And... the Royals had a runner thrown out at home down 4 in the 9th. Thank God the Royals have a new manager and a new third base coach. Yost!
There will be a lot of chatter about Zack Greinke's rough start, but I'm not sure there's much to take away from this game. He had a bad start. Can we say more? Zack gave up an ill-timed HR in the third, and the fourth was just a disaster of singles, doubles and errors. It wasn't as if Zack was wild, as he didn't walk anyone and really didn't even throw that many balls (23 total). Only one strikeout is a bummer, but it seems like the Rockies were fairly aggressive against Zack, as he threw only 65 pitches in facing 19 batters, although that is a little misleading because of a quick first inning. As we pointed out last season, Zack's always had mild HR issues, and today that hurt him. The Royal defense didn't help, fate didn't help, and the Rockies hit the ball hard at times. For me, at the moment, I just call it a bad day and move on.
Betancourt hurt Zack in the third and fourth with misplays.
Many people were unhappy with Kendall's pitch call on the Greinke home run. I try not to get caught up in that stuff, since I'm not going to give Kendall credit for an awesome Greinke pitch in the inverse.
After falling behind 9-0, the Royals actually had a nice game. The five double-plays killed what could have been an epic comeback. None bigger than Bloomquist's first-pitch GIDP with the bases loaded in the 5th inning, that left the Royals down 9-4. That play, according to WPA, was the second biggest play of the entire game. Billy Butler ended up 4-5, yet even managed to hit a double-play.
The Royals and their crazy singles-hittin' ways. The Royals managed 13 singles today. Even 4 walks. Nevertheless, live by the dribbler, die by the dribbler.
Are we living in a weird era of fast guys who nevertheless can't play CF? How did Guillen end up with a triple? Between last night's Nyjer Morgan play, a horrible misplay I saw by Adam Jones today in Washington, and whatever Fowler did I don't know what the heck is going on.
I am no longer entirely desirous of watching Chris Getz play baseball.
