Never underestimate the heart of a Royal team under Buddisimo Bell. Never. In front of a hostile and rabid Detroit crowd on a friday night in Michigan, the Royals stormed into town ready to play the winning brand of baseball we know their capable of... once or twice a week.
Aside from a bizarre sequence which saw Greinke get thrown out of the game in the 6th, the once and future phenom had his best game in months, posting a 5.2 IP: 5H, 0BB, 3K, 1ER line, keeping the ball down to the tune of 8 ground-ball outs on the evening. Thanks to the rare occurence of a Royal Offensive Explosion, Greinke didn't somehow manage to end up suffering a 1-0 loss tonight.
About once a month or so the Royals have a game like this: 2 homers, a triple, 5 doubles and 10 singles; en route to 12 runs and an easy win. Hell, John Buck's now hitting .223 for goodness sakes.
Lots of love to go around... Personally, I smile every time Aaron Guiel does something well (3-5, double, homer) and here's hoping he beats out Super Joe next spring for one of the final roster spots. I'm less excited about Emil Brown, although I can't say why. I think its clear that no one would consider Guiel a key component of any decent team, but with Brown, theres a larger fools gold possiblity. Yea, its kinda cool a spring training invitee has ended up playing damn near every day and has hit 13 homers and 30 doubles. Unfortunately, those numbers still aren't really good enough for a corner-player, and it simply isn't the case that Brown has a ceiling. This is it, and it isn't good enough.
Still, the guy's made some money this year, getting that sweet prorated $386,000 major league salary. So 2005's probably gonna be his financial foundation for the next decade or so. Of course, I can only wish him well... speaking of decades, I'm not sure I'll reach that total in the next 10... we'll see I guess.
Theres always discovering my true father was a Wal-mart heir. At which point I might be your next Royals team president!