Okay, now that’s much better. The Royals seem to have gotten back on track this week by winning back-to-back series at home to return to .500 ahead of a huge series this weekend with the first place Chicago White Sox. They didn’t play so well against the Braves but won the series, and then I thought they played a good series against the Red Sox. It’s definitely the right time to be playing probably the best baseball of the season.
The Royals have had a couple measuring stick series already to this point, where they did fare well. Remember that they took three of four from Houston (before Houston looked awful) and then two of three from Baltimore. This team seems to get up for the big series, and it’d be hard to look at this upcoming one as anything but big.
- Eric Hosmer is frightening at the plate for opposing pitchers right now. He’s hitting .327/.388/.553 with 17 extra base hits through 40 games. If you extrapolate that to 162 games, he’s looking at 32 homers, 32 doubles and four triples. He appears to be getting more patient as the season wears on as well, so I’d expect both his walk and power numbers to go up as he lays off pitches he can’t drive as much. It’s pretty fun to see him do this. I said during spring training that he had bulked up a little and I thought it would be a career year for him, and one thing that is plain to see is that he’s simply hitting the ball farther this year. We’ve all heard the stat that he has four homers of 440 feet or more, which is the most in baseball. But it’s easy to see in his fly ball distance too. This year, he’s averaging 311.65 feet on his fly balls, which is 12th longest in all of baseball. That’s more than 27 feet longer than his average fly ball last year. I know that a lot of people have noted that his stats are about the same now as they were at this time last year, but I just have to say this feels different. How hard and how far he’s hitting the ball is a big reason why.
- Clark Fosler did a nice job of writing about the decision to send down Christian Colon when the Royals called up Whit Merrifield on Wednesday, but I want to weigh in briefly. I know it’s not terribly popular to go against the organization, but it’s beyond clear to me that they got this one wrong. I’m aware that Omar Infante is still owed $13.8 million by the organization and that’s a huge cost to just eat, but at this point, he is a sunk cost. The guy is hitting .239/.269/.301, which is somehow an improvement over his abomination of a season last year. Now, though, he’s not even playing good defense. I don’t think Colon is a world beater, but I do think that a guy who has a career .350 OBP in 216 career plate appearances to go along with two of the biggest hits in Royals history in the postseason should get an opportunity to start at second base. If they had someone better, I wouldn’t care. But it’s time to move on from Infante. I suspect they will soon enough, but this move is just very curious to me, no matter how much he’s making.
- What to do with Cheslor Cuthbert? The guy isn’t hitting quite as well as a lot of people probably believe (.255/.271/.383), but he’s shown he can play third base and has the look of a guy who can hold his own at the big league level. A lot of people want him to play second base, but I just don’t see it. To me, his footwork just isn’t good enough for him to play an adequate second base. Now, if he was hitting the cover off the ball, I’d say you find a way to make it work, but my guess is he goes back to Triple-A on Saturday when Mike Moustakas is activated from the disabled list. He probably will spend some time working at second base, with Colon at shortstop and Hunter Dozier at third base. I think Cuthbert could find a way to be something close to just below average, which would allow him to carve out some time at second base, maybe even for the 2017 Royals. I don’t think he’ll ever be anything special there, and I think that Royals fans would be very frustrated with his defense at second if they had to watch it every day. I’m all for trying it out, though. Guys have moved from third to second with success in the past, and I could definitely be wrong about this one.
- Let’s take a minute and talk about Salvador Perez’s defense this season. I don’t know what he did in the offseason, but he’s even better this year at throwing out runners than he’s been throughout his entire career. To date, he’s caught 15 of 26 attempted base stealers, which is the best in the league. His throws are strong and on the money basically every time. It’s been really impressive to watch. Honestly, I had some complaints about Salvy’s defense last year. Many didn’t want to hear it, but there were more than a couple occasions when he got lazy about blocking pitches, which led to some wild pitches that I think could have been avoided. This year, he’s allowed just six wild pitches through his first 36 games of the season, which puts him on pace for around 24 this year. That’s half the number from each of the last three seasons. His at bats can be infuriating to watch, but his defense is better than ever this season.
- Kelvin Herrera is good. He’s really good. I know I’ve talked about him before, so I won’t spend very much time on him, but I didn’t realize he’d only walked two batters all season long. With the kind of movement he gets on his pitches, that kind of control is just unfair to opposing hitters. Of course, Hanley Ramirez might agree also after their showdown on Tuesday night. The fact that he was able to add a third pitch in that slider has made him just a filthy weapon. He seems to be getting hit a little bit more by being around the strike zone more, but man is he fun to watch right now.