The Royals had an off day on Monday as they traveled to Tampa for this week’s three-game series against the Rays, marking the start of their road trip, which also includes a visit to Baltimore this weekend. With no Royals game on TV (no Minor League affiliates either), Jared and I recorded on Monday night for another episode of the Crown Talk Podcast.
We discussed not only the Royals’ 6-1 home stand but also examined the strong performance of Drew Waters, attempted to understand Vinnie Pasquantino‘s struggles at the plate, and reviewed some top performers on the Quad Cities River Bandits, the Royals’ High-A affiliate.
Our fifth episode is available on Spotify and YouTube, with the latter embedded below.
I didn’t have a chance to present my Royals Three-Star awards yesterday, but I wanted to do it before the Atlantic Coast road trip starts this evening. (I think that’s the proper term for teams in Florida and Maryland, respectively?)
Kansas City wasn’t able to pull off the sweep this time around, as they got beat pretty badly on Sunday in the series finale, which I was in attendance for (though it was not as bad as the final score indicates). However, there were still a lot of positives to glean from that series win over the Astros, especially in the pitching department.
First Star: Seth Lugo (8 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K)
Lugo pitched his best outing of the year on Friday in the Royals’ 2-0 win. Not only did he go eight innings (giving the bullpen a rest), but he also absolutely dominated the Astros’ lineup in multiple ways.
The 34-year-old veteran righty only allowed three hits and one walk while striking out eight, a season high. Here’s how his profile looked from that April 25th outing at Kauffman Stadium via TJ Stats.
A lot sticks out from Lugo’s TJ Stats summary card.
First off, he threw ten pitches! That’s an Eddie Cicotte level of craftsmanship. Not only did he throw multiple pitches, but he also had stellar command.
Lugo had a zone rate of 66% and an overall strike rate of 69.1%. That made up for a subpar chase rate (9.4%) and mediocre whiff rate (22.5%). Astros hitters couldn’t sit on one or two pitches (since there were eight to nine others) and thus, they failed to do much, as evidenced by their eight strikeouts and measly three hits (though they did have a 0.454 xwOBACON).
Lugo’s curve had the best pitch quality on Friday, as evidenced by his 106 tjStuff+ and 64 grade. The pitch not only generated a 60% zone rate, but also only allowed a .209 xwOBACON. Lugo has been consistently productive with the curveball all season long, against both left- and right-handed hitters, according to the TJ Stats comparison heatmap data.
The pitch generates more whiffs against left-handed hitters (25% whiff rate), but it is more effective overall against right-handed hitters, based on a 44.4% CSW and a 0.241 xwOBACON.
It will be interesting to see if he throws it more against righties in the future, though he may need to avoid the middle a bit more if he does.
The curveball has a 44.4% heart rate against righties, which is nearly 20 percent higher than his heart rate against lefties (24.7%). Granted, lefties will do more damage on a curve in the heart of the zone than righties, so it makes sense why Lugo is more conservative with the curve when it comes to throwing it in the zone. That said, finding the shadow and waste with the curve against righties could help make it a more effective “swing and miss” offering.
Second Star: Michael Wacha (6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K)
I had Wacha as a two-star performer last weekend in the Detroit series, and I give him the honor again, as he helped the Royals collect back-to-back shutouts against the Astros.
Wacha’s outing was a bit more flawed than Lugo’s masterpiece. He gave up one more hit, one more walk, and had two fewer strikeouts. That said, he produced a quality start nonetheless, and a rested Royals bullpen was able to take care of the rest in the 7th through 9th innings.
Here’s what Wacha’s metrics looked like on a TJ Stats end from his April 26th outing.
It was a peculiar outing for Wacha as he was more fastball-heavy in this outing. He threw his four-seamer 27.2% of the time and sinker 20.7% of the time. Surprisingly, they were his two worst pitches, stuff-wise, as demonstrated by 95 and 92 tjStuff+ marks, respectively.
However, the fastballs helped make his secondary offerings more effective, especially his slider and changeup, which both had usage rates of 16.3%. His slider had a chase rate of 33.3%, a whiff rate of 40%, and xwOBACON of 0.267. The changeup wasn’t as effective in terms of chase (16.7%) or whiff (25%), but it still produced ineffective contact, as demonstrated by the 0.290 xwOBACON.
The changeup has been Wacha’s prime offering the past couple of years, and it’s interesting to see how he has utilized it this year, as evidenced by the TJ Stats heatmap data.
Lefties have more strikeouts against Wacha’s changeup in terms of swings and misses this season. Wacha is producing a CSW% of 30.3%, a whiff rate of 31.4%, and a Z-Whiff% of 27.8% against left-handed batters, all solid marks. However, he’s been much better at inducing weaker contact against righties with the changeup, as illustrated by their 0.190 xwOBACON against the changeup in 2025.
I’ll be curious to see if Wacha continues this fastball-heavy mix to make his changeup more effective, which would be somewhat counterintuitive to his approach in previous seasons when his changeup was his primary pitch.
Third Star: Jonathan India (3 H, 3 1B, 2 R, 1 RBI, 3 BB, 3 K)
It’s been a bit of a rough start for India as a Royal. In 111 plate appearances, he’s hitting .213 with a .594 OPS. That’s not precisely what Royals fans were hoping for from him at the leadoff when they acquired him from Cincinnati for Brady Singer this offseason.
That said, India had a great series at the plate against Houston, even if he didn’t offer much in the power department. He had three hits, all singles, and three walks (to only three strikeouts). That helped him score two runs in the three-game series against the Astros.
Unfortunately for India, a significant contributor to his struggles at the plate is his hard-hit ability, which has traditionally been subpar. India’s career hard-hit rate is 36.1%, which is 2.1% below the MLB average. This year, his hard-hit rate is slightly up at 37.2%, but those hard-hits came at the beginning of the year before his slump.
India is not going to be a “bomber” by any means at the plate. That said, the Royals don’t need him to be, especially at leadoff. Instead, they need plate discipline and an ability to get on base when the hits are not falling. He did that against the Astros, as demonstrated by his trio of walks this weekend.
His chase, swing, and whiff data rates pretty well this season, according to his TJ Stats batter card data.
It’s interesting to see that India’s issue has been against fastballs this year, based on wOBACON. He’s producing a 0.354 wOBACON on breaking balls and a 0.418 wOBACON on off-speed pitches. Against fastballs? That wOBACON is only 0.213.
India is too good of a hitter to see that wOBACON stay that low against fastballs. Once that ticks back up, his overall lines will start to look a lot more impressive.
Hopefully, last weekend’s games against the Astros were a step in that direction.
Graphic Credit: Kevin O’Brien and Jared Perkins/Crown Talk Podcast