Monday Euphoria

Alex Gordon hit two rally killers yesterday.  The Royals should kill rallies more often using that bad old home run thingy.

Loosely paraphrasing Royals' hitting coach Pedro Grifol:  the fans will be happy when the Royals win, no matter how many runs they score, and sad if they hit three home runs and lose.  True, but the Royals could actually do both.

Since the dawn of the Dayton Moore era (I'm calling it 2007 as you can't pin much of 2006 on him, not even Luke Hochevar, I am told), the Royals have hit three home runs or more in 55 different games.  The team is 40-15 in those contests, including winning 14 of the last 17 games in which they have gone deep/hung dong/killed a rally three times. If you're shocked, then you either don't pay much attention to baseball or hold a high profile position at One Royals Way.

While there is certainly some carryover between games, the Royals are also 26-11 (9-1 over the last ten games) in which one player hits two home runs.  Prior to Alex Gordon's fantastic day yesterday, Salvador Perez went deep twice in a game last August 28th, with Moustakas and Hosmer each doing so the month prior.

While I believe a lot in the ability to hit 40+ doubles in a season, I'm thinking more home runs might equal better.

Prior to Gordon (and Billy Butler, by the way) raking on Sunday, we saw Danny Duffy be brilliant on Saturday (and maybe a touch lucky as well), carrying a perfect game through two outs in the seventh.  In three starts this season, Danny has thrown 17 innings, allowing just six hits and two runs.  The red flag, of course, is he has eight strikeouts and seven walks.  Is this just electric stuff mixed with lucky results or the beginning signs of Duffy turning 'the switch' to the on position?

A lot was made by the Royals' announcers of Danny taking a little off his fastball to get better movement.  I'm not sure that was really true as Brooks' Baseball shows him throwing his fastball actually harder in his 2014 starts than in most of those in previous seasons.  Take it for what it is worth, but I am certainly excited to see Duffy's next start.

Really, what would we do with ourselves if the Royals suddenly had two bonafide homegrown starting pitchers in the rotation?!!

Finally, we watch this Royals' team play .500 baseball and stay perilously close to in it (they are tied with half the league for the second wild-card spot), but also be just a bad week or two from 'out of it' and it seems more and more apparent that this probably is a 80 to 84 win team.  It seems to me that a bold organization might make a bold move to separate themselves from the pack of wild card contenders.

Of course, this is the part where you insert your Brandon Belt/Clint Robinson trade ideas, but is there a move that could bolster the team?  Is there a point in even discussing the probability given the rather non-bold nature of the Royals' organization?  How many pieces do you need to add to a package around Wade Davis (assuming you believe in Herrera to pitch the 8th) to get a hitter who can hit those long things that no one can catch?