Ponson Gives Up Seven, Royals Lose Again

Game Date: July 31, 2009
Kansas City @ Tampa Bay
Rays 8, Royals 2 / Box Score
WP: Price (4-4), LP: Ponson (1-7)
KC Home Runs: None
Royals Record: 40-62 / Record in July 7-19

Last night, for the third straight game, the Royals lost by four runs or more. We have Sidney Ponson and Bruce Chen in the rotation. The bullpen is a disaster—although not bad last night. Mike Jacobs has been reduced to a coming off the bench. Yuniesky Betancourt is hitting .122 in his 14 games with the Royals. And Dayton Moore pretty much stayed the course at the trading deadline.

Those are the facts. Don’t drawn any conclusions from my presentation of them. I’m fairly happy that Moore didn’t make any moves. That’s not the right attitude to have because bad baseball teams become good ones by acquiring good young talent and then bringing it along. But I’m no longer all that confident in Moore’s ability to find diamonds in the rough—or even to acquire players that make sense for this team.

The Betancourt trade tipped the scales for me.

I’ve also seen a lot of games in Omaha this season and for the most part, Omaha is still everything it was under Allard Baird’s reign—a place where careers go to die (Yasuhiko Yabuta is 36; Brian Buchanan is 36; Brandon Duckworth is 33; Tim Hamulack is 32; Cory Aldridge is 30; Time Raines Jr. is 29; J.R. House is 29; on and on it goes) rather than a place to develop good young talent. You see a few young guys: Greg Holland (23), Jordan Parraz (24), and even Chris Lubanski (24), but not nearly enough.

So, for this season and probably next, we’ve got what we’ve got and I’d rather see Banny and Teahen at the big league level than the guys who may have replaced them. Arguably, guys like Lenny DiNardo (29) and Scott Thorman (27) deserve a shot in Kansas City and if Moore had moved Banny and Teahen at the trade deadline maybe they would have gotten their shot (I’d like to see DiNardo replace Chen in the rotation now), but I doubt if they would have matched their numbers. And since my confidence in Moore’s ability to acquire good young talent is dropping by the day, I wonder if we wouldn’t have ended up worse at the big league level with nothing to show for it in the minor leagues.