As promised.... The Royals!

This will be an ode to the Royals. Both good and bad.

I will say that this is the first full year I have been away from the KC area, so I have not followed the Royals as closely as I would have liked. I am by no means an expert. But I do have an educated opinion from being a fan for a long time (not as long as others) and there are plenty of the players that have stayed the same.

So let's begin.


An Ode to Zach Greinke...
Probably the best pitcher in baseball today. He is regarded by many experts (Buster Olney of ESPN being the most prominent at this time) as the leader for the AL Cy Young award. Despite the fact that he has only a 13-8 record.

The last 2 outings he has had include an 8 inning demolition of the Cleveland Indians in which he recorded a franchise record (a franchise that has had some decent pitchers including a former Cy Young winner David Cone) 15K's, as well as a complete game 1 hitter (and only 1 walk to boot) on the road in Seattle.

As of today, the Greink leads the AL (only using AL for comparison for the Cy Young purposes) in ERA, Walks and Hits per inning, Complete games (6), Shutouts (3), Home runs per 9 IP, and Adjusted ERA + (an overall stat for ERA compared to league averages, which Greinke leads Felix Hernandez of Seattle 189 - 157, or 32 points, which is the difference between 2 and 10th!). He is second in innings pitched, second in hits per 9 IP, second in Hits: Walks ratio and is on the worst team in baseball.

He has taken a loss in 3 games in which he has pitched 6 innings or more and given up 2 earned runs or less. He has got a no decision in 6 games in which he has had a quality start (6+ innings with 3 ER or less). If the G-man were to get W's in the games in which he gave up 1 ER or less, his record would be 16-6, because he has 2 losses while giving up only 1 ER.

As long as he stays with the Royals through the end of his current contract, I anticipate him being the best pitcher to wear a Royals uniform. He has the ability to win 2 Cy Youngs, and if he gets an offense, could win 20 games easily.

Moving on...

An Ode to John Bale...
Why an ode to John Bale? Because he is the worst relief pitcher in baseball in my estimation.

Last night he allowed 1 of 2 inherited runners to score. And that dropped his percentage of inherited runners scoring from 64% to 62%. What is worse is that he did not even record an out. The Royals maybe looked at this stat after it happened and decided they should remove the person who has allowed the most inherited runners to score (21) and has the worst percentage of runners to score of pitchers who have faced 30 inherited runners. Of pitchers facing 20 or more inherited runners, he only has the fourth worst percentage, narrowly edged out by former Royals reliever Ron Mahay.

He has done this with an ERA of 5.93. And just to emphasize how bad that is, he allows 1 run to score every 1.5 innings (rounding of course) he pitches. Of the batters he faces.

He has pitched 27.1 innings on the year and allowed 18 earned runs. He has faced situations with 34 inherited runners and allowed 21 of them to score. In the 27.1 innings that John Bale has pitched this year, there have been 39 runs scored! Every inning John Bale has pitched, there have been almost 1.5 runs scored for the other team!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Royals just released Ron Mahay, who would be the closest competition to John Bale in the futility department, but he only gave up 22 ER in 41 1/3 IP. Throw in the 18 inherited runners to score and his total is up to 40 runners scoring total. Only 1 more than Bale. Except he pitched half again as many innings as Bale! And he was released!

The Royals bullpen on the whole has been awful. It may not be fair to pick on Bale (yes it is) because of how awful the entire 'pen has been. As a whole they have allowed 46% of inherited runners to score. They have the top 3 in number of inherited runners scoring with Bale, Mahay (18) and Jamey Wright (19) in the entire major leagues. The next team to get 3 pitchers in the lead of such a stat is the San Fransisco Giants, who have 4 in the Top 30 (numbers 3 and 4 are right next to each other). One of those pitchers is former Royals "great" Jeremy Affeldt (DJ Carrasco also is in the Top 30).

The 46% as a team is the second worst in the decade (baseball-reference.com). The only team worse is the 2003 Royals who allowed 49% of runners to score, but they allowed 93 to score that year and this year's team has already allowed 102. The next closest team this year is Washington who have allowed 90 inherited runners to score (but only allow a league average of 33% to score).

Did I mention Bale has had 5 save chances and blown 4?



An Ode to Billy Butler...
The only fairly consistent offensive player in the Royals lineup. Butler leads the team in batting average (.295), on base percentage (.349 and by no means something to brag about), doubles (41), hits (146), RBI (67), Total bases (234), AB's (495), Games played (130) and is second on the team in walks (42 to Dejesus's 45), and slugging percentage (0.473 to Bryan Pena's 0.487). He was even named AL offensive player of the week once!

I will be the first to admit the Royals are terrible. And as bad as they have pitched, their offense has been even worse. But Billy has done all this at the age of 23. For the longest time, he was on pace to break the team record in doubles of 54 set by Hal "I will throw my phone at you in a violent rage" McRae. The fact that he continues to produce is a great sign for things to come. He has even been a better first baseman than Mike Jacobs. That's not saying much, but he was supposed to be AWFUL and the fact that he is better than someone speaks volumes.


An Ode to Management...
Dayton Moore just got a contract extension. He did have one year left on his contract (through the end of 2010), but got his contract extended by 4 years to 2014. When Dayton Moore was hired, the Royals thought they were saved. I remember the days of Allan Baird and the draft picks (other than Greinke) during his reign and the entire decade of the 90's (Jeff Granger, Dee Brown, and Kyle Snyder anyone?). I remember the acquisitions of Neifi Perez and Chuck "way passed his prime" Knoblach. Chili Davis. Emil Brown leading the team in RBI's two consecutive years! Jose Lima! (may have happened with Moore, but it was bad and I think its a good example so live with it). This was supposed to be different.

While I will say the draft has potentially been different (we have not been scared off by the asking price of prospects), the rest of the moves have yet to come to fruition. I know that we have expanded the scouting department and started scouting in other countries. I know they have beefed up coaching and development in the minor league system. But what have we gotten out of it?

The signing of Jose Guillen, Mike Jacobs, Kyle Farnsworth and Horacio Ramirez? The worst bullpen in the major leagues? The worst offense in the major leagues (the Nationals have multiple players hitting .300. Look it up!)? No real replacements ready to make the jump, even for September call ups (they activate Guillen off the DL with the opening of the 40 man roster, but can't bring up anyone else?)?

While I did not think that Moore needed to go just yet (one more year to see if ANYONE progressed to major league ready), I'm not sure they needed to extend his contract. Too many bad moves, too many holes in a team and a fan base that had high hopes.




I think that is enough of an ode for one day. Check back later for some college football, starting tomorrow!

DDSF