Royals earn their second three-game losing streak in seven days; fall to Padres 7-3

They haven’t been able to finish a rally for a week

It may be a new month, but the Royals look the same as they have for the last week. Another game, another poor performance by the bullpen, another short-circuited rally (actually, two, this time) and the Royals take their sixth loss in seven games following their eight-game winning streak.

Let’s go ahead and get the complaints about home plate umpire Andy Fletcher out of the way first. I know that complaining about umpires is something only losers do and that the Royals had their opportunities to win this one despite his interference. But he called strikes on two different ball fours to Royals batters - in the same inning, no less! - and also rung Bobby Witt Jr. up on what should have also been a ball four.

(This highlight is from earlier in the season, but representative of how he called today’s game as well)

We all know that umpires aren’t perfect, and most of the time we will forgive an umpire for his bad calls if he’s at least consistent. Fletcher was anything but.

So, yeah, the Royals could have won anyway. But it’s asking a lot of them to try to beat the Padres and the home plate umpire. I know umpires almost never get fired and that, despite being used successfully in the minors for years, the Automatic Ball-Strike System is apparently nowhere near ready for use in MLB, but it is insane. And there are tons of other examples of Fletcher and other umpires just being truly terrible at various times on that Umpire Auditor twitter account.

OK. Moving on.

Alec Marsh decided his last start wasn’t bad enough and decided to see if he could one-up himself a bit today, albeit with a little help from Fletcher. For the first time this year, he really looked like the Marsh of last season. He only managed to go five innings, giving up five runs but in such a way that it felt like it could have been a lot more or a lot fewer. He only struck out three and also walked three.

Nick Anderson also looked like the worst version of himself in the ninth inning when he gave up a leadoff home run to Kyle Higashioka and then allowed two more hits before giving up a sacrifice fly to Jurickson Profar. Right now the most reliable relievers the Royals have are Angel Zerpa and Sam Long and if you expected that to be the case before the season started, I’d like for you to please give me some North Carolina lottery numbers to play.

This game wasn’t without some bright spots, though. Will Smith, Chris Stratton, and Sam Long each had a scoreless inning. Stratton, interestingly, has 11 shutdown appearances to only four meltdown appearances. I know he’s lugging around a 5.76 ERA and we don’t trust him at all, but it kind of seemed to me that he’s been mostly good but when he’s bad he’s very bad and those statistics back it up.

Vinnie Pasquantino, on his bobblehead day no less, had three of the Royals eight hits, finished a triple shy of the cycle, and drove in all three runs, including a two-run home run in the bottom of the first that seemed to prophesy a good day for the Royals. Alas, it was not to be. Still, having Vinnie hot again can only help the Royals going forward.

The Royals had two failed rallies in which at least two runners were on base in the seventh and eighth innings, including one where Vinnie made his only out of the day swinging at 99 up and out of the zone with the bases loaded to end the seventh. How you feel about the Royals right now probably says more about you than them. On the one hand, they’ve lost six of their last seven games. On the other hand, they’ve clawed and scraped in all six of those losses and made them more uncomfortable for their opponents than anyone would have imagined. I’m not saying it’s OK that they lost because they played hard, but I’m not saying you should completely disregard that, either. We’ll only know if this is the beginning of the end for the 2024 Royals or a sign that the end is very far off until much later in the season when we have more context around these games.

For now, the Royals will have only their second opportunity to be swept in this entire season tomorrow afternoon. They managed to avoid the sweep in the opening series of the season against the Twins. At this point last season, the Royals had already been swept five times and had already had nine losing streaks of three games or worse (including a four-gamer and a seven-gamer) and were on their way to a tenth.

I know it’s frustrating now, heaven knows I was screaming at my TV today for the first time since probably 2017. I’m realizing that losing baseball may actually have been better for my mental health because after a while I can just tune it out and focus on other things instead of hanging on the outcome of every game. But this team is far from out of it. The Rangers lost seven in a row at one point, last year. The perenially good Atlanta team lost three out of four to their lesser division rival the Nationals this week and while they’ve split their first two games against their interleague California opponent this week, the Athletics are significantly worse than the Padres. I don’t think anyone is counting them out, yet.

The Royals will ask Cole Ragans to get things done, tomorrow. Brady Singer, who is feeling better, will start again on Wednesday. The Padres will send out left-hander Michael King. King, despite breaking out last season for the Yankees, has not been nearly so dominant for the Padres this year. The game will start at 1:10 Royals time.