Well, everything that could be said about the Twins series was opposite in the Astros series. That's not entirely true though, because the pitching was actually very good in this series too. The team was finally able to get some runs on the board and were even able to overcome an average pitching performance from Jeremy Guthrie and come back in extras in the second game of the series. I think that this series could be really big heading forward. I don't know where many people stand on the topic of confidence, but as a former athlete, though merely low level, I think that confidence can play a huge part in your actual ability to play.
When Mike Moustakas hit that go ahead home run in the 11th on Wednesday night, he created a large wealth of confidence, the likes of which can stick with an individual, or an entire team, for a good deal of time. In my opinion, a high confidence creating play like that could have a noticeably positive effect in the locker room for about a week. When you combine that with the stellar performance by James Shields last night and the recent trend for Billy and Moose to start getting hits, we could be very well on our way to a short hot streak. This should only be compounded by returning home and playing against a team that swept us just a weekend ago. The team should be very ready to come out with guns blazing. Though I personally always feel that you should play smarter, not harder when you have something to prove, anger can be just as strong of a motivator.
The only things to note that aren't really positive are Chen's back and Cain's groin. These injuries are minor and are to non-essential players. Although Cain is amazing on defense and has done decently well on offense so far, he is not someone that we cannot afford to lose. Every indication is that he will only be out for a couple of weeks and then be back to full-time duty, barring something crazy happening. It is unfortunate that Dyson has a family issue right now, because this is exactly when we need him. Hopefully we will be able to pick up the series win this weekend and everything will be good.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
First Away Twins Series. Games 9-11
In the interest of time, and my sanity, I've decided that I will only write once per series unless I feel the urge to write on a specific topic.
As we know now, the Royals did not get many wins against a supposedly shoddy team in Minnesota. In fact, they got none. There have been pitching woes and defensive miscues, but the primary culprit has been the lack of offense. The Royals rank last in many offensive categories and need to step it up if they hope to make the playoffs this season. In the first five batters of our lineup, only one has an OPS of more than .710 and that is Alex Gordon. Overall, the only people who are batting close to or above expectations so far are Alex, Salvy and Cain. There is no way that they are all this bad. It is basically statistically impossible. The numbers aren't showing them as being unlucky necessarily either. They just aren't hitting the ball well. It's too hard to win games when you aren't scoring runs on offense. We need to step it up. Facing the Astros may be a good place to start, but regardless of team, the Royals need to start swinging it better or this will quickly be a lost season. Three games under .500 isn't great, but we could have been in the exact same position simply by losing the home opener. We could easily go 9-1 over our next 10 or something like that and be far into the positive column. Essentially, it is too early to tell anything. I saw a post yesterday that in each of the last several seasons, some team that started 4-7 went on to make the playoffs. Clearly, the season isn't over. The boys just need to put their hitting shoes on, buckle down and blast some balls. Only one home run by the whole team is an embarrassment. They are better than that and they know it. Improvement will surely come. It is statistically likely for it to come because this would rank as the worst season for several Royals hitters. We just need it to come sooner rather than later. Digging out of a hole last year was dramatic and all, but it was the reason why we didn't make the playoffs. Anything less than 2-1 against Houston is a disappointment and we can't be taking disappointments each series. We have to start winning games before it is too late.
As we know now, the Royals did not get many wins against a supposedly shoddy team in Minnesota. In fact, they got none. There have been pitching woes and defensive miscues, but the primary culprit has been the lack of offense. The Royals rank last in many offensive categories and need to step it up if they hope to make the playoffs this season. In the first five batters of our lineup, only one has an OPS of more than .710 and that is Alex Gordon. Overall, the only people who are batting close to or above expectations so far are Alex, Salvy and Cain. There is no way that they are all this bad. It is basically statistically impossible. The numbers aren't showing them as being unlucky necessarily either. They just aren't hitting the ball well. It's too hard to win games when you aren't scoring runs on offense. We need to step it up. Facing the Astros may be a good place to start, but regardless of team, the Royals need to start swinging it better or this will quickly be a lost season. Three games under .500 isn't great, but we could have been in the exact same position simply by losing the home opener. We could easily go 9-1 over our next 10 or something like that and be far into the positive column. Essentially, it is too early to tell anything. I saw a post yesterday that in each of the last several seasons, some team that started 4-7 went on to make the playoffs. Clearly, the season isn't over. The boys just need to put their hitting shoes on, buckle down and blast some balls. Only one home run by the whole team is an embarrassment. They are better than that and they know it. Improvement will surely come. It is statistically likely for it to come because this would rank as the worst season for several Royals hitters. We just need it to come sooner rather than later. Digging out of a hole last year was dramatic and all, but it was the reason why we didn't make the playoffs. Anything less than 2-1 against Houston is a disappointment and we can't be taking disappointments each series. We have to start winning games before it is too late.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Games 7 and 8
With Infante's head injury this week, I didn't expect a lot from our second base corps. Johnny Giavotella came up, but only played on Wednesday. It looks like Infante will be back in the 2nd base position as early as tonight (game 9), but that is still up in the air.
As far as game seven went, here's what I have to say. Loading the bases three times: good. Scoring zero runs when the bases are loaded: bad. That about sums it up. Getting on base is the most important thing that you can somewhat control. The Royals just didn't get any hits when they would have been opportune which could be a lineup problem or it could just be bad luck. This early in the season, I'm going with the former. This was also Yordano Ventura's first start and he performed admirably. He got his pitch count a touch too high, but he went 6IP with 6Ks and no ERs. That's pretty darned good for your first start of the year.
Game eight was Guthrie's second shot at starting and he did remarkably well. For whatever reason, it seems like we score tons of runs for him. No idea what that's about. It would be moderately interesting to see if there is some sort of correlation between pitching statistics and runs scored by the offense in starts by that pitcher. It could be luck, opposing pitcher or something else. It would be interesting to see, regardless. We scored a bunch of runs and won. This was Gio's first game starting at second and he played pretty well.
We have now won our last two series after dropping our first two game set against Detroit. I would hazard a guess that if we win 2/3 series for the rest of the year, we will make the postseason handily. Not that I'm making any impressive prediction or anything. Pitching is good and the offense can only improve on what they have shown so far. The first home run of the year by Gordon was nice, but there should be a lot more power in our lineup than we have seen thus far. Could simply be a case of it not being quite warm enough for the bats to succeed yet, but I'm hoping that everybody breaks out soon and we can roll over the Twins and Astros who we play exclusively over the next nine games. It would be wise of us to get as many games as we can into the win column over this stretch of fairly easy opponents.
As far as game seven went, here's what I have to say. Loading the bases three times: good. Scoring zero runs when the bases are loaded: bad. That about sums it up. Getting on base is the most important thing that you can somewhat control. The Royals just didn't get any hits when they would have been opportune which could be a lineup problem or it could just be bad luck. This early in the season, I'm going with the former. This was also Yordano Ventura's first start and he performed admirably. He got his pitch count a touch too high, but he went 6IP with 6Ks and no ERs. That's pretty darned good for your first start of the year.
Game eight was Guthrie's second shot at starting and he did remarkably well. For whatever reason, it seems like we score tons of runs for him. No idea what that's about. It would be moderately interesting to see if there is some sort of correlation between pitching statistics and runs scored by the offense in starts by that pitcher. It could be luck, opposing pitcher or something else. It would be interesting to see, regardless. We scored a bunch of runs and won. This was Gio's first game starting at second and he played pretty well.
We have now won our last two series after dropping our first two game set against Detroit. I would hazard a guess that if we win 2/3 series for the rest of the year, we will make the postseason handily. Not that I'm making any impressive prediction or anything. Pitching is good and the offense can only improve on what they have shown so far. The first home run of the year by Gordon was nice, but there should be a lot more power in our lineup than we have seen thus far. Could simply be a case of it not being quite warm enough for the bats to succeed yet, but I'm hoping that everybody breaks out soon and we can roll over the Twins and Astros who we play exclusively over the next nine games. It would be wise of us to get as many games as we can into the win column over this stretch of fairly easy opponents.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Games 3, 4 and 5...and 6
I was a bit distracted over the weekend and forgot to make a post. It also struck me that there is very little to talk about early in the season because so much of what we would or could say is just overreaction to a small sample size. I will talk a little bit about things that I think we can say from each game.
I went to the home opener, which I believe my last post was just prior to. It was a lot of fun, but very cold. Excitement for Royals baseball is very high right now. It would have likely been even higher if we had swept the Tigers, but you can only ask for so much. I was pleased that we scored so many runs that day. That's basically what I'm expecting of our offense. It was a lot of walks and singles, which can win you games if you're constantly putting pressure on the defense.
Saturday's game was a reminder that Bruce Chen can still be an extremely effective pitcher and will definitely earn his paychecks this year. I still suspect that either he or Guthrie will be moved to the bullpen sometime around midseason to make room for Zimmer or Duffy (or both), but he played well and we scored enough runs to win. Wade Davis tried to blow the game, but Gordon and Perez put the team on their backs (as they are apt to do) and won the game.
Sunday's game was when I first acknowledged that the bullpen terrifies me right now. After Collins demonstrated once again that he is incapable of throwing strikes right now and Bueno came in and let all the inherited runners score, it struck me that I really only have confidence in Holland, Crow and Herrera right now. Everyone else is generally lucky to get through an inning unscathed.
Now, to the present. Today we find out that Collins and Bueno are both going on the DL with nonsensical injuries. I see this as a "get your head straight" period for both of them. It's possible that they do have some nagging injuries, but this is clearly one of those reactionary moves that happens when somebody gets knocked around a couple times. We brought up DoJo and Michael Mariot to replace them. DoJo is kind of like Collins in that he has control issues coupled with extreme strikeout potential. I don't know much about Mariot, except that this is his first trip to the big leagues and he will likely be a little nervous his first time out. I think that Ned would prefer to use him in a lower leverage situation if at all possible, but alas, that is not bullpen life. We have Vargas going today and Ventura tomorrow. Hopefully we can win the first two games of this series to guarantee us at least a .500 record going into our Minnesota and Houston trip. I think we could be in good shape after those games since neither of those teams are very good. It would be nice if our offense could start hitting the ball a little harder, but these things may still come. I'm not yet worried about anyone offensively. Moose hasn't shown much as far as hitting, but his plate discipline has been outstanding. Alcides needs to just be more patient. I normally view him as an automatic out. If we can get away from that, it would be a huge step forward for our offense.
Game 6 ninja edit to make sure I cover every game: Infante gets hit in the head, Royals win. Sucks that he got hit, but we won and he looks like he might not be out for too long!
I went to the home opener, which I believe my last post was just prior to. It was a lot of fun, but very cold. Excitement for Royals baseball is very high right now. It would have likely been even higher if we had swept the Tigers, but you can only ask for so much. I was pleased that we scored so many runs that day. That's basically what I'm expecting of our offense. It was a lot of walks and singles, which can win you games if you're constantly putting pressure on the defense.
Saturday's game was a reminder that Bruce Chen can still be an extremely effective pitcher and will definitely earn his paychecks this year. I still suspect that either he or Guthrie will be moved to the bullpen sometime around midseason to make room for Zimmer or Duffy (or both), but he played well and we scored enough runs to win. Wade Davis tried to blow the game, but Gordon and Perez put the team on their backs (as they are apt to do) and won the game.
Sunday's game was when I first acknowledged that the bullpen terrifies me right now. After Collins demonstrated once again that he is incapable of throwing strikes right now and Bueno came in and let all the inherited runners score, it struck me that I really only have confidence in Holland, Crow and Herrera right now. Everyone else is generally lucky to get through an inning unscathed.
Now, to the present. Today we find out that Collins and Bueno are both going on the DL with nonsensical injuries. I see this as a "get your head straight" period for both of them. It's possible that they do have some nagging injuries, but this is clearly one of those reactionary moves that happens when somebody gets knocked around a couple times. We brought up DoJo and Michael Mariot to replace them. DoJo is kind of like Collins in that he has control issues coupled with extreme strikeout potential. I don't know much about Mariot, except that this is his first trip to the big leagues and he will likely be a little nervous his first time out. I think that Ned would prefer to use him in a lower leverage situation if at all possible, but alas, that is not bullpen life. We have Vargas going today and Ventura tomorrow. Hopefully we can win the first two games of this series to guarantee us at least a .500 record going into our Minnesota and Houston trip. I think we could be in good shape after those games since neither of those teams are very good. It would be nice if our offense could start hitting the ball a little harder, but these things may still come. I'm not yet worried about anyone offensively. Moose hasn't shown much as far as hitting, but his plate discipline has been outstanding. Alcides needs to just be more patient. I normally view him as an automatic out. If we can get away from that, it would be a huge step forward for our offense.
Game 6 ninja edit to make sure I cover every game: Infante gets hit in the head, Royals win. Sucks that he got hit, but we won and he looks like he might not be out for too long!
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Game 2
Since my last post was during Opening Day, I gave myself a pass and said I didn't have to write again until today. I'm hesitant to make any grand claims about the season, even at this point. We really won't know anything for any reasonable certainty until three weeks from now. That being said, let's address a few things, starting with the only true problem of the first two games.
The pitching is fine. We need to score runs.
There are those who will say that the bullpen blew both of these games. While those people are technically right, it isn't solely the bullpen's fault. It's hard to keep a team off the scoreboard. The bullpen has given up two runs in 4 2/3 innings pitched. That's not horrible. The starters have gone 6.1 and 7 IP respectively. I can't blame the pitching for losing two late-inning games in the fashion that they have. It puts enormous pressure on a bullpen when they have to come into a tied game late and pitch nearly perfectly to escape. Collins did a poor job today, but everyone has bad outings, especially early. The real takeaway from this point is that the Royals need to hit. They just haven't yet. There were a couple good innings, but one was ruined by a dp ball that should never have been swung at and one was ruined by a previous coaching decision, which brings me to point number two.
Ned Yost, please don't pinch run for your all-star, gold glove catcher in the eight inning when he is standing on second with nobody out.
This was the most egregious decision in my mind. It could be argued that pinch running for Billy after his walk was also a bad idea, but Salvy is one of the best players on the team. Don't pinch run for him earlier than the 9th inning in desperation mode. I guess hindsight is 20/20, but I just knew this was going to come back to bite them in the ass. Dyson never even made it to third and the following inning ended when Brett Hayes grounded out with two men in scoring position. The over-willingness to pinch run needs to be addressed by management. If I were Dayton Moore, I would have a conversation with Ned Yost tonight about using complementary players sparingly, instead of whenever you freaking feel like it. Rany Jazayerli noted on Twitter that a change in philosophy from pinch running eagerness to pinch hitting eagerness might be better for the team. I think this might be true, especially in the case of Escobar. There just needs to be more thought given to the situation. There was always a decent chance that Salvy was going to come back up, Ned just needs to stop overthinking and let his lineup do what it does.
As a closing note, the Royals faced probably two of the top 10 pitchers in the American League in their first two games, so I will forgive them for not crushing the ball all over the field. They certainly need to step it up though if they hope to compete this year. Averaging 2.5 runs per game right now which is certainly not going to win you many games, unless the pitching staff all have career years.
The pitching is fine. We need to score runs.
There are those who will say that the bullpen blew both of these games. While those people are technically right, it isn't solely the bullpen's fault. It's hard to keep a team off the scoreboard. The bullpen has given up two runs in 4 2/3 innings pitched. That's not horrible. The starters have gone 6.1 and 7 IP respectively. I can't blame the pitching for losing two late-inning games in the fashion that they have. It puts enormous pressure on a bullpen when they have to come into a tied game late and pitch nearly perfectly to escape. Collins did a poor job today, but everyone has bad outings, especially early. The real takeaway from this point is that the Royals need to hit. They just haven't yet. There were a couple good innings, but one was ruined by a dp ball that should never have been swung at and one was ruined by a previous coaching decision, which brings me to point number two.
Ned Yost, please don't pinch run for your all-star, gold glove catcher in the eight inning when he is standing on second with nobody out.
This was the most egregious decision in my mind. It could be argued that pinch running for Billy after his walk was also a bad idea, but Salvy is one of the best players on the team. Don't pinch run for him earlier than the 9th inning in desperation mode. I guess hindsight is 20/20, but I just knew this was going to come back to bite them in the ass. Dyson never even made it to third and the following inning ended when Brett Hayes grounded out with two men in scoring position. The over-willingness to pinch run needs to be addressed by management. If I were Dayton Moore, I would have a conversation with Ned Yost tonight about using complementary players sparingly, instead of whenever you freaking feel like it. Rany Jazayerli noted on Twitter that a change in philosophy from pinch running eagerness to pinch hitting eagerness might be better for the team. I think this might be true, especially in the case of Escobar. There just needs to be more thought given to the situation. There was always a decent chance that Salvy was going to come back up, Ned just needs to stop overthinking and let his lineup do what it does.
As a closing note, the Royals faced probably two of the top 10 pitchers in the American League in their first two games, so I will forgive them for not crushing the ball all over the field. They certainly need to step it up though if they hope to compete this year. Averaging 2.5 runs per game right now which is certainly not going to win you many games, unless the pitching staff all have career years.
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