The post-Teahen era begins as the Royals continue their anti-September callup period. Even teams in contention are bringing up more guys than the Royals, Teahen was in fact replaced with... no one on the roster, which I guess is a strange way of saying he's irreplaceable.
Last night, as we were blasting through 300+ game thread comments I noted something rather silly, the Royals Anti-killer bees. At two positions the Royals have fielded some truly awful players:
-John Buck: .230/.294/.373 (354 PAs)
-Paul Bako: .226/.283/.248 (144 PAs)
-Angel Berroa: .232/.256/.337 (431 PAs)
-Andres Blanco: .266/.309/.313 (67 PAs)
(Congrats to Angel on 12 walks on the year by the way.)
Thats 996 displays of just hideous baseball: the best possible hitter out of that group is something like a .266/.309/.373 hitter (Blanco's pathetically superior avg/obp with Buck's "power") who still hurts a lineup. Berroa and Buck have been stunningly bad players, and Bako's .248 slugging makes Joey Gathright look good. Buck has always alternated between passablity and horribleness during his Royal tenure, using mixing in an .820 OPS month with two shots of .500. This year he's hitting .211/.281/.301 since the Break. At 26, its time to consider if he is actually a major league level hitter, even for a catcher.
With the Royals assured of playing two out machines each day at SS & C, the loss of Teahen really highlights the fact that ciphers like Gathright & Keppinger are really luxuries we can't afford. Especially when Sweeney, Brown and Shealy are all still below-average/barely average for their position.
Tonight however, its the Yankees finale, which means one last crowd above 20,000 and a shot at glory. Runelyvs Hernandez (5-8, 6.31 ERA) takes the mound, looking to build on his last two starts, in which he's allowed only 1 earned run. The Yanks counter with Randy Johnson, who may or may not be "done". It should be an epic battle...