2015 ROYALS—The Free Swinger

Swing hard, you might run into one...

June 7, 2015—Rangers

In the eighth inning of a tie ballgame Salvador Perez puts the Royals ahead with a home run…and has no idea what pitch he just hit. After the game I ask Salvy what he hit out of the park and Salvy doesn’t know.

He was looking for a first-pitch fastball, but got a first-pitch breaking ball and swung anyway. With the count 0-1 Sal gets another breaking pitch and chases that one, too. Perez gets yet another off-speed pitch 0-2 and somehow lays off.

Salvador Perez will chase a breaking pitch like it owes him money, but pitchers persist in throwing him something else. Someone on the Rangers—either catcher Robinson Chirinos or reliever Keone Kela—gets the bright idea of throwing Salvador Perez the fastball he’s (at least theoretically) been looking for.

Salvy hits it into the left field bullpen.

There are times a pitcher needs to change speeds and what pitch he’s throwing and there are times he can just keep doing what he’s doing because the hitter’s not adjusting. Part of being a successful Major League pitcher is recognizing when to do what.

This appears to be case of a pitcher and catcher outthinking themselves.

2025 Update:

Salvador Perez is a free swinger—Franklin Delano Roosevelt walked more often—and will chase pitches out of the zone and yet pitchers throw him strikes when they don’t have to. And it happens a lot.

In 2021 Salvador Perez will set the record for most home runs hit by a catcher in a single season (48) and by 2025 will have 290 home runs and two of them came last night against the Cubs and out of curiosity I looked up the pitches Salvy swung at and here they are:

• Fastball away

• Fastball in

• Slider down-and-in

• Cutter up-and-away

• Curve down

• Fastball up

• Curve outside the zone

• Cutter down

• Slider outside the zone

Pretty much every type of pitch in every location.

Mike Schmidt—another fairly decent home run hitter with 548—once said every at-bat contained a hittable fastball and it was his job to find it. Schmidt was looking for a specific pitch in a specific location; as that list of pitches indicates, Salvador Perez isn’t.

And if they made me Salvy’s hitting coach I’d tell him not to change a thing.

Greg Holland—2015

MLB.com constantly misidentifies pitches, so after a game I ask Greg Holland if he really throws a splitter—MLB.com thinks Holland throws one—but I’m under the impression Greg actually throws a couple different sliders.

Holland tells me he throws a couple different sliders “on a good day.”

When he has a feel for his slider Holly says he can control downward and lateral movement; adding more or less of either depending on the situation. Pitchers do not have the same stuff every day which is no surprise because I don’t either.

Greg also says when he gets beat it’s because he doesn’t have his good slider and he tries to throw it down-and-in to lefties.

For a whole bunch of left-handed hitters, down-and-in is their hot zone and Holly can get a lot of swings and misses by appearing to throw his slider to that hot zone, but then have the slider break down out of the good-hitting zone and it’s called a back-foot slider because if the catcher doesn’t catch it, the pitch will hit a left-handed batter in the back foot.

When Holly’s slider isn’t good it stays in the down-and-in zone and lefties tend to hit the crap out of it. And when Holly’s slider isn’t good, that’s when he’ll break out the splitter (turns out he has one).

And when neither pitch is working?

“That’s when you hope Lorenzo Cain catches the ball.”

Yordano Ventura—2015

After Yordano Ventura’s latest meltdown a Royals fan suggests the team might want to get rid of him, which is (what’s the phrase I’m looking for here?) fucking nuts. Fans are often eager to dump or demote players, but have no idea who would replace those dumped or demoted players.

When Mike Moustakas was scuffling in 2013 and fans wanted to get rid of him, that’s when Ned Yost pointed out there was no “third baseman tree.” You can’t just pick another power-hitting third baseman; sometimes you have to give the one you have time to develop.

Fans who haven’t played much baseball ask why the players can’t do their developing in the minors and GM Dayton Moore has an explanation:

When fans wanted to demote Eric Hosmer in his second year, Dayton said it’s hard to develop beyond the level of your competition. In 2011 when Hos got promoted to the Big Leagues he was hitting .439 in Omaha; Triple A had nothing left to teach him. To learn how to hit Big League pitching, Hosmer had to face Big League pitching and our job was to be patient while he did that.

Since I’ve been covering the team, Royals fans have suggested dumping:

• Alex Gordon

• Eric Hosmer

• Mike Moustakas

• Luke Hochevar

• Wade Davis

• Greg Holland

And I’m not that popular either.

People shouldn’t forget Yordano Ventura is 24 years old. He’s still figuring out how to approach being a Big League pitcher and handling failure with a spotlight on him. It’s one thing to scuffle in Omaha; it’s another thing to scuffle when it’s shown on ESPN and everyone’s blowing you up on Twitter.

If memory serves…

I was a blithering idiot at 24 (if you don’t relate, you’re definitely the exception and I hope you enjoyed your stay at the monastery). And I didn’t have cameras recording my every screw-up and bad decision or hundreds of thousands of people telling the world just what they thought of my latest escapade, so maybe the rest of us ought to ease up on a 24-year-old Dominican kid currently living in a fish bowl.

I’d say Yordano has a million-dollar arm, but that’s selling his arm short; you don’t see talent like this every day, so you might want to give him time to develop. Sometimes it takes a while for a guy to figure things out.

And sometimes it’s worth the wait.

June 12, 2015—Cardinals

In the second inning the Cards are up 1-0, there are two outs, John Jay is on third base and the St. Louis pitcher—Jaime Garcia—is at the plate. Garcia is the ninth Cardinal batter to come to the plate and all eight batters that came to the plate before Garcia got a first-pitch fastball.

This is how a catcher can get a pitcher in trouble: fall into a first-pitch fastball pattern and someone on the other team will notice and take advantage.

Jaime Garcia might be a pitcher and comes into the game hitting a robust .000, but he looks for a first-pitch fastball, gets it and slaps the ball past Mike Moustakas at third base; the Cards are now up 2-0.

Later, Moose and infield coach Mike Jirschele take some of the blame; they both think Mike should have been playing deeper—there wasn’t much chance Garcia was going to try a two-out bunt. But the main fault lies with Salvador Perez for calling the pitch and Yordano Ventura for agreeing to throw it.

Ventura leaves the game after three innings, due to “right hand weakness” and nobody’s 100% sure what that means. Ventura also left his last start after three innings and these short outing are putting a lot of pressure on the Royals bullpen.

At this point in the season, “Ace” Ventura isn’t pitching like one.

June 15, 2015—Brewers

In St. Louis the Royals bats were in a deep freeze, in Milwaukee the Royals bats are smoking hot. In Game 1 of the Milwaukee series the Royals put up 13 hits and eight runs. Everyone in the starting lineup—with exception of pitcher Edinson Volquez—has at least one hit.

When a team’s offense gets hot someone is sure to say “hitting’s contagious” and I guess it’s a theory, but it’s a dumb one. It doesn’t seem likely that one hitter sees another hitter get a hit and thinks:

“Hey, it hadn’t occurred to me before, but I’d like to get a hit too!”

Think about it: when an entire team slumps at the same time or an entire team gets hot at the same time, what do they all have in common?

If you said the pitcher they face, give yourself a pat on the back.

The St. Louis Cardinals have the lowest team ERA in baseball; the Milwaukee Brewers are 28^th in that category. The Cardinals have given up the fewest runs; only two teams have given up more runs than the Brewers. The Cardinals are third in quality starts; the Brewers are 27^th.

So it’s not all that hard to figure out why the Royals were cold in St. Louis, but hot in Milwaukee.

Hitting isn’t contagious; bad pitching is.

June 18, 2015—Brewers

The Royals win two games in Milwaukee and then come back to Kansas City to play two more games against the Brewers at home. Rusty Kuntz says he’s glad the four-game series started in Milwaukee.

Being a dope, I ask why.

Rusty says the two games in Milwaukee gave him a better idea of how to position his outfielders and that will mean better defense by the Royals here in Kansas City and if you have to choose when to win, you want to win at home.

Still being a dope one paragraph later, once again I ask why.

Rusty explains: when big crowds come out and see a win, those big crowds are happy and a whole bunch of them buy tickets for another game. Lose and send the crowd home unhappy and a whole bunch of them might not come back. Putting butts in the seats is what pays everyone’s salary.

It’s good for business if the home team wins.

June 19, Red Sox

Once again the Royals need a pitcher to make a spot start and this time it’s Yohan Pino. The Red Sox score five runs in the second inning and the game’s pretty much over, but Pino stays on the mound and throws five and a third innings.

When a starting pitcher gets lit up right away, fans will start yelling at the manager; they want the starting pitcher pulled. Ned Yost tells me a story about a fan coming down to the dugout and screaming:

“Can’t you see what’s happening?”

(Which is a really great way to meet a member of the stadium security staff, so I wouldn’t advise it unless you’re dying to see the holding cell in Kauffman Stadium and yes, they have one.)

Sure, Ned can see that the starting pitcher is getting lit up, but unless it’s a must-win game, there’s not much he can do about it. If Ned yanks a starter after two innings he’s going to need seven innings from his bullpen in a game the Royals are probably going to lose anyway. Burning up his bullpen in a lost cause on Friday can lead to losses on Saturday and Sunday.

Panic on Friday and one loss becomes three.

But fans in attendance don’t care about tomorrow night; they came to this game and don’t want to watch a blowout. But Ned Yost can’t afford to think that way; he’s managing a 162-game season. And once in a while a starter gets lit up early and has to “wear it” and keep pitching; he has to save the bullpen for the next day’s game.

Against the Boston Red Sox Yohan Pino wears it for the Royals and it’s the last time he’ll pitch for Kansas City in 2015.

June 20—Red Sox

The next night the Royals beat the Sox 7-4 and use five relievers who didn’t get worn out in a loss the night before.

And nobody thinks to give Ned Yost credit.

June 22, 2015—Mariners

To the guys who play the game there are no “small” things—and in this game against the Mariners, Alex Rios demonstrates why they think that way.

In the second inning Salvador Perez doubles and then, with two outs, Alex Rios singles. The Seattle centerfielder—Austin Jackson—fields the Rios’ single and launches an unguided SCUD missile in the general vicinity of home plate. Seeing the throw home is too high to be cut off, Rios advances to second base.

Because Alex took those extra 90 feet he’s able to score when Omar Infante singles; the Royals go up 2-1.

When a pitcher is given a lead he can pitch more aggressively and Joe Blanton does; after the Royals take the lead, Blanton throws a higher percentage of strikes. As long as Blanton keeps runners off base, all the guy at the plate can do is tie the game no matter how far he hits the ball.

Blanton gets an insurance run in the third inning and with a two-run lead now he can really pound the zone; the guy at the plate can’t even tie the game. Blanton strikes out seven batters and six of those strikeouts come after he’s handed a lead and can pitch more aggressively.

Guys who hit 30 home runs and drive in 100 runs are nice, but not every team can have one and very few teams have two.

So in reality you have a bunch of players who are something less than future Hall of Famers and they have to do the “small” things right because those small things add up to a big thing: winning.

And there’s nuthin’ bigger than that.

In 2015 Joe Blanton will win two games for the Royals, Kris Medlen will win six and Chris Young will win 11 regular season games.

Dayton Moore made three additions to his pitching staff—three signings that didn’t get much attention when they happened—and winds up with 19 wins from guys he picked up off the scrap heap.

Maybe Dayton Moore knows what he’s doing.