Just to fuel the fire of the AB debate, I arbitrarily looked back at drafts from 1989 to 2005 to compare Alex to his peers, which I considered (again arbitrarily) to be position players, drafted in the top 5 out of college.  I found 20 such players and you can see what they did (are doing) in their 2nd and 3rd years after the draft.  of the 16 that went between 1989 and 2003, it looks like a good mix of busts, ERSTADS and stars.  I think its safe to say the jury is still out.

I also think an interesting comparison is Burrell, he didn't make his ML debut until May 25th of his 2nd year and went on to a 106 in 111 games.  I don't know what AGs OPS+ was from May 25 on last year, but I'd guess it was comparable.  If Gordon turns into Burrell offensively, I think we'd all be happy.  Discuss amongst yourselves.

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Interesting post by Sam Mellinger regarding Guillen's tirade:  http://royalsblog.kansascity.com/?q=node/122 

I'm a big fan of a good tirade, and its nice to see that Jose actually cares.  It will be interesting to see if anyone actually responds...to be a clubhouse leader, you have to be that EVERYDAY, not just on convenient occasions.  I do agree that is time to get out of the "Milk and Cookies" era, though and this could help.

I was fortunate enough to hear the rant on the radio this morning, too bad about the censoring...He must have dropped 50 f-bombs in the span of 2 minutes...it was one of the best f-bomb rants since Steve Martin at the car rental counter in planes, trains and automobiles. 

DeJesus update...Rumor has it he broke out in hives after an allergic reaction to "having the lead"!!!!!!!!!!!1

The biggest problem with the Royals offense early in the season was Guillen's lack of production and it was clear that once he started mashing the wins would come and everyone would forget about TP's utter worthlessness at the plate.  Well, we all know what Guillen has been doing and the results for the Royals, but I cannot seem let go of the Pena situation after looking at these numbers:

Grud is now leading the AL in batting average, (whatever THAT is worth, but congrats to him anyhow) and he has 43 hits but ONLY 4 RBI's!!  that is not a typo, THAT is the number FOUR.  there are about 46 others in the AL with at least 40 hits and all of them have at least 10 RBI, but there's Grud with only 4.   Given their usual spots in the line up, that might be the biggest indictment of TP's "skills"

(Grud is hitting a respectable .286 with RISP, but obviously, that is with a small sample size!!!)

It seemed to me like the Royals are not pitching inside much, so I looked at the stats to see what they would tell me.  It turns out the Royals pitching staff is last in the league in hit batters with 3.  They are also 2nd from the bottom in walks, good control is a good thing, right??  However, I also scanned through to see what other teams are doing, of course Texas leads the league in walks and HBP, NOT coincidentally, they are last in the majors in ERA, they clearly have some control issues.  I found this to be really interesting, though…there are two staffs in the bottom 1/3 of the majors in walks allowed, but in the top 1/3 in HBP, indicating that they have good control, but are aggressive inside.  These two teams are Oakland and Arizona, which NOT coincidentally, lead the majors in ERA. 

The lesson for the Royals is clear…hitters are far too comfortable and the staff ERA is rising.