Thursday, April 10, 2008

Royals Today: 4/10/2008.

A quickie today:










Anonymous said...

You DO realize that the "Teahen is back!" and "Guillen is pure garbage" stuff is just knee-jerk 1 1/2 week reactionary stuff, right? I mean, that's intentional, right? Not serious analysis? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

philevans3154 said...

The thing that surprised me was that Hillman never had a pitcher warming up while Nomo was in the game.

Well, that and Nomo getting major leaguers out with an 86 mph fastball.

Peter said...

Another interesting streak that is still current is that the R's have had between 8-12 hits in every game so far.

10, 8, 11, 8, 9, 9, 12, 8, 8

The best they managed last year was over a 7 game stretch.

Curtis Ruder said...

Hillman leaves all of his pitchers in for longer than I would expect. There has to be a half dozen times I have been surprised to see a pitcher not lifted. Sometimes it works, but quite often it hasn't.

The two troubling trends I see so far are this tendency and our atrocious baserunning.

Anonymous said...

I was at the game last night and wanted to choke Guillen after his at bat in the 8th. Two on, two out and he is swinging at pitches at his shoe tops. WTF??? He gave Joba two free strikes before striking out.
Last night was just a bad night overall though. Joey dropped that ball in CF that lead to the second run for NY. Pettite threw 30 pitches in the 1st and only about 85 by the time he got pulled in the 7th. It just seemed like we lost all our patience. When you see Pena and Gathright bunting for outs on back to back pitches you want to pull your hair out.

JayhawkOwensJunior said...

I love that "just a quickie today" means you only wrote 700+ words. That's pretty much a newspaper column.

Gary said...

I saw the same thing Anonymous did. First three innings I never saw a swing at the first pitch. Even Gload, Guillen and Pena took a called strike. I thought Butler and German worked 2 great walks.

Then it was if they decided to see if they could keep Andy Pettite in longer than they kept Scott Baker in (48 pitches in first 2 innings, 84 pitches total through 7). But they are young and it takes a while. Teahen looked like a real ballplayer.

What really torqued me, though, was when Callaspo "nearly castrated Cano" and Gathright, instead of bunting at the only time it would have helped the team, ground into a fielder's choice. Teahen's sharp single would have scored Callaspo from second to make it a 2-4 game.

But. kids will be kids. They won't remember to work counts during a entire series for a while yet. Maybe they will look at this game, in comparison to the two previous, and lights will come on...or maybe Grudz will open up a can on them and move the process along!

Gary said...

One more thing: JayhawkOwensJunior. That avatar is painful to look at, my friend!

David said...

To the orginial commenter...I'd disagree that the thought about Teahen is reactionary. Yes, its only nine games, but he just looks like he did a couple of years ago when he's at the plate. He really seems to be back into that groove that he never found last year. I don't expect him to keep a 1.000+ OPS all season, but he's definitely a different hitter in the early going than he was last season. Just take a look at his strikeouts for a clear indication.

Patrick said...

I know he has 8 K's and only 1 walk, but it seems that Alex Gordon is MUCH more patient this year as well (as Mark Teahen). He's seen 148 pitches in 38 plate appearances, while Teahen has seen 150 in the same amount of PA's. That must mean that his BABIP is REALLY high, considering the8 k's in 38 PA's. To me that says that if he can simply stop swinging at the "bad strikes", and take those pitches, he'll be in for a monster year.

Antonio said...

Why is Grudz carrying a reputation of a good teacher? F-in' rookie when one makes a baserunning mistake, but not a word from him when he makes an error? And considering his career best in BB is 45, I'm not sure he'd be the best to preach the value of walking and taking pitches.