The umpires gathered near the third-base line, waiting for a replay to determine whether Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. had hooked a baseball on the fair side of the foul pole. And waiting to answer what became the most intriguing, coin-flip question of the opening home stand of the season.
Will the Royals score today?
To date, by the way: No, no, yes, yes, yes, no and yes.
The eighth-inning homer counted, much as Witt would deadpan, “I was leaning more towards an out — because the balls that we’ve been hitting, they’ve kind of all been getting caught.”
It’s April 6.
April. The. Sixth.
Two of the previous three years, the baseball season had not yet even started by this date. But here we are, already dissecting all that ails the Royals. Or at least much of what’s ailed them so far.
They are 1-6 after another loss to the Blue Jays on Thursday afternoon, after another round of compliments for someone else’s starting pitcher, and another round of praise for someone else’s starting lineup. The season a week old — only 4% exhausted, still 96% to go — but its commencement should be about opportunity, about a fresh start. And wouldn’t you know it, the start instead looks a lot like last year’s finish. Oh, and last year’s start.
Already.
Less than seven months ago, that fresh start arrived in a September news conference after Royals owner John Sherman had fired longtime president of baseball operations Dayton Moore. On that day, Sherman said, “Dayton talks about what a championship team looks like. I want to know what a wild card team looks like.” He so accurately pinpointed a city’s appetite for meaningful September baseball.
We would settle for meaningful July baseball. Or maybe even June. In the last four full seasons, the Royals’ best first-half record is 17 games under .500. Done by the All-Star break. You can understand if some are already a bit restless, whether it has been one day, one week or one month.
That’s really what this is about. Because the Royals are not done after a lousy opening week. This does not need to be doomsday. They are, however, triggering feelings of familiarity inside a fan base that hasn’t had to dig very far to unearth feelings of doomsday in the past.
While the Royals simultaneously attempt to squeeze support for a long-term future, most notably a new home, they cannot get the present to help advocate the cause. And we’d be kidding ourselves not to acknowledge the potential for a correlation in that support. This town loves a winner. Hey, most do.
There’s time. Plenty of it. Maybe even too much of it. I’ll reiterate that over and over again when I’m penning a column in the first week of April.
But the Royals have already managed to sandwich two scoreless streaks of 19 innings or longer. Been shut out three times. Forget the apples-to-apples comparisons, because the offense ranks dead-last in just about every statistical category. How’s this: Half the league has hit for a better average than the rate at which the Royals have reached base. The Rays have a better slugging percentage than the Royals have an on-base plus slugging percentage.
The top four hitters in the Royals lineup are a combined 17 for 102 (.167), and that’s after they all reached based as part of an eighth-inning rally Thursday. That’s probably not the best indicator for the future. Witt, MJ Melendez, Salvador Perez and Vinnie Pasquantino are quality hitters. But it’s a pretty darned good description of the opening week.
I attended four of these initial seven games, and until that eighth-inning home run, I’d see one run in 34 innings. It’s agonizing, and I walked in the stadium for free.
But it’s not just been the bats. The lowest-scoring team in baseball flat-out gifted the Blue Jays a run Thursday afternoon. Nate Eaton didn’t charge a single from center field, allowing Kevin Kiermaier to turn a run-of-the-mill, routine single into a “double.” One pitch later, catcher MJ Melendez dropped a foul ball that would have been the third out. Bo Bichette concluded that same plate appearance with a run-scoring single into right field.
A day earlier, Pasquantino said he thought he’d lose sleep over a play in the field, and he wasn’t really the one to blame. In that same game, Blue Jays outfielder Daulton Varsho took an extra base and scored because the Royals seemed to assume he’d stop at third.
The idea here isn’t to pick out every last mistake — nor even suggest this is how the next 155 games will go. Not ready to jump there. Yet. It’s hard to play a perfect game, but the Royals are making it seem damn near impossible.
Instead, the idea is that, man, it would probably be a nice change of pace to survive the first half. Or at least to survive April.
It really isn’t much to ask.
But harder to answer than it was eight days earlier.
