Kevin's Royals Blog

I had an entire post written when my browser locked up on me, so because it's been a very long day and I'm extremely tired, here's the really, really short version:

The secret announcement I mentioned in Wednesday's entry won't be made today. While it became final last night, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet because the project isn't fully functional. When I know things are up and running -- which I'm very certain will be sometime next week -- you, my loyal and awesome readers, will be the very first people to know about it. Again, stay tuned...

Have a great weekend, and I'll see ya on Monday!

This is starting to get really old, really fast. Another night, another loss, and another notes article where I talk about why the game got away (again)...

Brian Anderson was having a very nice night in the early-going of his start retiring the first eight Twins who came to bat, but I noticed that he fell behind in the count quite a bit during those 2.2 innings. Knowing that poor hitters generally become All-Star hitters when they have the advantage in the count, I predicted that Anderson's run of success wouldn't last, and he unfortunately proved me right. Including his allowing six earned runs in six-plus innings against the Twins, Anderson's 1-2 with a 7.54 ERA, suggesting that 2004 might not have been a fluke after all.

Continuing to display the offensive approach every Royals hitter should be taking in every plate appearance, David DeJesus had another fine game, going 2-4 with a double and a walk. However, his lack of basestealing ability showed again when Joe Mauer -- despite throwing the ball to the third base side of second base -- pegged him in the third inning. Sooner or later, the Royals are going to have to accept that DDJ's value lies solely in his ability to get on base.

Relief pitchers are often characterized as being extremely weird individuals (Turk Wendell and Steve Kline come to mind), but many of them could also be classified as flaky, at least in a performance sense. In other words, the pitchers who aren't dominant closers like Eric Gagne, John Smoltz, and Mariano Rivera simply can't be counted on to put together solid seasons back-to-back.

Unfortunately, Shawn Camp's become the latest casualty. A year after having one heck of a good season with the Royals, Shawn's gone from being Jason Grimsley with control to Albie Lopez in the matter of a few months. Last night, Tony Pena called on him to pitch out of a jam in the 7th inning, and this was the result:

Hit batter
Wild pitch
Triple

In zero innings of work, Camp allowed two earned runs on one hit, bringing his season ERA to a robust 12.15 in 6.2 innings. I really hate to write off a guy who rode the "keep it down and throw strikes" philosophy to quite a bit of success a year ago, but the Royals badly need another position player, and Camp isn't a part of the team's future anyway. His roster spot would be much better used on a guy like, I don't know ... Calvin Pickering, perhaps.

Does anybody else wonder how Jaime Cerda throughly dominated his minor-league competition with the very ordinary stuff he has?

The Royals have seen a whole lot of talented pitchers derail their careers while with the club, and I'm afraid that the wheels are going to fall off Mike MacDougal's pretty soon. It's a shame, too, because A) As usual, his slider buckled the knees of right-handed hitters. Matt LeCroy and Michael Cuddyer bailed out multiple times, and B) He appears to have cleaned up his delivery. However, as Baseball Prospectus once wrote about Doogie, there's more sizzle there than steak.

Speaking of Royals pitchers who've seen more cloudy days than sunny ones, Kyle Snyder got in an inning of mop-up duty in the ninth, and really did a hell of a job. Before striking out Torii Hunter to end the inning, Snyder threw a Zack Greinke-esque sloooow curve that just kept dropping. With his track record, I still hold out hope that he can become a very good back-of-the-rotation starter with Greinke, Denny Bautista, Andy Sisco, and Runelvys Hernandez down the road.

Today, I find myself defending a man I very much would like to see fired, so I’m in a little bit of a strange situation right now. A day after semi-blasting the work ethics of the team and Tony Pena, an article on the Royals’ web site detailed the lengthy full-squad workout the Royals had prior to Tuesday evening’s game against the Minnesota Twins. Despite the fact they blew another opportunity to emerge victorious for the first time in about a week, seeing that they still care about fixing what’s wrong was definitely encouraging. Additionally, I really liked reading that Pena will have the Royals “work on fundamentals every single day” during homestands. While that new revelation certainly scores the manager some points in my book, I spent more than a few minutes over at the Royals’ mlb.com message board defending not Pena himself, but a decision he made in the ninth inning of yesterday’s loss.

With one out and nobody on base in the inning, Pena came out of the dugout to summon his new closer. Ambiorix Burgos replaced Andrew Sisco, who pitched what’s becoming his usual: scoreless, one-strikeout baseball spanning two-thirds of an inning. The move made sense at the time; the Twins were scheduled to send up four consecutive right-handed hitters. Since the Royals are apparently doomed to have at least one disastrous inning a night that tears out the hearts of the Kansas City players and their fans, Burgos promptly surrendered a broken-bat flare single to Matthew LeCroy and a close 3-2 pitch to Michael Cuddyer that was called a ball. The Royals badly needed a double play to escape without any damage, and they damned near got it. Shannon Stewart, pinch-hitting for Luis Rivas, hit a 2-2 pitch from Burgos on the ground towards third baseman Joe McEwing, who fielded the ball and stepped on third base to force out pinch runner Jason Bartlett. Despite Stewart’s speed, it looked like the Royals were going to get out of the inning with the score still tied at one … until McEwing fired the ball about 15 feet wide of the bag at first.

That was another Royal mistake; any regular third baseman would’ve been able to accurately make that throw. Good teams capitalize on their opponents’ mistakes, which is something the Twins have been better at than most any other team in baseball over the last three seasons. This time, the player who stuck in the dagger was KRB favorite Lew Ford, who, like LeCroy before him, hit a flare to the right side that just barely got past second baseman Tony Graffanino. Cuddyer scored the go-ahead run, Joe Nathan did his thing in the bottom of the inning, and the Royals suffered another heartbreaking one-run loss, their fifth in the last six games. It’s been said that good teams create their own luck and that bad teams create their own misfortune, but there’s just no reason why the Royals shouldn’t have won at least two of those five games.

It’s very difficult for baseball fans to accept a string of losses as little more than plain old bad luck, so to take out our frustrations, we immediately look for spots in the game in which a different move could’ve been made that might have affected the outcome. Almost immediately after the game was over, Pena was taking another beating on the message board for removing the red-hot Sisco and replacing him with Burgos. I still don’t think Pena should be allowed to keep his job much longer and I can see the logic behind leaving in the hot hand, but suggesting that any switch was the wrong move only after seeing the result is the worst kind of second-guessing out there. For example, Grady Little may have left Pedro Martinez in too long back in the 2003 playoffs, but if ‘dro hadn’t allowed what he did in that deciding inning, nobody would’ve been upset with the decision. In this case, Pena could’ve replaced Sisco with Ruben Gotay if he wanted. If Gotay somehow would have escaped the inning without allowing any runs to score, would Pena’s choice to have an infielder pitch a high-leverage situation have been the right one? I certainly don’t think so, and I hope you don’t either.

I’m not saying that Tony hasn’t made some blunder-headed decisions with his pitching staff in the early-going this year, because he most certainly has. I’m also not trying to suggest that replacing the guy who’s been the team’s best reliever to date with a wild rookie was the right thing to do. However, if we’re going to criticize a managerial move, it’s important to do it at the time the move is made, not afterwards when we’ve seen the result of the action. If Burgos had done his job (or if he’d been a little bit luckier in this instance), no runs would have scored, and I’d be willing to bet that not a word would’ve been spoken of the situation. Managers can only do so much, like putting their players in the best possible position to succeed. Pena – who doesn’t have a crystal ball – did that last night, and it just didn’t work out.

Random thoughts...

The big-league team has the worst offense in baseball right now, but there’s help on the way in the form of Justin Huber. Yesterday, he went 4-4 with a home run in a 7-2 win over the Arkansas Travelers, boosting his season average to .369 and his slugging percentage to .600. I’m not exactly sure what his on-base percentage is, but it’s definitely quite a bit higher than the .453 mark it was at prior to the game. April baseball statistics generally don’t mean very much, but this, despite Huber not being this good, is an exception to the rule. The kid can flat-out rake, and the sooner the Royals start converting him to the outfield, the better.

On a non-baseball note, the six remaining American Idol finalists performed songs from 2000 to the present last night. The best performance of the night undoubtedly came from Vonzell Solomon’s fine rendition of Christina Aguilera’s I Turn To You, while the official Idol contestant of KRB, Carrie Underwood, sang an out-of-place-sounding country song, but sang it very well nevertheless. Scott Savol, however, should definitely take Simon Cowell’s advice and pack his bags tonight. I’d seen enough of him a month ago and I think America’s finally going to vote him out of the competition.

Finally, I may have an announcement to make by the end of the week regarding even more places where my writing will appear. Stay tuned.

Royals fans have gone through a LOT over the past ten seasons, but 2005 is going to be something far worse than anything any of us have ever seen before. That may not come as a surprise to some outside the Kansas City inner circle, seeing as the Royals are probably the least-talented club in the American League, and as a result, never were on any sort of a track to pocket even 70 wins this season. However, while even the most passionate of Royals fans would tell you that the numbers in the win/loss columns would heavily favor the “loss” side, I don’t think any of us foresaw this train wreck coming.

I’ve grown fond of saying that as it relates to baseball (and young players and teams specifically), the process of achieving a result is equally as important as the result itself. A result – such as home runs, runs batted in, wins, and saves – certainly tells us how good a young player was in one of his first few seasons, but the steps he took towards reaching those figures are better indicators for the likelihood of future successes or failures. These processes can go beyond statistics and sabermetrically-encouraged metrics; walks for hitters and strikeouts for pitchers can only tell us so much. It’s also a question of how a position player responded in the game following his first 0-5 night at the plate or how a young pitcher responds to giving up a hit and a walk before being taken out of the yard by a veteran hitter. For fielders, it’s about hitting a cutoff man and things of that ilk. Basically, it’s all about making adjustments, both to the league and to their own games to improve. Those 20-somethings who adjust have lengthy major league careers, while those who don’t flame out faster than Michael Richards’ attempt at his own NBC sitcom.

Managers and coaches have plenty to do with whether or not their young players make the necessary adjustments. While one would think a “players’ manager” like Tony Pena (who played catcher for two decades) would be a guy bursting at the seams to help The Inexperienced Ones get through their major league growing pains, one would apparently be very wrong, judging by this excerpt from the April 24, 2005 postgame article on kcroyals.com:

KANSAS CITY -- Maybe a day off is just what the doctor ordered for the Royals and manager Tony Pena.

Pena had a simple plan for Monday's gap in the schedule.

"Sleep," he said wearily. "Sleep. Sleep. Sleep."

While I’m very sure that the Royals’ 5-14 start has weighed much more heavily on Pena’s shoulders than it has mine, it’s also true that his job is to manage this ballclub, maximizing the abilities each player on the roster. That he manages a club in one of the two or three very smallest markets in baseball only makes his job description that much more detailed and time-consuming, as accelerating the developmental processes of select young players at the major league level is much more of a necessity here than it is in New York or Los Angeles. That means there’s an added responsibility for Pena that other managers don’t have, and as we all know, you can’t take care of responsibilities by sleeping them off.

Way back in 1999 and 2000 when the Minnesota Twins were at the same stage of their rebuilding process the Royals are at now, the Doug Mientkiewiczes, Torii Hunters, Corey Koskies, and Jacque Joneses were just making names for themselves in the major leagues. They also made a ton of fundamental mistakes and lost games as a result, but the Twins’ manager at the time, Tom Kelly, frequently took the time to explain to each guy how he could get better by eliminating those mistakes. In fact, I vividly remember the image of Kelly, after his team blew a game they should’ve won, ordering all 25 guys back to the Metrodome pitchers’ mound for a crash-course in baseball fundamentals before they were allowed to leave the park. Tony should’ve been taking yesterday not to sleep, but to come to the park with the entire team for a day-long practice and reinforcement session.

Although not every player currently on the roster is a non-veteran, there are entirely too many correctable and stupid mistakes being made by both the kids and the veterans right now. Ruben Gotay struck out four times on Sunday, each a swinging third strike at the same offspeed pitch in the dirt. On Friday, Matt Diaz overthrew two cutoff men and tried to score the game-winning run on a ball that barely got away from A.J. Pierzynski. Neither Mike Sweeney nor Eli Marrero is being patient enough at the plate, while Angel Berroa horribly botched a simple rundown play on Sunday afternoon. There’s just no excuse for why Pena probably isn’t going to take the time to work with them, especially when these ridiculous errors are causing the Royals to look like something far worse than a Triple-A ballclub. That’s something Pena should care about, but if he doesn’t, it’s time for the Royals to look in another direction for the right man to manage this team.

Other thoughts from Sunday...

Denny Bautista started Sunday's game, and it looked like he was going to have another disastrous start after what we saw in the first inning. Chicago's first two hitters, Scott Podsednik (a real pest who fights his way on base) and Willie Harris, both drew walks on ten pitches. After falling behind in the count again, Paul Konerko hit a screaming line drive to left that was fortunately right at Diaz. Ross Gload's run-scoring hit and yet another walk to Aaron Rowand had me convinced that Denny might not make it out of the second inning, but he found a way to work around his self-imposed problems (he only threw ten strikes in his 25-pitch frame), "escaping" with a minimal two runs scoring.

Whatever changes pitching coach Guy Hansen had him make before going out to the second is a testament to both Hansen's incredible understanding of pitchers and Bautista's ability and willingness to make and execute those changes. Check out his line after what was obviously a fluke first inning:

INNINGS	HITS	ER	BB	SO	PITCHES
6.0	1	0	1	3	74

The numbers don't lie in this case, especially in the number of pitches he threw. 50 of those 74 pitches were strikes, or 68 percent. However, what was most impressive was simply the way Bautista dealt with adversity. He couldn't buy a strike call in his first inning of work, but he made the necessary changes to his mindset/delivery/pace, and reaped the rewards. This guy's stuff is so unbelievably filthy that the American League is going to have more than just a handful when (not if) he discovers his control.

Speaking of young pitchers with filthy stuff, Andrew Sisco is looking more and more like the real deal. Adversity is sure to come his way as well, but he's been the Royals' best reliever to date, and his combination of being a big left-handed Rule 5 draftee with a hot fastball and fading offspeed pitch has visions of Johan Santana v2.0 dancing in my head. In his last three appearances spanning 3.2 innings of work, Sisco's struck out seven batters against only one walk. For the season, he's fanned 15 in 14 innings of work, allowing only seven hits for a 1.29 ERA.

The Royals gave Sisco a new bullpenmate before Saturday's game, sending down Nate Field to make room for flame-throwing righty and KRB favorite Ambiorix Burgos. In addition to inheriting at least a partial stake of closer duties, Ambiorix (pronounced Am-BEE-or-ee) also instantly gained the title of Coolest Name in Baseball. The Royals may suck, but with Burgos and Mike MacDougal possibly pitching back-to-back innings, at least the late innings of games will be VERY entertaining for the rest of the year. Heck, they might not even need fielders with all the strikeouts and walks that'll be doled out by the duo.

The Royals might want to consider getting a few more of those " Be alert - Baseballs can and often do leave the field of play" warning signs for the fans, however.

Could Diaz be Tom Brady's long-lost brother?

The Twins play "small ball." The White Sox win games by bashing the ball out of the park (despite what Ozzie Guillen would lead you to believe. The Braves? Well, they've always relied on great starting pitching. As for the Royals ... well, if you aren't sure what the Royals are all about, the ninth inning of yesterday's loss should give you a pretty good idea.

As I mentioned yesterday, any game in which Mike MacDougal is called upon to protect a one-run lead immediately becomes a game in jeopardy. Right on cue, MacDougal walked Torii Hunter on four pitches to lead off the inning. That act alone is an unpardonable sin -- especially in the ninth inning -- but what occurred after the walk epitomized Royals Baseball of the past ten years. MacDougal had Hunter picked off first base, but freaked out and chucked a line drive towards second base with reckless abandon, only to see the throw sail into centerfield. A Lew Ford single and a Jacque Jones double later, the score was tied, and the Twins went on to win in 10 innings.

Anyway, I'm planning on going to the game against the White Sox on Saturday night, and I'm definitely going to take a lot of pictures at the K. Look for that on Monday, and in the meantime, please check out Warning Track Power, another good blog that focuses on the Royals. Have a great weekend!

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?

The white smoke appeared today, signaling the selection of a new Pope and, apparently, foreshadowing an Alberto Castillo walk-off homer. I haven’t had the chance to watch the game yet, but I have some thoughts on the action anyway…

The Royals certainly haven’t hit a lot of walk-off bombs in the past ten years or so, so every time they do, the event tends to stick in my mind. Castillo – who has to be the most unlikely Royals hero since Rey Sanchez took Mike Trombley out of the yard in 2000 – hit his off Arthur Rhodes, who’s probably growing tired of facing the Royals at Kauffman Stadium in the late innings of a tight games. Less than two years ago, Carlos Beltran hit a game-winner off of Rhodes, who was then pitching with Seattle.

David DeJesus is quickly becoming one of my favorite players, mostly because he embodies the approach every Royals hitter should be taking in each plate appearance. David, who’s now hitting .309/.397/.400 on the season, really is becoming Johnny Damon v2.0, only with less basestealing ability and, of course, far less hair.

After more than a week of play, we finally saw an example of how the Royals are putting themselves behind the 8 ball by carrying 12 pitchers. In the 8th inning, Indians manager Eric Wedge brought in Rhodes, a lefty, to face Matt Stairs with Mike Sweeney on first base and nobody out. Tony Pena countered the move by sending the right-handed hitting Tony Graffanino to bat for Stairs and, later in the inning, pinch-hit for Terrence Long with Eli Marrero.

Graffanino stayed in the game to play third base and Marrero was put in right field. Those moves required that, unless Pena wanted to waste another potential pinch-hitter in Emil Brown, jack-of-all-trades guy Super Joe McEwing play relatively out of position in left field. It would’ve taken a crazy chain of injuries for disaster to strike, but if it had, the Royals would’ve been out of non-catchers if Brown had entered the game. (Imagine John Buck having to play first base, or even a corner outfield spot.) At this point, I really don’t see any reason why a non-performing 12th pitcher like Nathan Field is deemed as needed in the major leagues, while potentially-useful position players like Luis Ugueto and Matt Diaz are wasting away in the minor leagues.

Again, I haven’t seen any of yesterday’s game yet, but the box score suggests that Denny Bautista was supremely unlucky to have allowed 11 hits and five runs in 5 1/3 innings. He did just about everything right, walking only two, striking out five, and getting nine groundouts (compared to only two flyouts). To add to that, reports are that Denny was throwing heavy 97-mph fastballs with quite a bit of regularity. Perhaps the game tape will tell me differently, but it appears that the combination of a bad infield defense and blind stupid luck resulted in Pronk & Co. getting so many knocks against him.

Going back to Castillo for a moment, how about The Mustachioed One picking up his third career stolen base in more than ten seasons? Paul Konerko would be proud.

Andrew Sisco picked up a blown save in a situation where he probably couldn’t have converted a save opportunity anyway, but that’s pretty much been the only negative in his season so far. Sisco’s been everything I thought he’d be this year: a guy with some control problems, but also a guy with good-enough stuff that the league will find him difficult to hit during the first couple of months. If the Royals can keep him on the roster for the rest of 2005, I’d like to see him go back to the minor leagues next year to complete his apprenticeship. The kid has some big-time ability.

Mike MacDougal showed what he can do to opposing hitters when he throws strikes, which is to say the Indians didn’t really have a chance. Control is a big “if” for Doogie every time he makes an appearance, but I love him for it. There’s nothing quite like having a real-life Ricky Vaughn on your favorite team.

On a non-Royals note, if you haven’t seen Vladimir Guerrero’s Monday home run off of Aaron Sele, you need to watch it. While I disagree with Jim Rome that Guerrero’s the best player in baseball, I agree with him in that there’s nobody else I’d rather pay to watch. After all, hitters who swing out of their shoes on every pitch are just really freakin’ cool.

And finally, since the big-league club isn’t doing much in the way of hitting, here’s a look at what 18-year-old Billy Butler’s doing to California League pitchers at High-A High Desert:

.404/.491/.702

Yes, High Desert is a launching pad of a ballpark, but Butler’s demolishing pitchers who’re much, much older than he is. I think we’re looking at the hitting version of Zack Greinke, and that isn’t a bad thing in the least.

I’ve come to believe that two of the most difficult things to do in any sort of writing are expressing emotions and tones of voice within the context of an article or, for our purposes here, a blog entry. There are a few tools available to writers like italics, boldfaced print, and capital lettering that certainly aid in clarifying how something is meant to be read, but even those don’t really hold a candle to actual spoken word.

I’ve begun today’s entry in this fashion because of the way I began (and concluded) yesterday’s. Those two brief paragraphs were just my venting – and nothing more – about my absolute favorite team in professional sports. I’m frustrated, but I’m definitely not going to quit on them. Judging from the e-mails and comments I received, a lot of you are under the impression that I’ve reached a breaking point after the first two weeks of the season and that I’m going to stop blogging about the Royals because of it. Although I can understand why so many of you would think that to be the case, what with my writing “I give up” yesterday, I’m definitely not going to stop writing, at least for the foreseeable future.

However, it’s just plain hard to want to write anything about this particular team right now because the Royals aren’t doing anything right. As I sit here now, the Indians 5-0 are currently bludgeoning them in the seventh inning. As has been par for the course so far this year, they’ve only collected two hits, two walks, and have made two dumb errors in the field. None of that’s acceptable to me. To make matters worse, Zack Greinke allowed five runs in five innings, surrendering home runs to Casey Blake and Ben Broussard, meaning I’ll be able to start watching for his implosion to begin in five days. Hey, it’s happened to almost every other promising young pitcher the Royals have brought along, right?

Am I bitter? Absolutely, but only because I’ve been following this team for ten damn years always wishing that The Year would finally come around and I’d have my season in the sun. That’s all I’m asking for. One year I can actually sit back and enjoy because I know that the team the Royals have on the field is far superior to the team they’re playing every. single. night. As it stands now, I feel like I’m in this famous Saturday Night Live sketch seven days a week:



Like Alex Trebek (played by Will Ferrell) constantly says, “Good Lord!” in frustration when the idiot Celebrity Jeopardy contestants can’t provide the correct question to the preschool-level answer shown on the board, I find myself shaking my head in disbelief when the Royals are out there playing like Little Leaguers. Losing isn’t what bothers me, because losing streaks and injuries and down times just happen over the course of 162-game seasons. However, it’s extremely bothersome when the pitchers can’t finish off hitters when they have two strikes, when absolutely nobody in the lineup is willing to breathe and just WAIT until the opposing pitcher screws himself over, and when mass confusion ensues on infield pop-ups. It’s just becoming ridiculous because they’ve had more than a decade to fix this stuff.

Anyway, I don’t really have a good conclusion for this rant, so I’ll just say goodnight with the wish for a better tomorrow.

I think it's pretty incredible that after everything the Royals have put me through during the course of the past ten seasons, I still get extremely frustrated when they beat themselves in ballgames. There's currently no willingness to NOT swing at the first pitch of any plate appearance, outfielders missing the cutoff man, relay throws being thrown over the catcher's head, and a general lack of attention to detail. Or maybe all of these guys just stink, which would be the reason for all of the above.

Either way, I've already HAD IT with this group, a group that isn't only playing losing baseball, but a group so untalented they aren't even capable of playing winning baseball. I give up.

I don't really have anything positive to say about the Royals and their horrific (yet vintage) series against the Mariners, so I'm just going to shut up until I have the chance to chill out a little. See ya Monday!

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.

Kevin: Well, it's been an extremely long time since we last chatted, my friend. Between steroids, Calvin Pickering being freed, and the candlelight vigil I'm going to hold for Zack Greinke's bruised right arm, we have quite a bit to get caught up on. But let's start with a guy who had more to do with the Royals' 3-3 start than any other player on the roster: David DeJesus.

As you aptly pointed out on the Royals MLB.com message board a few days ago, DeJesus drew six walks in the team's first six games, and was hitting .348/.483/.435 in 23 at-bats at the time of this writing. I know that any player's early-season performance is going to be unfairly praised or grumbled upon because those numbers, without any other stats to put them into context, stick out like a sore thumb. Additionally, DeJesus isn't going to draw 162 walks, and he definitely isn't going to hit .348.

However, I think his plate discipline deserves to be noticed and talked about. After all, the fun part of April is trying to answer all of those "what if?" questions, and my "what if?" question with DeJesus pertains to if he's actually a much-better player than anyone's ever given him credit for. Nobody's ever doubted his ability to play at this level; Allard Baird and I have both brought up Mark Kotsay's name when anybody's asked for a good comparison for DDJ, and Kotsay's certainly a damned fine ballplayer. But is it possible that he could be something greater than Kotsay ever will be? Check this out:

MINOR LEAGUE PERFORMANCE
PLAYER A: 1274 AB, .268/.347/.438
DEJESUS: 562 AB, .302/.400/.484

Before you say anything, yes, I know that DeJesus had half the minor league at-bats of Player A, and how that could skew any comparison. I think it's interesting, though, that Player A is the man DeJesus replaced in CF after The Trade last June.

Does DeJesus have the raw physical abilities Carlos Beltran possesses? No, and that's a major strike against him ever becoming the player Beltran is today. But he certainly has always understood how to hit, how to lay off sliders in the dirt, and, most importantly, how to make hard contact. Oh yeah, and he's a pretty fine defender too.

So what do you think? Is it totally ridiculous to believe that DDJ could, in time, become a Baby Beltran as opposed to a Kotsay Klone?

Daniel: Baby Beltran? I'm going to refute that moniker, but only because of the "baby" part of it. I'm sticking my neck out here, but I don't think that there needs to be any mini-comparison with regards to what DeJesus could become.

That being said, I'll digress quickly -- I'm not projecting DeJesus to become the slugging centerfielder that the Mets are dearly, dearly hoping showed up in 2004 for the Royals and Astros. No, I'm projecting the possibility (dare I say probability?) that David will become the Beltran of 2002 and 2003.

It's simple, really. Dejesus is currently 25 years of age, and will be 26 by December of this year. Beltran was in his year 25 and 26 years in 2002 and 2003. So, we already have a similarity in age.

Secondly, those two years for Beltran were the years his ability to draw walks took off, along with another metric that indicates plate patience -- pitches per plate appearance.

If we look at Beltran's progression from his rookie season in 1999 to 2002 and 2003 (excluding 2000, the year that he had his sophomore slump and was injured), we can see the rise in two numbers...

AT-BATS PER WALK
1999: 1 walk every 14.4 at-bats
2001: 1 walk every 11.9 at-bats
2002: 1 walk every 9.0 at-bats
2003: 1 walk every 7.2 at-bats

PITCHES PER PLATE APPEARANCE
1999: 3.40
2001: 3.64
2002: 3.95
2003: 3.85

Now, I could go on to say that Beltran had an even better walk rate and saw 4 pitches per plate appearance in 2004, but his isolated power took a spike last year that I do not believe DeJesus is capable of, so I'll let it go. An ISO of about 200 points sounds about right for DeJesus, but Beltran's nasty ISO of 281 points in 2004 is something that will be beyond what David can do.

Okay, so now we come to the DeJesus comparison, with one large problem: sample size. I don't have 3 previous years of major league data on DeJesus to compare to Beltran's, but the thing is I don't really think it matters. We know DeJesus has put up Beltran-similar numbers in the minors. Big deal, right? We'll simply go with DeJesus' comparable rates from his 363 at-bat stint last year:

AT-BATS PER WALK
2004: 1 walk every 11 at-bats

PITCHES PER PLATE APPEARANCE
2004: 3.91

Yeah, are you seeing it now? If we compare their age 24 years (2004 for DeJesus and 2001 for Beltran) we can see even more: DeJesus is actually ahead of Beltran in the area of plate discipline. He's drawing a walk almost a full at-bat earlier than Beltran, and he's seeing more pitches per at-bat. If this was any other area than plate discipline, I could write it off as some sort of spike, but plate discipline is a skill. Furthermore, it's been a highly developed skill for DeJesus for years now, whereas for Beltran it didn't become highly developed until he was in his 4th year in the majors.

I don't think it takes much of a stretch at all to say DeJesus is right about the same point in his hitting ability at his age that Beltran was at the same age. I won't go any further than that; Beltran obviously has a higher ceiling on power, and DeJesus will never be quite the centerfielder that Beltran was at the height of his prowess, but in the end, who cares? Allard Baird may have pulled off one of the most underrated player transitions (from star to rookie) in years, as nobody yet is close to giving him credit for knowing exactly when to pull the Beltran trade-trigger: when DeJesus was ready for the Show.

After everything that happened in sports yesterday, I’ll be surprised if we hear the “s” word mentioned much at all on talk radio, in newspapers, or on TV. Not only did Tiger won a major tournament for the first time in what seems like a million years, but Sunday also provided us with John Smoltz and Pedro Martinez engaging in the mother of all pitching duels, Josh Beckett striking out 11 Washington Nationals in a shutout victory, Johan Santana blowing away the White Sox like it was 2004 all over again, and Vladimir Guerrero hitting one of his patented moonshots to left field. And I know Baltimore’s series win over the Yankees was a sweet, sweet victory for all you Yankee-haters out there, especially the Royals fans that suffered through the late 1970s.

Speaking of the Royals, they had a pretty darned successful weekend in Anaheim. As a result of taking two out of three from the Angels, they’ll open up their home schedule tomorrow against Seattle with a .500 record and, more importantly, quite a bit of confidence.

They began building that confidence on Friday night, when Denny Bautista had The Start far earlier than I thought he would. Just as a point of reference, The Start is a young pitcher’s coming-out party in which he displays to the baseball world what he can do. It's a pretty special thing to watch, because it doesn’t just happen for every pitcher in his early-20s who’s blessed with great stuff and an encouraging track record. Just ask Jeremy Affeldt. Anyway, while I haven’t had the chance to actually watch Bautista’s performance (the game file I downloaded from MLB.com’s been having some technical problems), judging from the box score and accounts from KRB readers who watched it on TV, he pretty much had a perfect outing. Well, I guess it wasn’t perfect; he did allow two singles and a double in his eight innings of work. But when you consider he struck out one batter per inning on average, picked up 13 groundball outs, and displayed amazing control (zero walks) for a guy with control problems, he was as close to perfect as a pitcher can be without going David Wells on the opposing offense.

If the performance itself wasn’t enough, how he achieved his final totals was even more impressive. While Bautista was under strict orders from the club to throw fastballs 70 percent of the time, he picked up each of his strikeouts on unbelievably-filthy 12-6 curves and harder breaking pitches that appeared to be sliders. I really don’t like to make comparisons, especially after first starts, but Bautista was working like Martinez did in the late-90s with the Red Sox. Like Pedro, he (probably) got ahead of the Angels’ hitters with well-placed 95-mph fastballs before finishing them off with a breaking ball that looked like a strike until the last second, when it took a nosedive straight into the dirt. Bautista used that strategy to perfection against Guerrero, who swung well over the top of a knee-high curveball before chasing a slider well out of the strike zone later in the game.

I really don’t believe Bautista’s going to make it through an entire season without bumps in the road. There are going to be nights where he won’t be able to find home plate, and as a result, he’s going to get creamed every once in awhile. But the days leading up to his next start should be filled with nothing but celebration, not only because he flashed the awesome ability Allard Baird played up after acquiring him for Ordinary Relief Pitcher Jason Grimsley last June, but also because Royals fans hadn’t seen a Royals pitcher dominate a game with sheer power in the past ten or 11 seasons. Zack Greinke’s crazy craftiness got him a few seven-inning shutouts last year, but no KC hurler since Kevin Appier had blown batters away with the awesome stuff Denny displayed to kick off the series.

Unfortunately (but also expectedly), Jose Lima wasn’t able to continue the trend the next evening. In fact, Lima’s Saturday couldn’t have been any more of an antithesis to Bautista’s Friday. Whereas Bautista got ahead of almost every hitter, the noted control artist Lima fell behind, and even walked in a run in the first inning. And after he put the Angels’ hitters in good hitting situations, he found the middle of the plate far too frequently, and took a seven-run beating as a result. Lima’s already taken two of the Royals’ three losses this season and, so far, has been the only Kansas City starting pitcher to pitch ineffectively. The sooner Jimmy Gobble’s ready to take Lima’s place in the rotation, the better off the Royals will be.

But what transpired in Saturday’s 8-3 loss wasn’t all negative, especially after Andy Sisco kept the Royals relatively in the game with three shutout innings complete with no walks and three strikeouts. Despite his 19-game hitting streak coming to a halt, David DeJesus drew three walks, and has already drawn six in 23 at-bats so far this season. As a team, KC drew seven walks against Kevin Gregg (who I was very impressed with) and two Angels relievers, so they probably were unlucky to score only three times in the game.

The Royals turned the tables on Anaheim yesterday, beating them 8-3. The story of the first three of innings was Brian Anderson, whose reworked delivery did wonders. It appeared to me that he’s throwing more over-the-top as opposed to a three-quarters arm angle, and he retired the first nine Angels, four of which on strikeouts. He did a fantastic job of throwing first-pitch strikes, changing speeds, and hitting his spots: everything he didn’t do last year. In fact, he only missed his location badly on back-to-back pitches to Chone Figgins (who ripped a line drive over DeJesus’ head for a triple) and Guerrero (who ripped a belt-high changeup all the way to Michigan). I really believed the 5-0 lead was going to evaporate when Anderson fell behind Garret Anderson 3-0, but he kept his wits about him, getting Anderson and Juan Rivera on easy groundouts.

The Royals hitters were teeing off on Bartolo Colon all day long, just as I suspected they would before the game. Colon’s really no different than any other pitcher: if he throws his breaking and offspeed stuff over the plate for called strikes, the opposing team’s going to have a long day ahead of them. However, if he can’t get his curve over, he has a tendency to throw nothing but fastballs, and even the worst big-league hitters become all-stars when they know what’s coming.

Ruben Gotay led the attack with four hits (including a towering home run), and handled himself well in the field. From an offensive standpoint, Gotay reminds me quite a bit of Ray Durham, from his ability to slash the ball into alleyways to his lefthanded batting stance. Emil Brown also got into the act with his second homer, as did Angel Berroa (three hits), and Terrence Long, who whacked his fourth double. Surprisingly, the only guy who looked awful all day long was Calvin Pickering. His normally very good bat speed was non-existent, and he just didn’t look comfortable at the plate all day long. I’m guessing he’ll relax after his wife gives birth to their son in the near future, and he might even go on a hitting rampage like Johnny Damon did in 2000 after his wife gave birth to triplets.

After struggling in the early-going, the bullpen did a very nice job of holding serve. Nathan Field and Jaime Cerda each threw two-thirds of an inning, each picking up a strikeout. Mike MacDougal finished things off with a very efficient 1 2/3 innings performance, picking up a strikeout while displaying a simpler delivery and, as a result, unusually-good command. He looked like the MacDougal from the first half of 2003 who was damn near unhittable at times, and shortened games to eight innings.

All told, the Royals beat the Angels with some legitimately-good pitching:

IP	H	K	BB	HR	ERA
26.0	21	21	2	2	3.12

I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time any Royals pitching staff walked only two (TWO!) batters in an entire three game series, much less struck out 7.27 batters per nine innings. It looks like new pitching coach Guy Hansen's really made a difference in a very short period of time.

Mariano Rivera’s reign of having the most scrutinized right arm of the 2005 baseball season to date was short-lived. Royals fans and fantasy baseball owners of Zack Greinke alike will be collectively holding their breaths to see if he’ll be able to make his next start (and, more importantly, pitch effectively) thanks to Carlos Guillen’s line drive that hit Zack's arm in the third inning of yesterday’s 7-3 Detroit win.

The good news here is that Greinke’s optimistic about taking his turn in the rotation next week, the X-rays came back negative, and the Royals medical staff diagnosed his ailment as a bruised right forearm. The bad news is that almost no pitcher in the history of baseball has been anything other than “optimistic” about making his next start after an injury, so Greinke’s opinion should be taken with a grain of salt. Additionally, the medical staff in Kansas City is worse than any other in Major League Baseball, so a bruised right forearm could easily turn into a misdiagnosed bone fracture in the matter of a few days.

I’ve long believed that if anything were to ever happen to Greinke that would hamper his long-term outlook towards superstardom, that success just isn’t in the cards for the Royals. Ever. Of course, that fear came from a belief that the Royals themselves would do something irresponsible with his arm, not that he’d take a liner off it. Regardless, for the sake of the future of the club, it’s imperative that Greinke recovers from this in time and continues to pitch like he has.

Speaking of Greinke, here’s a very interesting article about him from Sunday’s edition of the Kansas City Star. Check out that side-by-side picture of him and Bret Saberhagen; the similarity in their deliveries is just spooky.

Well before yesterday’s game, I expressed a real concern to friend of KRB Dave Sanford about the terrible approach I thought the Royals hitters would take against Tigers starter Jason Johnson, and unfortunately, my concern proved to be a valid one. There’s nothing magical about Johnson or how any members of Thursday’s lineup have hit against him in the past. However, too many times in the past five or six seasons I’ve seen the Royals be extremely patient and work themselves into hitters’ counts one game, and score a ton of runs in that game as a result. So what’s the problem? More often than not, every hitter’s so pumped up over winning a ballgame with their bats the previous night, they completely forget their plan of attack and swing at anything in the strike zone. Invariably, they usually end up scoring about as much as NHL teams are as we speak, can’t figure out why, and keep on swinging without any sort of restraint.

Johnson looked like a Cy Young candidate yesterday, and a big reason why was KC’s willingness to help him out by putting the ball in play early in the count. Royals hitters put the ball in play 16 times on the second or first pitch of the plate appearance, and made at least one out in 10 of those at-bats. John Buck swung at the first pitch in two of his four times up. As a result, Johnson needed only 76 pitches to get through 6 2/3 innings, which is a ridiculously-low figure and isn’t at all excusable. They got better against Ugueth Urbina (20 pitches in one inning) and Troy Percival (23 pitches in one inning), frames in which they scored their only runs of the game. Coincidence? I think not.

It’s nice that the Royals have an organization-wide belief that working the count and drawing walks is important, but the philosophy doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot if they won’t put it into action on the field.

I was going to blow a gasket after seeing that the official hitter of Kevin’s Royals Blog, Calvin Pickering, wasn’t in the lineup against the righthand-throwing Johnson. After all, Tony Pena made a commitment to correctly utilize his platoon situations this season, and putting a guy who’s helpless against righthanded pitching in Eli Marrero over a lefty masher like Pickering had me wanting to fly to Detroit and berate Pena in front of his entire team.

Fortunately, no berating was necessary, as I found out later that was Pickering was absent because his wife is expecting their child to be born very soon. Hopefully, all will go well, and Calvin will use the happiness his son or daughter will bring him as a springboard towards a very successful year.

I was right about Tony Graffanino and Ruben Gotay in yesterday's entry. Pena, managing once again on a gut feeling rather than logic, had the veteran starting over the kid. Hopefully, Pena’s nonsense will stop this weekend in Anaheim, because Gotay has to play almost every single day whether it’s with Kansas City or Omaha.

By the way, here’s Rotoworld.com’s hilarious reaction to Pickering and Gotay not being in the lineup before we knew all the facts:

Despite homering in his final two games of the spring and on Opening Day, Calvin Pickering didn't start versus a right-hander today.

Ruben Gotay was also absent again. Maybe Tony Pena thought that since the Royals scored seven runs with a lefty pitching yesterday, he should use the same lineup today. Maybe Mike Sweeney was achy and had to DH. Maybe Pickering, upset with the lack of a pregame spread, ate Gotay this morning and was benched as punishment. Either way, we don't like this one bit.

I went to a friend of mine’s birthday party at Nakato Japanese Steak House last night, and was it ever one cool experience. Using chopsticks, the chef making a volcano-o-fire out of a stack of onions, and the exquisite Japanese cuisine made for a heck of a good time. You haven’t lived until an expert chef has turned cooking a meal into an entire performance right before your eyes.

How about the Indians? A day after a demoralizing 4-3 loss to the White Sox, the Tribe returned the favor by hitting three bombs off of Chicago closer Shingo Takatsu to tie the game at five in the ninth inning, and won by the score of 11-5 in extras. Coco Crisp was one of the guys who tagged Takatsu, so in the aftermath of Sanchezgate, I’m sure that rumors of Crisp taking performance-enhancing drugs will start circulating sometime today.

And for all you Springfield basketball fans out there, the word on the street is that former Kickapoo High School standout guard Spencer Laurie is coming home. Laurie, who was granted his release from Quin Snyder's program at Mizzou, might be on his way to Missouri State next season. I'm understand the rules of college athletics transfers about as well as I understand baseball's waiver policy, but I've been led to believe that he'll have to sit out this season to suit up for MSU in the 2006-2007 season.

While I'm definitely not any sort of a close friend of Spencer's, I became acquainted with him over the years through high school, and I'm not at all surprised he chose to transfer out of Columbia. He kept getting hurt, wasn't getting any playing time when he was healthy, and was involved in a program that's quickly becoming the biggest off-court soap opera in Division I men's basketball. At MSU, if he chooses to play here, he'll get to play in a more comfortable environment with a former KHS teammate, Deven Mitchell.

Runelvys Hernandez was without his clown perm, but his return to the pitching mound went pretty well, now didn’t it? While I wouldn’t go as far as saying that he thoroughly dominated the Tigers due to a very bad strikeout-to-walk ratio of 1-to-1, the fact that he allowed only one run in seven innings is still very impressive. It’s especially cool because knowing that Wednesday’s start would be his first since his elbow surgery, I was definitely bracing for the worst possible scenario, meaning I thought he’d have a day where he just couldn’t throw the ball over the plate to save his life.

And in the bottom of the third inning, he was starting to make my prediction come true. After walking Carlos Pena, allowing a Craig Monroe single, throwing a wild pitch, and walking Brandon Inge, the bases were loaded with nobody out, and the walls were slowly closing in. However, following Omar Infante’s sacrifice fly that scored Pena and Carlos Guillen’s infield single that loaded the bases again, Elvys really buckled down.

For a guy with pretty bad peripheral statistics in his career, Hernandez has had a pretty solid run of pitching league-average baseball. One primary reason he’s been able to survive without even a passable strikeout rate is his ability to keep the ball out of the middle of the plate. Facing Pudge Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez, Detroit’s two best hitters, Hernandez used his ability to locate the ball on the edges of the strike zone to good use. Rodriguez popped out to Tony Graffanino at second base, and Ordonez hit a harmless fly ball to David DeJesus in center field.

That inning was the only time Hernandez was in the slightest bit of trouble, and that he escaped with only one run crossing the plate speaks to how good his location was, a willingness to attack the strike zone, and, most of all, extremely good fortune. I’m still expecting Runelvys to struggle quite a bit this year, as the first year back for Tommy John surgery patients usually isn’t a pretty one.

In typical Royals form, they used up an inning’s worth of outs on the basepaths. I can’t really blame John Buck for getting picked off of first base by a lefthanded pitcher, but I can blame Buck and DeJesus for getting pegged on steal attempts. It’s a mystery to me why a slow, plodding guy like Buck was trying to swipe a bag on the best defensive catcher of all-time, but the bigger mystery is why the Royals keep sending DeJesus.

For his career at all levels, DeJesus succeeds barely 50 percent of the time on his steal attempts, and I think it’s time to accept the fact that he just isn’t good at stealing bases. The Royals would be well-served to accept DDJ for what he is – a guy with very good on-base skills – and stop trying to turn him into a threat to run. This offense is going to have a hard-enough time scoring runs as-is, so they really can’t afford to give away any outs.

As discouraged as I was that the Royals ran the bases about as well as Scott Savol sings, I was very encouraged to see them take an outstanding approach at the plate against Tigers starter Mike Maroth. Junkballing lefthanded pitchers like Maroth, Brian Anderson, Jamie Moyer, and Darrell May have carved careers out of making unprepared hitters look foolish at the dish. Take a good approach against pitchers like them by laying off those knee-high fastballs and changeups, however, and they become imminently hittable. Although it didn’t show up in the walk column yesterday, Mike Sweeney & Co. made Maroth use 87 pitches in 3 2/3 innings, and the result of their discipline was tagging him for 11 hits and five runs.

I think it’s a little bit messed up that Graffanino got the start over Ruben Gotay at second base. I understand that Tony Pena wants to protect the confidence of his young players, but it seems bizarre that Graffanino spelled the switch-hitting Gotay and not the lefthanded-hitting Mark Teahen against Maroth. After his 4-4 day that had a walk thrown in for good measure, I’m betting that Graffy’s going to see entirely too much playing time for the rest of the season while Gotay rots away on the bench. Mangers who dish out playing time based on who’s “hot” are great, ain’t they?

How bad do you think Cleveland Indians fans feel? A year after their team’s bullpen started more fires than they put out in the early part of the season, the only out Bob Wickman recorded in yesterday’s game against the White Sox was Juan Uribe’s sacrifice fly that scored the final and winning run of Chicago’s four-run ninth-inning rally.

On a non-baseball note, I saw Sin City last night, and have come up with the following conclusions:

1) Jessica Alba and Brittany Murphy are very, very hot
2) Mickey Rourke’s character is the biggest movie badass in at least five years
3) Stuff that blows up is really cool
4) Clive Owen should be the next James Bond

I’m also fairly certain that Sin’s the most creatively-shot movie I’ve ever seen. The way directors Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez strategically inserted color into an otherwise black-and-white production is fascinating to me.

On a marvelous Opening Day that saw Carlos Beltran and Joe Randa – two players who were on the Kansas City Royals’ roster in 2004 – go a combined 5-9 with two home runs (Randa’s a game-winner) in the same contest, the Royals simply played like it was 2004 all over again. The pitching staff made damned sure of that by helping Dmitri Young become the first guy since Tuffy Rhodes to hit three home runs in his team’s first game.

Where to begin? For starters, I suppose I should color myself thankful because I didn’t even have the opportunity to hear the 11-2 butt-whoopin’ the Tigers put on KC. JOCK 98.7, the local radio station that’s carried the Royals’ radio broadcasts for the past several seasons, has apparently decided to not air Royals games ever again. I guess that’s disappointing from the standpoint that I’m a huge Royals fan and probably won’t get to hear Denny Matthews and Ryan Lefebvre call games from Kauffman Stadium this summer, but then again, it’s entirely possible that the only “good” I’ll be missing is 62 wins. At any rate, I’d encourage all of you Springfieldians to give JOCK 98.7 a call and encourage them to put Denny and Ryan back on the air.

Speaking of things being “back on (or in) the air,” Jose Lima started yesterday’s game, and the results (five earned runs in three innings) weren’t pretty. In typical Lima fashion, his problem keeping runs off the board didn’t stem from an inability to throw strikes, it stemmed from an inability to throw quality strikes. Aside from 2003, when he somehow only allowed seven home runs in 73 2/3 innings with the Royals, Lima Time!’s always had his troubles keeping the ball in the park. That issue came up and bit him once again in his “triumphant” return to Comerica Park, as he badly missed location three times, and predictably watched as Brandon Inge (once) and Young (twice) took him yard.

Tigers starter Jeremy Bonderman, on the other hand, was downright filthy. In seven innings, he allowed only one run, six hits, two walks, and struck out seven batters. His outing should serve as evidence to the Royals front office that pitchers with high strikeout totals aren’t necessarily pitchers who always have high pitch counts. Bonderman K’d a batter an inning, and needed only 102 pitches to do it. The formula is simple: if a pitcher has good stuff and gets two strikes on a batter, there’s no need for him to screw around by “wasting” a pitch or two. If he stays aggressive and goes right after the guy, throwing what would be a called strike on that third pitch, he can keep his pitch counts down while creating his own outs.

As far as positives go, Calvin Pickering hit a no-doubt homer to right field in the eighth inning, David DeJesus got on base twice in his four at-bats, and KRB favorite Shawn Camp was the only Royals hurler to not allow an earned run. All things considered, it was just a horrible, horrible way to start the season. They should have a better chance to win on Wednesday when they pitch Runelvys Hernandez against Mike Maroth, but more days like Monday is probably all Royals fans have to look forward to in 2005.

Have you ever experienced an entire weekend in which almost everything that happened to you had nothing but positive overtones and the few things that weren’t positive were still overshadowed by the good stuff? Well, if you have, you’ll understand why today’s entry isn’t about my beloved Kansas City Royals opening up the 2005 season in Detroit at noon. If you haven’t, I hope such a weekend is on the way for you, and that you’ll take the time to read this anyway. After all, I’ve been feeling like exuberantly shouting my story off the top of a mountain so all could hear it. Heck, I’d probably talk to total strangers who couldn’t care less if they knew what I was talking about in the first place.

Incidentally, talking to people I don't know was the theme of the past two or three days, especially if you count Friday when I toured some apartments and, a day later, turned in my application for what would be my first-ever apartment. All of which was pretty darned exciting stuff, but little did I know that taking the next step towards total independence would be the thing that would put the smallest smile on my face over the course of Saturday afternoon.

As I’m sure all of you KRB regulars remember, I’ve been writing little bits and pieces about not only the Springfield Cardinals playing their first games this past weekend against their defending National League Champion parent club, but also that I picked up a job as an usher at Hammons Field for this season. Even though I was essentially a nervous wreck Friday evening after my day of looking at and deciding on an apartment, preparing for a date that ended up being doomed from the start, and really freaking out over the unknown situation I’d be stepping into the following day at Hammons, my nerves really began to calm down after I set foot in the stadium at 11:30 a.m. Saturday morning.

First of all, there’s just something soothing to me about the first five or ten minutes of being in any ballpark, soothing in a way I can’t even begin to describe logically. I knew there were other Cardinals employees all around me, some working in food service, others in the front office, and others such as myself decked out in grey polo shirts and khaki pants – the event staff’s uniform. All of them were strangers, but yet I didn’t feel like they were strangers. I’m sure there was a very cool breeze up on the concourse level, but I didn’t feel it. And I can’t remember but a few things that were said during our pre-game staff meeting, as I was just mesmerized by the field, trying to gain a true grasp of the history that was about to be made later that day. In other words, the first few minutes of being in a baseball stadium – especially one right in my backyard – have a way of making the entire world go away, and all of my problems disappear for a few moments as well.

However, the world certainly wasn’t going to stay away for long, as the stands would soon begin filling to capacity about an hour-and-a-half before the scheduled start time of 3:10 p.m. The (approximately) three hours we had to prepare for 10,000 very-excited Cardinals fans surprisingly proved to barely be an adequate amount of time. Before I knew it, I was standing by my “post” on the sun-covered concourse level at section A, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with a very nice older gentlemen named Gordon who was in charge of section A-1, which, before that day, I only knew as a very popular steak sauce. The cool breeze whipping my shirt around and became more and more prevalent as I began to see a sea of red visors, red caps, red shirts, and even a red cowboy hat march up the stairway leading to the seating. I took a quick glance down the steps of my aisle, which was splashed in sunlight. I knew I wanted to go down there very badly. Not because I was starting to get really, really cold thanks to the aforementioned and resilient cool breeze, but because I wanted a place to hide. Half of a NBA arena was emerging out of nowhere … and many of them were headed straight for me.

Talking to people I don’t know very well has never been a major problem for me, but I feared the questions this particular set of people-I-don’t-know would have, terrified of not knowing the answers. After all, wearing That Shirt with EVENT STAFF embroidered directly below the Springfield Cardinals logo says only one thing to the people entering the stadium, and that’s, “Have a question? I can lead you to the right place politely, quickly, and capably.” As I’ve learned, a part of ushering is finding someone else who might have better information if I don’t. Not knowing what’s going on isn’t acceptable.

Although the queries of most of the fans were very reasonable (many just wanted a reassurance of where exactly they were sitting so as not to feel lost), other questions had me succeeding “politely,” but certainly not “quickly” and definitely not so “capably.” For example, sitting here now, I know that I repeatedly sent people with a certain ticket level to the wrong place, wrongly informing them to go to the second level when their seats were actually only a few steps away from me. Admittedly, mistakes were made, I learned from them, and was pretty anxious to get things started.

I anticipated HF becoming one gigantic house of good times during the pre-game ceremony, and I definitely wasn’t disappointed. It’s important to understand that what made Saturday’s game such a big deal in the Ozarks was that the heroes (baseball or otherwise) of almost everyone in attendance would be in attendance too. For the kids, Fredbird, the Cardinals mascot, did his usual crazy antics on the field, the dugouts, and in the stands. A legendary singer in Andy Williams successfully crooned our National Anthem for the older fans of great music. For the older Cardinals fans, former Cardinals great Red Schoendist sat during the festivities next to John Q. Hammons, the man who made this past weekend possible. And Stan Musial, a frail man who’s now just a shell of the amazing Hall of Fame player he was, was able to captivate the eyes, minds, and hearts of men and women young and old. His contributions? Tossing the ceremonial first pitch better than most in the same situation, playing a sing-along version of Take Me Out To The Ballgame on the harmonica, and, most importantly, standing in the left-handed batter’s box and swinging an imaginary bat at an imaginary ball. It doesn’t take too much of an imagination to think of a scenario where Stan The Man could still line a single back up the box, even today.

As Saturday’s game got underway after the players from both squads were introduced, things calmed down considerably. There were fewer people asking, “Where’s my seat?” or “Where’s the nearest restroom?” I think the primary reason for that could be seen on the faces of everyone there, especially when I’d jog downstairs to the bottom railing just to keep an eye on the crowd after every half inning. I’ve never seen a happier bunch of people, especially for a game that ended up featuring no home runs, no real exciting plays, and a relatively uneventful 4-3 St. Louis Cardinals victory. No matter where I looked, I was able to find at least nine people out of every ten with a gigantic smile on their faces.

Every person I had the awesome privilege of speaking with was incredibly cordial, engaging, and in a good mood. Some, I found out, were at the stadium for the first time, awed by the nicest video board in the state of Missouri among other things. Others were there to see Jim Edmonds and Albert Pujols play in person. And one woman even approached me, expressing how much having a state-of-the-art facility that houses a Cardinals farm team means to her and her family. Getting teary-eyed, she told me that her father and grandfather – both big Cards fans – would’ve picked up so much joy from knowing their team played in their hometown, even if it was just for one weekend in April. Unfortunately, both have passed away, and never got the opportunity.

Wrapping up my duties after Julian Tavarez struck out the side in the ninth inning for the save, I was once again downstairs to not only shoot the breeze and get to know some more folks, but also to visually encourage people to leave the stadium as soon as possible. Saying my see-ya-laters to Bob and Danette, a very nice couple who enjoyed the game from the sun-splashed front row, I spotted several Springfield players signing autographs for anyone who wanted one. At this point, I, along with everyone else don’t know one Cardinal from another, but that certainly didn’t stop the autograph hounds. Kids were lined up along the railing, leaning over it begging anybody wearing a red cap, sunglasses, and spikes to pleeeeease scratch his name on a program or hat. As is par for the course with minor league baseball, everyone who asked for an autograph got one, which is every bit as beautiful as the sunny, 64-degree day the players who signed just competed in.

Before the game started, all of us were instructed to have fun so the guests in our “house” would have fun as well. While I did my best to execute the plan my supervisors set for all of us to accomplish, I couldn’t help but think our guests, the fans, were stealing some of my thunder. Seeing the laughter, the toothy grins, and the baseball stories being shared had an effect on me. Those fans caused me to have the time of my life. Saturday, April 2, 2005 reinforced what the heart of baseball really is. It’s about family. It’s about stories. It’s about friendship. But most of all for me, it’s about enjoying the time I’m going to have talking with and getting to know the baseball fans I’ll be helping out this year. For the time being, however, those strangers are some kind of perfect.

Wow ... we made it. Only three days separate us from Opening Day, a celebratory event so big that it should be a national holiday.

Anyway, I have a humongous day of things to do ahead of me, so I'm going to call it a night. For some Royals-related reading, I'd recommend checking out The Daily Lancer, Royalties, or The Royals Op-Ed Page. See ya Monday!