For such a cold environment for a baseball game, the Royals hitters sure seemed red-hot today. I realize that’s not something you usually say after a simple 4-2 victory, but there was a ton of loud contact. Carter Jensen’s home run in the sixth inning was a 111mph scorching line drive that just barely cleared the right field fence. Jonathan India launched a towering homer at 101mph off the bat. Salvador Perez just barely missed a home run as it sliced foul.
Jac Caglianone and Bobby Witt Jr did not
make as much of an impact on the box score as Jensen and India, but Witt hit four balls above 100mph. Cags hit three. Maikel Garcia doubled on a ball that’s a homer in 6/30 ballparks according to Statcast (and doubled on another ball that would have been a homer in Houston only).
It was just one of those games – a lot of the loud contact was either sequenced without runners on base or hit directly at a well-positioned Guardians defender. The Guardians did not have as much loud contact but their two runs were also on homers. Steven Kwan launched a Wacha fastball over the fence, and it was only the 21st-hardest-hit ball of the game. Brayan Rocchio took a Matt Strahm delivery over the left field fence.
Having said that, Tanner Bibee pitched a strong game for the Guardians. He kept a balanced pitch mix, including higher usage of his curveball, to keep Royals hitter off-balance. While watching, I felt like there were a lot of unusual takes from the Royals hitters on hittable fastballs. I looked it up – Bibee had 11 called strikes on his four-seam fastball out of 27 total pitches. He also got a good number of whiffs on his other junkballs. He was on a sort of pitch count limitation due to shoulder irritation coming out of Spring Training. He made it only 4.2 innings on 87 pitches.
The only run that was not scored on a homer came from the Royals in the fourth inning. Vinnie Pasquantino walked, and Jensen struck out on a wild pitch. I heard the announcers going through the rules around this strikeout/wild pitch. If there were zero outs or one out, Pasquantino would not have been allowed to advance and Jensen just would have been out. Since there were two outs, the play was allowed to run its course. The wild pitch went pretty far, so there wasn’t much of a chance to get Jensen at first for the final out. India took a middle-middle sinker to the opposite field for a single to score Pasquantino.
Aside from the Kwan homer, Michael Wacha pitched really well. He did a good job painting corners and using his changeup, which got him a few whiffs. His fastball wasn’t fooling anyone, but he mostly stayed out of trouble. He threw seven complete innings with three walks and three strikeouts; all three of those walks came near the end of his outing in the 6th/7th innings. He gave up only three hits, including that Kwan homer.
Wacha did get some defensive help on a couple inning-ending double plays. One of those double plays was a 5-6-4-3. A grounder to Garcia doinked off his gloved straight to Witt, who completed the rest of the normal sequence for the double play.
Quick note – José Ramírez played his 1620th game for the Guardians; he’s now the all-time leader for games played in team history.
The Royals and Guardians play a day game tomorrow due to the cold weather forecast. The game starts at 12:10pm US central time. The Royals move to 5-5, and the Guardians drop to 6-5.
