Royals bullpen blows another game; they lose to Marlins 3-1

The Royals are not making a good case that they should be considered fringe playoff contenders

At the beginning of the season, the Royals unveiled what they hoped would be the new HDH, HEE. And things looked good at first for Hunter Harvey, Lucas Erceg, and Carlos Estévez.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Harvey to go down with a lower back injury; to this day, he has only appeared in 11 innings across 12 games for the Royals since they acquired him early during last year’s trade deadline season.

Lucas Erceg started out dominant, then wobbled a bit and came up injured in late May. Even after blowing today’s game, though, his ERA has only risen to 2.50. Despite a ridiculously high BABIP since his return, he’s managed to limit the runs allowed.

Carlos Estévez started the season strong, but with lowered velocity, and had to dig himself out of more than one self-created jam. Then he was dominant for a period. Things have been bad for him lately, unfortunately, with a 5.59 ERA in his last 10 appearances, and he has blown his last three save attempts.

Some people would like to see Steven Cruz get even higher leverage instead of those two, but he’s pitched to a 4.50 ERA in his last 10 appearances, striking out only five while walking four.

The Royals’ bullpen, on the whole, has been quite good this season. But of late, they’ve been awful. Disappointingly, where once there were clear answers for every situation, there are no answers for any situation.

And, yeah, the only time the Royals got even as far as second base today was the top of the eighth. Salvador Perez launched a solo home run, and later in the inning, John Rave walked and stole second. That’s it. And it’s not like Cal Quantrill was dominant, he pitched six scoreless innings, but only struck out three and left a lot of pitches over the middle of the plate that the Royals either watched or hit weakly.

Much like so many other games and series this season, the Royals had a chance to do so much better and just couldn’t execute. No matter how much you try to blame it on the manager for pulling a pitcher too early, or too late, or calling in the wrong reliever - yesterday it was people complaining that Lucas Erceg was the closer, today it was that Angel Zerpa wasn’t called in to pitch instead of Erceg - but the players just aren’t doing their jobs. That’s on them. We could perhaps blame the front office for not bringing in more talent - and there’s certainly some blame to spread there - but most people thought the Royals would be better than this.

The Royals can try to avoid the sweep tomorrow. Kris Bubic will face off against Janson Junk in a battle of unlikely staff aces. The game will start at 12:40 CDT.