Games » Minnesota Twins
Jun30Why Hochevar got hit
Lee Judge
The Kansas City Star
Before the second game of Saturday’s double header, catcher Salvador Perez was asked what Luke Hochevar needed to do in his start against the Twins. The first thing Salvador said was this: Luke Hochevar needed to keep the ball down in the zone. Luke failed to do this and gave up five earned runs in six innings.
In the past when Hochevar has had a bad outing, it often was an accumulation of bad things: a-hit-followed-by-a-walk-followed-by-a-hit kind of inning. I don’t know if it’s progress, but against the Twins Hochevar gave up four of his runs on balls that left the park. So instead of a string of bad pitches, Luke managed to give up four of his five earned runs on three swings.
It’s not much of a silver lining, but this outing wasn’t the typical Hochevar meltdown we’ve seen in the past.
Game notes First inning: Hochevar gives up a single to Joe Mauer and a home run to Josh Willingham. The Twins have all the runs they need to win this game, but nobody will know it for another two-and-a-half hours.
Second inning: Billy Butler hits a monster shot into the uppermost deck in left field. It doesn’t change anything, but it’s one of the few Royals highlights, so we should all enjoy the moment. (Last season the Royals asked Butler for more power and a little less average. His transition has been impressive. Not many hitters can do this.)
In the bottom of the inning, Hochevar has Minnesota’s Chris Parmalee down 0-2. Catcher Salvador Perez signals for a pitch down in the zone. Hochevar misses up, and Parmalee homers.
Fifth inning: Yuniesky Betancourt dives for a Jamey Carroll grounder and knocks it down, but he still doesn’t get Carroll at first. The results may have been the same, but diving for a ball — even if you don’t get a runner — just looks better.
Next, Alcides Escobar dives for a Joe Mauer ground ball with better results. Esky makes a spectacular play to force Carroll at second. If you did not see this play live, find a replay. It’s well worth your time. Kansas City has one of the best shortstops in the game, and we should all enjoy watching him play.
Sixth inning: Alex Gordon reads a carom of the left-field wall incorrectly, and Minnesota’s Trevor Plouffe doubles. If Gordon had read the carom correctly, Plouffe would still have doubled, but it’s an example of how a player on the visiting team is at a disadvantage when playing the idiosyncrasies of an unfamiliar park.
Seventh inning: The Royals get the call on a pickoff of the Twins’ Ben Revere. The call is incorrect, but the umpire has a bad angle on the tag. (Just remember this play the next time the Royals get screwed on a call.)
Eighth inning: With Josh Willingham at the plate, Salvador Perez looks up to see whether Willingham is peeking back. When a batter has a good view of the catcher, you often see the catcher look up at the hitter to make sure he’s not stealing signs by looking back. (Catchers are especially suspicious of batters who wear sunglasses at the plate.) Also watch for the catcher to look down at the hitter’s feet. He wants to know if the hitter has changed his position in the batter’s box and will adjust the pitches thrown accordingly.
Ninth inning: Billy Butler gives it a ride, but hits it into the wrong part of the park — deep center field. An out later, Eric Hosmer doubles, but it’s too little, too late. Twins 5, Royals 1.
That passed ball
Perez was expecting a breaking pitch and got a fastball. He started to move his mitt down, realized that the pitch wasn’t breaking and got it back into position too late. When this kind of mix-up happens, there almost always is a runner on second base. The pitcher and catcher have agreed to use an indicator with a runner on second who can look in and see the signs, but either the pitcher or catcher — usually the pitcher — forgets the indicator and there’s a mix-up on which pitch is being thrown.
Game one
(Just in case you missed the brief period in which the game notes from game one were on the home page, here they are again.)
Twins starting pitcher, Scott Diamond, threw strikes, pitched ahead in the count, trusted his stuff and his defense, kept his pitch count low and won the ball game—Jonathan Sanchez did not. Sanchez walked six, gave up six runs and threw 101 pitches in 4 1/3 innings. Sanchez also made a mental mistake by failing to cover home plate.
For a guy who already has a lot of critics, this was another bad outing.
Game notes
First inning: The Twins pitcher, Diamond, obviously has a reputation for throwing strikes. The Royals hitters try to “ambush” him. When a pitcher throws a lot a lot of first-pitch fastball strikes, hitters sometimes swing early in an effort to ambush him. The Royals offense has been hot lately, but the ambush doesn’t work—too many hard-hit balls right at fielders.
In the bottom half of the inning, Sanchez has Ben Revere on first base and keeps throwing over to hold Revere close. Sanchez has Revere confused—Ben is sometimes breaking back to first as the pitch is delivered to home plate—but splitting his attention costs Sanchez as he walks Josh Willingham, the first of six walks on the day.
Second inning: Twins second baseman Alexi Casilla proves that the Royals aren’t the only ones that make mental mistakes. Casilla follows up an infield hit with a prolonged bit of styling afterwards. Base runners trying to beat out an infield grounder are supposed to glance to their right as they pass first base to see if the ball has gotten away. Casilla fails to do this—too busy slowing down in an overly stylish manner—and misses the fact that the ball is bouncing around the infield. Casilla fails to advance.
Later in the inning, Sanchez is still struggling with his command and seems to lose focus on what’s happening behind him. The Twins pull the first of two double steals without a throw.
Third inning: With nobody out and Trevor Plouffe on third, Ryan Doumit hits what appears to a sacrifice fly to centerfield. Jason Bourgeois joins the outfield assist club, throwing Plouffe out at the plate. As Doug Sisson points out in our current home page video, the Royals outfielders are throwing people out on the bases because they play shallow. They’re trying to take away the cheap hits and will live with the balls hit over their heads.
Fifth inning:With runners on first and second base, Brian Dozier hits a ball off the end of the bat that first spins away from the field and then heads back toward foul territory. The ball has more English on it than an episode of Downton Abbey.
Brayan Pena comes out from behind home plate to field the ball and throws it to Eric Hosmer at first, but Jonathan Sanchez gets caught spectating and fails to cover home plate. A runner scores from second base on a ball hit halfway to first.
After 4 1/3 innings, Sanchez is lifted from the game. Just as quality starts gives fans an idea of how many times a pitcher keeps his team in a game, giving up more than four earned runs tells a fan when pitchers made it very difficult for their team to win. Sanchez has given up more than four earned runs four times—tied for first on the team with Luke Hochevar. Hochevar appears to be turning his season around—Sanchez does not.
Sixth inning: Jason Bourgeois leads off the inning with a single. Bourgeois is currently with the team because he’s a lifetime .320 hitter against left-handed pitching and the Royals are facing five left-handed starters in the first six games of this road trip. (If any of that’s incorrect, blame Ryan Lefebvre—I’m going to.)
Eighth inning: If you’re wondering why Yuniesky Betancourt is on the field when Irving Falu is available, Betancourt has been very hot at the plate in June. Yuni continues his streak, driving in his second run of the day, but it’s not enough, Royals lose 7-2.
(Yuni has had 24 RBIs in the month of June.)
Butler
Hochevar
Gordon
Jim Fetterolf
10 months, 3 weeks agoBrief thoughts on both games: Scott Diamond looked a lot like Luis Mendoza, threw strikes low and on the edges, lots of ground balls. He has a nice curve that he can throw for strikes low and get grounders. Didn’t matter if Jon Sanchez gave up two runs or twenty runs, the result would have been the same.
Second game for the first few innings, Luke Hochevar looked like he was throwing batting practice. One of the announcers mentioned that Hochevar has problems in games following 110 or 15 pitch performances. He didn’t look strong and sharp, but did settle in, but too late.
Also, Hochevar was around 80 pitches after 6 innings, quite efficient, I probably would have left him out there for another inning or two, as it was fairly obvious that the offense wasn’t going to do anything, save the bullpen for tomorrow night. For all the complaints about pitching, scoring three runs in two games against the Twinkies doesn’t look like a winning strategy.
If the Royals were going to have two bad games like this, probably best to get them out of the way the same day.
John Miller
10 months, 3 weeks agoI have to agree with Lee here—aside from the homers, Hochevar didn’t have a terrible game. The Twins just made him pay for his mistakes. Compared to Sanchez’s 101 pitches in 4.1 innings, Luke pitched quite well. Even Verlander gets beat from time to time. Give the Twins credit: they flat-out played better than us today.
Michael Scott
10 months, 3 weeks agoI may need to go back and look at Alex’s 6th inning play. I was sitting in the upper deck in right field tonight and it appeared to me that he got a bit lazy on that play. He obviously read the wall wrong but I was not impressed by the time it took him to find the ball and get it to second. With a bit more effort, I think he actually throws Plouffe out at second. Or, at a minimum, prevents him from going from first to second. Maybe the result of it a double-header on a 90+ degree day where we weren’t really in either game?
Lee Judge
10 months, 3 weeks agoMichael: I wouldn’t know without talking to Alex, But I think he was ready to come up throwing had he read the carom correctly.
Once the ball got past him I didn’t think there was any way to prevent a double and Alex conceded that.
I know what you’re saying, Gordon didn’t bust it going after the ball, but to me it didn’t change the results of the play.
Lee Judge
10 months, 3 weeks agoBTW: A popular notion going around currently is that Jonathan Sanchez “doesn’t care” about his performances.
I’ve met him and talked with him several times and can tell you he’s an exceedingly quiet person at the best of times.
I wouldn’t even try to determine what is going on in his mind at this point. Hell, I don’t know what’s going in my mind half the time.
Reading other people’s minds is a popular activity in sports journalism and commentary. We usually start with the results and work backwards.
When Alex Gordon wasn’t hitting he also “didn’t care.” Now that he’s producing, he’s got an “even keel.” The truth is Gordon works as hard or harder than anyone, but doesn’t show much emotion during a game.
Fans might like to see Gordon smash a bat or Jonathan Sanchez throw his glove, but ballplayers call that stuff “eyewash”—something that looks good, but doesn’t make any difference.
I’ve been around players who show up late for practice, don’t pay attention during team meetings and then show how much they “care” by throwing a tantrum over a poor performance. I’ll take the guy who does his prep work and then plays without all the histrionics every time.
Granted, Sanchez has horrible body language and doesn’t show much emotion after a poor outing, but that doesn’t mean we know what’s in his head. The guy’s got several million reasons he should care, but the bottom line will be what he does on the field.
The Royals have enough invested in him that they’re obviously giving him every chance. I don’t know how long that particular leash is.
But whether Sanchez destroys water coolers or sits quietly after a poor performance doesn’t matter—the poor performance matters.
Amateur psychologists—and only amateur psychologists would attempt to do this—reading his mind don’t really get us any closer to understanding the situation.
Nobody really knows what Jonathan Sanchez is thinking. We all know how he’s performing and we should probably focus on what we actually know.
Ben Weddle
10 months, 3 weeks agoWhat’s our destiny mama? I don’t know Forrest. Life’s like the Kansas City Royals. You never know what you’re going to get.
Terry Payne
10 months, 3 weeks agoI can only hope that the powers that be are biding their time and waiting for help from Omaha, or more unlikely, a trade, before pulling Sanchez from the rotation.
His poor performances are killing the team.
Thayne Griffin
10 months, 3 weeks agoThoughts on the games: Diamond was a stud, Mauer murders the Royals, Sanchez was terrible again, Mazzaro pitched well, Hochevar couldn’t throw anything down (even outs were hard hit), Billy’s homer I think was the farthest I’ve seen him hit a ball, was pleasantly surprised Yuni dove for a ball, and Esky’s play was flat-out ridiculous good. And Dozier’s single might have been one of the craziest hits/plays I’ve ever seen.
All that said, if we don’t get TWO all-stars today I may throw a tantrum, especially if Escobar doesn’t make it and Jeter does. I can’t believe how much market and rep-based the system is. Jeter is no better than the 4th-best SS in the AL now (Esky, Cabrera, Andrus). Would like to see Moose or Butler (finally) make it.
Lee Judge
10 months, 3 weeks agoI talked with Pirates manager Clint Hurdle yesterday and he said once everyone else—fans, players, etc.—get done with their picks, the All-Star manager should try to fill any need he sees on his roster.
For example, the year he managed the game, Clint needed a left-handed reliever and picked Billy Wagner.
The player or players that get selected from the Royals may then depend on what other players are on the roster first.
I’m guessing Butler, if Ron Washington feels the need for a right-handed bat, Broxton if Wash wants an inning of stress-inducing, but probably shut out ball and Esky or Moose if he needs a position player.
Thayne Griffin
10 months, 3 weeks agoGlad to see 3 former Royals starting in the ASG. Anyone know what we got in return for Beltran and Bautista (how could anyone forsee this in 2004 though? He was nothing until 2009..)?
Thayne Griffin
10 months, 3 weeks agoBroxton made the Final Vote (MLB released final vote via text before on tv). Text “A1” to 89269 to see two Royals! Haven’t released any AL reserves or pitchers yet..
Pat Reinhart Miller
10 months, 3 weeks agoI just listened on the radio, but I thought it was sooo obvious Sanchez should have been taken out when it was 2 to nothing and they were starting to hit him. I thought this before they got four more. He wasn’t sharp, they were walking, hitting and stealing at will. We didn’t save the bullpen by leaving him in longer. The bullpen had to come in, just after four more runs were scored.
Lee Judge
10 months, 3 weeks agoIf you haven’t heard: Billy Butler is going to the All-Star game.
Larry Tindle
10 months, 3 weeks agoBiily makes sense. I would think AL managers would like several DH’s on the team. After all they are really professional pinch hitters.
Bob Forer
10 months, 3 weeks agoEsky continues to amaze me with his glove work. The dive and flip to get the runner at second was pure circus. Astonishing play.
You former players who have tried to pull off a toss like that know how hard it is to get off a quick and accurate throw in that position. The diving stop was great, but the quick and accurate toss was far more impressive.
Question for Lee. Do players practice making throws like that?
Jim Fetterolf
10 months, 3 weeks agoBob, don’t know about pros but kids make weird throws when they’re just playing around, flips behind the back and between the legs or glove tosses. That’s one of those things that probably everyone has years in their background that follows along and pops up when needed:) Esky is amazing, though; athleticism, coordination, and the confidence to try it under pressure. He’s a special talent.
Lee Judge
10 months, 3 weeks agoBob: Jim is right, you might see players goof around a bit in practice, but I’ve never seen anything remotely like the play Escobar made the other night.
Of course, if he flips the ball into right field we’re all talking about his bad decision-making…but he pulled it off and we ought to appreciate one of the more spectacular plays we’ll see this summer.
Devan Shopinski
10 months, 3 weeks agoThayne
The Royals got John Buck, Mark Teahen, and Mike Wood in a three way deal with the Astros and A’s.
Jose Bautista was traded for Justin Huber. What amazes me the most about Bautista is how many other teams whiffed on him before he landed in Toronto. Pittsburgh (twice), Baltimore, and Tampa all traded him.
Jim Fetterolf
10 months, 3 weeks ago“the Royals—incomprehensibly…stupefyingly….inconceivably…insist on playing him.”
Good match-ups against lefties and he has performed well in that role. He’ll be sent back down again soon. His last 7 days slash, the period he was brought up for, have been .375/.500/.375. Calling him up looks like genius to me, but suggests that the chattering class has neglected to look at the numbers and forgot why he was recalled, something about a bunch of lefties.
“*When it was clear to all that Chen was done in the heat today, Ned left him out there. The Royals lost in no small part because of this decision.”
Best point, I would have had Herrera up to start the 6th and pulled Bruce after the triple and walk. The bullpen is rested. Of course, after the last few performances, I might have Aaron Crow in Omaha working on becoming a starter. This is about the same time of year that he started losing it last season.
“A couple of others are this: the only thing worse than a mistake (trading Melky for Sanchez, for example)’
I read a lot of blogs and comments and can’t think of anyone who thought it a mistake to trade “regression to the mean” for “elite k/9” and opening a spot for Cain to boot at the time. I thought it the best trade available at the time, but neglected to predict injuries. Some think that a good general manager could have gotten Justin Verlander for Melky:)
“Down a run and one out, you simply cannot…EVER…under ANY circumstances….make the second out attempting to steal a base.”
Unless it’s a hit and run that the batter doesn’t pull off? There’s much more going on down on the field than a single action under a microscope.
Good post, Mark. Always a pleasure.
Jim Fetterolf
10 months, 3 weeks agoI thought you’ld be pleased that I didn’t mention who had twitted the Bourgeois rant points earlier.
The conventional wisdom behind the talking points is that Bourgeois is kept so that Dayton Moore doesn’t look like he lost a trade of a AA reliever and low-ball incarnation of Joey Gathright for a desperately needed major-league catcher. I think the numbers show that the brief call-up worked, don’t you? The same conventional wisdom had the Royals keeping Humberto Qunitero so Dayton Moore didn’t look like he would lose the trade…I expect Jason Bourgeois to be sent back down fairly soon, the run of lefties is about over. Might be time to give David Lough a look, see what we have.