One of my pet theorems about the Kansas City Royals franchise and their fans is that nobody really knows what winning looks like, what good players look like. It’s a point of view naturally warped by decades of mediocrity punctuated by brief seasons of excitement. Tonight, the New York Yankees crushed the Royals 15-1 and notched a hilarious 24 hits in a farce of a game that was never close.
There’s not much of a story to this one, really. The Royals, down a couple of starting pitchers and bereft of any
legitimate arms in the upper minors to help, made this a bullpen game. One week ago, I sat in the press box and wrote about a game wrecked by Bailey Falter and The Bullpen Dudes. Tonight, I type this sitting in the press box and am writing about a game being wrecked by Bailey Falter and The Bullpen Dudes once again.
Falter’s first inning was one of the worst innings I think I’ve ever seen. No, he didn’t give up nine runs in a frame like Edinson Volquez did in 2016 or 10 runs like Vin Mazarro’s fourth inning disaster in 2011, but it was frankly a miracle he didn’t give up more. And that’s because, well, just look at this:
Seven batted balls. An average—average!!!—exit velocity of 104 MPH. Not a single ball had an expected batting average of less than .460, and that one was the home run. Just an absolute embarrassment. Four runs scored.
Now, to be somewhat fair to Falter, he should have been out of it with just Cody Bellinger’s solo home run on the board. Two batters later, Ben Rice hit a sinking line drive to right field. Jac Caglianone had a bead on it but jogged it down instead of ran it down, barely catching the ball with his glove touching the ground.
But the Yankees challenged. They thought the ball touched the ground in the course of the catch, and the MLB replay officials agreed. That ended up scoring Paul Goldschmidt and led to two more runs.
Falter managed to squeeze through the second inning with only one additional run given up, but the Yankees tagged him (and reliever Luinder Avila) for another four runs in the third. Just look at this beautiful pitching from Falter:
The Yankees ended up with a whopping 11 batted balls off Falter at more than 100 MPH, tagging Avila with two more. Stephen Cruz later gave up a 103.9 MPH home run from Trent Grisham. Eli Morgan gave a 107.3 MPH homer to Jazz Chisholm Jr. It was a bloodbath.
The Royals bats were, as you might expect, silent. Kansas City didn’t get shut out thanks to a laser beam opposite-field homer from Bobby Witt Jr., in a sort of “Chris Paul hits a huge 3 to cut the lead to 42” sort of way. It was his second consecutive day with a home run. His wRC+ is up to 135. That’s nice.
The rest of the game happened, but it was over in the first inning, unfortunately. Despite the conditions, the sizable crowd remained jovial throughout. I’m sure that was because of the significant count of Yankees fans; during the “root, root root for the TEAM NAME” section of the seventh-inning stretch, the volume of the words “Yankees” and “Royals” was identical.
But this goes back, I think, to my initial statement a few hundred words ago. Royals fans are so used to losing that they didn’t seem particularly phased by the drubbing. Despite getting totally pantsed by a team that most Royals fans despise, the only notable boos were reserved for Jazz Chisholm (warranted) and varying calls by the officiating crew (maybe warranted, depending on your opinion of the Cags drop call). Now, it was indeed a lovely night at the ballpark with absolutely perfect weather, and Lord knows there are enough angry Royals fans on the internet to make up for the chill vibes at Kauffman tonight. And yet I simply can’t imagine Yankees fans in the Bronx suffering a game like this without being ticked about it, and I can’t imagine St. Louis Cardinals fans just sitting around if the Cubs were dominating at Busch Stadium.
At one point there was this, I guess? It was a Vinnie bobblehead night.
Anyway, it’s easy to chalk a game like this up to a pitching mismatch—Yankees starter Cam Schlittler has been the best pitcher in the American league, after all—and to just shake a game like this off. Some of tonight’s result was because the Royals put in Tyler Tolbert in to pitch the ninth inning, so like, ok. But the truth of the matter is that this is simply the result of a talent difference. The Yankees are a good team. The Royals are not.
The Royals are 22-33. They are not coming back from this.
