I will remember that way more fondly than I recall this game.

In March, Cotton’s UCL ligament exploded like Gallagher smashed it with a mallet. If he never throws another pitch, I’ll always remember him for seven innings of two-hit ball in April 2017. And I tell that boring story because tonight another of those acquisitions in the Hill-Reddick fleecing, Frankie Montas, also spent several innings stymieing the Royals, in between long stretches when his offensive teammates beat Royals pitching like the Baby Blue Bombers had collectively stolen something.

If the A’s got to play the Royals all the time, it’s possible they wouldn’t quite so rue the day they let Rich Hill, Patron Saint of Effectively Wild (formerly a Baseball Prospectus podcast), go for nothing.

Now, it’s easy to befuddle the Royals as presently constructed. They are very bad on offense. And it’s easier to let it all hang out there in your fourth career start when you’ve been staked with a nine-run lead, which is exactly what the Royals gave the A’s.

Ian Kennedy was Montas’ counterpart; you, casual Royals observer, will be unsurprised to learn that Kennedy did not exactly match Montas’ prowess on the pitching rubber. Oh, sure, he sat down the first four A’s he faced before giving up a home run to Matt Olson; it flew 428 feet and exited the building at 108 mph, which often happens when you throw a belt-high fastball dead center of the plate with no movement.

The third inning is where everything got rocky (i.e. went to hell) for Kennedy. The inning’s first six batters either reached (Jonathan Lucroy singled, Matt Joyce walked, Matt Chapman singled, Jed Lowrie walked, Khris Davis singled) or, in the case of Olson, cleared the bases with his second homer of the game. If his season’s 10^th was launched, No. 11 was rocketed into orbit, into the fountain some 456 feet away. That baseball exited at 110.3 mph, the fourth-hardest hit ball Kennedy’s surrendered this season; given the year Kennedy is having, that’s no small feat.

By this point it was 7-0, but Dustin Fowler hit a solo home run for poops and grins before the inning ended; apropos of nothing, one of my best friend’s is named Dustin Fowler.

Montas sat down eight in a row before Alcides Escobar lined a single into center in the third; by that time, the deficit was eight runs. And unlike collegiate softball, where you can end the game after five innings if the deficit is eight runs or more, we still had six more innings of this.

The Fox Sports Kansas City broadcast made a crucially important decision in the fourth inning; instead of more time spent with Rex Hudler and Ryan Lefebvre, the broadcast sent Joel Goldberg down to talk to Paul Rudd, Eric Stonestreet, Rob Riggle, David Koechner and a subdued Jason Sudeikis about their role with Big Slick Celebrity Weekend. Between Rudd attempting to have Very Serious Baseball Man conversations with Goldberg, Riggle hollering random gibberish and Koechner dusting off some Champ Kind for the occasion, it was easily the best part of the game.

For fun, the Royals ended the fourth and fifth innings with double play groundouts.

Back-to-back-to-back singles, including Lucroy’s 1,000^th career hit, gave the A’s run No. 9 in the sixth inning. It was here I assumed we’d reached the portion of the evening where the A’s were killing time and the Royals were killing time and we were just gonna zoom through the final few frames and get everybody home.

Then the A’s scored seven more runs in the ninth.

[very Jeff Goldblum voice] Mmm. Yes. Seven runs. In the ninth? Yes. Seven runs in the ninth. Of a 16-0 ballgame. The Royals… find a way.

Chapman walked. Lowrie walked. Mark Canha singled. Olson walked, bring in his fifth RBI of the game. Chad Pinder flied out, so assume he’s getting sent down, but Stephen Piscotty made up for it by doubling home Lowrie and Canha. Then Fowler homered again to make it 15-0. Lucroy tripled (???) and scored on a sac fly by Joyce, which… I don’t know how baseball’s unwritten rules work. But scoring on a sac fly in a 15-0 game seems like something that Billy Martin would’ve had a pitcher throwing at somebody for. Call me old-fashioned.

Abraham Almonte hit a two-out triple in the ninth. Emilio Pagan struck out Dozier on three pitches to end the game with Almonte on third. This game was trash.

The Bright Spot: Whit Merrifield had three hits!

The Nadir: Almost all of the preceding 780 words.

The Next Step: Trevor Cahill makes his triumphant return to Kansas City sporting a 1-2 record, 2.25 ERA and 41 strikeouts; if there is mercy in this world, he will be beaten like a piñata tomorrow. Jason Hammel is also pitching; he struck out 10 in his last appearance. If there’s mercy in the world, he’ll double that total tomorrow.

But what if I told you it didn’t have to be that way? In fact, what if I told you the Royals were (gasp) underachieving?

Actually, you’d probably believe that.

But what if it could be true?

If you’ve made it to this site, you (I hope) have a pretty good understanding of semi-advanced analytics, which means you don’t need my awkward attempts at sounding like I know what I’m doing. So let’s dive in with some super-fun stats that may offer you a glimmer of hope in this abysmal season.

(Note: I’m an equal-opportunity employer. I’ll use some stats from Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Savant and FanGraphs. Variety is the spice of life, after all.)

xwOBA

I could try (and fail) to give you the clinical definition of expected weighted On-Base Average, but the definition is like 250 words long and reads like a rogue SAT question. Call it quality and amount of contact plus walks and strikeouts, which is what I pulled from Baseball Savant.

What has this to do with the Royals? Well, at present the MLB average wOBA is .312 and the expected wOBA is .334, a -.022 difference. Well, guess who has the most players in baseball (minimum 50 plate appearances) with a wOBA/xwOBA difference larger than that -.022 difference?

It’s the Royals, stupid (and also the Blue Jays and Phillies, but you can do your own legwork on why they’re not very good at the moment).

Only Jorge Soler (.416 wOBA/.382 xWOBA) is outperforming expectations, but some of those underperforming are doing so quite spectacularly. Lucas Duda is -.060 (.314/.374). For all the good Mike Moustakas has done, his differential is -.049 (.362/.411). Alcides Escobar, Cheslor Cuthbert and Drew Butera are all underperforming by more than 40 points.

Will the difference be substantial, should these guys start tracking closer to the mean? Dear reader, they will not. Even if Butera, Cuthbert and Escobar get closer to the -.022 mark, they’ll still be below league-average in wOBA. So will Abraham Almonte. Only Moustakas and Soler have an xwOBA at .380 or above; while not out of the ordinary, no other teams are fielding so many Quad-A players on the regular.

Hard-Hit Ball Rate (short interlude)

You will not be stunned to learn that the Royals are one of 15 teams across baseball who do not employ a player who have hit at least half their batted balls 95 mph or harder (min. 50 batted ball events).

You’ll similarly be unsurprised to learn that the Royals are one of seven teams with three or more batters hitting less than 30 percent of their balls 95 mph or harder.

Of those seven, the Royals are one of four—the Rays, the Astros and the Twins—with fitting into both slivers of this particular Venn diagram. The Royals are hitting softly almost across the board. Jon Jay is a starter for this outfit and has made solid contact on less than one percent of the pitches he’s seen.

(Silver lining: Overall, FanGraphs has the Royals hard-hit ball rate pegged at 36.5 percent, which is a very solid ninth in the league. The downside there is that 20.7 percent line drive rate is but 17^th.)

You probably knew all this. But this is one of those nice stats that confirms what we already believe.

Chasing Balls and losing the strike zone

You look at the top of the leaderboard for lowest swing rate on balls outside the zone, you find the usual suspects—Joe Mauer, Joey Votto, Mike Trout, Alex Blandino (hey, you fish for tuna, sometimes you catch an old boot). There are no Royals on the top-30 of this list, although there are plenty of old faces—Jarrod Dyson, Lorenzo Cain, Ben Zobrist—and a few more quality Alex Gordon at-bats may put him up there.

What was more surprising is that both Salvador Perez (47.3 percent) and Mike Moustakas (39.0 percent) were bottom-30 chasers. Both are well-known for their aggression at the plate. Both have done a good job this season as the linchpins in a lineup lacking consistency. Both could stand to quit chasing outside the zone so often.

This represents a larger problem within the Royals ethos: they don’t walk. I don’t know if this is a philosophy problem or poor command of the strike zone, but at 7.7 percent, they walk less than all but the Red Sox (who hit) and the Tigers (who suck). The swinging strike percentage, while not as bad (10.2 percent) is still in the bottom-half of the league.

On the one hand, you check out someone like Moustakas and you can see an area for improvement—low and/or away is the spot to get him to chase, which you can see from below…

… while someone like Cheslor Cuthbert is more of an equal-opportunity chaser.

Conclusion

Sports can be frustrating. Sometimes you spend day after day following a team and they are more up and down than a depressed cocaine addict. I’d argue that the teams that lose 3-2 and win 10-3 drive fanbases crazier than whatever the Royals keep doing (i.e. losing all the time and being largely bad while doing so).

The good news: like as not, only Perez, Gordon and Soler are locks to be on the roster by next season. That’s beauty of a rebuild (which is what this is, regardless of how terrified the whole franchise seems to be of uttering those words, even when they’re barely winning a third of their games and the stadium is 40 percent full): whatever dumb things are dissatisfying to you currently, chances are pretty good some other worse, stupider thing will be the problem soon.

(I’ve been told my articles are not for those suffering from clinical depression. There’s probably something to that.)

Historically, the answer had been pretty good, depending on your perspective. In two career starts on less than four days of rest he’d pitched seven innings and allowed three hits, one earned run and struck out seven.

The problem is that was total. Both previous times—May 3, 2014 against Detroit and May 15, 2016 against Atlanta—also represented Duffy’s first start of the season after performing more of a long man role out of the pen. It was basically a bridge start, the kind of thing that happens when you can’t send a guy to the minors to get stretched out but still need him to start working longer into the game.

Saturday Duffy started on three days rest because Major League Baseball is actively trying to screw the Royals trying to help Kansas City make up for all the days recently lost due to weather/natural disaster. Which meant Duffy was unlikely to go the distance, thereby turning the game over to Kansas City’s bullpen and making a bad situation infinitely worse.

Is that exactly what happened? Buddy you know it was! Duffy threw 101 largely ineffective pitches, allowing 10 hits and six earned runs, although we’ll get to how that’s not exactly all his fault later, before yielding to the bullpen which was once more only too happy to toss some gas onto the fire.

The Tigers got going in the very first inning Leonys Martin led off with a double, with Duffy limiting Jeimer Candelario and Miguel Cabrera to ground outs. Then Nick Castellanos singled to score Martin and get the Motor City Kitties on the board—to which the Royals responded an inning later with singles from Cheslor Cuthbert, Abraham Almonte and Drew Butera, the last scoring Cuthbert.

The Royals had a chance to go ahead in the third when Mike Moustakas extended his hitting streak to 13 games and advanced to second on a two-out Jorge Soler walk. Cuthbert flew out and Detroit tacked on two in the third on a two-run swat by Castellanos.

Ah but our heroes responded in the fourth by loading the bases (Almonte single, Alcides Escobar single, Butera reaches on an error), and tacked on runs thanks to a Jon Jay groundout and a Whit Merrifield sac fly.

The fifth inning is where the wheels came off for Duffy and by extension, the Royals. He surrendered a leadoff single to Victor Martinez, then got JaCoby Jones to line out and James McCann to strike out. That set up this sequence:

• Jose Iglesias single, Martinez to second
• Dixon Machado single, Martinez scores, Iglesias to third.
• Tim Hill replaces Duffy
• Martin singles on a bunt mishandled by Butera (not that he would’ve gotten the speedy Martin anyway). Bases loaded.
• Candelario walks. Iglesias scores. Bases still loaded.
• Cabrera walks. Machado scores. Bases still loaded.
• Kevin McCarthy replaces Hill.
• Castellanos flies out.

Given what the Royals have become in terms of a bullpen, this was never going to go well, but the offense kept trying, God bless ‘em. Almonte, having the game of his life, led off with a single, followed by an Escobar double that moved him to third. Butera popped out (of course) but Jay scored Almonte on a ground out to get the Royals back within two runs.

And then Jones homered in the bottom of the sixth (bad).

And then two Justin Grimm walks were begat by a Cabrera single, a Castellanos double and a Martinez sac fly in the seventh (worse).

And then Burch Smith loaded the bases with nobody out in the eighth, leading to two runs (why am I still watching this).

And then the Royals meekly folded in the ninth, turning a two-run game into an eight-run whipping (what did I just do with my Saturday).

The Bright Spot: Abraham Almonte went 3-for-4 and yes that is the whole joke.

The Nadir: Pretty much anything that happened after Danny Duffy departed, although kudos to the Royals offense for allowing Warwick Saupold to record seven outs on just 12 pitches. That a way to work the count.

The Next Step: Eric Skoglund is the next sacrifice to the baseball gods; he and his 9.31 ERA go against Francisco Liriano, who pitched 6.2 innings and gave up one run against Kansas City, April 2. The Royals will go for the most unlikely series split in recent history. Rumor is if they get it the city of Detroit will have a referendum on whether or not to just ban baseball.

Part of this, it’s true, is due to the singular nature of his accuracy and his pitch economy in Friday’s doubleheader opener against Detroit. He was deep into the eighth before he reached 80 pitches, finishing eight innings for the first time since 2015 and his first complete game since 2012 when he was with Baltimore. Not bad for the 35-year old.

And part of the extended nature of Hammel’s outing, it should be noted, goes to MLB’s decision to saddle Kansas City with two doubleheaders in four days, with another on tap eight days from now. If you’re scoring at home, that’s 13 games in 12 days. Seems fair. No, I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.

And the last part of what brought Hammel through the ninth inning against Detroit was much more obvious and it’s that the bullpen that would erstwhile save his arm and the Royals chances of winning is a raging tirefire the likes of which those spoiled by the heady days of HDH will do better to avoid.

But calling those other entities into question belittles the achievement of Hammel and while he takes a lot of (deserved) crap in this space, it should be noted that he was phenomenal, and that despite using just a fastball-slider combo around 90 percent of the time.

And look, of course the Royals lost because the Royals lose all the time now and it’s the world we all have to adjust to. They’re 3-14 through 17 games, which not only gives them pole position for the top overall pick in the 2019 Amateur draft, they’re threatening to run away with it like Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes. They’ve lost nine straight; without some postponed games, that number could be significantly higher. The road to 90 losses was graded and paved by February; we’re just reaping those benefits now.

So with that in mind, we won’t spend tons of time on questionable lineup decisions (you don’t deserve to win a baseball game with Abraham Almonte hitting sixth)(or for that matter, not pinch-hitting for Ryan Goins when he can’t hit lefties)(you know what, let’s just forget about Ned Yost) and instead I’ll try, for once, to draw some positives from Hammel, who I spent nearly as much time excoriating as Ian Kennedy last year.

In scattering five hits and two earned over nine innings, it’s true Hammel struck out just four batters. He also recorded a Game Score of 78; the best by a Royal since Jason Vargas almost one year ago to the day (79 against San Francisco, one of three 78+ Game Scores over a week last April back when we were all hopeful) and Hammel’s first since June 23, 2015 against the Dodgers.

Hammel really only ran into one spot of trouble, giving up back-to-back doubles to James McCann and JaCoby Jones to start the fifth, with McCann scoring on Jones’ double and Jones scoring two batters later on a Dixon Machado sac fly after Jones stole third. In the sixth, he could’ve had some issues after Nick Castellanos’ one-out double after Jeimer Candelario led off the frame with a single, but Hammel picked him off after Candelario inexplicably elected not to dive back into the bag.

Hammel’s then went three-up, three-down in the seventh, eighth and ninth, with only a Miguel Cabrera walk yielding a baserunner.

We’re nearing 600 words here and you’ll note we haven’t spent much time on the offense. There’s a good reason for that: it stunk. Five times in 10 innings, the Royals put at least one runner aboard with one out or less; only once did a run come across, when Alcides Escobar scored after reaching via fielders choice, moving to third on a Cam Gallagher single and scoring on a Jon Jay single. And even that was tainted, as a better bunt by Esky would’ve given the Royals an extra attempt at bringing home the go-ahead run.

Kansas City’s other run was a two-out solo blast by Mike Moustakas in the sixth, who is presently making 29 other teams look pretty stupid after his fifth homer.

The eighth, wherein lefty Daniel Stumpf got Moustakas and Lucas Duda easily before giving up singles to Cheslor Cuthbert and Almonte, should’ve gone differently. With right-handed masher Jorge Soler available to pinch-hit, the Royals stuck with Goins, who you will be stunned to know failed to come through when it mattered.

The Royals had another chance in the 10^th, when Whit Merrifield led off with his third hit. A Moustakas strikeout and Duda flyout looked to bring the threat to an early end, but then Cuthbert singled again and Merrifield and Cuthbert both moved up 90 feet after Joe Jimenez uncorked a wild pitch.

Almonte, who has yet to drive in a single non-Abraham Almonte runner, worked the count to 2-2. I’ll let the visual tell the rest of the story.

Look, I’m not a professional hitter or an amateur hitter or pretty much anything to do with athleticism. But I think if you want to be a major league baseball player, that little blue dot in the middle represents a pitch you should be able to drive.

In the 10^th, Jones hit a one-out walk-off home run against Brad Keller. The good times never last.

That was Game One of a day-night doubleheader. I don’t know who is pitching for the Royals tonight and it probably doesn’t matter.

(I lied, it’s Jakob “Please don’t call me Jake” Junis and Daniel Norris. Junis has been great! Norris has been butt. Congrats in advance to Detroit for getting to .500 on the season.)

• The Miguel Almonte saga from this past week has me both confused and concerned. I talked about this a little on Twitter, but I’ll go more in depth here. As much as I thought he could have been a nice piece in the 2018 bullpen, losing him isn’t really that big of a deal. Yes he has talent, but until last season, he hadn’t pitched well since 2013. I don’t love getting rid of him in general, but I’m not worked up about that. What I am worked up about is the process, and the fact that Abraham Almonte was the reason they moved on from Miguel. Abraham is not what you’d call good, and on top of it, he was popped for the same steroid in 2016 that Jorge Bonifacio was earlier this spring. Abraham Almonte is a player you add to your roster when you have spots available, but not someone who you get rid of someone for, especially someone who could contribute. The Royals say that Almonte had a shoulder injury and that it’s hard to say when he might pitch again. And I get that, but why not just put him on the 60-day DL? I just really dislike this move for what it represents, more than the move itself and it has me pretty concerned about the decisions they’re going to be making moving forward.
• The Royals offense has been horrendous to start the year (again, just four games), but I wanted to look deeper into it and see if maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. I was pleasantly surprised that isn’t actually. The team has hit .197/.261/.291 with just the one home run in the first inning of the first game, but it seems as if they’ve underperformed a bit. Based on Statcast data, the Royals expected average is .278, which heading into Thursday’s action was the fourth highest xBA in baseball. Their xSLG was .467, which was 10th in baseball. Their average exit velocity of 88.3 MPH was tied for 16th with the Nationals, Yankees and Brewers, all teams with really good offenses. Obviously the sample is tiny for everyone and especially the Royals, but it’s nice to see that they may not actually be that far off. And the statistic that has me the most confused is that they actually have swung at the lowest percentage of pitches outside the strike zone of any team in all of baseball. Four games or not, this is the Royals we’re talking about, so I think that’s at least worth mentioning.
• One really encouraging thing we’ve seen in the early going is Kelvin Herrera has looked outstanding in his first three outings. Yeah, I’m tired of the small sample caveat, but it applies to everything so far. His fastball has looked good and he’s getting swings and misses with five strikeouts out of the seven outs he recorded. Of all the players who are scheduled to become free agents after the season, Herrera is the one who I think is most likely to bring back a big return in a deal in July. You could argue that Mike Moustakas could bring back even more, and I think he could if the right team presented itself, but to have a closer throwing the way Herrera is capable of could really alter a pennant chase down the stretch. I shudder at the thought of who would handle the ninth inning if Herrera is dealt, but it also doesn’t especially matter because the number one goal of the next two or three seasons is to rebuild the farm system, even if it hurts the big league club. But until he’s potentially dealt, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of Herrera looking good again because I really enjoy watching him pitch when he’s going well. Having said that, I probably jinxed him and he’ll probably blow a save tonight, but the nice thing about rebuilding is that wins are fun to watch, but losses have their benefits too, so it’s win-win.
• With the focus being shifted more to the minors due to the rebuild, it’s good to see minor league baseball back (and Diamonds in the Rough with it). There were already some positives from the first day of the season with Seuly Matias popping two homers for Lexington, Samir Duenez hitting one for Northwest Arkansas and Hunter Dozier hitting one for Omaha. I was disappointed to see Trevor Oaks struggle in his first start in the Royals organization because I think he has a chance to overtake Eric Skoglund for the fifth spot in the big league rotation relatively soon, but I’m just glad minor league baseball is back too. Make sure you’re following Clint all through the season for the best coverage of the Royals system out there.