In 2005 Buddy Bell did the brave and honorable thing for the long-term good of the franchise. Day after day, he put the immortal Terrence Long in the lineup. T-Long got 85 PAs in August of that season, and 105 in September and October. Sadly, it was the last time Long ever played full time again. This was part two of a two-part series RR did honoring T-Long and, in a way, venerable ole Buddy.

------

As we continue to honor Terrence Long's unforgettable legacy as a Royal, it is imperative that we understand his hallowed place among his peers in the American League in 2005.

Games Played: (137) Tied for 64th most in the American League with Travis Hafner. Congrats T-Long, only 63 American Leaguers played more games than you did in 2005. Clearly, your near daily presence helped the Royals toward a successful season.

Runs: (62) Tied for 74th with four other players, and one run behind his teammate Mike Sweeney. I wonder if they know about this? Good thing Long's leaving the Royals... you'd hate to see this develop into a big-time personal rivalry about who scores more. Its about "team", guys.

Hits: (127) Tied for 62nd with Da Meat Hook Dmitri Young of the Tigers. Wow, T-Long was 64th in Games Played, and here is 62nd in hits. Thats called being above average my friend.

Doubles:(21) Tied for 91st with an odd collection of 9 other players, including Ichiro!, A.J. Pierzynski, Reed and Dan Johnson and teammates Berroa and Buck. I think this might be the first time Ichiro and Pierznski have ever been grouped together. Of course, 12 times Ichiro kept running and made it to third for a triple, while A.J. never did. And yea, T-Long's in there somewhere. It pretty much sucks when your below-average catcher and shortstop both double as much as your starting corner outfielder.

Triples:(3) Tied with 25 other guys for 43rd best in the American League. Awesome job, Terrence. I could really label you anything from 43rd to 68th, but I'm gonna put you all the way at the front of the pack. 43rd all the f---ing way.

Home Runs:(6) Tied for 128th best in the American League. OK, I can't even be snide or sarcastic here. Hitting just six homers in 137 games is terrible, no way around it. I don't think anyone could have expected that Long's power would drop this much. And yet, it did. But there he was, in the middle of the lineup every damn day. Why??

RsBI:(53) Tied for 93rd. Amazingly, Long finished behind Mark Teahen in a power/run-producer category. Do you wanna look at their salaries? Or should I? He was ahead of Scooter Podsednik however.

Total Bases:(172) Tied for 93rd with two other players.

Wow. 93rd in RsBI and Total Bases? OK, I'm getting chills. Creeeeeepy. Congrats on being tied with Travis Lee, T-Long.

Walks:(30) Tied for 98th with Orlando Hudson and Magglio Ordonez. Too bad Maggs appeared in 82 games, compared to the 137 that featured T-Long.

Stolen Bases:(3) Tied for 90th in the American League with about a million guys, including, ahem, Mike Sweeney, one of the slowest men on the planet. Even if we go all Ozzie ball here and fawn over the merits of base-running, 6 homers/ 3 steals is the power-speed combo of someone who brings nothing to the table. Still, only 90 players in the American League stole more.

Batting Average:(.279) Tied for 51st in the American League among players with 200 ABs or more. With no power and no patience, we should relish T-Long's ability to almost crack the top 50 in batting average.

Some fancy stuff...The league average line for corner outfielders in 2005 was .268/.322/.407, which a little lower than you might expect. I guess its getting harder to stick a Matt Stairs-type in right-field these days. Or maybe its the effect of the Podsedniks and their ilk. T-Long went .279/.321/.378 in '05... A few more singles, a little less walks and a lot less power. Bleh.

For the enlightened, we can note Long's totally badass 6.7 VORP, good for 9th best on the team. Good thing he was 6th on the team in plate appearances.

Don't you, forget about me...

In 2005 Buddy Bell did the brave and honorable thing for the long-term good of the franchise. Day after day, he put the immortal Terrence Long in the lineup. T-Long got 85 PAs in August of that season, and 105 in September and October. Sadly, it was the last time Long ever played full time again. This was part one of a two-part series RR did honoring T-Long and, in a way, venerable ole Buddy. Part II will be reposted tomorrow.

------

As the losses piled up and the creeping sense of despair and hopelessness grew, Buddy Bell knew just what to do: he had to keep playing Terrence Long.

Wise move Buddisimo. Mr. Long didn't let you down. Long posted a totally awesome .279/.321/.378 line in 137 games with the Royals. Now that it looks like Long's career with the Royals is over, it is important to get a grasp of his historical place in the Chronicles of Royal baseball. Without understanding our past, we're no better than the animals.

Home Runs: (6) Tied for 104th most all-time. Only just over 100 Royal players have homered more in the KC uniform than Long has. Six home runs from a corner outfielder in 2005 is part a solid recipe for success, if not domination. Long is tied with such luminaries as Benito Santiago, Chuck Knoblauch, and Vince Coleman.

Total Bases: (172) Long's in a dogfight with the immortal Larry Sutton for 103rd all-time. Since 2001 Sutton's appeared in 15 games with Oakland and Florida. Would it be too much to have Allard sign him to a one game contract so he can rip a single and end this deadlock?

Runs Batted In: (53) Wow, this is cool. Our friend T-short is tied for 100th all-time with the immortal run-producer Vince Coleman. Now I'm starting to see why Buddy played him so much: he might be 103 or 104 best in terms of raw hitting stats, but digging deeper, he's 100th as a run-batter-inner.

Stolen Bases: (3) Tied for 123rd all-time with 16 other players. I'm curious to see if Ken Harvey gets another steal as a Royal. If he does, he'll vaunt ahead of Long and further into the record books.

Sacrifice Flies: (4) Tied for 94th with 15 other players. It seems like 4 sac flies over the course of a season isn't that much, but considering the low- OBP of the Royals generally, I guess its not laughably bad. Long's tied with, among others, The Mighty Quinn who appeared in 293 games as a Royal. Remember him? He posted an .830 OPS in 500 ABs in 2000, which is pretty damn good for a dude thats basically out of baseball now.

Games Played: (137) Tied for 142nd all-time with Tony Gwynn. No, wait, not Tony, Chris Gwynn. Mark your calendars Royals fans, sometime next April Mark Teahen should pass Long on the all-time list. I hope ESPN does a live cut in when he makes his first PA on that day. I know I'll be there, standing and applauding in the front row.

In the next installment of Honoring T-Long's Legacy will examine his historical place amoung his contemporaries during the 2005 season.

Until next time, remember fondly this great player and man.

The Royals posted a 12-16 record in July, which counts as surprisingly non-horrible in my book. In fact, the Royals were 12-12 for the month headed into this weekend's series against the Rays... and we know how that turned out.

Looking at the primary members of the pitching staff, July looks like a strange month. For one, MacDougal, Affeldt and Sisco were good, bordering on dominant, giving the Royals a 1-2-3 punch at the back end of the bullpen that was one of the American League's best. Importantly, all three continued to post solid, if unspectacular, strikeout numbers that belie continued success. Even Jimmy Gobble had a decent month, eating innings and posting a decent 4.50 ERA, despite allowing a .302 BA in July. 4.50 is nothing to write home (or blog about, as it were), but after 2004 I wasn't sure Gobble was capable of ever sustaining a sub-5.00 ERA ever again. He did it in July.

MacDougal: 12 games, 6 saves, 2.13 ERA in 12 IP

Affeldt: 11 games, 0.90 ERA in 10 IP

Sisco: 12 games, 1.59 ERA in 11.1 IP

Gobble: 9 games, 4.50 ERA in 14 IP

With regards to the pitching staff, its clear that Greinke and Carrasco, effectively sabotaged the team's month, turning in awful performances just when LimaTime was heating up and Runelvys was cruising to a second-straight solid month.

Carrasco: 5 games, 2-2 record, 6.75 ERA in 26.2 IP

Greinke: 6 games, 2-4 record, 6.75 ERA in 32 IP

Lima: 6 games, 3-3 record, 3.79 ERA in 35.2 IP

Runelvys: 5 games, 3-1 record, 3.99 ERA in 29.1 IP

Of course, the staff also featured the J.P. Howell/Kyle Snyder combo getting torched in the 5-slot, which should temper one's enthusiasm a tad. As with all bad teams, the good performances never quite add up, or coincide at the right time. Take Carrasco's first two months, Greinke's first two seasons and the last month of LimaTime and Run', and you've got one of the League's best rotations, 1 through 4. Instead, as it stands now, the team's still below average, and probably will be throughout the rest of the season.

Offensively, the carnage continued, as the Royals scored only 122 runs in the month, good for 11th in the American League. Collectively, the team hit .268/.327/.411, revealing an offense that is short on power and big on outs.

Sorted by OBP, the numbers look like this:

Chip Ambres: .348/.464/.522 (27 plate appearances)

Alberto Castillo: .227/.393/.273 (28 plate appearances)

David DeJesus: .330/.386/.527

Mike Sweeney: .337/.381/.629 (Welcome back Mike.)

Donnie Murphy: .250/.364/.429 (33 plate appearances)

T-Long: .314/.351/.429

Angel Berroa: .287/.324/.406

Mark Teahen: .233/.320/.384 (Yikes.)

Emil Brown: .265/.302/.357 (Yikes, again.)

John Buck: .227/.301/.333

Matt Stairs: .241/.273/.386 (Yikes, again, again.)

Super Joe McEwing: .219/.219/.344 (All Hail Super Joe for a walk-free month!)

Ruben Gotay: .169/.211/.197

Shane Costa: .133/.188/.167

As you can see here, the Royals' offense in July was basically Mike Sweeney and a mix of assorted uselessness. Gotay, Costa, McEwing and Teahen all turned in months that raise serious doubts about the ability to play Major League baseball, and Buck and Brown weren't much better. Even Royals Review favorite Matt Stairs isn't blameless here, posting a line worthy of late-career Pete O'Brien or Scott Fletcher. On the other hand, Ambres, Castillo and Murphy all turned in fluky good performances, which helped to soften the blow delivered by the bottom of the lineup. At this point, I'm sufficiently beyond making a snarky comment regarding T-Long, especially considering his semi-adequacy in the face of, apparently, the alternatives. Just as quickly as Emil Brown flirted with an .800 OPS he's back to being a journeyman level player, and well, at least Angel Berroa hit .287 for a month.

It's an off-day for our Royals, as they travel from Chicago to Colorado for a weekend set against the Rockies. Hopefully Bell's been making countless motivational speeches and "lookin' guys in the eye" and letting them know that this will not stand!

The Royals are now 5-20 against the AL Central this season, which is a fairly damning indication of their talent-level. Granted, the Central is having a solid season, and other than the Royals there are no train-wreck teams this season, when in the past their have sometimes been three. Still, the three-division format is baseball's unacknowledged form of parity control, putting the so-called "small-market" teams in the same division, and guaranteeing one of them a playoff spot. So, the Twins get a short series against the Yankees... sounds like a much better and quicker route to equity.

I digress. Let's take a look at some Royals numbers for June:

Angel Berroa: .235/.287/.333

Tony G.: .396/.453/.521

Mike Sweeney: .250/.250/.375 (good job on not taking a walk this month Mike)

Shane Costa: .297/.366/.405

Super Joe McEwing: .368/.429/.421 (he drew a walk? when?)

Emil Brown: .362/.416/.551 (wow, a legitimate major league hitter)

T. Long: .407/.444/.644 (you can't stop Terrence Long...)

David DeJesus: .286/.382/.416

Mark Teahen: .279/.310/.368

Ruben Gotay: .288/.358/.525

John Buck: .260/.288/.380

Matt Stairs: .222/.379/.378(still drawing his walks, slumping otherwise)

On the whole, you can see that June's been a good month for the Royals at the plate, despite downturns by Stairs and Sweeney that might have prevented the team from being really hot this month. T-Long, Gotay and Emil are having strong months, with DeJesus, Super Joe and Costa finding ways to contribute. Buck and Teahen haven't been great, but they haven't been completely terrible either.

Still, it's gonna be a long season in Kansas City, and it looks now like the Bell-Shine may be wearing off.