Questioning Quatraro’s odd, costly decision in Sunday’s loss

Shoulda woulda coulda

The Royals had bounced back nicely from their recent slide.

In the team’s three-game sweep against the Rangers on the road, the Royals only trailed for one and a half innings the entire series. Overall, the pitching staff stifled Texas’s offense, holding them to a mere five runs, while the lineup woke up a little bit, scoring six runs in consecutive games before putting up four in the third and final game.

The good times continued into Friday night as the Royals showed some pop in winning a close one against the Padres in San Diego, 6-5, said pop coming from Bobby Witt Jr. and Jonathan India, the latter of whom walloped a three-run homer in the fifth to the put Kansas City up 4-0. Kansas City blew the lead, but scored twice against Jason Adam in the eighth, and held on for the tight victory.

Saturday was a wash, really, as the offense reverted, once again wasting a fine outing from rookie Noah Cameron, who’s now 2-3 despite a 2.08 ERA and 3.67 FIP. The young man from St. Joseph still maintains a WHIP under one as he’s holding opposing batters to a .537 OPS that includes just a .249 on-base percentage.

That loss, of course, snapped the team’s four-game winning streak, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much, or cause as many questions, as did Sunday’s 3-2 defeat.

I won’t go full recap on the game as Trenton has you covered with that. I just want to focus on the bottom of the ninth.

Daniel Lynch IV started the inning as a) the game was tied, so of course the closer can’t enter, and b) the Padres had two left-handed hitters due up to begin the inning. Luis Arraez led off and singled to the opposite field. Alright, fine, the guy’s a professional hitter and now has a nine-game hitting streak. Gavin Sheets followed with a fly-out to center. Next up, right-handed hitter Xander Bogaerts, who started getting hot in the Padres’ series finale against the Dodgers right before the Royals came town, continued his four-game heater with a double to center.

Arraez, not a speedy fellow, stopped at third.

Runners on second and third, one out, right-handed hitter Jose Iglesias up.

Four things here: 1) Iglesias had tied the game earlier on a pinch-hit two-run single, 2) first base was open, 3) there were currently no force outs, and 4) switch-hitting Bryce Johnson, who had not had an at-bat yet this game and only has nine all season, was on deck. For the season, Johnson is 2-for-5 against lefties and 2-for-4 against righties, but for his career, he’s slashed .207/.277/.276 against lefties and .187/.256/.483 against righties.

Quatraro made the call to the bullpen to bring in John Schreiber. Which, fine.

Q then made the call to pitch to Iglesias.

I’m sorry, what?

What an odd decision. Sure, Arraez isn’t fleet-footed, but why not intentionally walk Iglesias to set up the force at every single base? Maybe (probably?) the Padres would’ve countered by pinch-hitting for Johnson, but still: whoever was up next was going to have to get the ball into the air. A grounder would’ve been ripe for either a force out at the plate or an inning-ending double-play.

By not walking Iglesias, Q greatly limited the positive plays available to the Royals while allowing a greater range of positive outcomes for the Padres.

Essentially, the Royals needed a strikeout, a pop-up, a short flyball to the outfield, or a sharply hit grounder directly to an infielder. Outside of the first two, the Padres could still win on whatever happened with the ball put into play, even a ground ball not hit directly to an infielder.

Which is, of course, exactly what happened.

Now, I’m not going to go all-in on bashing Quatraro here. I’m not calling for his job. The offense clearly needs to score more than two runs, and the bullpen needs to pitch better.

And yet, Q seemed to choke under the pressure on Sunday. He had a decision to make, and he made the wrong one. He made a fateful call to pitch with a base open, and it came back to burn not only him, but the team. The Royals, denied a shot at extra innings, are now 38-40 on the season.

There are 84 games remaining this season. There was no guarantee the Royals would’ve won had the game reached extra innings, which would’ve put them back at .500.

But damn, it would’ve been nice to be given the shot.