It Gets Even Better

Posted this in game thread before I saw this one. More embarrassing: No hitter or this run of suckitude. A 10 game losing streak like this one is far worse than a no – hitter.

Here’s the thing for me – KC pulls this kind of stuff every year. Change manager, pitchers, hitters, coaches and it’s the same. Have the starter pitch well – bullpen screws it up, have the hitters score runs – starters are awful, good pitching – poor hitting. KC’s normal routine of making average to below average starters look like Cy Young – insert the most recent name here. Continue to play terrible ML players – looks like TPJ is this year’s Jason LaRue whipping boy although Teahen is closing ground. Butler hasn’t improved. Buck and DDJ are just good enough to get you beat. Can’t take a walk even though plate discipline is emphasized in ST. KC leads the league in getting runners thrown out in various ways. The guys who need to bunt as part of their offense can’t get it done.

The culture of losing is alive and well. They’ll say all the right things, gritty and brave as ever, but it won’t change. I am more disappointed with this losing streak than I can remember. Perhaps the fast start gave me false hope. I’ll have my annual retreat into the minor leagues and hope that we can contend two – three years down the road. The ghost of Chip Ambres continues to haunt the organization. Somewhere Allard Baird is smiling . .

it’s not even worth adding anything.

I don’t think the manager is always to blame when the hitters don’t hit or pitchers don’t execute but Wednesday night’s game can point some of blame on Hillman and/or GMDM.

Nunez on the DL should have been covered with a pitcher from Omaha so the bullpen would have at least one fresh arm. Omaha is 2 hours from KC. Would have liked to had Musser on mound for Morneau instead of Peralta. I know he’s not that great but Musser has closed in AAA and LH/LH match up couldn’t have hurt.

Having Gload in RF and Teahen at 1B in the 9th inning was a strategic mistake that might have cost KC an out. Not sure why DDJ was out but it must have been serious.

I’m usually not a finger pointer but just have to bring up the questions. Don’t know if I can listen to game tomorrow. I am glad I have a meeting so I have an excuse.

I thought we were suppose to overreact during the losing streak.

and was considering bringing the family up to the K to watch a couple of games, but decided against it based on this teams piss poor play of late. Instead we are going to OKC to watch the Redhawks battle the O Royals. I believe Rosa and Wright are scheduled to pitch the games we will be attending. This team is just a complete nightmare. It’s the same shit that has been going on for the last 10+ years. What is it going to take to get this team turned around? Patience will be a typical answer I imagine, but one can only be patient for so long. I never expected to win anymore than 75 games this year, but even that is starting to look like a reach. I am just glad that their games are blacked out here in Tulsa because I just don’t know how I would’ve reacted seeing this shit happen live.

Hillman didn’t trot out Soria tonight because of concern about Soria’s 31-pitch outing last night.

My uncensored and immediate reaction to reading this was, “What the fuck, since when did Hillman start caring about pitch counts?”

Bringing in Ramirez to start the ninth made sense, but I’m not sure why he was yanked for, of all people, Peralta. If Soria was truly unavailable, and Ramirez HAD to be yanked (which I’m not sure was the case or not), Mahay only threw 17 pitches last night and presumably should’ve been available.

And leaving Peralta in to face Morneau in the 10th, even before the homer was hit, was a bad idea. Morneau went into that AB being 5-6 against Peralta in the past. I realize that having to go into extra innings the night after a 12-inning game puts a strain on the bullpen, but only Gobble and Soria really threw an excess of pitches last night (Nunez came close, but he probably could’ve pitched tonight), and Hillman should never have alloewd Peralta to face Morneau.

Just caught some audio of Jose after the game. Didn’t hear all of it but it sounded like he was cussing out a reporter who implied this was Hillman’s fault.

I no longer use that name and I can’t find that post but in it I wrote about how the Royals have engendered a culture of losing. I compared it to USC pre Pete Carroll. I still think that the culture exists but believe it or not I’m actually going to write a positive response here rather than a negative one.

The point I tried to make in that blog post way back when was that it took Carroll at least one year to get the team and the program to shake off that menality of losing that permeated the program. He’s talked openly about it being the hardest challenge in his first year. He knew there was talent and the young guys could fill the gaps but there was this aura of losing that when things went bad the team would implode. It culminated in a game at the University of Washington where they worked their butts off to be in a position to win only to watch the Huskies march down the field and kick a field goal to win it. After that Carroll made a conscious decision that they were going to reign in things and keep it close and make winning no matter how ugly a priority. Things began to turn around and the next season they made the Orange Bowl and had a Heisman QB in Carson Palmer.

The bottom line is this. I don’t know yet if Hillman has what it takes to turn it all around but I do know that these are the growing pains the team will have to go through to break through this mentality/culture/aura of losing. There’s talent. There’s pitching but none of that matters when the shoulders are hunched and the feeling is that no matter what things are going to go bad and they’re going to lose. When that mentality changes and I hope Hillman has what it takes to do it, they will begin to win. It will be that sudden.

Here’s to hoping it comes sooner than later.