Royal Scrolls: A Sweep, a Stale Lineup and a Date with Detroit
Kansas City's offense failed to deliver in the Bronx while the bullpen bobbled leads
Royal Scrolls is a recap of the week so far and a preview of the weekend ahead, along with news, nuggets and notes.
Woof.
It’s April, and the Buddy Bell quote is already making the rounds. If you’re here, you know the one.
When this road trip began and the “let’s just go 4-6” sentiment bubbled to the surface, it felt a little too 2012. Expectations are — and should be — higher than hoping for a sub-.500 swing. This team aspires for the playoffs, after all.
With just one win through six of those games, though, 4-6 sounds awfully enticing. The Cleveland series required a heroic effort from Cole Ragans to avoid a sweep. No such hero put on the cape in New York, a demoralizing sweep in which KC fired the opening salvo in all three contests, only to concede those leads in quick succession.
The Royals could desperately use a rebound series against the division-leading Tigers at 10-8. With four games on deck in Detroit and Tarik Skubal looming for the Sunday finale, a fast start in Thursday’s opener is imperative.
Let’s get to a few Crowning Achievements from a soul-crushing week and, more importantly for KC, look ahead at who awaits them in the final leg of the trip.
Crowning Achievements
Bobby is Barreling
It’s hard for an OPS that begins with a 1 to quietly pass by, but a couple factors are at play with Bobby Witt Jr.’s recent hot stretch going a little overlooked.
He’s reached a level of stardom that it’s expected.
The lineup around him is crumbling in a way that his superior statistics aren’t mattering in the grander context of the team.
Let’s set those aside for a minute and appreciate what the MVP runner-up shortstop did over the past week.
In seven games since our last Royal Scrolls, Witt is slashing .417/.464./625 with a pair of doubles, a New York homer, four runs scored, three RBI and a pair of stolen bags. Yes, you would think those peripherals would lead to more than seven runs generated, but such is the state of the lineup right now.
In that timeframe (excluding Wednesday’s game as the data hadn’t updated at time of publish), the young slugger posted an average exit velocity of 95.8 MPH, a 55.6% hard-hit rate and a 16.7% barrel rate. If only the offense around Witt could provide a little protection (and more plate appearances), he’d be off and running heading into the second half of April.
Ragans Keeps Rolling
The pitching staff is largely keeping this team afloat amidst the offensive apathy, and at its core is the left-handed ace who’s out to show last year’s Cy Young-caliber campaign was just the start. He’s up to 23.2 innings through four starts with a 2.28 ERA, 0.93 WHIP and 1.33 FIP, powered by a 32.3% K-BB and 34% called strikes plus whiff rate.
Ragans’ last outing, a gem of a start on Sunday when Kansas City desperately needed a win against Cleveland, may have been the best of his career. The superlatives speak for themselves: 7.2 innings (career high), 20 whiffs (seventh-most) and 41% whiff rate (fifth-best in career starts).
His stuff was phenomenal. The command was crisp. His pitch count remained efficient throughout the outing.
It was his third consecutive start with double-digit punchouts, and if he continues at this torrid pace, he’ll position himself right back in the mix for a Cy Young trophy at the end of the season — one in which, at least to this point, every bit of his ace-ness has been required.
Bubic Continues Mixing
The left-hander’s outing in the Bronx was disappointing on the surface after the way he’s started 2025. He managed just 5.1 innings, allowing three runs on seven hits and four walks.
But Bubic struck out six on 14 whiffs/41 swings, a 34% whiff rate that’s fifth-best in his 66 career starts. He posted a 35% CSW that, on most nights, is going to serve up a better finish than what he put forth against a tough Yankees lineup in a tricky ballpark.
What intrigues me most, though, is how Bubic has tweaked his pitch mix all four starts. Whether the changes are based on game plan or feel, I’m not sure, but he’s swapped out his primary and secondary weapons through four outings, showing an ability to keep opponents guessing from start to start.
Start 1, 92 pitches: FF 40, CH 23
Start 2, 99 pitches: FF 43, SL/CH 20
Start 3, 93 pitches: FF 48, ST 22
Start 4, 94 pitches: ST 43, FF 32
Weekend Preview
Teams may not look at road trips the way fans do, with a goal of going 5-5, 4-6, whatever. Maybe they do, but even if so, they’re not going to admit it publicly. “One game at a time” is a cliche for a reason, after all.
But coming home with just two or three wins in this tough 10-game set would be an abject failure, both in fans’ and players’ eyes. The Royals put themselves in a tough spot heading to Detroit, now needing three wins to not feel like the trip was a waste of jet fuel.
Detroit’s Cy Young winner awaits in the series finale on Sunday, putting even more pressure on the first three tilts of this four-game intra-division series.
Pitching Probables
Thursday: Michael Lorenzen vs. RHP Reese Olson
The series opens with one of Detroit’s several ascending arms in Reese Olson, a third-year Big Leaguer with the look of a long-time middle-end-of-a-rotation stalwart. He’s a groundball specialist with middling career strikeout and walk rates that bely his ability to miss barrels, in spite of allowing loud contact (16th-percentile EV and 12th-percentile hard-hit rate in 2024).
Chalk his success up to quality vertical movement across the right-hander’s arsenal from a low three-quarters arm slot paired with an ability to stay out of the middle of the strike zone. Olson’s a bit of a nibbler, though, with the third-lowest zone rate among 126 pitchers with more than 100 innings in 2024 — but he more than makes up for it with the 17th-highest chase rate among the same sample of arms. The 25 year old is going to test KC’s plate discipline.
Friday: Cole Ragans vs. RHP Jackson Jobe
One of the top pitching prospects in the game, Jobe’s been a bit of an enigma through his first three career outings. Stuff models love his high-octane four-seamer and upper-80s slider, but his chase and whiff rates on those two pitches (and his entire arsenal, really) don’t jive with the data.
A 1.7 K-BB% is sixth-worst among pitchers with 10+ innings so far this season. He’s conceding far too many free passes without the requisite strikeout rate to make up for it. Jobe’s 50% zone rate is middle of the pack, so he’s not exactly wild, but is perhaps trying to be too fine with a pitch mix that would play perfectly well in the strike zone.
Putting the Royals fandom aside for a moment, it’ll be a fun first of many looks at the premier 22-year-old prospect, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Kansas City take a patient approach to find out if the youngster will get himself in trouble.
Saturday: Seth Lugo vs. RHP Casey Mize
On Saturday, the focus shifts from Detroit’s current top prospect to its former No. 1 pick in Casey Mize, who’s somehow already in his fifth Major League campaign. Through 17.1 innings, Mize looks like he may be in for a breakout, too, following an uninspiring start to his career. A healthy, if unspectacular, 13.2% K-BB and solid 29.9% CSW, both career-bests, are bolstered by a revamped pitch mix.
The right-hander has more than halved the usage of his slider, completely turfed a knuckle curve that got rocked in 2024 and added a slower slurve that generates a bit more drop than the slider at a lower velocity (83.5 MPH). The slurve doesn’t grade well, but it keeps open a separate velo bracket to avoid sitting 87-94 across the entire arsenal after bailing on the failed curveball.
Mize’s splitter is also showing increased tail and depth, boosting its tjStuff+ rating seven points from a year ago to a near-elite 109 for its pitch type.
Sunday: Michael Wacha vs. LHP Tarik Skubal
And that brings us to Sunday, the reason there’s heightened pressure on games 1-3 of the series. Skubal, the reigning AL Cy Young winner, awaits the Royals with a repeat bid for hardware on his mind. He’s off to another strong start, though the K% is down a bit — that won’t last long as the whiff and chase marks are in line with what he did in 2024.
Kansas City did find relative success against the southpaw in two of his four starts against them last season, scoring four runs across five innings on May 22 and five runs across 6.1 innings on Aug. 2. The repertoire remains largely unchanged (why wouldn’t it?) outside of a decreased usage of the sinker against lefties to lean a little more on the bullet slider and changeup.
Tigers Notes
Spencer Torkelson may finally be figuring things out. He’s hitting the ball harder, and more often, with a career-high barrel rate (16.7%) and xwOBACON (.546). It’s led to a .270/.360/.587 with five homers on the young season.
Kerry Carpenter, AKA Kerry Bonds, is following up a breakout 2024 with a strong start to 2025. The difference? He’s actually playing against left-handers after getting glued to the bench when opposing southpaws took the bump a year ago — and for good reason, based on his .107/.194/.214 same-handed slash. Carpenter took 32 plate appearances against lefties last season and is already halfway to that mark this year. He’s showing he may be able to handle the job with a .200/.188/.600 slash this time around, but it remains to be seen if Detroit will let him take his hacks against Cole Ragans on Friday.
Data Mining
Unearthing always fun, sometimes meaningful Royals stats. (This section is a little different this week as I want to do a semi-deep dive on Kansas City’s batted-ball profile as opposed to overwhelming you with a million bullet points.)
It may not feel comforting right now with the offense moored to the bottom rungs of every major statistical category, but KC’s hitters are doing one important thing right: lifting the baseball to the pull side.
Per Statcast, they’re seventh in MLB in fly-ball rate (29.4%) and line-drive rate (24.4%). They’re last in ground-ball rate (35.4%). Pop-ups are an issue right now, yes, leading the league at 10.8%, but the important thing is, they’re keeping batted balls off the ground and hoisting them into the sky — exactly what you want to see from your offense. The proof:
2024 MLB averages on fly balls/line drives: .426 batting average, .833 slug
2024 MLB averages on ground balls: .249 batting average, .273 slug
Some of you probably didn’t need the crash course on the importance of lifting the baseball. But another area KC leads the league in, that blends with the above, is pull-air%, which is simply the percentage of batted balls you’re getting off the ground (fly balls, line drives and pop-ups) to the pull side. The Royals are at 24.4% — a quarter of their batted balls are pulled in the air, and this is a good thing, contrary to what your little league coach might’ve told you about going the other way.
Again, the proof:
2024 MLB averages on pull-air batted balls: .543 batting average, 1.217 slug
2024 MLB averages on straightaway air balls: .355 batting average, .586 slug
2024 MLB averages on oppo air balls: .263 batting average, .429 slug
That was easy, wasn’t it? Pulling the baseball in the air maximizes damage.
Now, here’s where I caveat that, even as a numbers guy, I absolutely recognize there’s a time and place for situational baseball.
Runner on third and two outs? Sure, go with an outside fastball to the opposite field and get the run home.
Runner on second with no outs in a tight game? A ground ball to the right side isn’t the worst outcome.
Your next question is likely something along the lines of: “So if the Royals are pulling the baseball in the air, and pulling the baseball in the air is a good thing, why aren’t they hitting better?”
Simply put, they aren’t hitting the ball hard enough, often enough.
Their 89.5 MPH average exit velocity is fine, basically middle of the league, and actually matches last year’s number when it was fourth-best across MLB.
But their 39.2% hard-hit rate is seventh-worst. Their wOBACON (weighted on-base average on contact) is third-worst at .298. Their 6.7% barrel rate is fifth-worst.
The hard-hit rate a season ago was 40.5%, good for seventh-best in baseball. The 2024 wOBACON was .349, toward the bottom of the league, but still ~16% better than what they’ve put forward in 2025.
If KC continues pulling the ball in the air, I think the contact metrics are going to find their level. Basically the entire bottom half of the Royals lineup, plus Vinnie Pasquantino, are underperforming against their career EVs and hard-hit rates, including Michael Massey, MJ Melendez, Hunter Renfroe, Freddy Fermin, Cavan Biggio and Kyle Isbel. Only one of those names is past the age curve that might be cause for expected regression.
I can’t promise those guys are all going to get back to their career batted-ball norms. (Though I’m highly, highly confident Pasquantino is about to go on a tear.) I can’t promise the offense as a whole is going to take off.
But if they continue pulling the ball in the air, good things are going to come.
wOBACON? More like wOEBEGONE! Good stuff as always