Royals POSTCAST: Kansas City Royals SMOKED In EMBARASSING Game One Against Minnesota Twins

Royals POSTCAST: Kansas City Royals SMOKED In EMBARASSING Game One Against Minnesota Twins

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. Welcome in to the Royals postcast here on the Locked On Network. Your team every day. I’m your host, Chance Lebo, and I’m here to give you reactions and live shows after every single Royals game the rest of the way. Follow me on Twitter, Chance Leebo. That’s cha nie b au. If you can’t make a show live, don’t worry. These episodes will be uploaded for you to listen to on demand wherever you get your podcast. Want to say thank you for making the Locked on Royals podcast or the Royals Postcast your first listen of the day. Before we get started, remember to subscribe to the channel and turn on our notifications so that you get an alert whenever we go live. Thanks so much for joining the show. Please like the video and join us in the live chat as we always enjoy people talking in the live chat. We enjoy the uh interaction tonight. Probably going to be a little bit more interactive. I’m going to do my best to get to some of the comments because I have to imagine it’s going to be a a pretty um pretty light crew tonight. Um, Friday night usually not as uh not as busy for you guys. Um, not as many people here. Um, but obviously going to try to get to as many comments as we can. But while we’re here, let’s get into it. Here is what you’ll be talking about. This is what you’ll be talking about. I think Seth Lugo’s performance is going to be what is at the forefront of everybody’s minds right now. Um, just an atrocious day for him on the mound. I I think this was far and away his worst start of the season. Jack tweeted it out. Um this was his worst start of the season. Um he hadn’t given up more than five earned runs all season. He’s his command was off and he was not fooling the Twins whatsoever. I’m going to look up and see if he’s had a bad history against the Twins. Maybe Jack talked about it on the show yesterday. uh he usually does a good job of previewing the series, but um a guy like Lugo who’s whose stuff is kind of supposed to fool you a little bit, he just was not very he wasn’t very sharp today. His stuff wasn’t there. Um the Twins saw him well and he wasn’t throwing strikes and that’s going to get you in trouble more time more times than not. Um looking at his uh his Savant pages, I’m pulling up his numbers against the Twins throughout his career. I mean a 353 RA against him in his career. So, I guess that’s not not terrible, but uh he only got two whiffs all night tonight. Two whiffs. Um that is really bad. Um and I and Seth Lugo is never going to mistake me for a pitcher that gets a ton of strikeouts. He’s never going to be an overpowering pitcher, but you if you are going to give up just two whiffs all night long, you can’t give up nine hard hit balls. Um the fast ball was getting torched tonight. Um he w every single fast ball that was swung at was hit and put into play. Um there was and he was not in the zone. He was 49% in the zone. Fast ball 50% cutter 44% curveball 8% in the zone. I mean that’s just not going to be good enough for you. And then when the ball was in the zone 65% contact rate uh or 65% swing rate. They were being aggressive in the zone. This is a Twins team that’s really playing for uh playing with nothing to lose right now. And that’s showing. It shows. Um they’re playing fast and loose. And the Royals just don’t seem to be uh don’t seem to be playing that way. They’re playing tight. And uh I was talking to uh my my coworker and host of one of our daily shows down here at ESPN Witchaw. Um I asked him about uh I was talking about the game, the series this week. I said what really scares me is that they’re they felt like I mean even Rex Huddler who is the epitome of positivity talking in the Red Sox broadcast about Joe Ryan. Boy, we never hit that guy. We we never seem to pitch. We never seem to get him. Well, that it just felt like they had a losers mentality entering this game like they were going to lose this game regardless. And they got out to a hot start. I mean, we’ll talk about that in a little bit, but that it just felt like there was this negative connotation with this game as a whole that they were going to lose it regardless. Seth Lugo wasn’t sharp, but the offense didn’t never gave him a chance either. Um, it it it puts a lot of pressure on a team for that has been told that they have to they have to get out of this gut that they put themselves in. They have to get back to 500. They have to at some point in this se in this road trip get to within striking distance in the wildard race because at some point the Yankees are not going to play like one of the worst teams in baseball. At some point the Mariners or the Guardians or the Rangers are going to take off. The Royals are being gifted an opportunity by every team in the wildard race putting them back in this. Um, and it puts so much pressure on this team that I mean, not good pressure, uh, not good pressure. I mean, pressure for them to perform in these last two games, and I think they’ll be favored in terms of the betting odds. Um, but it’s still a team that has not performed well with their back against the wall. Now, they’ve won 10 straight series closing games. that’s hard to deny, but also it’s not a position you want to be in if you’re a team that’s vetting for a playoff spot that this this loss in my opinion was the worst loss of the season except for the the one loss I would put up there with this one is the White Socks loss. Uh it was the Saturday or no it was the Friday game where they boot about eight balls, they play sloppy, they just have terrible abs and they lose to the White Socks in Jack Kagleion’s second series. Um, this is the second worst loss of the season in my opinion. They just weren’t competitive all night from a pitching standpoint, from uh from a hitting standpoint. They just weren’t competitive. They didn’t come into tonight with an approach ready to win a baseball game. And it’s disappointing after a day off. And I get it. They’re on the tail end of a nineame road trip. They probably want to get back home. They probably are looking forward to it. But even then, you just cannot have a game like tonight where you lay a big egg. I mean, you have to be a little bit more competitive. The Twins are playing really good baseball right now. I’m not sure if you guys have noticed, but the Twins, especially offensively, they’re hitting they’re hitting the brakes off the ball. I mean, they’ve done a great job. Credit to them and the organization for having some foresight to be able to do something like this. Now, the attendance is not going to be great because they do not like ownership and the cost cutting that they’re doing, but even then, uh, just tip your cap. I mean, they hit the ball really well tonight. They saw Luggo for the life of them. They couldn’t get Ryan Jeepers out. They could not get Royce Lewis out. The game ended in my opinion. The game was lost when Bobby Whit Jr. throws to second in the first inning. Probably the stupidest decision of the baseball game. Um doesn’t charge it. Doesn’t charge the uh the baseball. Instead throws it to second where Luke Keshaw, who’s a pretty good runner, I’ve seen him plenty here at the Win Surge games. Um he’s not able to get him at second base. And then the in my opinion the game was lost. That was over. The game was over. Uh not a huge fan of this game tonight. A very very bad outing for the Royals. And it started on the mound with the guy that they paid uh $40 million to come back for the next two seasons. So um just a very lackluster and disappointing performance for what we expected to see from the Royals. But then again, uh they’ve done this before and maybe they’ll be able to uh you know, they put up some competitive at bats against the Twins bullpen, but uh we’ll talk about that when we come back. You’re listening to the Royals postcast. All right, we’ve all been there, logging on early and waiting forever for concert tickets to go on sale, only to lose your spot for a show you’ve been dying to see. Live music should be about making memories, not dealing with the stress of ticket shopping. That’s where Game Time comes in. Game time makes getting concert tickets faster and easier than ever. Prices actually drop as it gets closer to Showtime, and you can save up to 60% off with their zone deals. Pick the best seats in the section for you. Take the guesswork out or sorry, you can save up to 60% off with their killer last minute deals. 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Uh bottom of the lineup, I mean I heading into the uh the final inning, I was going to talk about how poorly the bottom of the lineup played tonight, but John Rave um I I’ll get I’ll tip my cap to him. John Ra’s done an incredible job fighting for this team uh fighting to stay on the roster. I mean, I know Jack I was listening to Jack’s mailbag Friday episode and he was talking about how when Kaggs comes back that John Rae is probably the guy that gets sent down or at least in Jack’s opinion it is. Um, but John Ray’s battling his tail off to stay on this roster. Um, at this point, I would I don’t know, man. I I don’t know if I if I would rather have Tyler Tolbert or if I’d rather have John Rave on the roster at this point. Um, John Ra’s fast. I mean, they’re both fairly fast runners. Um, but it’s just, man, I I I like to believe that John Ravvel has kind of turned it around. I mean, you look at where he’s hitting right now. He’s up to 198. If he could get that uh over 200, that’d be that’d be impressive. I mean, I have to tip my cap to him after he was atrocious to start the season. I mean, one of the worst WRC pluses in all of baseball. But he’s turned his season around, and you got to give him credit for doing that because it was uh it wasn’t just him. It was probably Alex Zumalt and Ke Duran, and the entire hitting staff. They’ve done an incredible job with uh turning him around, but the offense as a whole today just didn’t do enough. Um runners in scoring position, two for nine. Uh Yremsky fails to score a couple runs. Uh they leave seven on base, including bases loaded with Frasier at the plate in the eighth inning. I know at that point the game was probably over, but even then uh just to make the Twins sweat a little bit, it’s a really bad bullpen. At least you give yourself an opportunity in the ninth inning to do something special. But then again, they just weren’t able to compete tonight against the Twins. And now it gets to be really, really interesting heading into the final two games this series in which we’ve been saying they just have to be 500. They have to get to 500. 59 and 59 going home has to be the goal. Um, but they are just kind of treading water right now. You’d like to see them start to swim upstream and they have to at some point here in the next couple weeks against some very mediocre competition uh in uh on the horizon. All right, let’s uh let’s get to some comments because I have done a terrible job of getting to these. Um uh Aiden says, “I know it’s only one really bad start, but was it worth giving Seth Lugo the money?” Um yes, I I still think that Seth Lugo deserves the money. Uh they didn’t pay him to start two games uh against the Twins and the Blue Jays, but um I’m I’m more so on the positive side of some of this stuff. Um I like the Seth Lugo deal. loved it when it happened. It’s a discount for It’s a discount for a guy that is going to give you 180 innings a season. Uh it’s expensive to get that. The A’s just gave 20 million a year to Luis Severino last year for three years and he’s been terrible. I mean, the pitching market is absurd. Seth Lugo was it it these last two starts have not changed who I think Seth Lugo is as a pitcher. Now, the Twins saw him really well, and they have this season, but I’m not I’m not going to write off, uh, Seth Lugo going forward. Um, uh, Jamie says, “Do you think they’ll bounce back pretty easily, or will this weigh down on them? Really bad all-around game.” Man, it’s up to the guys in that locker room. Uh, that’s really what it comes down to. Uh, I think that they’ve got the veteran crew with guys like Frasier and Yrevky. Now, a month ago, this is probably a different story, but I think that they have the guys in the locker room in the clubhouse to be able to turn this thing around. Um, as uh fireworks are going off, I live right by the Wind Surge Stadium, the minor league team down here in Witchaw, and they have fireworks every Friday, and I usually try and time it up where they don’t go off right when I start my show, but uh here in the 11th hour, it seems like they are. Um, Curtis, great question here. Has Lugo spin rate been down of late? Um, taking a look here, I’m looking at Savant right now. Um, in terms of breakdown, um, I mean, the fast ball was 5 RPM under, um, cutter 19 under, sinker 7 under, curveball was up 181, change up down 30, slurve down nine, slider up 70, sweeper up 35. I mean, he’s pretty much right where he was. I mean, the only concerning thing would be the change up’s not spinning well. Um, but tonight it also wasn’t a strike. If I’m not mistaken, the change up was uh or I guess it was a strike. It was in the zone 86% of the time. But um uh in terms of the spin, it’s pretty much what it has been all season. And nothing I think that if it was noticeable, there would be a checkup on him, like an injury potentially, but I think he’s spinning it just fine. Um looking around here in the comments, LMW saying, “Not even sure if we can still talk about the playoffs.” I mean, I don’t really even care about the playoffs at this point. I I really don’t. And that’s going to sound really bad, but man, I just want competitive baseball. That’s really all I care about at this time of the year. I mean, I I have to do this for a living. I have to talk about the Royals for the next month and a half. So, I’d like to talk about a team that’s at least trying to win games. Um, but obviously, um, it just seems like it’s a they’re in a tough position, uh, right now. Uh, Parker saying, “Go Cats with the cap.” Yeah, this is my favorite hat right here. This is uh I believe it’s Sailor Willie right there. That’s one of my favorite hats. Um right there. Um yeah, I just don’t think they make the playoffs. Uh but um it’s they’re in a tough they’re in a tough position where they there was nothing to sell and if you sell off on Lugo, if you trade Lugo, who are you starting? Um you’re not going to you don’t pick up Ryan Bert and those guys and Bailey Falty. You probably don’t get those guys if you sell off on Lugo. But um yeah, a lot of people just talking about Lugo. Um, worst game in a Royals uniform. Yeah, I I think so, too. Um, and Dean saying, “Would be great if they put some fire under their butts and go on an eightgame win streak.” Absolutely. Uh, Wesley doing his best. Jim Mora impression. Great work there, Wesley. Um, yeah, I I just think that, you know, playoffs are something that we is kind of a pipe dream at this point. Just want to root for them to be competitive. I mean, I know you guys are going to be watching the games. Um, I hope personally that you aren’t rooting for them to lose. Um, that’s just uh bad fanmanship if I But I understand if that’s the fan you want to be. If you want to root for a lottery ball, I’d rather root for a competitive team in September. But I uh I just uh Gary uh bringing up a good point. Uh Lugo should reduce his pitch selection and work on command. Um and that’s the thing with Seth Lugo when people talk about his pitch, all of his pitches. I mean, when you look at him, he’s got three variations of his fast ball. Four seam cutter, sinker. So, those are basically a fast ball. He’s got a curveball and a slow curveball. So, basically a curveball. He’s got a sl he’s got a slur, a slider, and a sweeper. What do all three of those pitches have in common? They sli they are a slider. They basically a slider. Uh, and then he’s got a change up. So, I am someone who I am someone who like does he technically have 10 pitches? Yes, but if you’re a batter and you’re up at the plate, you aren’t having to sort through 10 pitches that he’s going to throw you. It’s either going to move away from you in on you. It’s going to be a fast ball or it’s going to be a change up. That’s it. It’s not like a super diverse pitch set. But, um, I digress. It’s whatever. But, uh, that will do it for tonight. I appreciate you guys for joining us here on a Friday night. We’ll be back tomorrow night for another edition of the Royals Postcast. Should be hopefully a fun one as the Royals look to even up the series with the Twins. Be sure to like and subscribe to the channel. Like the video and subscribe to the channel.

Chance Liebau reacts to the first game between the Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins. We discuss Seth Lugo’s worst outing of the season, the atrocious bottom of the lineup, and the importance of the final two games of the series.

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