Francisco Pena up, Giavotella down

It seems Salvador Perez is not a cyborg sent back in time to catch 162 games for the Royals this year. The bulldog catcher will be sidelined for a few days with a jammed hand that makes swinging the bat difficult (maybe the entire lineup has been playing with jammed hands all year?). When can our field general return?

"I'm optimistic for Saturday. I'm not really sure I want to do it on Friday with C.J. Wilson pounding cutters in on his hands the whole time," Yost said. "So, when we get there, we'll figure it out."

Enter - the Brett Hayes Experience.

Hayes, the Royals backup, is now 0-19 to begin the year, surpassing even Mike Moustakas' 0-fer to begin this year. I'm getting flashbacks to Jason LaRue.

To provide depth, the Royals called up catcher Francisco Pena from AAA Omaha. The 24 year old right-handed hitter is the younger brother of former Royals shortstop Tony Pena Jr. and the son of former manager Tony Pena. We just can't get enough of the Pena family here in Kansas City. Francisco signed here as a minor league free agent this past winter after several seasons in the Mets organization. He had never appeared in the Major Leagues until last night. He was hitting .240/.309/.540 with an astonishing nine home runs in 30 games for Omaha. He has never hit more than nine home runs in a full season in any minor league season in his career.

To make room for Pena the Royals optioned down infielder Johnny Giavotella back to Omaha. Gio hit a nice home run up in Seattle in his stay here, but had just four hits in nine games aside from that blast. Overall he was hitting .176/.216/.265 with 1 HR 5 RBI in 37 plate appearances. Pedro Ciriaco will play second base until Omar Infante returns from injury.