The Royals strike in the first but ultimately fall short

Coming into Wednesday’s game against Sacramento, the Royals had scored a grand total of two runs in the first inning all year.

Yep. You read that correctly. In 29 games, the Kansas City Royals touched home plate in the first inning exactly twice. I’m not sure how that’s even possible.

Their first inning issues run deep. Collectively, they’re hitting .167/.200/.250 in the opening frame. Both of their runs have come via the home run. Solo shots. So the Royals haven’t even as much as mounted a first inning rally all season long.

Yet there they were in the first inning in Sacramento on Wednesday. Bobby Witt Jr. and Carter Jensen hit singles with one out with Witt advancing to third on Jensen’s knock. With Salvador Perez at the plate, he clubbed a little humpback liner to short. Shortstop Jacob Wilson was under it, but turned at the last second and dropped the ball.

Was it on purpose? It didn’t look like it as Wilson turned at the last moment as if he lost track of the ball. Still…with Perez running down the line at first and Jensen having to hold at second, it felt a little suspect. Except Witt foiled the plan to turn two by breaking for home once the ball dropped. Pivot man Jeff McNeil noticed and threw home instead of to first. Witt slid in just ahead of the tag.

A first inning run!

So in addition to scoring in the first only through a home run we can now add a bizarre, maybe on purpose, dropped popup as another means to manufacture a run. Honestly, the Royals cannot afford to be picky. Take the first inning runs however you can get ‘em.

And then the Royals forgot to score until the ninth inning.

The final: Royals 2, Athletics 5. The four game winning streak is over.

Starter Michael Wacha was far from his best. His fastball velocity was down a tick and his spin rates were lagging. The result on his secondary pitches was a loss of his normal horizontal movement. The pitches still moved, just not as much as they usually do. The result were some, let's say meaty sliders, that hung around in the zone for far too long.

One of those sliders was to Lawrence Butler with two on in the fourth. It was an 0-2 pitch that was close to the inner edge, but not far enough inside. Butler turned it and burned it, crushing it over the fence in right for a three-run shot that proved the difference.

Still, as I wrote about Bubic on Tuesday and Lugo in the homestand finale, credit to a starting pitcher who can hang around for at least five when he doesn't have his best stuff. And credit to the A's bats who, as on the series opener against Bubic, just seem to grind out plate appearance after plate appearance.

With the Royals down four runs, Witt and Perez combined for a couple of ninth inning singles and advanced 90 feet on a wild pitch to get to second and third with one out. Michael Massey hit a deep fly to center to plate Witt. The Royals have hit 12 sac flies this year, the most in the AL. They trail only the Cardinals in the sac fly department. St. Louis has 15 sac flies.

Isaac Collins walked to bring up the tying run: Jac Caglianone. You’ll recall that on Sunday, Cags launched a game-tying home run with two outs in the ninth against the Angels. Could he do it again?

It would help if he found a better approach at the plate.

Swinging at pitch number three, a 2-0 sinker, in that location…absolutely atrocious. Just gross plate discipline. When Mark Leiter Jr. threw a splitter in the zone that Caglianone fouled off to move the count to 2-2, I think we knew how this was going to end.

I mean, look at that chart again. While Caglianone didn’t have to hit a home run, he basically got himself out. He saw five pitches, four of them weren’t in the zone. He actually took the two pitches that were closest to the zone. Hell, on the first pitch, Sacramento catcher Shea Langeliers challenged because it was so close.

After hitting that epic home run on Sunday, Caglianone has gone 0-7 with six strikeouts. He has not looked good at the plate in this series.

Sacramento starter Luis Severino was in command all night long. He finished the night throwing seven innings, allowing four hits. Two of those, you’ll note came in the first. He walked two and struck out eight. The Royals managed just four Hard Hit balls off Severino all night. Again, two of the four came in that first inning.

Good thing Severino showed up to shove because this was a sloppy game in the early going. Both teams seemed intent to run into as many outs on the bases as possible. Lane Thomas was picked off first to end the second inning, the second time in as many nights he made a boneheaded error on the bases. The A’s pulled a couple TOOTBLANs of their own in the bottom half of the inning.

Thomas atoned for his baserunning blunder a couple of innings later when he gunned down Nick Kurtz at home in the fourth. It was a fantastic throw from Thomas and a perfect reception and tag by catcher Jensen.

In the fifth Jac Caglianone walked and was then out when he ran into a ground ball hit by Kyle Isbel. The ball wasn’t even hit that hard. Caglianone just ran into it. That’s kind of the ultimate TOOTBLAN. But since it didn’t involve a throw, it was just an OOTBLAN.

The sloppiness wasn’t limited to the bases. The routes the players took on flyballs was borderline comical. The Royals corner outfielders especially seemed to be playing by sound rather than sight when tracking balls hit to the outfield. The game settled into something of a dull rhythm in the middle innings.

A day after the Royals lost Jonathan India for the season due to injury, two more players went under the knife and will be out until 2027. Ryan Bergert, who has spent the first month of the year in Omaha and made three starts prior to landing on the IL with elbow discomfort, had Tommy John surgery. Bergert finished last year on the IL with forearm tightness that was eventually diagnosed as an elbow strain. I’m going to assume that a tear was diagnosed at the time and the decision was made to delay surgery in hopes a winter of rest and rehabilitation would at least delay what these days feels inevitable. Sadly, he lasted only around 10 Triple-A innings before requiring surgery. We know the timetable for his return is around a year.

That's terrible news for Bergert and the Royals. I have long felt that Bergert was a guy who could pick up some important innings at some point for the big league club this season. If he was Emergency Starter, Plan A for the Royals, they're going to have to break glass at some point on the next in line.

Meanwhile, Ben Kudrna had olecranon stress fracture fixation surgery. That one, I had to rely on my internet medical degree. An olecranon stress fracture is “an uncommon phenomenon” that accounts for around five percent of all baseball-related elbow injuries. The surgery is a procedure where screws or bands are used to lock plates together to promote healing. The surgery is usually successful and he study I found at the National Library of Medicine said most athletes resumed throwing four to six month post-op. That’s bad news for his 2026 season but his long-term prognosis sounds fairly positive.

It’s safe to assume that Kudrna has been dealing with this for quite some time as his control completely abandoned him upon his promotion to Triple-A last summer. The issues continued this spring in Arizona. He made just a single appearance for the Storm Chasers this year, walking four in two innings.

If you want to see a bright side to these injuries, the Royals will now have three players they can shift to the 60-day IL and off the 40-man roster when they decide to add a player or two to the 40-man roster. James McArthur and Alec Marsh are already on the 60-day IL.

It’s also a reminder that you can never have too much pitching depth.

As for the other arms currently on the IL, Carlos Estévez threw against live batters on Tuesday in Arizona. JJ Picollo said on 610 Sports Radio that his velocity was very close to where they need it to be. That sounds…encouraging. Although given what we saw back in March I will reserve judgement until we see him pitch in a real game situation.

Meanwhile, Steven Kolek (strained oblique) and Bailey Falter (elbow inflammation) are both on a rehab assignment in Omaha. Both pitched on Wednesday. Kolek started and threw 4.1 scoreless while Falter retired all four batters he faced in relief, striking out two. The Royals still have some time with both (their rehab assignments both started on April 15 and can run for 30 days), but I would assume Kolek will come off the IL and will be optioned to Omaha. Falter, as we know from the roster projections this spring, does not have options remaining so the Royals will have to bring him back to the majors or risk losing him on waivers.