Royals POSTCAST: Kansas City Royals Offense Nonexistent in Opener Against Athletics | LIVE REACTION

Royals POSTCAST: Kansas City Royals Offense Nonexistent in Opener Against Athletics | LIVE REACTION

[Music] this is the Royals Post Cast your instant game reaction for the Kansas City Royals part of the Locked On podcast network your team every day wow can’t believe we’re here again welcome in it’s the Locked On Royals post here on the Locked On Network your team every day i’m your host Chance Lebo here to bring you reaction to every single Royals game the rest of this season go ahead and shoot me a follow on Twitter Chance Lebo you’ll be able to check out the live stream and much more uh just shoot me a follow on Twitter i really appreciate it if you can’t make a show live uh which we do these every night uh or every Royals game every Royals post game uh don’t worry these up these episodes will be uploaded uh for you to listen to on demand wherever you get your podcast or you can come back and check out the video on YouTube a little bit later um once this live stream is ended before we get started remember to subscribe to the channel turn on our notifications so that you get a notification an alert on your phone or your mobile device whenever we go live thank you guys for joining the show we already have some people in the chat we had uh Brent in here before the uh before the game even ended said he’s getting his popcorn here for the comments and uh appreciate you guys all for hopping in uh this is going to be uh this is going to be a pretty I I want to say it’s going to be a pretty short episode because man everything we uh we’re kind of we’re kind of beating a dead horse right now everything that happened tonight has happened before and that’s the unfortunate part and uh I might have uh come around on a couple of ideas so we’ll talk about that in a little bit but first we’ll start out with our usual what you’ll be talking about segment this is what you’ll be talking about all right this is the worst offense in Major League Baseball in the first five innings against starting pitchers this Royals offense is the worst in Major League Baseball i went to teamrankings.com which is one of my favorite sites a great site where you can get a lot of different information on a lot of different things for you gamblers out there fanduel is one of our ad sponsors today we’ll get to them in a little bit they’ve got some great information on no run first innings uh so if you’re a gambler and love to dabble in that uh teamrankings.com’s where I go for all that information but one thing that I found today and I’ve got it here on my handydandy little notebook i I’ve been taking notes in the game although these notes are a lot shorter because it’s been the same thing over and over and over again but the one thing that I went and picked up and I said it yesterday on the show that the Royals first five team total under is always a good bet well this season the Royals in the first six innings of games this season are averaging 2.16 runs per game that is third worst in Major League Baseball third worst behind the Rockies and the Pirates two really bad baseball teams so the Royals are obviously really bad and it’s even worse when you consider when they play at home that number dips to 1.74 which is far and away the worst in Major League Baseball the uh the Pirates are 2.10 so almost over a quarter of a run more per six innings that is really bad and it continues to pop up as an issue the Royals had an excellent start to today’s game uh they had Jonathan India walk they get a run in the first inning salvador Perez hits one at the left it feels like this is going to be the the the frustration ending series against a team that has just been a punching bag losers of 14 in a row on the road it felt like this was a great opportunity for the Royals to come in and you know potentially possibly make something happen sorry it wasn’t uh it wasn’t Jonathan India that walked it was Mike Garcia who got on second then Salvi brought him along but man this continues to happen after Salvi brings in Mike Jack Kagleon gets out then later it it just continues to be an issue where this team cannot hit with runners on base royals get a lead off runner on mel Garcia Vinnie hits it sharply to the left side right out of guy and it should have been two but a really weird throw by Max Muny made it a little bit of an easier play for a fat and slow Vinnie to get to first base i don’t even know i I it’s it’s becoming to the point where it’s like I don’t even know what to say this this team just doesn’t have an approach to plate everybody in the comments talks about and I I do read the comments i know I don’t really respond to them on on here most of the time because I usually am have my own thoughts and I don’t want to take some from you guys although I do encourage you guys to keep commenting but the comment I I see a lot is why are they you know taking these pitches why are they swinging so much why a lot of it has to do with what the what the guys at the plate decide to swing at and not to swing at when they decide to swing when they don’t decide to swing and honestly I couldn’t tell you why or why they aren’t swinging which is honestly really really bad because I probably should be able to tell you why guy yeah that probably wasn’t sitting that pitch there okay probably wanted to see first pitch get a read out of this guy at the bullpen okay once you get to the second third time around in the order you should probably have a decent idea of what you’re going to see from a guy unless of course you’re Bobby Whit Jr or your Salvador Perez who refuse to see any pitches whatsoever so there are so many issues that continue to compound each other the Royals have no approaches at the plate they don’t hit the ball hard when they do hit the ball hard it is on the ground uh we had a commenter bring up the stat they showed on the uh the broadcast i’m going to search for it here tony thank you so much did you see the stat that on 90% of Kag’s contact is lowline drives and ground balls yes I did see that thank you Tony for bringing that up because it the uh Ryan talked about it a little bit how Kags is getting a lot of low pitches because obviously these major league pitchers have have scouting they know exactly what he’s capable of when he’s able to do what he’s you know what he’s able to do uh they’re throwing him a lot of pitches down down low uh they’re trying to get him to hit the ball on the ground and he is and right now everybody on the Royals is hitting the ball on the ground bobby Wit Jr i tweeted out he’s either killing worms or he’s hitting the ball 500 feet in the air that lands in a short stop’s glove it continues to be a there are a lot of uh a lot of coaches will talk about uh approach at the plate and a lot of coaches will talk about hey we need to be doubles hitters not home runs hitters the Royals it seems like they’re the guys at the plate are trying to be home run hitters bobby Jr seems like he’s trying to go yard every time or he’s trying to hit a line drive right through the pitcher’s face he needs to work gaps i mean the Royals aren’t getting any extra base hits at all except for when Tyler Soderstrom a converted catcher that’s never played the outfield before is missing fly balls in left field it continues it over and over and over again we’re going to continue to beat this dead horse until until something changes i don’t know what that change needs to be um but something has to change whether it’s an approach thing a lineup thing they’re running out of options at this point they are running out of options and I’m going to talk about that very very much in the next segment we are going to talk about what options do the Royals have left what is the next what is the next step for this Royals team in the evolution of the 2025 Kansas City Royals i’m going to talk about that next when we come back here on the Locked on Royals Postcast all right time now to talk about the sponsors of today’s show we’re going to start start out with Trade Coffee let’s be real 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Royals podcast jack and I talk a lot we work together um we both kind of backed off on the take that Alex Zumalt needs fired but man it’s kind of uh it’s kind of parasitic where the longer you’re with this guy whether you’re a Vinnie Pasquantino or an MJ Melendez or now he’s starting to creep into the Bobby Wick Jr territory like the longer you’re around Alex Zumalt the worse things are getting for you at the plate if you go and look and I’m a big baseball Soant fan it’s my one guilty pleasure if you go back and look at MJ or MJ Melendez and Vinnie Pascantino in their first season in the big leagues their first season it was a shorter season for both of them so they don’t qualify if you go and look at that and look at their chase rates their walk rates their strikeout rates pretty solid then you fast forward to 2025 it’s a little bit different it’s a little bit different they have regressed from their approach where they as rookies where when you’re a rookie you would kind of expect pitchers to attack you go right at you throw you a lot of strikes and in that time frame they were really good at having a good approach to plate they were getting on base with base on balls they were getting base hits they weren’t striking out and the more time they spent with Alex Zumalt who I’m not using as a skate there is correlation and causation those are two entirely different things i’m not saying which one Alex Zumalt as the Royals hitting coach is i’m not trying to say he needs to be fired i’m not going to call for anybody’s job he’s got a very difficult job where he’s got to manage a lot of egos but this Royals team the guys that are with him the longest have struggled and I’m continuing to worry about the development of some guys where it is crucial for them whether that be Mikel Garcia or a guy like Jack Kaggleon of course or later down the road when legitimate Royals prospects start to come up not just the Nicoloftens of the world not just the Drew Waters reclamation projects he has continued to struggle the longer he’s spent with the major league squad so I do start to wonder if Alex Zumalt is the next domino to fall because at this point right now the Royals are out of excuses i thought this I thought yesterday was rock bottom for the Royals i really truly did thought yesterday was rock bottom worst loss of a competitive Royals team in a long time today was even worse you can say they lost six to three and the box score will say that but getting a couple of runs gifted to you by Mason Miller who had bad command in the ninth doesn’t make the offensive performance that any any better than it just was it was a terrible offensive performance i I’ll go out on a limb and say that at what point do you have to have the really tough conversation of maybe it’s not the players because I don’t think the Royals have bad baseball players on the team and I said I a couple last week I said you know this Royals team just doesn’t have very many you know very good baseball players they’ve got a a lot of hasbins and a lot of never willbees kind of like in Major League the Movie but as we stand right now the longer we sit and wait for some of these guys to break out of slumps Bobby Wit Jr is having a really bad month and a half we have been waiting since Bobby Wit Jr had his super long hitting streak we have been waiting patiently for him to break out it is June 13th and Bobby Whit Jr.’s batting average is in the 270s that’s an issue he hit 330 last season and I’m not saying that it’s Zumalt’s fault it could be that people are adjusting but at what point do the Royals adjust at what point do the Royals make some tough decisions because at some point you’re going to run out of guys to send down to Omaha or DFA they are running who if so let’s say that you believe that let’s just throw a guy out there let’s say you believe that Drew Waters is the problem you have and you want to send Drew Waters down to Triple A who do you call up because guess who the first call is going to be for it’s going to be for MJ Melendez who is hitting 085 in the majors this season and 230 in Triple A or it’ll be Cam Deainy who is this year’s version of CJ Alexander who didn’t do Jack squat last season you’re running out of guys that you can run out there and cross your fingers and hope that they are going to be a part of the solution i am curious what the next decision is to be made because I give credit to JJ Piccolo he’s done a great job about being proactive not sitting on his hands giving guys x amount of abs until they you know let something happen he’s been pretty pretty good at approaching this at what point do you run out of options on guys to use as an excuse well you know John Rave just hasn’t been hitting right now but if we get a guy in here if we get MJ Melendez in here instead of John Rae like that’s going to help us out a lot it might in the long run i’m not going to say it won’t but it is going to be a really interesting couple of weeks because the Royals have an off day on Monday and then they’ve got a West Coast road trip they’ve got Texas in Arlington for three next week and then they’re in San Diego against the Padres’s a really good Padres’s team for three on the road and the Royals have traditionally never done well at least in my lifetime as a fan in the Pacific time zone and then you’re back at home you’re facing the Rays you’re facing the Dodgers and then you head out to Seattle it is going to be very interesting to see because this was supposed to be the series that the Royals get back on the right track that the Royals make some strides in a positive direction and tonight was quite the opposite of that because Luis Severino shoved it i mean he was I don’t want to call him I don’t want to call him great but the Royals just had weak contact after weak contact i’m going to go back and look at the uh at the at the Savant page it didn’t feel like the Royals got a whole lot of balls out of the infield in the first eight innings of course they had the double or sorry the triple from Loftton in the ninth and uh I think Garcia of course had a double but it didn’t feel like they were getting very many balls out of the outfield tonight the lineup just really didn’t perform that well and they are running out of time they are running out of it it is June 13th that is insane to say that the Royals I I don’t know who you look to a month ago it was well John Raes hitting really well we can call him up at some point kags will be up this season uh I don’t know anymore i I there’s no guys on the injured list other than Michael Massie that you can really say that they could bring up it’s the pitching staff that’s all banged up and so at this point I truly don’t know what the what the move is and uh I don’t envy JJ Piccolo because he has put a lot of John Sherman’s well-earned m uh hard-earned cash into this baseball team and right now they are squatting away a golden opportunity in a very mediocre American League wild card race and they’re doing it against competition that they should be beating up on the Royals have now dropped three of their last four against the White Socks and A’s combined and the A’s just snapped a 14game losing streak on the road i I I’m running out of excuses i’m running out of I’m running out of ideas to make this team better and I know a lot of people are too i saw Joel Penfield on Twitter today saying “I don’t even know what to say anymore.” And I I feel the exact same way i love watching the Royals i love doing this postcast with you guys has been 10 episodes now and I really enjoy it but right now watching this team feels like a chore because they are so difficult to watch but I appreciate all of you guys hopping in the comments obviously not the result we wanted tonight but uh this is uh this is definitely definitely not what we wanted to see from the Royals this evening uh but good news they play tomorrow and they play Sunday so have an opportunity to go win a series but it’s going to be difficult to climb out of the hole that they have put themselves in don’t forget to hit like and subscribe on the video turn on the bell notification so that you’ll know when we go live should be around 6:00 tomorrow depending on when the game ends but right after the Royals game ends just plan on being here the rest of the season whether it’s with me or potentially with Jack if I am unavailable that day so appreciate you guys for tuning in thanks for watching i’m Chance Lebo this has been the Locked on Royals post part of the Locked On podcast network

Chance Liebau reacts to the Kansas City Royals series opener against the Athletics. He discusses the continued offensive struggles, a startling statistic, and ponders what could be the next move if the woes continue.

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