FanPost

Five Unlikely Heroes and Five Surprising Bums

John Milton: I'm the hand up Mona Lisa's skirt. I'm a surprise, Kevin. They don't see me coming: that's what you're missing.  Look at me - underestimated from Day One. You'd never think I was a master of the universe, now, would you?  Bonus points to the first one to place this quote.

Royals who have performed other than expected.

Unlikely Heroes
Reggie Sanders - .367/.446/.612, 49 at bats, 2 HR, 8 RBI.
John Buck - .302/.415/.642, 53 at bats, 4 HR, 7 RBI, 10/17 BB/K.
Duckworth - 1.47 ERA, 18.1 Innings, 18 hits, 6/8 BB/K, 1 save and set-up man.
Soria - (1-1, 2.77 ERA, 4 saves), 13 Innings, 7 hits, 6/16 BB/K.
De la Rosa - (3-2, 3.38 ERA), 40 Innings, 39 hits, 7/23 BB/K.

Surprising Bums
Emil Brown - .183/.234/.225, 71 at bats, 0 HR, 5 RBI, 5/13 BB/K.
Alex Gordon - .170/.311/.284, 88 at bats, 2 HR, 5 RBI, 11/31, BB/K
Ryan Shealy - .113/.186/.208, 53 at bats, 1 HR, 5 RBI, 3/19, BB/K.
Riske - (0-2, 6.35 ERA), 11.1 Innings, 16 hits, 4/6 BB/K.
The DL - Hudson, Dotel, Nelson, Shealy, ??Sanders??.  The DL is having a good year.

Outside of the dull pain of the mounting losses, overall it has been a good month in terms of team development. Moving past the surprising cases above -  DeJesus, German, Teahen, Sweeney, Meche, Gobble, Greinke and Gload are all doing their jobs well.  In fact they all have exceeded expectations to one degree or another.  Pena, LaRue, Perez, Wellemeyer and Peralta have fallen short, but no one was expecting great things from any of them.  Teahen has made the shift to RF much better than I expected he would.  Pena has been a plus glove and does not have the worst bat in the AL (nods to LaRue and Sheeley). We know Gordon will be OK and Buddy hasn't paniced and put him on the bench.

There is a lot of goodness breaking out in Omaha (Costa, Musser, Day, Shiell, Giron and Ray all looking good.)  Padilla, Brazell and Lubanski are a lumber crew in Wichita, while Plummer, DeHoyos, Cedeno and Hochevar are mowing down opposing batters.  Some kids named Morales is in Burlington looking CyYoungish (3-0, 1.23 ERA, 1/17 BB/K) while another kid named Damico is closing like a cheap salesman (1.32 ERA, 13.2 Innings, 9 hits, 2/14 BB/K).

All in all, I give the Royals organization a C- for the first 28 games of the year.  If April was the rough draft, May and June should organize matters and we might see a very accomplished product by July and August.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Royals Review community. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the editors and writers of this site.