Salvador Perez all of a sudden is in his 20th year in the Royals organization, and he’s grown up and filled out so much that he reckons the current version of himself would “eat Salvy from 2011.”
But, well, he’s as hungry as ever, even as he’ll soon turn 35.
So he’ll tell anyone who asks that he hopes to play until 40, and he still reveled in the prospect of opening day so much that he likens it to the World Series.
“Seventh game of the World Series,” he clarified.
Something about opening day strikes most of us in a similar way, doesn’t it?
Because the moment is about the abiding truth in the clichés: the perennial sense of rebirth and possibility generated by spring, and all the anticipation of, say, a childhood Christmas.
So how to process it when Game 1 of 162 is an exasperating dud, like the one at Kauffman Stadium on Thursday?
Well, first — and this can’t be emphasized enough — the Royals’ 7-4 loss to Cleveland in 10 innings is .617% of the regular season.
It’s a sliver of a speck of a germ of a sample from a team that figures to be better this year than last.
Think of it as opening a subpar gift on Christmas Eve that may or may not be at all indicative of all that’s left to see.
Because this performance more easily could prove a non sequitur as revealing in any way.
But, hey, cue the critics of “Q,” aka manager Matt Quatraro, and gloom-and-doom scenarios.
For an opening day loss — just like last season, when the Royals started 0-2 and somehow went on to win 86 games and sweep a postseason series after losing 106 the year before.
“I think it’s overreactions all over the place: from you guys (in the media), from us,” said Vinnie Pasquantino, who returned from a hamstring injury to swat a three-run homer and a double. “Like, sleeping is a little bit harder last night. It just feels a little bit more special.”
Until it wasn’t, deflating 39,393 in attendance — the Royals’ largest regular-season home crowd since April 2017.
As for right-sizing the reactions?
It’s not really that they lost.
It’s why.
The Royals gave up this game because of some fundamentally funky things they just can’t do with their self-proclaimed, and evident, slim margin for error — especially not against the team it seeks to supplant in the American League Central race.
They lost because of a run allowed through a fielding gaffe by right fielder Hunter Renfroe, who misplayed Kyle Manzardo’s ball in the corner into a fourth-inning triple … and who also couldn’t get to what appeared to be a catchable double by Steven Kwan to lead off the three-run Cleveland 10th.
(Afterward, Quatraro suggested the triple was more of an issue with a tricky carom, a “hockey hook” around the corner. And he noted Renfroe was “going as hard as he can, straight across” for Kwan’s double.)
And they lost because they squandered a fertile opportunity in the eighth inning with an absurd base-running sequence: With runners on first and third and no one out, Jonathan India’s grounder to third somehow was converted into the ol’ 5-3-5-4-6 double play after pinch-runner Dairon Blanco got caught between third and home and Kyle Isbel strayed too far past second into no-man’s land hoping to seize third.
“Live and learn,” Isbel said, adding that he was going to “keep making aggressive mistakes.”
Contradictory as that sounded, Isbel made the point they’d worked that play “a thousand times” in practice situations. But …
“It just didn’t go right today,” he said.
Much like a few other things the Royals need to count on in the cumulative long run that will define them.
Such as new leadoff hitter India going hitless in five at-bats — albeit with two blasts that would have been out in his previous home stadium in Cincinnati.
And a seemingly much-enhanced bullpen that gave up a batch of key runs: Manzardo’s two-run homer on the first pitch by Angel Zerpa; three runs off Sam Long in the 10th.
Stir in some managerial moves that had amply sound reasoning but backfired, and you get a game gone awry after the Royals took a 3-0 lead with Cy Young finalist Cole Ragans on the mound.
With a 3-2 edge into the sixth inning, Quatraro hooked Ragans seemingly abruptly after Carlos Santana singled to open the frame.
But that was Ragans’ 83rd pitch, and he would say afterwards he could tell he was losing his command even before Santana smacked the hardest hit ball of the game (105.3 mph).
Hardest hit, that is, until the first pitch thrown by Zerpa to Manzardo was rocked out at 106.4 mph to give Cleveland a 4-3 lead.
After Cleveland took a 5-4 lead in the 10th, with two outs and Kwan on third and lefty Long pitching, Quatraro intentionally walked the switch-hitting Santana to get to the left-handed-hitting Manzardo.
Because of Santana’s prowess against left-handed pitching, Quatraro said, “we’ll take that chance” of going left-on-left against Manzardo.
Alas, it didn’t work out: His two-run double essentially put it out of reach for the Royals.
Here’s the thing, though: Sometimes you make moves for the right reasons, and they just don’t work out every single time.
Data-driven decisions like that will even out, most likely quite favorably, over the long haul.
Moreover, the overall bullpen still figures to prosper. Bear in mind that the three best relievers (Lucas Erceg, Carlos Estevez and Hunter Harvey), pitched 2.2 innings of hitless ball.
India is going to make a difference at the top of the order, and AL MVP runner-up Bobby Witt Jr. is going to do bigger, better things than just dazzle us with his speed as he did again Thursday.
And why shouldn’t we believe that the starting rotation with the second-best ERA in MLB last season (3.55) has the capacity to be just as effective barring injuries?
Time will tell on all that, of course.
And, as Quatraro put it earlier in the day, it’s not like there are any “extra points” for winning on opening day over any other days.
But here’s a fundamental truth, so to speak: If the Royals hope to get to their stated goal of an actual World Series, instead of just Perez’s opening day version of it, they have to correct the correctable ASAP.
They can’t be a team that gives anything away … lest this game actually turns out to be telling.
