Games » Detroit Tigers
Apr17‘We're headed in the right direction’
Lee Judge
The Kansas City Star
That was what starter Bruce Chen said after the Royals lost their sixth straight game. “We’re headed in the right direction.” So what is the disconnect? Why are some people running around screaming that the sky is falling and other people are saying everything is going to be OK? It’s simple: effort vs. results.
When I first started taking baseball seriously, there was a concept I had to get my mind around. Effort is more important than results. It is what players, coaches and managers believe. It is why their reactions to a loss can seem so out of touch to a fan who is more concerned with results than effort.
The Royals got off to a good start, but over the weekend they did not play well. The Royals let the Cleveland Indians bat around the order at least once in each game, and the games got ugly. The Royals have played better the last two nights. They haven’t won, but the effort has improved, and Chen is seeing that. He knows that if his team continues to give this type of effort, everything will be OK. That was why he said the Royals are headed in the right direction.
Some fans and members of the media are jumping off the Royals bandwagon. They are focusing on results, and so far, the results haven’t been good. So far, the effort of the 2012 Royals has been inconsistent, and the results show that. But give a good effort long enough, and the results will be there.
Like I said, the media and most fans focus on results. Ballplayers don’t think that way. You shouldn’t either.
When too much effort hurts you
The Royals had bad starting pitching over the weekend, but they hit. Now, they’re getting good starting pitching — Bruce Chen was great — but they aren’t hitting with runners in scoring position. Some of that is plain old trying too hard. These guys don’t want to lose, and they know this has been a bad home stand. So the hitters are going to the plate, trying to be heroes.
Take Eric Hosmer. Before the game, I asked Hosmer what he had been working on with hitting coach Kevin Seitzer. Eric said his swing had gotten a little long (taking too big a cut) and he and Seitzer worked on shortening it up. In the eighth inning, Hosmer came to the plate, and I’m sure he wanted to do something to turn the game around. So what did Detroit pitcher Joaquin Benoit throw? Changeup, changeup, changeup. Hos took mighty hacks and missed three times.
That’s how you use a young hitter’s aggression against him.
I didn’t get to ask Hosmer about this at-bat when I came into the clubhouse after the game because the team was having an informal meeting in the corner. I don’t know what was being discussed — the media gave them their space — but no surprise, Jeff Francoeur was in the middle of it. I’ll ask about it tomorrow.
Blame Yuni
I listened to Robert Ford on 610 Sports radio as I drove home from the park. Fans’ reactions to what we’ve all just witnessed were interesting, and Robert’s responses were, too. A few fans blamed shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt for not getting to two ground balls hit up the middle. Robert wasn’t buying that, and neither am I.
I’m lucky enough to sit in a direct line behind home plate — six floors up, but still in a direct line. None of those ground balls up the middle looked as if it should have been caught. In a weird way, professionals sometimes look worse on those balls than amateurs.
An amateur will chase after a ball he has no chance of catching, dive and miss the ball by 10 feet. After judging jillions of ground balls, pros are much better at realizing which balls they can reach and which ones are destined for the outfield. When a pro peels off because he knows the ball can’t be caught, it looks bad. It’s not, but it looks that way.
Technical stuff
Runner on second. Nobody out, and the man at the plate is going to bunt the runner over. Usually, the ball is bunted to third base. That forces the third baseman to field the ball, which leaves the bag wide open. Even a slow runner makes it easily. On Monday night, Chris Getz bunted the ball to the first-base side. The reason is interesting. Getz says bunting the ball to third works great — if the bunt is perfect. Get it too close to the mound, and the pitcher picks up the ball and has an easy play to cut down the lead runner. Bunt the ball on the first-base side, and there is more room for error. Even if the batter doesn’t get it past the pitcher, the pitcher will throw the ball to first base.
So if Getz is right, why didn’t Alcides Escobar bunt the ball to the first-base side later in the same game? Answer: Prince Fielder. The Getz bunt came in the first inning. Fielder was back at first base. The Tigers were not going to do anything that might open up a big inning. Escobar’s bunt came in the fifth inning. By then it was clear one run would mean a lot, so the Tigers had Fielder charge the plate.
Reader questions
Someone recently asked me what is said when at home plate before every game. The umpire and the managers — or whoever the managers send to the plate with the teams’ lineup cards — go over the ground rules of the ballpark. The umpire makes sure everyone is on the same page regarding what’s in play and what isn’t. Last season there was a short green railing atop Kauffman Stadium’s outfield wall. Padding now covers that railing. The change makes it easier for the umpires on home-run calls.
The meeting at the plate is probably longer before the first game of each series. Before game two or three, they probably are talking about what restaurant they will go to that evening.
Another reader asked about the Royals stealing bases when they are down by a lot late in a game. The answer — provided by first-base coach Doug Sisson — was interesting. Both teams are still trying to win. The team with the big lead has decided that it is better off positioning its first baseman back behind the runner — that gives him more range. The team that’s behind figures it is better off taking the base that is being offered and forcing a long throw across the infield.
The same thing applies to sending a runner home. Third-base coach Eddie Rodriguez was waving runners around third last weekend even though the Royals were far behind. Eddie knew the Cleveland outfielders were not going to throw home, risk injury to their catcher and allow trailing base-runners to move up.
One more question: Why did Jonathan Sanchez continue to pitch out of the stretch after picking off a runner on first base? Jonathan said he was ahead in the count and didn’t want to change the rhythm of what he was doing. When he came back out for the next inning, he went back to the windup.
Maybe this will cheer you up
Someone told me that the Tigers started last season 3-7 and the Tampa Bay Rays started 1-8. Even the Philadelphia Phillies, with that pitching staff, had a 1-9 stretch in 2011. The problem for the Royals is they have had their bad stretch at home and at the start of a season. If they had a stretch like this in the middle of the season, many people wouldn’t notice.
Chen
Butler
Pena
Terry Payne
1 year, 1 month agoThe thing I’ve been most encouraged about so far has been the consistenly fine defensive play. This gives me hope that the effort is there, that no one is giving up and dogging in. More important is that the Quality of the defense is there. Defense, in and of itself, can win ball games, especially when the offense is struggling to score.
Darral VanGoethem
1 year, 1 month agoLong time no comment for me. Still reading everyday though. Thanks again. While I don’t have a “sky is falling” mentality. I am genuinely concerned about a trend I have seen of late. Bear in mind when I speak of this observation I try and do it with all of the inside knowledge and thought into decision making that you have shared in these posts.
Ned Yost has made too much of an impact on the outcome of a lot of games in my mind. Last night for example. Chen gets our 13 stright, gives up a single and immediately yanks him. Guess what? Hits happen sometimes. His pitch count was good. Ride the hot hand. This isn’t the first time he has done this. He did it to Chen in his first start after he only threw 75 pitches. He has a tendency to go to the next guy in the bullpen and gets a little too into the righty/lefty matchups. I believe there is a time and place to factor in lefty/righty matchups but I also believe that there are times when you need to ride the hot hand, in the starting rotation and the bullpen. Then look at what he has done with the lineup. There are some guys you just shouldn’t move out of their spots, regardless of how they are hitting. Gordon, Frency, Butler, Hosmer. Let them fight through it in their roles. You don’t see Girardi shifting around w/ a different lineup every night. Like I said, I don’t have a “sky is falling” mentality. But I have seen some disturbing trends.
Eric Miller
1 year, 1 month agoSee, I’m a bit different. Maybe it’s my frustration, or maybe it’s my optimism (I seem to have both in spades these days), but I don’t see many trends. I think we’re trained and conditioned to look for trends, but in the end, this team has lost games for myriad reasons. SP, offense, bad baserunning and bad defense have all been the but-for cause of losses, if not also the proximate cause. But, for each of those causes of loss, we’ve also seen fantastic SP, offense, baserunning (ok, not so much as yet), and defense (certainly more great than bad, especially with our starters). What that means to me is that the trends are not trends at all.
We all knew that this is a young team, that they would play amazing and amazingly bad at different times. Consistency may not be in the cards for us; and maybe it doesn’t have to be. On any given night, we could have won any of our lost games (maybe not the opener against the Angels, but certainly the rest), but we didn’t because the component parts of the team didn’t work together, at all. But, consider if the SP was only slightly better in 3 of those games, giving up only 3 runs instead of 7, or if pick offs didn’t occur at the worst moments, or if our hits had been closer together…any of those slight changes would mean a very different record as of right now.
My frustration is that I think we’re far better than we’re showing. My optimism is that we’ll figure out a way to put at least some of our component positives together enough to overcome our component negatives. SP gives up only 3 runs in an inning and offense produces 6 runs instead of 9. Fine by me.
A long post to say that, essentially, I don’t see trending yet on a macro level; and when there are no trends, there are no good bets, no sure things, and no absolutes. Give the youngsters time, they might get it together yet.
Go Royals.
Eric Miller
1 year, 1 month agoReminds me of that quote from Bagger Vance:
Bobby Jones’ swing was a study of grace in motion. He had a way of making the difficult shots look easy… and the easy shots look even easier. Hagen, on the other hand…
hit more bad shots in a single game than most golfers do in a season. But Hagen had long ago learned one thing: Three lousy shots and one brilliant shot can still make par.
I think the Royals are a Walter Hagen type of team. We just need to start making the brilliant shots.
Kurt Vancil
1 year, 1 month agoSomething I noticed today looking at the stats from the first 11 games. Yes this is a small sample size… yada, yada, yada… but the stat I am looking at may be more telling and a big part of the current slump.
While we only have 2 less hits than our opponents thus far and only 6 less total bases we have been outscored by 13 runs. Does this mean our opponents have done a better job with RISP? Just looking at those numbers it would seem likely, but…
Our opponents have 16 more BBs that us. 16 in only 11 games. That seems like a huge indicator to me. Our opponents are getting nearly 1.5 free bases more than us per game. Adding up BB and hits and our opponents have 18 more than us which can account for those extra runs.
Walks are not a luck thing so I do not think this trend is likely to just randomly switch. We need our pitching staff to lower the amount of walks given (3.6/game) AND we need to find a way to take more walks (2.1/gm). If this trend continues it could be a big part of why we have a disappointing season. I’m hopeful it will improve but think it is worth pointing out.
Lee Judge
1 year, 1 month agoGotta do my day job for a while, but I agree with what Kurt said, too many walks and that has to get fixed.
Hitting with runners in scoring position has been poor in the last two games and I think that’s a case of guys pressing for a win.
Staying on an even keel is tough—just look at the fans. But players can’t afford to get emotional. They have to keep the same approach whether the first baseman just dropped a pop-up or the tying run is in scoring position.
Joel Kallem
1 year, 1 month agoKurt, I agree with your analysis. This is an on-going problem and the reason the Royals changed pitching coaches. I think it is getting better (as compared to last year), but still an area of need.
Darral, Chen was over 100 pitches, and frankly I wasn’t expecting him out to start the inning. I think Yost wanted to give him a chance to win the game, but intended to go with Holland if Chen couldn’t go an easy 1,2,3. It is way to early in the season to be “burning out” our staff by stretching them out. In addition, the bullpen is supposed to be one of our areas of strengths and Yost needs to use it when we have a chance to win.
Eric Miller
1 year, 1 month agoA legitimate question here: does our poor hit to run ratio depend in part on inefficient lineup order? I know hindsight is 20/20 and all, but are their predictions we could make about batter behavior that should dictate lineup positioning that would make us more efficient in hit to run? Nothing I hate more than high number of hits and low number of runs.
Joel Kallem
1 year, 1 month agoDon’t think it rose to the level of an outstanding defensive play, but did anyone else notice the nice play by Brayan on Frenchy’s off-line throw to the plate. He came off the plate to catch the ball and held the runner on second rather than letting him get to third.
Fred Bracken
1 year, 1 month agoThe Universe is out of alignment right now. Billy is not going to hit .356 this year, and Hosmer is not going to hit .182 all year. Everybody relax; we’ll be a .500 team this year. Next year, more experience, some pitching, we’ll contend. This I believe.
Eric Miller
1 year, 1 month agoJoel, I saw that too. Very heads up.
Fred, I’m with you.
Brian Robinson
1 year, 1 month agoI’m a pretty critical guy and do see some things that need to be addressed internally but it’s still too soon to call anything a trend. Let’s get 50 games into the season and then take stock. Hopefully the boys can come back today and salvage the final game of the series and get some rest on Thursday.
In my opinion the worst thing that’s hurt KC is the injury bug. Sure the organization was able to deal with Salvador Perez and Joakim Soria but those took place in Spring Training. The injury that really exposed KC was with Lorenzo Cain. I feel two games were severely handicapped (can’t say lost because this is a team sport) because of poor play in center. Outside of that the team is young so you can’t really expect them to show patience like that of a NY Yankees ballclub, and with that knowledge comes the understanding that you do have to juggle lineups because roles aren’t yet defined. I mean at this point I’d have Frenchy batting third with Hosmer dropping to fifth in the order. This is no disrespect to Hosmer but he’s only 22 years old and like it or not is mired in an early slump. That final at bat against Benoit convinced me of it. But it’s nothing more than a slump. Baseball is a game of steaks and slumps because the season runs too long.
Once the weather warms up a little more the boys will be smacking the ball all over the field, and hopefully Cain will comeback soon with no more injuries the rest of the way.
First things first though … win today.
Brian Robinson
1 year, 1 month agoHa, ha .. meant to type ‘streaks and slumps’ but I’m sure plenty of STEAKS get eaten along the way!
Jim Fetterolf
1 year, 1 month agoLot of great comments today, best baseball community on the internet. Think I’ll take a nap:)
Eric Miller
1 year, 1 month agoI wish there were a sport that involved steaks, I’d go pro.
Chad Jackley
1 year, 1 month agoTake away a few opposing big innings and this team is fine. I do feel pitch selection is lacking for several key guys right now though. Any correlation to it being this early in the year or perhaps we are finding ourselves down in the game and perhaps pressing? We’ve made some young opposing pitchers look very impressive by swinging at balls down or away (or both).
I really like what I’m seeing from Getz at the plate with his upright stance. Not enough mention (from the local radio-heads) of the good wood he gets even when it’s an out.
Jim Fetterolf
1 year, 1 month agoChad, good point on Getz. He was challenged by Gio and Yuni and made off-season adjustments to get more power and seems to have succeeded. As I remind people, Getzie is bigger than Mickey Mantle was, so no reason physically why he can’t have at least warning track power. Baseball is a little like chess, move and counter-move.
“We’ve made some young opposing pitchers look very impressive by swinging at balls down or away (or both).”
Guys trying to hit five-run homers. They don’t like losing any more than the fans do and look to be pressing instead of staying within their abilities and doing what got them here in the first place. With Billy, Frenchy, and Master Chen they have the veteran leadership that has been there, done that, so will work through it. Too much talent for this to be anything other than an unfortunate aberration that will even out over a long season.
Chad, Kurt, and Eric, good posts. I appreciate the insights and positive contributions. Thanks.
Lee Judge
1 year, 1 month agoEverybody: Love it when you guys go right on without me. Jim gets around the internet much more than I do, so it’s a real compliment when he says this is the best baseball community he’s found.
I agree with much of what I’ve read here today; Dayton Moore says it takes about 40 games to know what you really have and that sounds about right. The Royals have gone 3-8, which is about like the Chiefs losing their first game.
I’d ask if fans would panic then, but some definitely would.
The team played well in Anaheim, should’ve won two in Oakland, played badly over the weekend (although the offense was battling back) and have played really well the last two nights. Bottom line: most of the time, they’re playing well.
The pitchers need to throw strikes no matter what and the hitters need to get a good pitch to hit and not overswing with a runner in scoring position.
I do think guys are pressing and I’m guessing that meeting last night was Francoeur telling everyone to calm down. Either that or he was selling timeshares in a condo.
Based on what people who have been around the game a long time have told me, this club should be .500 or a little better. I don’t see why that’s not still possible.
OK, gotta run, Moose is taking extra fielding practice this afternoon and I have to go sit in the dugout and stare at him.
Jeff Circle
1 year, 1 month agoLee, you talk about he art of catching a lot on here. I was noticing that Pena seemed to be moving his whole body a lot to catch pitches last night - dropping the right knee, shifting way out left to catch a pitch that was still close to the plate. Big moves that sure looked like they were too much in terms of making the pitch look good to the ump. Are you seeing that too?
Eric Miller
1 year, 1 month agoDon’t catchers sometimes do that to try and throw off a hitter’s concentration? I don’t really know, just something I thought I read/heard once.
Darral VanGoethem
1 year, 1 month agoJoel, there is actually very little evidence that pitch counts have ANYTHING to do with “burning out” a pitching staff. Actually the more it has been studied lately the more it seems likely that “burning out” a pitching staff has more to do with how many consecutive games that pitchers are used. So with that thought in mind you have a better chance of “burning out” a pitching staff by sending out the same relievers for consecutive games at a time, say for 3 games in a row when the reliever only throws 1 inning, then letting the starting pitcher, who goes every 5 days and has found a grove in his start, throw more than 100 pitches if he has pitched well. Who cares that Chen had gotten to 100 pitches?? He was pretty much dominating one of the most potent lineups in the majors. He had just retired 13 straight. Like I said in my earlier post, HITS happen. He gave up one after retiring 13 straight. I say he should have thrown to at least one more batter instead of going to the ‘pen. The problem with the “bullpen is our strength” theory is that they have been very uneven so far. It was 0-0 game to open the season and the bullpen gave up 5 runs in the 8th. If not for the bullpen we sweep the A’s. Can’t blame the ‘pen for the implosion against the Indians or the Duffy start, but you can hang last nights loss on the ‘pens inconsistency.
Kurt, you make a GREAT point about the BB’s. Very telling the stats you found. Lee has been pounding the table about the affect BB’s have on the outcome for a while now.
Larry Tindle
1 year, 1 month agoWow I love this site. Great comments everyone. Looking forward to the third time through our Starting staff. As Lee said we are not as good as the first time through and not as bad as the second time.
Eric Miller
1 year, 1 month agoWell, I don’t know that the pen is to blame for last night. If any inconsistency is to blame, it was the hitting. Or should I say consistency? We were consistently getting hits, then consistently leaving those runners on.
The pen only cost 1 run, Chen cost 2. Don’t think the pen can be blamed for that, necessarily. And I don’t think we can blame Chen. Holland messed up and gave up a run, but that didn’t “cost” us the game anymore than strikeouts and stranding runners did.
Lee Judge
1 year, 1 month agoSome catchers like that style, I know Jason Kendall prefers a catcher to be as quiet as possible when receiving the ball.
Lee Judge
1 year, 1 month agoGame’s going so I’ve got to be quick: Ned’s take on Holland’s outing last night was that Greg did what they wanted him to do: get ground balls.
Unfortunately, they were up the middle right over second base.