Juan Cruz is really bad right now. Seriously. Very, very, very bad. Even by the Royals-of-the-21st-century standards, he's going really bad right now.
You can see it in these numbers: 22 innings, 22 earned runs, 12 walks, 28 hits since May 21.
Or you can see is in this anecdote: after his latest bomb last night, two guys who follow the Royals and know baseball said some variation of, "Cruz has to be hurt, right?"
I am no sleuth. I'm not even all that smart. If you read this blog often enough, you know that already.
But there has to be some reason that Cruz has gone from electric, dominating, overpowering 8th inning guy -- he struck out 158 batters in 112 2/3 innings the last two seasons in Arizona -- to something more resembling Albie Lopez.
There just has to be something, right? Something other than manager Trey Hillman's assertion that it's just location?
We hear so much about his dominating slider, I figured that thing had to have flattened out, or maybe his fastball velocity has depressed. Gotta be something, right?
So here's what I did. Used the Pitch f/x data on MLB.com's really cool Gameday feature to compare Cruz's best outing of the year* and his worst**.
* 2 innings, three strikeouts, no walks, no runs on April 14 against the Indians.
** 1/3 inning, no strikeouts, one walk, three hits, three earned runs last night against the Angels.
Gameday's Pitch f/x kicks out what it calls "break" and "Pitch f/x value." Break is defined as the greatest distance between the trajectory of a pitch at any point and the straight line path from the release point. A Barry Zito curveball will have a big Break value.
Pitch f/x value is defined as the distance between the location of the actual pitch and the calculated location of a ball thrown by the pitcher in the same way with no spin.
There are certainly reasons that what you're about to read is not the definitive analysis on this, starting with the fact that I only looked at two games, but here's what I found:
Cruz threw seven sliders on April 14, ranging from 79 to 83 mph, 8 to 10 inches of Break, and 4 to 6 inches of Pitch f/x value.
He threw five sliders last night, ranging from 80 to 83 mph, 8 to 9 inches of Break, and 6 to 10 inches of Pitch f/x value.
Cruz threw 15 fastballs on April 14, ranging from 93 to 96 mph, 3 to 5 inches of Break, and 11 to 16 inches of Pitch f/x value.
He threw nine fastballs last night, ranging from 92 to 96 mph, 4 to 6 inches of Break, and 13 to 15 inches of Pitch f/x value.
It's virtually identical, save for extra PFX value on his slider last night, and really, the 10-incher is the outlier -- the other four were from 6 to 8 inches.
So, well, Pitch f/x apparently has no idea what's going on, which means I don't either.
Maybe Trey's right. The "stuff" is apparently the same. Maybe it's just location, which may point more to a mental problem than physical.
If only this was the Royals' biggest problem.
hey, at least the Chiefs don't have to worry about KC fans spending too much money at the K that they can't afford to go to Arrowhead