Kevin's Royals Blog

I still haven’t downloaded my copy of Tuesday’s win over the Indians, but the Royals’ website finally made the clip of Alberto Castillo’s strange walk-off homer available. Watching it revealed a few things:

- Neither team’s network broadcast it on TV
- Both the play-by-play man and the camera guy went all Howard Dean when the ball cleared the fence
- Brian McRae’s been practicing his diabolical laugh
- Castillo’s attempt at dramatics needs some work. His “slide” into home plate was more Willie Mays Hays than Rickey Henderson

Due to the Cardinals’ game against the Cubs being shown on Fox Sports Net Midwest, I didn’t get to see any of KC’s 5-4 loss to the Twins, so my commentary on the contest is going to be limited tonight...

Tomorrow’s box score will show that the Royals got to Johan Santana, as the reigning American League Cy Young award winner allowed four runs in seven innings. However, every one of those four tallies came in the third inning after two were out. Joe McEwing, David DeJesus, and Tony Graffanino’s back-to-back-to-back singles plated a run before Mike Sweeney muscled up and took Santana WAY out of the yard for a three-run homer.

However, when we subtract that inning from his night, Santana’s outing looked something like this:

IP	H	R	BB	K
6.0	1	0	0	8

That’s typical Johan. By the way, he has to be the unluckiest pitcher in baseball right now. He’s sporting a bloated 4.32 ERA that just doesn’t match his 37-2 (yes, thirty-seven-to-two) strikeout-to-walk ratio in 25 innings of work. The guy’s wicked good, and I’m looking forward to many pitching duels between Santana and Zack Greinke in the coming seasons.

The Jose Lima Experiment isn’t working out so well, is it? Allard Baird signed him to be an innings-eater, but I thought at the time of the signing that for a pitcher to eat a lot of innings, he must pitch effectively, something Lima isn’t very good at doing. He’s already allowed six home runs in just 19 innings, putting him on a pace to throw 65 gopher balls this season. He was a waste of time this past offseason, and he’s a waste of time now. Once again, Jimmy Gobble can’t recover from the No-Strikeout Blues soon enough.

All managers can do is put their teams in the best position to take advantage of situations and matchups. Because of that, I don’t like pinning losses on Tony Pena’s decisions, but he really screwed the pooch last night in the ninth inning. With his team down 5-4, Pena allowed righthand-hitting Eli Marrero to hit against Minnesota’s right-handed closer, Joe Nathan. I don’t know about you, but that screamed of a Calvin Pickering pinch-hit appearance, even if he’d have to play first base if the game continued on into the bottom of the ninth. However, Pena apparently would’ve rather avoided putting Pickles in the field than putting his team in the best possible position to tie the score. Marrero struck out right on cue, and the Royals – despite Matt Stairs batting for Emil Brown – went down without a fight.

Lastly, how about a “Caption This Picture” contest?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21, 2005 at 4/21/2005 12:00:00 AM. |