Record: 7-8 (L2)
W: Luis L Ortiz (1-2 | 6.16 ERA)
L: Michael Lorenzen (1-2 | 3.71 ERA)
For the first eight innings, Vinnie Pasquantino was the only defense against this game being a shutout and a no-hitter.
Luis L. Ortiz’s best starts were the couple of occasions he’s pitched six innings and recorded seven strikeouts. Today, he struck out 10 Royals over 5.2 innings, tripling his strikeout total on the season. 46 of his 100 pitches were out of the zone, not atypical for him, but a combination of horrible approach and outright abominable umpiring caused his outing to be a nightmare for the Royals. KC hitters swing and missed 17 times and only walked twice against Ortiz and the only hit he surrendered came from a Vinnie Pasquantino home run, his first since Opening Day.
Vinnie caught a lot of flak from Royals fans after going 0-fer the previous game while Bobby Witt Jr. reached base four out of four times. It might be safe to say that got to him and he woke up haunted. More on him later, but he was just about the only notable hitter wearing blue today.
Michael Lorenzen kept the Royals in the game as he seemingly always does; it wasn’t his best start in terms of run-prevention, but it might have been his best throwing display of the season so far. Lorenzen wasn’t as erratic this time around, showing a better ability to locate the left and right sides of the zone well.
The Guardians started to get into him later into his start, scoring in each of his last three innings. Gabriel Arias has three home runs in 2025 and all three of them are oppo tacos against Royals pitchers. I don’t know why either. The bomb came with two outs in the 6th inning and a single from Angel Martínez immediately after was enough to convince Q to pull Lorenzen. For the second time this week, a Royals pitcher came one out short on a quality start, but Lorenzen pitching more than five innings is a small victory in and of itself. The supposed worst starter of the Royals has a 3.78 ERA on the year so far.
Facing a 2-run deficit with no signs of life on offense, Quatraro went with the B-team bullpen, first having Angel Zerpa finish Lorenzen’s last inning. He started by walking Bo Naylor but got Brayan Rocchio to groundout. He would start the 7th inning by striking out the always-annoying Steven Kwan before handing the ball to Steven Cruz with a job well done. Cruz generated a foul flyout to José Ramírez before striking out Carlos Santana. It was more-or-less what we wanted from these relievers.
It’s now the 8th inning and the Royals still haven’t any breakthroughs on offense; in fact, the last two innings were bleak, weak and feebly pointless. Q decides to keep this game in the hands of the B-team and bring in its most controversial member, Sam Long. To this point, Long has appeared in six games and given up a run in five of them. He’s given up runs, plural, in three of them. Only one appearance, on April 1st if you can believe it, was a certifiably good relief job by Long.
5-pitch walk, single, wild pitch, 6-pitch walk, ground-rule double. That’s how Sam Long’s 7th appearance on the year started. By the time he finally recorded an out, a swinging strikeout from Bo Naylor, the Guardians tacked two more runs on the board. They would score on another wild pitch for good measure before mercifully ending another miserable and overly-long inning.
It’s becoming less and less early in the season and Sam Long still has an ERA that has as many numbers as there are letters in his last name. He was a good success story last year and who knows what the problem is, but his 12.86 ERA is proving without a shadow of doubt that he is now unplayable. I don’t like writing harsh words about people, but the numbers are the numbers. Make it four out of seven appearances with multiple runs surrendered by Sam Long. There are no silver linings to this.
Similarly, MJ Melendez has had little to show for this season. He wasn’t the worst hitter today–that dishonor would go to Cavan Biggio going 0-4 on 4 K’s–but it was another winless day for him. MJ struck out once today while grounding out twice and weakly lining out once. He hit the ball hard on those grounders, but it matters little when the launch angle is negative. For what it’s worth, MJ has been pulling the ball in the air much more than in past seasons, but today wasn’t an example of such as his batting average falls to .086. It might be a sign that some 86’ing needs to occur with this roster.
This is becoming a talking point among Royals fans due to the Minnesota Twins demoting one of their young-ish homegrown players after a blunder in a loss. The Twins are off to a much worse start than the Royals so they have more cause for alarm, but Miranda was hitting .167. That’s both terrible and also twice as good as MJ right now. Other teams are starting to make roster moves, transactions and cuts as they distance themselves further from the start of the season. With the Royals failing to make progress in some of their most problematic areas, it might be time for them to follow suit.
The Royals did stage a small comeback against the still-struggling Emmanuel Clase. The first four batters–Bobby, Salvy, Vinnie and Massey–all singled to score a run and keep the bases loaded with no outs. Unfortunately, the late surge was about as underwhelming as the offense has been for much of the season; Cavan Biggio struck out again, Garcia flied out to score Vinnie and MJ grounded out. It did spark some amusing thoughts of the game being tied had Sam Long not blown that chance, but they were hard to take seriously when the team looked outmatched for most of the day.
Also, Jonathan India was taken out of the game mid-way with quad tightness. It’s said to be mild and he’ll be re-evaluated tomorrow. He was still in the dugout after the game so it’s unlikely that he’ll miss significant time, if any. It was just another aggravating part of the game.
Player of the Game:
Vinnie Pasquantino
3-4, 2 R, HR, RBI
As mentioned previously, Vinnie seemed eager to put yesterday in the past and remind everyone who he is. Vinnie’s first two hits were the only hits the entire Royals lineup had for the first eight innings of the game and he became part of the ninth inning chain. For all the headaches the Royals have within their lineup, a vintage Vinnie performance is very encouraging.
Summary of the Next Game:
The Royals can win tomorrow to avoid a sweep and get back to .500, and Cole Ragans will be the arm holding that chance. Ragans’ first start of the year was a mediocre 5-inning show of 3-run ball, but his two starts have him on a sharply-upwards trajectory. Ben Lively will be his starting opponent, who the Royals have a 4.79 career ERA against. The game starts at 12:10 PM.
Image credit: Ken Blaze – USA TODAY Sports
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