SB Nation User Blog: royalsreview

Game 89 Ope Thread - Royals (39-49) at Rays (54-32)

royalsreview — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:42:58 -0000

Rays envy.

Not only have their position prospects eclipsed ours, so have their pitching ones as well. Like today's starter, James Shields (3.70 ERA).

The Royals counter with Luke Hochevar (4.91 ERA).

Lineup

Kansas City Royals @ Tampa Bay Rays

07/06/08 1:40 PM EDT

Kansas City Royals	Tampa Bay Rays
Joey Gathright - CF	Akinori Iwamura - 2B
Mark Grudzielanek - 2B	Carl Crawford - LF
David DeJesus - LF	B.J. Upton - CF
Jose Guillen - DH	Carlos Pena - DH
Mark Teahen - RF	Evan Longoria - 3B
Ross Gload - 1B	Willy Aybar - 1B
John Buck - C	Ben Zobrist - SS
Esteban German - 3B	Gabe Gross - RF
Tony Pena - SS	Shawn Riggans - C

Treyball. Where finding more playing time for Joey Gathright and Tony Pena Jr. happens.

Game 88 Open Thread - Royals (39-48) at Rays (53-32)

royalsreview — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:55:03 -0000

It was something like Rays Week at BP the last few days, and one of the more interesting pieces was Nate Silver's Flipping the Switch article (free):

Team balance? The Devil Rays had five players who had a legitimate argument for making the All-Star team last year: Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton, Carlos Pena, Scott Kazmir, and James Shields. But they also had 28 distinct players who produced a negative VORP, collectively costing the Rays 157.9 runs below replacement level. Merely replacing those guys with passable alternatives—never mind league-average players—would have made a huge difference.

Put differently, the Rays had an awful lot of room to make additions by subtraction. The difficult part about baseball is supposed to be locking up blue-chip assets like Upton and Kazmir at below-market rates. The Rays had done plenty of that, but they hadn’t really bothered to sweat the small stuff—to dump some of their dead weight, to make sure they had guys who were up to the job defensively, or to tend to their bullpen.

Sound familiar? How's this for dead weight? First, the position players: John Buck (-1.7 VORP), Joey Gathright (-5.4 VORP), Ross Gload (-6.0 VORP), Esteban German (-8.7 VORP) and, por supuesto, Tony Pena Jr. (-18.0 VORP). Combined, those players have eaten up 952 plate appearances, or 29.1 % of the team's at bats.

As for the subpar pitchers, at least purely according to VORP: Brian Bannister (-1.2 VORP), Yasuhiko Yabuta (-1.4 VORP), Joel Peralta (-2.5 VORP), Jeff Fulchino (-3.3 VORP), John Bale (-3.8 VORP), Jimmy Gobble (-5.5 VORP), Hideo Nomo (-6.5 VORP) and, Brett Tomko (-12.3 VORP). Now, some of these horrible innings can be dismissed, to a point, thanks to size (Nomo only blasted 4.3 innings) and leverage considerations. In a blowout you can send Nomo out there for an inning, but you can't give TPJ most of his at bats that way. Nope, TPJ was slowly eroding innings an at regular distribution. Still, its telling how quickly a bullpen that we all thought was going to be an asset has not quite turned out that way.

Until this winter, that is, because that's when the Rays decided to transform themselves from a sort of hedge fund for undervalued assets into a real, functional baseball club.

Maybe the Royals will get to that point someday.

Aviles Nominated for Rookie of the Month

royalsreview — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:52:36 -0000

Aviles Nominated for Rookie of the Month

Aviles Then!

Huber Update

royalsreview — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:49:38 -0000

Huber Update

.244/.295/.415

He's homered twice with the Beavers!

Game 87 Open Thread - Royals (39-47) at Rays (52-32)

royalsreview — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:38:01 -0000

I liked "Devil Rays" better. "Tampa Bay Rays" sounds awkward and the Rays comes out too short sounding.

For today's battle it's Brian Bannister (4.88 ERA) versus Edwin Jackson (4.33 ERA) o the 4th of July. Why are so many young Rays good now? I thought that was supposed to take years? Evan Longoria is hitting .275/.348/.528. While I'm pulling hard for the Rays in the AL East, I'm also a bit resentful than they became good before the Royals ever did, and in fact look much much stronger. Just thinking about it informally, the Royals are probably three good no-miss draft picks away from where Tampa is right now.

Since my research area is American poetry 1770-1800, nearly all of which is essentially patriotic propaganda, I really wanted to post something from one of my guys today on RR. Unfortunately, I'm just too overwhelmed by all the nearly identical choices, most of which are actually fairly long and hard to quote in a short snippet. Oh, well. A good book on the history of patriotic celebrations and festivals in the United States is David Waldstreicher's In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes- The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820. (Amazon link) Fetes describes the battles between the Federalists and Republicans/Anti-Federalists to define and claim various early national holidays, parades, odes, toasts, etc. My loyalties, of course, are with the guys who lost, the Anti's. Although the Federalists did get a nice beat-down in 1800, with the Jefferson landslide.

But we have Rays-Royals, so none of this matters.

Game 86 Open Thread - Royals (38-47) at Orioles (43-40)

royalsreview — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:21:25 -0000

Um.. I'm not good at math, considering I labeled yesterday's game "#87".

There's a huge difference between a 2-2 split and a 1-3 series lost, but to earn that split the Royals will have to top those unstoppable Orioles.

Critical Start for Davies Tonight

royalsreview — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:25:42 -0000

First, the numbers from Hiram's first four starts with the Royals this season:

	IP	BAA	SLG-A	K/BB	ERA
Good Davies	24.2	.256	.344	1	1.46

While Davies walked as many men as he struck out (12 each) over his first four starts, he found success thanks to a low BAA and a clean slate regarding home runs. He wasn't terribly efficient (Gil meet Hiram) with his pitch count until, roughly, his fourth start, when he went seven strong against the Cardinals, and needed only 106 pitches to do so. By way of comparison, he hit 100 pitches exactly in his first start of the season against the Indians. In five innings.

Now, the data from his last two starts:

	IP	BAA	SLG-A	K/BB	ERA
Bad Davies	7.2	.371	.514	0.75	9.39

You don't need to have Buzz Bissinger's impeccable integrity and wisdom to see that when your BAA rises from .256 to .371, your ERA is going to explode proportionally. In his last two starts Davies was more or less the same guy: not many walks or strikeouts. Only against the Giants and Cardinals (a second time) more balls found grass.

What's interesting is his performance this season, both good and bad, goes against what Davies has always been: a great stuff guy with control issues (you've probably heard that before). Last year with the Royals, Davies struck out forty batters in just fifty innings, but still allowed a devil's ERA (6.66) thanks to ten homers allowed and twenty six walks. Some of that high ERA was a bit of bad luck, but wholly in line with his career numbers at the Major League level. This season, he's gone from a JDLR-type to a Brian Bannister-type, and it seems likely that this is reflective of a change in approach.

Here are Hiram's career K/9 numbers:

	K/9
2005	6.37
2006	7.25
2007	6.55
2008	4.18

To this point, although the data isn't without issues, according to one measure, Davies has essentially abandoned his slider, a pitch he threw 14.1% of the time in 2007, but only 1.2% of the time this season. Taking its place has been the Bannyrific change up, which Davies has thrown 21.2% of the time.

Despite the headline, it isn't really a critical start for Davies tonight. I don't think he can have much long term success on the Bannister model (don't think Banny can either, by the way) and I'll be interested to see how he does tonight.

Gil Meche Everyone

royalsreview — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:42:19 -0000

	W-L	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	BS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2008 - Gil Meche	6-9	18	18	0	0	0	0	108.1	109	59	57	13	37	82	4.74	1.35

Not a terrible effort (4 ER in 6 IP) from Gil, but not anything to be excited about either. Meche is nothing if not frustrating, at least in the eyes of this 'umble blogger. I know he's valuable, even if his ERA is below league average this year, simply for the innings and stability. Still, he leaves me feeling like he's the lamest #1 starter ever.

Oh, and Mike Aviles has produced twelve outs the last two games.

But hey, Trey's hackers managed ZERO walks against one of the wildest starters in the American League. Cabrera only needed 105 pitches to complete the game, despite allowing seven hits. Incredible.

Help Support Royals Review

royalsreview — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:32:14 -0000

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Top 5 Pet Shop Boys Songs

royalsreview — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:46:20 -0000

Top 5 Pet Shop Boys Songs

West End Girls
Suburbia
Always on My Mind
Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)
Where the Streets Have No Name