Another swing, another miss

Well, that was another frustrating game to watch.

That makes three in a row. Bah. Coming off back-to-back games where the offense mostly failed to show, the bats completely disappeared on Thursday night at Kauffman Stadium. The Royals lost the opening game of their four-game series against the White Sox by a score of 2-0.

As Russell Carleton at Baseball Prospectus used to say, there's some gory math ahead. The Royals had 11 baserunners (five hits, four walks and two hit batters) but they never moved any of those runners past second base. They went 0-7 with runners in scoring position. They stranded all 11 of said baserunners. Add all that up (the math part!) and you get a big zero in the run column on the scoreboard. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

It was as futile in person as it reads a day later on the internet. Maikel Garcia went 2-4. Bobby Witt Jr. went 2-5. The rest of the lineup combined to go 1-23.

All I can do at this moment is remind you that we aren't even 10 percent of the way into the season. Andy Pages has a .438 on base percentage. Aaron Judge has a .488 slugging percentage. These things are going to change a great deal between now and the end of the season. The Seattle Mariners, Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox each have just four wins. They are better than this.

The Royals are supposed to be better than what we've seen this week.

The angst is understandable. Scars run deep and we've seen plenty to scare a normal person completely off baseball. Some of the action we've seen this year—again, especially this week—has been dull and uninspired. Yet the season is young. The story is still being written. That's why I'm here; that's why I chronicle this team. I want to see how it ends.

In his first two starts of the season, White Sox lefty Anthony Kay had faced a left-handed batter just nine times. Collectively, lefties had not recorded a hit against Kay and struck out once. It’s a small sample, but hang with me.

Kay had random cups of coffee from 2019 to 2023, first with the Toronto Blue Jays and then with the Cubs and briefly with the Mets. For his career, he had a reverse platoon split with left-handed hitters generally doing better against him. Lefties hit .270/.362/.549 against Kay in his major league career.

Something has changed. Kay spent the last two seasons pitching for the Yokohama BayStars in the Japanese Central League. He dominated last season with a 1.74 ERA (2nd in the league) and a 7.6 SO/9 (1st). Last year in Japan, lefties hit just .207/.248/.259 against him.

The Royals stacked three left-handed hitters in their starting lineup. Vinnie Pasquantino, Jac Caglianone and Kyle Isbel. In retrospect, probably not such a good idea to leave Michael Massey and Starling Marte on the bench. Kay gave the lefites fits. Collectively, they were 0-7 against him with six strikeouts and one walk. Each of the Royals three left-handed hitters punched out twice. These were the fatal pitches.

Five of those were swinging. The lone take was the sinker on the inside edge. It was initially called a ball against Pasquantino in the first but overturned for the strikeout via ABS.

The sweeper, in particular, gave the lefties an incredible amount of trouble. The sinker, used sparingly, was also a quality offering. Kay comes in with a low, three-quarters arm slot that makes it difficult for the lefty to get a good read. He doesn’t have a great deal of extension and can pump the four-seam up to 97 mph. He looked good. Too good. Especially to the Royals left-handed hitters.

I think the White Sox found themselves a decent starting pitcher. His catcher, Edgar Quero, concurs.

Indeed.

As dull as the hitting was, the infield defense provided something fun to watch. The Royals turned three double plays on the night. The first was started when Maikel Garcia, playing in a shift and shaded more toward second than third, fielded a grounder and took it to second himself for a 5-3 double play. It was the second time he's done that this season. That's some confident action.

The second double play was a routine 6-4-3. The third was a lined shot up the middle off the bat of Munetaka Murakami at 102 mph that was fielded by Witt on a wicked hop. That ball almost vaporized starter Seth Lugo before it even got to Witt. Plus, it had some kind of voodoo spin behind it. I'm not sure how Witt snagged it, but he kept his composure to step on the bag and bounce a throw to first for a 6-3 double play.

It would be nice if we could sing the praises of the entire defense.

I don’t think, in his first impressions, Lane Thomas is endearing himself to the fanbase.

In the fourth inning, Munetaka Murakami led off with a walk. With one out, Colson Montgomery laced a line drive to right. From my perch at the stadium, I don’t think that it was a catchable liner. However, I’m not sure what Thomas thought with the route he took to try to get to the ball. It was rather…direct. Almost as if he thought he could catch the ball. Perhaps. But because of his route, the ball scooted past him and went for a run-scoring double. Had he played it properly, I believe he could’ve cut the ball off and held the lead runner at third.

To be fair, there was a play to be had at the plate. Witt’s relay throw sailed to the first base side. As Keith Hernandez would say, that was just poor fundies all around.

Compounding matters, the Sox scored their second and final run on the back of another breakdown. Starter Seth Lugo, who looked up for the challenge for most of the night, wobbled in the seventh when he walked back-to-back hitters with one out. He was lifted for John Schreiber who got the ground ball he was looking for. The problem was, it was hit close to the foul line, forcing Vinnie Pasquantino to his backhand. He fielded the ball and chose to throw to second, but sailed the throw and pulled Witt off the bag, missing the force out. An error to load the bases. I think it was the correct idea to go for the runner at second. He had time. He just missed with his throw.

The next hitter, Luisangel Acuña lofted a fly to right for a sacrifice fly. White Sox 2, Royals 0. Ballgame.

The Royals announced a couple of transactions ahead of Thursday’s action, both in the bullpen. They optioned Luinder Avila and Steven Cruz to Triple-A Omaha. Avila threw 62 pitches and Cruz offered 41 on Wednesday in the loss at Cleveland.

This was the state of the bullpen following that game:

Avila, by filling in for Ragans in the aftermath of his injury, basically took a starter’s turn on short rest. Cruz, by wearing the bulk of a disastrous eighth inning, ran his pitch count up to a point where it will probably take a day or two to recover. As noted yesterday, the Royals have played a ton of games in the early going of the season and if they didn’t make moves for reinforcements, would’ve been playing the first two games of the White Sox series short-handed in the bullpen. It was a risk they weren’t willing to take.

Coming up was Eli Morgan, seen at The K last weekend as the 26th man in Saturday’s doubleheader against the Brewers. He pitched the final three frames of the Royals 8-2 win so he picked up the rare three inning save. It was the Royals first three inning save since Daniel Lynch IV did it in August of 2024. Prior to that you have to go all the way back to 2016 for a Royals three inning save. Three inning saves are cool. Old school cool. Morgan tossed two scoreless innings on Thursday against the White Sox. I think he can be an asset in this bullpen.

Morgan is joined by Mitch Spence, a late offseason acquisition by the Royals, coming over in mid-February after the Athletics designated him for assignment. He’s made just one appearance for the Storm Chasers, making a start last Saturday where he went five innings and allowed just one unearned run.

Quite a bit of off the field news on Thursday. Let’s start with the brand new City Connects that the Royals will don for the first time on Friday.

I…don’t really like them. I mean, they’re fine…but I thought the original City Connects were amazing. Everything about the old jersey was fantastic. The hat was iconic. So it was a difficult fashion bar to clear. These City Connects are just kind of meh. Except for the hat. The hat is really, really bad. I saw them in the team stores on Thursday at the yard and even in person they are just so poorly designed. I just don’t think we’re going to be seeing a lot of those in the wild.

I realize my fashion takes may disappoint some of you. I hope we can still be friends.

The other news is the biggie: Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is introducing an ordinance that would authorize the city to enter a binding term sheet, lease and development agreement for a Royals project to be located at Washington Square Park, nestled just east of Union Station and north of Crown Center. A new stadium for John Sherman and his ownership group seems closer today than at any time over the last few years. Our long, local nightmare might be over.

The project, which would include the stadium, an office complex and an entertainment district, would cost an estimated $1.9 billion. Lucas is proposing a funding framework that would chip in $600 million for the project. The state of Missouri, under a funding deal passed by the state legislature last summer, could pay up to 50 percent of the cost of a new stadium. At the moment though, it’s not clear how much the state—or Jackson County—would chip in. The rumblings are that it would be funded 60 percent by the public with the remainder to come from private financing. The stadium would open for the Royals in 2030.

Remember, as you read all of the beat writers and columnists as this deal takes shape, the economic numbers they will tout regarding this project as a benefit to the city and the surrounding area is strictly puffery. The initial read on the this is that the city would pass the ordinance before a lease or development plan are agreed upon. The city would fund their portion through bonds. Maybe! Or maybe through Tax Increment Financing. When you're building a house of cards, who really knows how it's done.

But it sounds like despite Sherman and the Royals inability to produce anything constructive in the two-plus years since the citizens of Jackson County rejected their first half-baked (quarter-baked?) stadium plan, they're still going to get what they craved all along. It just took longer than they anticipated.