One more Buddy Bell post

I’ve made my peace with the Buddy Bell resignation (it was a long, hard process, but I’m finally at acceptance). Anyway, Dag Nabbit has written a wholly enjoyable musing/summary of Bell’s career at the great new site, Ballhype (is it too old to call it new?). Check it out.

All of that made me think, invariably, of Justin Huber—for reasons I don’t care to discuss without throwing myself back into the grief cycle.

But I do want to see how he’s doing, because I really haven’t heard about him in a long while and, let’s face it, it’s looking more and more like Ryan Shealy isn’t the long-term answer at 1B that Dayton Moore had marketed him to be in the Affeldt/Bautista trade.

In 55 games at Triple-A Omaha this year, 208 ABs | 13 HR, 52 RBI | 14 BB, 33 K | .269/.328/.510.

Pretty good, but it’s no 2005 Double-A .343/.432/.570 in 88 games that came pre-… uh, pre-Buddy Bell.

Still, might be worth a call-up to the MLB with the understanding that he will actually play at least two out of three games.

Looking at where the Royals are

Been awhile, eh?

In getting myself caught up with the team, the first thing I noted was how very mediocre this team is playing! I don’t mean that in any condescending way. I mean that in a the-Royals-might-not-lose-100-games-finally way. Observe:

Year: Winning percentage
2004: .358
2005: .346
2006: .383
2007: .443 , so far

And that’s without noting that the Royals are underperforming their Pythag record of 54-61 by three games.

Over the last 30 games, the Royals are 15-15—that’s .500 baseball, for those of you without a scientific calculator within reach.

There are six baseball teams currently with a worse record than the Royals, which is better than the usual zero or occasional one.

Here are some W-L splits for the team as a whole, via B-Ref:
16-24 vs. the AL Central
15-11 vs. the AL West
(10-21 vs. the AL East)
5-7 in extra innings games, and 16-14 in one-run games.

Now let’s stop and look at those one-run games real quick. Maybe you aren’t baffled or amazed by it, but let’s put 16-14 in context:

Year: W-L in one-run games
2004: 14-19
2005: 18-30
2006: 14-24
2007: 16-14, so far.

2007 has been the only year the Royals…

A look back at 6/24/04

June 24, 2004 was surely an important day to a number of people for a number of reasons, nearly all of which are more important than baseball. But Royals fans who take the game (too) seriously (like myself) remember that day for something else: The Carlos Beltran Trade.

ROYALS TO ASTROS
Carlos Beltran, CF

ASTROS TO ATHLETICS
Octavio Dotel, RP

ATHLETICS TO ROYALS
Mark Teahen, 3B
Mike Wood, SP/RP

ASTROS TO ROYALS
John Buck, C

This piece from Sam Mellinger at The Star breaks it down nicely:

The A’s needed a closer. Their bullpen was falling apart — 14 blown saves in 27 chances — jeopardizing the team’s playoff chances.

The Astros needed a superstar. They were five games back in the division and two back in the wild-card race.

And the Royals needed prospects. With more than a month before the trading deadline, Royals GM Allard Baird was interested in receiving prospects at catcher, third base and pitcher.

The piece also made me start to think—has this trade been a success for the Royals?

Personally, I remember being pretty down on it for the first year or so, mainly because Mike Wood was the only so-so part that came from…

Based on how everyone’s hitting right now, my lineup is..

1. David DeJesus (I’m flexible with Joey Gathright here)
2. Mark Teahen
3. Alex Gordon
4. John Buck
5. Esteban German (DeJesus if Gathright at 1)
...
8. Tony Pena Jr.
9. Joey Gathright (Pena if Gathright at 1)

I like that lineup.

But what do I know?

I’m just a blogger of simple stats. I’m not a Real Baseball Man. I watch ESPN, but I’m not sure I could tell you the difference between Gor-don and Tea-hen.

/Odd patriotic Alan Jackson song ripoff

The almost-half-year MVP and Cy Young

When considering which Royal has been the most valuable, you have to address a few things first:

===John Buck.

John Buck: 415 innings, 49 games. .263/.348/.569
Jason LaRue: 213 innings, 28 games. .173/.236/.321
Paul Phillips: 24 innings, 4 games. .200/.273/.300

Obviously, John Buck is the best catcher available to the MLB Royals roster. I would make the fairly defensible statement that Buck is among the best offensive catchers in baseball right now. He is tied with Victor Martinez with most home runs by a catcher (13) despite playing in 14 less games and racking up 90 less plate appearances than Martinez. In terms of rate stats like batting average, OBP, SLG, only Jorge Posada is a better catcher. He might not be the best hitting catcher in the league (I’d give that to Posada right now), but he is the second best and easily the best power-hitting catcher in baseball.

Of course, this means that Buddy Bell must bench him.

For 32 games, Bell has played another, massively inferior catcher. For 24 remarkable games, Buck has never even tasted playing time despite being among the absolute best at his position. Words and logic cannot describe how bad an idea it is…

Interesting column about DeJesus—reactions aplenty!

Bradford Doolittle, who pens the “Stat Guy” column for the Kansas City Star, had a really interesting column out yesterday.

In it, he suggested the Royals should trade David DeJesus to capitalize on his value. In light of my post yesterday, I wanted to highlight some points Bradford made, and comment on them.

The main reason now is the time to move DeJesus is what seems to be a decline in his defensive range. According to Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), a defensive metric from sabermetrician Mitchel Lichtman that many consider the gold standard for the topic, DeJesus’ defense has dropped to below-average levels this season (minus 14 runs per 150 games).

DeJesus has always had borderline speed for a center fielder; a fact that is also reflected in his disappointing base-stealing totals.

If DeJesus loses even a tick of foot speed at this point, he’s going to have to move to a different position. But as a player who has never reached double-figures in home runs, he doesn’t hit for enough power to play a corner outfield position on an everyday basis.

I can’t really agree totally here, in two areas. First, I’m not sure that a move to a corner…

David DeJesus, Unslumped?

Back before the season started, I had some cold feet about David DeJesus’ upcoming season. In light of his severe slump this year, I want to check in with my concerns and see how he’s doing there. Then we’ll check on some other parts of his season, and even see if he’s finally breaking loose from his nasty slump.

Two Baseball-Reference pages—DeJesus’ Stats | Splits

I pointed out a couple of things that made me a bit uneasy:

(1) The most obvious, his bad history with injury. In 2005, he played in 122 games. In 2006, he played in 119 games. In 2007, it’d be nice to see 140, 145, 150+ games from him.

How’s he doing in 2007? So far so good. In fact, very, very good. Of the Royals’ 64 games, DeJesus has played in 63 of them. His 63 games has him tied with two Orioles for the AL lead in games played—Nick Markakis and Miguel Tejada—who have played in every single Baltimore game this year. DeJesus is also tied with Grady Sizemore (at 290, eight more than Derek Jeter at number three) for the AL lead in plate appearances.

(2) His right/left hitting splits. Between ‘05 and…

Thoughts on an odd game

I knew Freddy Garcia had been struggling, but I knew that Scott Elarton had been struggling even more. I went to tonight’s game, pretty much because it’s the only night I’ll have off in a period of three weeks, not because I thought the Royals would win.

Well Elarton did struggle—allowing four runs in five innings—and is the textbook case why wins and losses are practically useless when comparing pitchers: with tonight’s win, Elarton is 2-2 with a 7.34 ERA. But Garcia didn’t even make it out of the second inning, giving up six runs over five outs.

Anywho, I had various thoughts that cropped up in the old skull during the game, so I figure I might as well put them down here so I can remove all doubt that I’m dumb.

---Buddy Bell is actually a pretty good manager, but he has a great sense of humor. Don’t believe me? Why did Jason LaRue start again tonight? Bell knows he’s going to get fired, so he’s having a ton of fun making subtle but devastating mistakes game in and game out. Why did Tony Pena—who was tied with David DeJesus with the second-best batting average in tonight’s lineup, if…

Day One summary

This is depressing. Of the Royals’ five selections today, four are younger than I, including one, who is over a full year younger.

ROUND 1, PICK 2—Mike Moustakas, 1b/3b

If they weren’t going to take a pitcher with the second overall pick in the draft (they could have made it easy on themselves by losing one of the last three games last season and just picked David Price, but what can you do?), I would have hoped the Royals would have gone with catcher Matt Weiters. That said, I’m very willing to admit I know little about the various potential Royals draftees, so perhaps I should leave my love of good-hitting catchers alone and just listen to the experts.

Baseball America on Moustakas:

No premium draft pick had a better season than Moustakas, who had one of the great careers in California high school history. [...] He was the starting quarterback at Chatsworth as a freshman and has a bazooka for an arm--his fastball sat in the low 90s early in the year in relief roles and hit 97 mph in April. His power arm isn’t his best tool though, as Moustakas’ quiet, quick hands, polished approach and strength at the…

The over/under game—Gil Meche!

I don’t check ESPN too terribly often, but I saw this fantasy column about three fantasy pitchers—Jason Marquis, Matt Morris, Gil Meche—and had to peruse.

They break it down into two thoughts and each columnist takes one. Adam Madison took the “Gil Meche isn’t for real” angle. He addresses Meche’s positives first—peripherals like his walk rate and home run rate, and the length of his starts (6 2/3 IP per start, much higher than past years). Then he delves into why he believes Meche won’t finish the season as strongly as he has started: (1) “the AL Central is tough to pitch in,” (2) “the Royals are 27th in defensive efficiency, which is a rather big negative since a poor defense results in more balls in play” (which has to be a typo—hopefully he meant more balls in play become hits, not simply more balls in play). Madison continues to say this might be a career year for Meche, but he’s still regressing toward the mean.

I agree with the first point (AL Central), but I don’t know how much of a difference it’ll make by the end of the year. I’m not so sure about the second point. Perhaps their…

Checking up on AL and NL Rookie of the Year candidates

This post was inspired not by Joakim Soria, as perhaps it should have been, but rather by Alex Gordon’s underwhelming year. In any event, I wanted to check out some of the contenders—some expected, some who came out of no where—and the seasons they’re having.

National League

--Hunter Pence: Whoa. The kid’s hitting .375/.403/.625 over 33 games for the Houston Astros. The 24-year-old is, by my count, the only hitter in Houston besides Carlos Lee that matters in the national sense. Plus, getting that kind of production from a center fielder is just outstanding. Can anyone discuss his defense? If he’s even close to major league average at CF, he’s got a strong hold on the lead for NL RoY in my book.

--Mark Reynolds: Were it not for Chad Tracy, Reynolds might be a legitimate NL RoY contender. As is, he’ll have to wait for Tracy—having a pretty great year so far—to get injured or benched or something else unlikely to happen. But then again, perhaps not playing every day is the number one reason he’s hitting off the charts, eh?

--Chris Sampson: A teammate of Pence, Sampson’s having a solid year on the mound. 10 games started, 63 innings…

Preliminary Royals draft thread—Matt Wieters / John Buck question

John Sickles’ mock draft has Matt Wieters going to the Royals at number two overall, an altogether likely event from what all my smallish brain can gather about the upcoming draft. So I wanted to ask people who know much more than I: what does John Buck’s recent success do to the drafting of Matt Wieters?

Also, feel free to use this thread as any type of Royals draft talk, or Royals talk period, really.

Brian Bannister, Stopper Deluxe + Royals notes!

In what I would call his first great game this year—he’s had a few bad, a few so-so, a few pretty decent—Brian Bannister stopped the Royals seven-game slide. Granted, it was against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but after the Royals got slapped around by the Baltimore Orioles and Seattle Mariners, I’ll take anything.

8 innings pitched, 2 hits, 0 walks, 1 run (a home run) allowed, six strikeouts. All of that with 107 pitches, 70 of which were strikes. It was his first win this season. Perhaps most important, he completely outpitched a fellow youngster (but a guy who might be a touch better in terms of the ol’ prospect value), Scott Kazmir.

(Sidenote: Octavio Dotel picked up his first save of the season, but it was iffy—one strikeout, two walks, no hits, 17 pitches. It got the job done but it could have been a touch more dominant.)

---

In other news today, would somebody who saw the game or read a recap, please, please tell me—how did MIKE SWEENEY get a TRIPLE? It had to have been like three mistakes made by the outfielder on the same play.

---

John Buck should obviously be a priority player this…

I’m back

I don’t know why this is newsworthy, but I’m a little sluggish in the brain and the only song title I could think of that seemed appropriate here was “I’m Back” from a pretty amazing blues guitarist.

It didn’t start as a blogging hiatus, but it ended up like that. I was just enjoying my early summer way too much. It was an amazing couple of weeks off—seeing the outdoors, getting some sun… weird, human stuff—and I’m glad I took them. I feel entirely refreshed from finals and school and my first few weeks at my new job and now I can focus on more important things: things like baseball.

Anyway, my laptop’s up off the DL for now and so I’m going to go get some lunch and then try to get myself caught up here at BBTF and FanGraphs before work at 4:30.

While I’m getting myself caught up, please feel free to use this as a Royals open thread.

Ideas for discussion:
--Shane Costa / Emil Brown—worst LF combination of our time, or worst LF combination of all time?
--Mark Teahen is pulling balls and hitting them well. I was at last night’s game and his dinger was…

Open Thread Time

As I finish up finals and get my laptop back up to snuff, please feel free to use this as an open thread.

Some recent news:

--Zack Greinke to the bullpen, not sure why.
--Angel Berroa back up in the majors when we need a first baseman, not sure why.
--Related to that, Alex Gordon playing first base and Billy Butler benched, not sure why on both and the latter reeks of The Justin Huber Treatment.
--Ross Gload to the DL, Shealy close to being back?
--Whatever happened to that Dotel guy?
--Wow, that Luke Hudson knows how to make an entrance, doesn’t he?
--Gil Meche’s AL Rankings: 1st in IP, 2nd in batters faced, 2nd in ERA (1.91!), 2nd in ERA+ (240!). Also, he’s 3-1 in 9 starts on a 13-27 team. If he keeps this up, he’ll be pretty much the best Royals pitcher in my memory of watching the team. I was a tad too young for Cone or Appier, really.
--Meche also looked very good against Haren, arguably the AL’s best pitcher so far this year, for two straight games.

When did the Royals get starting pitching?

I have a five-page paper due tomorrow that I have yet to begin working on, but I’d prefer to put it off another half-hour, so after Meche’s quasi-gem today, I’d like to talk about a much more pleasant topic: the Royals’ rotation. Four of these five guys are Dayton Moore acquisitions, which means I’m still firmly in the Moore4Prez campaign. Anyway, I wanted to look at two of the starters who have been, to me at least, surprises. Both have been surpassing my expectations pretty strongly. Let’s check them out…

Gil Meche

Now, this is scary. Dayton Moore announces an $11 million per year, five year deal for a guy who, up to this point in his career, has been ehh. People nationally and people locally suffer from dropjaw syndrome. He constantly cites guys like Chris Carpenter and Jason Schmidt in terms of who Meche compares to, and how they expect Meche to recover from his injuries and turn on the burners later in his career like those two did. People are unimpressed with the reasoning. But, so far this year, Moore has been very right.

Now I understand the sample size on this thing in 2007 is smaller than Angel…

Vlady, Teahen, Bartolo, Greinke, and some guy named Billy

So it was Billy Butler’s MLB debut today, which was much to my surprise. I almost wished I hadn’t have checked into BBTF before I left, simply because it would have been fun to see how I would have reacted. Stark, awe-struck silence? Happiness? Tears of sheer joy? In any event, Max ruined all my fun and I was resigned to a few fist pumps before I left for the game.

For all of the positive reactions to the Butler call-up, I think Lee Warren has a valid point, too:

Billy Butler was called up and got the start in left field. I don’t really understand this move. Surely, the Royals offense has been anemic, but between Emil Brown and Reggie Sanders, they have left field covered. And Butler was supposed to be in Omaha to get his defense up to par. Was he able to do that in one month? Seems to me like Moore is hitting the panic button to get the offense jump-started at the major league level. I’m guessing that Butler won’t have a problem in the plate, but I’m not so confident regarding his fielding.

And Lee seemed to be dead on with tonight’s game. In…

Fun Splits Time, with Baseball-Reference!

Because I was a grumpy Gus last time, I’ll keep this one Buddy Bell-criticism-free.

Every single stat I quote is courtesy of B-Ref. More specifically, courtesy of this page.

Batting Order
1—98 plate appearances, 4 HR, 09 RBI | 333/408/552 | .960 OPS
2—95 plate appearances, 2 HR, 13 RBI | 264/319/402 | .721 OPS
3—89 plate appearances, 2 HR, 10 RBI | 237/348/368 | .716 OPS
4—87 plate appearances, 3 HR, 12 RBI | 286/345/468 | .813 OPS
5—87 plate appearances, 1 HR, 10 RBI | 238/264/321 | .585 OPS
6—87 plate appearances, 1 HR, 08 RBI | 197/287/329 | .616 OPS
7—84 plate appearances, 3 HR, 07 RBI | 167/214/346 | .560 OPS
8—83 plate appearances, 3 HR, 06 RBI | 236/325/458 | .783 OPS
9—81 plate appearances, 0 HR, 04 RBI | 213/263/333 | .596 OPS

There’s a real dead spot at number six—three games ended with it as its last out, and the seven-spot has two more home runs but one less RBI. Also, John Buck is single-handedly saving LaRue from making that eight-spot embarrassing. That five-spot (Gordon for awhile, now often Gload or Brown) is pretty weak. David DeJesus, of course, is rocking that leadoff spot.…

Why Buddy Bell is the worst manager in MLB history—no hyperbole or exaggeration

In the fifth inning, when Brian Bannister was struggling, there are several moves that could have been made. The most sensible to me would be to play Brandon Duckworth, a long reliever recently freed from rotation duties. A man who is fresh—he has played in two games ALL YEAR.

Instead, BUDDY BELL PLAYED JOEL PERALTA. YES, THE SAME JOEL PERALTA AS BEFORE.

Guess what? PERALTA BLEW THE GAME AGAIN! YAY!

I don’t know who to blame more—Peralta or Bell.

I can honestly, without exaggeration, say that the Royals might be near or above .500 ball without Buddy Bell at the helm.

It’s so frustrating.

Great news—BRANDON DUCKWORTH IS BEING WARMED UP AS PERALTA GETS SHELLED! WHAT MARVELOUS MANAGEMENT!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Progress Report—Pitchers

Brian Bannister is being called up for today’s start and a place in the rotation, sending Brandon Duckworth to the bullpen and someone down to Triple-A Omaha. Since I don’t know who’s getting sent down, we’re just going to pretend that, for this progress report, Bannister isn’t coming up. We’ll check in with the current 25-man roster, sans the Ban Man.

All stats are coming from: The Hardball Times, Baseball-Reference, FanGraphs. [Mini-glossary: B-Ref’s glossary (ERA+), THT’s explanation of FIP, and my explanation of WPA.]

ROTATION

4 G, 26.7 IP—2-1, 3.04 ERA, 1.163 WHIP, 18 K, 5 BB | 151 ERA+, 3.80 FIP, 0.32 WPA

de la Rosa has been a pleasant surprise this year. A 26-year-old with great K/BB numbers so far, de la Rosa has proven to be one of Dayton Moore’s better pitching pickups this year. de la Rosa is also the only starter with a winning record. His WHIP and FIP would suggest that he might be getting a bit lucky, in terms of his ERA, even after accounting for the strikeout and walk numbers. And I can guarantee that he won’t be finishing the year with a winning record unless he stops playing…

Progress Report—Batters

Let’s take a look around the 25-manner and check in with everyone, and start making wild guesses (based on minimal amounts of information) as to whether or not the player will maintain or break the pace he’s on. And because I don’t want to continually cite the stats, I’ll just say that, unless otherwise noted, everything here comes from three of the best baseball websites out there: The Hardball Times, FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference. Although it should be noted the stats in the three sites won’t be updated until tomorrow, so this post will leave out today’s game.

Glossaries to peruse: B-Ref, about RC/27 and OPS+ | My explanation of WPA. Also, PA is plate appearances, P/PA is pitches per plate appearance, LD% is percentage of batted balls hit as line drives, and BABIP is batting average of balls in play.

CATCHERS

10 G, 38 PA—.375/.474/.781, 3 HR—4.0 P/PA, 8.3 LD%, .429 BABIP | 15.43 RC/27, 230 OPS+, 0.33 WPA

He dunked another 2-run home run today, which these numbers don’t reflect.

What a great start from Buck. There’s a recent post over at Royals Retrospective about him and his future. But for now, I’m a little bit concerned with…

The 91st Greatest Royal of All Time is John Buck

Max, or ”Alex Gordon’s #1 Fan” around these parts, has one of the coolest baseball blogs out there, as you well know by now.

Well, in his ‘100 Greatest Royals of All Time’ series, he has reached number 91, who has turned out to be none other than young catcher John Buck.

I had intended to write a post about Buck soon, addressing the Buck/Jason LaRue platoon and Buck’s early success (he’s got an OPS+ of 274!), but I think that Max has it all covered.

He even has… (shudder)… hope for Buck’s future. Go check it out.

Sidenote: If 312 games of 84 OPS+ production gets you 91st in the Royals list, what does it do for you in the Devil Rays list?

Second sidenote: With the signing of Octavio Dotel, the Royals have had every single member of the infamous three-team Carlos Beltran trade on their 25-man roster—John Buck, Mark Teahen, Mike Wood, Carlos Beltran, Octavio Dotel.

On a better, more alliterative note: Billy Butler, Brian Bannister

Because nobody likes to end on a downer…

Brian Bannister is doing well.

4 starts, 2.61 ERA, 20.2 IP, 16 H, 11 R, 6 ER (great defense in Omaha, eh?), 4 HR, 4 BB, 14 K.

Billy Butler is doing pretty well, too.

16 G, 55 AB, 13 R, 18 H, 3 doubles, 4 HR, 11 BB, 5 K, .327/.441/.600.

When does Bannister get called up to KC? The bullpen seems weak enough that it could be any old time now.

When does Butler get called up to KC? Of course this depends on the clock starting, and Dayton Moore’s insistence on not rushing prospects. It’s likely that if he does get called up this year, it won’t be until August or September. But, considering how Emil Brown and Ryan Shealy are playing, the little instant gratification gnome in me wants Brown traded/sent-down/released, Shealy benched for Gload, and Butler called up to play left field. Of course, that would be unwise in terms of the Shealy investment and could prove devastating to the Butler investment. Still, the gnome must have his say, and so he has.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this thread, other than to say I…

Joel Peralta: 8 middle-relief appearances, 3 blown saves

I was having a great time at the ballgame today. I was enjoying fun conversation with friends, watching the Royals offense look pretty good (despite Emil Brown’s urgent attempts to wreck it), watching Greinke do so-so. And then, on Kauffman’s large board, came the announcement that Joel Peralta was warming up in the bullpen.

I had already been to another Greinke start (the Dice-K debut I wrote about before) where I had already seen Peralta come in and open up the gates for the other team. I’d also read boxscores of his relentless ability to yield runs.

So there I was, with Peralta’s face staring down on me, and I just knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. A man on first and third with one out, I set the over/under for my friend: 1.5 runs. He took the under (predicted a double play, actually), and, groaning, I took the over. Peralta allowed one run so I guess my friend won for the inning. Then Peralta came back out again the next inning for one more out, and gave up another run for good measure. I suppose I won for the game.

Regardless, to the main point: WHAT IS BUDDY BELL…

On the skipper and the slugger

NYRoyal at the inestimable Royals Review has a post up on Buddy Bell (along with an interesting comment thread following it). The goods:

Buddy does have his faults.  He has played vets too much to the expense of young, developing players.  He may be too wedded to R/L matchups with the bullpen.  But, in case you haven’t been following baseball too closely, that is what the vast majority of managers do.  That is standard, traditional baseball.  That is very Tony LaRussa.

Which leads me to my final point.  If you hate Bell so much (and I don’t think there is much good reason to hate him as a manager), then

1) Who would you like to be the manager?

and, more importantly

2) Why do you think he would be better?

Since I’ve started my blog at FanGraphs, I’ve been thinking more often in terms of WPA and the such. And let’s see what it says about Buddy Bell. I want to compare the WPA and REW of the pitchers, and what it means. [Feel free to click my explanation on WPA, BRAA and REW if you like. The basic idea is this—WPA is what happened, REW is what should have…

Small Sample Sizes, Underwhelming Offense!

When suffering from writer’s block, steal from someone else.

Looking at Baseball-Reference.com (primarily this page, but elsewhere on that amazing site, too), let’s check out some of the numbers from this young Royals season.

--John Buck’s .429 batting average, .520 on-base percentage and .905 slugging percentage over 7 games is pretty good, no?

--Fun underproduction numbers: Ryan Shealy, in 11 games, went .108/.171/.216; Alex Gordon, in 11 games, went .125/.205/.225; Emil Brown, in 10 games, went .176/.200/.235; Mark Teahen, in 13 games, went .179/.319/.282; Mike Sweeney, in 10 games, went .152/.216/.152 (correct, zero extra base hits along with five singles and two walks); and Jason LaRue, in 9 games, has gone .125/.154/.250.

--Our lineup’s average age is 29.2, and they’ve hit .228/.293/.362, plus an OPS+ of 78. Our pitching’s average age is 27.3, and they’ve pitched to a 4.79 ERA, good for a ERA+ of 90.

--Some ranks, compared to the total of 14 AL teams: 5th in at bats, 12th in runs, 8th in hits, 10th in home runs, 11th in walks / 1st in strikeouts. Some pitching ranks: 12th in ERA, 14th (last) in wins, 1st in losses, 9th in saves, 4th in innings pitched—interestingly, 4th in strikeouts.

--Of…

Three links, open thread

I apologize for not having any posts up recently. I do plan to have that fixed soon, but until then, feel free to use this as an open thread for any type of Royals or KC or whatever stuff. Also, I’ll probably be getting up some PineTarCharts updates in, and here are a few links in case you haven’t seen them:

--The Hardball Times reviews the Soul of Baseball. (By the way, if you haven’t yet, BUY THE BOOK BUY THE BOOK BUY THE BOOK.)

--Royals Retrospective (Penned by Alex Gordon’s #1 Fan) has updated with two new top-100-Royals posts since I’ve last linked there. Check ‘em out, pronto. Double pronto. Double posthaste pronto stat.

--A few KC Star links: (1) Interesting quotes from Baird about Greinke. (2) Greinke lost two of his grandparents. (3) Interestingly, a Jason Whitlock column about race that I didn’t stop reading halfway through. Interesting take on the Imus thing.

The beginnings of a man-crush + game pictures!

Well, despite the early feelings I had about the Erik Cordier/Tony Pena Jr. trade (indifferent-to-mildly-negative), Pena is really, really impressing me so far.

His three (awesomely cool) triples aside, his plate discipline and defense is really endearing to me. I’ve been to half of the games so far this year (I’m at 100% loss rate), and Pena has impressed me more than once in each game.

[I have an awesome picture of his great play from Saturday’s game, below.]

But my favorite part is the fact that he’s batting 9th, as a secondary lead-off hitter. He has the plate discipline and speed to get on base often in time for the top of the order to come around. David DeJesus seems to be a meld of ideal 1-spot and 2-spot hitters, and thanks to Pena, he can be.

I really like Pena’s improvement over Angel Berroa. My man-crush of him has begun.

Now, the pictures from Saturday’s game. Frankly, I cared less about getting certain pitcher’s and hitter’s pictures and just looked for cool shots. Hope you enjoy.

--Meche pitching to who I believe is Curtis Granderson Placido Polanco.
--Pena’s amazing play! [With terrible focus!]
--Sanders coming in from his home…

Royals Hacktastic Scores

Well I was at the game but just got home now, so I don’t have time to put up the pictures I have. I have what I believe to be a great picture of Tony Pena Jrs. web-gem-quality dive and throw (great stretch by Shealy there, too), but we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to get that straightened out.

For now, though, I want to throw out another ranking post. At first, I thought the real hacktastic guys were Emil Brown, Ryan Shealy and Ross Gload, then Sweeney kinda looked the part today and both Shealy and Gload showed a bit of restraint. I’m also noticing Teahen with a little less patience than last year, but new guys like Pena doing very well. DeJesus seems to be hit-and-miss, not only with his actual hitting, but his ability to lay off some pitches, too.

So, give me a list: At the top, the most hacktastic and least patient hitters; at the bottom, the least hacktastic and most patient hitters.

Dice-K’s great game, Royals thoughts, pictures, and videos!

The anticipation around Daisuke Matsuzaka’s first regular season Major League Baseball start has been building since the Red Sox paid $50 million just to talk to the guy, and another $50 million to sign him.

It finally happened today, and it would have been foolish to hope for a better game out of him. He looked dominant over the Royals lineup.

He struggled a bit early. His very first at bat in the majors resulted in a base hit for David DeJesus. But later, in the first inning with men on first and second, Emil Brown grounded into a double play to get Matsuzaka out of the inning painlessly.

Innings two through four were masterful. It was nine Royals up, nine Royals down, which crescendoed into the fourth inning, in which Matsuzaka struck out the side.

He looked a bit more human in the fifth and sixth innings, with five men on base (two in scoring position) and a solo shot. In some aspects, through poor decisions/execution from the Royals and a pinch of good timing, Dice-K was a little lucky to escape the fifth and sixth innings with only one run given up.

But he recovered very strongly in the…