The Royals are strange. Every year there's going to be a massive losing streak, most likely over 10 games. Something like over half of the 10+ game losing streaks this decade are courtesy of the Royals. However, as happened last season as well, a sub-par Royal lineup is also good for a massive offensive explosion once or twice a year. Not shockingly, this tends to happen at home, where the K can sometime play like mini-Coors.

In the last two games the Royals have scored 23 runs and banged out 38 hits. Sure, its the Royals, so 25 of those hits have been singles, but five homers, a triple, and seven doubles have certainly helped. Oh, and six walks. But why take a walk when it's a thousand degrees outside and the ball is flying off the bat?

Lineouts:

• Clearly, Grudz was holding the team back.
• I always thought Miguel Olivo -- who had a monster series and should be flirting with a league average OPS now -- looked baby-faced, then I saw the pictures of him from today's brawl and wondered why TPJ's dad was on the field again.
• Jose Guillen does not care for your singles. Two games, two hits, two homers.
• Everyday Rossy picked up five hits the last two days.
• Mitch Maier entered the series hitting .188 and left hitting .308.
• Since falling to 21-34, the Royals have gone 31-26.

Twenty-two minutes to go...

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UPDATE: make that zero minutes to go... someone man the internet, someone man the radio, and we'll get this figured out

Years from now, having lived through everything that once made life sweet, we'll be telling our grandchildren about this Bannister-Gallagher duel.

In the short term, we have Aviles and Maier as the sparkplugs of our potent offense. Build around them Dayton, build around them.

Announcing the 2008 Royals Review ASG Prediction Game!

Prize: The Winner will receive their very own Royals Review t-shirt!

The Game: Correctly predict which players WILL NOT APPEAR in the ASG.

Method: 1) Submit four guesses/players below. Each exact combination becomes locked when it is claimed (Navarro/Kinsler/Young/Soria, for example, can only be made by one person). 2) Submit a game score prediction, with a winner. This will be used as a tiebreaker. Obvious scratches, like Kerry Wood, Alfie Soriano and David Ortiz, are not eligible. There are no rules about balancing between leagues. You can pick whomever you want.

Method2: This is where it gets slightly more complicated. For each submission, we will use the following metric for awarding points: 3.5 pts for an unused position player, 2 pts for an unused pitcher, -1 pt for a wrong guess. There is some strategy involved here because there will almost certainly be a few pitchers on each side who do not appear. Position players are a riskier proposition, but will earn you more points if you hit on them correctly.

So in sum, submit four names and a game score prediction. Your exact combination becomes your own when you post and the game score prediction is the tiebreaker.

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Here are the eligible reserves.

AL Position Players: Navarro, Varitek, Morneau, Kinsler, Young, Crede, Guillen, Longoria, Drew, Quentin, Sizemore

AL Pitchers: Duchscherer, Halladay, Kazmir, Nathan, Papelbon, Rivera, Rodriguez, Santana, Saunders, Sherrill, Soria

NL Position Players: Martin, McCann, Gonzalez, Uggla, Guzman, Tejada, Ramirez, Wright, Hart, Ludwick, McLouth

NL Pitchers: Cook, Dempster, Haren, Lidge, Lincecum, Marmol, Volquez, Wagner, Webb, Wilson, Wood, Zambrano

Did the Royals not speak to the media after the game? I've just read the AP game story, the official website story and Dutton's story with the Star.

No quotes.

Obligatory fangraphs representation:

via www.fangraphs.com

• Full disclosure here: I more or less took this game off, although from the 7th on I was sporadically checking the score via my phone. Every once in awhile we've all got to pull a Rhoden. I didn't goto see Hancock however, I just watched some History Channel. Oh Monsterquest, you always rope me in, and you always let me down.
• Ross Gload went 3-4 and is now hitting .278. Trade him for a PTBNL yesterday.
• David DeJesus drew a walk to start the game. No one else followed his example.
• Banny almost turned in a helpful outing. Almost. Your Banny ERA update is  5.24.
• Billy Butler hit a double! We'll have that slugging percentage up to .350 any day now! I love getting excited about Royal prospects...
  
• Someone with an office job should check for me early tomorrow morning, but Buck may not be a sub-replacement level hitter (-VORP) after tonight's big game.
• I enjoy the box score oddity of Ramon Ramirez's blown save: 0.2 IP, 2 Ks, 0 Hs, 0 BBs. Blown save. Looking at the replays of the balk, I have no idea. Konerko certainly sold it.

Ramon Fernandez Ramirez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
You jerked your neck forward
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
They called you for balking

Hold the lead.

Apparently, every few years the Ozzie Sox put together a solid bullpen, hit a bunch of home runs, do freaky well in one-run games, and win the division. It's just something we'll have to get used to. At least this time, no one is trying to give Scott Podsednik all the credit, which I consider a net-win in my book.

Taking the ball for the Royals tonight is Brian Bannister (5.15 ERA), a pitcher who with each passing start looks like someone Dayton should have traded in the off-season rather than a future building block.

Banny's first five starts:

This was the Golden Age, when it looked like the 2007 model was not only sustainable, but perhaps capable of being improved upon. Banny even mixed in eighteen strikeouts for good measure. Banny shutout the Tigers in his first start, allowed only two runs against the Yankees, then posted a complete game, earned-run shutout against the Twins. After a rough start against Oakland, he rebounded with another quality start against the Tribe. Since then however, it's been a different story.

Banny's subsequent thirteen starts:

I can remember a game thread last season when someone made a comment to the effect of "I love watching Odie pitch. He totally sucks, but somehow does better than you think he should. He battles." It was a eye-opening comment for me, and another reminder of how we can view essentially similar performances in wildly different ways. Odie was a hard player to root for as he was clearly not a part of the team's future. He was just a guy -- an overweight, vaguely unhealthy looking guy -- passing through town for a few years. A salary the Royals were eating to pay for the prospects (Johnson and Pimentel) they'd acquired for him. Nevertheless, despite really having very little ability left, he did string together some league-average months: a 4.40 ERA May and a 4.50 ERA August last season, for example. The fact that he was the Opening Day starter for the Nationals this year was a blogosphere-wide joke, but with some park-effect help he's managed to post a ERA+ of 116 thus far, his best season since 2004. If you saw the highlights of him last week being ejected after a balk call, it would be hard to say he doesn't care or that he isn't still competing either.

Maybe he's even a smart guy too. We just don't know, since no Spanish-speaking baseball player has ever been given that label.

Returning to Banny, while he's given up hits and homers aplenty, it's difficult to characterize broadly just what the problem has been. Control has been perhaps the dominant or underlying problem -- he's had some of the wildest stretches I've seen from a Big League pitcher in awhile at times -- yet he's also had odd starts when he actually is striking dudes out. A side benefit of wildness, perhaps?

Hosmer it is!

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In like four years three of the guys taken today are totally gonna be Royals!

Well, if it is a good draft that is.

Consider this your Draft Day Open Thread (things get started around 2 EST supposedly, give or take some ESPN lead-in type delays). I'll be leaning on you guys today, since I don't know Smoak from Posey from Dennys Reyes. Sure, in five years somebody taken today might well become my next Shane Costa or Justin Huber, but that's only after their meaningless and ignored AAA stats are put up.

Here are two links to get us started:

• Goldstein's Mock Draft at BP (he has the Royals taking Pedro Alvarez) and related chat.

Quick Goldstein hit on Hosmer: A lot of questions about why Hosmer over the big college bats, because he's more risky. He might be, but his ceiling, especially on a power level is totally ridiculous.

• This Rays blog has a nice breakdown , with video, of Hosmer.
• This draft blog predicted Hosmer would drop on Draft day.
• Keith Law video blog on Hosmer.
• Mellinger on the Draft, with a look at 2003 .
• Sickels on the High School hitters.

Hosmer it is!

Through their first 57 games, the Royals did not play the White Sox once, which rather unfortunately means that over the season's final 104 games, these two teams will battle 18 times, roughly 17% of the remaining schedule. Going a bit further, after this week's three game set, the Royals won't face the White Sox again until July 8th, meaning those final fifteen battles will give Chicago's stretch run a distinct KC tint.

Your pitching matchup is Greinke (2.88 ERA) versus Floyd (3.22 ERA). I've spent all season getting Floyd and Danks mixed up -- I know one has been pretty lucky, and one has had some no-hit bids and that these may or may not be the same person -- and I see no reason to rectify the problem now. Mainly, I'll be interested to see if Ozzie fields some bizarre, speed-tastic lineup. (FWIW, I agree with South Side Sox's The Cheat on the latest Ozzie "controversy" and happen to think Ozzero is a very good in game manager.)