Game of the Year.

My patients can wait. I don’t know how long it will be before I can write about another game like this one.

Now that we’re six weeks into the season, I’ve got a routine down with my kids, whereby I finish storytime with the older two and put them to bed by 9 o’clock, which usually affords me the opportunity to watch the last two or three innings of each game in peace. Last night my work wasn’t done until 9:20, and the game was zipping by at an unusually fast pace (thanks in part to the Royals’ free-swinging ways against Cliff Lee), so by the time I was able to free myself from fatherly duties, it was the middle of the ninth. The score was 5-2, and if anything I was almost grateful that the margin of victory was large enough that some of the ridiculous baserunning (Mark Teahen trying to advance from second to third on a flyball to shallow center field) and fielding (allowing a runner to score from first on a single; allowing a foul popfly to fall between three defenders) plays would not have single-handedly cost the Royals the game.

Instead, I saw the Royals squeeze the life out of Cleveland in seven easy steps.

Step 1: Kerry Wood emerges to pitch the ninth.

I would stop short of saying this decision was a mistake on Eric Wedge’s part. Cliff Lee had thrown eight brilliant innings, and had only thrown 101 pitches. Two of the first three hitters for the Royals in the ninth were left-handers. If we’ve reached the point where a 30-year-old starter can’t pitch the ninth inning because he’s thrown 101 pitches, then the pitch count revolution has gone too far.

But from the Indians’ standpoint, I wouldn’t fault Wedge, because this move struck me as being as much about trying to win future games as about trying to win this one. The Indians’ bullpen has been a nightmare, but Kerry Wood has been somewhat less offensive than his brethren. He had a 5.84 ERA coming into the game, but had blown only one save, and had struck out 18 batters in 12.1 innings. Wood had a terrific season as the Cubs’ closer last year, and the Indians desperately needed him to settle down so they could work on fixing the rest of their pen. If the Indians had been leading by one run, I think that leaving Lee in would have been the right move. But a three-run lead ought to be safe enough that Wedge was within his rights to make a move that would help the Indians down the road as well.

But as a Royals fan, well, I was happy to see the change made.

Step 2: Mike Jacobs goes yard.

Alright, I want to see a show of hands: after Jacobs finished off a brilliant nine-pitch at-bat, including three consecutive full-count foul balls, with a laser to right-center field, how many of you were whining about Jacobs, “of course he hits a solo home run with the Royals down by three runs in the ninth!” Come on, you know you were thinking it. Last week, he hit homers in back-to-back games in Oakland – once with the Royals down 12-1 in the sixth, once with the Royals down 9-1 in the ninth.

That’s just the nature of the beast when you’re dealing with an all-or-nothing hitter: some of their biggest hits come in the smallest situations. Jacobs has also homered with the Royals up 9-0, and with the Royals up 3-0. But he hit a game-tying two-run homer in Arlington in April – the game that Soria came down with AITP – and he hit a huge three-run homer against Chicago with the White Sox winning 5-1 in the fourth, a game the Royals would win in extra innings. Last Friday he homered on behalf of Zack Greinke in a 2-1 game, and the Royals went on to break their six-game losing streak.

Anyway, that’s what Jacobs does: he hits home runs. It wasn’t his fault that the circumstances of the ninth inning were such that the #5 hitter had to start a three-run rally. Sam Mellinger wrote about this already, but what made this rally work was that the Royals have such a deep lineup that they were able to score three runs with their 5-6-7-8-9 hitters. Teahen, who was batting third not long ago, now fits in as a very nice #6 hitter. DeJesus, who granted has been struggling, is massively overqualified to bat 8^th. Last night was a nice reminder of why it’s always nice to have nine major league hitters in your lineup.

And while Jacobs homer last night was no more valuable than a walk, it was certainly more meaningful. He made Kerry Wood look mortal. He brought the crowd to its feet. He set the tone for what would come next.

Step 3: Mark Teahen goes yard.

The Royals’ broadcast had barely come out of replay to show Teahen hacking away at Wood’s first pitch. Chalk this up as another event that would never have happened in the past: in the past, when the Royals hit a home run and the next batter swung at the first pitch, he invariably killed the momentum with a one-pitch out. Instead, Teahen goes with the pitch for another opposite-field home run. Is it just me, or is Mark Teahen and Kevin Seitzer a match made in heaven?

Step 4: Miguel Olivo doesn’t go yard – because he doesn’t try to go yard.

A lot of people are saying that Olivo’s walk was the turning point of the inning, and I don’t disagree. But as cool as it was to see, I disagree that the key to the at-bat was Olivo’s decision to take a 3-1 pitch for possibly the first time in his life. Rather, I think the key was the very first pitch.

Consider the situation: Jacobs and Teahen have just gone back-to-back to bring the Royals within a run. The Kougar/K2 is rocking. Another homer ties the game – and homers are pretty much all Olivo is good for. In that situation, with that much emotion, ou know he’s going to be trying to tie the game on the first pitch, no matter what or where it is. What’s more, everyone knows that – including the opposing pitcher. This was the baseball equivalent of Groundhog Day, where you knew everything that was going to happen ahead of time: Wood would throw a slider, Olivo would swing and miss by about two feet, and he’d be down 0-1.

And that’s what happened. Wood threw a slider. Olivo started to swing –

– and checked in time.

And that, my friends, was when I started to believe that we would win. Olivo would foul off the next pitch, but then took three straight pitches. Kerry Wood was melting down on the mound, and Olivo was content to let him do so on his own.

And that’s when it hit me: the Indians are the Royals! The Royals are the…whoever was playing the Royals!

I’ve seen this movie before many, many times – but never quite from this seat. In a pre-Soria, pre-Dayton world, it was the Royals who were blowing a three-run lead on the road in the bottom of the ninth. And had this been one of those games, the minute Ricky Bottalico or Roberto Hernandez or Mike MacDougal had surrendered back-to-back homers, then walked the next hitter, you might as well have turned off the TV right there – because even though they still had the lead, there was no way the Royals were going to win the game.

Only this time, you couldn’t pull me away from the TV with wild horses, because there was no way the Royals would lose this time. Was there?

Step 5: Mitch Maier pinch-runs for Olivo.

In the moment, it seemed to me that if you’re going to use Maier for Olivo regardless, why not use him to pinch-hit, given that you gain the platoon advantage – and Olivo is terrible against right-handers – while also gaining the OBP? That seems almost petty now. Olivo is fast for a catcher, but Maier is fast, period. I was just worried that Hillman would gamble with a stolen-base attempt. The way Wood was pitching, there was no reason to risk giving away an out. Hillman wisely decided not to.

Step 6: David DeJesus triples.

When DeJesus came to the plate, Ryan Lefebvre made sure to tell us that the last time these two had faced, DeJesus had hit a two-run homer – unfortunately, in that game the Indians still held a two-run lead at the time. Meanwhile, I was thinking of a different two-run homer.

Either one works. DeJesus took a fastball down and in, then Wood’s second pitch missed the target low-and-away in favor of right-down-Broadway. Maier scores, DeJesus winds up at third, and the Royals don’t need a hit to win the game.

Step 7: The Spork Becomes...The Spark!

I’m trying to hold onto my hatred of Willie Bloomquist, but man, he’s making it difficult. First came the perfectly-executed hit-and-run that set up the winning run against the White Sox in the 11^th inning, the kind of play that makes crusty old scouts weep with pride. Then last night, with the Royals needing only a deep fly ball to win the game…Bloomquist hits a deep fly ball to win the game. Bloomquist isn’t a great player, but he may be that rare player with great fundamentals even without great talent. I know this much: David Howard doesn’t hit that ball far enough to score DeJesus. I’m not sure Howard hit an opposite-field fly ball that far in his entire career.

Seven steps to the greatest Royals comeback since Opening Day, 2004, a game which still lives fondly in our memories even though it was followed by 104 losses. That game is known simply as the Mendy Lopez Game, but this comeback had so many heroes and key moments that I’m not sure how it will be remembered. The Miguel Olivo Walked On Five Pitches Game? The George Brett Rallied The Troops Game? Or maybe, just maybe, the Game That Buried Cleveland. Call it payback for Chip Ambres.

I do know that this was yet another GWWNHWITP, our second in a row and our sixth of the season.

Finally, I can’t talk about the ninth inning without talking about the crowd. Pretty much from the moment Jacobs made contact, the crowd was as much a factor in the comeback as anything else. It was loud, boisterous, and into every pitch. I’ve read some comparisons between this game and the Ken Harvey Game, when Harvey’s walk-off homer against the Tigers in 2003 put the Royals at 12-3 and set off pandemonium in the crowd of 38,937. There were only 25,024 in attendance last night, but there’s a big difference between the two. The Harvey Game came on a Friday night. Last night’s game, a Tuesday night game with no Zack Greinke pitching, nonetheless drew over 25 thousand to the ballpark. By comparison, when the 2003 Royals played on a Tuesday night at the end of May, they drew just 14,154. Last year, on Tuesday, May 13^th, the announced crowd was 11,703.

No question, some of this is the new(ish) ballpark. Which is as it should be; you spend a quarter billion dollars on a renovation, you expect the people to turn out to see it. But some of this is the new team. And I only expect those crowds to swell as the weather warms up, and school lets out, and the Royals stay in the chase. Who knows? Maybe another large crowd will get to witness – and do their part to help – another ninth-inning comeback later this year.

Royals Today: 5/19/2009.

Never a dull moment in Royalsville.

This intro was planned in my head ever since the Royals pulled Sunday’s game out, but obviously in light of recent events it may look conciliatory, or even like I’m sucking up. Rest assured that I was only entertained, not intimidated, by the remarks of our Fearless Leader George Brett*. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed that Brett didn’t call me out by name. I’m guessing he just didn’t know how to pronounce it.

*: The best part of Brett’s monologue – and the reason I find it ultimately benign – is that if you ignore the words and just look at the cadence in his voice and his body language, he really doesn’t seem all that upset. When he says “Eff You and Eff Them”, his voice seems as calm and unemotional as if he were giving his opinion on some new restaurant in town, or the new Star Trek movie. Belligerent words, delivered in a non-belligerent manner – I’m going to speculate wildly here and presume that Brett’s BAC was a positive number.

Brett certainly makes some good points, which is that while Trey Hillman has certainly been guilty of some whopping errors of good judgment, it serves no one to call him out for decisions that reasonable men can disagree on. Whether to bunt with men on first and second in a one-run game in Anaheim: reasonable men can disagree about the right answer. Letting Kyle Farnsworth pitch to Jim Thome on Opening Day: if there’s a reasonable man who agrees with Hillman’s decision, I have yet to meet him.

Like I said, I meant to write about this even before Brett’s comments, because as much as I believe that Hillman has cost the Royals a few games with his decisions this season, I believe equally that his moves on Sunday were bold, effective, and ultimately decisive.

I thought Hillman was premature when he closed the curtain on Hochevar’s second start in the fourth inning, but that decision may have saved the game. Hochevar wasn’t terrible to that point, but he wasn’t all that effective either. He had allowed three runs, but with men on first and second and one out, Hillman decided not to give Cool Hand the chance to double that total. He went to Robinson Tejeda, who frankly is overqualified to be a mop-up guy, but in this case the combination of a quick hook and a competent replacement saved the day. Tejeda got out of the jam in the fourth, pitched a scoreless fifth and sixth, and was in line to get the win when the Royals erupted for three runs in the bottom of the inning.

When the Royals’ fourth error of the day, followed by a single, put men on first and third to start the eighth, Hillman pulled Ron Mahay in favor of Juan Cruz, who allowed the tying run to score but prevented further damage, and wound up going two innings for the win. In the bottom of the eighth, after DeJesus doubled and John Buck tripled to give the Royals a one-run lead, Hillman called for the squeeze with Coco Crisp (twice!) with perfect results.

The classic scenario for a squeeze play involves a speedy runner at third base, but in reality the speed of the baserunner only matters on a safety squeeze. With a suicide squeeze, anyone with better than Molinan speed is likely to be safe – what determines whether the gambit works isn’t the speed of the runner, but the contact ability of the batter. Crisp made contact both times, the second time in fair territory, and got the run in.

He would later steal second and score another insurance run, but really, the game was decided there. Nate Silver wrote a fascinating article a few years back on the value of one-run strategies, comparing the value of a single run to the value of a multiple-run inning. What he found is that while the best time to play for a single run is in the late innings of a tie game (obviously), it makes almost as much sense to play for a single run when you lead by just one run. That second run was crucial, because the difference between a two-run lead and a one-run lead in that situation is bigger than the difference between a three-run lead (or even a five-run lead) and a two-run lead. A squeeze in that situation is the right call, assuming you’ve got the personnel to make it work. The Royals did, and it did.

My biggest weakness as a baseball analyst is that I’m a baseball fan; no matter how much I understand the concept of small sample sizes intellectually, I still can’t help but get caught up in the moment. No team is as good as it looks when it’s winning, and no team is as bad as it looks when it’s losing – but when the Royals are going bad, it feels like they’ll never get things turned around. In the middle innings on Sunday, with the Royals down 3-1 and unable to muster anything off of Koji Uehara, they looked for all the world like they were doomed to suffer their eighth loss in nine games. That they didn’t is another exhibit in the case that the New Royals are not the same as the Old Royals. And it’s a feather in Hillman’s cap. If you don’t believe me, just ask George Brett.

- And if you still don’t believe me, just remember the competition. The Rays had their pitcher bat in an American League game – in the #3 spot! – because Joe Maddon screwed up the lineup card by listing two third baseman and no DH. Maddon gets a pass because he took his team to the World Series last year (and because Andy Sonnanstine hit an RBI double in three at-bats) – but can you imagine the outrage if Hillman had done such a thing?

And I’m surprised just how little attention has been paid to Dave Trembley’s whopper on Saturday. Here’s the scenario: Orioles lead 2-0, bottom of the fourth, men on second and third. Mike Jacobs – batting cleanup against a LHP because Hillman doesn’t…Ow! Don’t tase me, Brett! – has just whiffed for the second out. Trembley elects to intentionally walk Jose Guillen.

To pitch to Alberto Callaspo.

Now, I understand that Guillen is the more accomplished hitter, if by “accomplished” you mean “older”. He is hitting .279/.398/.419 for the season, and does have the platoon advantage. But when you intentionally walk a batter to load the bases, you are creating a situation in which a walk scores a run. In other words, by intentionally walking Guillen in this situation, Trembley is betting that Callaspo’s on-base percentage is lower than Guillen’s batting average.

Which makes this a stupid move in almost all circumstances, because it’s rare for there to be such a gap between two consecutive hitters in a lineup so great that the first hitter’s AVG is higher than the second hitter’s OBP.

But in this circumstance, well, it’s almost a fireable offense. Callaspo is hitting .344. His OBP is .396. He’s second in the league in doubles. He’s hitting .438 against LHP, and last year hit .333 against southpaws. You could almost make the case for intentionally walking Callaspo to pitch to Guillen if the roles were reversed. Instead, Trembley decided to load the bases for the line drive machine, who then floated another double down the left field line to tie the game. Nobody will remember this, because the Orioles held on for the win, but I’d argue that for all his mistakes this season, not one decision Hillman has made this year was as bad as this one. I mean, even Jay John Gibbons thinks Trembley’s a fool.

- I know I’m not the only one who was taken aback by Hillman’s vote of no-confidence in Hochevar after the game. “He wasn't going to pull out of it himself, in my opinion,” Hillman said. Yeah, I’m thinking that Hochevar is pretty damn close to pitching himself out of the rotation again. The whispers about Hochevar have long been that he’s lacking a bit in the mental toughness department, and whether that’s true or not, this quote certainly lends credence to the notion that the Royals believe it to be true.

His stuff certainly isn’t a problem – he throws 93 with a great sinker, his curveball and slider are both decent pitches. If anything, his problem on Sunday was that his fastball had too much movement, to the point where he couldn’t control it. Sinkerball pitchers frequently take longer to find themselves than true power pitchers. I’m still hopeful the light bulb will go on for Hochevar, but the Royals have sent notice that they’re not going to wait forever. The Royals under Dayton Moore have ended the redshirt program in Kansas City, which is a good thing. As Hillman pointed out, there’s not much point in sending him back to Omaha, but Hochevar might find himself switching places with Ponson if he doesn’t start pitching with confidence out there.

- Am I the only one who’s starting to get scared by the Tigers? It’s not just that they’re leading the division, or that they lead the division in run differential as well (+31, to the Royals +18). It’s that their starting rotation, which looked like a huge weakness at the start of the year, suddenly looks like an undeniable strength. Armando Galarraga has turned into a pumpkin of late, as I hoped he would, but everyone else has been terrific. Justin Verlander got off to a rough start, even though his velocity was back to 2006-07 levels – and sure enough he’s turned things around with a Greinkesque last four starts, and now leads the league with 69 strikeouts.

Edwin Jackson, who two years ago was one of the worst starters in baseball, has taken The Leap, and in 52 innings has walked just 11 batters with a 2.42 ERA. (And he’s just six weeks older than Greinke.) Twenty-year old rookie wunderkind Rick Porcello* is making the decision to jump him straight from A-ball to the majors look brilliant. And while the Tigers haven’t been able to find a reliable #5 starter, Jeremy Bonderman made his first rehab start a few days ago and looked good.

*: Remember, the Royals could have taken Porcello with the #2 overall pick in 2007; he was the consensus second-best player in the draft. They took Mike Moustakas instead, at least in part because he was cheaper. While Moustakas is playing well, it is well within the realm of possibility that the decision not to take Porcello – and watch as he fell in the draft to an in-division rival – may well decide the division this year.

It’s early. The Tigers still have major bullpen issues. Brandon Inge can’t hit .279/.389/.557 all season. Adam Everett is not a .306 hitter. There’s only so many game-saving catches Curtis Granderson can make. But with the Twins and White Sox getting swept over the weekend, and the Indians continuing to be the most disappointing team in baseball this season, it’s not too early to say that Detroit is the division favorite at this point.

- In case I don’t get to update in the next few days – I have something like 58 patients on my schedule tomorrow – I’m pleased to report that in honor of the Royals’ series against the Cardinals this weekend, our guest on this week’s episode will be Will Leitch, founder of Deadspin.com, author of God Save the Fan, current writer for New York Magazine, and hopeless St. Louis Cardinals fan. So please tune in. It should be fun.

Mea Culpa. (For Real This Time.)

I know, I know. It’s all my fault.

I knew I was risking some blowback with this article last week. But in my naïvete, I looked at the upcoming weekend series – MGD against a depleted Angels team starting a 30-year-old rookie and a 29-year-old journeyman, with their only legitimate starter going up against The Baseball Jonah – and said, “what could go wrong?”

A lot could go wrong. The Royals could score four runs in three games. They could have a game-tying home-run in the ninth taken away by Torii Hunter. They could lose two more one-run games, dropping their record in those affairs to 2-6. Luke Hochevar could give up twice as many runs in two major league innings as he gave up in 40 minor league ones. Brian Bannister could pull himself from a game with a stiff shoulder. Gil Meche could continue to favor his back – I don’t care what he says, when he’s consistently missing the strike zone high like he was yesterday, it all comes back to his back. The Royals could lose six games in a row immediately after winning six in a row, something they’ve done just twice before in their history (in 1979 and again in 2001, both times in late June and early July.)

Let’s take a deep breath, everyone. Good teams lose six games in a row. The difference is they also win six games in a row. (After winning their first nine games in 2003, the Royals went over five years – until June 2008 – before they had another six-game winning streak.)

So don’t panic. This is the AL Central, where the Royals can lose six games in a row in mid-May and still hold on to a share of first place. Just twice before have the Royals awoken in first place after losing six games in a row – in 1980, when they lost eight in a row in late September after already clinching the division, and in 1976, when they lost six in a row in mid-June, but were still 39-26 at the end of that stretch.

The Royals not only are tied for the division’s best record, they still have the division’s best run differential at +9. The only AL team that has allowed fewer runs is the A’s, who have played four fewer games. And unlike the Twins, the Royals haven’t had a favorable home-road split in their games so far this year. (Minnesota has played 23 games at home and just 12 on the road, which has artificially jacked up their record: they’re 14-9 at home, just 4-8 on the road. Remember, the Metrodome is such a huge and unnatural advantage that the Twins have won two world championships – despite the fact that they’ve never won a single World Series game on the road.)

The last six games represent a missed opportunity, certainly, but they did not bury the team, not in the slightest. Essentially, the season starts now for the Royals, Tigers, and Twins, with the White Sox a little behind and the Indians in a sizeable hole. The division looked like a five-way dogfight in early April; it looks like a five-way dogfight in mid-May.

There are some legitimate questions that need to be answered, of course. How long will Soria be out? When will Meche be back at full health? How long until the Royals send Mike Aviles back to Omaha to find his swing? (Put me in the camp of people who think Aviles should be demoted to Triple-A, and that’s not because I think he’s never going to hit. It’s precisely because I think he will. But right now he needs a mental breather for a few weeks, and in the meantime we can call the “Willie Bloomquist is an everyday player!” bluff. Aviles is currently hitting .194/.221/.269, and somehow I think that even the Spork can beat those numbers.)

But the important thing is that despite those questions, and despite the loss of Alex Gordon, the Royals are pretty much where we pegged them: a .500 team, maybe a little better, in a division that’s likely to be won by a .500 team, maybe a little better.

So again, Don’t Panic. Zack Greinke takes the hill tonight, at home, in front of a sellout crowd, against a pitcher with a 7.18 ERA. The six-game losing streak is unlikely to stretch to seven.

If it does, then we can start to worry. Six-game losing streaks are not a definitive mark of a non-playoff team; of the 16 teams that made the playoffs the last two years, 13 of them had losing streaks of five or more during the season, and 10 of them had six-game streaks. But only five had losing streaks that reached seven, just two reached eight, and none reached nine. (Three teams – the Angels last year, the Red Sox and Indians in 2007 – never lost more than four games in a row. If memory serves, the last team that made it through the regular season without losing more than three in a row was the 1989 San Francisco Giants – who then lost four straight to the A’s in the World Series.)

Tonight’s game therefore has a little more significance than your typical game. So I think you will all understand when I say Game Off. The Royals suck, same as they’ve always sucked. Their hot start is just like 2003, and the same fate awaits them. They’ll never amount to anything, especially the guy taking the mound tonight, who’s just another in a long line of first-round busts. I dare say he’s the suckiest ball of suck who ever sucked.

My work here is done.

Dark Cloud, Meet Silver Lining.

I guess I should have paid more attention to Will Carroll. Carroll, you might recall, was the one saying “I don’t feel good about this one” when Hillman finally came clean about Joakim Soria’s shoulder even while downplaying the extent of the injury.

It turns out that the injury was not something that would clear up with a few days of rest, which opens up a whole ton of questions. Like, wouldn’t the Royals have been better off putting him on the DL back on April 19^th? That was over three weeks ago, meaning there’s a good chance Soria might have already been re-activated. And, as Sam Mellinger pointed out, if Soria’s injury was more than the he-just-needs-a-few-days-of-rest variety, why on earth did Hillman use him in back-to-back games as soon as he was healthy enough to pitch? (For more with Sam, download yesterday's podcast here.)

In his first game after the injury was revealed, on May 2^nd, Soria came in to pitch the 10^th, threw six pitches in the inning, and then went back out the following inning with a three-run lead. I don’t fault that decision at all – he was already warmed up and in the game, and he only threw 13 more pitches to close it out. But why, if there was any concern whatsoever about the status of his arm, would Hillman use him the following day (barely 12 hours later, actually) to protect a three-run lead in the ninth? Soria wouldn’t pitch for another four days, even though the Royals played an 11-inning game at home in between, after which Hillman said Soria wasn’t available because of “manager’s decision”. In that game Soria pitched as poorly as he has all season, and afterwards the persistent pain in Soria’s shoulder finally forced the DL stint. In retrospect it would appear that the decision to use Soria in back-to-back games aggravated his symptoms.

And while Hillman deserves some of the blame for that decision, the bulk of blame lies on the training and medical staff for clearing Soria to pitch in the first place. On paper the training staff had a good year in 2008; the starting rotation, in particular, was remarkably healthy outside of the rib-cage injury to Luke Hochevar. But the training staff, led by head trainer Nick Swartz, has never had a particularly strong reputation around baseball. I make that statement not as a medical judgment of my own – I’m much too far from the situation to render that kind of judgment – but simply as a reflection of what I’ve heard from people around the game.

Injuries to Royals players have an annoying tendency to linger, or to recur after we’ve been told they were healed. This isn’t a new problem, either; this goes back to 2000, when Jose Rosado complained of shoulder pain after four starts, the Royals declined to order an MRI – hey, those puppies are expensive! – and instead skipped his turn in the rotation once. Rosado took the mound again on April 30^th, and gutted his way into the sixth inning and even got the victory. Afterwards the pain in his arm was even worse, so the team finally caved and ordered the MRI – which revealed that Rosado’s rotator cuff had been reduced to hamburger meat. Rosado would never pitch in the majors again, the career of a two-time All-Star over at age 25.

I certainly hope that a similar fate does not await the Mexicutioner. His MRI, the Royals repeatedly reassure us, is completely normal. But even ignoring the possibility that this is a lie – the Royals have already lied once about the condition of Soria’s health – sometimes the worst news you can get about a pitcher complaining of arm pain is that “nothing is wrong”. Something is clearly wrong, or his arm wouldn’t hurt. The problem is that the Royals don’t know what’s wrong – and if you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t make it right. Maybe it’s true that all he needs is a little rest, and he’ll be back in a few weeks, good as new. If that’s the case, the Royals will be fine. Juan Cruz is perfectly capable of functioning as the closer in the short term.

But it’s also possible that after a few weeks of rest, Soria’s still feeling arm pain – in which case, what do you do? When the medical tests and the symptoms disagree, trust the symptoms. Show me a pitcher that’s been accused of malingering, of refusing to pitch through the normal soreness that every pitcher feels, and I’ll show you a pitcher whose got an arm injury that’s gone undiagnosed. Mark Prior was accused of being a faker by the Cubs right up until the moment the doctors did exploratory surgery on his rotator cuff and found that the MRI had somehow missed the fact that somewhat had set off a bomb inside his shoulder.

Soria is so indispensable to the Royals largely because he’s not fazed by anything. No one thought he would become a closer when he was acquired in the Rule 5 draft, and even today no one would accuse him of having closer stuff. What he has is a closer’s mentality. He’s fearless on the mound, and he never, ever loses his composure. He’s about the last guy on the team you’d suspect of exaggerating pain symptoms. If he says his arm’s hurting, I don’t care how many imaging studies come back negative – there’s something wrong with his arm. And this time, the Royals better not let him anywhere near a pitching mound until they are totally, completely, utterly certain that his arm is 100%.

That may be a long way off. As Will wrote yesterday, “I'm worried that there's something more going on here.” You and me both, brother.

The silver lining here is that tonight’s starting pitcher is Luke Hochevar, who has probably been the most effective pitcher in Triple-A this season. I didn’t see this coming. Even though I’m not surprised to see Soria get put on the DL, I didn’t expect the Royals to use this injury as an opportunity to revamp their rotation. I would have expected someone like Carlos Rosa, who has taken to the bullpen nicely (17 Ks, 4 BBs in 17.2 innings in Omaha), to get an opportunity instead. Or I would have thought that Hochevar would have been called up to use in long relief while waiting for a rotation spot to open up.

Just last Thursday on the radio show, I asked Assistant GM Dean Taylor about what the Royals planned to do with Hochevar given how well he was pitching, and nothing in his response suggested that Cool Hand was about to replace Sidney Ponson in the rotation. Which was not surprising, given that Ponson was coming off his best performance (one run in 7.1 innings) the day before.

So give the Royals credit here: they didn’t have to make this move. They could have left Hochevar in Omaha, or brought him up to use in long relief, but instead they made the move that gives the team the rotation that they had last summer – and that I recommended last winter that they stick with. It took us longer than I would have liked to get here, but now the Royals have their five best starting pitchers in their rotation. Plus, we can at least entertain the possibility that Ponson, who has made just 15 relief appearances in his career, will see his stuff improve in short stints and be far more effective as a reliever than he was as a starter. Hey, it’s worked for Jamey Wright and Robinson Tejeda.

And in the long run, it’s possible that Hochevar’s brief return to Triple-A will be the best thing for him. For the first time in his pro career, he was able to completely dominate hitters at a level before he was promoted. He made six starts, each arguably better than the one before – topped off with an eight inning, five hit, no walk, nine strikeout performance in which he got 14 groundouts and just one flyout.

Hochevar has succeeded by focusing on what he does well: throw strikes and get groundballs. In 40 innings, he’s walked just 10 batters, and has a phenomenal groundball/flyball ratio of 3.68 – which has led to just two home runs. His 0.90 ERA is not going to last, driven as it is by allowing just 28 hits – his BABIP is about .250, which is unsustainable. But he’s whiffed a solid 30 batters in 40 innings, a ratio which is actually better than it looks precisely because he has surrendered so few baserunners per inning.

The biggest reason for concern with Hochevar is that he hasn’t done much to conquer his platoon splits. Last year RHB hit just .244/.319/.348, but LHB hit .314/.371/.475, and that weakness has persisted this season. In Omaha this year, RHB hit just .168 against Hochevar, but LHB have hit .286 with five walks in 42 at-bats. It’s not a fatal weakness, in part because major league teams are so insistent on carrying seven or eight relievers that they can’t stack their lineup with eight left-handed bats all that easily. But it’s something he’ll need to continue to work on as the season goes on.

For the remainder of the season, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect Hochevar to put up an ERA in the mid-4s, maybe a little lower if something really did click for him in Triple-A. If he’s the Royals’ fifth-best starter – and depending on how you feel about Brian Bannister, even if Hochevar is their fourth-best starter – then this is one hell of a rotation. There isn’t a single guy in the rotation that projects to be significantly below-average, which is the first time I can say that since, I don’t know, 1991? The 1994 Royals had David Cone, Kevin Appier, Tom Gordon, and Mark Gubicza all pitching well, but no reliable fifth starter. The 1991 Royals had Appier, Mike Boddicker, and Bret Saberhagen – and while Gubicza was terrible that year, Gordon and Luis Aquino both pitched well when they were used as starters. In any case, it’s been a long, long time.

Get well soon, Jack. With a rotation that should consistently keep the Royals in ballgames – and with an offense that doesn’t figure to blow opponents out all that often – I expect that we're going to have a lot of close leads to protect all season long.

The Future of Pitching vs. The Past.

On the morning June 6^th, 1968, Bob Gibson had a 1.66 ERA. Even in the Year of the Pitcher, this was a perfectly respectable performance, but his record was only 4-5 thanks to poor support from the Cardinals.

That day Gibson threw the first of five consecutive complete-game shutouts. Then after surrendering a run the next time out, he threw another shutout, then another complete-game with just one run, then two more shutouts. Over a 10-start stretch, Gibson threw 10 complete games, eight shutouts, and went 10-0 with a 0.20 ERA. It’s safe to say that this represents the best ten-game stretch by a pitcher in baseball history. His season ERA at the end of this stretch was 0.96. Even though he would throw four more shutouts in his next seven starts, his ERA rose to a scandalous 0.99 at the conclusion of play on September 2^nd, at which point Gibson had made 29 starts (and thrown 263 innings!). He could not maintain that pace through September, but finished the year with his famous 1.12 ERA.

That winter, Major League Baseball lowered the mound, shrunk the strike zone, and restored the balance of play between pitchers and hitters. Needless to say, no pitcher has made it 29 starts into a season with an ERA that starts with “0” since. With many thanks to Baseball Prospectus’ William Burke, I can tell you that since Gibson, only one pitcher has made it to even 10 starts with an ERA under 1. Fernando Valenzuela made it to nine starts in his fabulous rookie season of 1981, and Randy Johnson made it that far in 2000. (We’ll get to the guy who tops the list later.)

Zack Greinke lost last night because the Royals, in an effort to honor their heritage, picked a particularly inopportune time to be shut out for the first time all season. Nonetheless, Greinke has a 0.51 ERA after seven starts. Greinke has put so much distance between himself and a 1.00 ERA that even if he were to, for instance, surrender two earned runs in seven innings in each of his next two starts, he would still have a 0.94 ERA. He has an excellent chance to make it to 10 starts with an ERA in the aughts, which means that Greinke is well on his way to having the second-best start to a season by a pitcher in the last 40 years.

It’s hard to put his performance in perspective, because the best way to put it in perspective it to compare it with other performances, and there just aren’t many comparables. It’s just as hard to compare Greinke himself with any other pitcher, because few pitchers have ever elevated themselves to this degree.

When Greinke was a rookie, I compared him to Bret Saberhagen, and I think this holds up very well. Saberhagen, like Greinke, was a rookie at 20, showed preternatural control, threw four plus pitches, and as his velocity increased in his early 20s he developed into a power pitcher without surrendering his command. Greinke is 25, and at age 25 Saberhagen had what is to this point the best season in franchise history. Certainly Saberhagen belongs on any short list of “most comparable pitchers” to Greinke of the last 30 years.

The thing is – and I know this is almost sacrilegious to say, but Saberhagen himself has said as much – I’m not sure Saberhagen was ever as dominant as Greinke is right now. Saberhagen closed his age-25 season the way Greinke opened his, going 6-0 with a 0.56 ERA in 48 innings. But even Saberhagen only struck out 43 batters in that stretch, and just once struck out more than seven in a start.

But if Saberhagen isn’t perfectly comparable to Greinke, the other obvious candidates aren’t any better. John Hart, speaking on the MLB Network, recently described Greinke as “like Greg Maddux, but with better stuff”. That seems to be a popular comparison to make, but I think that’s a reflection of how well Greinke is pitching, not how he is pitching.

Greinke might have better velocity than Maddux, but I don’t know that he has better stuff. He has different stuff, certainly. He throws 95 and has that divebombing slider and that rainbow curveball. Maddux threw his fastball 87, but with a ridiculous amount of movement. Greinke’s changeup is his fourth pitch; Maddux’s changeup was, at his peak, as good a pitch as there was in baseball. Maddux was always an extreme groundball pitcher; Greinke is a flyball pitcher. Aside from the fact that both were considered the best pitcher in baseball, I don’t think this comparison works at all.

So who else is there? Roger Clemens? Built entirely differently, lacked a finesse component to his game (he never walked fewer than two batters per nine innings in a season), and used a splitter as an out pitch. Orel Hershiser? See Maddux above. Randy Johnson? Um, no. That would also go for fellow lefties Valenzuela and Johan Santana.

That leaves only one transcendent pitcher of the past 30 years. And the more I think about this comparison, the more I think that it might just work.

Pedro Martinez.

Start with their repertoires. Both throw their fastball around 94-95; not the fastest in the league, but not far from the top. More importantly, both throw their fastball with precision to both sides of the plate. Both are four-pitch pitchers with an almost uncanny ability to add or subtract from their pitches so that no two pitches are completely alike. There are some differences. Martinez’s changeup was among the best in baseball, while Greinke throws his just a few times a game. Greinke’s curveball is tremendous, while Pedro rarely threw his. But in terms of the sheer variety of pitches they both throw, they’re very comparable.

Both are renowned for their intellect on the mound. Greinke doesn’t come across in interviews as brilliant, but of course he was an honors student in high school, and on the mound had picked up nuances of pitching as a teenager that most pitchers don’t learn until their 30s. Martinez is one of the smartest men in baseball; he has better command of the English language than all but a few players from Latin America, and once earned a standing ovation from a crowd of reporters in Montreal by accepting an award with a speech delivered entirely in French.

In addition to their intelligence, both pitchers have a nasty streak that belies their unimposing build. Martinez famously said of the Yankees, “Wake up the Bambino and have me face him. Maybe I’ll drill him in the ass.” Greinke doesn’t have any quotes quite that memorable, but he’s probably pissed off more opposing teams with a well-placed fastball to the ribs than any other Royals pitcher of the decade. In his first full year as a starter, Martinez led the NL in hit batsmen with 11 in the strike-shortened 1994. In his first full year, Greinke beaned 13 batters of his own to finish fourth in the AL.

Both are flyball pitchers, so that even when they’re at their best, they’re still somewhat vulnerable to the home run. In fact, when Pedro was at his turn-of-the-millenium peak, the home run was about the only way to score off him (as, for instance, in this game, or this one). Of course, when Pedro did give up homers, the damage was generally limited by the fact that no one was usually on base at the time. (In 1999, Martinez gave up nine homers – all of them solo shots. In 2000, 13 of 17 homers came with no one on base.)

Turn-of-the-millenium Pedro was the answer to a question I had had for a long time: what would it be like if you gave the ultimate finesse pitcher power stuff? I mean, look at someone like Jamie Moyer, who's figured out how to succeed in the majors with an 82-mph fastball. What would happen if someone who "knew" how to pitch so well that they could succeed with below-average stuff, like Moyer or late-career John Tudor, suddenly woke up with the best stuff in baseball?

That was Pedro when he was Pedro: the best power pitcher AND the best finesse pitcher in the game. It's obviously premature to put Greinke in the same class, but his stuff is as good as anyone in the game - and the touch he has on his pitches is almost unparalleled.

If the two are similar stylistically, they’re almost identical statistically. Consider this:

In 2008, at age 24, Greinke went 13-10 with a 3.47 ERA.

In 1996, at age 24, Martinez went 13-10 with a 3.70 ERA.

In 2009, Greinke announced his presence to the world with authority, going 6-1, 0.51 in his first seven starts.

In 1997, Martinez announced his presence, winning his first seven starts with a 1.20 ERA.

Break the first seven starts of their respective seasons down even further, and the comparison is even better:

Greinke, 2009: 53 IP, 34 H, 8 BB, 59 K, 0 HR

Martinez, 1997: 52.1 IP, 34 H, 11 BB, 56 K, 3 HR

Martinez, like Greinke, was considered one of the most promising young pitchers in the game for some time, and had shown flashes of brilliance before. (In 1995, he famously threw a perfect game that was ruined when the game went into extra innings and he surrendered a leadoff double in the tenth.) Thus, when he came out of the gate like gangbusters in 1997, it didn’t take long for people to take his start seriously. No one expected 1999-2000 Pedro, maybe, but this wasn’t Cliff Lee, where people kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. There were no SI covers for him that year, but as with Greinke this year, from very early in 1997 it was clear Martinez was taking his rightful place among the best pitchers in the game.

What remains to be seen is whether Greinke can replicate Martinez in terms of psychological impact. I think that, as much as any pitcher in my lifetime, when Martinez was at his peak, there was a sense before every start that you were about to see history that night. As Bill Simmons has documented here (and here and here), Pedro Martinez was not simply a pitcher – he was an Experience.

It’s too early to answer whether there is such a thing as The Zack Greinke Experience. But it’s not too early to wonder. Remember, Greinke today is at the same point that Martinez was in early 1997, when he was still an Expo, when the world outside his hometown was just starting to learn how extraordinary he was. It was only after he had proven that he could sustain this level of performance for months, even years, before the hometown fans (with home now being Boston) approached each of his starts anticipating – no, expecting – something they had never seen before. Something no one had seen before.

As Simmons wrote, “Sometimes Pedro lifts me to a higher place, the same way Bird and MJ did. Every time you count Pedro out, he responds. Every time he gets challenged, he roars back. Every time you think he's extraordinary, he does something that makes you think he's just a little bit greater. And honestly, I don't know what else to say. I love the guy. I've never even met him, but I love the guy.”

Greinke isn’t there yet, for the simple reason that it’s only been seven starts. But in two of his last three home starts, the buzz in the crowd, the way the fans sustained their passion from his first pitch to his last, is unlike anything I’ve seen at Kauffman Stadium in a long time. (The middle start, played in a rainstorm on a Wednesday night, drew barely 10,000 fans. But even that crowd was awfully rowdy for its size.)

So yeah, the Zack Greinke Experience is certainly possible. For the first time since Kevin Appier was in his prime, I do everything in my power to adjust my schedule around the Royals every fifth night. And for the first time ever, when Greinke is on the mound, I feel like I’m watching something more than just a Royals game. I’m watching an artist at work, and the art he creates hits me at an almost spiritual level. I know that the other team has to do everything almost perfectly – like the Angels did Saturday night – to have a shot. Every time out I feel like I might see something I’ve never seen before. And yeah, as much as I can love a guy I’ve never even met, I love Zack Greinke.

Why do I bring this up? Why don’t we just let the years play out and see how Greinke compares to Martinez down the line? Because if Greinke really is the second coming of Martinez, then a look at what happened to Pedro after his first seven starts of 1997 is rather instructive. And more than a little encouraging.

Martinez was nearly as dominant the rest of that season, posting a 2.10 ERA, but went just 10-8 the rest of the way due to criminal lack of support. He finished 1997 with a 17-8 record, a 1.90 ERA, and 305 strikeouts (the Expos/Nationals record by more than 50). He won the Cy Young Award. He was then traded to Boston in a trade (for Carl Pavano and Tony Armas) that in retrospect signaled the death knell of baseball in Montreal.

In his first season with Boston, he “slumped” to a 19-7, 2.89 ERA season, and finished second in Cy Young voting to the Blue Jays’ Roger Clemens. He made up for the disappointment by going 23-4, 2.07 in 1999, and 18-6, 1.74 in 2000. This was at the height of the Steroid Era – the league ERAs were 4.87 and 4.92, and in the middle of all that Martinez put up the lowest ERA by any qualifying AL starter since 1968.

Oh, and remember how I made the case that Greinke could be the second pitcher of the divisional era to have an ERA under 1 after ten starts? The only other pitcher to do that was Pedro in 2000, whose ERA after TWELVE starts stood at 0.99.

Montreal benefited from just a fraction of Martinez’s exploits, because they didn’t lock him up to a four-year deal right before he went nuclear. But the Royals did, to a $38 million contract that Greinke is doing his best to earn in his first season alone. Just to give you an idea, if Greinke pitches the same way Martinez pitched from ages 25 to 28, you’re looking at this over the next four years: 77 wins, 25 losses, a 2.16 ERA, and 1153 strikeouts in 905 innings.

Martinez started a slow fade after 2000. He was still the best pitcher in the league, inning-for-inning, but was available for fewer and fewer innings, until after 2005 he was suddenly unable to compensate for one too many arm injuries. (Though I strongly feel that in the right role, Martinez would still represent an outstanding gamble for any team so inclined to tender him a contract at mid-season.) But at least on the issue of durability, Greinke has a big edge on Pedro.

For one, he’s listed at 6’2” and 200 pounds, compared to Martinez’ 5’11” and 170. For another, he’s pitching a decade later, a decade which – largely due to pitchers like Martinez – saw the pitch count adopted throughout baseball as a thoughtful way to protect pitchers’ arms. Greinke’s career high in pitches is 117. By comparison, Martinez had thrown 120 or more pitches 14 times in his career before 1997 – and then the pace picked up. In 1997 alone he would do so 11 times, reaching a high of 139 pitches in a start. In 1998, he did so 12 times, including 140 twice. In 1999, 12 more times; in 2000, “just” seven times. In 2001, he missed two months with an injury and made just 18 starts.

What happens to Greinke after his current contract is up is not really worth contemplating at the moment. What is worth contemplating is that whether or not Greinke can lead the Royals into the playoffs this year, there is an excellent chance that the Zack Greinke Experience will continue next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. So let’s not fret too much about his loss on Saturday, or the three-game losing streak, or the fact that we’re percentage points out of first place at the moment. If Greinke really is the best pitcher in baseball, this won’t be our last chance to ride his right arm into the postseason.

And in the meantime, every fifth game, the Zack Greinke Experience is Must See TV.

***

(Just a reminder: last week’s show is podcast here. This week’s show is tomorrow (i.e. MONDAY) at 7 PM CDT, not Thursday. Our special guest is Sam Mellinger, who I'm told is a blogger of some renown. I’ll also be on WHB tomorrow morning around 9 AM. And in light of recent events, I’ll hopefully have something up on Soria/Hochevar/Ponson before Tuesday night’s game.)

Game On.

(Remember to tune in this evening at 7 PM; listen live at 810whb.com. Royals’ Assistant GM Dean Taylor is scheduled to be our guest this evening.)

I’ve always felt that for all the advantages that come with having access to a team, in the sense of being a beat writer or a reporter or at least having graduated from J-school, the biggest advantage of my lack of access – of being an outsider – is the luxury of being able to take a step back from the day-to-day minutiae of baseball, and analyze things from a distance. Perspective is hard to obtain from up close.

Well, this year I’ve started to shed the “outsider” label just a little. It’s been a tremendous opportunity to have a radio show and to have access to people inside the game. But it’s also made me so focused on keeping up with every Trey Hillman decision and the ebb and flow of every single game, every single day, that maybe I’ve been missing the big picture just a little bit.

So I took a step back after last night’s game and realized: dammit, we’re good. The Royals are 17-11, which as Bob Dutton pointed out is the first time the Royals are six games* over .500 since the end of the 2003 season. As Will McDonald points out, the Royals could lose their next 36 games in a row and still be ahead of their pace from 2006, just three years ago.

*: “Games over .500” is a very vague term in the way it’s used; some people will say a team that’s 82-80 is two games over .500, while others will say they’re one game over .500. The second answer is technically true, because a team that’s 82-80 is one game ahead of a team that’s exactly .500 (81-81). However, the first answer is usually what people mean. My personal method is to use “games over .500” to denote half-games – in other words, (wins – losses). When I want the second meaning, I’ll use “full games over .500”. At 17-11, the Royals are three full games over .500, which means if they play .500 the rest of the season, they’ll finish with (81 + 3 =) 84 wins.

All the hair-pulling over Trey Hillman’s decisions in April obscured the fact that the most important job for any manager isn’t pushing the right buttons in the late innings, it’s putting his players in position to succeed in the first place. And the best manager can’t win without the horses. The Royals have the horses. They lead the league in runs allowed. They rank only 9^th in runs scored, but given that they’re fifth in the league in slugging average and in on-base percentage, they have the makings of at least a league-average offense. The Royals have won with less.

Zack Greinke gets all the press, and deservedly so. But the Royals have played better than .500 ball in the games that The Big Grein does not start. They lead the American League in Beane Count, a statistic that Rob Neyer invented years ago that distills a team’s performance to the two most immutable categories of the game, homers and walks. And yes, Rob’s put one foot on the bandwagon.

For all the talk about how the Royals have been winning games they never would have won in the past, the fact that the Royals won a couple of close games wasn’t definitive proof that they were a good team. Those of you who have been reading for a while already know this, but the hallmark of a good team is not the ability to win the close games – it’s the ability to win the blowouts. Winning one-run games is mostly a matter of luck; winning the eight-run games is mostly a matter of talent.

What was meaningful about the win against the Twins on Saturday, or against the White Sox on Tuesday, wasn’t that it they were the kinds of wins that characterized good teams; it was that they weren’t the kinds of losses that characterized bad teams. Specifically, bad Royals teams. More specifically, pretty much every Royals team from 1995 to 2007.

So we had, I thought, established over the last week that the Royals were not a bad team. But I looked at last night’s game as a litmus test for whether the Royals were a good team. Against another first-place team that seemed to be playing over its head, against a soft-tossing finesse pitcher who has sucked pretty much non-stop since the end of 2007, a good team would bust out the whooping sticks early and often.

Carlos Silva is exactly the kind of control artist who always seems to throw his best games against the Royals: before last night, he had a 4.10 ERA in 14 career starts against KC, and had walked just five batters in 83 career innings.

The verdict? The Royals grounded into two double plays and left five men on base in the first four innings – and still led 8-0. Sidney Ponson did his best Brian Bannister impression, and the three worst pitchers on the Royals’ roster held the Mariners to one run.

And that’s why I’m here to tell you: game on. This team is good, this team is for real, and it’s time to commit fully and hang on tight all season long. I’m not saying the Royals are going to win the division. But I’m saying that from this moment on, every game has playoff implications.

“Wait a minute,” some of you are saying, “how is this any different than 2003?” To which I can only say, “I knew 2003. 2003 was a friend of mine. This team, sir, is no 2003.”

Y’all remember 2003, don’t you? Tony Pena tossing a coin to decide whether Runelvys Hernandez or Jeremy Affeldt would start on Opening Day? Ken Harvey hitting walkoff homers? Mike MacDougal walking a tightrope every ninth inning? Everything about that season was surreal from the start. NO ONE thought, prior to the season, that the Royals had any hope of contention. Then they started 9-0, and 16-3, and even then the feeling wasn’t “we’re going to win”, it was “we’re winning!” The emotions that I recall were more about living in the moment than in expecting the winning ways to continue. They continued a lot longer than we expected, and when the Royals went into the All-Star break leading the division by seven games, you could actually start to believe that the magic might last into October. But it was still clear that they were winning with magic.

This year, even before the season began people around the game were talking about the Royals as a sleeper contender, to the point where it actually got annoying – the New York Times predicted the Royals to win the division. Those predictions weren’t made because people thought the Royals were well-versed in sorcery; they were made because people thought the Royals had a lot of talent.

Which they do. The Royals’ second-best starter is better than anyone in the rotation in 2003 – or in any year from 1998 to 2006. Their closer is one of the very best in baseball. Their leadoff hitter has a .363 OBP and catches everything in centerfield. Their DH does little but hit homers – but he does hit homers. Their first baseman is hitting .276/.370/.425 and is just scratching the surface of his potential. Their second baseman, batting 7^th, is hitting .359 – and while no one thinks he’s a .359 hitter, a lot of people think he’s a .310 hitter. They have Zack Greinke. They have a pitcher who’s 5-0, 1.13 in Omaha and can’t break into the rotation. None of their players are pregnant.

The Royals are 17-11, and they’ve outscored their opponents by 30 runs, which projects to a…17-11 record. They’re winning even with one of their best players on the DL. In the last week, they’ve won games by bashing 11 extra-base hits around the park; by scoring eight runs in five innings off a pair of Quadruple-A pitchers (who were both sent down to Triple-A immediately after the game); by outlasting the Twins on the road with an 11^th-inning rally triggered by four walks; by storming back from a 4-0 deficit after six innings with a five-run seventh; by rallying from a 5-1 deficit to the White Sox to win in 11 innings, even after the home plate umpire blew a call on the potential go-ahead run in regulation; and beaten Carlos Silva like the rented mule he is.

Oh, and somewhere in between Greinke threw another shutout.

And in the process of writing this, the Royals have won their sixth straight game. A night after their fifth starter allowed one run in 7.1 innings, their fourth starter throws six shutout innings, striking out seven. Tomorrow the nominal ace of the staff takes the mound. And then the day after that, The Greatest Show in Baseball rolls into Anaheim.

So yeah: it’s on. It’s most definitely on. The Royals are 18-11, they lead the division by 2.5 games, and unlike 2003, I’m not even excited about how they have played. I’m excited by how I think they will play. I think they will play well enough to contend, and maybe even win, the division. I think that it’s going to be the most enjoyable summer for Kansas City sports in a few decades. I think that many of the 32,713 kids who came out to the park this afternoon will be fans for life.

I think that the city is ready to embrace this team. Last night’s game garnered a 7.5 rating, the highest in the history of Fox Sports Kansas City. The previous highest-rated game was…the game before, with a 6.4 rating.

I think that we’re going to have a lot of fun over the next few months. I think that at some point, someone is going to see me walking around suburban Chicago with my Greinke jersey on and accuse me of being a bandwagon fan. I think that my wife is going to feel like a single mother in late September and October.

I think all of this will happen, but I don’t know. But I know one thing.

It’s on. It’s most definitely on.

Royals Today: 5/6/2009.

With last night’s win, the Royals’ total of GWWNHWITP (Games We Would Not Have Won In The Past) moves to three in the last four games, and four for the season as a whole (I would add the April 12^th game against the Yankees, when the Royals started a three-run rally with two outs in the eighth.) I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m having more and more trouble discounting the way the Royals are playing as simply a hot start, or simply a one-man show.

As Sam Mellinger points out, the Royals are only 10-11 when Zack Greinke doesn’t start – but they’re 16-6 when Sidney Ponson doesn’t start. The best way to look at is this: when neither Greinke nor Ponson start, the Royals are 10-6. If the Royals can play over .500 when their 2-3-4 starters are on the mound, they’re going to be fine. Greinke is more good than Ponson is bad. More to the point, Greinke is more likely to pitch like he is than Ponson is to pitch like he is and stay in the rotation.

Last night, the Royals should have taken the lead in the bottom of the seventh, when home plate umpire Jerry Crawford blew a call at the plate when A.J. Pierzynski used his Jedi mind trick on him. (Seriously, how is that a player universally considered one of the dirtiest players in the game so consistently gets umpires to make calls in his favor? If I were an umpire, I’d call every close play against Pierzynski on pure principle. Then again, if I were an umpire I’d probably sucker-punch Pierzynski just for the fun of it.) Living in Chicago, I was forced to watch the White Sox feed of the game, which featured this exchange during the replay:

Steve Stone: “Pierzynski is in perfect position to make the catch, applies the perfect tag…” replay shows Maier’s leg gets in first “…and we caught a break.”

Hawk Harrelson: “I don’t know – Jerry Crawford is in perfect position to make that call.”

And that, my friends, is why Steve Stone is one of the best in the business. And why Hawk Harrelson is not.

- The Royals drew 11 more walks in the game (granted, two intentionally) and now rank 5^th in the league in that category. Last night they scored the tying run in the sixth on a bases-loaded walk, three nights after they scored the go-ahead run in the 11^th on a bases-loaded walk.

The Royals have three bases-loaded walks this season. They had five all of last year.

- Coco Crisp walked four more times. I’m running out of ways to describe how surreal this is to watch a leadoff hitter who spits on pitches two inches out of the strike zone. Crisp is just the fourth Royal this decade to walk four times in a game. (Alex Gordon set the team record with five last year – two intentionally – on August 30^th. Like Crisp, he didn’t score in the game either.) Crisp also quietly tied a team record earlier this year by walking at least twice in four straight games, a feat last done by Jeff King in 1997.

He’s never done anything like this before, but at this point I’d be shocked if he returns to his previous career walk rates. Maybe there’s something in the water this year; one of the two players in the league with more walks than Crisp is Marcos Scutaro, who has 26 of them. Like Crisp, Scutaro has never drawn even 60 walks in a season before.

- You know whose plate discipline is even more startling than Crisp’s? Jose Guillen. Guillen has drawn eight walks in just 14 games. Guillen’s career high in walks is 41; he had 23 all of last season. He has a .414 OBP, people. How’s that portrait coming along?

- I’ll save more Greinke talk for another column - although Craig Brown as a nice column here about how Greinke is maintaining his stuff deep into games - but I did want to address the hysteria over Greinke’s ERA+, which is currently at 1170.

ERA+ is a wonderful stat, in that it adjusts ERA for the context of era and league and ballpark so that you can directly compare the performance of two pitchers from any point in baseball history. But ERA+ has a flaw which only manifests itself at the margins. This is not a flaw that is unique to ERA+. ANY statistic that involves dividing one number by another – in other words, any rate statistic – has this same potential flaw.

The problem with rate statistics is this: as the denominator in the formula decreases, the statistic increases at an ever faster rate – and when that denominator approaches zero, the statistic increases so fast that it quickly becomes unreliable.

An example may make this more clear. Consider three different pitchers, all of whom have pitched 240 innings in a season:

Pitcher A averages 16 innings per home run.

Pitcher B averages 80 innings per home run.

Pitcher C averages 240 innings per home run.

Looked at this way, it appears that the difference between Pitcher C and Pitcher B is far greater than the difference between Pitcher B and Pitcher A. But look at it the other, more traditional way:

Pitcher A surrendered 15 homers in 240 innings.

Pitcher B surrendered 3 homers in 240 innings.

Pitcher C surrendered 1 homer in 240 innings.

The raw difference between Pitchers B and C is just two homers, whereas the difference between Pitchers A and B is 12 homers. But the first method gives a false reading of Pitcher C’s ability because the method breaks down as homers approach zero. If Pitcher C had not surrendered any homers, then – like Greinke’s ERA+ before he gave up a run – his “innings per home run” would have been infinite.

Like I said, you can have this problem with any rate stat – which is why we have things like innings pitched and at-bat limits, so that someone who goes 2-for-2 doesn’t win the batting title and someone with a scoreless inning doesn’t lead the league in ERA. The problem with ERA+ and the example I presented is that the denominator isn’t expressed in terms of opportunities, but in terms of outcomes. If we reverse the formula – if we expressed their home run rates in terms of homers per inning instead of innings per homer – then the numbers look like this:

Pitcher A: 0.063 HR/IP

Pitcher B: 0.013 HR/IP

Pitcher C: 0.004 HR/IP

Which looks much more reasonable, and in fact, this is the way it’s normally presented (albeit in homers per nine innings, for obvious reasons).

Any stat which involves dividing by the outcome is prone to breaking down as the outcome approaches zero. When you extract the park and league adjustments from ERA+, the formula is essentially (league ERA/pitcher ERA). In this case, the closer a pitcher’s ERA is to zero, the closer his ERA+ gets to infinity. We can solve the problem by reversing the formula, making Greinke's ERA+ roughly 8, but custom has already dictated that with ERA+, like with OPS+, the higher the better. In this case, though, Greinke’s number is so high that it doesn’t mean much other than he’s been really, really good.

Sorry for the math digression.

- Brayan Pena cleared waivers, and I think it’s time I give up and admit that I’m out of my depth when it comes to figuring out which players are going to be claimed and which ones aren’t. You’d think that out of 29 other teams, one of them would want a 27-year-old switch-hitting catcher with a lifetime .303 average in the minors (and who has hit over .300 in all four of his seasons in Triple-A) making the league minimum. You would be wrong, as I was. I’m happy to have him. If he does nothing else for the Royals this year, he’s already earned all the ink I’ve spent writing about him with his game-altering pinch double against the Yankees on April 12^th. I suspect we’ll see him again in September, if not sooner.

- I have a confession to make. I do a mean Guy Fieri impression.

- Finally, I’ve been meaning to address Luke Hochevar’s contract situation for awhile, and with Sidney Ponson making (hopefully) his last start tonight, now’s as good a time as any.

Hochevar came into the season with 1 year, 17 days of service time. The rules state that 172 service days = 1 full service year, so in order to keep Hochevar from being a free agent until after the 2014 season, the Royals can not afford to give him more than 154 days of service time this year.

Complicating things is that there are, I believe, 182 days (exactly 26 weeks) from Opening Day to the last Sunday of the season. This is why a player can get a full year of service time even though he’s not called up until a week into the season (see, for instance, Kerry Wood’s rookie year.)

Anyway, if you just count from the last day of the season and work backwards, the tipping point for Hochevar was May 4^th. If the Royals had called him up before May 4^th, then he would have qualified for free agency a year early. (This became a source of concern in the Jazayerli household when Gil Meche’s back acted up, and it looked like the Royals might need Hochevar to make Meche's next start – on May 3^rd.) In other words, the Royals have no reason to keep Hochevar on the farm any longer purely from a service time standpoint.

There is the additional concern of trying to keep him from qualifying as a “super-two” player, a player who’s eligible for arbitration before he has three full years of service time. The math here is a little tougher to figure out, because the line that separates super-two players from the other players with 2+ years of service time moves from year to year. Generally, the dividing line falls between 120 and 140 days of service time. That means the Royals would need to keep Hochevar down on the farm for somewhere in the range of 5-7 more weeks.

This would be dumb, not only because the Royals need him, but because the benefits of avoid the super-two pale to the benefits of keeping a player out of free agency. If the player’s any good, then the couple extra million he’ll make that first year of arbitration is nothing compared to getting to keep a quality player for another season. If he’s not any good, then that first year of arbitration isn’t going to cost you much anyway.

So root for a slugfest tonight – the Mariners are cooperating by sending Carlos Silva to the mound – and hope that the Royals pull out the game despite, not because of, Ponson. And maybe we’ll finally get around to the rotation we should have started the season with in the first place.