Zack Stat Pack: Start #6.

I’m reasonably certain that when I wake up tomorrow, I will discover that it’s actually April 7^th, that the season has yet to begin, and that I just had this really vivid dream about Zack Greinke that I’ll be embarrassed to mention to anyone. Something about six straight wins to start the season, two shutouts, a franchise-record scoreless streak, an SI cover, a first-place team. I know: I have got to lay off the Mountain Dew right before bed.

But until that happens, I’m savoring the moment.

- Coco Crisp has been an igniter on offense and brilliant with the glove, but do you all realize that if Crisp had, say, Carlos Beltran’s arm, Greinke’s scoreless streak might be at 59 and counting? As brilliant reader Curtis pointed out, Crisp has figured into all three runs Greinke has given up in his last 59 innings:

1) The unearned run against Detroit came after Mike Aviles’ relay throw hit Gerald Laird in the back – but that throw would have beaten Laird to the bag if Crisp had hit Aviles with the cutoff throw sooner.

2)The first run against Toronto came when Vernon Wells singled in Marcos Scutaro from second with two outs, after Scutaro doubled. Scutaro reached second when he turned a routine single into a double by challenging Crisp’s noodle arm.

3) Scutaro scored again in the third, after drawing a walk and then going first-to-third on a single to center. Scutaro would have held at second against a centerfielder with a strong arm – and would not have scored on Alexis Rios’ GIDP.

Put a strong arm – not a howitzer, just someone who can throw the ball 200 feet on the fly – in center field, and Greinke is one inning away from breaking one of the most hallowed records in baseball. Saturday’s start in Anaheim, near one of the world’s media epicenters, would be a circus that would shame Barnum & Bailey. Maybe it’s better this way.

- Greinke threw a six-hit shutout tonight, and what’s ridiculous is that with a smidge of luck and a smidge better defense, he could have had a perfect game. Look at the six hits:

Hit #1: A groundball by Scott Podsednik that bounced off Alberto Callaspo’s glove into right field.

Hit #2: A.J. Pierzynski breaks his bat and fists a floater in no-man’s land in short center field, right between three fielders.

Hit #3: Scott Podsednik hits a fast grounder that appears to hit the lip of the infield grass, taking a funny hop that eats Billy Butler up, and Podsednik races to second with a double.

Hit #4: Pierzynski hits a line drive that bounces off of Mark Teahen’s glove for a single.

Hit #5: Alexei Ramirez golfs a pitch into short center field for a bloop single.

Hit #6: Jayson Nix hits a looping drive that lands a few inches inside the foul line (it might have grazed the chalk) for a double.

For the game, opposing hitters were 6-for-21, or .286, on balls in play against Greinke. For the season, his BABIP is also .286. The BABIP for the Royals as a team is virtually indistinguishable at .289. In other words, Greinke hasn’t been lucky this season. He comes by that 0.40 ERA honestly. Honestly.

Alright, so here’s a woefully incomplete list of all the records that Greinke is taking aim at:

- He’s the third Royal, after Bret Saberhagen in 1987 and Jose Lima in 2003, to win his first six decisions of the season. (Lima started 7-0.)

- Only Saberhagen had won his first six starts of the season. Saberhagen lost his seventh.

- Zack Greinke has thrown two complete-game shutouts. The rest of the American League has combined for…hold on, let me do the math…zero.

- Greinke has reached double digits in strikeouts three times this year. In franchise history, only three pitchers have ever whiffed 10 or more batters more than three times in a season: Kevin Appier (four times in 1995, five times in 1996), Bob Johnson (five times in 1970), and Dennis Leonard (six times in 1977).

- Greinke now has six double-digit strikeout games in his career, at age 25. Only five Royals have more: Leonard with seven; Tom Gordon, Mark Gubicza, and Bret Saberhagen with eight; and Appier, with 21. Greinke has a good shot at being second on this list by the end of the year. If not the end of the month.

- Greinke now has two starts this season with 10 strikeouts and no walks. No Royal in history has had two…in their career. Tom Gordon comes closest; he did so once on July 17^th, 1989 – and also struck out ten without a walk on April 12^th that year, only in a relief appearance that spanned 6.2 innings.

- Greinke has four starts in his career with 10 strikeouts and no walks. Every other pitcher to suit up for the Royals in their history has combined for four such starts: one by Gordon, one by Gubicza, one by Johnson, and one by Rich Gale.

Unfortunately, the otherwise-excellent Play Index at baseball-reference.com does not allow me to run queries like “lowest ERA for a pitcher six starts into a season” and “most opposing hitters brought to tears after an at-bat”. So this will have to do for now; if I find the time to raid the Baseball Prospectus database for more goodies, I’ll let you know.

Royals Today: 5/3/2009.

After last night’s epic win, I tweeted, “Looking for another reason to take KC seriously? There's no way we win tonight's game last year...or the year before...or the year before...” Then I read the game recap, where I learned that Zack Greinke was thinking along the exact same lines: “We never win these kinds of games here,” he said. “Along about the seventh or eighth inning, I was thinking, ‘If we win this, things have changed.’ ”

We won. Maybe things have changed.

If you’re not a Royals fan, you may have difficulty understanding just how frightening it is when we play the Twins. The Indians may have dominated us more over the last 15 years, the White Sox may be the target of more personal hatred…but in the late innings of a tight ballgame, no team fills me with more dread than the Twins – and no venue frightens me more than the Metrodome. I’m willing to wager that in the span of time when the Royals were saddled with the worst bullpen of all time (1998-2006, roughly), no team stole more games from the Royals in the late innings than Minnesota.

This series looked like another data point for the theory that the Twins just have our number. Joe Mauer finally returned to the majors on May 1^st, just in time to play the Royals – and homers in his first at-bat, then doubles in his second at-bat, then grabs four more hits yesterday. Last night they responded to Royal runs in the second, fifth, and sixth with rallies of their own. After the Royals rallied to tie in the seventh and take the lead in the eighth, Juan Cruz started the bottom of the inning with a pitch that was about 15 feet outside, a fitting introduction to a 24-pitch outing which included two walks, a single, a wild pitch, a passed ball, and just ten strikes. I was tempted to shut off the TV after Delmon Young’s single tied the game; the odds that the Royals would pull this game out were too slim to justify watching it.

But they did. They did because David DeJesus made two great hustle plays in left field in the eighth inning. They did because Ron Mahay came in and finally looked like the pitcher he was during the first half of last season, retiring Kubel-Mauer-Morneau in order in the eighth and ninth, and working into the tenth. They did because Coco Crisp masterfully worked Joe Nathan for a 12-pitch at-bat to lead off the ninth, and even though he eventually grounded out, he set the tone for a grueling 25-pitch inning which insured that Nathan wouldn’t come out for the tenth. From Dick Kaegel’s writeup: “Bench coach John Gibbons turned to Hillman after Crisp’s at-bat and said: “All we have to do is keep seeing some pitches, and hopefully we’ll only see Mr. Nathan for one inning.’”

The Royals won because after Mahay gave up a double to Brian Buscher leading off the tenth – which just missed clearing the fence – it was the Twins who, for a change, had problems with the fundamentals. Carlos Gomez, one of the fastest players in baseball, fouled off two bunt attempts before harmlessly flying out to center. And the Royals won because Trey Hillman decided to see what all this talk about using Joakim Soria for more than one inning was about, and brought him in to pitch in the 10^th inning of a tie game. They won because after a wild pitch moved Bruscher to third, Tony Pena (who had apparently already broken the hamate bone in his left hand) made a nice play on a grounder to hold the runner at third, and then Billy Butler made a nice player on a grounder down the line.

But mostly, they won because after a half-decade of talking about the importance of on-base percentage, the Royals have finally figured out how to use the walk as an offensive weapon. Crisp didn’t swing at any of the six pitches he saw in the top of the 11^th, the first three and the last of which were balls. Willie Bloomquist showed bunt, but pulled the bat back twice on pitches out of the strike zone, and realizing that there was no point bunting on a pitcher who couldn’t throw strikes, worked his own five-pitch walk. Butler grounded out, but Mark Teahen pinch-hit and walked on four pitches. R.A. Dickey relieved Craig Breslow and got John Buck down in the count, 1-2, but Buck worked the count full, fouled off two pitches, then took ball four to drive home the go-ahead run. Callaspo then hit a slow grounder to plate another. Against the best control pitching staff in baseball, the Royals had scored two runs, in the 11^th inning of a tie game, without benefit of a hit.

Maybe things have changed. Much like this game went a long way towards eliminating doubt that the 2003 Royals were in it for the long haul, the fact that the Royals had the last word in a game that had ten lead changes tells me that they’re not going away anytime soon.

- Thanks to scoring 34 runs in their last four games, the Royals now rank a respectable 10^th in the league in runs per game. A few days ago, there was a big disconnect between the Royals offensive stats and their run totals, due primarily to a poor performance with runners in scoring position. The team’s performance with RISP has evened out, as it tends to do, with some nice work the last few days.

The Royals have scored 112 runs and allowed 96; according to BP’s Equivalent Runs, they “should” have scored 114 runs and allowed 97. The difference is immaterial. The team is playing well because they should be playing well.

- You want to know the biggest single reason why the Royals are playing better than last year? The Royals have drawn 86 walks in 24 games; they rank 7^th in the league in that category. The last time the Royals ranked in the top half of the AL in walks? 1989. Before that? 1980. I’m not saying the Royals should be putting Kevin Seitzer in their Hall of Fame yet. But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start working on the portrait.

- The man leading the Royals’ foray into the land of plate discipline is Coco Crisp, who has 17 walks already. I’m as shocked as anyone. Crisp’s career high in walks is 50 – he’s on pace to get there before the All-Star Break. On the one hand, when a 29-year-old player is on a pace to basically double his career high in a category, you have to suspect it’s a small sample size fluke. On the other hand, walk rates are one of the most stable statistics in baseball. Guys hit .400 in April and .200 in May all the time; drawing 17 walks in a month and four walks the next is a much rarer event.

Crisp certainly has the look at the plate of someone who is looking to work the count at every opportunity. If you knew nothing about his track record, you’d think he absolutely could draw 100 walks in a season. But it’s hard to just ignore the track record. I mean, Crisp played for the RED SOX the last three years, a team for who plate discipline is akin to a religion, and never walked in even 10% of his plate appearances. Could Seitzer have really found a way to get Crisp to double his walk rate?

- If Crisp does draw 100 walks this year, he’ll be the first Royal to do so since, again, 1989. Who did it that year? Kevin Seitzer.

- Alberto Callaspo. My God. Batting average is subject to a lot of variation, but still – he’s hitting .382, he’s second in the league with 11 doubles, and he’s struck out just four times all year. He’s not going to hit anywhere near this well all season – one of the best hidden indicators of batting average is line drive percentage, and Callaspo’s mark of 18% this season is right around league average – but he’s a legitimate .300-plus hitter. He’s also spent all but two games this year batting 6^th or lower in the lineup. Is there any legitimate reason why Callaspo shouldn’t be batting third?

- Willie Bloomquist. Um, yeah, I didn’t see this coming either. Before the season, the one reason to be a little intrigued about Bloomquist was that last season, his walk rate spiked, as he drew 25 walks in under 200 plate appearances and posted a very solid .377 OBP. My feeling was that the Royals would beat that out of him in quick order, but instead he’s maintained that discipline, already drawing eight walks. Throw in his defensive versatility and clubhouse presence, and that justifies a roster spot. Then add in a fluky batting average and some accidental power, and suddenly you have a guy who’s winning games for the Royals.

I mean, this next phrase is inarguable: Willie Bloomquist willed the Royals to victory last night. He singled in the first to set up a run. He homered with two outs in the fifth to tie the game. After hitting into a fielder’s choice in the seventh, he stole second base and then scored on Butler’s single. In the ninth he singled again, stole second again, but was stranded at third base. In the 11^th he was sent up to bunt, but walked instead to key the three-run rally. It might not last for long, but for now: all hail The Golden Spork!

(That still doesn’t mean he has any business starting against a right-handed pitcher, mind you.)

- Can we all agree that the Sidney Ponson Experiment has failed? Please? Yes, Ponson has pitched well in three of his five starts – but the other two starts were so bad that he still has a 7.16 ERA. Meanwhile, Luke Hochevar is trying to become the Zack Greinke of the Pacific Coast League – after last night’s seven-inning shutout he’s 5-0 with a 1.13 ERA. Is common sense really that rare a commodity in the Royals’ front office?

“We looked at the video,” Hillman said. “We see stuff. Hopefully, sooner than later, it will play out. I plan on him making his next start if that’s the question.”

I think we have our answer.

- Should we be a little worried about Juan Cruz? It’s not just his performance last night, it’s the fact that in 11.1 innings, he has just six strikeouts. For a guy who had 158 Ks in 113 innings the last two years, it’s something which warrants watching.

- There is a body of evidence which suggests that when it comes to platoon splits, all hitters are essentially equal – if one player shows a larger platoon split than another, it’s likely due to pure luck.

I can only assume this evidence did not take into account the curious case of one Miguel Olivo.

Olivo is having a pretty awful year overall, but once again he’s hitting lefties: he’s 8-for-26 (.308) against them with a double, triple, and homer. The problem is that he’s 3-for-27 against RHP with 13 strikeouts. Watching Olivo, it’s pretty obvious the reason for the discrepancy: the man is completely hypnotized by the slider. He can neither identify nor lay off it.

Statistically speaking, Buck is a similar player, but his approach against RHP is much, much better, and I hope that Hillman eventually adopts a platoon of sorts, starting Buck against RHP and Olivo against southpaws (with Buck occasionally DHing). Olivo’s career line against RHP is .222/.258/.365. There’s no reason to give those numbers relevance any more than necessary.

- Finally, from the “Awkward Moments in Radio Broadcast History Department”: this week’s podcast is here. Towards the end of our interview with Keith Law, my connection to the studio suddenly died. I quickly called back in, and when Keith was still talking about Mike Moustakas when I finally got re-connected, I was hopeful that no one would notice my absence.

But then Keith finished his sentence, and there was a pause for a second…two seconds…five seconds, before my co-host Jason Anderson finally rescued us by saying, “I completely agree.” What I didn’t know was that just seconds before I got re-connected, Keith had started his sentence by saying, “Rany, I think this kind of up your alley too” – setting me up for a reply which never came. You can hear this exchange around 39 minutes in, if you’re the kind of person who, you know, holds up traffic to look at car accidents.

Also, this is a good time to point out that I should be making regular appearances promoting the show every Monday morning on The Border Patrol with Steven St. John and Nate Bukaty, usually a little after 9 o’clock.

Your (Hopefully) Regular Zack Stat Pack.

I don’t know how often I’ll do one of these, but hey, as long as Zack keeps setting records, I feel obligated to report on them. So while we wait to see if the Royals can pull off a winning April, enjoy these stat nuggets. Some of these you know, some of them you probably don’t.

- Zack Greinke is the first pitcher in Royals history to go 5-0 in April.

- Greinke is the third pitcher in Royals history to win his first five starts of the season. Bret Saberhagen holds the record, with six consecutive wins to start his 1987 campaign. (He threw 51 innings in those six starts, which goes a long way towards explaining why he went 15-3, 2.47 before the Break – and 3-7, 4.61 afterwards.) The only other Royal to be 5-0 after five starts is Al Fitzmorris, in 1973*.

*: Okay, I have to report this: Fitzmorris didn’t make his season debut in 1973 until July 15^th, going six solid innings, allowing three runs, walking one batter – but not striking anyone out. He didn’t make his second start until 12 days later, and threw a complete game shutout – and again, didn’t strike anyone out. In his next three starts, his lines were: 7 7 2 2 2 1, 6 4 1 1 1 1, and 9 7 1 1 1 0.

Add it all up, and Fitzmorris was 5-0 with a 1.70 ERA, having allowed just 32 hits and eight walks in 37 innings – with TWO STRIKEOUTS. That might be, in its own way, the most amazing stretch of pitching in the history of the world. His BABIP in that stretch, for the record, was .225. And you all thought Brian Bannister was lucky.

- Going back to last season, Greinke has actually won eight starts in a row. This ties a franchise record previously accomplished by three pitchers: David Cone in his Cy Young season of 1994, Bret Saberhagen in his Cy Young season of 1989…and Rich Gale in his decidedly un-Cy Young season of 1980.

(I should point out that Saberhagen won eight straight starts from July 26^th to August 31^st that year…and then won six straight starts from September 9^th to September 30^th. Saberhagen won 14 games in 15 starts – not 15 decisions, 15 starts – with a 1.52 ERA over that span. I don’t know if Greinke is pitching better than anyone in a Royals uniform ever has – but at least I know who set the bar he’s trying to clear.)

- Greinke still has a way to go to match the longest winning streak in Royals history; Rich Gale won 11 in a row in 1980, and Paul Splittorff won 11 in a row between 1977-78. Kevin Appier won nine in a row in 1992.

- Greinke has now struck out at least 7 batters in five consecutive starts. That doesn’t sound like much, but it matches the longest streak in Royals history, set by Appier in 1996. (There have been five streaks of four starts in a row with 7 or more strikeouts: three by Appier, and one by Tom Gordon.)

- I’m not going to go through all the various ways to describe Greinke’s scoreless innings streak. But I thought this was a fun way to put things in perspective. Greinke went six consecutive starts without surrendering an earned run. Since 1997, only three other pitchers (Paul Byrd, Gil Meche, and – of all people – Brandon Duckworth) have gone more than six consecutive starts without surrendering a home run.

Finally, you know how I was writing that we may have been a little harsh on Trey Hillman? Here’s more proof – just look at his competition. Wow. This would be the equivalent of Hillman pinch-hitting for Mike Aviles with Tony Pena, only if Pena had already changed into street clothes and they had to hold up the game for five minutes while he got dressed.

Mea Culpa. (Sort of.)

Apparently, we’ve all been a little too hard on Trey Hillman.

I hesitate to call the following an “apology”. The things that I and others wrote about Hillman’s mystifying usage of Joakim Soria were completely fair based on what we knew at the time – and we had no reason to think that there was more to the story. My column hinting at a hidden injury for Soria was completely tongue-in-cheek, though in retrospect was shockingly accurate (a critic might say it’s the only accurate thing I’ve written this year). But it read as satire precisely because the Royals stuck to their story that the only thing wrong with Soria was the way his manager was using him. Remember, Bob Dutton and Dick Kaegel both asked Hillman, point blank, if there was anything wrong with his closer. The answer at the time was no. The answer two days later was entirely different.

But if I don’t owe Hillman an apology, at least I owe it to say I take it all back. My criticisms may have been entirely fair – but they weren’t entirely accurate. And frankly, while you never want one of your players to be injured, now that the mystery has been revealed this might actually be a best-case scenario.

Soria’s shoulder injury isn’t severe enough to put him on the DL, and while Will Carroll wrote that “I don't feel good about this one,” he admitted that was based more on a feeling than any tangible evidence. And I suspect Will might have changed his mind given that Soria threw off a mound with no problems yesterday.

“[I]t appears quite certain that the Mexicutioner is suffering from an ailment that prevents him from pitching. That is because the alternative explanation is that Trey Hillman has the IQ of a barnyard animal, and I think we can all agree that barnyard animals possess neither the intellect nor the communication skills necessary to obtain a job as major league manager in the first place.”

If Hillman is guilty of anything, it’s deliberately lying about a health issue regarding one of his players in order to gain a competitive edge. That might not be sportsmanship, but it’s certainly gamesmanship. It’s an open issue as to whether teams gain an edge by hiding injury reports, but the relevant issue is that Hillman and Moore thought this would gain them an edge. They wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they weren’t trying to find one. (On the other side of the Truman Sports Complex, a couple of newly hired forty-somethings nod their head approvingly.)

The problem is that, having lied to us already, there’s no reason to trust that Hillman isn’t lying to us again, if not about the extent of the injury, then about the timing. Nonetheless, the facts check out pretty well here. Consider:

1) The Royals claim that the problem with Soria’s shoulder was first noticed when he was warming up on Saturday, April 18^th, in anticipation of bailing out Zack Greinke if needed in the ninth (Greinke closed the game out for his first career shutout). This squares with the facts. No one else was warming up alongside Soria in the ninth; if the Royals had been concerned with Soria’s availability prior to that date, they almost certainly would have had someone ready to come in if the go-ahead run had come to the plate.

2) Soria did not appear in a game until April 22^nd, when he closed out the ninth against the Indians, but shakily, giving up a walk and single with one out, and a passed ball to put the tying runs in scoring position with two outs, before ending the game on a questionable strike three call against Trevor Crowe.

3) The Royals finally came clean with the injury before the game on Friday, even though (they claimed) Soria had an MRI on his shoulder the following evening which revealed no abnormalities.

The explanation for all of this is pretty straightforward, which is why I’m inclined to believe it. Basically, Soria felt something in his shoulder while warming up on Saturday night. That “something” was evidently not serious enough to keep him from pitching entirely; he would have likely come into the game anyway had Greinke allowed another baserunner. And from Sunday through Wednesday, Soria was evidently available but only for one-inning stints, which explains why Hillman refused to use him in anything other than the holy Ninth Inning Save Situation. Soria finally got into a game on Wednesday, continued to feel soreness the following day, and that’s when the Royals decided to come clean.

And keep in mind, along with a firm timeline that explains all the weird bullpen shenanigans of last week, we have a pretty obvious reason for the injury in the first place: the World Baseball Classic, which resulted in Soria being used for exactly two innings over a two-week span. Soria isn’t the first, and won’t be the last, pitcher to suffer as a result of the unpredictable usage patterns the WBC brings to pitchers at the exact point in the year where they most need predictable work to get their arms ready for the season. Assuming Soria just needs a little rest, we should consider ourselves lucky that the only fallout is a week or two of forced inactivity. Let’s hope that come 2013, the tournament structure will have moved to later in March with a much more compressed schedule, which ought to address the main concerns of too much downtime for relievers (and too many pitchers for starters) too early in spring training.

“Rest assured that there’s no way someone could spend a quarter-century playing, coaching, and managing in professional baseball, and ascend to the highest rank of his profession before he turned 45, and make the decisions that Hillman appeared to make today. It’s simply not possible that Hillman would not use Soria to protect a tight lead, even as the inning was falling apart, just because it was the eighth inning instead of the ninth.”

Last Sunday, Hillman called on Juan Cruz, Ron Mahay, and Jamey Wright with a lead, and Kyle Farnsworth in a tie, while the only sighting of Soria was of him lightly tossing the ball in the bullpen in the eighth. Hillman’s usage of his bullpen that day is consistent with the theory that Soria was available to pitch the ninth inning – if Soria was unavailable to pitch at all, you’d have to figure that Cruz would have been saved for that situation.

If Hillman erred in the way he handled the pen in this game, his error didn’t come in the eighth, when he used Ron Mahay and Jamey Wright as the inning melted down, but in the seventh. If Soria is only available for one inning, why was Hillman so keen on pulling Juan Cruz from the game after only two outs? Cruz should have been left in to face Josh Hamilton, who only represented the tying run, not the go-ahead run. If Cruz retired Hamilton, he was in fine position to pitch through the eighth and hand the ball directly off to Soria with an off-day coming. If Hamilton reached base, Cruz would still get to face the right-handed Andruw Jones – a matchup that definitely favored the pitcher.

“It’s tough to lose a game because Soria came down with AITP at an inopportune time. But in a way it’s a relief to know that the reason the Royals lost yet another game that they had in the bag was simply because of AITP. I mean, if Soria doesn’t have AITP, that means the Royals lost today’s game because their manager is a complete and utter moron. AITP is curable, but I’m afraid there may be no cure for imbecilic bullpen management.”

Um, yeah.

Ultimately, you have to take some positives from this. Soria really did have AITP. His version of AITP does appear to be curable. Our manager is not a complete and utter moron. And the cure for what appeared to be imbecilic bullpen management may be as simple as the cure for Soria’s achy shoulder – a little bit of rest.

Hillman has made some poor decisions this month, and they certainly can’t all be blamed on Soria’s arm. Opening Day is still on him. But Soria’s injury changes the narrative, from “our manager is actively costing our team a chance at the playoffs” to “our manager has made some bad decisions along with some good decisions, and overall he’s neither an asset nor a liability.” Ultimately, the Royals are 10-10 – that’s a good thing. They’ve allowed the fewest runs in the majors. The offense is dead-average in the American League in walks drawn with 73, which for the Royals represents enormous improvement. They rank a surprising fifth in the league in defensive efficiency despite an infield that will be the subject of a lot of campfire stories this summer.

Hillman’s not perfect. But take away the biggest imperfection on his resume this season, look at the Royals’ performance from a distance, and suddenly his track record looks a lot better. The Royals can survive without Soria for a week or two – hell, the Royals haven’t been in need of his services even once since the injury was revealed. They can’t survive with a manager as dumb a Hillman appeared to be. So let’s all be thankful that Soria should be back soon, and that when he returns, he’ll be under the watchful eye of a manager who’s a little bit smarter than we were all giving him credit for.

The Future Has Arrived.

(In light of recent events, I owe all of you – and particularly Trey Hillman – my thoughts on the news that Joakim Soria has been battling a shoulder problem. (AITP exists? Who knew?) But I think you’ll all understand when I say that another pitcher deserves our attention first.)

Four years ago, I somewhat famously (some might say infamously) wrote in the pages of Baseball Prospectus 2005, “With apologies to Jon Landau, we have seen the future of pitching, and his name is Zack Greinke.”

With apologies to myself, Zack Greinke is not the future of pitching.

He is the present.

Being a die-hard Royals fan for the past two decades has no doubt made me rather annoying to the other baseball fans I have worked with, fans who would rather not hear me boast that Jeremy Giambi could be the second coming of John Mayberry, or that Jeremy Affeldt might just be the next Sandy Koufax. But I’d like to think that it also made me rather endearing in a pathetic sort of way. “Oh look, Rany’s so cute when he talks about Dee Brown as a future All-Star! Calvin Pickering could hit 40 homers? How adorable!”

Because being a fan means clinging to hope, no matter how absurd that hope appears to be: that’s the deal you make when you sign up. I never gave up hope, no matter how grim things looked, no matter how silly I looked. And if I couldn’t hold on to a reasonable hope regarding the Royals as a team, at least I could put my faith in individual players. I believed in Giambi and Affeldt, in Brown and Pickering, in Mark Quinn and Kyle Snyder, in Chris George and Jimmy Gobble, in Dan Reichert and Jeff Austin.

But in the last 15 years, I have neither hoped more nor dreamed higher for a player than I have for Donald Zackary Greinke. And no player has strained the bonds of those hopes and dreams quite like The Baseball Jonah.

I have been a Royals fan for a quarter-century, but I’ve only ever owned one Royals jersey, and it has a “23” on the back. I love Gil Meche, but I don’t plan my schedule around the nights that he’s on the mound.

I’ve watched Greinke’s career unfold from the day he was drafted, to the positive reports from his first instructional league, from the first whispers that he might be The One that drifted up from Latin America when he played there in winter ball, just six months out of high school, the youngest American ever to pitch down there.

I tracked his every start in Wilmington in 2003, when the Zack Greinke Phenomenon went mainstream. (For the record: July 14, 2003. That’s the day Joe Posnanski introduced Greinke – not just the pitcher, the person – to the sports world. “And that's when you realize something remarkable: Zack Greinke has never been nervous in his entire life. He doesn't even know what it feels like.”)

There are still some who argue that the biggest mistake the Royals made in that magical run of 2003 was not promoting Greinke to the majors and putting him into the rotation by July or August, as the team started to fade down the stretch. Mind you, Greinke was 19 at the time.

He finally made the rotation the following May, at 20, and was terrific from day one. He went 8-11 for a team that lost 104 games, finished with a 3.97 ERA, struck out an even 100 batters against just 26 walks. My daughter Cedra was 18 months old that June, and after weeks of coaching, she finally had her answer down pat. “Who’s the best pitcher in the world?” “Zac-rine-key!” It wasn’t the right answer, mind you. But it was the future of right answers.

And then, of course, someone had to go and remind Greinke that he was a Royal. A solid start to the 2005 season quickly disintegrated; from May 20^th until the end of the season, Greinke went 5-13 with a 6.73 ERA, giving up an astonishing 189 hits in 136 innings over that span. The highlight of his season was the home run he tomahawked over the fence at Chase Field – in the process of becoming the first Royal in history to surrender 11 runs in one game.

And then he was gone. Home to Florida, burnt out at the age of 22. He was certain he through with baseball, a sentiment that many people around baseball shared. Baseball is a difficult game, and the culture of baseball is unforgiving. The future of pitching was in the past.

If this were the Royals of old, the story would end here. Only it didn’t. Greinke was nurtured back to health with counseling, medication, and the kindness and patience of two men who have suffered the slings and arrows of my words as much as anyone, Allard Baird and Buddy Bell. Greinke learned to enjoy baseball again, first in Wichita, then in the bullpen, then in the rotation.

He came back a different pitcher. The genius of Greinke as a rookie was that he pitched in defiance of the style of every young hotshot pitcher to come up over the years. He paced himself, he varied the speed on his fastball, he’d throw any pitch in any count, he’d throw pitches that no one had ever seen before. And for the better part of two years, we raved about how precocious this young man was, how he pitched with the guts and guile of a 15-year veteran. Only it turned out that Greinke didn’t throw that way because he was wise beyond his years. He pitched fearlessly because in order to be afraid of failure, you have to care about success. Greinke simply didn’t care enough about the results to be intimidated by the challenge.

So when he returned with a new sense of purpose, he also returned with new life on his fastball. Gone were the days of sitting at 89 and touching 92; now he was sitting at 92 and touching 95, and in the bullpen he was hitting 97 and 98. He streamlined his approach – gone were the LaLob curveballs in the 50s and the occasional attempts to skirt the law forbidding quick pitches, and in their place was a fairly straightforward repertoire: fastball in the 90s, slider in the 80s, curveball in the 70s, changeup in emergencies only.

He announced his return with authority in a brilliant start against the White Sox on September 20^th, 2007, allowing just two hits in eight scoreless innings, striking out 10. He followed that up with his best season in 2008, winning 13 games, throwing 202 innings, posting a 3.47 ERA (the lowest by any Royals starter since 1997), and striking out 183 (the most by any Royals starter since 1997). The fans fell in love again. He returned the favor, signing a four-year contract.

If this were the Royals of old, this is where Greinke would get hurt, or suffer another change of heart, or simply continue to tease Royals fans with glimpses of dominance occasionally peeking out between mountains of untapped potential.

These are not the Royals of old. This is not the Zack Greinke of old. He is not the future of pitching. He is not just some vessel transporting that most cursed of possessions, potential. Like an alchemist who has suddenly found the philosopher’s stone, Greinke has overnight transmuted the weighty iron of his potential into brilliant gold that he molds into goose eggs every fifth day.

It took Greinke five years to become an overnight sensation, and what a sensation he is. He threw 38 consecutive scoreless innings, the longest in Royals history, before the streak came to an end when Mike Aviles’ relay throw hit Gerald Laird sliding into third base, allowing Laird to score. If Aviles holds onto the ball, that streak would be at 43, which would put Greinke at 12^th all-time and give him the longest streak since Orel Hershiser set the record in 1988.

(The irony is that Greinke's scoreless streak ended on an unearned run, given that as I wrote about last year, Greinke's pitching style makes him as unlikely to surrender an unearned run as any pitcher in baseball.)

Laird’s cheap run only succeeded in making Greinke mad. He retired the next 13 batters in order; Laird’s double was the only baserunner Greinke surrendered after the second inning. For the second straight start, Greinke went the distance, which had not happened since Jamey Wright did it in 2003. For the second straight start, Greinke whiffed 10 batters, which had not happened since Kevin Appier did it in 1996.

(Remember, over a seven-year span from September 1999 to September 2006, a Royals pitcher reached 10 strikeouts in a game exactly once – by Blake Stein on June 17, 2001. Greinke has done it twice in a week.)

Greinke was so dominant on Friday night that the Royals won, 6-1, they never appeared in any danger of losing the game, and I still had trouble falling asleep because they didn’t win 6-0. The way he’s throwing now, you have to wonder if he’s simply going to start another streak right away. As it is, he’s the third pitcher of the Retrosheet era (since 1954), after Hershiser and Don Drysdale, to go six straight starts without surrendering an earned run. He has a chance to be the first with seven straight starts.

Unfortunately, that scoreless streak is completely unofficial because Greinke had the audacity to record his streak over two seasons. So let’s just look at this season. Greinke leads the majors in wins, with four. He leads in ERA, with 0.00. In the Retrosheet era (since 1954), only one other pitcher gave up no earned runs in his first four starts: Fernando Valenzuela, in 1985. (Amazingly, Valenzuela also gave up just one run in his first four starts in his rookie season, 1981.)

Greinke leads the American League in strikeouts (36) and strikeouts per nine innings (11.17), along with complete games and shutouts. And suddenly, there seems to be no dream that seems out of Greinke’s reach.

A Cy Young Award? He has to be considered the early favorite. Three hundred strikeouts? If he makes 34 starts, he’s on pace for 306 Ks. If 300 is a stretch, the franchise record of 244, set by Dennis Leonard in 1977, is not. The first Sports Illustrated cover shot by a Royal since, who, Bo Jackson? With our man Poz working on the inside now, you have to think that it’s coming.

There will be bumps and potholes along the way, no doubt. Greinke will give up an earned run or two at some point this season; he may even, perish the thought, lose a game. But for once, Royals fans can forgo basking in the dream of what may come, and can instead bask in the memory of what just happened. On a Friday night in Kansas City, in front of a sellout crowd, with fans in the bleachers putting up K cards with every strikeout, Zack Greinke threw a masterpiece effort to give the Royals an uncontested hold on first place.

On the day after Tony Gonzalez, the best player in the Kansas City sports scene for the past decade, was traded to Atlanta, Greinke made his best pitch to be Gonzalez’s replacement. On the day before the Chiefs began their first draft under new management in two decades, Greinke announced his intention to make Kansas City a baseball town again. Bob Dutton’s lede began, “Is this the night, after more than a generation, that baseball truly became relevant again in Kansas City? Maybe. Just maybe.” Bob Dutton, folks. I write stuff like that all the time – I’m Dr. Hyperbole. Dutton is Mr. Tell-It-Like-It-Is. When he says that this game might be the tipping point for baseball in Kansas City, that’s an opinion you have to take seriously.

The best part of Friday night’s game came afterwards, when Joel Goldberg interviewed Greinke about his outing. It wasn’t the answers Greinke gave, it was the way he delivered them: with a goofy grin on his face, almost like he couldn’t believe how much fun he was having. Like he had suddenly realized that he enjoyed playing baseball, and that he enjoyed being rooted on by a sellout crowd, and that the 36,363 in attendance might have equally enjoyed watching him play. Maybe he realized that all the years it took getting to this point didn’t hurt his relationship with the fans of Kansas City – it only strengthened it. And that we’re all very much looking forward to enjoying the next four years together.

Maybe Greinke won’t single-handedly carry the Royals into the postseason this year, though I’m certainly not about to rule that out. But the saving grace here is that, as a wise man once said, “I have seen the future, and it’s much like the present – only longer.” If the next four years look anything like his last four starts, Greinke is going to have plenty of chances to pitch us into the playoffs.

In the meantime, let’s enjoy what we have, starting Wednesday night against the Blue Jays. Greg Maddux was Must-See TV in the mid-90s, and the Pedro Experience was the greatest show in baseball at the turn of the century. But since Pedro lost his fastball there hasn’t been a truly transcendent pitcher in the game, the kind of pitcher that entices even fans of other teams to tune in every five days because they’re afraid they might miss something historic. It’s too early to proclaim 2009 the start of the Zack Greinke Experience. But it’s not too early to hope, and it’s not too crazy to dream. With Greinke, nothing is too crazy to dream.

Not even this: the best pitcher in the world just might be Zac-rine-key.

Royals Today: 4/22/2009.

Podcast’s here.

Also, I’ve figured out how to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, if you’re looking for a way to take the podcast with you on your iPod. Open up iTunes, go to “Advanced” at the top, and select “Subscribe to Podcast”. Then enter this URL: http://www.stationcaster.com/stations/whb/rss/?c=377

(Late update: reader Brad comments in my last post that he has requested that iTunes add the show to their list of available podcasts. It doesn’t appear to be up yet, but hopefully in my next post I’ll have instructions on that.)

- In its own way, last night’s game was every bit as frustrating as Sunday’s, if not more so. The Royals collectively batted 13-for-34, with four walks, a HBP, three doubles, and a homer – their line for the game was .382/.462/.559. Ordinarily that’s a line that should produce a double-digit run total – assuming you don’t ground into a franchise-record six double plays in the game.

Even so, the Royals scored seven runs, which is enough to win most nights – and would have been enough to win every game the Royals had played up to this point. The Royals had not surrendered more than six runs in a game all season, but Sidney Ponson matched that total by the fourth inning, and frankly he was lucky it wasn’t worse. For the game the Indians actually had more batters reach safely (19) than the Royals did (18), thanks to nine walks, and left nine runners on base compared to the Royals’ six.

Every one-run loss eats at you in a different way, and the Royals are now 1-3 in one-run games this year. But I’m a lot more upbeat after this game than after Sunday’s. This time we didn’t lose because of managerial incompetence*; we lost because our batters, while very productive overall, hit ground balls at infielders at the most inopportune times. Productivity is a lot more consistent than serendipity. The 18 baserunners who reached, the way the Royals mounted threats in almost every inning, the way they battled back to score six runs in two innings off the Indians’ bullpen – that tells us more about what the Royals are capable of going forward than the fact that they hit ground balls with a man on first and less than two outs in six straight innings.

*: I have no significant issue with Hillman bringing in Juan Cruz to pitch the eighth with the Royals down a run, even though Cruz wound up giving up a two-run homer to Victor Martinez that proved crucial to the outcome. Cruz is clearly our second-best reliever, and he just picked a bad time to give up his first two runs of the season. Still, it must be said: Joakim Soria has not pitched in nine days. Since Soria last pitched, Kyle Davies and Sidney Ponson have both started TWICE. And for the second straight game, if Soria had been called upon to pitch in the eighth inning of a one-run game, the Royals likely would have won.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s important to remember that while the Royals should have a better record than 7-6…the Royals should have a better record than 7-6. We still have over 90% of the season left ahead of us. The fact that the Royals have underachieved to this point is frustrating, but it’s also exciting, because it means that the Royals are above .500 and tied for first place while underachieving. The Royals have scored 57 runs and allowed 46 runs, a run differential which, when plugged into the Pythagorean formula, yields a .605 winning percentage. (Using the slightly more accurate Pythagenport formula, we get a projected .595 winning percentage.) That projects to either 7.9 or 7.7 wins so far this year, which means the Royals have lost roughly one game more than they should have based on their run totals.

That win may well be crucial – but the greater point here is that the Royals have basically played like a .600 team so far this year. There’s still 149 games left; if they play like a .600 team the rest of the season, they’re going to win 95 games and we’re probably not going to care all that much about a couple of April losses.

They’re not going to play like a .600 team the rest of the way, unless Meche-Greinke-Davies continue to combine for a 1.69 ERA all season. But the Royals have a winning record, and it’s not a fluke. That’s something to build on. (And keep in mind, the Tigers have an even better run differential (72 RS, 55 RA) and the same 7-6 record. We’re not the only ones underperforming so far.)

- Thank God at least one member of the Royals’ brain trust is able to admit when he’s made a mistake. The Horacio Ramirez Starter Experiment lasted exactly one start before he was shuttled off to the only role he’s shown himself capable of filling: left-handed long reliever. He’s vastly overpaid for the role, obviously, but the money’s spent either way. The Royals do need a second lefty in the pen, so maybe Ramirez can work his way up to being the LOOGY that the Royals need, freeing Ron Mahay up for less specialized work.

I’m surprised that the Royals went with Brian Bannister in his place rather than Luke Hochevar, but I can understand the reasoning, even from a non-financial perspective. Hochevar has the better ERA in Omaha (1.89 vs. 3.46), but ERA is almost meaningless as an indicator of quality over the span of three starts. Bannister has walked one batter and struck out eight in 13 innings of work, and in his last two starts has worked nine scoreless innings with three hits and no walks. Hochevar has just five walks in 19 innings – but also has only nine strikeouts. Cool Hand doesn’t need strikeouts to be effective, given his groundball tendencies, but it’s still a sign that he’s not exactly dominating the competition.

It’s a coin-flip, basically, so if you’re the Royals, why not – despite Dayton Moore’s protests to the contrary – let the non-baseball factors make the decision for you? Hochevar came into the season with 1 year, 17 days worth of service time. However, there’s a cushion of about 10 days built into the season – you only need 172 days of service time to get credited with a full year, but there’s something like 183 days in the season. So if the Royals keep Hochevar in Triple-A for about 28 days, they can delay free agency by a full year. The Royals are going to deny that as a consideration for obvious reasons, but really, shouldn’t it be a consideration? Hochevar’s a Boras client – you don’t think he’s going to use his leverage to go to the highest bidder as soon as he hits free agency?

This is the way the game is played – both sides use whatever leverage they have. I thought it was silly to send Hochevar to Triple-A at the beginning of the year because he was better than two of the guys that were picked to be starters. But now one of them is in the bullpen, and if Ponson pitches like he did last night again, he’ll probably be gone in a few weeks. At which point the deadline has passed, and the Royals can go back to the five-man rotation they had last year – the rotation I’ve argued they should have had all along this year.

- As atrocious as Hillman’s bullpen management is, he’s always done a pretty good job of getting his bench players involved, and yesterday is a terrific example of this. In the eighth inning, with the score 6-1, the Indians brought in the sidearmer Joe Smith to pitch against Mike Aviles. Aviles has struggled in the early part of the season, but still, he’s the guy who hit .325 last year. Still, Hillman did the right thing, calling on Brayan Pena to get the platoon advantage against a pitcher where the platoon advantage is almost as important as actually being able to hit. Pena doubled, the first of five Royals to reach base in a row and the start of a four-run rally.

- What ended that rally was a groundball double play from Miguel Olivo, and what’s sad is that the most remarkable thing about the outcome was that Olivo actually made contact with the baseball: he has whiffed in nearly half of his plate appearances (13 of 28) so far this year. His OPS+ is 9, which is approaching Tony Pena Jr. territory.

He’s better than this in terms of outcome, but this is who he is in terms of style: someone whose mid-range power can’t compensate for his appalling command of the strike zone, and someone who has never hit right-handed pitching in his career. This is one of those Common Sense Tests that Hillman has been struggling with all month: do you continue to use the catcher hitting .143/.143/.286 more often than the catcher hitting .409/.480/.909? Sometimes when a question seems to have an obvious answer, it’s a trick question. Sometimes, the answer really is that obvious. John Buck needs, and deserves, to start behind the plate at least 60% of the time. No, Buck can’t throw. But Olivo can’t hit, and one skill is more important than the other.

Zack Greinke reportedly loves working with Olivo, which is fine: make Olivo his personal catcher. I’m not typically thrilled with the “personal catcher” meme, but for the Royals it works, because Olivo and Buck have similar enough skill sets that there’s no point in picking Olivo’s starts based on the opposing pitcher or ballpark or whatever. Besides, if Greinke wants Olivo to catch him, I think I speak for all Royals fans when I say, MAKE OLIVO HIS STARTING CATCHER.

If Greinke wants Willie Bloomquist to start at first base, make it so. He wants his centerfielder to be a lucky fan selected from Section 107 before the game? Cool. He wants to set up a Chipotle serving table in the dugout? I recommend the green chili. He wants Kyle Farnsworth to close for him? I know a good facial reconstructive surgeon – Zack will never know the difference. (Though we’ll have to come up with a good excuse for how Farnsworth lost two inches and fifty pounds, and now speaks with a Mexican accent. We’ll need an even better excuse to explain how Farnsworth now throws strikes and doesn’t give up homers in every inning.)

- Has anyone else noticed what a crazy year Robinson Tejeda is having? So far this season he has faced 20 hitters. Two of them have hit fly ball outs; one of them grounded out. Those are the only three batters to put the ball in play. Of the other 17, 10 struck out, five walked, and two were hit by a pitch. Tejeda has also balked once, thrown two wild pitches, and picked up another out when the runner on third tried to score on another wild toss but was thrown out at the plate.

Last night’s game was a masterpiece. His line reads: hit by pitch, wild pitch (scoring an inherited runner), strikeout, strikeout to end the fourth. Then in the fifth, walk, balk, strikeout, and walk, before he was lifted. I believe tonight’s game will be delayed a few minutes to accommodate Tejeda’s induction into the Three True Outcomes Hall of Fame.

Tejeda has been as effective as anyone in the bullpen this year, but eventually he’s going to give up a hit, so unless he learns to curb the other base runners, and to curb the free bases to the guys already on base, he’s due for a blowup. Still, it’s hard to believe the Texas Rangers put this guy on waivers less than a year ago.

- Mike Jacobs is a remarkable player in many ways, as Joe Posnanski has pointed out, but the most remarkable thing he has done is to make me write a sentence I’d never thought I’d write: the Royals need Billy Butler’s glove in the game. Jacobs’ NC-17 defense on a routine grounder by Hank Blalock on Sunday was the turning point in the loss. Jacobs has only one major league skill, but fortunately it’s the most important skill in baseball: he can hit right-handed pitching. They need to let him focus on that skill, and leave everything else to the professionals.

- It’s early, but Kevin Seitzer is earning his keep so far. The Royals have drawn 43 walks in 13 games, on pace for 536 for the season (after drawing 392 last year), and ranking a respectable 9^th in the league. Bam Bam isn’t hitting for power yet, but for the first time he’s showing the plate discipline (7 walks in 41 AB) he had in the minors. Coco Crisp has 11 walks in 13 games; on top of his spring training performance, it is quite possible that we’re seeing a dramatic change in his plate approach.

- Finally – and I’m sure I’ll regret this – I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and opened a Twitter account. I have no idea what it’s for or what the hype is about, but then I’m still trying to figure out what’s the point of Facebook, other than (because everyone else is signing up) I’ve been able to locate a bunch of friends I went to school with 20 years ago. (It’s not like we actually say anything to each other – but still, I know where to find them.)

So if you’re into Tweeting, then you can find me at Jazayerli. I have no idea if I’m going to use it yet or not, though if I do it will probably be to talk about the Royals. (In 140 characters or less? Seriously? I haven’t finished clearing my throat in 140 characters or less.) So feel free to follow me if you like. If you don’t, don’t worry: you won’t miss anything worthwhile.

Another Injury To Overcome.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it appears that having already lost the services of Alex Gordon for half the season, the Royals have suffered another blow to their playoff hopes. Joakim Soria is out indefinitely with an apparent inability to pitch.

I say “apparent” because there has no been no confirmation from the Royals on the subject. I hesitate to say that Soria is injured, because there is no evidence of an actual injury.

Nonetheless, it appears quite certain that the Mexicutioner is suffering from an ailment that prevents him from pitching. That is because the alternative explanation is that Trey Hillman has the IQ of a barnyard animal, and I think we can all agree that barnyard animals possess neither the intellect nor the communication skills necessary to obtain a job as major league manager in the first place.

See, after pitching (and picking up saves) in four of the Royals’ first seven games, Soria had not pitched in the last four – his last outing came on April 13^th. He’s fully rested, and more, the Royals have an off-day tomorrow. If ever there was a game where Soria ought to be pitching, it was this one. Even if the game was a blowout, he ought to come in. Hillman said so himself. “We’ll get Jack some work somehow,” Royals manager Trey Hillman said before Sunday's game.

So clearly, Soria is suffering from an inability to pitch. If he were able to pitch, I’m certain we would have seen him to start the eighth inning this afternoon, this being the perfect time to give Soria a two-inning save opportunity with the Royals leading by a pair of runs.

Or, after Ron Mahay gave up a double to Andruw Jones that bounced out of David DeJesus’s glove, and then after Mike Jacobs performed that weird interpretive dance he loves to do, “Waltz With Baseball”, that allowed Hank Blalock to reach base safely, then Soria would have come in. Certainly, Hillman would not have caused the bottom to fall out of my stomach when the bullpen door opened to reveal Jamey Wright to pitch with none out and the tying run at first base. Not unless Soria was suffering from AITP.

And when Wright got a slow dribbler for the first out, and a flyout from David Murphy for the second, and then Chris Davis pinch-hit for Taylor Teagarden with two outs and the tying runner in scoring position – I mean, there’s no way Hillman would have left Soria in the bullpen at that moment if he hadn’t been suffering from AITP. The fact that Soria was briefly shown lightly warming up in the bullpen alongside Kyle Farnsworth at the time was no doubt a clever ruse by Hillman, whose intellect clearly works on a plane that us mere baseball fans can not understand.

And after Wright got out of the inning (but not before surrendering the game-tying single to Davis), and the Royals went quietly in the top of the ninth inning, and the Royals had to choose between Farnsworth and Soria to pitch the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game, surely there’s no way a sentient and bipedal primate would look at those two options and choose Captain Goodnight* – not unless Soria was suffering from AITP. (And evidently, Robinson Tejeda may have a mild case of AITP as well – our sources are looking into it.)

*: There was a computer game that I remember playing in the late 1980s, when I was about 13 years old, called “Captain Goodnight”. All I remember about the game was that you were a hero that had 24 hours to save the world and get the girl, or something like that. I also remember that the game was very, very difficult to complete in time, and after weeks of trying to finish it, I finally had a game in which I hit every button in perfect synchronicity, got to the finish line with hours to spare – and then the game crashed and I was never able to play it again. Anyway, I see those aviator goggles that Farnsworth wears, and the fact that when he comes into the game you can turn off your TV and go to bed, and I think I’m going to call him Captain Goodnight from now on. (And yes, I know some of you think I’m too obsessed with nicknames. For your sake – for all our sakes – I hope I don’t have to use it very often.)

I know today’s game was a crushing loss. I know that it has ruined my day. I know it has ruined my appetite to write the Zack Greinke column that I want to write and you want to read. I know that the final two innings completely wasted a start from Kyle Davies that in its own way was every bit as impressive as the ones his big brothers made on Friday and Saturday. (After walking four batters and throwing 22 balls in 37 pitches in the first inning, Davies responded by allowing just two hits and a walk over the next five. Davies now has 21 strikeouts in 18.2 innings – and he’s our #3 starter.) I know it kept the Royals from taking over sole possession of first place. I know that it’s the second game the Royals have lost this year that they were leading after seven innings.

But please, don’t blame Hillman for this. Rest assured that there’s no way someone could spend a quarter-century playing, coaching, and managing in professional baseball, and ascend to the highest rank of his profession before he turned 45, and make the decisions that Hillman appeared to make today. It’s simply not possible that Hillman would not use Soria to protect a tight lead, even as the inning was falling apart, just because it was the eighth inning instead of the ninth. It’s not possible that instead of Soria in the ninth, he would call upon KYLE FREAKING FARNSWORTH, who now has more losses (3) than the rest of the team combined (2) in exactly 3.1 innings of work, just because it was a tie game instead of a save situation. Trey Hillman is not that stupid. No one is that stupid.

Maybe we’ll get some confirmation from the Royals on this soon. Or maybe Soria’s AITP will clear up by Tuesday, he’ll be back on the mound, and the Royals will pretend it never existed. I don’t know much about AITP – it was never listed in any of the books I read in medical school – but I suspect that it’s a very brief affliction, sort of like the 24-hour flu. After all, it didn’t exist last night, when Soria was one batter away from coming in to close out Greinke’s masterpiece. And rumor has it that Soria had AITP on Opening Day, but it cleared up in time for him to close out the game the following day.

But he clearly had AITP today. I’m sure that it’s merely a coincidence that yesterday’s game constituted a Ninth Inning Save Situation – I capitalize those words out of respect for such an august institution – and today’s game never did.

It’s tough to lose a game because Soria came down with AITP at an inopportune time. But in a way it’s a relief to know that the reason the Royals lost yet another game that they had in the bag was simply because of AITP. I mean, if Soria doesn’t have AITP, that means the Royals lost today’s game because their manager is a complete and utter moron. AITP is curable, but I’m afraid there may be no cure for imbecilic bullpen management.

Fortunately we don’t have to worry about that. Hillman’s a brilliant manager – Dayton Moore said so himself. Let’s just hope that Hillman…I mean Soria…finds a cure for his AITP soon. The Royals can’t afford to lose any more games this season because of it. I’m not sure they could afford to lose the games they already have.