Royals Monday Notes – A Gore-y Weekend

The Royals went 3-1 this past week

Terrance Gore and the Royals beat the Twins last night in the most Royals way ever yesterday, on a wild pitch.

The Royals 10th inning consisted of a walk, lazy fly out, and strikeout. Naturally, it ended with Gore scoring the game winning run.

We’ll talk about that inning, as well as all the strikeouts and some worrisome matchups coming up this week.

Next: Royals Now Like The Strikeout

Lets Look At Sabermetrics (I know you guys are just gleaming with excitement)

“SABR nerds don’t understand the speed and defense factor,” is a very common narrative. As a SABR enthusiast myself, I’d like to deny this claim, and I’m going to use Terrance Gore’s ridiculous 10th inning on Sunday as a case study.

Here is the tweet that really started this crap

First of all, this tweet really encompasses a misguided interpretation of metrics in general.

Fanning went on to tweet this as well.

I responded with this thread, which really explains the common misinterpretation of metrics.

Here’s the deal. I get the angst against sabermetrics. They don’t like the Royals, and we are all Royals fans. We want people to love the Royals.

The important thing to realize is this: Metrics do not define success, as much as they evaluate it.

This is why Fangraphs came out and owned their Royals projections, saying this:

Since the Royals keep beating their projections, there’s definitely an increasing belief they just do something the numbers struggle to detect,” Jeff Sullivan said. “The Royals are the controversial team, as projections go, and evidence suggests people came here just to vote on them. To do that implies you have a strong opinion, and the strong opinions were overwhelmingly that the Royals are being badly under-estimated.”

I love metrics and believe strongly in their ability to diagnose real success. However, as they say, that’s why they play the games. More often than not, the numbers are right. There are times that they are not, and woudn’t you know it, the Royals are the team this happens with most, as a team and individually.

With that being said, the original tweet is totally bogus because, just to remind you, Moneyball does not define SABR.

I know Brad Pitt told you not to steal bases, but we metric lovers find real value in speed, whether it be on the bases or defensively.

Next: A Gore-y 10th Inning

10th Inning Madness

Terrance Gore only goes to emphasize this point.

We see Jarrod Dyson‘s speed value in the outfield, as well as on the bases. We find Gore’s value completely on the base paths.

On Sunday afternoon, in a tie-ball game, Christian Colon led off the 10th inning with a walk.

Enter Gore as a pinch runner, and here is where the “that’s why you play the games” statement is still relevant.

There isn’t a metric that can measure Trevor May‘s ultimately dyer fear of Gore’s speed. However, we saw this with his first pick-off attempt of Gore, his subsequent long pause, causing Paulo Orlando to request time, and ultimately in his first pitch, which was an overthrown 95-MPH fastball, which ended up near Orlando’s shoulder.

May was clearly more concerned with Gore than Orlando.

We obviously know that he would throw the next pick-off attempt past Joe Mauer at first base and Gore, showing the difference between 80-grade speed and his speed, took third base, not second base. He also did this while taking a horrific angle around second base.

With Gore on third, May settled down a bit, getting a weak fly out from Orlando and an ugly strikeout of Alcides Escobar.

His confidence in his breaking ball, despite having Gore sitting on third, was seemingly encouraging. He trusted his catcher and got Escobar to strike out on a spiked curveball that was blocked by John Ryan Murphy.

However, that confidence came back to bite him. Not due to any (huge) fault of his own, but because his catcher wasn’t quite as able as he thought.

On a 2-2 pitch to Lorenzo Cain, he threw another 58-foot curveball, directly in front of Murphy. I’m not a professional catcher, so I’m not going to judge, but that was about as easy of a block as you’re going to find on a breaking ball in the dirt.

However, Murphy failed get around the ball and play its spin, causing the ball to hop off of Murphy’s chest protector, about 6-8 feet to the right of him.

This is where Gore’s value again comes to play. There aren’t a whole lot of people who score on that play. The ball didn’t get that far away from Murphy.

As we would know, though, Gore is stupid fast and scored on the play, rather easily. Not to mention that he hesitated. 

Long story short, Terrance Gore is fast.

Next: Looking Toward Houston

Worrisome Matchups in Houston

Don’t panic yet, but Chris Young is scheduled to pitch tonight, in Houston.

We might have a problem.

Chris Young surrenders more fly balls than just about any pitcher in baseball, while the Astros put more fly balls in the seats than just about any other team in baseball , as well as playing in the launch pad known as Minute Maid Mark.

We will also see Kris Medlen make his 2015 debut in a rather tumultuous environment against a team that is pretty stacked.

Medlen also throws about 60% fastballs, a pitch that the Astros feasted on in 2015.

Next: Rex Isn't On The Same Planet As Comic-Con

We can be encouraged by the fact that Medlen did register a 1.20 ERA over 30 IP in road games last season.

So there’s that.