Ranting on the Royals

(Be warned that the following was written about 2 a.m., my stomach churning from a bad decision that involved the usually delicious Flamin' Hot Munchies when I got home from the game. Also, a DVR'd Ultimate Fighter was playing in the background. So I hope this is coherent. Too much information? Probably. Let's get the fun started!)

Maybe this is some of the aggravation fans have been waiting for. Two straight disaster* losses, and doing it against a last-place team from a bad division in the worse league, well, yeah, that'll do it.

* That word is used here, of course, in the sports context. Which is to say, not really a disaster.

A couple of us smart alecks were talking, it's almost as if the Royals, after watching Arizona kick it around and generally play terrible in losing the series opener on Monday, collectively said, "Oh, yeah? You think YOU can play bad baseball? Watch THIS!"

Only the team, of course, is not laughing. One of the players asked that I stop with the Bill from Shawnee stuff, and it sure doesn't seem as funny after the last two games*.

Reminds me of the time last year, when a player agreed to play Wii home run derby with me on the ginormous video board, but by the time I could get it set up the player was in a tough spot and the team was losing in a bad way so it never happened.

But I do have Bill's latest letter to Mark Teahen, and it is gold, so maybe we'll get to it soon enough.

Anyway, about the aggravation. We've talked about this before here, and I do think that we -- in the general sense -- tend to overrate the impact of strong words like this.

But at the same time, I imagine it's nice for fans to hear this from Trey:

"Do I have an explanation at this point? No, because it is a very up-and-down team. We've hit more streaks of inconsistent fielding and inconsistent hitting and inconsistent pitching that we have positive (streaks).

"One of the things that sucks the energy out of good pitching is the fact you don't give them run production or you don't make plays behind them."

Then there was this, after I asked* something about what, besides the obvious, a manager can do to make sure that two bad games in a row don't become three or four.

* I'm not a fan of the "he told me" thing that we media types tend to do, me included sometimes. But I also think it's weird, in the blog forum, to go third person here. I'm confused. Let's just move on.

"We've talked about it all before, what do you want me to say? What's my approach going to be? My approach is going to be, come back out with a good attitude tomorrow and plan on beating the St. Louis Cardinals. That's my approach.

"I've said it 10, 15, 20 times this year. I'll say it again for you. Inconsistent baseball, it happens. It runs in streaks.

"It also happens when you've got a butload of injuries. I'm not going to start pulling the trump card, but we've got some injuries that we're playing through. We've got some guys that are not on the field that we'd like to have on the field.

"When you start putting less experienced pieces out there, it shows up. It shows up and it has a domino effect. It has a domino effect offensively, it will have a domino effect defensively. When you get to the middle of the season and guys start to wear down a little bit because they have not (played this much) in the past, or there's not the support that once was there with a different roster, sometimes they get a little bit tired. And when they get a little bit tired, bad things happen."

He went on to talk more about staying positive, being accountable, playing hard, and hoping for fan support.

All in all, a pretty decent showing, no?

Trey lets off a little steam, shows the fans the team isn't taking losses lightly, and talks about doing better in the future.

Before there were any (public) rants, I wrote here that (public) rants probably don't have much impact on wins and losses. I still feel that way.

But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing.