Royals Monday Notes – A Gore-y Weekend

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