The Royals have a good team, but they don’t have much room for error. Tonight there were too many mistakes, some more serious than others, but they all add up to the same thing.
First of all, Seth Lugo wasn’t fooling people during this start. He gave up a two-run homer in the first inning to Seiya Suzuki. He gave up a triple to rookie Pete Crow-Armstrong, who was batting ninth tonight and hasn’t been good, yet, in his young career. Crow-Armstrong scored on Salvador Perez’s groundout at first to bring the Cubs’ lead back to two. In the bottom half of the second, Hunter Renfroe had cut the lead in half with his own homer.
In the bottom of the third, Dairon Blanco led off the inning with a single and advanced to second on a wild pitch, but was thrown out at second base when he came out too early on a stolen base attempt. It’s debatable how much of a mistake that was, because Cubs starter Shota Imanaga was initially going to throw behind Blanco, and if he had, Blanco likely would have been safe at third. Imanaga realized this before throwing to second, turned, and threw to third to get Blanco out.
In the bottom of the sixth, Maikel Garcia led off with a single and Bobby Witt Jr. stepped up to the plate as the go-ahead run came in. Witt doubled into the gap in left-center and scored Garcia to cut the deficit to one. Again, this is a questionable call as an error because you want a runner as fast as Witt to be ready to be aggressive, but his shift was too wide at second. Cubs third baseman Chris Morel cut off the throw to the plate and threw to Michael Busch behind Witt to get him out at second. Two batters later, Salvador Perez singled and would have driven in the tying run.
This led to a moment when the Royals appeared to be on the verge of overcoming the errors. Imanaga, who had allowed multiple hard balls to begin his third inning in the batting order, was replaced by reliever Julian Merryweather. Freddy Fermin greeted him with a double down the line, putting runners on second and third. Hunter Renfroe came to the plate and drove in both runners with a single to left field to give the Royals the lead.
At that point, Lugo had been getting a lot of outs, but he still wasn’t fooling anyone. He struck out just two batters all night. Still, his pitch count was low and the bullpen has been moderately suspect all year. They’ve generally been fine with multi-run leads, but they’ve struggled when put in close games. Manager Matt Quatraro decided to ask Lugo to come back out for the seventh.
Nine pitches later, two Cubs reached base on singles. It wasn’t necessarily a mistake to ask Lugo to pitch the seventh, but it was a mistake to not have someone ready to back him up right away. Then came the plate appearance that everyone will remember tonight.
With runners on first and second base and no one out, Seth Lugo faced Dansby Swanson. Lugo threw two different pitches that were clearly called strikes. Instead of striking out Swanson, Lugo walked him to load the bases.
Lugo then got a fly out to center, not deep enough to score a run, and Sam Long was summoned from the bullpen to face the left-hander Crow-Armstrong. But, prepared for that move, Cubs manager Craig Counsell responded by sending right-hander Patrick Wisdom in as a pinch hitter. Widom hasn’t been very good this year, but has The Cubs have been above average against lefties. The Royals bullpen, as noted above, is not good when its back is against the wall. Long fell behind 2-1 and then hit a fastball up the middle. Wisdom didn’t miss it and the Royals were behind once again. To compound the mistake of not having a reliever ready, they called up a reliever who allowed the Cubs to play off the strength of their bench. The only lefty the Cubs had on their bench was Miles Mastrobuoni, who has a sub-.500 OPS on the season, even worse than Armstrong’s.
Kris Bubic pitched the eighth inning and most of the ninth. His eighth inning was perfect with one groundout and two strikeouts. He allowed his first two runs of the year in the ninth. But that’s OK, because the game was already lost, the defense wasn’t doing him any favors, and he wasn’t going to have a 0.00 ERA all year.
The Royals came out of the break looking very strong through the first four games, but now they’ve had two awful losses that were within reach in the last three days. Each new trade announcement comes with information that the Royals were interested in the player, but couldn’t match the offers made by the other teams. Hope always seems to disappear after a loss like tonight’s. It doesn’t help that this is Seth Lugo’s second bad start in three games. Could he be wearing himself out? His next start will almost certainly see him set a career-high for innings, surpassing the 146 he pitched last year.
Yes, it was a frustrating loss. But as David Lesky recently wrote in his Inside the Crown newsletter, it’s nice to still be frustrated by losses this late in the season. Plus, the Royals bounced back from Wednesday night’s loss with a win last night. And they can bounce back tomorrow to take the series and finish the homestand with a 6-3 record, which would make them feel pretty good heading into their first road trip after the All-Star break. Cole Ragans will take the mound for the Kansas City Chiefs tomorrow afternoon, while the Cubs will look to Javier Assad to help them win the decider. The game will tip off at 1:10 p.m. CT.
