Royals Trounced Again

Game Date: June 19, 2009
St. Louis @ Kansas City
Cardinals 10, Royals 5 / Box Score
WP: Thompson (2-2), LP: Davies (3-7)
KC Home Runs: Olivo (10), DeJesus (4), Butler (6)
Royals Record: 29-37 / Record in June 6-10

In the last three games, our pitching and defense have given up 34 runs. It’s hard to get too up set about the poor performance of any one player. Our starters are struggling. Our bullpen is too. And while we didn’t technically have any errors last night, there was plenty of bad defense to go around.

I don’t know what the answer is at this point. With so many weaknesses, we’d have to make a series of changes to even have a chance for them to make a difference. I don’t expect the Royals to make a lot of trades to fill in their defensive gaps because we don’t have a lot to offer. We could send a couple of players down to Omaha and bring a couple up because the mixture of players we have at the major league level right now is quite odd.

We’re carrying Willie Bloomquist, Alberto Callaspo, Luis Hernandez, Tug Hulett, and Tony Pena—all of whom are middle infielders, four of whom are second baseman. Pena doesn’t belong on the roster. We’re only carrying three outfielders, plus Bloomquist, which means that when it comes time for Hillman to pinch hit, he’s mostly stuck doing so with a back up middle infielder who little or no power.

Hulett probably still has options. I’m not that concerned if B. Pena or Hernandez have any.

Scott Thorman, a LF, is hitting .306 with 11 HR and 26 RBI in 40 games. Why not bring him up? I’d like to see us bring up J.R. House and use him as the back up catcher until John Buck returns. Bruce Chen is 4-2 with a 3.38 ERA in Omaha.

Of course, none of these guys are going to make enough impact to turn things around at the big league level. It seems to me that we’ve got what we’ve got and now we have to watch, sometimes in agony, to see how it all plays out.

This afternoon, Brian Bannister (5-3, 4.10) will go up against Chris Carpenter (4-1, 1.59). Bannister is 3-1 in his career against the Cardinals with a 4.01 ERA in 24.2 IP. Carpenter is 4-5 against the Royals with a 4.14 ERA in 71.2 IP.