Tag: baseball (Page 10 of 22)

Sadly I didn’t get to this before Monday afternoon’s disaster in Comerica Park in Detroit. But still, the Royals are one game into their biggest regular season series since that epic series with the (then) California Angels in September 1985. The big differences are that Angels series was in KC and during the final week of the season. When the Royals caught the Angels that week, they needed just two more wins to clinch the division.

This time, the R’s are in Detroit and there’s still plenty of baseball no matter what happens in these three games. Importantly, the teams play one more series back in KC to (potentially) balance whatever happens this week.

Still, there was a buzz in the air Monday anticipating the late afternoon start.¹ Sure, it was going to be tough to beat Verlander, Scherzer, and Porcello. But in a season where crazy things keep happening, anything felt possible.

And then…

Misplays in the field. A bad time for a really crappy start by Jeremy Guthrie. Detroit ripping balls down the line and hitting soft liners that landed on the chalk.

A terrible start. But the beauty of baseball is that they get to try again today. I have a feeling Scherzer mows down the Royals tonight. Hopefully Jason Vargas can slow down the Tigers bats, too. But then James Shields will be nails on Wednesday and put the Royals back into first place with just over two weeks to play.

The last couple of weeks have been nerve-racking yet tremendous fun. Alex Gordon hitting huge, potentially career-defining home runs. The pitching staff being lights-out almost every night. The defense rising to the occasion more often than not. Baseball that really matters in late August and early September.

As so many people have written, the way the Royals are doing this is not sustainable. But it also harkens back to how that 1985 team won: great pitching, scratching out just enough hits to win. And the thing about sustainability is that this doesn’t have to last forever. Just two more weeks and, suddenly, the game turns to the Royals’ advantage. Playoff baseball is made for strong starting pitching and dominant relievers. We’ve seen it time-and-again in the Wild Card era. A team gets hot on the mound and rides them to back-to-back best of seven series wins.

Realistically, I expect the Royals to come up short. There’s just not enough juice in their bats and it’s hard to believe they can keep winning while scoring only one or two runs a night. And even with Detroit’s health issues, they have bats up and down their lineup and a pitching staff that keeps them in any series. That realist in me sees Detroit finally putting it together for a hot 15-game stretch and winning the division by three or four games. Meanwhile Seattle keeps winning and the Royals not only miss out on the division title, but on the second wild card spot.

But, you know what? The Tigers have only played really good ball for a few weeks in May and July. Why would they suddenly put it together now? They’ve battled injuries all year. Why not lose Miguel Cabrera for two weeks, or David Price develops a blister on his finger, of JD Martinez runs into a wall and goes on the concussion list. The Mariners still have 11 games against the A’s and Angels. There’s no reason they can’t fall apart. And that streaky-ass Royals offense has enough time to crawl out of this latest deep freeze and hit the ball hard for a couple weeks to put this thing away.

It’s been a ridiculously fun and tense six weeks for us Royals fans. The first time I’ve felt like this since I was 14 and starting high school. I hope they can keep it going for two more weeks so we can see what happens that last weekend of the season.

Wow. It was almost exactly a year ago that I wrote about a weekend series in Kansas City between the Royals and Red Sox, wondering if we would look back on it as the high point of the season. The Royals drifted, then climbed back to the periphery of the Wild Card race, staying in it until the final week of the season.

After this past weekend’s sweep of the Giants, I’m tempted to write a similar post. Will we look back on the crowds of last weekend, the play of the team, the good vibes surrounding the organization and say, “Man, that was great. But it was never that fun again,”?

I’m thinking no, that will not be the high point this year. Even if the Royals come back to earth this week, which seems likely given how hot they’ve been for the past two weeks, the math is much more in their favor this year than last. After the A’s four-gamer, they have, arguably, the easiest remaining schedule of any contender. Detroit, Toronto, and Cleveland are all suffering from injury woes. No team in the American League can seem to put together a hot 20-30 days and run away from the field.¹

For an organization that has desperately sought the breaks to go its way for a quarter century, the dominoes might finally be lining up in their favor.

I’ve said before that sometimes Twitter is the worst thing that can happen to a sports fan. For all the sources of quick information you can tap into, it can also turn into a stream of unending cynicism, bitterness, and anger when things go bad. That’s often been the case in the Royals’ corner of the Twittersphere this time of year.

But this weekend was something else. Normally negative voices were expressing their disbelief at what was happening. Again, for the first time in forever, there are good vibes around this team. We were having a lake weekend with many guests, so I could only check in to watch the scores and read Tweets occasionally. Each time I turned on the phone, though, I was delighted to see the Royals were ahead and then read a series of Tweets relaying the magic of what was happening at The K.

I’m as cynical as anyone about this franchise. I’m as distrusting and outright hostile to the ownership and front office as anyone. But, as Rany wrote last night, it sure feels like a moment to set all that aside, to not fear the historically inevitable turn when it all goes wrong, and just watch and enjoy.

Baseball, more than any other sport, taps into the memories of your childhood. This year is beginning to feel a little like that glorious late summer and early fall of 1985, when a team with not much hitting but a stacked pitching staff clawed back from well behind the division lead to catch, and then pass, California in the final week of the season. Which, of course, was just the beginning.

Hey, we can dream big for a minute, can’t we?

The Royals have officially reached the maddening stage with me. They had a nice road trip last week, winning four of seven games. With one exception, they continued to get solid pitching from the starters. Those guys just can not hit, though.

As Joe Posnanski and others have written about many times, what is especially infuriating is that this franchise hasn’t hit since the Golden Era. It doesn’t make sense. Yes, Kauffman Stadium is not a great home run park. But the Royals haven’t hit home runs on the road since pretty much forever, too. And when road teams come into the K, they still find a way to clear the fences, even if at lower rates than in their home parks.

It’s as though every Royals general and field manager since the artificial turf was ripped out doesn’t realize that slapping the ball and letting it bounce around doesn’t work anymore.

The problem isn’t just the lack of home runs, though. This organization has always had a horrific approach at the plate. Even the franchise’s greatest players were loathe to take a walk. When Tony Muser was managing the promising group of young hitters around the Millennium, he famously told them to jump on the first pitch they saw because they might not see another ball to hit in their at bat.

Tony’s been gone for a long time, but the Royals still hack as though he’s in the dugout.

Two weeks ago the Detroit Tigers retired six straight Royals on ten total pitches. Early in Sunday’s game in Seattle, Royals pitchers had thrown at least ten innings of 15 or more pitches in the series. Seattle pitchers? Zero 10+ pitch innings.

Even Eric Hosmer, who seems to be the only guy who can consistently hit, will come out of his shoes at the first pitch in an AB if it’s anywhere near the plate.

It’s infuriating to watch a rally die because two straight hitters try to jump all over the first pitch and pop it up on the infield.

The most common thing I say while watching the Royals?

“TAKE A FUCKING PITCH!”

So the Royals can’t hit home runs. They don’t work the count. Guys like Alex Gordon, Sal Perez, and Billy Butler will hit for a week or ten days and then fall into a deep slump. Mike Moustakas, who was supposed to be the power at the center of the lineup, can’t hit his weight, let alone live up to his hype, and is likely headed back to Omaha today. Hosmer is the only home-grown hitting talent who shows any consistency, and I’m beginning to believe that’s in spite of his approach at the plate rather than because of his terrific talent.

The Royals off-season moves have mostly worked out for the best. Omar Infante, when he can stay healthy, provides fine defense at second and a good bat at the top of the order. Nori Aoki has struggled at times with the transition to the American League, and his defense is the weakest on the team. But in general he’s been solid. Jason Vargas has surprised being terrific in most of his starts. And Alcides Escobar rediscovered his stroke from two years ago and is again playing Gold Glove caliber shortstop.

But the Royals are a game under .500 with just three weeks left in the soft early portion of their schedule. When the calendar turns to June, suddenly they begin playing much better teams more often. Maybe the warmer air will help balls carry at the K and some of those line drives will sail over the fence. And maybe those shots will build confidence in Gordon, Butler, and Perez and the bats begin to give the arms some support.

These are the Kansas City Royals, though. Putting your faith in being smart at the plate and getting on base and scoring runs every night is bound to leave you disappointed.

Tuesday night I did something I haven’t done in years. I took out a baseball scorebook I had stashed away¹ and kept score for a game I watched on TV.

I keep score a few times a year for baseball and softball games that I’m covering for the paper. But I can’t recall the last time I decided to keep score for a game I was watching from home.

It’s one thing to do it when I need all the details for a story and box score that I will submit to be published with my name attached. The quicker pace of high school games makes that process easier as well.

It’s another thing, though, to tackle a 2.5 — 3 hour Major League game when you have the distractions of kids, other channels, checking Twitter, and maybe playing a quick round of an iOS game between innings.²

I thought Tuesday was a good night, though, because it was Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura’s first start of the year. Something about him reminds me of when Dwight Gooden first came up to the Mets in 1984. For the next 3-4 seasons, when Dr. K was pitching, it was must-see TV. Although this wasn’t Ventura’s first big league start – he started three games last September – this felt like a good night to document what happened to hold on to and look back upon years down the road.

Who knows how his career will go. Maybe he’ll be amazing, like Gooden, for a short span then burn out. Maybe he’ll have a long, solid career but never be the absolute ace some expect him to be. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll match those Pedro Martinez comparisons and be the dominant pitcher in the game for a long stretch.

It ended up being a fine night to keep score. Ventura was amazing. He made Wil Myers look foolish three times. He completely froze Evan Longoria, one of the best hitters in the game, on a called third strike. And he kept Tampa Bay in check all night. His only flaw was racking up too many pitches, limiting himself to only six innings, giving up just two hits and striking out six.

Tampa’s Chris Archer was nearly as good, though. The 25-year-old went seven innings, working around six hits and two walks and getting out of two bases-loaded jams.

The Rays bullpen escaped another bases-loaded threat by the Royals in the 8th and then scraped a run out in the ninth to win 1-0.

Perhaps, ten years from now, I’ll pull out the scorebook and look back on the night that two of the best pitchers in the game went up against each other on an early-April night when both of them were just beginning to discover how great their talents were.