Change in 'mojo': How high socks helped snap the Royals' skid

KANSAS CITY -- The Royals, Bobby Witt Jr. says, are not a superstitious group.

Well, maybe only a little stitious.

Several Royals players received a shipment of new blue knee-high socks earlier this week, and on the heels of a three-game losing streak, the infielders -- led by first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino -- made a coordinated effort to all hitch up their pants on Tuesday night against the Blue Jays at Kauffman Stadium.

The result? A 3-2 win, evening the four-game set at one apiece and stopping the Royals’ losing streak in its tracks.

“Change up the mojo,” Witt said. “We lost three games in a row, so just change it up a little bit. We’re not very superstitious in here, but just change it up a little bit.”

The Royals’ high-socks look Tuesday night called to mind images of ballplayers from a bygone era, and certainly, high-leverage pitching and defense led the way against the Blue Jays. Starter Michael Wacha labored through 4 1/3 innings, needing 96 pitches to get 13 outs, but the bullpen was lights out.

Chris Stratton entered with the bases loaded and one out in the fifth and allowed a sacrifice fly before getting out of the inning without further damage. Helped along by a diving catch from MJ Melendez in left field for the first out of the sixth inning, Stratton threw a shutdown inning after the Royals took the lead in the fifth, which earned Stratton the win. And John Schreiber lowered his season ERA to 0.82 with a scoreless seventh.

Closer James McArthur picked up his second career six-out save, and the defense also helped him, including a double play and Pasquantino stretching out into the splits at first base on two different plays.

Perhaps the high socks helped there, too.

“You see Vinnie stretching over there -- I don’t know if he does it with regular pants on,” Witt said tongue-in-cheek.

Offensively, the Royals got their break in the fifth inning on Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s glove gaffe. Kyle Isbel hit a soft chopper up the middle, and a dart from third baseman Isiah Kiner-Falefa clipped Guerrero’s glove and went past him, giving the Royals their first run. Maikel Garcia moved Isbel to third on a single to center field to put runners on the corners for Witt.

One pitch later, Witt ripped the go-ahead, two-run double down the left-field line.

“There was a lot of work to do after that [error],” manager Matt Quatraro said. “That’s not always going to happen, you’re not always going to score right there. But we have the top of the order coming up with a chance to do some damage.”

If Guerrero had made the play, Witt’s at-bat never would have happened. But the entire inning was a direct consequence of the Royals’ process against the reigning American League strikeout leader on Tuesday night: Put the ball in play. They struck out just twice against him Tuesday and whiffed just four times on 50 swings.

“Just try to control the zone as much as possible and put the balls in play,” Witt said. “Put pressure on him. That’s what we do, we have to apply the pressure.”

The Royals’ offense applied tons of pressure in the early part of the season, but has been searching for better results the past week and a half. In a small sample size of the past 10 days entering Tuesday, the Royals’ .201 average ranked third-worst in baseball and they had a .631 OPS. Meanwhile, their 40.5% hard-hit percentage ranked seventh-highest in baseball over that stretch.

“We know we’re in a dogfight every night with these teams,” Quatraro said. “These are good teams. Really, there’s no message from what it was before. Just stay consistent. Get your pitch, and it boils down to swinging at the strikes and taking the balls. Not trying to win it with one swing.”

Despite the searching, there hasn’t been much panic nor frustration. With a consistent belief in their approach, the Royals have hardly changed a thing beyond minor tweaks.

“Sometimes you find a hole, sometimes you don’t,” Wacha said. “We hit a lot of balls hard over these past three games that didn’t find a hole, and we executed a lot of pitches that found holes.

The biggest change happened Tuesday.

“That’s the one thing -- we come to the field, and we’re the same guys,” Witt said. “We’re not changing too much. Besides our pants going up.”

And it might just stick around.

“We tried it, and got the win,” Garcia said. “If they keep putting theirs up, I’ll do it.”

Witt added: “You can’t get that superstitious about it, but you never know.”