Last night, due to a poor outing by Hiram Davies, the offensive ineptitude mattered little. Today however, it was a killer, as the Royals saw their already modest record in close games deprove.

As mentioned in the game thread, baseball remains a complex sport: good pitching plus bad offense still equals mediocre. And for those dreaming of a return to the scoring levels of the 1970s, at least three weeks in, it doesn't look like that's the case. (Of course, we had to restore our national innocence and have since dubbed the last fifteen years "the steroid era" because only hitters juiced and thus hit home runs, so now we have returned to the old bugaboo of the juiced ball... anything except the most obvious explanations must do.)

So you can look at the team's record of 9-9 from a couple different angles: its either a tick better than we may have expected, or something of a bummer considering all the good pitching that the team has wasted in the starts of Meche & Davies (to an extent) as well as some close losses during Sir Sidney's starts.

Still, the offensive approach was uncharacteristically sound today at the K (six walks?) but those magical hits just never game when it seemed to matter. Most of this is bad luck/timing, unless you're strongly into the Church of Clutch, of which I'm not a member.

And so, the Royals still sit on only one win in games not started by the MGD Trio.