between stealing young pitchers in the rule 5 draft and signing a struggling 29 year old journeyman pitcher. I guess as long as it was a minor league deal there’s not much harm.

We really don’t have to jump off the deep end after bad stretch of a few games, do we?

...can someone post an over the top overreaction just so we have some balance. Because it seems like every time the Royals have a losing streak, there’s a fanpost, front page story (or three) essentially claiming that the sky is falling. It’s not falling. We can back away from the edge now. [this ends the multiple, mixed metaphors]

The Royals showed that they were overmatched (and I think perhaps a little psyched out, at times) against a quality team like Boston right now. It’s not the end of the world but it is discouraging after playing fairly well lately that they didn’t get at least one of the four. Just reaffirms that there is a long way to go still.

It’s funny, because Ryan Braun (the good one, of Milwaukee) caught some flak last weekend after saying that, although his team played hard in Boston, they didn’t seem to expect to win there. I kind of saw a little of that from the Royals in these games. The Red Sox have a dominating home field advantage and the Royals (and other younger and/or lesser teams) can get intimidated at Fenway. Oh, and of course there is the fact that Boston is a great team. But I’m talking about struggling against the rookie Masterson and Colon, for example, and having less than stellar at-bats against an admittedly tough Lester for much of Monday’s game.

I think the move alot of us has been clammering for is definitely under consideration. KC has been operating with a 39 man roster ever since they released Nomo. Pena is still hitting below his weight and Aviles has played SS for the last two nights in front of Moore and alot of the FO. I know that Carlos Rosa and Kyle Davies were pitching these last two nights but you would have to believe we aren’t making any changes with the pitching staff yet. The bullpen is performing great and I don’t see any need for Davies in KC and Rosa isn’t ready yet. What were they there for? To see Aviles play SS to decide if they are ready to give him a shot or make a decision for a trade. Before tonight Angel Berroa had played 13 games at 2b and 26 at SS, Aviles had played the inverse 27 at 2b and 17 at SS. Berroa took last night off with Aviles playing SS and tonight Aviles played SS and Berroa played 2b. Coincidence? I think not, I believe the last two nights were a audition in front of the Big Chief the Head Honcho the Hefe. How did he do? Only Dayton knows but I wouldn’t be shocked if he was called up within the next week or so. If Dayton wasn’t impressed maybe dangle one of the pitchers out there for a SS trade.

we were 19-28 after a 3 game winning streak. Doesn’t seem a whole lot better, but the next game started a 7 game losing streak which led to losing 10 of 12 games to put us at 21-38.

So here is to hoping we don’t lose 12 straight on top of the four straight we’ve already lost to feel like we have gone no where from last season. I, personally feel great about this team in the overall grand scheme of things. Let’s take 3 of 4 from the Jays and get back home so I can go to some more games!

But your point is well taken. Last year 19-28 was a relative high water mark in the ups and downs of the first third of the season. This year 21-26 is a relative low water mark for our up and down first 1/4 of the season. Anyone who doesn’t see the significant difference either isn’t looking or just doesn’t want to see it.