In every season, a successful team will have a handful of signature wins.
These aren’t wins that kick off a winning streak or jumpstart a successful patch of baseball. Rather, these are wins that are larger than that. They are moments that define a season.
We witnessed one of those moments yesterday afternoon at The K.
Through seven, it was a mundane, run of the mill mid-June day game. Ian Kennedy built on a successful last start through his first three innings of work. He was inducing harmless pop ups and easy groundouts while mixing in a couple of whiffs.
Meanwhile, the Royals offense was vintage. That is to say they were scoring without the aid of the home run, instead using the old favorite of productive outs. Mike Moustakas eschewed an RBI with runners on the corners in the second when he grounded into a run-scoring double play. Whit Merrifield brought home a second run on a sacrifice fly after a groundout advanced Alcides Escobar to third who doubled to leadoff the inning.
The two-run advantage didn’t last long. Andrew Benintendi and Xander Bogaerts went back to back, launching a pair of homers to lead off the fourth. Suddenly, the Kennedy mojo was gone. He didn’t allow another run to cross in the inning, but required 37 pitches to get three outs. Two more scored in the next inning as the Sox took advantage of two errors from the pitcher – one from Kennedy and another from Mike Minor, who entered the frame with two down. By the time the Royals stopped throwing the ball around, the Red Sox held a 4-2 advantage.
The game fell into a familiar rhythm. The Royals loaded the bases in the seventh, but couldn’t take advantage. They were running low on outs.
The Red Sox held a 29-0 record when leading after seven. That was going to change.
With Matt Barnes coming out of the bullpen for the Red Sox, Jorge Bonifacio opened the inning looking at a called strike. That would be the last called strike for the Red Sox relievers over the next 22 pitches. Bonifacio fouled off a pitch in the zone before making his way to first on a walk. Everything he looked at was elevated.
Lorenzo Cain followed. Same story.
The Sox went to lefty Robby Scott to face Eric Hosmer. It didn’t matter. Whatever strike throwing malady Barnes was battling, it infected Scott as well. Just with a different location.
If you’re keeping score while reading, that makes 14 pitches from Red Sox relievers with just two in the zone. None of those pitches out of the zone was close. It’s a remarkable stretch of inept pitching.
Enter Salvador Perez.
Ahead of that at bat, in 46 career plate appearances with the bases stacked, Perez owned a .268/.261/.366 line. That’s not very good. He had just 11 hits in that situation, with four doubles and seven singles. As you would imagine for a player who owns a scant 3.5 percent walk rate, he had never drawn a bases loaded walk.
He wasn’t going to walk here.
This is a representation of the first three pitches he saw. After watching a pair of Red Sox relievers throw pitches everywhere but the strike zone, Perez actually swung at those two strikes. This is the moment where everyone following along on MLB Gameday was readying to take a screenshot of Perez’s at bat to post to Twitter. It’s just an awful approach given the situation and how the Royals arrived there.
Perez somehow found the discipline to lay off the next two pitches, both of which were – you guessed it – outside the strike zone. With Scott on the razor’s edge, Perez fouled off three consecutive pitches. One was definitely in the zone, a second was borderline, and a third was well outside. This is how the Perez plate appearance was shaping up after eight pitches.
Here’s the thing. To that point, all eight pitches were fastballs. All of them. They came in between 89.5 mph and 91.1 mph. This is a pitcher who clearly doesn’t have confidence in his secondary offerings. He can’t find the strike zone. Who can blame him?
Pitch nine? A 90.9 mph fastball that was elevated over the middle of the plate.
The ball left at 104 mph. With some serious hang time.
It took the ball a little while to leave the yard, but Perez wasn’t in a hurry. It took him almost nine seconds to get to first base. That’s fine. When you clobber your first grand slam, it should be savored.
It turns out, that grand slam was courtesy of Miguel Cabrera.
For real. Apparently, the last time the Royals and Tigers met, Cabrera gave Drew Butera a bat. Butera passed the bat along to Perez Wednesday morning. What the hell, Perez thought. I’ll swing the Miggy model. Of course.
The Royals are now one game under .500. They’re 3.5 games back in the AL Central and two back of the Wild Card.
We will be talking about this one for awhile. Three walks, a Miguel Cabrera bat, and a Salvador Perez grand slam. That’s how signature wins are made.