The Kansas City Lumber Company throw themselves a home run party

Well, that was something. The Royals rode four two-run home runs to out-smash the Chicago Cubs by a score of 8-4. The thunder rumbled from a couple of familiar bats and one that was entirely unexpected.

The home runs, combined with a vintage Seth Lugo start (audition?), drove the Royals to a series victory over the Cubs. They are now 3-3 since the break and have scored seven or more runs in four of those games.

The only way to write about Wednesday’s game is to go home run by home run. We begin with the third batter of the game.

Home Run #1
Vinnie Pasquantino
102.1 MPH, 406 feet

The Royals announced their intentions early. Leadoff man Adam Frazier looked at two pitches well out of the strike zone before lofting a fly ball to right. There wasn’t a degree of difficulty to the play. Even though it was drifting semi-deep and toward the corner, I suppose you would call it routine. Yet Seiya Suzuki couldn’t catch it. I thought, given the hang time, that Frazier would end up at third. The excited yelp of Rex Hudler on the broadcast led me to further believe this was possible. Yet Frazier stopped at second.

The next batter, occupying the spot usually reserved for Bobby Witt Jr., was Maikel Garcia. He squared to bunt.

#^&$&@%!

It wasn’t a good pitch to bunt, but it somehow worked, and Frazier advanced to third.

There was barely enough time for me to complain about the Royals wasting an out before Vinnie Pasquantino did this:

Cubs starter Colin Rea throws a four-seamer that has that illusion of rising action. When that happens, not only does the ball look like it elevates as it approaches the plate, but it looks like it explodes. That fastball got in on Pasquantino, and he took a swing that was on an absolutely perfect plane. As he pulled his hands in, he didn’t swing with particular violence. It was just direct. Statcast measured the speed of the bat at 71.7 mph, which is exactly the velocity of the average Pasquantino swing this season.

Three batters into the game, and the Royals had a 2-0 lead.

Home Run #2
Salvador Perez
95.1 MPH, 384 feet

This one is kind of funny when you look at the Statcast metrics behind it. Salvador Perez’s home run had an expected batting average of just .080. But! It was going to be a home run in 26 of 30 yards. No, I don’t know how all that adds up.

What I do know is that Salvador Perez is some kind of locked in at the moment.

The home run was the culmination of a seven-pitch at bat where Rea threw a couple of sweepers and five fastballs.

That’s an interesting way to attack the captain. Start him with a four-seamer and then spray your subsequent fastballs while spotting a couple of sweepers just off the edge. But for Perez to yank pitch seven out of the yard…That’s just a dude who is unconscious at the moment.

Perez has now hit nine home runs in his last 13 games. It was the first time he went out of the zone to exit the playing field.

I have no idea why a pitcher would throw Perez any hard stuff. And a slider in the zone? That’s just asking for pain.

This barrage has been something else. That was home run 291 for Perez, so the countdown for 300, while it didn’t seem possible this season after his slow start, is officially on. Once he hits that milestone, we can focus on the franchise record that currently stands at 317.

Home Run Interlude
Vinnie Pasquantino
109.3 MPH, 312 feet

This was not a home run, but it deserves mention. Pasquantino battled in this confrontation against Rea in the third inning.

With the count 2-2, Rea went to back-to-back splitters and Pasquantino hit the second one to the gap in right-center for a double. It was scalded—Pasquantino’s hardest-hit ball of the afternoon. He scored on the Perez blast above.

Home Run #3
Vinnie Pasquantino
100.9 MPH, 414 feet

Poor Colin Rea. He had to face Pasquantino for a third time. Like the previous two encounters, it did not end well for the Cubs starter.

So in this duel, Rea went heavy on the curve and the cutter.

The inside cutter seemed to be working as Pasquantino offered at two of them, missing one and fouling the other one off. The curve, while a little down, was of a hanging variety. Note the difference in velocity, drop and break from the curve that was demolished to the other two earlier in the at bat. I referred to it as a hanger. It was more of a cement mixer. Pasquantino did not miss.

At this point, Pasquantino was 3-3 with two home runs, a double and four RBIs. It’s close to a career day and we were only in the fifth inning.

Home Run #4
Tyler Tolbert
94.2 MPH, 391 feet

If Tyler Tolbert is cracking no-doubters, the game has officially gone off the rails. In the best way possible.

I have to be honest: This one kind of leaves me speechless. Witt is supposed to turn on those inside four-seamers like that. If you handed me a roster and asked me to rank the hitters by the likelihood that they would turn on elevated, inside heat and yank it out of the yard, I probably would’ve ranked Tolbert 13th. Out of 13.

I guess that is what makes this game so great…Moments like this. The unlikely and the unexpected.

It’s not like Tolbert has never hit a home run before. He clubbed 10 in Northwest Arkansas a couple of seasons ago. His power dipped in 2024 as he hit just four. He had hit three at Omaha before getting the call to The Show.

And now he has one big league bomb. He’s only 290 behind Salvador Perez.

The home run barrage came in support of Lugo, who has had trade rumors swirling around him of late. With the deadline approaching, he’s a bona fide ace who would absolutely enhance any pitching staff in the league. He went six solid innings, allowing four hits and two runs while striking out six.

He showcased all nine of his pitches. He recorded at least one swing and miss on eight of them. This is pitching sorcery. The only pitch Lugo threw were he did not record a whiff was his sweeper. He only threw two of those.

My favorite confrontation came against Pete Crow-Armstrong in the fifth. It was as if Lugo wanted to show the young player what a real starting pitcher could do.

Are you kidding me? A sequence of slurve, slow curve and regular curve? The first pitch was fun. The second was an absolute delight. (I started laughing when Crow-Armstrong waved at it.) The third was just unfair. One hundred percent fun, but unfair.

I will miss Lugo if the Royals trade him.