For a team like this, during a season like this, you end up rooting more for individual players than for the team. The team is bad, and for me personally, I'd rather see the Royals win 65 games, with three or four players taking steps forward, against the team winning 75 games thanks to Jose Guillen hitting 50 home runs.
So here we are again, just about to get excited about Luke Hochevar.
Luke pitched a complete game today, allowing 3 runs, off of 4 hits and 2 walks. Hochevar also notched 7 strikeouts. Cleveland didn't exactly put a murderer's row out there today, but it was a functional lineup in decent weather.
I thought Luke pitched well during his last start (two starts ago he was awful) but the numbers don't fully reflect that. The White Sox haven't had a great offense this year, and Luke did end up allowing 5 runs and couldn't get out of the 7th inning. So for now, its more of an OK start and a good start mini-streak.
Tell me I'm missing something.
Finally, a note about the offense. The Royals did their usual thing, getting 8 singles. However, today, they augmented those singles with two doubles by Butler and two home runs, the latter accounting for 5 runs. The teeth gnashing over the team not scoring the so-called easy runs thanks to a sacred single+steal+productive out+productive out is never going to go away. But really, its a non-issue. Read game threads on other blogs or listen to other games, every team's fans think this is a huge problem their team has, and mostly, its just a wash all the way around.