More Disastrous Defense

Game Date: June 18, 2009
Arizona @ Kansas City
Diamondbacks 12, Royals 5 / Box Score
WP: Haren (6-4), LP: Hochevar (2-3)
KC Home Runs: None
Royals Record: 29-36 / Record in June 6-9

You are going to find this hard to believe, but statistically speaking there are worse teams defensively than the Royals. The Nationals, for example committed 61 errors going into play last night, while the Royals committed 47 errors in one less game. But, of course, they had three more in this train wreck of a game.

Can I just say the obvious? Brayan Pena is not a catcher. He’s a misser. I know that Luke Hochevar throws a sinker and that sometimes the ball is going to bounce, but Pena knows when its coming—he’s the one calling the pitches for crying out loud. But that didn’t seem to matter much. The Royals ended up with four wild pitches and a passed ball. The Royals need to get J.R. House in uniform for the game tomorrow night. He couldn’t possibly by any worse behind the plate than Pena, who will hopefully be Omaha bound soon. And we know that House can hit a little. He had 18 HR and 60 RBI for Triple-A Round Rock in 127 games last season.

No matter how well Alberto Callaspo is hitting this season, it’s not well enough to justify keeping him on the roster because he’s embarrassingly bad with the glove. Let’s give Tug Hulett a chance there for a few games. Even if he just makes the routine plays, we’ll be miles ahead of where we are with Callaspo. When Alex Gordon comes back, Mark Teahen will presumably move back over to second, but he hasn’t played the position in months and you have to wonder what he’ll look like over there. I don't think we can hand the job to Willie Bloomquist unless we want to start TPJ at shortstop every game. How good would Mark Grudzielanek look in a Royals uniform along about now? Yeah, he’s almost 39 and his knees are shot, but he’d be far, far better than anybody else we’ve got in our organization right now.

After being crushed by the Diamondbacks the last two games, the Royals will begin a new series against the Cardinals tomorrow night at the K. That should be fun. Kyle Davies (3-6, 5.14) will go up against Brad Thompson (1-2, 3.60). Davies is 1-2 in his career against the Cardinals with a 2.79 ERA in 19.1 IP. Thompson is 1-2 against the Royals with a 4.84 ERA in 22.1 IP.