This weekend, just as the Alex Gordon story was developing, I was down in Brownsville, Texas, for a wedding. Although I'm a blogger, I'm not really a huge travel-with-my-laptop kinda guy, if I don't have to be. As such, I wasn't around for most of the Gordon discussion, the two big wins against the Rangers, or the latest edition of Treyball. Thankfully, the site has evolved to the point where it can pretty much run itself, and most of the time there's a fanpost or fanshot that's ready before I can get one going and just as good.
Nevertheless, after more or less a week away from the site, I'm glad to be back in the swing of things. The only problem is that the weather forecast looks horrible in Cleveland. The chances of precipitation the next three days are: 60%, 60%, & 30%, with temps in the high 30s. The over/under on games played between the Royals & Indians is at 1.5. If they make it to two games, it'll most likely be an "eff the fans game": a six hour, multiple delays affair, played in horrible conditions that gets the total to two.
- Royals Review is on Twitter. SB Nation is having a contest between the blogs to see who can get the most followers or somesuch. Things haven't been hammered out, but when the first blog gets to 5,000 followers, a random follower is going to win a prize, most likely two tickets to their local team's game. (As you can tell, the details are still being worked out.) Frankly, I'm not sure what the point of Twitter is unless you're someone who doesn't want to blog either due to time or attention-span constraints. Anyway, I post site updates there, as well as random observations. Follow, and watch your life change.
- I don't really know how I feel about the Bannister-Ho-Ram-Waechter switcheroo. The Royals are replacing a guy who has been getting killed by BABIP with a guy who is likely to do the same. As much as I complain about Ho-Ram, I still kinda like him out there more than Ponson, but the early results have been so strong in the other direction that more or less we should all shut up about Ponson for awhile. With the weather being what it is in Cleveland, either the move is going to be somewhat irrelevant short term or Bannister will be asked to risk injury pitching in mud so that someone more important doesn't have to.
- We need more Maier and less Bloomquist in right field. Neither guy can hit, so you might as well play the better gloveman. I don't know how Trey can look at Bloomquist and say, "this is my right-fielder."
- So far so good on using TPJ properly: he's at six PAs in six games.
- Mike Aviles is hitting .200/.213/.244 in 47 PAs. Are you worried?
- Coco Crisp has a .373 OPB, despite only hitting .200. I didn't think he could do it, so far so good.
- Mike Jacobs has been driving the offense for about a week, after a miserable start. In his last 24 PAs, Jacobs is hitting .364/.417/1.000. This may be his best little run since he went .538/625/1.538 in his first 16 PAs as a Met.
- The Royals have recieved fifteen scoreless innings from the Wright-Cruz-Tejeda trio, which has been almost like having a second Greinke on the staff. Given that more heralded types like Ron Mahay and (cough) Kyle Farnsworth haven't been terribly effective, those dudes have been huge. In modern baseball, sometimes your bullpen is only as good as your third-best guy and said trio has held the non-Soria portion of the bullpen together.