Walkoff! The Royals win another at home

More home runs and another solid outing from Seth Lugo set up some late-inning heroics from Nick Loftin.

Who are these Royals?

After going two months without a home series win, a stretch where they went 5-19 at The K, the Royals are now standing up for their home turf, refusing to be bullied. One night after putting up nine runs in a series-opening victory, they walked off the Pirates by a scoreline of 4-3.

It was their fifth win in their last six games. If you prefer a longer stretch, they’re 7-4 in their last 11. In those 11 games, the Royals are hitting .315 with runners in scoring position. Wild what can happen when you support your quality starting pitchers with some runs.

The hero of Tuesday’s game would be Nick Loftin. I know…I didn’t think I’d ever type that sentence, either. But Loftin was The Man in the later innings. He clubbed a two-run home run (more on that below) in the seventh to push the Royals to the lead. He then lined a ninth inning single to walk off the Pirates.

Current Royals baseball status: Fun. Again.

Watching this game, even after the Pirates tied it in the eighth, I felt a confidence in the Royals. That seems…probably misguided. Yet there was an air on inevitability around this game. Maybe it’s because of the opponent. Maybe it’s because the bats are showing some signs of life.

In that ninth inning, Maikel Garcia led off with a single. He was followed by Salvador Perez, who also singled.

I know…we’ve seen so many first and second, nobody out situations this year where the Royals do not score. It’s dangerous territory for this team, ripe for disappointment. But I felt optimistic because of how reliever Dennis Santana pitched to Perez.

Perez, of course, swung at that 0-1 slider that was well off the plate. Santana went back to the slider but left it in a dangerous spot and Perez fouled it off. The next pitch was a fastball on the outer edge at 93 mph. Do you think Perez will miss that? Insanity. He just did what he does: Pulled it into left for a single, a tidy line drive.

A Caglianone fly ball advanced Garcia to third with one out. All Loftin needed to do was get the ball to the outfield. Bonus for him that it dropped for a hit. Ballgame.

That’s a fun Tuesday night at the yard.

I continue to fret about Jac Caglianone like a worried parent when their teenager is breaking curfew. This will help alleviate those fears. Somewhat.

That’s what can happen when Caglianone gets gifted a middle-middle changeup. I mean, look at this sequence:

Fastball up to start the at bat, a pitch that Caglianone really likes. He spits on it, though, and gets the call. Then, a pair of changeups, both with pretty much the same shape. The first one was well located, especially after the elevated four-seamer. The second one? Not so much.

Peep those metrics above. The ball left the bat with a launch angle of 19 degrees. That’s an absolute laser. Home runs just aren’t hit with that kind of arc. It was the 40th home run in the majors this year with a launch angle of 19 degrees or less.

This is what Caglianone can do. While I continue to beat the drum of concern about how the Royals are handling him, I remain optimistic about his future. He can, as we have seen three times now, obliterate baseballs. He just needs to adapt and make adjustments. The game is a lot different from the one he was playing in Northwest Arkansas to open the year and then for a couple of weeks in Omaha.

After the Caglianone laser, Pittsburgh starter Mitch Keller went into domination mode, retiring the next 16 batters who dared step in the box. It wasn’t as if the Royals were squaring Keller up and just hitting a lot of “at ‘em” balls. Of the 12 balls the Royals put in play during that stretch, just two had exit velocities greater than 95 mph, classifying them as hard-hit: A ground out from Salvador Perez at 96.5 mph and a fly ball off the bat of Bobby Witt Jr. at 97.2 mph. That’s it.

Because this is baseball, Keller’s stretch of dominance didn’t end on a hard-hit ball or a seeing-eye grounder. Nope. Something weird had to happen. Like this:

That’s catcher’s interference. It’s the fifth time Perez has reached in that manner in his career and the second time this season.

What a way to get a runner on base against Keller.

Then, after Caglianone flew out for the second out of the inning, newly clean-shaven Nick Loftin did this to the first pitch he saw.

That is a meaty slider. How meaty? Center-cut meaty.

Loftin was out in front by a bit, but not enough for it to drift foul. Instead, it was a two-run bomb that staked the Royals to a 3-1 lead. Loftin has now homered in back-to-back games. The facial hair was clearly holding him back. For the Royals, it was their sixth home run of the series. Entering Monday, the Royals had hit 15 home runs at home the entire season. Fifteen home runs in 44 games! How is that even possible?

So we welcome these new Thunder Royals who are swinging with fury. Home runs are fun. They should do it more.

Royals stater Seth Lugo was dealing once again. He made two mistakes on the night. One, a hanging slurve to Nick Gonzalez. The other, a curve that broke down and in to O’Neil Cruz. The curve on the chart below looks like it’s in a good spot. It’s not. It needed to be further in or further down. Or both.

Cruz does bad things to baseball. He has the maximum exit velocity of any player this year at 122.9 mph. In the Statcast Era—which goes back to 2008, only Giancarlo Stanton has hit more baseballs (16) with an exit velocity greater than 120 mph. Cruz has laced six.

The home run Cruz hit against Lugo wasn’t hit all that hard, at least according to the standards set by the left-handed batter. It had an 115.6 exit velocity. But it was a moon shot at 458 feet.

I make no apologies: O’Neil Cruz is fun.

Other than those two pitches, Lugo was Lugo. He shelved his split-finger, so he only threw eight different pitches. I guess we could say the slider wasn’t working that well—Pittsburgh hitters had a 100 percent contact rate on sliders in the zone and put the ball in play on five of six swings, but since there wasn’t any true damage done against the pitch, that’s just being nitpicky.

Lugo finished with six innings and four hits allowed. He walked one and struck out five. Solid and dependable.

Central Issues

Rays 2, Tigers 4

Detroit ran their winning streak to five on the back of Colt Keith’s go-ahead two-run home run in the seventh. Keith had tied the game in the fifth with an RBI single. He’s the anti-Loftin, not having shaved for a couple of days because of “subpar razors” in the Cleveland clubhouse in their previous series. Baseball players are weird.

Cubs 1, Twins 8

Minnesota clubbed three home runs—all of them in the eighth inning—to push a two-run lead to the final seven-run margin. Ryan Jeffers, Willi Castro and Harrison Bader had the honors for the Twins, with all three homering against Chicago reliever Porter Hodge.

Blue Jays 6, White Sox 1 — 6 innings

Rain washed out the final three frames, but the Jays don’t care as they rolled to their 10th consecutive victory. Chris Bassitt gets credit for a complete game going all six for Toronto. George Springer and Bo Bichette each drove in two.

Guardians 10, Astros 6 — 10 innings

A wild one in Houston saw the Guardians jump out to a 6-1 lead through the first three innings. The Astros clawed back three in the fifth and then tied it up on a Jose Altuve single in the eighth. To extras they went where Angel Martínez launched a grand slam off Josh Hader to break the game open and secure the win.

Four wins for the Central teams in one night? That’s not happening often these days.