Thaaaaaaaaa Yankees win.

Helluva game, and a revenge contest for Johnny Damon, who went 6-6 (although in effect 5-6, as he was gunned down trying to stretch a single into a double).

Lots to discuss, but maybe not much to say?

• Huge day by Guillen. Two homers, two guys thrown out on the bases and a single to boot.
  
• Another long day for the bullpen (after a rough May).
• A tough outing for Banny (even though it was a day game).
• More flukey excellence for Aviles, who I now believe leads the team in extra base hits.
• Royals drew two walks in a 12-11 marathon. I believe this ties a season high in walks drawn. (kidding)
• Your Tomko ERA update: 6.34
• Your Ramirez ERA update: 3.49.

Another blast from the past (a haunting?) on a rainy Thursday. Back in January, I looked at the Top Five Doubles Hitters in the post-Brett Era...

Continuing the life-changing examination of the post-Brett era in Kansas City. This time, with a nod to the problems inherent in taking RsBI very seriously, lets instead look at doubles.

Doubles are interesting because a double is a fairly good play, but, at the same time, a double is also sometimes just a home run that doesn't go as far, or do as much damage. Here are the run expectancies for doubles, or, more properly, for a dude standing on second base:

Run Expectancy for a Dude Standing on Second Base:

Dude on Second, no outs: 1.154 runs
Dude on Second, one out: .736 runs
Dude on Second, two outs: .3645

Note: these numbers are just from the 2006 season.

Thinking more about doubles, a fairly common double situation is "man on first moves to third on double" (at least if Sweeney or Buck aren't on first). In that situation, with no outs, the double moves the run expectancy of the inning from .926 to 1.807. With one man already out, the double pushes the expected runs from .567 to 1.173. All good things.

Anyway, here are the top five doubles men since 1993:

Top Five Doubles Hitters For the Royals Since 1993:

1. Mike Sweeney- 292
2. Joe Randa- 223
3. Carlos Beltran- 156
3t. Johnny Damon- 156
5. Jermaine Dye- 115

About what you would expect regarding doubles. Mike Macfarlane has 174 doubles as a Royal -- good for 9th most in club history -- but the majority of them came in the early '90s, which is for whatever reason outside the data-set I'm interested in presently. Berroa currently has 103 doubles as a Royal, and David DeJesus already has 82. If David doesn't catch Angel in this category by the end of 2008, then that probably means things are going horribly wrong.

Overall, Kauffman Stadium has played as a good hitters park over the last decade and change, usually posting solid pro-hitter park factor. Still, the dimensions have changed twice, and intuitively I would suspect that the moved in fences helped homers but suppressed doubles, while the new/old dimensions of the last three seasons have increased doubles while decreasing homers. Unfortunately, I don't have this data in front of me. If anyone knows where outcome-specific historical park-factors can be found, I'd love to know. However, it must be remembered that single-year PFs aren't terribly reliable as it is, and single-outcome ones can be fairly noisy.

Anyway, the beat goes on. Congrats to Sweeney on another post-Brett victory.

Update [2007-8-9 12:46:48 by royalsreview]:

While Sweeney's managed only a 10 double season to date, he's obviously in no danger of being caught any time soon. On other fronts, David DeJesus has, indeed, passed Angel on the All-Time Doubles list. As of August 8th, David has notched 108 2Bs, five ahead of Berroa's 103.

The sometimes maligned Emil Brown has snuck all the way up to 83 doubles as a Royal, passing Raul Ibanez's total of 81 with a two-double game against Texas back on July 28th. Amazingly, the Royals didn't honor this achievement with an in-game ceremony.

Mark Teahen now owns 73 career doubles (two behind our beloved Mike Tucker's total as a Royal), while Buck sits at 66.

George Brett retired after the 1993 season. Since Brett leads the Royals in just about every single statistical category, I thought it would be interesting to examine the Royals leaderboards for the post-Brett era. At random intervals over the off-season, I hope to do just that.

Without further ado, the leaders:

Top 5 Royal HR Hitters Since 1993:

1. Mike Sweeney- 190
2. Carlos Beltran- 123
3. Joe Randa- 86
4. Jermaine Dye- 85
5. Johnny Damon- 65

Its a little surprising to see Joe Randa come out ahead of Jermaine Dye on this list, although Randa did play nearly twice as many games as a Royal (1019 to 547). Randa's final homer as a Royal came on September 25th, 2004 against the White Sox, the only Royal highlight in a 5-1 loss that pushed the Royals to 57-97. Moreover, I've always felt Dye was a little overrated as a player, at least until his random MVP-level season in 2006. After a solid 1999 with the Royals, Dye went nuts in April/May of 2000, hitting .388/.459/.847 with 11 homers. Considering he finished the season hitting .321/.390/.561 with 33 homers, you wouldn't say he was horrible the rest of the way, but he did cease being a truly elite player. Still, thanks to the early season glory he earned an All-Star berth and a disproportionate amount of media coverage. If he'd thrown up his 1.306 OPS in a July/August stretch only the rotoheads would have truly noticed... But anyway, nothing against Jermaine Dye, but he is out-homered as a Royal by Randa.

After Damon's 65, Raul Ibanez comes in at 6th in the post-Brett era with 55 homers, followed by yes... the one and only Angel Berroa with 45. Actually, Berroa's tied with the Mighty Mark Quinn at the moment, but should inevitably pass him.