2015 ROYALS: Game 2—Astros 4, Royals 5

Despite what I wrote in a previous post, Scott Kazmir (not Dallas Keuchel) is the Astros starting pitcher in Game 2 and I’m not sure how I made that mistake. I’m having to remind myself of what actually happened 10 years ago by looking at old box scores and if an old box score could remind me whether I actually took my allergy pill this morning or just think I did, I’d really appreciate it.

OK, so Kazmir not Keuchel and Kazmir holds the Royals to 3 runs in 5 and 1/3 innings which isn’t all that great, but is good enough because the ever-enigmatic Johnny Cueto gives up 4 runs in six innings.

And Now, Another Digression About the Media

In what almost immediately proves to be a bad idea, during Game 2 I’m instructed to supply “live analysis” which—when you sand the protective coating of bullshit off—means “pop-off with some poorly thought-out opinions before you do any research or ask any questions.” Which is kind of like asking a theater critic to describe what he thought of “Our American Cousin” one act before Lincoln got shot in the head.

“Well, I certainly hope the last act is just as funny and entertaining as the first two and I’d be willing to bet my cane and top hat that the audience will leave the theater laughing.”

When the deadline for my “live analysis” arrives, Johnny has given up 4 runs in 3 innings so I pan his performance, but then – and I’m pretty sure he did it just to make me look bad—Johnny throws 3 scoreless innings, so while it still wasn’t a great performance it wasn’t as bad as it initially looked. Nevertheless, I still look like an idiot when they published my “live analysis” in the paper the next morning.

So we couldn’t wait until the game was completely over to start having opinions?

(I’m extremely glad that we’re doing this look back because I’ve forgotten to be pissed off about this for the past 10 years and needed something to get my heart going this morning.)

And Now Back, However Reluctantly, To Something That Isn’t About Me

If you’ve been following along, there’s a reason I mentioned Twins catcher Kurt Suzuki’s trick of introducing breaking pitchers into a game by asking his pitcher to throw one when the pitcher doesn’t have to throw it for a strike.

Bounce a curve or a slider and get a feel for the pitch and how much break it has today and then there’s a better chance the pitcher can throw it for a strike when he has to.

In the first inning of Game 2 with one down and the count 3-2 on George Springer, Salvador Perez asks Johnny Cueto to throw his first curveball of the game. Sal does not have Johnny throw the curve when Springer was 0-2 or 1-2 or 2-2; Perez waits until Johnny absolutely has to throw it for a strike and Johnny can’t do it.

That poorly-timed curveball results in a walk and that walk results in a run after Colby Rasmus doubles.

When a pitcher is struggling he needs a catcher to help him through it and asking Johnny Cueto to throw a 3-2 curve for a strike when he hadn’t thrown a curve at all, didn’t help.

Before we go any further, we might as well get this out there:

Salvador Perez is an immensely-talented catcher with a great smile, a cannon for an arm and enough home runs and Gold Gloves to get him in the Hall of Fame, but when I was covering the Royals he was not considered a great pitch caller. The media ignored it because we don’t know jackshit about calling pitches. No idea if Salvador’s improved since I stopped covering the Royals and paying attention to pitch-sequences, but I mention this now because his pitch calling is going to come up again in the Toronto series and it’s hard to explain what happened without talking about pitch calling.

But before we get to Toronto, the Royals need to beat Houston and for the first five innings that’s not going so hot.

Analytics Giveth, Analytics Taketh Away

In 2015 the Moneyball crowd is giving the Astros a lot of credit for some of their radical defensive positioning: “Hey, look! Five infielders!” (which pays off sometimes and hurts them at other times…just like traditional positioning) but the Moneyball crowd doesn’t have much to cheer about when Alcides Escobar triples in the 7^th inning.

At that point, the game was tied because a “bunch of stuff happened” (man, you don’t get that kind of baseball analysis in the daily newspaper) including a Salvador Perez home run, so let’s give credit where credit is due and move on to something less obvious that nobody else talked about, which let’s face it, is kind of my thing.

Old-School outfield positioning in the later innings when one run matters is called “No Doubles” and the outfield coach signals for that by waving a hand behind his head.

“No Doubles” means: don’t let a ball get hit over your head, back up and don’t dive for a sinking line drive. Play everything conservatively because we’re going to hold the other team to singles and count on the fact that they probably won’t hit three of them in one inning.

But instead of playing “No Doubles” the analytically-inclined Astros play their off-side outfielder shallow. (Off-side would be right field for a right-handed hitter; left field for a lefty.) The reasoning being there are a lot of flares and dinks and doinks hit to the opposite field so let’s play shallow and catch them.

So when Alcides Escobar hits the ball deep to right in the seventh inning, Houston right fielder George Springer can’t get there in time to prevent a triple.

(Just in case you’re taking notes: most triples are hit to right field for the simple reason that right field is the field farthest from third base.)

Esky’s Triple Brought the Infield In Which Helped Ben Zobrist

With Escobar now on third base in a tie ballgame, the Astros bring their infield in.

But once again the Astros tinker with traditional positioning; Ben Zobrist is hitting from the left side and the Astros have their shortstop positioned over toward second base. Throw off-speed pitches to a batter and he’s more likely to hit a ball into the shift that’s overloaded to the pull side of the field.

But Zobrist stays back on an 81-MPH curve and hits a routine grounder toward short—which would have been an out if the shortstop had been there. The ball bounces through the infield and the Royals have a run and a lead they’ll never give back.

Why You Watch Batting Practice

One of the many incorrect ideas promoted by the book Moneyball (and there were quite a few to choose from) was that everything worth knowing is in the numbers and you don’t have to actually watch games to understand baseball.

It was actually being argued that scouts were no longer necessary. Why pay to send a scout to Buttfuck, Indiana to watch some kid play when everything worth knowing was in the numbers you could see on your computer?

The answer is pretty simple: everything worth knowing isn’t in the numbers.

Let’s say the vast majority of the time a hitter pulls a curveball when he makes contact with one and I’m going to say 85% and I just pulled that number directly out of my ass which makes me wonder why I haven’t been hired to run some team’s analytics department.

Anyway…

Logic would say position your defenders on the pull side of the field because 85% is bigger than 15%, but what if that hitter can hit the ball to the opposite field when he wants to?

And if that hitter sees 42 defenders on the pull side of the field he’s going to want to hit the ball the other way. Which is why you watch BP: is this a guy who spends time working on hitting the ball to the opposite field?

Can he do it when he needs to?

Which is just what Ben Zobrist did and it cost the Astros a ballgame.

The Bullpen

Cueto comes out after six innings and because the Royals have the day off the next day, Ned Yost can use his best relievers in a tie ballgame and Kelvin Herrera, Ryan Madson (who appears to be Greg Holland’s replacement) and Wade Davis pitch scoreless innings.

Which would seem to be the end of our Game 2 story, but first…

The Story Behind That Ninth-Inning Pickoff

In the ninth-inning Astros pinch-hitter Preston Tucker walks (the umpire appeared to miss some calls) and Carlos Gomez comes out to run for him. Wade picks Gomez off which is a huge deal because Gomez is a base-stealer who represents the tying run and the top of the Astros order is coming up.

BTW: I once asked Wade about his weird stance in the set position and he told me he could see the runner out of the corner of his eye when he was in that stance, so now you can bore others with that arcane bit of information.

OK, so Wade picks off the runner, but he got a lot help from first baseman Eric Hosmer.

I couldn’t find pictures of Hosmer, so bear with me: but normally a first baseman has his foot right next to the base, catches a pickoff throw and then drops the tag straight down, trying to tag the runner’s hand. That’s what you’re seeing in the above picture.

That’s not how Hosmer’s doing it; when holding a runner Eric has been positioning himself off the bag—a step toward the pitcher—(once again that’s not Hosmer) and then sweeping the tag back to the runner’s body.

It helps that Hosmer is 6-4 and built along the same lines as a California Condor, but his positioning shortens the pitcher’s throw and has the tag happening sooner than if he were on the bag. In this case Wade short-hopped the throw, but Homser handled the short hop and got the tag down on Gomez.

Gomez was initially called safe (maybe because the umpire wasn’t used to the pickoff technique: instead of one focal point—the hand and the tag—now there are two—the hand and the tag on the body) but the safe call was overturned on appeal and now you see first basemen play it that way all the time.

Eric tells me James Shields and Wade Davis brought that pickoff trick along with them when they came over from Tampa Bay.

This is why you talk baseball: you never know when you’re going to learn a new thing that will help you win a game, and in this case, a very important playoff game.

The final out was made by Jose Altuve when he grounds out to third base, probably because nobody in the Astros dugout was hitting a trash can to let Jose know a fastball was coming.

Next Up:

With the series tied 1-1, the Royals are headed to Houston to face Dallas Kuechel and I’m 72% sure I’ve got that right…

This time.