Royals Flat, Drop Ninth Straight

The losing streak reached nine games last night and rather than following their normal relatively silent locker room routine following a loss, the guys cranked the stereo hoping to trick themselves into thinking that everything is okay.

As a writer, I've tried this trick a few times myself. As someone who makes a living from my writing, I don't have the liberty to only write when the muse strikes. I have to write every day whether I feel like it or not. On the days when I'm writing about things that don't exactly thrill me, I just open my word processing program and say to myself, "Just write the lead, and come up with a transition so I can work on the body of the article later." I did this the other day and ended up writing for over two hours on a project—making good progress on it.

This nine game Royals skid ties their fourth longest in club history. They couldn't blame this one on bad breaks though. Greinke seemed to be in love with his big arching curve ball. He threw it repeatedly and the Indians started looking for it. When he did go to the fastball it didn't have much pace or any movement.

Pena called it a "batting-practice" fastball.

“I wasn't trying to throw batting-practice fastballs,” Greinke said in typical Greinke fashion, “but that's what they were. Usually when I throw them, it's because I'm trying to throw them. Today, they were just coming out like batting-practice fastballs.”

I'm trying to figure out when Zack would intentionally throw batting-practice fastballs, but trying to figure out Zack is like trying to figure out the Patriot Act. Not possible.

Sabathia pitched well and shut the Royals out for seven innings and the Royals only managed 3 hits for the entire game.

Kyle Snyder pitched well in relief: 3 2/3 IP, 0 ER, 0 BB. I'm wondering if Kyle is going to get a shot in the rotation soon. We're a month into the season and some of the starter's ERAs are awful.

We've got Denny Bautista (1-1, 5.33) going against Cliff Lee (2-0, 3.12) in Cleveland this afternoon.