Early Season Ailments

As the rain poured in Lincoln yesterday, I had the opportunity to take in my first full Royals game of the year. I would say “enjoy” were it not for some unsettling trends that, until now, I’ve only been able to piece together through stats or an inning or two here or there. The Royals were 4-6 and coming off of two straight poundings at the hands of the lowly division-rival Twins. After succumbing to the sweep yesterday, now at the precipice of a stretch in which they will face lesser competition in teams like Cleveland, Houston, Baltimore, Toronto, and Minnesota again, the Royals cannot afford to have these problems amount to another disastrous May like the one they suffered last year.

Some quick thoughts:

– Up until the first two games of the Minnesota series, starting pitching had been quite enough to keep them in each game, and the club’s record might indeed be 7-4 or 8-3 were it not for struggles at the plate. The team is 12th in the league with a 3.48 ERA, and tied for fifth with seven quality starts. They have also only allowed seven home runs thus far, good for top ten. James Shields has pitched well as expected, excluding Saturday’s debacle of a six-run second inning. Jason Vargas has performed up to the standards of his initially puzzling 4 year, $32 million contract, throwing over 100 pitches in each of his first three starts with a 3.00 ERA. Jeremy Guthrie and Bruce Chen have done their jobs, for the most part, eating innings and handing close games off to the bullpen. Young flamethrower Yordano Ventura, in his only start, fueled the optimism that flowed his way in spring training. The Royals have so far found themselves in close contests on a near nightly basis, but have been unable to either close the door when up or score when the other team isn’t.

– Let’s tackle the hitting problem first. All day Sunday, it felt as though the Royals couldn’t hit with runners in scoring position. In fact, the Royals have left on base 4.10 runners per game in scoring position so far this year, and thus sit at the bottom of the league in runs scored. They were the last team in the majors to hit a home run, setting a franchise record 7 game streak without a home run. All tangible stats that verify they eyeball test. The Royals have also dropped to 20th in the league in batting average at .239, and 22nd in OBP at .305. The only player making any impact at the plate has been C Salvador Perez, hitting .375/.500/.531, all top ten marks league-wide. Both LF Alex Gordon and DH Billy Butler, expected to be major run producers, have struggled. Butler has been in a particularly bad rut, hitting a putrid .154/.244/.154. The top of the lineup, as expected, has been getting on base at a decent clip, but the rest of the lineup has been unable to take advantage of ample opportunities thus far.

– When they have, the bullpen has been apt to rain on the parade. Collectively, they have blown three of six save opportunities, and that doesn’t include the first two against Detroit. In both games, the Tigers and Royals were tied entering the late frames, and both times the Tigers won in walk-off fashion. The save stat also fails to include what has been the most Royals-ey loss to date. With a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning, Aaron Crow came on only to walk his first two batters. Manager Ned Yost then brought on Wade Davis, who fanned Joe Mauer, then walked Trevor Plouffe to load the bases. The next batter chopped one right to Davis, who sailed his throw to home right past Perez and into the backstop. Brian Dozier scored on the error, and Davis’s subsequent failure to cover the plate after his errant throw allowed the go-ahead run to score as well. By my count, there have been nine games that could have gone the Royals way that all went the other way. Losing their key set-up man in Luke Hochever for the year has left Yost to figure out how the bullpen puzzle fits together. It won’t matter, however, what order relievers pitch in if they can’t stop issuing walks or failing to produce outs. By now, fans are used to this kind of pain, but with so much optimism at the outset, especially after the season the Royals’s bullpen enjoyed last year, it stings to start the season this way. Again, shades of May 2013.

– One more nitpick, this time regarding Ned Yost. Yost has been an easy target ever since his arrival in Kansas City, but already this year he has added logs to the fire. Down one against Detroit in the eighth inning early this year, he left SS Alcides Escobar, the worst everyday hitter in baseball last year, in to face Detroit’s defending Cy Young winner Max Scherzer with two outs and a runner on second. If ever they needed a hit, that was the time, and yet Escobar stepped in, to predictable result. Part of the problem is not entirely his fault, that being that the Royals do not carry a backup middle infielder to replace him should they need to pinch hit for him or he becomes hurt (instead, they carry seven relievers). What irked me was the reasoning he gave, which was that he “did not want to get into his dome” so early in the season. It sure is early, and one game may not be as important as having a hitter fully prepared for the entirety of the season, but that was a winnable, important game against what figures to be their main AL Central competition. Yost’s unwillingness to pinch hit thus far hasn’t affected his penchant for pinch running. He has insisted on pinch-running for Perez and Butler at almost every opportunity, whose domes he is apparently less worried about. Yost has done so in close games, were leaving those hitters in for potential high-leverage, late-game situations would likely be more ideal. He hasn’t been all bad this year; Escobar, for instance, hasn’t hit near the top of the lineup yet. Johnny Giovatella was called up to cover second base after Omar Infante was struck in the face by a pitch, and Yost opted to him his second instead.

You know what you are getting with Yost, who isn’t going to win you many games with his tactical prowess. The team just has to hope that Yost can make enough of the right decisions more often. Again, they are entering what projects to be their easiest stretch of the season. Going into June a few games over .500 is almost vital to any second half run. In September alone, they have two series with Detroit, and one each with Texas, Boston, and New York. There is urgent need to find a way to wake up the slumbering lineup and fix the struggling bullpen if the Royals have any hope of divisional or wild card contention.