Royals make too many mistakes, lose 9-4

A stark reminder of what this team can look like when the risks don’t pay off.

The Royals have a good team. But it’s a team without much margin for error. Tonight there were too many mistakes made. Some of those mistakes were more egregious than others, but they all add up the same.

First, Seth Lugo was not fooling people during this start. He gave up a two-run home run in the first inning to Seiya Suzuki. He gave up a triple to rookie Pete Crow-Armstrong, who was batting ninth tonight and has not been good, yet, in his young career. Crow-Armstrong scored on a hot-shot groundball to Salvador Perez at first to bring the Cubs’ lead back up to two. In the bottom half of the second, Hunter Renfroe had cut the lead in half with his own home run.

In the bottom of the third, Dairon Blanco led off with a single and advanced to second on a wild pitch. But he was picked off of second base when he left too early on a stolen base attempt. It’s debatable how much of a mistake this was, because Cubs starter Shota Imanaga initially was going to throw behind Blanco and if he had, Blanco would likely have been safe at third. Imanaga realized this before throwing to second, whirled, and threw to third in order to get Blanco.

In the bottom of the sixth, Maikel Garcia led off with a single and Bobby Witt Jr. stepped to the plate as the go-ahead run. Witt doubled into the left-center gap and scored Garcia to lower the deficit to one. Again, this is a questionable call as a mistake, because you want a runner as fast as Witt to be ready to be aggressive, but his turn was too wide at second. Cubs third baseman Chris Morel cut the throw to the plate off and fired to Michael Busch behind Witt to pick him off at second. Two batters later, Salvador Perez singled and would have driven in the tying run.

This led to a moment where the Royals seemed like they might be about to overcome the mistakes. Imanaga, who had given up multiple hard-hit balls as he began his third time through the order was pulled for reliever Julian Merryweather. Freddy Fermin greeted him with a double down the line, putting runners at second and third. Hunter Renfroe came to the plate and drove both runners in with a single to left to give the Royals the lead.

At this point, Lugo had been getting a lot of outs, but he still wasn’t fooling anyone. He only struck out two batters all night long. Still, his pitch count was low and the bullpen has been moderately suspect all year. Generally, they’ve been fine with multi-run leads, but they’ve struggled when placed in close games. Manager Matt Quatraro chose to ask Lugo to go back out for the seventh.

Nine pitches later, two Cubs were on base via single. It wasn’t necessarily a mistake to ask Lugo to pitch the seventh, but it was a mistake not to have someone ready to back him up immediately. The plate appearance that everyone will remember tonight then occurred.

With runners at first and second and no one out, Seth Lugo faced off against Dansby Swanson. Lugo threw two different pitches which were clearly strikes that were called balls. Instead of striking Swanson out, Lugo walked him to load the bases.

Lugo then got a flyball to shallow center, not deep enough to score a run, and Sam Long was summoned from the bullpen to face lefty Crow-Armstrong. But, prepared for that move, Cubs manager Craig Counsell countered by sending right-handed Patrick Wisdom to pinch hit. Wisdom hasn’t been very good this year, but he has been above average against lefties. The Royals’ bullpen, as previously noted, is not good with its back to the wall. Long fell behind 2-1 and then grooved a fastball down the middle. Wisdom didn’t miss it, and the Royals were behind once more. Compounding the mistake of not having a reliever ready by summoning a reliever that allowed the Cubs to play to the strength on their bench. The only lefty the Cubs had on their bench was Miles Mastrobuoni, who has a sub-.500 OPS on the season, even worse than Armstrong’s.

Kris Bubic pitched the eighth and most of the ninth. His eighth was perfect with a groundout and two strikeouts. He gave up his first two runs of the year in the ninth. That’s fine, though, because the game was already lost, the defense wasn’t doing him any favors, and he wasn’t going to have a 0.00 ERA all year long.

The Royals came out of the break looking so strong for the first four games, but now they’ve had two awful losses that were within their grasp over the past three days. Every new trade announcement comes with information that the Royals were interested in the player, but couldn’t match the offers made by the other teams. Hope always seems missing after a loss like the one tonight. It doesn’t help that this is Seth Lugo’s second poor start in three games. Could he be wearing down? His next start will almost certainly see him set a career-high for innings, topping the 146 he threw last year.

Yes, it was a frustrating loss. But as David Lesky recently wrote in his Inside the Crown newsletter, it’s kind of nice to still be frustrated by losses this late in the season. Also, the Royals bounced back from Wednesday night’s loss with a win last night. And they can bounce back tomorrow to take the series and finish the homestand 6-3, which would feel pretty good before they head out on their first post-All-Star Break road trip. Cole Ragans will take the mound for KC tomorrow afternoon while the Cubs will ask Javier Assad to help them take the rubber match instead. The game will start at 1:10 central time.