The Buddy Bell Era Begins

If ever the Royals were going to beat the evil Yankees, it was yesterday. I liked the Greinke vs. Brown pitching match up. And all the talk in the locker room about some guys not caring had to serve as fuel for extra effort—if only for a day. And it was Buddy Bell's coronation. Oh yeah, and the Yankees are old.

Greinke didn't look to be at his best, but he was good enough to beat Kevin Brown. How nice is it to see a Yankee starter with an ERA over 5.00? Especially a highly paid Yankee starter. Wood was a little shaky in relief, walking two guys and giving up two hits in 1 2/3 IP, but nobody crossed the dish against him. Sisco and MacDougal were outstanding behind Wood and the new era of Buddy-ball has begun.

I listened to Bell's press conference yesterday afternoon. He certainly had an attitude that let us know he'd been there before. He didn't seem to be all that phased by the media attention or his apparent lack of knowledge about the Royals organization—including the names of our players.

Before the press conference, Joe Randa was on WHB and they asked him about the selection of Buddy Bell since he'd played for Bell in Detroit. Randa said that he thought Bell was a good choice for the Royals and he compared him to Tony Muser—in that he expects his players to show up on time and play hard. If Bell turns out to be that sort of manager, then we're on the right track. What I can't figure out though is why we dumped Muser to begin with if we needed somebody like him.

The obvious word of the day yesterday was patience. Here is Bell's response to a question posed at the press conference about the future direction of the club.

"I don't think you ever want to ask a player to do more than what they can do," Bell said. "But we won't know that until we get inside them. It's going to take some time. Obviously the direction of this team is at some point to get to the point where we can contend. I don't know when that's going to be. I don't know if Dan or Allard can tell you when that's going to be.

"But I will tell you this—I've been in this situation, they tell me twice, but I only think I was in it once, and that was in Detroit. The people I was with in Detroit, I feel pretty much the same way I do about the people I'm with now. The problem in Detroit was that we weren't patient enough. I'm very impatient with impatience.

"And I really believe that this is where we're at right now. This is going to happen. We understand that this is a hard game to play. That this game is going to take some time for us to turn the attitude around at times—I don't even know what the attitude is to be frank with you—I've been reading this, reading that. I really could care less. There's some intangible stuff that's going to have to take place, but the direction is to hopefully bring these guys up together. They've certainly learned how to lose right now together. So that's not all that bad.

"We're going to find out if they really want to get it done or not. And that's part of the process. But we have to be patient with that process. Just because a kid's 20, 21, 22 years old and makes an error every once in a while—I'm sure you guys say enough about it, but in our particular case, there's got to be some patience and there's got to be some understanding. We've got to be able to see past all that.

"So, the direction is just being patient. Seeing what we've got. Hanging on to the people we've got. And hopefully bringing these guys up together so they can have a little fun together."

I wonder if he realizes that the Royals organization hasn't shown a willingness to be patient in the past 15 years. We've had youth movements and then let them get away. We've had a mixture of youth and veterans and when that didn't work, we went back to a youth movement. When we didn't have enough talent in the organization to fill all the positions at the major league level with major league talent, we went out and got more veterans and even made a mini-run with them in 2003. But two years later, we're back to another youth movement.

This time Baird does appear to be serious though. He didn't re-sign Randa (big mistake). He traded Jason Grimsley and Curtis Leskanic. He designated Eli Marrero for assignment yesterday and we've got another Double-A guy, 23 year-old Shane Costa, making the jump to the major league roster to take his spot. (Costa wasn't exactly tearing things up in Wichita. He was hitting .274 with 5 HR and 27 RBI. But he's left handed and we certainly could use a little pop from one of the corner outfield positions.) Teahen is that guy at third even though Truby is healthy again. So, Kansas City, this is your youth movement. Let's hope that Baird assembled the right players and hired the right guy to direct them.

D.J. Carrasco (0-1, 4.08) goes against the Big Unit (5-3, 3.99) tonight at Kauffman. Let's go up 2-0 against the Yankees.