Disastrous Season

On Saturday night, I had great seats for the game against the White Sox. Five rows up, directly behind home plate. Here's a photo of Zack Greinke delivering a pitch to Carl Everett.

Greinke's stuff was nasty. Looping curve balls, biting sliders, and well placed fast balls. He's already starting to mature. Last season, he challenged guys too often and paid for it by giving up too many long balls. He's learning when to challenge guys and when not to. He ended the night with 7 innings pitched, 1 ER, and 7 K. Well deserving of a win. But that assumes that the Royals scored and that's quite an assumption with this line up. He left the game losing 2-1 and you know the rest of the story. The Royals lost in extra innings.

On Sunday, the Royals lost their fifth game in a row. Bautista pitched well after a shaky first inning, giving up just 2 ER, and 2 H in 7 innings. The bullpen let this one get away and the Royals dropped to a major league worst 5-14.

We knew that this team would have problems scoring runs. Besides Sweeney and Stairs, they don't have any pop in their line up. The line up had a lot of question marks going into the season: Teahen, Berroa, Gotay, Buck, and Pickering. Not one of the question marks is contributing at the plate right now. Teahen got hurt after a horrible start and is due back soon. Berroa is hitting .230 and is still a free swinger. Gotay is hitting .241 and looks overmatched—he struck out four times on Sunday. Buck is hitting .189—enough said. And the Calvin Pickering experience didn't work. He's already back in Omaha.

We hoped that the rotation was going to be much improved over last season. Runelvys Hernandez was back. Jose Lima was resigned. And Denny Bautista looked to be the real deal. Here are the starters stats so far:

Lima: 0-2, 8.05
Hernandez: 1-3, 4.62
Greinke: 0-1, 2.66
Anderson: 1-1, 7.02
Bautista: 1-1, 5.32

As bad as Lima, Anderson, and Bautista have been, all three of them have shown stretches of quality major league pitching. But I'm not going to push that too far given their inflated ERAs. I feel good about this rotation and time will tell whether Mike Wood, Kyle Snyder, or Jimmy Gobble needs another look if one of the other guys can't get the job done.

I had relatively high hopes for the bullpen, but with Affeldt already on the DL and Mike MacDougal (3.86 ERA) being unable to get outs when he needs them, this bullpen looks to be in huge trouble with the exception of Andy Sisco who has a 1.29 ERA, here are the rest of the ERAs in the pen:

Mike Wood: 4.85
Shawn Camp: 9.45
Nate Field: 9.45…and recently shipped to Omaha
Kyle Snyder: 4.15
Jaime Cerda: 12.27

That's just not going to get the job done.

As bad as this team looks and as overmatched as they appear to be, Allard Baird and Tony Pena are ultimately responsible for the product on the field. Greinke and DeJesus came through our system and they are producing. But so many of the other young guys that Baird drafted, traded for, or signed aren't even close to contributing.

And no matter how overmatched these guys may be right now, that is no excuse for not playing fundamental baseball. From missed cut off attempts, to botched picked off plays, to a manager who calls for sacrifice bunts and squeeze plays in the craziest of situations, this has all the makings of a disastrous season.