Games » St. Louis Cardinals
Jun19Results vs. effort
Lee Judge
None
If all you care about are results, the Royals lost this series one game to two, so it was a bad weekend, and I’m officially a road jinx. But if you care about effort (and you should — it’s the first step toward understanding what you see), this was a good weekend. The Royals played good baseball, battled, came from behind, didn’t fold in situations when they might have in the past and showed they were becoming the team everyone hopes for.
A lot happened, so it’s a bit unfair to focus on just two pitches, but they were the two pitches that were hit for game-winning home runs. Saturday night’s pitch was a ball up from Greg Holland that Matt Holliday hit for the game winner. Nobody defended that pitch. Everybody said it was the only bad pitch Greg made that night. But it was in a bad location. Catcher Matt Treanor took some blame for it, saying the Royals were trying to go inside on Holliday, didn’t get there and got hurt. Matt said he thought maybe it wasn’t best call on his part.
Sunday’s pitch was from Tim Collins, a fastball that was down, but Skip Schumaker dropped the bat head at just the right time and drove it out of the park. Treanor said he thought it was a better pitch, even though the results were the same.
Those two home runs are what a lot of people will remember about this series, but if that’s all you remember, you’re missing some good baseball.
Albert’s injury
I’ve already written about tag plays at first and how the first baseman has to rotate counterclockwise when reaching in to tag a runner who is hustling down the line. Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols either didn’t or couldn’t pull off that maneuver, and everybody saw the price he paid. If you’re coaching a kid’s team, make sure your first baseman understands this move. You might save somebody a broken wrist.
Esky’s weekend in the 8-hole
Before Sunday’s game, Alcides Escobar told me he had been getting nothing but junk whenever the pitcher was coming up behind him. The opposition pitchers know Esky doesn’t want to take a walk and have a pitcher trying to drive in a run, so they feel free to throw marginal breaking junk, knowing that Esky has to expand his zone.
That makes his weekend even more remarkable: 2-4 Friday night, 2-4 Saturday night and 2-3 with a walk Sunday afternoon. To give you an example of what we’re talking about, Escobar’s triple on Sunday came on the sixth straight slider he saw.
Sunday’s home run came on a 93 mph fastball (the 10th pitch of maybe the best at-bat of the year by anyone), but that was because Eric Hosmer was on deck. A good hitter behind you changes what you see.
Now that he is hitting this well, Alcides knows the league will adjust to what he’s doing. Opposing teams probably will start pitching him inside to take the opposite field away or try running stuff just off the outside corner of the plate to see if he will chase.
Do you have any Mr. Bubble?
That was the question Matt Treanor asked a clubhouse attendant Saturday afternoon. Matt wanted a towel and some Mr. Bubble so he could clean off his bat. (Wow. That sounds like a dirty euphemism, but it’s not.) Lots of hitters do this before a game, so they can see any fresh ball marks. They want to know exactly where the ball hit on bat’s surface. I thought maybe it gave Matt more information on how the pitch was moving and what adjustment he might have to make in his next plate appearance, but he said no.
He just didn’t like being reminded of how many times he had been jammed.
The day before
Saturday I talked to pitcher Danny Duffy about the next day’s start and what he does to prepare. The next day’s starting pitcher charts pitches, recording pitch, location and how the hitter reacted. It helps them focus on the opposition hitters and how they might want to pitch them the next day. I knew all that stuff, but Danny told me something I hadn’t heard before: He will ice his arm the day before pitching to keep the inflammation to a minimum the next day.
However much icing Danny did, I guess it wasn’t enough. He left the game with cramps. (Being a good father, I left the air-conditioned comfort of the press box to sit in the right-field bleachers with my son. It was smoking hot. I guess I’m not that great a father because I abandoned him like a straggler on the Oregon Trail in the seventh-inning stretch and finished up the game in the A.C. Don’t look at me like that. I was working! Working on not passing out at a Cardinals game.)
Walk this way
After Friday’s game, I wrote something about the effect of walks early in the game on the later innings. Think of it this way: If you walk three Cardinals and none of them is erased by a double play, you just bought Albert Pujols an extra at-bat. Walk four, and Matt Holliday gets one more plate appearance. Walk five, and Lance Berkman gets another chance to beat you.
The best policy is to pound the strike zone and live with what happens, and that’s why you hear coaches and managers harp on “limiting the damage.”
The Maytag repairmen of baseball
Here’s a bit of pseudo-journalism advice: If you’re looking for someone to talk to, try a coach, a backup player or a middle reliever. Middle relievers will tell you nobody wants to talk to them unless they lose the game.
So on Saturday Nate Adcock was leaning against the dugout rail, and I went over to talk. Here’s what I found out (some of which is probably obvious). His best pitch is his sinker. He throws it “middle down,” meaning he just throws to the middle of the plate, but low, and lets the pitch’s natural action move it to a corner. He said that if he’s ahead in the count 2-0, he probably will take that approach. The hitter’s in swing mode in that count and might see a pitch in the middle of the plate and trigger before he realizes it’s moving in or away.
When Nate’s trying to hit a spot with a little more precision, say moving the batter off the plate, he will use a straight four-seam fastball. He also has a change-up and has said his breaking pitch is a curve … then he said it was a slider.
“Dude, you just said it was a curve.”
Nate, laughing now, said, “OK, it’s a slurve. Actually, I don’t know what it is.” Nate said that depending on its release, the pitch might have more curve ball or slider action. He said the No. 1 thing he’s learned about being in the majors is “you can’t make a mistake.” A hung slurve that got popped up in A-ball will get hammered in the big leagues. Each pitch is important. A pitcher has to bear down on every pitch and not slop something up there just because he’s 0-2.
This conversation took place Saturday afternoon, and (as I’ve already discussed) that night I saw what he meant: Greg Holland, who has been lights-out for most of the season, was lights-out (according to Ned Yost, who had slightly better seats than I did) most of Saturday night. Greg made one bad pitch in his appearance, and Matt Holliday sent it up on the centerfield grass to win the game.
Tim Collins had one pitch ruin his outing Sunday.
And suddenly everybody wanted to talk to middle relievers.
Part 1: Decision-making as the third-base coach
In this first of a two part series, Lee Judge finds out how the Royals' Eddie Rodriguez goes about making decisions on the fly as the third-base coach. 6/14/11 (Video by John Sleezer/The Kansas City Star)
Escobar
Butler
Gordon
Lee, why no warnings after Gordon was intentionally plunked Sunday? I completely agree with you that the W-L record in STL this weekend did not reflect the quality of play by the team. Saturday's game was the best-played game I can remember the Royals playing in a very long time.
I don't know about the lack of warnings. At that point I was in the right field bleachers feeling like I was on the Bataan Death March. It was a tad warm out there. The seats are shiny aluminum benches so when the sun comes out you feel like you're sitting in a frying pan.
Throwing at Gordon didn't make a lot of sense though, unless he had something personal with the pitcher.
I didn't think the Cards wanted to put a runner on at that point. And if it was payback for Albert it would make more sense to throw at Billy. (Our number three hitter and first baseman for your number three hitter and first baseman...the usual baseball code.)
But it didn't appear Betemit did anything wrong, just busted down the line and caught Albert reaching in at an awkward moment.
There wasn't a lot of time with the players afterwards. It was get-away-day and everybody was packing up for the trip home, they had a bus to catch to the airport. If I remember, I'll ask Alex about the situation when I see him Tuesday.
And I'm glad you agree about the quality of baseball: sometimes it can feel like your making excuses, but it really does feel like these guys aren't that far away.
They play hard, don't make the same kind of silly mistakes we've seen in the past and appear to be a couple of quality starters short of being a winning team.
It DOESN'T make a ton of sense, but Gordon was indeed hit on purpose -- the first pitch of the AB was behind him and the second one hit him square in the lower back. Ryan and Monty were talking on the air about how Tony LaRussa is highly sensitive to his players getting brushed back/plunked, so I have to think AG getting hit was retaliation, right?
Also, it feels like Albert got a little bit of karma thrown his way on Sunday. After getting brushed back by Coleman, then showing him up in a big way after hitting the HR (bat flip AND admiring his shot AND stopping and standing on home plate with both feet at the end of his trot around the bases)...he gets pulled into the runner and sprains his wrist during the very next half inning.
Maybe the baseball gods are tying to tell him something?
Lee- as always, a TON of great information! I love this!
My question to you, with All-Star break coming up and no Royals that will be elected, who do you think SHOULD be the Royal selected to play in the big game???? This may sound strange, but my selection, especially after the last two weeks, is Escobar! To think that three weeks ago he is at the Mendoza line and is now at the .252 mark is AMAZING!!! Your thoughts?
Nice to see a conversation with a pitcher for a change...keep it up !
Lee - I'd love your take on this, and I'd like to hear what kind of answer you'd get from Ned Yost, but Saturday's game I thought was a perfect scenario for the "8th inning save". I'm not taking credit for this idea, Joe Posnanski wrote about it last year, but it was NOT hindsight on my part. The Royals led 4-3 going into the bottom of the 8th, and I said to my buddy, "They should bring in Soria now, and use Crow in the 9th." Reason-being, the #'s 2, 3, 4 hitters were coming up for the Cards. We needed our closer RIGHT THEN! Worry about the 9th, in the 9th, but if Soria gets the "save" with one inning pitched, in the 8th, we win the game. We all know how that turned out. What do you think?
I like that! Why not pitch 2 innings? Tony LaRussa screwed that up for all teams with his A's and Eck! I remember Quiz pitching 2-3 innings in the 80's. Goose Gossage always pitched several innings and SOMETIMES did not close. I can remember when he would pitch the 6th and 7th and you would see somebody else in the 8th or 9th.
Of course, I like 4-man rotations and pitchers pitching deeper. I think Weaver, Martin, even Whitey use to do that all the time. What has happened to pitchers that they can't do more??? I know the answer is real simple- too much $$$$ invested!
The Royals may have played some good games this weekend, but I wouldn't call it a "good weekend" when the result is a record now 10 games below .500 & a seat in the Central Division basement. In reference to Pujols, I personally lost a little of my respect for him after his big display in response to the brush back pitch & then his home run. This was supposed to be a guy that respected the game, I thought...
Nick: I was about a mile away when Gordon got plunked, frying my brains in the right-field bleachers thinking, "People pay $32 a pop for this?" (Cheapest seat in the house by the way.) So anyone's opinion on that HBP is probably more valid than mine. If it was retaliation I can't figure out for what. If it was over Pujol's wrist injury (more Albert's fault than Betemit's it seemed) why not hit the next batter? Why give four batters a pass and hit the 5th one? Unless Tony didn't want to move the tying run into scoring position and waited to lead off an inning by plunking a guy. Unless someone gives me a better explanation, it just seems dumb.
Jeff: I think you could do worse than selecting Escobar as an All-Star. If it were me, I'd probably wait for him to show this streak isn't a fluke, but maybe the best defensive short stop in the league hitting .250 is a worthy candidate.
If you go by Ron Polk's system (and the way I've scored it), the player who's contributed the most so far is Melky Cabrera. Melky has a lot of ways to help a team.
Jeff Francoeur, who is second to Cabrera in Polk's system, said an interesting thing: if it was up to him, he'd pick Aaron Crow. Pitching is at a premium and Crow can give a manager a scoreless inning when he's on. It's doubtful a rookie middle reliever will get picked, but if you're trying to win and not just reward guys with good years, the pick makes sense.
I did the pre-game show with Joel Goldberg while in St. Louis and he made an excellent point: if Soria continues to look like Soria between now and the break, he becomes a candidate.
Just think of this: we're discussing several people who actually might deserve to go to the game, not sitting around saying, "Well, they've got to take SOMEBODY...who stinks the least?"
Scott: As you well know I've had a lot of conversations with pitchers...it's just that I usually didn't get a lot out of it.
John: I think the 8th-inning save is an interesting idea and sometimes might make sense. Although it doesn't take much to throw things out of balance. Guys usually perform better when they know their roles and how to prepare for them.
At home Ned will use Soria in a tie game in the 9th, because if he throws up a zero that gives the Royals two innings to try to win the game. On the road that same scenario doesn't apply.
I was assuming Collins was facing his last batter in Schumaker and I think once Tim cleared the lefties, we'd have seen a different pitcher.
I don't know any of this for sure, it's speculation on my part.
John: I think the 8th-inning save is an interesting idea and sometimes might make sense. Although it doesn't take much to throw things out of balance. Guys usually perform better when they know their roles and how to prepare for them.
At home Ned will use Soria in a tie game in the 9th, because if he throws up a zero that gives the Royals two innings to try to win the game. On the road that same scenario doesn't apply.
I was assuming Collins was facing his last batter in Schumaker and I think once Tim cleared the lefties, we'd have seen a different pitcher.
I don't know any of this for sure, it's speculation on my part.
David: Like I said in the opening, if winning is the standard it was a bad weekend, if playing well is the standard it was a good weekend.
The Royals took on a team tied for first in the NL Central, a team has the second-best winning percentage in their league and played neck and neck with them all the way.