Tag: baseball (Page 4 of 22)

In the past week we’ve had more snow combined that we had received all winter. Four inches fell last Thursday followed by over six inches Saturday.[1] In each case the snow melted quickly. Thursday it was all gone before the girls got home from school. Saturday’s snow was almost completely gone by Sunday evening. Now we’ve transitioned into warmer days – at least into the 50s – but it is dark and dreary and the land is saturated from seven days of melting snow and rain.

Makes a man feel like it’s time for baseball season!

My enthusiasm for baseball is not what it has been in recent years. I’m still focused on college hoops for a few more days, obviously. And the Royals window of opportunity has closed. Worse, the team can’t figure out what to do next. They went for “value signings” over the winter and have a team that, on paper, doesn’t look terrible. But it also doesn’t look great, and seems destined to win at most between 70–75 games. Not good enough to compete, not bad enough to be in full rebuilding mode yet.

Dayton Moore deserves an immense amount of credit for building a team that went to two-straight World Series. When you do that, you earn a lot of leeway in how to do your job. Still, I’m not sure I love him being in charge of the next Royals rebuild. The minor league system is already pretty lean but he’s putting off the total gut for at least one off-season. I don’t know that I agree with that strategy. And given how few major leaguers the system has produced since the championship core came up, I have concerns about Dayton and his scouts’ evaluation abilities.

Unless there is some dramatic shift in how baseball revenues are divided up or a change in how the Glass family is willing to spend money, the Royals have to build with young talent. That’s what they did in the first part of this decade. I don’t understand why you delay hitting the reset button to get that process going again. Especially in a division that should be won by one of the best teams in baseball (Cleveland) and also has a team that is both filled with young talent and made some strong moves to fortify that talent in the winter (Minnesota). The AL Central is not up for grabs. Nabbing a Wild Card spot would require a massive amount of good luck for the Royals and bad luck for at least five other teams.

Salvador Perez tearing up his knee this week and taking him off the field for 4–6 weeks is not a promising start.

I think the Royals could – could – have decent starting pitching. It looks like a staff where every guy can go on a 3–4 start roll where things are working and they only give up 2–3 runs a night. But I also worry about the health of most of them, and every dude is also capable of getting into ruts where they can’t make it through three innings for a few weeks in a row.

The once vaunted Royals bullpen is a mystery. Maybe Kelvin Herrera settles down this year and sets a standard that knocks everyone else into place. But I see too many arms that have struggled in the past joined by too many unknowns to have much confidence in that group.

The lineup is full of question marks, too. Whit Merrifield seems like the only sure bet, and that’s based on a single season of big league performance. Can Moose stay healthy? Will Salvy get healthy? Is Alcides Escobar’s modest goal of getting on base 30% of the time doable? Can Jorge Soler harness his immense potential? Can Lucas Duda be a poor-man’s Eric Hosmer? And can poor Alex Gordon provide anything at all at the plate?[2]

A lot has been made of the Royals late winter signings and how they added some “professional hitters” to the lineup. We’ll see if those are enough to keep the team in the window of mediocrity.

I really hope all those elements come together and the Royals can stay in the 70s for wins. It’s really going to suck if they don’t and the team ends up being shitty without having gone all-in with the rebuild. I think most Royals fans were prepared to accept bad baseball if it meant young talent would begin flowing into the system. Without that influx already in place, this will feel like an empty, wasted year that put off the chance to compete another year without making any progress toward that goal.

I’m still downloading the MLB apps onto all my devices this morning, though. I will be listening as the Royals open things against the White Sox this afternoon. And I’m sure they’re still going to be the soundtrack of my summer, even if the goals are a lot more modest than they have been in half a decade.

As for predictions, I haven’t paid close attention to spring break stories around the league, so I’m not sure how great these are going to be.

AL East: New York
AL Central: Cleveland
AL West: Houston
AL Wild Cards: Boston, Minnesota

NL East: Washington
NL Central: Chicago
NL West: Los Angeles
NL Wildcards: Milwaukee, St. Louis

It’s over.

Sure, there are five games left in the 2017 season, but the run for the championship core of the Royals is officially finished.

Although the standings kept showing them just out of the Wild Card spots, they’ve effectively been done for about a month. But it became official Tuesday when Minnesota beat Cleveland leaving the Royals too far behind with too few games remaining.

What a frustrating season. The death of Yordano Ventura in the off-season was by far the worst thing that happened to this organization over the past year. But then came a brutal start to the season that had us worried all the free agents to-be might not make it through June in Kansas City. The team steadied in May and then was blistering hot through June and July. They added instead of subtracted at the trade deadline, and it looked like it was going to be another exciting fall in KC. The team then promptly went to shit again in August. And September has been thoroughly mediocre. There have been injuries all over the roster. Players who put up the worst performances of their careers. Despite that great middle, it’s going to end up being a pretty meh season.

Time and again this team has had chances to get back into the heart of the race with just a solid week of baseball. But every week they muddled around, maybe 4–3, maybe 3–4, but never 6–1 or 7–0. Minnesota wanted someone to catch them, but no one ever did.

Honestly I began checking out about a month ago. I kept waiting for that spark to appear that ignited the team. It never came. Throw in kid sports and a flakey AppleTV and I wasn’t automatically turning the game on each night. Sure, I’d check my phone to see what the score was. Once the kids went to bed I’d turn on the radio broadcast and listen while I did other things. But I was far less invested than I would have been had they kept playing like they did in the heart of the summer.

So it’s been a sad week for a lot of us Royals fans. As the end drew near the blog posts and Twitter threads began popping up reliving the greatest moments of the Octobers of 2014 and 2015. I’ll admit I got a little emotional watching a few of them. We re-ranked our favorites, recalled how those months felt, and shook our heads in disbelief once again at what this team had done. If the end feels a little empty at what was not accomplished the past two seasons, it is with a greater appreciation for what was achieved the previous two years.

And now five games to say goodbye. Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain, and Jason Vargas are almost certainly all gone. Alcides Escobar may be back, but only because no one else is interested in paying him. Vargas missed the 2015, but the other four all accounted for some of the greatest moments in franchise history.

Hosmer tripled in the 12th inning in the 2014 Wild Card game then tied the game. He won game one of the 2014 ALDS with an extra-inning home run. He hit a massive home run in legendary game four of the 2015 ALDS. He hit one of the biggest singles in franchise history in game six of the 2016 ALCS. He doubled to bring in Cain in the 9th inning of game five of the ’16 World Series. Moments later he made his mad dash home to tie the game.

Moustakas won game two of the 2014 ALDS with his own extra-innings homer. He made an unbelievable catch of a foul pop-up in game three of the 2014 ALCS. He hoovered up everything hit his way, and was the “5” in the two 5–3 putouts that ended each ALCS. Along the way he reinvented himself, becoming the consistent hitter we had always hoped he would be. This year, became the Royals single-season home run king.[1]

Cain could fill up a highlight reel with his catches alone during the playoff runs. He single-handedly broke Baltimore’s hearts in the 14 ALCS with catch-after-catch while hitting the shit out of the ball. And if he did nothing else, his scamper from first-to-home in the 8th inning of game six of the 2015 ALCS would earn him a spot in the Royals Hall of Fame. He went from a guy with potential to a complete player and became my favorite Royal along the way. Hosmer and Moustakas are going to get paid for sure. I worry Cain’s age is going to prevent him from signing a ridiculously huge contract. I think he deserves every penny, and probably a lot more, that he earns.

And Esky saved his best baseball for October. He was the catalyst for the offense, spraying hits down the lines and taking extra bases. He was the 2016 ALCS MVP for torturing Toronto pitchers with line drive after line drive. And his inside the park home run to open game one of the 2015 World Series was a quick reminder to the Mets that they were powerless against Royals Devil Magic. Oh, and he also played amazing defense throughout the runs.

What was great about all those guys was how we got to see each of them grow up in front of us. Moose and Hosmer were the high draft picks that were supposed to become All-Stars. It took awhile, but it happened for each of them. Cain and Escobar came over in the trade for Zack Greinke, but had yet to establish themselves as everyday MLB players. They fit right in and the fanbase embraced them. They, and the guys around them, had all this potential to change the course of Kansas City Royals history. Holy shit did they deliver.

If you’re a Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cardinals, or (now) Cubs fan, you expect your team to replace your heroes when they depart. They’re going to sign the best free agents, or have a bunch of talent in the minors they can dip into when legends move on. For Royals fans we’re not sure what’s next. The minors aren’t brimming with talent. The payroll will no doubt get slashed as the team begins to rebuild. That, too, makes our relationship with the current guys more powerful. It might be another 5–10 years before we see a group like them again.[2] And even then, there’s no guarantee the next batch of young talent will be able to do what this group did.

This group began hitting KC in 2011. That’s seven seasons which, on balance, had more frustrations and pain than success. But in those early years they were building to something, and even when it was hard for the fans to trust the process, the players did. Out of that came a year when they narrowly missed the playoffs, another where they narrowly made the playoffs – then made it to the last out of the last game, another year where they dominated for five months then won the whole damn thing, and finally two years where they began the season with legitimate playoff hopes only to come up short. Along the way they helped Kansas City fall in love with baseball again.

That’s not a bad run.

Well, shit.

August wasn’t supposed to be like this.

After a scorching hot June and (most of) July, the Royals were supposed to roar into August and battle Cleveland for the AL Central lead, all while solidifying the lead they had built up in the Wild Card race. Worst case, they were going to play New York or Boston in the Wild Card game. Best case, they would be guaranteed at least three playoff games in the ALDS.

So much for all of that.

This team has completely fallen apart.

The bullpen went first, coming off a dominant stretch in late July and turning into total garbage. Then the starting rotation started leaking oil. Deadline acquisition Trevor Cahill sucked and then went onto the DL. Danny Duffy was mediocre at best after a DL stint, then went back onto the DL, and apparently got himself a DUI over the weekend. Jason Vargas’ early-season magic is long gone. Jason Hammel is really good for five innings then turns into a pumpkin in the sixth every time out.

Oh, and then the lineup. They go into tonight’s game not having scored a run in something like 800 innings.[1] Pathetic. This team has always been streaky as fuck, but this is taking it a little too far.

Pretty much every move Dayton Moore has made over the last two years has gone wrong. It looks like the Royals will be stuck with Ian Kennedy through the end of his contract. Brandon Moss has done very little. Jorge Soler hasn’t contributed a thing to the Major League team and there’s real doubt whether he ever will. Raul Mondesi was a disaster in the bigs, and they Royals may have ruined their best prospect by rushing him. Hammel has been decent at times, but far from a successful signing. None of the pitchers acquired from San Diego have been any good. And the Alex Gordon contract is turning into a blunder of historic nature.

Well, Melky Cabrera has been solid. So I guess that’s one in the win column for Dayton.

I point all that out not to blame Dayton, but rather to show how little luck the Royals have had this year. I think most of those moves were defensible, and even if they all turn into mediocre rather than terrible moves, this team is right in the playoff hunt.

One of the better modern baseball stats is BABIP: batting average in balls in play. It suggests that, over time, luck in baseball evens out. You might have great (or bad) luck on balls put into play one year. But odds are the next year that luck will swing back toward normal. Perhaps that’s what this season is for the Royals. After being an extraordinarily fortunate team from August 2014 through November 2015, they had to swing back. Last year was a neutral year. This year is the pendulum swinging toward the opposite extreme.

Which sucks. As I’ve said many times this year, my biggest hope for this season was that the Royals stay in the playoff race deep into the season. With their roster, a third AL pennant in four years was going to be a long shot. I just wanted this summer to matter. While we got an exciting eight weeks in the middle of the season, the first four and the most recent four all sucked. Now, with school ramping up, football about to start, and autumn just over the horizon, it’s getting harder to tune in each night to see how the team does. I wanted one more September where, despite all the fall stuff, I was still compelled to turn on the Royals game each night. Even if they came up short, I wanted that last month of watching Hosmer and Moustakas and Cain and Escobar fight they way they did in ’14 and ’15.

Flags fly forever, though. So L and I will probably dive into the DVR again soon to watch the bottom of the 8th inning of game six of the ’15 ALCS, and then Josh Donaldson ground out 5–3 to seal the pennant, and 12th inning of game five of the World Series. For her, it’s just fun. For me, it will be to relive that magical 14 months when, somehow, the Kansas City Royals were the best team in baseball.

Hopefully it’s not another 30 years before I get to live through moments like those again.

I intentionally held off writing about the Royals activity at the trade deadline because I didn’t want to be responsible for jinxing their hot streak. Fortunately, after winning 10 of 11, they’ve now lost 3 of 4, so any bad stretch is not on me.

First off, what a great run! Right after I said they needed to go 6–3 in the nine games leading up to their trip to Boston, they went 8–1. Then won 2 of 3 in Boston. That’s not a bad way to go into August! Sadly The Indians were just as hot, and the Royals only took a game off their lead over that stretch. But they also solidified themselves in the second Wild Card spot for the time being. I’d much rather they win the division and not have to play a single-elimination game against Boston or New York, but being in the playoffs is the important thing.

In the midst of that hot streak, the Royals were one of the bigger buyers before the trade deadline. They grabbed a starter and two back-end relievers from San Diego. Then they reacquired Melky Cabrera to add another bat to the lineup.

Overall, I thought these were great trades. Of course, Trevor Cahill got shelled pretty good in his first start and Ryan Buchter contributed mightily to the bullpen meltdown and led to the winning streak ending on Saturday. But Brandon Maurer has looked pretty good when he’s been in. Cahill is likely the biggest piece of that deal. He at least gives the Royals a proven MLB starter in that #5 slot. If he gets his shit figured out and can go 5–6 strong innings every outing, that will be huge for this team.

But Maurer could be just as big. Joakim Soria has struggled of late. Kelvin Herrera hasn’t been as dominant as a closer as he was in the 8th inning role. Maurer was the Padres’ closer, and shouldn’t have any trouble handling high pressure situations late. He gives the Royals another power arm that can pitch at any point late in games. He will most likely be a 7th inning guy. But he gives the R’s flexibility to slide him in anywhere in the last three innings if needed.

Despite his PED issues after he left the Royals, I, like a lot of R’s fans, love Cabrera. He’s not the same player he was when he had an awesome year with the club in 2011. But he’s still a really solid hitter who can keep either Brandon Moss or Alex Gordon out of the lineup when needed.

So, at the moment of each trade, I loved them. The Royals didn’t give up too much to get four new players, two of which they control past this season.

Now, of course, the catch is these guys have to perform. Cahill and Buchter have made less-than-stellar first impressions. And Melky didn’t get a hit until his eighth at bat as a Royal. Small samples sizes, etc., etc., etc. I still think these deals make the Royals better.

The last couple weeks have felt more like late September than late July. I’ve watched or listened to the R’s each night while keeping an eye on the Indians, Yankees, Rays, and Mariners scores. I’ve been looking ahead to see how each team’s schedules compare. Each morning L will ask me, “Did they win?!?!” I kept having to remind myself that there are still two months of baseball left. The Royals aren’t going to play .900 ball for two months. Nor are the Indians. Just keep winning series, keep having positive road trips, and this team will be right in the middle of the playoff hunt as we move into fall.

I was worried this would happen.

The Royals were the second-hottest team in baseball in the six weeks leading up to the All-Star Break. They were playing really good baseball and were in the heart of both the Wild Card race and the AL Central. Suddenly not only were the Royals keeping all their free agents to-be until the end of the season, but they might just be kicking the tires on a pitcher or hitter to add for the stretch.

Then they got swept in their final three games before the break. Sure, that series was in LA, against the Dodgers, the hottest team in baseball. But getting swept was a bad way to end the first half. Given how this season began, I got worried it was a sign the hot streak was over. Would the four days off erase all the Royals momentum and with it the hopes that the championship core had one more run in them?

They stretched the losing streak to five before getting a lucky win Sunday. Then they got pummeled but Detroit on Monday, with ace Jason Vargas getting hammered for his second-straight start. The offense suddenly looks more like its April iteration than the June one. The DH spot is a disaster. Alex Gordon seems unsalvageable. Lorenzo Cain has looked terrible for two weeks. Injuries keep popping up.

Still, they’re only three back in the Central and two back in the Wild Card race.

With the trading deadline less than two weeks away the Royals are in a tough spot. Do they move someone from their depleted minor league system for a DH that can actually put the ball in play, or someone who can throw 5–6 decent innings every fifth day? Does Raul Mondesi have any value and do you risk moving him to get someone who can help this year?

I think if you have an opportunity to make the post-season you go for it. The problem is the trend lines aren’t great. Who says that moving Mondesi and a couple other prospects will be enough? It’s not like 2015, when the Royals were firmly in control of the division and had their eyes on plugging holes for October when they acquired Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist. Those were very good and reasonable gambles. When you’re about to begin a large rebuilding process, do you move bodies you’re going to need next year and the year after for ones that will help you for just two-plus months?

My biggest fear is the Royals get stuck in the middle. I’d almost rather them fall apart completely than muddle along and stay 4–6 games back, treading water. I don’t know if Dayton Moore will start moving guys if the Royals go 1–9 over their next 10, but at least that gives him cover if he decides to. Sitting right around .500 on July 29 makes it tough either way.

They have nine games against Detroit and the White Sox before they go to Boston next weekend. I really think they need to break off a 6–3 stretch if they want to be honest about having hopes for October. If they reverse that, and go 3–6, Moore has to be honest about what this team is capable of. And if there’s a decent offer out there for Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, or one of the other guys who will leave this off-season, he needs to jump on it. He hasn’t had great luck with high draft picks, so I’d almost rather him acquire players with minor league track records than get a bunch of extra picks in next year’s draft.

I realize that’s all kind of wishy washy. What I really want is 10 more weeks of these guys playing decent ball. I’m fine if they come up short. But I want to see Lorenzo, Eric, and Moose go out strong.

Logic often gets thrown out in sports in favor of emotion. We mask over flaws in players and teams we love because we love them. And we ignore brilliance among rivals simply because they wear the wrong color of jersey.

The Kansas City Royals are in a dangerous situation when it comes to emotion right now. All of us who are fans, and everyone affiliated with the organization, hoped the core of players who got the franchise to the ’14 and ’15 World Series had one more run in them this season before the dismantling began. Off-season moves to bring in Jason Hammel and Brandon Moss were largely based on giving the team a chance to play this October.

But a brutal April made the team’s postseason prospects slim at best.

May was better. A few guys who were ice-cold warmed up. They went 15–14, which isn’t great, but is at least trending in the right direction. More importantly, no one else in the AL Central seems interested in running away with the division. Despite all the Royals’ struggles, they sit just 4.5 games out of first. After finishing a series with Houston tonight, the Royals travel west to face San Diego, Anaheim, and San Francisco, three teams that are all struggling as well.

Emotion says if they can get hot on the West Coast swing, they can climb right back into the division race. Emotion says that Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain, Alex Gordon, Alcides Escobar, and Sal Perez deserve a few more weeks before the team starts selling off its most valuable parts. Emotion says the Whit Merrifield and Jorge Bonifacio are real deals and not young guys with holes in the swings the league is about to discover. Emotion says this team has come back before, why not one more time?

But logic, as always, is a bitch.

The Royals offense has been better over the past three weeks, but there are still gapping holes in it. Escobar and Gordon in particular seem mired in perpetual, horrendous slumps. Moss has been pretty terrible as well. Perez is fighting it right now. The rotation has been flat out weird, with everyone other than Jason Vargas having wild swings of good starts balanced with brutal ones. And the once vaunted bullpen has regressed to a more typical group where you never know what you’ll get from night-to-night.

Danny Duffy being out of the rotation for at least another month and Jorge Soler being such a disaster he’s now in Omaha are two more sobering pieces of logic.

Every time logic seems poised to win the argument, though, emotion defies it. The Royals sweep Baltimore. They win 2-of–3 from Cleveland twice. They come back from six runs down to beat the best team in baseball. Just enough moments for us to think, “Well, maybe if…” and start imagining scenarios in which the team is suddenly a half game out of first.

Plenty of writers have given up on the Royals and suggested they begin selling now. I see that logic. I might even agree with it to a large extent. But I don’t see any advantage in moving Hosmer, Moustakas, Cain, etc. right now. Wait until multiple teams are in the market for making big additions for the stretch. Wait for a major injury that forces a contender to make a panic move. Wait for Houston and Washington to cool off a bit and put their divisions back in play, increasing the number of potential trade partners.

I feel like I have a very pragmatic view of the Royals at the moment. I understand they’re going to trade guys sometime in the next six weeks, but I don’t think they should do so out of desperation. Still, I admit my view is still clouded by emotion. I want to watch Hos, Moose, and Lorenzo play in Royals uniforms as long as possible. Baring a series of miracles, I know this isn’t a World Series or even playoff team.

But keeping those guys around another month or so will make the memories of their October runs seem not so distant. And will keep the reality that the next October run is far off in the unseeable future at bay, too.