Well that was different.
As promised, the game recap by slayor, only the brave should click through:
Zack Greinke Might Have to Smack a Bitch
For the 483rd consecutive game, the Royals found yet another innovative way to completely embaress themselves in front of their shrinking but increasingly rabid fan base. Today, we were treated to the spectacle of Zack Greinke pitching – he is, according to the experts at ESPN and other analytical powerhouses one of the best pitchers in baseball. Yes, even though he pitches for our increasingly god-awfully-amazingly-full-of-so-much-suck-Superhead-would-be-impressed-because-they-suck-that-f’ing-bad Kansas City Royals.
For the 11th time in 12 starts, Greinke gave the worst team in the AL an exceptionally good chance of winning. That’s a really really good ratio!Tonight, without his best stuff (didn’t break 95!), best control (3 walks! the horror!), or ability to retire Mark Derosa, Greinke cruised through 7 innings allowing but one run. Of course, because Dayton Moore traded every decent relief pitcher on the roster save Soria for a pathetic collection of overpaid OBP challenged pieces of garbage who pose as players, which to date have made little to no recognizable contributions to this team (unless making it suck even more than before can be counted as a contribution), Greinke was asked to pitch the 8th inning.
The Royals hate winning. A lot. The only thing they LOVE more than they hate winning is playing piss poor defense which will allow them to lose. So, when Greinke came out for the 8th inning, got an out, gave up a hit, and walked Victor Martinez on a brisk 5 pitches, you knew the tornado was coming. The tornado was the Royals defense, and the trailer park was Greinke’s line in the box score. It got wrecked.
Enter John Bale: Master of falling flat on his ass (figuratively and literally!) while letting the ball fly by him, mix in some trademark Royals incompetency, and you have a runner on 2nd with two outs, and the lead run at the plate.
So, Trey Hillman after bumbling around in the dark for the past 2 months, finally managed to fall ass backwards on the button labeled "That Funny Looking Mexican Dude". Of course, because this is the Royals, that funny looking Mexican dude hung a curveball to Johnny Peralta that TPJ could have managed to hit one handed, and the game was tied. It was a really, really bad pitch.
And Zack Greinke cried. All alone in the clubhouse. And then he threw a grenade in the manager’s office and bought a John Deere dealership. Not yet, but it’s probably coming. Long story short, Royals are horrible, cannot play defense when it matters, are incapable of executing "fundamentals" (who said they were fun?!), and Zack Greinke is awesome. At this point, the only question that remains is how many games will this team lose this season, and how long until Zack Greinke smacks a bitch?
You have to give the Royals credit for one thing, they've done their damndest to save Cleveland's season. The Indians are now 7-5 against the Royals, and 20-30 against real teams.
I thought Hillman did some good things tonight. In addition to a shockingly appropriate handling of Soria (though it didn't work out) it was one of his better lineups of the season, save a random start for St. Willie at third. Clearly, Hillman had some plan to rest Teahen in mind, which led to a bizarre sequence of events late in the game. To lead off the night, he had Luis Hernandez pinch hit for TPJ (which really, is perhaps the most damning indictment of TPJ as a Major League player we've seen, other than his stat line of course). Mark Teahen -- who is actually one of the team's better hitters -- remained on the bench for Hernandez's inevitable out, only to appear as a pinch runner in the tenth. Ultimately, the whole sequence was a oddly redolent expression of the Hillman-Moore regime.