(UPDATE: This story about Scott Boras' car probably doesn't deserve its own post, but it's too funny not to pass along.)
Well, jeez, you can say the Royals are playing terrible*, but you certainly can't say that following them is boring.
* Remember that whole, this-is-not-2004 moment I had? Can we, you know, just pretend that never happened?
Buster Olney had a line in a recent blog that the Braves are willing to trade shortstop Yunel Escobar for a good hitter. I hear they want a shortstop back in the trade, which sounds like the Royals can't be involved, which sounds like another apt anecdote about where this team is right now:
They need a shortstop, desperately, but likely can't trade for one because they don't have one.
This, a day after Tony Pena Jr. started at shortstop, then was pinch hit for by Luis Hernandez, who was then pinch hit for by Tug Hulett.
Trey Hillman has done plenty that's worth questioning -- the above paragraph included -- but no big league manager should even have as an option substituting Hulett for Hernandez for Pena.
Two more quick points and we'll be back this afternoon:
Speaking of Trey, he's being rightfully questioned after Gil Meche gave up a third run in the sixth inning. Meche, coming off a "dead arm," which was coming off a tricky back, had 99 pitches through five innings in a start the Royals were watching him closer than usual.
Meche came out for the sixth, which was a little surprising, and stayed in to face Joe Mauer -- the fifth batter of the inning, and who Meche never retired -- despite a lefty warming up in the bullpen. Mauer got the RBI single. Meche ended up throwing 121 pitches.
In the postgame, Trey said he felt comfortable with Meche in the sixth because his mechanics and velocity were still good -- some of his fastballs touched 96 -- and that the ball was getting out of his hand fine. Trey took a mound visit just to make sure.
It's surprising, to say the least, and not just because the move backfired in the short-term. You'd think that with the Royals still owing Meche about $30 million, they might want to take it easy on one of their most important players.
This line that's been making the rounds the last few weeks about the Royals being under pressure to win as many games as they can seems weird to me -- aren't all teams under pressure to win games? -- but moves like this are curious.
Meche has thrown 1,703 pitches this season, the seventh-highest total in the American League, and one behind teammate Zack Greinke. Meche is 10th in Baseball Prospectus' Pitcher Abuse Points, though that doesn't include yesterday's start.
We went over this in Sunday's paper, where the experts told us there is no magic number or formula to say when a pitcher will breakdown.
The experts, in fact, told us that Trey is doing exactly what he should to monitor his pitchers, and that the Royals are one of the teams doing it the right way in a sport that has made big improvements in this area the last few years.
Meche is 30 years old, turns 31 in September, and is past the point of needing to be babied. There very well may be no downside to how he's being used, but in at least two specific instances -- yesterday and when he came out for the 9th a few weeks ago to finish a shutout with 132 pitches -- it's just hard to see what the benefit is.
All this being said, this is probably one of those things that people will disagree on no matter what. One man's babying is another man's prudent caution. One man's monitoring is another man's abuse.
If Trey pulled Meche after eight innings a few weeks ago, and after five innings yesterday, there would no doubt be people criticizing him for not letting his best pitchers pitch.
Another thing to consider, one we've mentioned here before: partly of his own doing, and partly because of circumstance, Trey is in a place now where most everything he does will be criticized.
That's part of being in the big leagues, especially when you're there with a team playing .429 ball*.
* That win percentage works out to 69-93. Play around with the math, and continue the Royals on the .313 clip they've been on since that 18-11 start, and they end up at 60-102. Um, OK, back to happy thoughts...
THE INSANE ASYLUM KNOWN AS THE ROYALS:
This whole fiasco began when the lovable Ewing Kauffman died and entrusted the team to commitee. Which Glass was member of.
For several years there was no direction and the search for a owner was laughable at best. When Glass finally became the defacto owner, I can remember the local media hacks championing the purchase. "Now that we have a real owner things will definitely be looking up" and "with Glass in charge this team will have a new direction" was just a couple of golden quotes from the golden throats. Me, I was not on board. It has been my experience that people don't change and when you run a Wal-mart where the most important thing is profit margin well this is what you get. Glass hires Allard Baird as GM and by all accounts he's a comsumate loyal employee(puppet)and asks him to run the team like a Wal-Mart. Hire cheap signable players and make it work. It does not take a baseball genuis or any other genius for that matter to see that talent wins games and when you have inferior talent you have inferior teams. The hiring of Dayton Moore was a publicity move. Let's hire one the best up and coming baseball execs and ask him to run the team the same as Allard ran it. On the cheap. My friends, the pure definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" It's been 20 years and we are still sitting in the same place we have been. The bottom. No, a philosphy change needs to be made at the very top and until that happens my friends we will continue to occupy the bottom postion and be the laughing stock of the league.