Royals Win Series in Oakland

The A's haven't been playing their best baseball recently weeks (they are 3-7 in their last 10 games), but who expected the Royals to take two out of three games there?Emil Brown singled in a run in the top of the 12th inning to give the Royals a 5-4 lead and Jimmy Gobble worked his third perfect inning to close the door and pick up the win—lowering his ERA to 6.98.

Runelvys Hernandez was taken out of the game after two innings with tightness in his back. He'll probably have enough time to heal though before taking the mound again. A ruling is supposed to be made this week regarding his appeal of his 10 game suspension for the incident with the Tigers. I'm guessing that he'll lose his appeal. Hopefully his suspension will be reduced, but if it doesn't his miss his turn in the rotation twice.

The Royals don't have another off day until September 5, so we'll have to find someone to make a couple of spot starts and our options appear to be limited. Here's a run down of the rotation in Omaha:

J.P. Howell has a 3-1 record with a 4.06 ERA in 7 starts. I doubt if he's ready to return to the majors given his disastrous performances here earlier this season (1-4 in KC with a 7.68 ERA in 8 starts). Ryan Jensen has been awful in Omaha, posting a 1-9 record with a 6.60 ERA in 15 starts. Chris George is still not getting the job done in Omaha. He's 7-7 with a 5.81 ERA in 19 starts and 10 relief appearances. Danny Tamayo is 8-7 with a 5.40 in 25 starts and 2 relief appearances. Dennis Tankersley might be the best candidate from Omaha. He's 9-6 with a 4.31 ERA in 20 starts and 9 relief appearances. Kyle Snyder is back in Omaha and he's an option if he's healthy, but I don't think anybody is convinced that he is. He's 2-2 with a 3.42 in 9 starts and 3 relief appearances in Omaha.

We have a couple of options in Wichita:

Ryan Baerlocher is 7-4 with a 2.58 ERA in 13 starts there, but he didn't pitch well (0-1, 6.00 ERA) in his three starts in Omaha earlier this season. But he's 28 years old. It's sink or swim time, so maybe now is the time to throw him in the deep end and find out what happens. Kyle Middleton is 10-8 with a 4.90 ERA in 25 starts. He's 25, so like with Baerlocher, it might be time to find out what he's got—or at least move him up to Omaha.
The rest of our starters in Wichita have ERAs over 5.00, so clearly they aren't ready.

For now, let's just enjoy the mini two game winning streak. We've finally hit the 40 win mark. With 40 games left, 60 wins looks out of the question. The Royals would have to go 20-20, but judging from comments that Glass made a couple of weeks ago in which he said that he expected the Royals to play .500 ball from there on out, 60 might just be the magic number that allows Baird to keep his job.