Dear Penthouse Letters,
I never thought this kind of thing would happen to me, but it did...
- I've said it before, but I almost can't believe that this guy is a Royal. He's probably the best baseball player on the planet right now and he's ours. Evidently Zack's upcoming SI appearance resonated with many of you for perhaps the same reason... Tonight, Greinke was Greinkean (7 IP: 5 Hs, 2 BBs & 8Ks) and improved to a media-important 5-0 on the year. I can't wait for a interleague play, because you know Zack has a game in him in which he'll pitch great for eight innings, and go 2-3 with a homer. It's going to happen.
- Hurra for Billy Butler getting off the homerlessness schneid. Our immobile, iron-gloved, uber prospect is now hitting only a somewhat empty .242. Deal with it haters!
- Mark Teahen notched his third homer of the season, continuing what's been an excellent, if overlooked month. For all the attention, positive and negative that Teabag gets, you wouldn't think this would be the case, but it has been. Headed into tonight's game, he was 22nd in the AL in VORP, and will likely be a place or two higher when they retabulate tomorrow morning.
- Mike Aviles continued his mini-hot streak, raising his Hillman-important battting average over .200 with some cushion at .205. May we hope for better things ahead.
- Alberto Callaspo is absolutely scorching right now.
- I think we set a record tonight for most pictures of food posted in a game thread in SB Nation history. Hopefully they'll never start a University of Wisconsin blog... zing!
- The streak of "Soria's absence is irrelevant" games continues. Actually, as far as I can tell, Treyball hasn't had a terribly important bullpen decision to make in four days.
- One minor negative however: I'm not sure why Cruz pitched tonight... I know, I know, the old managers saw, "he needed work." Only, he pitched on the 26th and the 25th back in the Detroit series. Sure, Meche's short start yesterday threw everything off, I get that. Still, just seemed pointless to send him out there tonight. I woulda preferred Ho-Ram, even if he did throw 25 pitches last night.
- I can't close on a negative note however. Tonight the Royals won their 11th game. It took them 21 games to do so. Here are the game numbers on which they won game 11 the last few years: 24, 34, 46 (!) and 38. So far so good on avoiding the trademark season-killing horrible start.