The Royals are powering up

It figures the Royals go back out on the road and we get another low scoring pitcher's duel. Royals starter Kris Bubic allowed just a single run in his five innings of work. Athletics starter Aaron Civale did not allow a run in his five innings. The Royals scored their early run in the sixth when reliever Hogan Harris surrendered a home run to Salvador Perez. Otherwise, the bullpens were clean.

Of course the game completely changes when we get into extra innings and the dreaded Manfred Man takes his spot on second.

Why does it feel like extras always sets up in favor for the Royals? That's more a rhetorical question because I could be totally wrong on this, but it always seems like Kyle Isbel is the first man up with the freshly-minted Manfred Man on second. We all know what Isbel's intent is in that situation, and honestly, I don't really hate him squaring around to bunt in extra innings. He's obviously very good at it. Except on Tuesday, he snatched at his opportunity and went for a pitch he should've pulled back on. The result was a pop up, but it was one that was somehow perfectly placed. The ball dropped and Isbel was safe at first. Nick Loftin, the Manfred Man, had to hold though, because of the ball in the air.

Still, it didn't matter. Not with Bobby Witt Jr. getting warm.

Pure power. After going 123 plate appearances to open the year without a home run, Witt now has two in his last eight. Baseball has a way of leveling out if you just give it some time. Who knew?

A baseball also has a way of flying over the fence when it's left in Witt's happy zone. As you see in the GIF above, it was a perfectly placed liner, just to the right of that notch in right-center, a home run in just 11 of 30 major league ballparks.

The home run provided the margin in a 4-1 extra-inning win for the Royals. They won their first road game since April 6 and have now won four straight for the first time this season.

Gang, I think Vinnie Pasquantino is about ready to go off at the plate. I mean, the signs were already fairly obvious as he posted a .385 OBP off of seven walks in the last homestand. He also clubbed three extra base hits en route to a .529 slugging percentage. It's one of those things while still early, Pasquantino was so bad his numbers will take a little more time to progress to the mean. Anyway, check out his first two plate appearances against Aaron Civale on Tuesday.

Here's their first confrontation:

He saw 10 pitches in a plate appearance that didn't even get to a three-ball count! He fouled off some decent pitches before going down for that splitter and looping one down the left field line for a double.

This was the battle in the third inning:

Civale was a little more out of the zone in this one, but Pasquantino wasn't taking chances and spoiled pitch after pitch...after pitch. In sum, the Pasquatch saw 19 pitches over his first two PAs. Civale had thrown a total of 54 pitches at that point. Pasquantino forced Civale to throw 35 percent of his pitches!

Alas, Pasquantino was removed from the game after his third plate appearance when he appeared to tweak something in his back on a swing. After the game, he said it was something he's been dealing with for a while; general tightness from time to time. That explains the contraption he was wearing during the walkoff celebrations on Sunday.

He says the injury is a day-to-day sort of thing and he will see how he feels on Wednesday. If he misses time just when he was putting everything together...

Maybe Pasquantino working those two early PAs was payback for the way the A's battled in the box against Royals starter Kris Bubic. The first two innings in particular were are grind for the lefty as he required 50 pitches to get six outs. Bubic got plenty of swings and misses, getting 14 whiffs on 44 swings. He also got a decent amount of chase. But he got ahead of just 11 of the 23 batters he faced.

He got his strikeouts with six, but he also walked four and hit a batter. There was a lot of traffic on the bases in Bubic's five innings of work, a few slightly stressful pitches. The A's also elevated his pitch count, fouling off 18 pitches, most of those coming on a two-strike count.

It was just an uneasy outing from Bubic. Like Lugo on Sunday who was able to hang around for seven innings after allowing six runs in the first two frames, credit to the lefty for battling even though he was never super-comfortable on the mound. He was able to limit the damage to just a single run that allowed his team to stay in the hunt.

As noted, Salvador Perez tied the game up with his fifth home run of the season.

Typical Salvy bomb. Salvy being Salvy. Sal! You know, 425 feet off the bat at an exit velocity of 107 mph to center field. I may have to amend my opinion from a few weeks ago that The Captain was near the end. That's just a quick and tidy swing on a 96 mph four-seam fastball. Perez is strong enough to muscle that over the wall.

Perez was battering the baseball on Tuesday. This at bat came after Perez pulled up at first after lining a ball off the wall in left. He hit the ball so hard (and wasn't especially quick out of the box) so there wasn't really any chance for him to bag a double, even though it did bounce off the wall. When he turned at first, he grabbed his quad. At first, I thought he had tweaked a hamstring, but he was stretching it out like he was cramping. I'm not sure how he would be experiencing cramps in that moment, but he stayed in the game. Perez was actually stretching out his leg again in his at bat in the sixth just before he blasted that home run.

Maybe he's back to being superhuman.

Cool milestone news: The Perez home run pushed him past 3,000 total bases in his career. He's going to be moving past some names on the Royals all-time list for those total bases over the next few weeks.

Royals all-time total base leaders:
1. George Brett - 5,044
2. Amos Otis - 3,051
3. Frank White - 3,009
4. Hal McRae - 3,006
5. Salvador Perez - 3,003

I just can't get over the fact that just five players in franchise history have over 3,000 total bases and George Brett has an almost 2,000 total base gap between him and Amos Otis.

I'm going to stick to my prior statements that Daniel Lynch IV has been the best Royals reliever in the early going. He had the seventh inning on Tuesday and delivered another scoreless frame, allowing just one hit. This was his pitch chart.

I grabbed the chart because, as I was watching the game, I was thinking that he was really staying out of the middle of the zone. Confirmed. The hanging slider to Shea Langeliers in the middle that was laced for a double aside, Lynch was living right on the edges of the zone. Maybe 20 pitches is more than you want from your key reliever, but the lefty was painting.

Credit to the entire bullpen who collectively showed up on Tuesday. John Schreiber, Lynch, Matt Strahm, Nick Mears and Lucas Erceg combined to go five scoreless innings on four hits and two walks. They struck out five. This being the Royals bullpen, it wasn't without some anxiety. Strahm loaded the bases in his inning but got out unscathed. After the game, he said there was a little intent in the bases loaded situation as he worked around the right-handed hitting Darell Hernaiz to face lefty Jeff McNeil. Bold given that despite owning the platoon advantage, Strahm had allowed three hits in seven at bats ahead of their matchup on Tuesday. Erceg allowed a two-out walk and single before he secured the win by getting a soft lineout to second.

My favorite part of the Mears inning was when Nick Kurtz, who after a first inning walk has now taken a free pass in 17 consecutive games, challenged a 3-2 strike call on a low slider from Mears.

Shot:

Chaser:

I knew I would like the ABS challenges. I'm surprised by how much I like them. An added wrinkle to an extremely tense situation!

In other bullpen news, before the game, the Royals announced they were optioning Eli Morgan to Triple-A and recalling Luinder Avila. Morgan has been far from the worst reliever in the bullpen, but he has options, so he's the guy who will hop on that KC-to-Omaha shuttle a few times this year.

I almost hate to bring it up, but there was some sloppy baserunning from the Royals, twice they made the final out of an inning at third base. In the first instance, it was Witt breaking for the base after a ball hopped away from the catcher Langeliers. Witt is a quick twitch runner who is always looking to grab that extra 90 feet. With his speed, he's always a great bet. In this case, the ball didn't bounce far enough away from Langeliers. It was actually a very kind hop that allowed him to field it and fire to third. Witt was out by a literal mile. He really needed to wait a tick to make the read.

The second TOOTBLAN came a couple of innings later when the Royals attempted a double steal against Scott Barlow on an 0-2 pitch. The lead runner, Lane Thomas, broke early for third. A little too early. Like Witt earlier, this was a bad read. While you can somewhat understand Witt going for it, Thomas doing that in that situation was simply poor baserunning.

Before the game the Royals announced that second baseman Jonathan India underwent a labrum repair surgery on his left shoulder. He will miss the remainder of the season.

The shoulder issue had been something chronic for India since he injured it while diving for a ground ball last June. It sounds like that the pain wasn't going to get any better and had, in fact, increased of late. Surgery is the only recourse for an injury of this type.

This likely ends India's time with the Royals. If that's the case, it's a wrap on a little over a season where he hit .228/.322/.343 and accumulated a total of 0.5 bWAR over 625 plate appearances.

He came to the Royals ahead of the 2025 season in exchange for starter Brady Singer. I get that it's been something of a polarizing move, but I continue to maintain that it was a shot the Royals needed to take. They acquired India to solidify the top of the order. They weren't looking for pop. They wanted a guy who could get on base. Don't forget, in the 2024 season, Royals leadoff hitters posted a combined .270 OBP. India was an upgrade, but he wasn't enough of one. It didn't help that the Royals decided to try him in the outfield early in the 2025 season.

At any rate, while the trade didn't work out for the Royals, it wasn't exactly a disaster. They dealt from a position of strength to improve the top of the order. It sort of worked. Hell, it was worth it to me personally because I haven't seen Singer pitch since he left Kansas City and I'm just fine with that. If you want to drag the organization for anything regarding India, do it for tendering him a contract. It was an $8 million gamble that, because of this injury, did not work out.