Hiroki Kuroda's (almost) Billy Chapel moment, an overweight slugger, and relating it to the Royals

This blog post will be all over the place, but will eventually get to the Royals, so stick with it. Or don't. Either way, I'm charging you the same amount.

Anyway, flipping through the channels, checking out the Extra Innings games, and I stumble upon Braves and Dodgers, top of the fifth, no outs, Mark Teixeira's up, which is always nice, but then Vin Scully mentions that Hiroki Kuroda has retired 12 in a row.

Now, I suck at math, but I can figure out that's a perfect game, so I decide to stick with it. Kuroda, without what throwing anything that looks overpowering, is mowing them down.

Granted, the Braves are bad away from home, just coming off a 17-inning game and what I understand was some bad travel delays (am I the only one reassured that the charter flights get hosed once in a while, too?), so maybe they probably weren't scoring 12 runs regardless.

But Chipper's in the lineup, hitting in the .380s, Teixeira's always good, and nobody in that lineup is getting the ball out of the infield.

Kuroda got to the seventh inning stretch still perfect, and averaging about 10 pitches per inning. The closest the Braves got was a bunt attempt by Gregor Blanco, and, quick question, am I the only one annoyed by the so-called unwritten rule that you can't break up a no-hitter with a bunt?

Well, once Kuroda got into the seventh, Scully announces that it's time to get serious, so he gets into Kuroda's life, says he's married with two daughters, pitched for the Hiroshima Carp in Japan, all that stuff, and I'm getting flashbacks of another Kevin Costner chick flick disguised as a baseball movie.

Honestly, at one point, I expected the cameras to show clips of Kuroda at his cabin in the mountains having a bad accident with a power saw.

And now that I'm looking at the IMDB page for that movie, seeing John C. Reilly's name on there, I can't help but think of Cal Naugton Jr. in Talladega Nights.

"Remember that time in tenth grade when we got kicked out of class for playing with Matchbox cars? Who's retarded now?"

Sorry. Tangent.

Back to the game, and Teixeira eventually broke up Kuroda's perfect game with a one-out double in the eighth, and I told you I'd relate this to the Royals, so you probably figured it'd involve the Royals' flirtation with Kuroda this past offseason.

And you'd be right. Mostly.

After last night, Kuroda is 5-6 with a 3.39 ERA (130 ERA+), hasn't given up a run in his last two starts (18 innings) and has given up three or fewer in all but three of his 16 starts.

I can't remember exactly what the Royals offered, but it was more than the three years and $35.3 million he signed for with the Dodgers. Supposedly Kuroda liked LA, wanted to be on the west coast, and wanted a shorter contract so he could make his money in the States and then finish his career back in Japan.

Sure would've been nice if the Royals could've landed him, no? When he's not making runs at perfection, he looks like at least a solid No. 3 starter, which would've given Brian Bannister, Luke Hochevar and Kyle Davies a little less pressure.

But watching Kuroda also gave me the privilege to see Andruw Jones bat a few times and chuckle when the broadcast put up a graphic showing that Jones went from averaging an RBI every 4.9 at bats the last three years to almost 18 at bats this year. Ouch.

He's a power hitter with a .255 slugging percentage, nine extra base hits and eight RBIs. But at least he's maintaining his strikeout numbers. That OPS+ of 36 is 50 points lower than Zack Greinke -- classic quote from Zack earlier this year: "I've got my confidence back. They're throwing me sliders, and it doesn't matter" -- and just edging out Brian Bannister and Gil Meche (but also more than nine times Tony Pena Jr.'s four).

And so I probably don't need to remind you that the Royals were willing to give Jones (LA Times columnist T.J. Simers convinced to hop on a scale
this spring, discovering Jones weighs 248 pounds) a longer contract for much more money (at least in the total package) to Jones.

You've heard the saying about the best moves sometimes being the ones you don't make?

Dayton Moore once told me he's not a baseball genius, that he doesn't feel smarter than any of the 29 other GMs running baseball teams. He said you have to be lucky, too, and that more people should admit that. The conversation had nothing to do with Jones, but it could've.

Art Stewart, the longtime Royals scout just inducted into the team's Hall of Fame, talks sometimes of Tino Martinez and Nomar Garciaparra (who played SS last night, by the way) ALMOST falling to the Royals in the draft. They had deals all but done with Will Clark and Deion Sanders, among others.

Jeremy Affeldt never pans out, Juan LeBron busts, Mike Stodolka has to turn into a hitter, Albert Pujols slides to the 13th round, these are the breaks in the utterly imperfect world of baseball scouting.

But sometimes, an overweight and declining baseball player turns down your tens of millions of dollars, saving you from a contract that would've hampered the franchise for years just as they got out from under Mike Sweeney's five-year deal.