Royals Rumblings - News for August 30, 2024

Can we just all pretend last night’s game was a bad dream?

At The Star, Jaylon Thompson talked to the team about winning the division title:

Now, after Wednesday’s series-ending loss, they’re one game behind and the divisional race has become an all-out sprint.

“That’s our goal,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said of winning the AL Central. “That was our goal from the day we stepped in the clubhouse in Surprise (Arizona). And these guys have never let that waver. You know, the Guardians have been clearly out front most of the year.”

The goal remains the same, even as the pendulum seems to have turned in Kansas City’s favor a bit. The stage is set for the regular season’s last 28 games, and the Royals appear to be in the fast lane toward an exciting finish.

At MLB.com, Anne Rogers spoke to Alex Marsh about his trip to the minors:

Marsh didn’t take the demotion as a punishment, he said, rather looking at it as a chance to “take a breath and hit the reset button.” The Royals were impressed with how professional Marsh was when he got the news.

From his very first day back in Triple-A, Marsh was ready to get to work.

“It was like, ‘Let’s figure this out and have fun again,’” Marsh said.

When I went to Fangraphs, Jay Jaffe’s headline story at the top of the page was “The Royals Are For Real, and They’re Breathing Down the Guardians’ Necks”:

The Royals have improved by leaps and bounds on both sides of the ball. Their 0.71 runs per game gain in scoring (from 4.17 to 4.88) is the majors’ third largest (behind only those of the Yankees and Diamondbacks), while their 1.21 runs per game reduction in runs allowed (from 5.30 to 4.10) is the largest; they’re one of only two teams that have cut their average runs allowed by more than a run per game. (The much-improved A’s are the other.) All of this is a tremendous validation of the work executive vice president/general manager J.J. Picollo and manager Matt Quatraro have done over the past two seasons. Picollo of course had his hands in the team’s player development under a variety of titles during his decade and a half working under predecessor Dayton Moore...

The staff received a shot in the arm from Picollo’s work ahead of the July 30 trade deadline. Lorenzen isn’t exactly an impact starter, but he’s kicked in a 1.85 ERA and 4.20 FIP in 24 1/3 innings since being acquired from the Rangers; he did land on the injured list on Wednesday, as an MRI showed a Grade 2 strain of that hamstring, and the expectation is that he’ll be out two to three weeks. Reliever Lucas Erceg, who was stolen from the A’s and has since claimed the closer role, was the losing pitcher on Wednesday afternoon, but the run he was charged with was his first as a Royal following 11 straight scoreless outings totaling 12 1/3 innings; similarly, the two inherited runners he allowed to score ended a streak of 11 he’d stranded since the trade. Oh well, an 0.68 ERA, 1.00 FIP, and five additional years of club control will have to do for that particular deadline addition.

At Yahoo, Jordan Shusterman talked about Salvy’s performance in the recently completed series in Cleveland:

“Salvy Perez just doesn’t seem to know what getting old means,” Guardians skipper Stephen Vogt said half-jokingly before the series.

Yet in some respects, Perez has begun to acknowledge the realities of being a 34-year-old catcher who is expected to carry a heavy load offensively. After catching the first game of the doubleheader in the sweltering afternoon heat, Perez admitted postgame that he was happy to keep the gear off for Game 2 and stay in the lineup as the DH.

“He’s remarkable,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said postgame. “To catch that first game … he was drained. You could tell, he was drained physically, mentally … to go out there and focus and put those at-bats up like he did was remarkable.”

Also by Shusterman, he put together a list of big series in September and about half of the Royals remaining series are there.

Blog time?

Craig and David ($) both wrote about the disappointing game 4 of the encouraging Cleveland series.

Brown:

It would be super-easy to second-guess the decisions Quatraro made in the seventh, but really, what could’ve been done differently? The Royals bullpen was absolutely shot from the previous three games where they couldn’t get five innings from a starter. They needed Wacha to go as deep as possible. After requiring 27 pitches to navigate the first, he had put together a couple of quick innings and was at 91 pitches entering the frame. If the bullpen had been fully stocked, there’s no way Wacha would’ve been out there for the seventh.

With two runners on in a game where the Royals had a two-run lead, it was an easy call to bring in Erceg in that situation. While it wasn’t a save situation, as noted above, it was a moment of…let’s call it extreme leverage. Erceg is the best and most reliable arm in that bullpen. In five of his 11 outings since joining the Royals, he had dealt with multiple inherited runners. Eleven of them overall. He hadn’t allowed a single one to score.

That streak came to an end.

In my opinion, Quatraro got the process correct. He rode his starter as long as he could. He brought in his best reliever in a tight situation he had navigated myriad times previously. It could’ve worked. You can argue it should’ve worked.

This time it didn’t.

Lesky:

Quatraro called on Lucas Erceg to do what he’d done so many times since joining the Royals, but, for the first time, he couldn’t. Erceg did get Jose Ramirez to fly out without anyone advancing, but then the soft contact started. Josh Naylor hit a 77.4 MPH single with an xBA of .040. Yes, .040. David Fry was out on a fly ball for the second out. Will Brennan hit one 69.8 MPH, though it did have an xBA of .750. That tied the game. And then Jhnonkensy Noel hit a well-placed ball with a .990 xBA that only left the bat at 75.5 MPH. Those three hits were enough to turn a one-game lead into a one-game deficit.

I don’t think Quatraro was blameless here. If you were willing to go to Erceg in the seventh, why let Wacha face the order a fourth time? On the flip side, if the plan was for Wacha to get through seven and give it to Erceg for six outs, he likely didn’t start throwing until Naylor’s home run, which means he’d need the time to get loose before he could be put into the game. You can make an argument that they could have gone to Steven Cruz or John Schreiber for a third straight day or Sam Long for a third straight day or even Chris Stratton. And I’d listen to that argument on anyone but Stratton. But the truth was that he was really hamstrung by the series leading up to this game.

I’m usually one of the last people to go bullpen bashing as there’s a lot of Monday morning QB’ing there. When the game gets blown, whatever you suggest is going to be “better” because you know what /did happen/ didn’t work. However, I respectfully disagree with both as I said in both the game and recap threads. Wacha’s 6th was really stressful and he looked cooked. At the very most, he needed to have a very short leash going into the 7th and the HR should have done him in. Personally, I would have given Stratton a clean inning and hoped he could navigate it without giving up a lead. Then Erceg for 2 or Bubic/Erceg. I know Stratton has been a bit of a dumpster fire this year. But if you can’t trust him in this situation: bottom of the lineup, up 3, with a completely gassed bullpen - why is he even still on the team? I don’t think any of this is “firing offense” bad or even “Aaron Crow’s inning is the sixth inning” bad. But I think it was a mistake. Then again, by the time anyone is reading this, another game will be done and we’ll have moved on.

Speaking of the bullpen, at Farm to Fountains, Preston Farr looks at Matt Quatraro’s bullpen usage across the season:

With all that in mind, it seemed more than worth it to analyze Quatraro’s decision-making with some data behind it. Unfortunately, there’s no manager fWAR stat. So much of what a manager does is intangible. It’s difficult to put a number on how lineup construction, bullpen moves, or playing time decisions impact a team’s win-loss record on any given day. Today, looking at just bullpen usage, I’ll attempt to do just that.

Blog Roundup:

• Mike Gillespie at Kings of Kauffman: “Wednesday’s decisions don’t tarnish KC Royals manager Matt Quatraro”
• Kevin O’Brien at Farm to Fountains: “Ranking the Position Players in Omaha Who Could Be Up When Rosters Expand”
• Matt Chabot at Farm to Fountains: “2024 Report Cards: RHP Eric Cerantola”
• Darin Watson at U.L.’s Toothpick: “This Date In Royals History—1984 Edition: August 29 - Bud Black recovers from a shaky start to pitch the Royals to a win over Texas” (Royals just got back to .500 this week)
• Jason Burke at Oakland Athletics on SI: “Former Kansas City Royals Pitching Prospect Turning Corner with Oakland”
• Brady Farkas at Fastball on SI: “KC Royals Superstar is the First Player in Baseball History to Accomplish This Feat”
• Brayden Haena at Clutch Points(?): “4 Royals ready for breakout September ahead of playoffs”
• Zombie Deadspin: “Royals try to shake off setback ahead of opener at Houston”

As August ends, we’re concluding our tour around Asian baseball. First, we revisited the CPBL and then the KBO. Now it’s onto the NPB. In case you missed the previews back in the Spring, here are links to the CPBL, KBO, and NPB previews. As noted the last couple weeks: the midseason checks are more laid back than the previews and season wraps. We’ll see what stories around the league filtered back to US audiences and how our rooting interests are doing.

One look at the standings and the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks jump off the page. They’re 72-40-3 (roughly a 105-win pace in MLB) and have a 10 game lead over the next closest team in the Pacific League! I guess that’s what happens when you score almost a half run more than anyone else in NPB (4.21 R/G). Looking at their team page, there’s not some young phenom leading the charge - it’s just a lot of veteran players, aged 27-32, as part of a well-rounded lineup.

Speaking of phenoms, there’s been a lot of noise around when Roki Sasaki of the Chiba Lotte Marines may come to MLB. Eric Longenhagen wrote about him earlier this month:

Sasaki has been the LeBron James of Japanese baseball since his junior year, a known generational high school talent who has gone on to deliver on and perhaps exceed expectations at the highest level of Japanese baseball. Sasaki turns 23 in November and his feats of strength are already legendary. He touched 101 in high school and once threw nearly 500 pitches in an eight-day span, including a 12-inning, 194-pitch complete game during which he also hit the game-winning two-run homer. He was the first pick in the 2019 NPB Draft by the Chiba Lotte Marines, had a sub-2.00 ERA in his 2021 rookie season, and then transcended the sport in 2022 when he threw 17 consecutive perfect innings that April.

However, he also wrote about Sasaki’s injury issues this year and his loss of velocity on his pitches (still averaging 96.7 on the fastball, but not the 98.8 from 2023). Sasaki’s trip across the pond is complicated by the fact that he’s so young - until a certain age and/or service time requirement is met, his posting fee and salary capped. This means he can’t get the eye popping numbers that Yoshinobu Yamamoto got this offseason (12/$325M). However, this is a fluid situation as Evan Drellich at The Athletic ($) wrote this week about how changes may be coming to the posting system and MLBTR had an article a couple of days ago. Sasaki’s Marines are currently in 3rd, 12.5 GB of the Hawks.

There’s also potential for more MLB/NPB partnerships:

Sadly, when I search for stories about Tsuyoshi Shinjo (aka BIGBOSS) this year, there’s not much this year as he must be keeping a low(er) profile. However, after two years of last place finishes, he has the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in position to make the playoffs in 2nd place. The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles are above .500 at 55-54-2 and are trailing the Marines by 2 games. Last year’s Pacific League champion Orix Buffaloes are in a disappointing 5th and the Saitama Seibu Lions are in last place, on roughly a 50-win MLB pace.

Unlike the single-team-dominated Pacific League, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp (60-47-5) and Yomiuri Giants (62-49-6) are in a virtual tie for the Central League lead. After breaking their 38-year drought last year, the Hanshin Tigers are hanging onto 3rd. However, the Yokohama DeNA BayStars are only 1.5 GB for that final playoff spot. The Chunichi Dragons are mostly out of it in 5th. And astute readers may have noticed that we haven’t mentioned our rooting interest, the Yakult Swallows. Sadly, they are in last place.

Father Time may have finally come for 42yo Nori Aoki. He’s hitting .192/.261/.231 on the season and, after eyeballing box scores for the last month, the only AB I can see for him in August is this PH back at the beginning of the month. While I doubt Aoki was a major part of their plans, Munetaka Murakami was and he’s had a “disappointing” season. His 23 HRs lead the Central League, however his .242 batting average would be one of the 2nd worst of his young career and a far cry from his 2022 Triple Crown and MVP season where he slashed .318/.458/.711 with 56(!) HRs.

For some reason, I’ve been jamming to the Just Shapes & Beats soundtrack this week. If you want to spend a few bucks for an awesome game that will probably only take a few hours to beat but is a master class in simple game design, looks like it’s on sale in the Nintendo shop and Steam for a couple more days.

Here was my initial review, along with the level for “Danimal Cannon & Zef - Corrupted”:

The story is simple but a great example of visual storytelling: there are no words, just shapes and music. It’s such a simple premise: there’s a bad shape guy corrupting the world for the peaceful little good guy shapes and you have to help save it. If you play through the game up to “Close to Me” and it doesn’t get you, just a little, I’m not sure you have a heart. It’s a pretty cool accomplishment for cute little shapes that look like they belong on my toddler’s toys.

We also have revisited it with “Noisestorm - Barracuda”, “Danimal Cannon - Long Live the New Fresh”, “Sabrepulse - Close to Me”, “Annihilate - Destroid/Tristam - Till It’s Over”, and “Nitro Fun - New Game”.

Today, we’ll do “Nitro Fun - Final Boss”. Of course, since it’s a video game, the one listed as the final boss is never the final boss. Also, I picked a video that looked like it was done by mortal humans who had died in the level a few times before finally winning. The most popular videos on YouTube are done by video game players with crazy reflexes or bots, who play perfect levels. This is what it’s really like to play the game (RIP yellow triangle):