Woof. That’s how I’d describe the last week of Royals baseball. Since we last spoke on Friday Notes, the Royals have scored four more runs than I have. You may not know this, but I am not a big league baseball player, so that’s pretty bad. They have, of course, lost all six of those games played. The best news of the week was that they didn’t lose yesterday. Off days are just terrible when the team is winning but boy are they amazing when the team is in a tailspin like this one. I’m not going to bore you with the numbers. You know that this is the worst stretch of offensive futility in team history. What I am going to tell you is that at least the rest of the division is mediocre.
- I think that’s where I’ll start this week. I hate these “if I had told you” things that people do, but I’m about to do one. I guess I’m self-loathing. Anyway, if I had told you before the season that Mike Moustakas would miss most of the season, Alex Gordon would miss a month or more, Kendrys Morales would hit like 2006 Angel Berroa, Alcides Escobar would somehow get worse, Chris Young would be giving up home runs at a record pace, Yordano Ventura would have an ERA well over 5.00, Kris Medlen would be on the DL after being a disaster and Joakim Soria had a 3.67 ERA, how many of you would have jumped at the chance to be just three games out of first place? All of you. That’s the answer. I’m not saying that the Royals are a good team. They definitely aren’t right now. I’m not sure if they will be in the future, but I know they aren’t at this particular moment. What I am saying is that there’s a lot of baseball left to be played and the Royals are somehow right in the thick of the division race. I don’t want to anger the Buddy Bell gods, but I think things simply have to turn around at some point. This is a team that just nine days ago was 30-22 and had a multiple game lead in the division. There’s at least some potential there. I’m going to try to be more positive, and this is how I’m doing it.
- As soon as I say I’m going to be more positive, I get into something negative. Well, I gave it my best shot. Before the season, I was worried that Volquez would see a negative effect from not just the extra innings he threw in the postseason but from the high stress innings he threw. Then he started the year with an ERA hovering around 1.00 and I thought that it was just another thing I was happily wrong about. Since blanking the Tigers for seven innings on April 21, Volquez is 2-6 with a 5.70 ERA in 53.2 innings over nine starts. I mean I guess he’s still getting almost six per start, which is good, but everything else is just not good at all. His velocity is there and all that, so I’m not sure it’s necessarily fatigue, but maintaining velocity doesn’t mean you aren’t tired. What I do know is that the Royals likely aren’t going anywhere without Volquez pitching well. This pitching staff is just not set up to have one of its supposed horses pitching poorly, and with Ventura’s struggles, that becomes even more true. The other thing about it is that if the Royals do fall out of the race, Volquez would be a ridiculously valuable trade chip as a pending free agent. Of course, if he doesn’t pitch well, he loses value. He just needs to be better, bottom line.
- Now it’s time to move on to the dead horse, which I will continue to beat. Alcides Escober is hitting .248/.274/.295 with a .209 TAv. Omar Infante is hitting .239/.279/.321 with a .237 TAv. Royals fans (rightly) want to run one of them out of town while the other one is a sacred cow to many. Look, I know what Escobar did in the ALCS and he has the hardware to prove it. I know that he’s been a very good defensive shortstop for the Royals for a long time now. And I know that Esky Magic means the Royals win with him at the top even though the numbers don’t support it. But enough is enough. Escobar is one of the very worst hitters in all of baseball. He’s to the point where Infante is honestly probably a better option to hit leadoff than him. I know that it doesn’t really matter because lineup construction isn’t that important and the rest of the team isn’t hitting anyway, but this has simply got to change. Maybe when Alex Gordon gets back, Yost will put him in the leadoff spot. That would make an awful lot of sense. Maybe he’ll stick Whit Merrifield there and hit Gordon second. Either way, it would breathe some life into an offense that desperately needs it.
- Okay, let’s get back to positive and talk about Danny Duffy. How good has he been? I’m a big Duffy fan, and I have to admit that I was skeptical that moving him back to the rotation was the right idea. They had to do it because of all their issues, but I just didn’t know how it would work out considering how well he had taken to his relief role. Whatever he learned in the bullpen has turned him into something really special right now. He’s throwing less than 14 pitches per inning, which is amazing, but doubly amazing for him. He’s striking guys out, not walking them and just generally being fantastic. He’s hit a bit of a wall in many of his starts, but I think that’s to be expected given the transition back to the rotation. If I was the Royals, I’d strongly consider a contract extension for Duffy through maybe the 2020 season or something like that. Obviously it would have to be friendly enough that if he ends up back in the bullpen, they aren’t paying too much for a reliever, but maybe throw starting and closing incentives in there to boost the deal. If he’s turned the corner, the Royals don’t want to see him pitching like this for someone else in a couple years and there’s minimal risk given how good he was in the bullpen before this.
- There’s still time to get tickets for the Pitch Talks event tonight (Friday, June 10) at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Our very own Mike Engel and Darin Watson will be part of the panel along with Amos Otis, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Danny Parkins, Carrington Harrison, Sam Mellinger, Arturo Marcano, Jonah Keri and our friends from Royals Review, Minda Haas Kuhlman and Max Rieper. Just click here and enter promo code “bpro” to get $5 off your ticket. It’s case sensitive, so use all lower case letters. It should be a phenomenal event.