Kevin's Royals Blog

Imagine turning on a radio to listen to your favorite team’s game. Now, imagine what your listening experience would be like if the announcers – say, Denny Matthews and Ryan Lefebvre – got caught in the mother of all traffic jams and weren’t in the booth, but the team decided to put the game on the air anyway. You’d be left with only the noise of the crowd and music blaring over the stadium loudspeaker to determine what exactly was happening on the field. Without any announcers to paint a picture of the game, you’d have to make your best guess of when the home team scored a run (*CHEERS AND APPLAUSE*), when the visiting team hit a homer (*SILENCE*) or when Zack Greinke unleashed one of his patented slow curveballs at Kauffman Stadium (*OOHS AND AHHS*).

Because I had to work in the media parking lot at Hammons Field last night, I didn’t get to see any of the Springfield Cardinals 1-0 victory over the Tulsa Drillers, leaving me with only the verbal reactions of the crowd to glean a vague idea of the proceedings. It wasn’t a whole lot of fun, except for the times when the crowd booed and loudly heckled somebody. Anyway, things weren’t much better earlier at the K. Some random thoughts about the Royals’ 2-1 loss to The Fighting Hargroves...

He threw six shutout innings against the Mariners yesterday, so thankfully, Greinke’s okay. I became 100 percent sure of that when he made Richie Sexson look plain ol’ stupid at home plate in the sixth inning. It was classic Zack, throwing a few fastballs and bookending them with slow 63-mph curveballs to get Sexson on a swinging strikeout. But as funny as Sexson’s plate appearance was to watch, what Greinke did to Detroit’s Omar Infante last September was even better:

Pitch One: 86-mph fastball (foul)
Pitch Two: 50-mph eephus (strike looking)
Pitch Three: 84-mph fastball (ball outside)
Pitch Four: 68-mph curveball (strike swinging)

Then, in the same inning, he did this to Ivan Rodriguez:

Pitch One: 76-mph changeup (ball low)
Pitch Two: 89-mph fastball (ball inside)
Pitch Three: 70-mph curveball (foul)
Pitch Four: 92-mph fastball (strike)
Pitch Five: 93-mph fastball (strike looking on a quick pitch)

Notice that none of those pitches were thrown at the same speed. Greinke was pretty clearly born to pitch, and he’ll be doing that unfair stuff to hitters for years and years to come.

Tony Pena finally used a lineup that made quite a bit of sense. Against the right-handed Aaron Sele, Pena started both of his lefty softball players (Matt Stairs and Calvin Pickering) and hit them fourth and fifth respectively. The decision nearly paid big dividends when Pickering, with Stairs standing on third base following his triple, really got into a Sele fastball in the seventh inning, crushing it to left-center field. On any other day I think it would’ve been a game-tying two-run dinger, but the wind was really knocking down any balls hit to the outfield. As a result, the homer turned into a sacrifice fly, scoring the Royals only run of the day.

Speaking of Pickering, his power to leftfield and dead center is downright ridiculous.

Does anyone else think bringing the infield in for a play at the plate during a non-game situation is really stupid? After two singles and a sacrifice bunt, the Mariners scored one of their runs in the seventh inning on a Mike MacDougal wild pitch, but the second run scored on a groundball single by Miguel Olivo that may have resulted in an out had Pena played his infield back at their normal positions.

I understand that runs were coming at a premium on Wednesday, but with men on second and third with one out, is trading a run for an out that big of a deal when you’ll still have three more chances to push one run across the plate? It just seems to me that pulling the infield in during situations where That Guy on third base isn’t the WINNING run only complicates matters, and increases the likelihood of a big inning by the opposition.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 14, 2005 at 4/14/2005 12:00:00 AM. |