Michael Wacha's first blowup amid sensational season raised some red flags

All good things in life must come to an end. The true fast food dollar menu. That much-needed vacation. Plenty of examples, big and small. For the Kansas City Royals, not many good things have started yet this season, but one of them certainly was starting pitcher Michael Wacha's opening salvo. But, like the examples above, it had to come to an end eventually.

The Royals have struggled mightily in series finales this season, and Wacha put a struggling team in a deep hole against the Baltimore Orioles. Wacha was charged with six runs allowed on seven hits and two walks across 5.1 innings pitched. It was a sharp departure from his previous starts, when he allowed only three earned runs in 27.0 innings across four outings. After giving up two runs in the first on a Pete Alonso home run, Wacha locked down the Orioles from the second through the fifth innings, but then allowed a walk and three singles that all came around to score in the sixth.

Wacha entered his fifth start of the year with a 1.00 ERA and left the ballpark with a 2.51 mark. That jump is steep, but it still leaves Wacha with an elite number, no doubt about it. It did, however, drop him from the second-best ERA in the AL to the 13th-best by the time Kansas City's game ended. Wacha still looks like one of the game's better pitchers on paper, but now he needs to prove whether Tuesday's meltdown was the new norm or simply an outlier the next time he takes the mound.

Should Royals fans be concerned about Wacha's Wedensday blowup?

What changed for Wacha? On the surface, his command and control were not as pristine. He still got ahead in counts more often than not, doing so at a 52% clip, but that is a far cry from his 70.4% season average. He also spent more time out of the zone than usual, forcing him to come back over the plate more often than he typically does.

There was also a noticeable shift in pitch usage. Wacha's curveball usage more than doubled from his 7% season average to 18%, primarily cutting into his changeup and four-seam fastball usage. Some days there is nothing more to a pitch mix change than the matchup or a pitcher's feel for a certain offering, but the process clearly affected the results. Wacha's 17% CSW% was his worst mark of the season, nearly half of his 31.3% season average. But maybe this was also the regression his .172 BABIP suggested was eventually coming.

Hopefully, this proves to be an aberration, just a hiccup in the season that even the best MLB starters have once or twice. Wacha now trails rotation mate Seth Lugo's 1.15 ERA, while Cole Ragans' 6.00 ERA remains one of the worst marks in both the league and Kansas City’s rotation. Wacha will likely get his next chance on the mound against the Athletics on the road in Sacramento. After so many of Wacha's earned runs allowed this season have come via the long ball, hopefully, the run-happy environment in Sacramento does not spell more trouble for the veteran right-hander.

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