Flailing Royals Implode in Minnesota

Any attempt to describe this game without a stream of expletives and a complete exhaustion of the synonyms for putrid and asinine does a disservice to both the memories of our spurned ancestry and any Royals fan who sat through the last four innings of this game. Were it not for SBNation's policies in regards to cursing in the articles, the flood of coarse language, crude suggestions, and lewd analogies that I'm naturally inclined to write would shock the younger and more reserved patrons of this blog. Despite the fact that you'll find no lewdly acerbic invectives herein, I assure you the desire to unfurl them is present.

I am not one to get too wrapped up in the results of a single game. The season is far too long to invest that much emotion into a game without wishing oneself an early death.

It is not simply the events of a single game that are so personally injurious to any fan who watched this abominable game. It is what those events were a microcosm of that is so infuriating.

In the top of the sixth inning, the Royals jumped out to a 5 - 1 lead with a four-run explosion fueled in large part by a grounder with the bases loaded that took a beneficent hop off of Justin Morneau's glove and was then mishandled by Darin Mastroianni (no relation to Marcello), successfully driving Minnesota's starter Francisco Liriano from the game.

With the Royals having spotted Bruce Chen with a four-run lead, Chen allowed a lead-off triple that evaded Jason Bourgeois's outstretched glove on what at least appeared to be a poor route to the ball. Puzzingly, Ron Gardenhire elected to have Denard Span sacrifice bunt the run home with no outs and a four-run deficit. Having been gifted the first out of the inning, Chen proceeded to walk Jamey Carroll and give up a single to Joe Mauer, laboring through both plate appearances. Chen, whose earlier home run allowed off the bat of Trevor Plouffe was the tenth homer against him by right-handed hitters this season, was then allowed to face Josh Willingham, a (wait for it... wait for it...) POWER-HITTING RIGHTY. Willingham promptly hung a most demoralizing dong, knotting the game up at five apiece. Chen predictably got the left-handed Justin Morneau out only to stay in to face Plouffe, who is not only a power-hitting righty but hit a g**d*** home run off Chen earlier in the game.

What do you think happened here? Take a wild guess.

Dong was hung.

Ned Yost sure had his finger on the pulse of this game.

Then to lead off the seventh, Jeff Francoeur singled. With one out and Eric Hosmer at the plate, let us just imagine what might have happened. Your guess is likely right because if you've seen a Royals game this year, you've likely seen Jeff Francoeur (or to be fair any number of other Royals) run into a foolish out on the basepaths.

In the home half of the seventh, Jason Bourgeois took an awkward route to a lined single to left-center field, came up throwing, and short-hopped the relay throw to Alcides Escobar, effectively eliminating any possibility at keeping the deficit at one run by negating a play at the plate. Then to lead off the eighth, Jarrod Dyson was pinch-hitting for Jason Bourgeois, raising the series of questions that follows:

1. Jarrod Dyson is worthy of pinch-hitting for Jason Bourgeois?
2. Wait, Jason Bourgeois's triple-slash in Omaha, which plays its games in the PCL, was .205/.262/.269?
3. Jason Bourgeois doesn't look like he's any better than Dyson on the defensive end of things, does he?
4. Why is Jason Bourgeois on this team in the first place?
5. With Humberto Quintero having been designated for assignment and Jason Bourgeois's presence on the Royals' roster being completely pointless, what was the point of dealing Kevin Chapman and D'Andre Toney to Houston again?