What do Royals fans have to be thankful for? Quite a lot, actually. I'm not generally a voice of boosterism, but when I started thinking about it, there were a lot of positives.

Zack Greinke: We -- and I was among the most guilty of this -- should stop worrying about whether or not Greinke will ever "break out" and become an Ace, whatever that means. He's an Ace now. According to BP's handy VORP stat, Greinke was the 22nd most valuable pitcher in baseball last year, and the tenth best in the American League. Moreover, Greinke's track record and profile suggest he's not merely a one-year VORP wonder (I'm looking at you Scott Baker) either. Even before we consider the off-the-field backstory, two or three years ago we still couldn't be sure this would happen, but it did. Good things can happen to the Royals. With his stuff, Greinke's one of the funnest pitchers to watch in the game and we know that somewhere inside there's one of baseball's more unique perspectives, a breath of fresh air in a pretty boring sport, athlete-wise. I like knowing that Greinke isn't just another good ole boy from the South who knows he's a badass and has pointless facial hair and would punch a wall if he got shown up by his manager and hunts in the offseason, etc. etc. Yea, he might not be a Royal forever, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy him while he's here.

Joakim Soria: Forget the stellar numbers for a moment and just think about how you feel when he takes the ball in the ninth. Not only are you 100% sure he's going to get the save, you really expect at least one strikeout and a handful of pitches that look absolutely sick. And that guy plays for the Royals! I loved Joe Nelson, but just think how far the Royals have come. We have a guy on our team with a cool nickname who creates an electric atmosphere when he runs onto the grass. Yes, he should be starting, but having one of the best two or three short-relievers on your team doesn't suck. He's still young, and he's going to a Royal for a long time. Savor it. This isn't normal.

Gil Meche: We're two years into his infamous five year, $fifty five million dollar contract and everyone's a happy camper. After a rough start last season (an 8.00 ERA after five starts) Meche rebounded to match his 2007 levels. An increasingly affordable rotation anchor, Meche continues, along with Soria, to define everything that's gone right with the Dayton Moore regime. Meche is already the 73rd Greatest Royal of All-Time and could end his contract as one of the franchise's all-time greats. Yes, he's sometimes maddening to watch and seemingly has never had a 1-2-3 inning, but he's been reliable and one of the most effective starters in the AL for two seasons (14th in the AL in VORP in '07, 15th in '08). And can you imagine if it had gone badly like most of us thought it would? Unspeakable annoyance and horribleness. But we've avoided that. Now about that Jose Guillen...

Mike Aviles in 2008 Happened: The Royals kept playing Tony Pena Jr, who kept not hitting. Like, not hitting at an historical level. Nevertheless, the Hillman/Moore regime seemed donkey stubborn about ex-Brave TPJ, as did a few notable members of the local media. We bitched, we moaned and eventually, in a completely sane, utterly necessary move, dude actually lost playing time. It was like the world actually made sense. Not only that, but his replacement, Mike Aviles, the quintessential sabermetric hero with no scouting love, showed up and had the week of his life to begin his career. Then it was the month of his life. Then it was the two months of his life. Then it was the three months of his life. Really against their will, the Royals replaced the worst player on the roster with a guy who probably should have won the Rookie of the Year. Again, this really happened and it happened to our team. Cool.

Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler, Alex Gordon: The odds are that two of these guys will reach an All-Star level, perhaps higher, before its all said and done. It hasn't happened yet, but at least its possible. Again, it wasn't always like this.

The Uniform: From pants to cap, the Royals have one of the simplest yet most appealing uniforms in the game. There's a word for that combination: elegance. Blue and white, with maybe a touch of gold. Simple. Pretty. I'm even willing to look past the obvious Dodgers-ripoff in the design, given that the franchise has remained loyal to it through all these years, save a few utterly unavoidable dalliances with black as a third color and the sleeveless look (which I actually loved with blue sleeves underneath). Better still, the team finally brought back the powder blues in 2008, which look fantastic. I swear have the teams in the game are playing in absolutely hideous uniforms at any given moment and you can never put the Royals in that category.

What a great uniform.

The K: The K should really almost be in the same paragraph as the uniforms. The K manages to look modern and timeless at the same time, and should be even better this season with the renovations done. I love that the K isn't a mallpark (knock on wood with renovations coming) and I love that it isn't supposed to look like the Baker Bowl. The retro-look is as nineties as teal pinstripes. As long as the fountains and some amout of green space remain in the outfield seats remain, I'm happy. And wonderfully, the big honking scoreboard actually accentuates the stadium's unique outfield and draws attention to it. Better still (knock on wood) the K is still simply "The K" and not "Qwest Ballpark" or "Circuit City Field". I can't explain how wonderful this is, and how much it sounds better and better with each passing year. On top of that, there are a higher percentage of good seats at the K than almost anywhere else in the game, thanks to the design of the seating bowl and the lack of a bazillion luxury suites. Good, affordable prices, too.

The AL Central: It doesn't get talked about much, but despite Selig's incessant preening about how revenue sharing and the luxury tax has "worked", perhaps the biggest thing baseball did to level the playing field was simply adding two Central divisions. In effect, most of the American League's smallest markets now have their own little competition going, with the winner getting to face the behemoths from the East Coast Megalopolis and Greater L.A. in an essentially random showdown. Last year, when us Royals fans were bragging about how we'd do in the National League, we should have also been thankful we weren't still in the old AL West or, God forbid, the AL East. The aging Tigers and White Sox won't be contending in two years, maybe sooner, which means Dayton Moore only needs to build a better team than the Twins and Indians, who are just as limited financially as he is.

Progress: Finally, we're makin' progress. Here are the win totals during the Royals Review Era (since 2005): 56, 62, 69, 75. The Royals don't even have a top ten draft pick next year! (Which is actually kinda bad, I suppose.) Not only is the big league team getting better, everyone agrees the farm system is getting better as well. Is anything assured? No. We don't know where this will end, whether its a World Series Championship or just a team that doesn't suck for a few seasons. The point is, for the first time since the late 90s (and then only briefly), it really looks like the team is on the rise. We don't know where the Royals are going to end up, but their progress is going to be fun to watch.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I'm off to the in-law's house in Ohio tomorrow morning and won't be too internet-involved. Expect more free Royals content after the weekend, including a new radio affiliate profile.

Every year the baseball bloggers here at SB Nation get together and vote on the major post-season awards, using the same format and distribution system as the BBWAA. This year, in addition to my vote, site moderator and contributor "NYRoyal" also voted in the American League contests.

First, the unimportant National League results:

Alright, I don't follow the National League that closely, but I have no idea who John Bowker is. I don't even feel like I should look it up either. Somehow, that's a suitable punishment.

Now for the American League results:

I failed Mike Aviles, and my lack of homerism has played a small role in him not winning this coveted internet award. I feel pretty bad about it.

I voted 1) Longoria 2) Aviles 3) Chamberlain who not coincidentally had the three highest VORP totals for American League Rookies. Aviles actually caught and passed Longoria (35.0) to (34.8) due to a much higher per at bat quality. Honestly, somewhat to my surprise, Longoria and Aviles looks like a coin-flip, since there is something to be said for Longoria being around to contribute much longer.

Then again, Aviles ended up being more valuable in less time. In the end, I gave a slight edge to Longoria based on his additional time on the Big League roster and some possibly incorrect evaluation of him as a slightly superior defensive player. If I had to vote again, I'd probably go Aviles. Or Longoria. Or Aviles. Who knows...

It won't happen, but Aviles/Longoria could have turned into one of the most interesting Award debates of all time, and the rare one that wasn't the endless replay of the team success v. individual stats argument either.

I don't really understand the love for some of these down-ballot guys (David Murphy?), and really don't see how you can fill out a three-person vote and include some of them. Chalk it up to Aviles's obscurity and some connfusion as to Joba's status I presume.

Eating lunch today, I stumbled upon this snippet from Christina Kahrl:

Big Moves: Putting Brett Tomko out of his misery? Benching Tony Pena Jr.? Getting over Joey Gathright? It seems these sorts of things abuse the meaning of the word “big.” The fixes are slightly more important, in that it's just as well to see if Kyle Davies is ready to take over a rotation slot, if Mike Aviles can play, and if Jose Guillen and Mark Teahen will do enough of something to be interesting to trade for at month's end.

Kahrl is one of my favorite writers, but when I read the line about benching Tony Pena Jr. I recoiled. Pena's been benched? Maybe I've just become over-sensitive to the presence of TPJ, but despite the heroic appearance of Mike Aviles, I was under the impression that Tony never really went away.

Luckily, as I used to say with one of my college roommates when getting in an argument about something factual, the internet will solve. Looking at Pena's game log on B-R pretty clearly reveals an initial demotion after Aviles's callup on May 29th. Unfortunately, Hillman couldn't stay away from the TPJ shaker in his cabinet with total abstinence.

TPJ Playing Time Since the Aviles Callup:

Total Royals Games: 42

TPJ Games Started: 8

TPJ Late-Inning Sub Games: 10

TPJ Innings Played: 88

TPJ Plate Appearances: 33

Pena's been flat-out benched in 24 games since Aviles has been called up, although many of those missed starts have come in clusters (five straight games in mid-June, then another eight to close the month, a five game benching before the ASB). So yes, broadly, TPJ has been benched, although Hillman has been fairly aggressive in getting him into led-games in the late stages.  Nevertheless, there has been some dithering on the matter, as Pena has managed to start eight times since supposedly being demoted.

Still, despite the uneven distribution of his playing time, you have to hand it to Tony. While some players would have struggled in a new role, he's been consistent. Over those 33 PAs, he's been pure Pena, hitting .129/.156/.226.

But we will come back, of course, because we are the Greatest Team That Ever Lived. I fully expect an Avilance pinch hit Grand Slam off Sherrill.

• Not a terrible effort (4 ER in 6 IP) from Gil, but not anything to be excited about either. Meche is nothing if not frustrating, at least in the eyes of this 'umble blogger. I know he's valuable, even if his ERA is below league average this year, simply for the innings and stability. Still, he leaves me feeling like he's the lamest #1 starter ever.
  

• Oh, and Mike Aviles has produced twelve outs the last two games.

• But hey, Trey's hackers managed ZERO walks against one of the wildest starters in the American League. Cabrera only needed 105 pitches to complete the game, despite allowing seven hits. Incredible.
  

Frustrating loss tonight, and back to eight games under .500. Those dastardly Orioles! Essentially this is the result I expected last night, only this time Sherrill was able to finish the job.

• According to the fangraphs.com's version of WPA, Mike Aviles was the worst Royal of all tonight, at least among position players. An 0-5 with two GIDPs will do that. When he wasn't GIDPing, he was leaving the bases loaded. Has Aviles let success go to his head? Is he an unclutch destroyer of our national innocence like Alex Rodriguez?
• A lame and disappointing start for Hochevar, who couldn't avoid a big inning in the third, and couldn't quite keep the ball down enough.
• Your Jimmy Gobble ERA update is: 7.40. Um... not good. Not good at all. Gobble may be one of the 100 Greatest Royals of All-Time by the end of the season (Retro?) but he isn't doing anyone much good at this point.
  
• Gathright was decent tonight, getting to first base three times. Does anyone know Kenny Williams's cell number?
• Hey! Billy Butler hit another single. He's the new Grimace!
• Congrats to Alex Gordon and Mark Teahen for both homering tonight! With twenty combined homers out of third base and rightfield, the Royals have the AL Central shaking.
• Did anyone expect Alex to deliver in the 9th inning? I wasn't around on the game thread at the time, but I suspect there wasn't much juice.
  
• 19,756 people watched the game in the stands. It looks like it won't be hard for me to catch an Orioles game this September when I'm living in D.C.
  

It's yet another getaway day for me here at the sprawling Royals Review headquarters. I'm excited to be flying out to Denver for a wedding, but I think by the time I return on Sunday night I'll be ready for some summertime equivalent of hibernation. I'm 28 and my fiancee (sp?) is 26, which puts us right in the friends getting married hotzone. Coupled with my own wedding planning (8/16) and the stretch of summer in which every weekend is a holiday, I think between mid-May and mid-August I'm scheduled to have about three weekends free. Last week I even mixed in a trip back to Austin for my high school reunion, which was predictably lame as hell. The top 20% of the class, in terms of popularity, showed up, and no one else, other than my four boys and their dates. None of the nerdy people I was friends with bothered to show, which left me there not talking to the cool crowd, just as I hadn't done in high school. Oh well. Anyway, it's going to be a summer of perpetually scrambling and scuffling to make sure RR stays decent, so be patient.

With last night's victory, the Royals improved to 36-43, their best mark through 79 games since 2003. Here are the recent records: 2007: 33-46; 2006: 27-52; 2005: 26-53; 2004: 29-50. What a nightmare. The 2008 bunch is still seven games under .500, is perhaps as close to .500 as they'll be all season (the rest of the way) and has been prone to some classic KC losing streaks, and still, compared to recent teams, looks like a world-beater. Still, as someone once said, I'm not here to talk about the past...

Links and miscellanea, some hither, some yon:

• Mellinger looks back at Dayton's moves, part 1.
  
• Mike Aviles is hitting .333/.363/.600 in 78 plate appearances. He's now 6th amongst all rookie position players in VORP, in roughly a fourth the playing time of guys like Evan Longoria and beloved Red Sox prospect Jacoby Ellsbury. His 10.2 is also good for third best on the team, tied with fellow middle infielder Grudzielanek (DeJesus leads with 17.1, Josey is second at 15.4). Prized pickup Miguel Olivo's month-long cold spell has dragged him down to fifth on the team, at 6.4, although still ahead of Alex Gordon (6.1). Greinke, in eight PAs, has a higher offensive VORP than German, Buck, Gload, Gathright and, of course, TPJ.
• The Royals need to find a way to make the middle-infield pieces fit a little better, because the current formation is out of whack. TPJ remains the only guy Hillman really trusts to handle short defensively, and he's the worst hitter in the Major Leagues. At second however, there's the four-headed hydra of German (who has struggled but has a track record of OBP), Grudzielanek, Callaspo and Aviles, the latter trio representing some of the better hitters on the team. It'll never happen, but we've come to the point where the roster is so weirdly shaped that the Royals should really consider playing one of their second basemen at first and DHing another for the time being. And yes, there was talk of doing this with catchers earlier in the year. Cool!
• Paul DePodesta will be doing a BP Q&A before a game at Petco on July 11th. If someone pays for my travel expenses I'll attend, if only to ask him how he could have possibly let Justin Huber be demoted. Speaking of our boy, in four games with the Portland Beavers, he's hitting .214/.313/.286.
• I noticed this post on Freddie Patek on Royally Speaking today.
  
• Good stuff from Rany.
• If you haven't read it yet -- hey, new people are hitting RR every day -- you might want to check out this old post on the Royals-Cards rivalry.
• I was listening to the Giants-Indians game on the radio two nights ago and I heard longtime Cleveland play by play man Tom Hamilton randomly say the following about Aaron Rowand, "I know we don't follow the National League much, but... he doesn't look as big as he used to." This was followed by color man Mike Hegan knowingly chortling. I can't tell you how much I despise stuff like this. If Hamilton really thinks Rowand (the hysteria knows no limits) used steroids, which is not only in most cases illegal, but, as we well know, an assault on our national innocence then he needs to say so directly. Save the wink-wink stuff for jokes about who slept in last night or the golf game this afternoon or whatever. Still, its not surprising to find someone being self-righteous, cowardly and completely speculative all in one sentence. This is America after all.
  
• SB Nation has an NBA Draft/prospects blog that's good. Might be worth visiting tonight.
• The Mariners are 28-50. All the more reason to read Lookout Landing.
• Sheehan (free) on the emerging trade market.
• Finally, as mentioned this week, the sweep of the Rockies was especially sweet because those damn purple-wearing bastards have had the gall to invade western Kansas, planting a radio affiliate in Goodland, Kansas. 
  According to our readers on the ground out there, western Kansas is definitely vulnerable. Making matters especially tense is the fact that Goodland is only miles away from Mount Sunflower, the highest point in the state. From this vantage point, the Rockies not only gain the strategic advantage of being able to see for great distances, they also have the psychological edge in knowing they own Kansas's peak. Hopefully, Battlefield Goodland is leaning blue for the first time in years.
  

This should be interesting.  It’s time again for the Royals Confidence Index (RCI)*.  So far the Royals have taken us on a bit of a roller coaster ride including one big dive.  There was a hot start, a significant fade, a nice recovery and a soul-crushing losing streak, followed by a return to .500ish play.  So what has happened to our confidence?  Last month’s RCI slid from around 7 all the way down to 6.43. Will it fall even further?  Remember that the RCI is not simply how you feel about what has happened so far.  It is about how you feel right now about the 2008 season (and beyond).

Here's the deal.  For each of these questions, give me a number from 1-10.  1 means you feel very bad/unhappy/negative about the item in question right now.  10 means you feel extremely good/happy/positive about it.  (If you want to use decimals like 6.5, feel free).

1. How do you feel about the 2008 Royals team overall?

2. How do you feel about the 2008 Royals pitching?

3. How do you feel about the 2008 Royals hitting?

4. How do you feel about the 2008 Royals defense?

5. How do you feel about Dayton Moore?

6. How do you feel about Trey Hillman?

7. How do you feel about the Royals minor league system?

8. How do you feel about the Royals future?

Bonus questions (these have no bearing on the RCI):

A. On what date would you like Joakim Soria to make his first start?  (Please give a day, month and year...or Never) 

B. What OPS will Mike Aviles have at season's end? 

C. How many games do you think the Royals will win this year?

* The RCI is not a competition.  It is only an exhibition.  Please, no wagering.

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.