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.
  

The Royals finished April with a 12-15 record and ended the fifth month of the year with a 22-34 mark (now 23-34). Considering the month contained the team's epic losing streak, an overall record of 10-19 in May wasn't a total disaster, and could have been much worse.

Let's take a look at how the boys in blue did at the plate in May. First, the team totals:

101 runs is actually not last in the league, it's tied for 11th. The Angels also scored 101 (in one fewer game) and the Mariners and Indians were worse, scoring 99 and 98 runs respectively, as the new deadball era sweeps across the American League. Despite the advantage of the DH, scoring in the American League is lower than in the NL, which of course can 100% be attributed to PEDs testing. 100%. Everyone who used PEDs was a hitter in the AL. Moving on... The Royals only hit 12 homers in May, which is remarkable. Not surprisingly, no team in the AL was anywhere close to this number, as the league average was 24 homers.It isn't anything like a full consolation, but the Royals did rip 65 doubles in May, second-most in the American League. Weirdly, the Royals continue to not hit triples, despite having some decent triplers getting regular playing time. They hit just 2 in May. Then again, no one ever got poor betting against Joey Gathright's extra base hit totals.

Speaking of Gathright, now about those individual numbers, sorted by OPS:

This is how you have a bad month. For a guy who probably won't be in the Major Leagues in 2010, Tony Pena Jr. has generated a ton of discussion this month, but he isn't standing alone in the forest of horribleness. Considering defensive value and where they play, it's certain that Ross Gload (another Dayton pickup) was the worse player in May, and Alberto Callaspo wasn't far behind. You can say the same for Billy Butler, who slugged .302 with no value on defense.

Other than Miguel Olivo's studliness and a decent month from Jose Guillen (characteristically a lack of walks drags down his performance, even when he's hitting over .300) nobody else stepped into the void. Although Gordon (and Teahen) continued to get his walks and John Buck tossed in his annual random month of hitting .300, there isn't much good displayed here. (Expect a .210 average from Buck in June.)

Pitching numbers will be up tomorrow.

Last night was apparently one hell of a game to miss. I remember, while watching the Celtics-Pistons post-game, seeing the final score on the ESPN Bottomline and saying something to the effect of "that stinks." It looked like it had turned out to be a close slugfest, one that, given it went into extra innings, could have gone either way. It was only when "KC Greinke - 8.1 IP, 3 ER" scrolled across the bottom of the screen that I began to suspect that it had been a painful loss, and even then I really didn't know until I checked the box score this morning. ESPN, as everyone here knows, would prefer to show the Red Sox failing to hit Erik Bedard all night than show Twins-Royals highlights. However, I think that might be a good thing in this particular case. Anyhow, the "earned run" tag meant I had no idea exactly how much the Royals had been leading by going into the ninth. Of course, that Greinke was still in the game indicated that they had been leading, and so my first thought was that Soria had actually had a bit of a meltdown.

Of course, that's not the way it went. You all know as well as I know what happened in the ninth inning last night, with Ramon Ramirez getting singled out of the game and giving way to the now-thoroughly dejected Joel Peralta.

One thing that would not change this night, though, was the despair felt by Peralta -- not for himself, he said, but because he let his teammates down.

"I won't sleep tonight, for sure," he said.

Yes, that definitely sound like a pitcher who gave two home runs in the span of three betters to heavily contribute to what I have little doubt will be the Royals most memorable loss of the year. I should make it clear I'm not attempting to get everyone blaming manager Trey Hillman rather than Peralta by evoking pathos, as I find it hard to blame Hillman for Peralta not being able to get Craig Monroe out. Really, with Nunez now hurting, and with Soria having pitched two games in a row, the decision last night came down to Mahay, Peralta, Yabuta, or keeping Ramon Ramirez in the game. Ramirez wasn't pitching well, so it's easy to see why Hillman turned elsewhere. Yabuta has a 6.00 ERA with no good peripherals. Craig Monroe historically hits lefties better than righties, to the tune of more power and a better OBP. Ron Mahay is left-handed, so assuming Soria wasn't ready to go, Peralta was left as the best choice for a high leverage situation. He blew it, he knows, let's move on.

We've already discussed this game at length, anyway. I'm just pointing this out because I've been critical of Trey, and others here have been a lot more critical of our fearless leader, but I don't think he takes the fall for the ninth inning. You can, as loyal2sdad pointed out, make an argument that Hillman should have just pitched either Peralta or Ramirez through the whole inning. You can also wonder why Greinke was allowed to start the inning with such a high pitch count and a 5-run lead. But either way, it's speculation that really isn't an indictment of the moves that were really made. If we all want something to complain about in regard to Hillman, it's much more debatable whether Peralta should have remained in to pitch to Justin Morneau with Mahay on the roster. Or the Gload in the outfield thing.

But I didn't write this whole thing to bury Hillman anyway. I didn't write to praise him either, because this entire team is in a funk that you usually only see once a year. If you want the bare bones consolation, we will probably go the entire year without the Royals ever playing this badly for this long. Feel better? Yeah, me neither. Maybe I'll just shut up about last night and get to the stuff I really wanted to touch on.

Notes on the Red Sox-Royals Series

Thanks to the heroic intervention of the MLB Extra Innings package, very soon I'll have the opportunity to follow more KC games without having to enlist the highlight reels and gameday. However, the four game set between the Red Sox and the Royals allowed me for the first time this year to actually see more than one Royals game in a row. It was pretty cool despite the obviously disappointing results. And yes, they were disappointing. Those of you who have been on this blog for awhile are well aware of my "split loyalties," but I was really hoping that the series would be a split so both "my teams" could have their moments. Well, I suppose I don't feel that bad that the Red Sox kind of beat up the Royals now that the Royals are getting beat up by everyone, if that makes sense to anyone. Anyhow, I have other places to go in this article, so onto the stuff that I jotted down during the series:

1. The improvements that Alex Gordon has made over last year were evident through the entire series, during which he was one of the few Royals offensive players who distinguished themselves. He looked more patient, more comfortable, and more disciplined than when I got to see him play last year.
2. Gil Meche looked as if he was starting to get turned around, K'ing 9 over seven innings and taking the hard luck loss in the second game of the series. Say what you will about the opposing points of view in the field of pitch count general pitcher workload research, but I think that poor Meche was suffering from a 200-inning, high-pitch count hangover that seems to finally be clearing up. It's like that time where I drank Ice 101 during finals week and didn't begin to function until approximately 2 PM the next morning. My god, that stuff is evil. Thanks to my friend Buddy, who recommended taking more shots of it than were necessary.
3. Joakim Soria - great man, or greatest man? Even though Soria only appeared in one game...and stuggled with his control...in the rain, I could still see the awesome stuff that he has. I was sitting next to a rather skeptical Red Sox fan during his outing, who made fun of me for saying that Soria had great control because Joakim walked two people in the rain. I had a good chuckle when Soria escaped the jam and then Mike Timlin struggled with his control and walked one in the rain on his way to creating his own save situation in the ninth. Funny stuff.
4. Contrary to whenever I saw him in the "highlights" earlier in the year, Jose Guillen had his timing down and more closely resembled the decent power hitter he's been in the past. You know this, but the difference was clearly visible.
5. Brett Tomko is not a victim of bad luck when it comes to his hittablility. After seeing his stuff, I don't think he's got enough to keep his BABIP at league average. I just bring this up because, other than his H/9, he looks like he is underperforming his peripheral numbers. After seeing how mediocre his stuff is, I don't think he's playing by the "normal" .290-.300 BABIP rule.
6. Billy Butler is sitting too far back in his stance, and almost never seems to get his weight forward into his swings. I know I'm not a scout, but it's odd to see a man that muscular trying to fight off pitch after pitch. In any case, he's a data point against the pitching coach. He looked completely lost in the Sox-Royals series.
7. Ross Gload is done. He doesn't look capable of hitting major league pitching. His numbers are terrible, and he's older than you think.
8. Leo Nunez and Ramon Ramirez both looked impressive in their outings. It's hard to believe that Nunez has come full circle and become a very good reliever, but he has. Ramirez looks like a good find, as if you look at his line in 2006 he was quite good before getting hurt last year.

Continue reading this post »