Avila bounces back

It probably should've felt more comfortable, but a win is a win and up to this point of the season, there have been too few of them. The Royals stacked together 12 hits, including four solo home runs, in salvaging the series finale against the Washington Nationals by the score of 6-2.

The win expectancy graphs makes it look like a breezy afternoon for the Royals.

Nary a blip or stumble. Yet my confidence in victory probably hovered closer to 50 percent for most of the game. That's just how these Royals go in 2026. Even the easy wins have a few moments where you break out into a cold sweat.

Luinder Avila did his part in making sure the Royals had this game under control, working 5.2 innings and throwing 92 pitches. Quite a change from his last outing where he couldn't get out of the first inning. In that game last Friday, Avila allowed five hits and three walks in 0.2 innings. Wednesday, he surrendered just three hits and one walk.

It turns out, the adjustments that Avila has been making have been with his positioning on the rubber. A few starts ago, the Royals had him shift more to the middle, rather than his usual spot more to the third base side. It's a move designed to harness the effectiveness of his sinker. From Anne Rogers:

“My goal is to throw the two-seam in the middle and allow it to move a lot,” Avila said. “When I’m on the third-base side, it misses too much when it moves.”

When things went awry against the Astros, Avila thought it might be because of his positioning. He moved even closer to the first-base side of the rubber, which didn’t help. Add in his left arm creeping higher than it needs to be during his delivery, and he’ll start missing big. A cue he hears a lot: Control your front side. That also eliminates waste pitches.

On Wednesday, Avila was back in the middle of the rubber, and his mechanics were back on track.

This was the Avila we saw in his starts against Cincinnati and Minnesota, where he allowed two hits and a run over five innings in both outings. It's a good thing that Friday's start appears to be a blip. He's too talented to have things go completely off the rails like that. For me, the most encouraging thing from this start was his command and how he was spotting his pitches in the zone. Even when things were going well in his two earlier starts this month, he was still walking too many batters. It was good to see him challenge hitters and locate.

It's a rare Royals game where the offense does something of note. I would hazard that those four solo home runs over the first three innings is certainly notable. They battered Washington starter Zack Littell, with Carter Jensen, John Rave, Lane Thomas and Michael Massey all exiting the yard, staking the Royals to a tidy 4-0 lead.

Jensen had himself a day. He got the Royals going straightaway with a leadoff home run in the first. He followed that up with a single in the second, a walk in the fourth, another single in the sixth and then a double in the eighth. He added a stolen base that inning for good measure and the front guy on a double steal with Bobby Witt Jr. I was impressed.

The Royals tacked on a couple of more runs in the sixth. Honestly, the six runs allowed flattered the Nationals as it felt like the Royals were on the verge of going large all afternoon. We are very familiar with this offense...It would be unwise to sneer at a six run outburst, even though there was a clear path to a double-digit tally.

The Royals bullpen is not good. As a group, they have an 8.4 SO/9 which ranks 20th in the majors. That's decent enough. But walks? That's a 4.8 BB/9 which is very poor, ranking 28th. And how about home runs? Well, thanks to the largess of Matt Strahm and just about every other reliever these days, that's ballooned to a whopping 1.49 HR/9. That's terrible. It's the worst mark in the majors.

Throw everything into a blender and you come up with a bullpen that has been worth -1.8 fWAR. Yep...that's the worst fWAR in the majors. The Nationals actually gives the Royals bullpen a run for the money at being the worst. They are currently at -1.7 fWAR. Although I'm not sure you would've recognized that from this series.

Strahm was the first man out of the bullpen on Wednesday, summoned after Avila issued a two out walk and his pitch count pushed above 90. Strahm's job: Retire the left-handed hitting CJ Abrams to close out the inning. Strahm served up a 2-2 pipe shot that Abrams laced for a run-scoring double. The lefty then offered a middle-middle cutter that Dylan Crews put an inside-out swing to lace a single down the right field line. A fantastic play by John Rave in right (and a replay review where the crew in New York was perhaps tuned into a different ballgame) saved the Royals from what could've turned into a disaster inning.

Lucas Erceg had the seventh and looked sharp, getting a pair of ground ball outs and a strikeout. John Schreiber came in the for the eighth and rolled up a double play after allowing a leadoff hit to Nasim Nuñez. To be fair, no Royals pitcher could get Nuñez out this series. One of baseball's great mysteries. Alex Lange closed it out, working around a leadoff hit by pitch. He needed his usual elevated number of pitches (he threw 19) to secure the final three outs.

Maikel Garcia was held out of the lineup on Wednesday, one day after exiting the game with soreness in his left hand. His hand has clearly been an issue for most of the season, one that has severely sapped his power. It didn't get any better when he was sidelined for around a week with a hamstring injury. It's not getting any better now. I'm not sure why the Royals just don't put him on the shelf for 10 days and see how he feels then.

Garcia last homered on April 30 in Sacramento. Since that game (where he also collected two doubles), he's hit .260/.314/.329 with eight doubles and a triple. He's lost almost 65 points off his slugging percentage over that time. I fail to see how Garcia playing through an injury helps him or the team.

The Royals made a deal on Wednesday sending cash to the Seattle Mariners for pitcher Randy Dobnak. The right-hander signed a minor league deal with the Mariners last winter and was pitching for their Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma where he posted a 4.24 ERA over 70 innings with 24 walks and 39 strikeouts. He's more organizational depth as the Royals are going through pitchers like Terry Francona goes through a bucket of chewing gum during games.

Dobnak made his major league debut in 2019 for the Minnesota Twins and appeared in 39 games for them over parts of five seasons, making 21 starts. He's thrown 140.2 big league innings with a career 4.86 ERA with 37 walks and 85 strikeouts.

The former Uber driver—who has a 4.99 rating—was added to the Royals 40-man roster and will report to Omaha. To make room for Dobnak, the Royals transferred Cole Ragans to the 60-day IL. That's not a good sign as they wait for more news from more tests and scans after an MRI on his elbow this week didn't reveal possible answers for what's ailing the lefty. The earliest he will be able to return to major league action is now July 7, but given his continued issues, that's going to be a stretch. At this point, I would think the best-case scenario is another September return, though I fear he's going to be down for the rest of the season.