A solid outing by Kyle Davies inspires a Ball Star game

The numbers that these words are based upon are more like a compass pointing a general direction than they are a GPS spouting turn-by-turn voice instructions.

But they're interesting nonetheless, because there's been so much talk about the Royals and their promising first three starters and a possible run in the American League Central.

The general wisdom, shared here and in other places, is that the Royals need starters Gil Meche, Zack Greinke and Kyle Davies each to have very good seasons for the team to stand any chance of competing.

If they stay healthy, that's about 100 games where the Royals have a starting pitcher they'd feel really good about, and if you have that, maybe you take your chances in the other 62.

Because of a conspiracy of improvement by the Royals and weaknesses from every other team in the division, this is the first season in a while where it's not just silly to judge the Royals on the scale of playoff teams.

This is all a wordy way of introducing a little game we're going to play this summer, where we judge the Royals' rotation based on the staffs that've pitched teams into the playoffs in recent years.

As I type this it's a shade past midnight, and I've gotta finish up my taxes in the morning* and then get to the ballpark by around 10, so this version of the game won't be as thorough as what I hope to put together by next week.

* Procrastination is a very underrated way of being able to not do something you don't want to do. Until, you know, you have to do it.

But here's the general idea:

We're going to track the performance of Meche-Greinke-Davies, measuring them against teams of recent playoff past. In the interest of keeping it simple, we'll use ERA+ numbers.

I'm throwing out last year's Brewers and Cubs, because the half-seasons by CC Sabathia and Rich Harden produced absurd numbers that skew the process.

The other 14 playoff teams of the last two seasons had their best three starters post an ERA+ number* of 114 on the low end ('07 Rockies) and 139 on the high end ('08 Red Sox).

* For our purposes, the ERA+ number is just the average ERA+ of each team's best three pitchers. I'm not going through and re-calculating the aggregate ERA+ for the group. Like I said, we'll keep this simple.

There are plenty of reasons that many of you can come up with as to why this is a flawed way to measure. In many ways, it is flawed.

But in a general sense, it seems like a decent enough way to quickly and easily see how the Royals' plan* -- pitching is currency, a team is only as good as its starting pitcher, etc -- is working when compared with teams that have achieved what the Royals are trying to achieve.

* I can't remember the path we traveled to get to this point, but I do remember a conversation with Royals GM Dayton Moore shortly after he signed Sidney Ponson in spring training, and him saying, "You know why the Rays won last year? It's easy. It's the five guys they had on the mound."

Each had a better-than-average ERA+, and they won despite a bullpen that had Troy Percival and his 98 ERA+ (!) as the closer and an offense that actually scored eight FEWER runs than it did the year before, when they went 66-96.

Anyway, the "average average" ERA+ of the 14 playoff teams we're looking at is 125.

Last year, MGD posted a combined 112 ERA+ -- Meche was 107, Greinke 123 and Davies 105 -- so they've got some improving to do.

It's too early to get a good ERA+ number this season, but two times through, its safe to say that MGD is off to a good start -- 37 2/3 innings, 32 hits, 41 strikeouts, 10 walks, 8 earned runs and a 1.91 ERA.

We can talk about an offense that doesn't have much power or an infield defense that doesn't have much range, but the MGD numbers might be the most important to the Royals' success. So far, fantastic. So far, the Royals are in first place.

And so far, the season is 5 percent complete.

We'll keep you updated on how they're doing.

And maybe we'll come up with a similar measurement for the back of the rotation, too.