Royals in Two – KC sweeps Rockies in double-header & series

It hasn’t been the best first month for the Royals, but they’ve made one thing certain: they can still beat up on bad teams.

Game 1 Final: Royals win 7-4

W: Angel Zerpa (1-0, 4.32 ERA)
L: Germán Márquez (0-4, 9.30 ERA)
S: Carlos Estévez (6, 3.00 ERA)

Game 2 Final: Royals win 6-2

W: Michael Lorenzen (2-3, 3.90 ERA)
L: Chase Dollander (1-3, 7.91 ERA)

For the second and third time this season, the Royals scored more than five runs in a game. Altogether, the Royals accrued 17 runs and 31 hits; a much-needed improvement over their previously MLB-worst offense. It may have been against a poor-pitching team, but another good sign of life from the club’s hitters is that put up runs in 12 different innings. Outside of Ryan Feltner’s first few innings, the Royals consistently pressured on offense and tagged nearly every individual Rockies pitcher with a run.

The catalyst for this offense-filled day was Salvador Perez. The Captain has finally gotten good results from hard-hit balls, going 5-8 with a walk. Four of those five hits were doubles and two of them drove in multiple runs. Salvy came into this series with a .182 batting average on the season, but it now sits at .220 and his strikeout rate gets lower, as he wasn’t called out on strikes a single time today.

Eight of the nine starting hitters collected a hit in Game 1 with five hitters collecting two. Maikel Garcia was one of them, including a leadoff double that started the game. Hunter Renfroe not only managed to rip a 106 MPH double and another single, he also reached base a third time via walk. Cavan Biggio had a hit and took two walks, raising his on-base percentage to .349 on the year despite a .200 average. Kyle Isbel harvested the most runs for the team, timing his two singles well to bring in three. Also, Drew Waters didn’t threaten a cycle, but did have another 2-hit game and made a crowdpleasing catch in left field.

It’s good that the Royals were able to continuously apply pressure on offense for this game. Germán Márquez has never exactly been a Cy Young threat, but he’s still a respectable veteran. A veteran off to a terrible start in his post-injury comeback season, but respectable nonetheless. He tempted the Royals to keep swinging and got Bobby and Vinnie to strike out, but the middle and bottom of the order were able to come through and prevent too many easy outs. Márquez tried to pitch the fifth inning, but back-to-back walks encouraged management to replace him; those two walks were scored by one of Isbel’s singles.

Really, the reason why the heightened offense was so encouraging is because Cole Ragans didn’t look great. He walked Brenton Doyle to start the game then advanced him on a wild pitch; Ragans would rebound with two groundouts but the Rockies were still able to advance the runner and then score him on a Hunter Goodman single. It’s not a catastrophe because this was one of the Rockies’ few good hitters and Ragans immediately responded by striking Sean Bouchard out, but it still wasn’t the most promising start.

That promise would grow as Ragans would strike out Mickey Moniak and get a quick out to Michael Toglia, thanks to Waters’ aforementioned gem. Then, a hitter no one had ever heard of named Jordan Beck turned on a high fastball and mailed it to the Royals Hall of Fame.

Maybe that’s just baseball; it’s not a meatball right over the plate or anything, he just got it. Maybe there isn’t anything to actually worry about with this start, but the third inning changes that even more. At first, he gets two more swinging strikeouts, but the first to Brenton Doyle was a 6-pitch strikeout that started at 0-2, then saw three pitches almost leave the pitch-by-pitch graphic. This erratic control really took an unfortunate swing when Ragans would walk Ryan McMahon, one of the most struggling hitters in the game right now, and then hung a high changeup to Hunter Goodman. That made it 4-2 Rockies.

Ragans would finish the inning, but not come back out for the 4th. The Royals announced he had groin tightness, which could mean something bad or nothing at all. It’s not the first potential injury we’ve had with Ragans this season, as he also suffered from hamstring tightness earlier in the year.

Fortunately, this wouldn’t spoil the game as the bats were able to pick up Ragans and the bullpen threw six scoreless innings. Angel Zerpa and Steven Cruz both pitched two scoreless innings and Cruz didn’t allow a single baserunner. The late-game duo of Lucas Erceg and Carlos Estévez returned in top shape; Erceg only needed seven pitches for his outing thanks to a rare 3-6 double play. Estévez had a perfect outing to help recover from the blown save on Tuesday. Overall, a quality game from the team sans Ragans and Pasquantino, but he’d make up for it in Game 2.

Vinnie Pasquantino would look a bit more like himself in the later game, grounding a single in for a run on his first AB of the game, and he’d collect a walk later on. Jonathan India also seemed to warm up a bit, getting on base twice with a walk and hit at the top of the lineup again. Freddy Fermin did the same, though he would unfortunately get picked off on third, perhaps tasting some of his own medicine from Tuesday’s pickoff.

It was a fun day having to face Chase Dollander, one of the game’s top pitching prospects. His velocity was as advertised, running up to 99 MPH on the day, but also as forecasted, the secondaries were ineffective. Kansas City swung 46 times at Dollander’s pitches and only missed 7 times for a 15% whiff rate; at no point did anybody swing and miss at his changeup. He only had 10 called strikes as well, making it just an 18% called strike + whiff percentage (CSW%). The young Rockie prodigy had a disappointing day away from Coors with a line of 4.2 IP / 7 H / 5 ER / 2 BB / 3 K and 92 pitches.

Michael Lorenzen, on the other hand, feasted on a bad, swing-happy lineup. Perhaps not wanting to be outdone by the prospect, he upped the velocity a bit, topping at 95.7 with an average MPH half a tick up from his seasonal norm. His location didn’t seem any better than his past starts, but perhaps that kept the Rockies from knowing what pitches to hit. Lorenzen would allow nine baserunners off five hits and four walks, but racked up seven K’s thanks to a 32 CSW%.

A perfect John Schreiber appearance with two strikeouts set up for two full innings of Daniel Lynch IV. It actually didn’t go amazingly well for him, as he gave up four hits and didn’t strike out a single hitter and also gave up a home run… but that just amounted to one largely-pointless run. By the way, who in the world is Jordan Beck?

Summary of the Next Game:

The now 12-14 Royals will face a hot 13-11 Astros who are coming off a 5-1 stretch against San Diego and Toronto. Friday’s game will start at 6:40 PM in Kansas City with Hayden Wesneski taking the bump for Houston. The Royals’ probable starter has yet to be announced but is likely to be Seth Lugo given the natural order.

The title of this article is based on the song ‘Right in Two’ by TOOL.

Image Credit: Charlie Riedel (Associated Press)