Royals shutout by Mariners, 2-0

The Royals had four hits tonight, all singles. Vinnie Pasquantino’s single in the first inning was the only hit they would have until the sixth. Bobby Witt Jr. struck out swinging in each of his first two at-bats. The Royals’ best chance to score came in the bottom of the eighth when Michael Massey led off with a single and Maikel Garcia added a one-out single to put runners at first and second for Bobby. Bobby and Vinnie each lined out to the outfield, and that was that.

The Royals were 1-for-7 on hard-hit balls. Jac Caglianone hit three of those, though one was a pop-up that went 190 feet nearly straight up. An impressive athletic feat, but meaningless on a baseball field. So there was an element of bad luck in this one, but when you’ve lost 10 out of 11 and averaged 2.3 runs over that span, no one wants to hear about it.

Anyway, that’s probably enough about the hitting. Let’s talk about tonight’s bright spot, Noah Cameron.

Cameron has struggled quite a bit this year. At this point, it’s well known that he dropped his arm angle by nearly 10 degrees. It’s caused him to struggle. But for the second straight start, Noah compensated for it by leaning heavily on his fastball, changeup, and curveball. The curveball, in particular, was deadly tonight.

As you can see in the TJ Stats graphic above, Noah got a ridiculous 71.4% whiff rate on his curveball tonight. They were nearly three times as likely to miss it entirely as make contact. You can also see that there is no xwOBACon in the final column for that pitch. That’s because they didn’t put a single one in play. Cameron tied a career high with 8 strikeouts, and 5 of those were with his curveball. The fastball and changeup didn’t work as well tonight as they did Sunday, but they did well enough I guess. The cutter started working again, so that helped. The slider is still kind of a disaster, he got chases on more than half of the ones out of the zone but couldn’t get a single swing and miss.

It was easily his best start of the year and could give Royals fans some hope for this year, if the bats ever wake up again, or next year if they don’t. Curse you, Hawaiian Bros!

The Royals will attempt again to get unstuck tomorrow afternoon at 3:10 PM Kauffman time. Stephen Kolek (4.24 ERA) will attempt to continue to do Stephen Kolek things and put that unfortunate White Sox start behind him. The Mariners will counter with George Kirby (3.45 ERA). So it could be another low-scoring affair. Maybe the Royals are the ones who will run into a dinger this time. The game will be nationally broadcast on FS1 but should also be available on Royals.TV.