Games » Chicago White Sox
Jul18No margin for errors
Lee Judge
None
A double play was not turned, a walk scored and a base stealer that was thrown out was not called out. That’s all it took for the Royals to lose.
After the game Ned Yost said the team wasn’t good enough to cover mistakes. Everybody (including me) says they’re a play away from winning, but that also means, that on most nights, they can’t afford to make a mistake.
Monday night, they made several.
In the 6th inning Alcides Escobar threw away what looked like a double play ball. It wasn’t his only bad toss. It won’t show in the box score, but Brayan Pena saved Esky from another error on a throw home and Eric Hosmer did the same on a throw to first. Esky was all over the place and could have had three errors.
The good news is that Kyle Davies threw a lot better than Alcides Escobar. Kyle had nine strikeouts, a personal high, but might’ve had a little help from home plate umpire, C.B. Bucknor. Bucknor had a strike zone for every occasion, calling Jeff Francoeur out on a pitch that Frenchy thought was low, Alex Rios out on a pitch that looked well outside and Melky Cabrera out on a high pitch that A.J. Pierzynski jerked back into the zone. (Here’s a clue: if the catcher thinks the ball is a strike, he doesn’t jerk the glove around.)
Before the game I talked with pitching coach Bob McClure and he emphasized the need for the Royals to pitch inside. That’s what they had Hochevar doing the other day and that’s what they wanted Kyle to do Monday night.
Mac said a pitcher who doesn’t go up and in allows the hitter to lean out and foul off quality low and away pitches. The hitter can keep fouling off the good pitches and wait for a mistake. A pitcher that does go up and in prevents the hitter from leaning out and fouling off quality pitches and going up and in might allow the pitcher to get away with that mistake. Suddenly that becomes the pitch they foul off and they don’t touch the quality pitch.
In the 4th inning, Kyle hit A.J. Pierzynski, so I guess the message sunk in. Keep watching for Royals pitchers to attack this quadrant of the zone.
Know thy enemy
Mac also said a pitcher has to know which hitters adjust (you have to change patterns) and which hitters don’t (you can keep throwing the same stuff to him).
I asked Bruce Chen about this, and Bruce said he thought everybody adjusts. The real question is how fast. Chen studies tape to figure out if a hitter can be jammed once, and if he can be jammed once, can he be jammed twice? Or does the hitter immediately adjust to the inside pitch?
That would mean that after Bruce goes inside, the next pitch should be away. If the hitter waits until he has two strikes to adjust, Bruce can go in there again. When you get to talk to these guys, it’s always impressive to hear how meticulous their preparation can be. It might be satisfying to assume that an athlete that fails is a dope, but in my experience, that’s rarely been the case. Now if you want to assume that writers can be dopes, you’ve got a better chance of being right.
But I’m trying to adjust.
Liking the life
So I come out of the dugout, it’s about a billion degrees in the sun and the only player on the field is Eric Hosmer. He’s down the right field line, lounging on top of the tarp, a favorite hangout for players waiting for 4:30 stretching to start before 4:50 BP.
Hos has got his pants pulled up over his thighs (you’ve got to get here early to see this, but players walk around with their pants pulled up so they can stretch out the elastic in the ankles and get the nice, floppy, comfortable look that’s in vogue).
I walked up and said, “Hos, how you enjoying the life?” The “life” is the life of a major leaguer and it can be pretty sweet. We spent the next 20 minutes talking about how bad the minors can be. In the lowest levels of professional baseball, the spread (the post-game meal) can be a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. Eric said they used to each give the pitching coach a buck and he’d go buy lunch meat so they could have a treat. Hosmer said every level gets a little better: the accommodations, the spread, the travel. I asked if he ever slept in the luggage rack on a bus and he said he’s seen it, but he was too big to make it work.
Having spent some time in the big leagues, he really doesn’t want to ever go back to the minors. Now he knows that’s up here and what he’d be missing. I asked how his buddy Mike Moustakas was handling things. Moose has been struggling, but Hosmer said Moose has struggled at every level and then figured things out.
I sure hope so, a guy can only eat so much peanut butter.
And then there’s Frenchy
Hos and I are still talking when Jeff Francoeur strolls up. So I turn on him, “Frenchy, what’s up? You can hit the ball the other way!” (On Sunday, Jeff hit a double to right and pulled a home run.) Frenchy gets a huge smile, “Now why would I want to hit a double to right when I can hit a bomb to left?” At this point, Jeff has the same expression as a miner who has just heard the word gold. (I think the word I’m looking for is greedy.)
About 90 percent of Frenchy is kidding, but he admits, “It’s a really good sign that I can hit a ball that hard to right, but all power hitters get pull-happy. It depends on the guy. Like Buehrle tonight, I can’t get pull-happy with him.”
“But I will.”
I don’t know if Frenchy will lead the team in RBIs, but he’s way out in front in laughs.
Butler
Pena
Davies
This website has "Toolbar" status on my computer, I check it daily. Great work.
Tim: Thank you. I've often had 'tool' status, but 'toolbar' is quite a step up. Glad you're enjoying the site.
By the way, if any reader hasn't watched the new Matt Treanor video, I'd really recommend it.
Matt shows us how to receive the ball and make it look as much like a strike as possible.
So much goes into this seemingly simple act, it surprising anybody can do it at 95 miles per hour.
Lee, looked at the stats for the year again and I'm still concerned about scoring for the bullpen. If you add Woods, Crow, and Holland together you just about equal Hoch. When you look at their contributions as compared to his, it just isn't reflective of what is actually occurring. I still think we need to come up with some positive points for holds. The bullpen has been bailing out the starting pitching all year and the results do not reflect this.
Joel: We plan to make several changes in the future and 'holds' for the bullpen is one we've considered.
I don't want to mess around too much with Ron Polk's system, but when we talked, he admitted the game had changed since its creation: far fewer complete games, much more work for bullpens. He thought updating some of the pitching stats to reflect this was fine.
As always, I would encourage readers to pay more attention to the patterns revealed (does a pitcher attack the zone and keep his pitch count down, are walks coming around to score, does he keep his team competitive with a quality start or hurt their chances to win with a 4+ earned run performance)than points compiled.
The points are arbitrary, the patterns are not.
Last night Luis Mendoza threw a no hitter for Omaha. He had thrown another in 2009 for OKC. In his last outing he had taken a no hitter to the 8th.
Last night's no hitter was marred by the official scorer's call in the 9th. A well hit ball by a Memphis batter could have been ruled a hit. The outfielder got turned around and then the ball hit off his glove. The scorer apparently changed his mind twice and left it an error.
Mendoza, 27, had been with the Royals briefly before. Right now he is leading the PCL in ERA with 2.30 more than a point less than anyone else.
Maybe we should have a 7 man rotation.
Lee, you seem to enjoying writing about the Royals, even though it is a lot of work. But it would seem hard to do this with them losing most of the time. I guess you can point why they are losing.
Bryce: You're right, the Royals are losing most of the time, but they don't lose by much. Most nights I see a close, competitive game in which the Royals come up short. So it's not like I'm watching bad baseball game after game.
Just about everyone I've talked to feels the culprit is the starting pitching.
The defense is clearly better, errors are down, outfield assists and double plays are up, but as Frank White pointed out to me, you don't want to lead the league in double plays. That means you had a lot of runners on and that means a lot of high-stress innings.
You might ask if Melky Cabrera is a true center fielder or what the plan is behind the plate if Jason Kendall isn't coming back, but this is still a much-improved defense.
The bull pen is clearly better. The offense is designed to score one run at a time and needs a low-scoring game, to be competitive.
The Royals are a winning team when they get a quality start (6 or more innings, three earned runs or less), so that seems like a good place to start.
"We plan to make several changes in the future and 'holds' for the bullpen is one we've considered"
I would suggest some variation on "inherited runners scored", maybe minus a point for each runner allowed home. The other night with Crow, he came in with two of Francis' runners on and one scored. That cost Francis points and a loss while Crow showed no runs against. Many times Crow comes in and strands base runners, so a point for each runner stranded with no runs scored?
Jim: I think a lot of stats are worth considering and you may have hit on one.
But here's the problem: before we started this website I had collected a lot of possible stats from players and coaches and was going over them with Ron Polk.
He kept saying, "Yeah, that's OK" or "Sure, you could keep track of that", but eventually he said this, "Lee, you can make this thing as long as you want to, but remember, you have to keep track of all this stuff."
Right now I fill out a form with 1,100 boxes on it every night. It's easy to make a mistake and the more boxes, the easier it gets.
I'm not against any changes (for instance, there's no way to record a balk), but I'd have to be convinced it was worth the effort to make things even more complicated.
That doesn't mean readers shouldn't make suggestions. We will consider changes, but it does mean I'm the one that will have to carry the load for any additional categories we add...and I'm getting about 5 hours of sleep a night now.
But suggest away and we'll talk about it during the off-season.