A wild walkoff

It's over! The latest losing streak is over! The Royals, on the verge of giving another game away, rallied late and walked off the Orioles to win their first game in nine tries. The final: 6-5.

Everyone exhale.

Lest you think a wobbly bullpen is unique to the Royals, on Tuesday it was Ryan Helsley's turn to go sideways. He opened the ninth with back-to-back walks. (Insert obligatory Denny Mathews reminder about leadoff walks in the later innings. Square that comment when there are two leadoff walks to open the frame.) Vinnie Pasquantino struck out on a slider that spiked in the dirt. That was a bad outcome, yet also a good one as Baltimore catcher Adley Rutschman couldn't block the pitch and it squirted away, allowing both runners to move into scoring position. The Royals only needed one run, but, given the way this offense has operated this season, it felt like a good thing they had a safety net so to speak. Yes, now is the time to be as greedy as possible when it comes to opportunity.

Next up was Salvador Perez. He had collected a double on a liner down the left field line earlier in the game in an at bat that looked Vintage Perez. Maybe I'm projecting a bit because I don't want the guy to fade away. Perez fell behind 0-2, offering at a first pitch four-seamer that was well out of the zone. We've seen him chase plenty of times, especially on sliders in that location. It's a bit unsettling to see him fish for a fastball like that. He's anxious.

Knowing the situation, aware that this game was being offered to them by Helsley, Perez hung in there, though. He laid off a slider in the dirt and fouled off a slider that was clearly offered as a swing and miss strike three. The fifth—and final pitch—was another slider. Spiked.

Ballgame. Damn if Denny isn't just about always right.

I thought the reactions from Garcia and his teammates were a bit curious. It didn't feel as cathartic as one might expect given the situation. It was rather business-like. I get it. One late-inning victory does not erase the previous nine games. Most of those were frittered away by a bullpen that cannot seem to get the job done and bats that routinely have failed to produce. There is a lot of work that has to happen and the odds are very much stacked against them.

We have to continue to acknowledge how great Perez is at using the ABS system. He made three challenges on Tuesday. All three were overturned in favor of the Royals. He had the bottom three pitches.

The middle pitch—number five on the chart—wasn't as important by the end of the plate apperance, but at the time felt very critical. It was a Lucas Erceg offering to Baltimore leadoff hitter Samuel Basallo in the ninth inning on a 1-0 pitch. Had Erceg fallen behind 2-0, that would've been some dangerous territory to tread given what had happened the night before. Basallo did eventually walk, but Erceg was able to know that he could spot a strike in the lower half of the zone. A small, but important, thing.

Perez is atop the catcher leaderboard with a positive 1.6 runs provided by his challenges. The irony is not lost that the dude fishes for everything while at bat yet has an extremely intricate knowledge of the zone when he's behind the dish.

Erceg then got a double play and a pop up to get out of the inning. It wasn't pretty—just six of his 14 pitches were for strikes—but the job was done. On a night when it was Matt Strahm's turn to lose the plot out of the bullpen, the Royals needed something.

Strahm's outing where he gave up two doubles, a home run and a walk one night after he struck out the side simply serves to underscore how unreliable this entire bullpen has been. The lefty looked unbeatable on Monday. Hell, he struck out the first batter he faced on Tuesday. Then couldn't get anyone out. The two-run homer allowed to Rutschman gave the Orioles a 5-4 lead.

I will continue my campaign to abolish the eighth inning.

The Royals had clawed into the lead because this team is good at making productive outs. They had scored four runs ahead of the ninth, three of them coming on sacrifice flies. It's not the best way to live offensively, but if your opponent is going to let you chip away at your early lead, you take what you can get.

In the second the sequence went double, wild pitch, sac fly.

In the fifth it was double, single, sac fly.

And in the seventh it was double, wild pitch, sac fly.

The Royals finally decided to muscle up in the eighth when Michael Massey led off the inning with a home run. I've probably buried the lede here—these Royals games are so full of twists and turns, some of the most important action can get overlooked—but Massey's bomb increased the Royals chances of winning by 30 percent. Obviously, the Royals have thrown away more than their share of games where the odds favored them late, but we shouldn't sleep on how big that home run was to get this team back in the game. Especially after the eighth inning follies that have surrounded this team since this streak began.

The sac flies and wild pitches helped the Royals win, but a lot of times you still need that big swing. Whew.