Losing Streak Hits Six

Tony had the guys out early today working on fundamentals. April 26th and our guys are still working on covering first base and hitting cut off guys. I can't believe that it's necessary, but it is obviously is, so I'm glad to see it.

The KC Royals official game notes has had a rather unbelievable statistic on the first page for the past couple of weeks: "PENA APPROACHING 200: Tony Pena is in his 4th season as Royals manager and is approaching his 200th career victory…he is 195-274 since taking over the Royals…with 5 more wins he will become the 8th Royals manager with 200 victories."

What the game notes don't say is—Tony Pena has the worst career winning percentage of any manager in Royals history. Yes, even worse than Tony Muser—whom I believe was a far better manager than Tony Pena.

Jose Lima struggled though the first inning tonight, giving up 1 run, but after that his change was nearly unhittable. He kept the ball down and his change had all sorts of life and that set up his fast ball nicely.

Johan Santana on the other hand didn't look sharp, but his numbers were impressive. He missed badly with a number of pitches early and the Royals were unable to take advantage until the fifth inning when Matt Diaz muscled one down the right field line and drove in Terrence Long to tie the game at 1-1.

Diaz made two critical mistakes on Saturday (missing a cut off man that cost the Royals a run, and getting thrown out at home after a pitch got away from the catcher), but one thing impresses me about him. He hustles. In the game on Sunday against the Sox, he hit a routine grounder to second but he ran hard down the line. The second baseman bobbled the ball and Diaz beat the throw. Tonight, Diaz hit a chopper to third, ran hard and forced a bad throw. I don't know if he'll be able to hit major league pitching, but I love his hustle.

Oh yeah…after Lima pitched 7 2/3 innings and gave up 1 ER, it wasn't enough to win the game and the Royals lost again to make it 6 in a row.

Tomorrow night Brian Anderson (1-1, 7.02) goes against Joe Mays (0-0, 3.21).