***Don Denkinger Appreciation/ Royals @ Cards 7/10 Doubleheader GDT***

[cmh6476]

Here's how we're taking the field behind Alec Marsh this afternoon in Game 1 of our doubleheader in St. Louis. pic.twitter.com/arLqXLdTqa

— Kansas City Royals (@Royals) July 10, 2024

Michael Wacha heads to the mound tonight in Game 2 as we look to sweep the doubleheader. pic.twitter.com/A4tkxqySPz

— Kansas City Royals (@Royals) July 10, 2024

[GabyKeepsMeWarm]

Originally Posted by Dartgod

Will Lugo be available to pitch in the ASG? That's only 2 days rest.

I'm more curious to see how the rotation shakes out post-ASG. Could keep Singer on his normal routine, as he pitches Sunday, then has the four games off, letting him go again on Friday when the season resumes, and following him up with Ragans, Lugo, etc? Or maybe Wacha gets that Friday game? I really doubt it'll be either Ragans or Lugo considering they'll both likely be getting a little action in the ASG, but who knows... I'm probably overthinking things...

[GabyKeepsMeWarm]

Originally Posted by Why Not?

Deal!

Here's to hoping!

[Mosbonian]

Originally Posted by GabyKeepsMeWarm

That would be September 20th. Yes, that is the correct answer. September ****ing 20th. Unreal turnaround.

So does that mean that the Royals manager might be a candidate for Coach of the Year or will bias against small market teams still raise it's ugly head?

[ROYC75]

Originally Posted by KCUnited

Feel this lineup goes how Sal goes

It does, when Salvy was Hot, or at least contributing often, we were several games over .500.

He goes in a slump, we do to, howbeit it was against quality teams, but we are going to have to beat those teams later in the playoffs! So this excuse is not acceptable, gotta play harder, keep winning!

[GabyKeepsMeWarm]

Originally Posted by ROYC75

It does, when Salvy was Hot, or at least contributing often, we were several games over .500.

He goes in a slump, we do to, howbeit it was against quality teams, but we are going to have to beat those teams later in the playoffs! So this excuse is not acceptable, gotta play harder, keep winning!

Didn’t help that when Salvy started slumping, we lost a hot Massey and Renfroe to injury for a few weeks there.

[KCUnited]

I don't have time to look at the numbers but it seems like we need to score at least 4 runs to win and I'm not sure we have the horses in the lineup to get that done if Sal is in a prolonged slump

[poolboy]

Yesterday was a great day to play two against the cards..so fun...lets do it again soon

[ROYC75]

Originally Posted by GabyKeepsMeWarm

Didn’t help that when Salvy started slumping, we lost a hot Massey and Renfroe to injury for a few weeks there.

True.

[KCUnited]

Clevo got smashed today

[GabyKeepsMeWarm]

Originally Posted by KCUnited

Clevo got smashed today

Always good news. Maybe they're time is up for a bit of a "correction". Hopefully we've had ours. Yankees seem to be going through theirs. I hate to get ahead of things, but check out the schedule following the AS break. We've got a chunk of 16 winnable games. Nine games at home beginning with the White Sox. If we play our best or even close to it, we could make some serious hay heading into August.

[teedubya]

I wish MLB would allow Trevor Bauer back in the league... He was proving a point.

That guy is so fun to watch... and he'd be great in blue. :-)

[WhawhaWhat]

Thanks for popping in.

[SithCeNtZ]

Originally Posted by KCUnited

Feel this lineup goes how Sal goes

I wanted to do a deep dive on this because I was curious how true it was beyond the obvious "hey your second best hitter can't hit 194 for a while month and not impact the club" kind of thing. And really from looking at it, I don't think it's true beyond the obvious but he does represent something that really plagued the lineup in June.

One big, big thing that I don't see get much play in the Royals discussion is how little we alter our lineup. Garcia, for better or worse, leads off(or has mostly). And then you can predictably slot in every other guy in the order for most games. While I won't argue if this is good or bad, what you can't argue is that it has very real impacts. So if we want to look at salvy and his impact, we also have to look at other players because they always hit in the same spots.

A perfect example of this is actually Isbel and Garcia. In May, when the Royals were doing well, Isbel was, like all of our outfield, really bad. He hits .200 exactly with a 545 OPS. You can't get much worse than that. However, Garcia was pretty good in May, hitting 300 with a 773 OPS. This results in Isbel scoring 11 runs despite doing the bare minimum to get on base. But then June hits and Garcia turns in one of the worst months in royals history for a regular, hitting .142 with a 397 OPS. Isbel meanwhile has an amazing month, hitting 300 with an 884 OPS. With roughly the same number of at bats. What is the result? Isbel scored fewer runs hitting like an All Star than he did playing like a minor leaguer.

You simply can't afford to have an automatic out at random points in the lineup as it kills efficiency. If your lineup starts with a decent player, MVP, decent player, All Star, then you'll get some runs because it's easy for those to pair together and score some big innings, even if the bottom of the lineup isn't doing anything. But when you have automatic out, MVP, decent, automatic out, that's going to cause problems because it's hard to get rallies going. And that's what salvy hitting 194 in June was. If Garcia wasnt so completely awful I bet this has just as big of impact as Salvy being good because we essentially wasted Isbel playing like an All Star for a month. Had Isbel been moved to the top of the order when he was on fire, I bet that also would have altered some things, but this isn't something Q really does.

TLDR: Salvy isn't the only key, he just represents a bigger problem of guys going in massive slumps which alters how our lineup functions because we never alter the order.

[KCUnited]

Originally Posted by SithCeNtZ

I wanted to do a deep dive on this because I was curious how true it was beyond the obvious "hey your second best hitter can't hit 194 for a while month and not impact the club" kind of thing. And really from looking at it, I don't think it's true beyond the obvious but he does represent something that really plagued the lineup in June.

One big, big thing that I don't see get much play in the Royals discussion is how little we alter our lineup. Garcia, for better or worse, leads off(or has mostly). And then you can predictably slot in every other guy in the order for most games. While I won't argue if this is good or bad, what you can't argue is that it has very real impacts. So if we want to look at salvy and his impact, we also have to look at other players because they always hit in the same spots.

A perfect example of this is actually Isbel and Garcia. In May, when the Royals were doing well, Isbel was, like all of our outfield, really bad. He hits .200 exactly with a 545 OPS. You can't get much worse than that. However, Garcia was pretty good in May, hitting 300 with a 773 OPS. This results in Isbel scoring 11 runs despite doing the bare minimum to get on base. But then June hits and Garcia turns in one of the worst months in royals history for a regular, hitting .142 with a 397 OPS. Isbel meanwhile has an amazing month, hitting 300 with an 884 OPS. With roughly the same number of at bats. What is the result? Isbel scored fewer runs hitting like an All Star than he did playing like a minor leaguer.

You simply can't afford to have an automatic out at random points in the lineup as it kills efficiency. If your lineup starts with a decent player, MVP, decent player, All Star, then you'll get some runs because it's easy for those to pair together and score some big innings, even if the bottom of the lineup isn't doing anything. But when you have automatic out, MVP, decent, automatic out, that's going to cause problems because it's hard to get rallies going. And that's what salvy hitting 194 in June was. If Garcia wasnt so completely awful I bet this has just as big of impact as Salvy being good because we essentially wasted Isbel playing like an All Star for a month. Had Isbel been moved to the top of the order when he was on fire, I bet that also would have altered some things, but this isn't something Q really does.

TLDR: Salvy isn't the only key, he just represents a bigger problem of guys going in massive slumps which alters how our lineup functions because we never alter the order.

Hate bumping an older game thread but this is super insightful

A quick glance at BA with RISP and was suprised to see we're actually doing fairly well, even with the June dip, so it seems the problem with June was getting on base and not necessarily timely hitting