Royals complete rare double sweep, lose 11-3

I have been covering the Royals for Royals Review since mid-2016. Maybe I’m to blame for the team’s awful fortunes since then. You’d think even a blind, deaf, and dumb front office could have accidentally found a star player by now. And yet, they haven’t.

I bring up how long I’ve been writing, though, to make this point: writing recaps has often been one of my favorite things to do here. No matter how bad the team has been at times, there has almost always been something interesting to write about in the recap. So unique perspective I can offer, or some silly word game I can play. The 2023 Royals are so bad that not only are they not fun to watch but they defy being fun to mock. The league is bullying them so hard that it’s difficult to want to pile on.

There were positives today, I suppose. Salvador Perez had a double and a home run. Bobby Witt Jr. had a pair of hits as well. No new injuries were announced. Oh, and Ryan O’Hearn went three-for-three with two walks and a dinger, so that was pretty impressive. Oh, wait, he doesn’t play for the Royals anymore. He did that to the Royals, not for them.

Since I’ve ragged on the team enough, let’s talk about the TV crew for a minute. I’ve long been a defender of Ryan LeFebvre and Rex Hudler. Hudler, in particular, is a terrific announcer for a winning team. No one can help you get hyped like he can. However, today’s broadcast was simply chock full of unforced errors by both of them. No, I’m not talking about the Steve Physioc-esque errors of naming the wrong count or forgetting directions or player names. I’m talking about color commentary that could better be described as off-color commentary.

In their defense, neither of them uttered any slurs. So at least they’ve got that going for them. However, at one point Rex Hudler announced he had had a dream about the 2018 draft picks all getting healthy and all figuring out how to pitch well and leading this team to the post-season. It’s a beautiful dream, one we’ve all shared, but he announced that it could and would happen. No, Rex, I don’t think it is.

LeFebvre, however, had a tremendously awful day. He continually cited cherry-picked statistics in order to make Bobby Witt Jr. seem better than he is. “He has an 11 game hitting streak! Against the Orioles.” and “He’s the first player to hit 10 home runs and steal 20 bases by some arbitrary point in the season since Bo Jackson!” That stuff doesn’t mean anything, Ryan, and I’ll thank you to not act like I’m stupid enough to think it does.

He also jumped on one of his favorite soap boxes, claiming that pitchers going for strikeouts are the reason guys can’t go deep into games. Nevermind the fact that unless you are willing to pitch to contact in such a way that it’s easy for the hitters to hit it, you’re going to run into the same problems trying to get a batter to make weak contact as to get them to swing and miss - balls and fouled-off pitches. Also nevermind the fact that the Royals aren’t striking guys out or pitching very many innings - they could probably stand to pitch to less contact.

Finally, and most irritating to me if not the most egregious thing he did today, he spent an extended period of time mocking the costume of the Baltimore Orioles worker who is responsible for showering the so-called “Bird Bath” section with a garden hose in the Orioles outfield when a Baltimore player gets an extra-base hit.

First of all, there was no acknowledgment that it was exactly as I have described - a costume meant to add to the entertainment value - but he was extremely judgemental of the getup for no real reason to the point that he insisted if he saw someone dressed like that elsewhere he’d call for help (I forget now if it was the police or an ambulance he was going to call for, but it’s not a great look either way.)

The games are frustrating enough to watch right now without the broadcasters doing everything they can to make the experience even less enjoyable. I’m sure they’re as frustrated and bored as I am with covering this team, but they’re paid a lot of money and given a very large platform and they need to do better or they need to be replaced.

The Royals will start a fresh series at home against the Cincinnati Reds tomorrow night. They will be leaning on your Chiefs fandom to sell some more tickets as they celebrate the most recent Super Bowl victory. Zack Greinke will pitch for KC and Luke Weaver will pitch for the Reds. Game time starts at 7:10 PM CDT.