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Kansas City Royals: June 2011

Bringing Winning Back

Posted on June 20, 2011 at 10:21 AM
Apparently, I'm just not supposed to be on the wrong side of the Mississippi when it's baseball season.  The Cards went out and dropped the seven games I missed while spending time in Ohio, yet won two dramatic ones when I was back ensconced in my home this weekend.  Let's do the wrapup of the last half of the week, then get into some of the more current topics.  Remember, I didn't watch much of any of these games (even this weekend was sporadic) so if I'm completely off base, be sure to let me know in the comments.


Hero: Jon Jay.  Two of the team's three hits, and since nobody walked in the game, it was pretty much all that the Cards could muster.

Goat: Ryan Franklin.  Kyle McClellan didn't pitch all that well, but Franklin made sure there was no rally to be had, completely blowing up with four earned in his inning and a third.

Notes: McClellan had some defensive problems behind him, including two errors from Albert Pujols at third base, and was limited in his pitch count in his first start off the disabled list.  Hopefully he'll be stronger tomorrow against the Phillies.


Hero: Yadier Molina. His home run in the ninth gave the team some hope, pushing it to extra innings.

Goat: Fernando Salas. Salas gave up the game-losing long ball.  While Danny Espinosa has a number of homers this year, he's a guy that you probably should be able to get when the game is on the line.

Notes: The team rallied, which was nice to see.  Homers by Pujols and Molina erased the deficit, but they never could get over the top.  A strong game from Matt Holliday as well in his first game back from the land of the injured.


Hero: Lance Berkman. Only one hit, but a big one as he drove in three of the four runs.

Goat: Albert Pujols. No hits for Albert (though he drew a walk) and had the error that allowed the go-ahead run to score.

Notes: Tough game for Chris Carpenter to lose, apparently.  Lots of raves over how he pitched, but he did allow 10 hits.  I know one of the major tenants of modern sabermetrics is that a pitcher has no control of where the ball is hit or if it falls for a hit, but still, that's a lot of dinks and dribblers.  Still, I didn't see that one and it may have been that he was much more effective than the stat line indicates.


Hero: Matt Holliday. Game winning home run in the eighth will do that for a guy.

Goat: Jake Westbrook. There wasn't an obvious goat in this one.  Westbrook did well, but that last home run to Alex Gordon almost added to the losing streak.

Notes: Great work by Colby Rasmus to get on base in the eighth against a lefty.  Good night for Ryan Theriot as well, with two hits in the leadoff slot.  Bullpen did a very solid job as well, with Salas coming in and locking things down.


Hero: Skip Schumaker. Game winning home run in the ninth will do that for a guy.

Goat: Fernando Salas.  Giving up a game tying home run to Alcides Escobar?  I know Escobar's been hot, but he's not a home run hitter.  Salas couldn't hit his target at all in that at-bat and finally paid the price.

Notes: Pujols was having a stellar day until he had to leave (and we'll get to that).  Andrew Brown had a nice day also, with a couple of hits and two RBI.  Jaime Garcia was inefficient, though he left with a lead.  The problem is he left with one out in the sixth, which left a lot of innings for the bullpen.  I want to talk some more about the pitching, but that may have to wait until tomorrow's post.

In the last week, there have been a lot of roster moves. To sum them up, besides the activations of McClellan and Holliday, Tyler Greene, Mark Hamilton, Lance Lynn, Matt Carpenter have been sent down to Memphis, while Maikel Cleto and Pete Kozma have come back up.  The Cards are back to the 13 pitcher roster makeup, but with the starters not going deep in games, it's more of a necessity now that it was last time.

Now we get to the really big story.  Pujols left yesterday's game with a wrist injury after being run into by Wilson Betemit.  I didn't see that play, being out at my parents and following the US Open with my father, but noted on the box score that Pujols had gone out of the game.  As Bernie Miklasz writes, it was a very scary moment.  I'm sure so many people flashed back to Scott Rolen and Hee Seop Choi and we know how bad that situation was.  Right now, the positive news is that it looks like it's just a sprain, though there will be more evaluation done today to see how severe it is.

The Cards are in a better position to replace Pujols's production than in some years, with Holliday continuing to hit and having Berkman slide into the first base slot.  That said, Pujols has brought the mystique back, causing pitchers to focus on how they are pitching and who they want to beat them.  A little bit of that swagger, that intimidation, is gone without Pujols.

You hope it's a mild thing, where he can miss the Philadelphia series and have no lingering effects.  Even a 15-day DL stint would be better than him playing through it with sapped power and the potential for a long-term issue.  However, it's not broken, so we have to be thankful for that and hope the team can come together and play good baseball for however long he's off the field.

Speaking of injured players (which we've done a lot this season), it looks like the Cards may be getting a bit healthy.  David Freese will be playing for Memphis starting tonight and Nick Punto will be playing in Springfield this week.  Both hope to be ready next Monday and could really help out the team, especially if Pujols is out for an extended period of time.  It'd be nice to see this team at fairly full strength, wouldn't it?

Off-day today, so we'll take a look at the opener of the Philly series tomorrow.  Thanks to all of those that so capably filled in while I was gone and I hope you aren't disappointed by the downgrade in quality today!


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Why the Royals and Cardinals envy each other: a series preview

Posted on June 17, 2011 at 2:54 PM

Life and sports run in cycles. The weekend series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals will showcase two teams at very different points in their respective cycles.

The Royals would certainly like to be where the Cardinals are now. Championship flags flying, a superstar player and currently spitting distance from 1st place. The quest to get to that point in the cycle has been fruitless since the mid 1980's. Clearly not every cycle is on the same time-line.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals are trying to figure out how to get where the Royals currently sit. Obviously, they don't want to be under .500 and trying to over-com decades of irrelevance. However, they are faced with an aging and increasingly expensive roster. Time will continue to march on and those older and declining players will have to be replaced by young talent - exactly what the Royals have by the truck load. Thus placing realistic fans in an odd position of coveting what their opponent has.

The Royals will be taunting the Busch faithful this weekend with Eric Hosmer at first base and Mike Moustakas at third. Combined, they  will make roughly $800k this season. Those three guys, along with the under-appreciated Billy Butler and the resurgent Alex Gordon, make up a decent middle of the lineup. Manager Ned Yost is going to have to make a decision between playing Hosmer and Butler due to the National League's penchant for putting bats in the hands of the truly unskilled 1/9th of the time.

The starting rotation isn't quite as young and talented as the lineup, but the Royals will put Danny Duffy on the hill on Sunday. He'll be making his 7th career start and is coming off of a pretty decent one in Oakland. He'll be the encore to Felipe Paulino - a recent acquisition from the Rockies,  and Vin Mazzarro - who is semi-famous for allowing 14 runs in less than three innings.  Suffice to say, neither of them will likely set the world on fire and highlights a major issue for the Royals.

The bullpen however is a completely different story. It's one of the finest in the game today with every pitcher pulling their weight. Closer Joakim Soria has been the least effective guy in the bullpen, but has seemed to come around lately. Former University of Missouri pitcher Aaron Crow is the primary setup man and he is typically preceded by any number of talented young relief pitchers.

The Royals aren't likely a contender in 2011. Picking and choosing players to keep an eye on is a much better way, I believe, to preview this upcoming series than laying out a team vs team comparison. I'm going to assume that if you read this blog, you're already familiar with the team that will be wearing red.

These games mean a lot to the Cardinals in the context of this season's division race. For the Royals, it's more about developing young talent and showcasing a few players for the trade deadline. That's not to say the team itself doesn't care about winning, they'll be doing their damnedest to do that. It's just that priorities shift depending on where a franchise is in it's cycle. The Cardinals are standing at third with two outs trying to figure out a way to score one more run. The Royals are on first, with no outs hoping to score a bunch of runs. The result isn't pre-determined, which is exactly the reason we'll be watching.

Nick Scott is a contributor to Royals Authority, writes a Royals blog for the Lawrence Journal-World and is host of the Broken Bat Single podcast. You can follow him on Twitter or on Facebook.





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Heroes
Matt Holliday (5)
Matt Carpenter (4)
Rafael Furcal (4)
Carlos Beltran (3)
Jon Jay (3)
Kyle Lohse (3)
Lance Lynn (3)
Yadier Molina (3)
David Freese (2)
Jaime Garcia (2)
Adam Wainwright (2)
Lance Berkman (1)
Allen Craig (1)
Shane Robinson (1)
Fernando Salas (1)
Jake Westbrook (1)

2011 Top Hero: Lance Berkman (24)
2010 Top Heroes: Matt Holliday and Albert Pujols (24)
2009 Top Hero: Albert Pujols (28)
2008 Top Hero: Albert Pujols (25)

Goats
Matt Holliday (4)
Carlos Beltran (3)
David Freese (3)
Jaime Garcia (3)
Marc Rzepczynski (3)
Adam Wainwright (3)
Rafael Furcal (2)
Tyler Greene (2)
Jason Motte (2)
J.C. Romero (2)
Fernando Salas (2)
Mitchell Boggs (1)
Matt Carpenter (1)
Tony Cruz (1)
Daniel Descalso (1)
Jon Jay (1)
Erik Komatsu (1)
Kyle Lohse (1)
Victor Marte (1)
Eduardo Sanchez (1)
Jake Westbrook (1)

2011 Top Goat: Ryan Theriot (12)
2010 Top Goat: Brendan Ryan (14)
2009 Top Goats: Rick Ankiel and Todd Wellemeyer (13)
2008 Top Goat: Troy Glaus (13)

2012 Happy Flights
Happy Flights: 7
Happy Flight Opportunities: 12
Happy Flight %: 58%

Through 5/20

    Cardinal Nation Approval Ratings (March 2012)
    Adam Wainwright 91.9% (down 2.8%)
    Chris Carpenter 90.1% (up 3.2%)
    Lance Berkman 88.6%
    Tony La Russa 88.2% (up 17.4%)
    Yadier Molina 87.4% (up 3.7%)
    Matt Holliday 87.3% (down 3.8%)
    David Freese 85.5%
    John Mozeliak 85.4% (up 13.3%)
    Mike Shannon 85.3% (up 0.4%)
    Jose Oquendo 84.7%
    Derrick Goold 82.8% (down 5.0%)
    Mark McGwire 82.6% (up 20.1%)
    John Rooney 81.5% (down 2.8%)
    Mike Matheny 81.1%
    Bill DeWitt 79.8% (up 8.8%)
    United Cardinal Bloggers 78.9%
    Skip Schumaker 73.3% (up 9.2%)
    Jim Hayes 71.9% (down 4.2%)
    Jon Jay 71.1%
    B.J. Rains 69.5% (down 0.9%)
    Kyle Lohse 68.9% (up 13.8%)
    Dan McLaughlin 68.0%
    Joe Strauss 67.7% (up 10.2%)
    Ricky Horton 67.5% (down 1.6%)
    Al Hrabosky 66.4% (up 3.2%)
    Albert Pujols 54.9% (down 45.5%)
    Colby Rasmus 46.5% (down 35.3%)

    2011
    Dave Duncan 87.9% (up 0.9%)
    Matthew Leach 85.5%
    Pop Warner 76.7%
    Ryan Franklin 72.8% (up 3.1%)
    John Vuch 68.9%
    Jeff Luhnow 66.4%
    Dan Lozano 58.7%

    2009
    Rick Ankiel 83.9%
    Chris Duncan 69.1%


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