Tag: baseball (Page 6 of 22)

Last Sunday, as I often do, I turned on the American Top 40 replay from the 1980s on our local soft rock station. The countdown was from this week in 1985, and I caught it just in time to hear the #1 song from that week, John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)”. First thing first, whether you approach the song with irony or earnestness, it’s a damn fine song. I enjoyed every second of it, as I always do.

But I also felt a touch of melancholy. That song became one of the unofficial theme songs for last year’s Royals, as it both celebrated their team speed and the pressure they put on other teams and harkened back to their first World Series title in that fall of 1985.

Sadly, it looks like there will not be October baseball for the Kansas City Royals this year. Royals fans will not be singing “St. Elmo’s Fire” out of pure joy and completely free of irony this fall.

Intellectually, most fans have known this for some time. That epically bad July pretty much sunk their playoff hopes. A scorching August made us start thinking it was possible for this group to pull off another miracle, this one over the course of two months instead of a few innings. But a thoroughly mediocre start to their September and the math of games left vs. games behind means that it’s time to face reality.

On one hand, it’s kind of amazing they are still, theoretically, in the Wild Card race. Two-fifths of the starting rotation turned to shit before May 1. Another key part of their rotation has been terrible since July 1.[1] They’ve battled major injuries all season. They’ve hit like shit much of the season. And over the last month the venerable bullpen seems to have finally regressed after three years of magic. Yet, while I think the past few come-from-ahead losses have dashed our dreams of another October run, they could still go on one of their 15–4 runs and sneak in. The problem is, there are only 18 games left. There’s just not enough time.

So this October is going to feel a lot different than the past two. Which, in a way, could be a good thing. For one, my blood pressure will hopefully remain normal as I’m not watching brutally tense baseball games for four hours each night while quadrupling my normal sodium intake as I go through a bag of sunflower seeds every two days. I won’t be drinking 3–4 beers every night, so I doubt I’ll put on the 5–10 pounds I’ve put on the last two Octobers. I’ll get more sleep.

Mostly, though, missing the playoffs will be a reminder that the last two Octobers were insanely glorious. I still, a few times each week, flashback to some moment in the ’14 or ’15 runs and just chuckle that any of it happened. This October would have/could have been special on its own. But coming up short this year will make me appreciate the last two years even more.

As I’ve given up hope over the last week, I’ve also been thinking ahead. Next year is, famously, the final year in the Window of Opportunity for this core group of players before they begin departing to bigger markets who can afford their next contracts. There are no guarantees in sports, but this team feels fairly well positioned for next year.

Danny Duffy turned into a stud in the second half of the season. Ian Kennedy and Yordano Ventura solved many of their early season issues and steadied themselves. There’s always the chance Ventura finally cracks the code as Duffy did this year and harnesses his full potential. But as he is now, he’s not a bad #3 option. Jason Vargas will be back next year. I probably have too much faith in him, but I still think he’s going to be a solid starter. That leaves just one spot to figure out, and the Royals have plenty of options for it, both old and young.[2] I’m cautiously optimistic about the starters.

Hopefully the offseason will fix whatever is wrong with Wade Davis without him needing major surgery. Might Greg Holland be ready to pitch again, and willing to re-sign with the Royals? Will Luke Hochevar be able to bounce back from his late-season surgery? There are a lot of questions in the bullpen, but given that group’s track record, there is also a fair amount of confidence that they will figure things out.

I don’t see any big surprises in the lineup. We pretty much know who all of these guys are. Maybe, MAYBE, Eric Hosmer finally takes that superstar turn he so often seems close to taking but can’t quite seem to do. Maybe Alex Gordon doesn’t hit .200 for three weeks at a time four times a year. Maybe Salvador Perez and Alcides Escobar learn how to only swing at strikes. But I doubt all that.

The biggest offensive key is keeping Lorenzo Cain in the lineup for 140+ games. He doesn’t always have to be hot for the team to be hot, but he does have to be in the lineup. Even when he’s battling bumps and bruises, he gets on base and makes things happen.

What do you do with the DH spot? Kendrys Morales has had a true Jekyll and Hyde season. When he’s not hit, he’s been awful. But when he does hit, he’s been as good as any DH in the league. Does that balance mean he will sign at a number the Royals can afford? And if so, do you take the risk on two more years of the risk he completely falls apart? Or do you let him walk and figure Mike Moustakas and Cheslor Cuthbert can platoon at third base and DH? Moose seemed to finally becoming the player he was supposed to be – a guy who hits about .270 but hits around 30 bombs and gets on base at a decent clip – before his injury in May. Cheslor did an amazing job filling in for Moose, but has cooled considerably at the plate over the last month and has shown issues in the field as well.[3] Or do you trade one of them?

The Royals always have a pretty low margin for error. I don’t think that changes next year. Inconsistency on the mound, another tepid year at the plate, or just a couple key injuries could turn 2017 into a long, sad season as the free agents to-be get traded in July. But I also think there is a really good base in place. A little luck with injuries, a few players performing closer to their career averages, a smart signing or two in the winter, and they can absolutely be a team that makes one more post-season run before it’s time to start rebuilding.

I’m giving up on the 2016 season, but I’m not giving up on this team.

It’s been awhile since I wrote about the Royals. The biggest reason for that is because the last time I wrote exclusively about them, they went in the shitter for the next week. My life without superstition would be empty and meaningless.

But here we are on July 21, the trade deadline is 10 days away, and the Royals sit 47–47, nine games out of first place, six games out of the Wild Card spot. After a slow start, Cleveland has looked like last year’s Royals for the past six weeks. It is Cleveland, so there’s always hope. But the Indians have every appearance of a team that’s going to run away and hide in the division.

The Wild Card race doesn’t hold much good news, either. The Royals only play teams ahead of them in the Wild Card race 12 times before the end of the year. The Royals may well get hot before the season is over, but there are limited opportunities to make those wins really count by hurting fellow Wild Card candidates.

Not that I have much hope that the Royals are going to get hot. Nothing has clicked this year. Too many significant injuries. Too much inconsistency at the plate and on the mound. And there’s just been a very different feel about the team. I hate to make assessments of player’s motivations without knowing them. This team just seems less focused than last year, though. There have been so many minor miscues that year that never happened last year. So many moments that needed a patient at-bat but received an overly aggressive set of hacks. Base running errors aplenty.

Every time they have a big, late inning comeback, I think, “This is it! This is the spark that will get them going!” And then they go out and look terrible the next night.

The easy answer is last year’s team was singularly focused on getting back to and winning the World Series. Even watching on TV you could almost feel the intensity late in games.

Maybe it was intensity. Maybe it was magic. Maybe it was an extraordinary run of good luck. Whatever it was, it feels like it’s gone.

So on the day the Royals go to the White House for the final official celebration of their World Series title, it also feels like a day to give up on getting back to the postseason for the third-straight year. Which is fine. I’ll absolutely trade last October for whatever comes next. I can deal with this year’s team not making the playoffs. But I was really hoping that if they fell short, it would be because the team faltered in September. Or because some other team got crazy hot late and the Royals just got beat by a better team. I didn’t want the hope to disappear in mid-July.

It also sucks because I haven’t been to a game in Kansas City in four years. A few weeks back I booked a trip for August and will get to go to the K for two games while there. I’ll still take a picture of myself next to the World Series trophy and enjoy seeing the team in person. But, man would it have been nice for the to be in the midst of the pennant chase and there be an extra charge in the air. My trip is four weeks away, so I guess it’s still possible, if unlikely.

Perhaps this is the Midwesterner in me speaking, but there’s also a part of me that feels like fans of other teams will use this as an argument against last year’s team. “I told you they weren’t that good! They were just lucky last year! These are the real Royals!”

Which is stupid because, who cares? This isn’t college sports where victories can be retroactively wiped out. Flags, and the memories that go with them, fly forever. Failure this year, or God forbid another 30-year drought, doesn’t change what happened in October 2015.

Still, for some reason, I’m rooting extra hard against the Blue Jays and Mets for the rest of the year. For some reason those taunts will sting a little more from their fans. Not that I know any Blue Jays fans, and the one Mets fan I know is a super nice lady at St. P’s.

I’ll keep watching and listening, though. Just in case there’s a little magic left.

I realized last week that I hadn’t documented my thoughts on the Royals season since early April. Which isn’t much of a surprise given it took me awhile to get into this season. There was missing the first week of the season while we were on spring break. There was the coming home to four nights a week of practices and games, which meant the girls stayed up a little later than normal, which meant some nights I flat forgot to turn the game on. And then there was that dreadful stretch of baseball in late April when the Royals looked a lot like the Royals of the bad old days rather than the defending World Series champs.

I began to put some thoughts together in my head, but didn’t get around to actually entering them into a text file. Which was a good thing, because last weekend was one of the crazier regular-season weekends in Royals history: three-straight come-from-behind wins over the Chicago White Sox – who entered the series in first place – including an epic, seven-run ninth inning comeback on Saturday. Of course, I missed watching any of those games thanks to MLB’s blackout rules. I listened to Friday’s game and missed Sunday’s game while we were on the water. But I was listening Saturday. Well, I was for awhile. But the Royals couldn’t get anything going, kept giving up runs, and it seemed like a better use of my afternoon to read a book instead of listening. Fortunately I checked Twitter during the bottom of the ninth, and was able to turn the game back on just in time to hear Brett Eibner’s game-winning hit. What a day.

A couple big innings Monday and Tuesday and the TV crew is beginning to make comments they were making a year ago: “For the first time this year, the Royals are now seven games above .500,” and “The Royals have now won six-straight series.” Those comments make me happy.

One of my favorite things about the early part of this season is how packed Kaufman Stadium has been this year. There were chilly Tuesdays in April where there were well over 30,000 in the house. Now that the Royals are hot again, you can feel the magic in the stadium, even on the MLB.TV stream.

Another great thing about this year has been the blossoming of Eric Hosmer. He’s gotten a little better each year of his big league career. But we’re finally starting to see the consistent talent that we heard so much about when he was coming up trough the minors. He’s on the verge of superstardom, and it’s a joy to watch. He’s become a very good hitter who just destroys mistakes. He’s good situationally, and he’s fantastic in the clutch. His previous years have been hampered by lengthy cold stretches. He just had a mini-slump, which could be a sign that he is hitting his peak. No one escapes slumps in baseball. But the superstars find ways to limit them to a week or so. He’s turned into the guy who can carry a team whether everyone else is hitting or not.

The big bummer of the year has been the rash of injuries the Royals have suffered. As I type this on Tuesday night, two more Royals have suffered injuries tonight. It looks like one could be serious, and hopefully the other seems minor.[1] Of course the worst injury was the disastrous foul ball in Chicago a week ago that took out Alex Gordon for at least a month and Mike Moustakas for the year. Then Salvador Perez went down in another foul-ball collision on Saturday. It felt like the Baseball Gods were saying, “OK, enough. You’ve had your two years of success. We’re stepping in to put you back in your proper place.” Only the Royals keep finding ways to overcome these loses.

The Moose injury was especially tough as it looked like he had finally figured things out. After a fantastic 2015, he appeared to be adding his natural power back into the new approach he used last year. It looked like he might be turning into the player he was hyped to be: a guy that hits .270–280, hits about 30 home runs, and grabs everything hit his way at third.

With all those injuries, all guys who have struggled at the plate this year, all the inconsistency from the rotation, it’s kind of crazy that they are in first place by two games as we flip the schedule to June. All those issues make me think this could be a roller coaster of the summer, as the team careens between hot stretches and cold stretches. But with no one else in AL Central looking all that great through the first two months, that might be enough.

But it’s too early to worry about that. I’m going to hope the hot streak keeps going, the injured guys get healthy, the slumping bats wake, and enjoy June baseball.