Less than an hour after he hit a baseball 420 feet that soared beyond the center field fence in Anaheim, Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Perez took a detour to talk about his starting pitcher. More specifically, Perez would conclude, left-hander Kris Bubic had just thrown perhaps his best game of the season.
A week earlier, that would have represented an anomaly to the league’s worst pitching staff. Now? It fits into a trend that has developed over the past seven days.
Can it last? That’s what we really would like to surmise from this recent run, right? And to figure that out, we’ll look at the metrics for why the Royals pitching staff — and particularly the rotation — has taken an abrupt turn for the better. There are signs of legitimate improvement here, which stretches beyond the gift that three of the seven games on this road trip through Monday came against the listless A’s lineup. We will dive deeper into it, but it can basically be summarized in a word.
There are a lot of factors for why the Royals rotation has produced a 3.11 ERA since June 13, same as there were plenty of factors it hovered near 5 beforehand. But if we preface everything with that caveat, can we too acknowledge that it makes a significant difference when the worst strike-throwing team in baseball suddenly starts to throw a heck of a lot more of them? Or better yet, when it starts not only throwing more strikes but picking better timing and location of those strikes?
Overall, the rotation is walking one batter fewer per nine innings on this road trip (3.1) than it was prior to its outset (4.2). It’s certainly a small sample size, though, and, besides, how much of that is really their doing versus some help from the opposition?
Well, the deeper data shows the Royals deserve a lot of the credit for it. This season, they have struggled to work the edges of the strike zone — only 31.8% of their pitches fall into those areas, fourth worst in MLB. But their starters over the past seven games — Brady Singer, Bubic, Jonathan Heasley, Daniel Lynch, Brad Keller, Singer again and Bubic once more — have surpassed that number in every single start of this stretch. Seven for seven. Put together, they have thrown 41.0% of their pitches on the edges of the zone, a 9.1% jump.
That’s not a small increase, and it’s the type of improvement that will show up whether you’re playing the Oakland A’s or the New York Yankees, albeit certainly to different degrees. Regardless of the opponent, go figure, the pitches on the edges of the zone are more difficult to barrel than those in the meat of it. The Royals have too frequently operated either outside the zone completely — without the stuff to prompt chase — or in the middle of it.
Until recently. Each of the Royals’ opponents on this road trip — three games against the Giants, three in Oakland and one (with two more coming) against the Angels — have an expected slugging percentage of .452 or worse, according to Statcast. Heck, three of them are .234 or worse. For comparison’s sake, the Royals held only one of their previous 11 opponents to an expected slugging percentage worse than .452. So from 1 of 11 to seven straight.
Amazing what pitch location will do.
The timing of it, too. Prior to leaving Kansas City a week ago, the Royals were dead last in first-pitch strike percentage at 56.9%, nearly two percent worse than any other team. They’re 15th in the league over the past week.
On Monday night, after his outing, Bubic said his mixture — 52 fastballs, 27 changeups and 16 curveballs — made Angels hitters unaware of what pitch to expect. That’s only the case, though, when you’re working from ahead in the count. When you’re behind, you become more predictable. On Monday, Bubic threw a first-pitch strike to 17 of the 25 hitters he faced (68%).
Three months after a spring training emphasis, the Royals are actually showing indications of moving the control of their pitching in the right direction.
It’s just one week. All of seven games. But it’s the type of turnaround that leads to four victories in five games for the first time all year.
Can it last? It’s in their control.
