a short bench, which gives us plenty of roster intrigue. There's also a trade to discuss.

All winning streaks have to end. And for the Royals, all of those streaks have ended after three wins. Bidding for their fourth consecutive victory on Tuesday, the Royals fell short, losing 7-5 to the Detroit Tigers.

The offense started brightly, but quickly shut down and it was the defense that ultimately betrayed them.

In one of the more bizarre things I’ve seen over the years, Miguel Cabrera stole third with two outs and scored on an MJ Melendez throwing error. It was one of three errors that contributed to a four-run seventh for the Tigers. Four errors on the night for the Royals, leading to three unearned runs. Three of them were on throws. That was the difference.

The Tigers aren’t a good offensive team. However, if you insist on giving any team four extra outs and the extra bases that go along with those outs, that’s going to be difficult to overcome.

For the Royals though, everything started to go sideways when Nicky Lopez attempted to bunt a runner over to third with nobody out in the second inning. Seriously. The sacrifice attempt doomed this team. For real.

To set the scene, the Royals were knocking around Detroit starter Beau Brieske. Of the first three batters who put the ball in play, three of them hit it with an exit velocity greater than 102 MPH. All three of those went for extra bases. Throw in another single and the Royals jumped to an early 3-2 lead.

After Emmanuel Rivera doubled home Kyle Isbel with that third run, that was the exact moment Lopez decided to drop a bunt. Except the bunt didn’t drop. It popped. Right into Brieske’s glove. Even if the sacrifice had worked, how in the world does that make sense? Lopez isn’t a candidate to rake one at 100+ MPH, but still…to give up an out when everyone is getting good looks only serves to reduce the pressure. Brieske was up against it. And Lopez let him off. It enabled him to get out of that jam and find a rhythm. The Royals collected just one more hit against Brieske all night.

In fact, after the Lopez bunt, Brieske retired 13 of the next 15 batters he faced. Talk about your rally killer. Maybe the errors were the baseball gods’ way of sending a message.

The Royals played the last two games with a short bench. There’s roster intrigue all around this team. Let’s try to sort this out…

Whit Merrifield is out with a bruised big toe. He exited about halfway through Sunday’s game and saw his consecutive game streak end at 553 games. Michael A. Taylor is nursing a sore shoulder. Those are the injuries that have whittled Mike Matheny’s bench down to two players.

Anne Rogers @anne__rogers

Whit Merrifield says he has a bone bruise and ligament swelling in his right toe. He’s in a boot and will take some time to heal. Today will be the first time in 553 games he hasn’t played, a #Royals franchise record.

On Monday, the Royals said the recommendation for Merrifield was to wear a walking boot for the next week or two. When he is ready to remove the boot, the only question would be about pain management. So…I’m surmising that the boot will help him heal and Merrifield will need to wear it for at least a week. Maybe a little longer. Perhaps a little less. Let’s get crazy and call it seven to 10 days at least for Merrifield in the boot. Although we know how the Royals seem to deal with injuries with a certain lack of patience. Still, it would seem an IL stint was imminent. The timing is decent enough with the upcoming All-Star break where he would only miss a week’s worth of games.

Jump to Tuesday and the Royals said Merrifield is day-to-day with the bone bruise.

Anne Rogers @anne__rogers

Whit Merrifield is also considered day-to-day with a right toe bone bruise. No IL stint as of now. He and the #Royals are evaluating how he feels each day.

So no Injured List for Merrifield. Yet. The Royals can backdate up to three days, so if they’re going to make a move to where he can come back immediately after the All-Star break they’ll have to drop him on the IL in a day or two.

Meanwhile, Taylor has yet to take the field after his two inning turn on the mound on Saturday where he threw 37 pitches. I’m so over position players pitching. I was over it before Taylor toed the slab. Yeah, it can be fun—and it was wild to see how hard Taylor was throwing—but the novelty is long gone. It just happens far too much anymore for it to be interesting.

If Taylor hits the IL and is out for a couple of weeks, that would be a disastrous development for the Royals. As I noted in my breakdown of hitting performances over the first half, Taylor is enjoying a career year at the plate, but he’s started to cool off of late. Under contract through 2023, there have to be a couple of contenders that could use a Gold Glove-winning center fielder who’s posted some nifty offensive numbers to this point. If the Royals were smart, they were hanging out the “for sale” sign here. Alas, if they were smart, they would’ve kept him off the mound.

Now if Taylor is injured and the Royals can’t move him at the deadline…goodness. That would be just pure managerial malpractice.

So two candidates to be moved at the deadline are sidelined by injuries. Both seem troubling, but the Royals aren’t making any moves so they’ve elected to play most of this series against Detroit with a short bench. (Which came into play in the ninth when the Royals were forced to let Lopez hit against the lefty Gregory Soto. Lopez struck out.) This is against the backdrop of the upcoming trip to Toronto. As I’m sure you’re aware, Canada—like the United States—demands that foreign travelers have proof of vaccination against Covid to enter the country. No vaccine, no entry. It’s been an issue for a few teams this year. The Twins had to place four players on the restricted list when they crossed the border. So did the Reds. Just this week, the Phillies likewise had to remove four players from their active roster. That’s the most any team has had to place on the restricted list when playing in Canada.

With that in mind, this was Tuesday’s lineup in Omaha for the Storm Chasers.

Omaha Storm Chasers @OMAStormChasers

Just testing the Waters 🆚 @RocRedWings 🏟️ Frontier Field 💪 RHP Daniel Mengden ⏰ 6:05 p.m. CT 📻 1180 The Zone 📱 bit.ly/OSCBroadcast 💻 MiLB.tv

That’s a lineup without regulars such as Nick Pratto, Michael Massey, Brewer Hicklen and Clay Dungan. (More on the leadoff hitter in a moment!) Are they potential reinforcements for the upcoming series in Toronto? The plot thickens.

We’ll learn soon enough who on the Royals active roster can’t enter Canada. I have a few guesses, but because that would be speculation, I’ll keep them to myself. Besides, we’ll find out after the game on Wednesday.

I will say that my rudimentary research turned up that the most players a team had to place on the restricted list before traveling to Toronto is four. The Twins, Reds and this week the Phillies have all placed four players on the restricted list. Clubs are allowed to use players without placing them on the 40-man roster and players on the restricted list will not earn pay for time spent on the list.

If the Royals have more than four, it would be a very big deal.

The Royals opened the week with a transaction of note, dealing their supplemental draft pick (slotted at number 35 overall) to the Atlanta Braves for three prospects: center fielder Drew Waters, right-hander Andrew Hoffman and infielder CJ Alexander

Baseball America, now adjusting prospect lists in the middle of the season, slotted Hoffman in at number 13 for the Royals.

One of the best breaking balls in the system, Hoffmann’s slider is his primary pitch seeing over 40% of Hoffmann’s pitch usage this season. The pitch sits 82-84 mph with heavy horizontal break, giving it a unique combination of velocity and movement. Despite the heavy break Hoffmann shows an innate ability to locate the slider to where he wants it in the zone.

Hoffmann has made 15 starts for the Braves High-A affiliate this year, throwing 80 innings. He has a 10.1 SO/9 and 2.4 BB/9. Those are some ratios you like to see. His 2.36 ERA is probably a bit lower than what it should be, in part due to an 86 percent strand rate. (In the majors, 75 percent is considered average.) Really though…it’s the strikeout and walk numbers that stand out.

Waters, a former Top 100 prospect, checks in at number 16.

Overall, Waters made marginal improvements offensively (in 2021), but was still a below league-average hitter in Triple-A, per wRC+ (94). A 6-foot-2 switch hitter with long levers, Waters has struck out 30% or more in 129 games with Gwinnett, though he went from a 36.1% strikeout rate in 2019 to 30.9% in 2021, and in the final month of the season, saw that clip drop to 21.9%.

That represents a bit of a tumble in the rankings for Waters, who was as high as number two in Atlanta’s system prior to 2020 and then number three a year later. It’s that strikeout rate (and his swing and miss issues in general) that’s bringing him down. He’s at a 27 percent strikeout rate in Triple-A this year with an 84 wRC+. Overall, he’s hitting .246/.305/.393 with five home runs in 210 plate appearances.

Waters is, however, if I may borrow a phrase from the past, the key to the trade. He doesn’t necessarily scream prospect material at this point, but pedigree remains and after seeing how just about the entire minor league system for the Royals has progressed at the plate over the last two seasons, this acquisition is worth the gamble of a draft pick in my mind. And it’s a great test for Drew Saylor and company to see if they can unlock a hitter who has roots in another organization. Make no mistake though…this is a roll of the dice for the Royals. We’ll learn quickly whether it’s boom or bust here.

Most of the swing and miss comes when Waters hits from the right side. Scouts say Waters gets beat inside and his swing can get long when hitting from the left side. There’s supposed to be some power there, although it hasn’t flashed this year.

Alexander is a 25-year-old repeating Double-A. A year after hitting .197/.258/.378 with a 74 wRC+, he joins the Royals after posting .258/.294/.465 with a 93 wRC+ so far in 2022. That’s an improvement. A lot of improvement, actually. Still not quite enough.

It wouldn’t be exactly fair if I was to say that I wasn’t intrigued by what Saylor and company can do here after I expressed that sentiment with Waters. Still…there’s plenty more prospect pedigree with Waters than with Alexander. Let’s just say he will represent more of a challenge for the minor league hitting coordinators.

As part of the deal, the Royals lose not only the pick, but the slot money that goes along with it. In this case, it’s $2.2 million, not an insignificant amount when the total draft pool for the Royals is now around $9.5 million. When you factor in a slot value of $5.2 million for their first pick (ninth overall), there’s a little less wiggle room if the Royals are looking to get creative.

Still, I like this move for the Royals. They get a hitter who’s a former top prospect who can use a change of scenery. They get a pitcher who can throw strikes and has a killer slider. And there’s the lottery ticket to round out the package. It just costs a draft pick and the money that goes along with it. It’s an aggressive, outside-the-box move for the Royals. They got transactional.