We’ve reached the time of the year when the Royals completely fall apart, before their inevitable signs of life in September that we will cling to over the off season in hopes it was a sign that the team’s fortunes are finally changing. I’ll call it now: Eric Hosmer is going to start hitting again in mid-August. Luke Hochevar will do his annual ‘pitch solidly when no one is watching’ thing. Starting pitching as a whole won’t be great, but will be more consistent than in the first four months of the season. The team will string together hits and score runs like we expected them to.
But unless the Royals move some players, get Jake Odorizzi into the rotation (which I think will happen), and get Wil Myers 100-150 ABs I’m not going to get excited about anything that happens over the next two months.
If the Royals do close the season on a decent run, I expect the official message from the organization to be a reminder about how Sal Perez and Lorenzo Cain missed much of the season; Danny Duffy, Joachim Soria, and Felipe Paulino will all be back next season; the team really could have contended this year, and thus doesn’t need a major rehaul to contend in 2013. Trust the process and all.
Sigh.
I was out of Internet contact over the weekend and missed the glorious news that the Royals had shipped Jonathan Sanchez to Colorado for fellow suck pitcher Jeremy Guthrie. I’m not sure why I, and many others, hated Sanchez so much. He sucked, no doubt, but there have been plenty of shitty pitchers in KC in the last 25 years. But I’m glad he’s gone.
Ichiro to the Yankees? Holy out of nowhere! Nice that he could play his first series as a Yankee in Seattle, so his old fans could pay their respects to his time as a Mariner. I don’t get worked up about the “Player X in Team Y’s uniform” thing much. But it will be odd seeing him in pinstripes. It would have been odder if he was still a decent player, though.
I mentioned earlier this year that most summers I end up working up a list of what team I would adopt should the Royals ever be contracted. A couple people said they’d like to see that list, so I’ve been putting it in written form over the past few weeks. I expect to post it next week.
Here’s a nice use of Internet bandwidth: the current walkup song(s) for every MLB player.
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