Horacio Ramirez Sucks. Get Over It.

Come with me, if you don’t mind, on a tour of recent history.

May 21^st: Zack Greinke allows two runs in six innings, departing the game with a slender 3-2 lead against the Indians. Horacio Ramirez, who comes into the game with a sparkling 5.84 ERA (his lowest at any point this season), starts the top of the seventh. He allows a leadoff single, and after a bunt and a groundout, surrenders another single to blow the lead. Jamey Wright comes in and allows a go-ahead RBI double; Ramirez is eventually saddled with the loss.

May 22^nd: With the Royals now in St. Louis, Kyle Davies follows Greinke’s effort with a six-inning, two-run performance of his own, but his teammates fail to score a run for him. Ramirez once again starts the seventh. After getting two quick outs, Ramirez surrenders a home run to the mighty Tyler Greene. Nonetheless, Ramirez is brought out to pitch the eighth as well, and gives up a single to Skip Schumaker, followed by a double to Brian Barden. He IBB’s Albert Pujols, retires Chris Duncan, and then heads to the showers as Kyle Farnsworth gives up a two-run single to put the game out of reach.

May 24^th: Two days later, the Royals once again get a six-inning, two-run effort from their starting pitcher, this time it being Brian Bannister. With the Royals holding a 3-2 lead on St. Louis going to the bottom of the seventh, once again Trey Hillman inexplicably calls on Ramirez. Ramirez retires the first two batters in order, then intentionally walks Pujols with the bases empty. He then allows a wild pitch on his way to walking Chris Duncan, forcing Hillman to make the unconventional move of replacing one lefty reliever with another. In his season debut, John Bale, uh, bales out Ramirez by whiffing Rick Ankiel on three pitches; the Royals would hold on for the win.

May 27^th: Ramirez is called on with two outs in the sixth inning to rescue Davies, who has allowed seven runs so far and leaves a man on first base. Ramirez gives up a single to Josh Anderson, and is immediately replaced by Roman Colon, who gives up another single to plate the eighth run before ending the inning.

June 2^nd: Once again, Davies is on the mound. Once again, the Royals’ starter has allowed two runs, only in this instance the game is tied, and instead of being called upon to start an inning, Ramirez is brought in with two outs in the sixth – and men on first and second. The first batter he faces, Matt Joyce, hits a two-run double that effectively ends the game. Ramirez would pitch a scoreless seventh, but the game is already over.

Over his last five appearances, Ramirez has pitched four innings, allowed eight hits and five runs. He blew a one-run lead in one game, gave up the tie-breaking runs in another game, allowed a 2-0 deficit to get out of hand in a third game, had to be rescued by another pitcher to preserve a lead in a fourth game, and gave up a hit to the only batter he faced in mop-up relief in the fifth game.

And before this stretch, he had a 5.74 ERA.

It’s now June, and Horacio Ramirez has a 6.86 ERA for the season. He has allowed 27 hits in 19.2 innings. He only has 12 strikeouts. He has walked 10 batters (granted, three intentionally). He has allowed three homers. There is absolutely nothing on his statistical record that is positive.

Lefties are hitting .261/.306/.348, which isn’t bad, but not particularly good. Right-handers are hitting .405/.500/.811. Even Jimmy Gobble thinks that’s bad.

And still Hillman sends him out there, in key situations, gambling that Ramirez won’t cost the Royals yet another game.

I guess it would make sense if the Royals were desperate for a LOOGY, even though Ramirez, you know, doesn’t even make for a good LOOGY. Except last I checked, the Royals have both Ron Mahay and John Bale on the roster, meaning that they’re keeping Ramirez around even though they have two better left-handers in the bullpen.

Look, guys, I know you invested a lot of money in Ramirez. I don’t know why you invested a lot of money, mind you, because he had done nothing to deserve the money, and no other team was particularly interested in offering him a comparable deal. But you did. You blew $1.8 million on a pitcher who doesn’t belong in the major leagues any more. It happens. Teams make mistakes.

But the money is gone, and no amount of putting Ramirez on the mound to justify that contract is going to bring the money back. All you’re accomplishing by keeping Ramirez on the roster is proving that you can’t resist throwing good games after bad money.

I have no idea if the Royals are going to turn things around, whether they’ll get back to .500 this year, whether they’ll contend again in 2009. On paper, there’s no obvious reason why the Royals can’t reverse course. But I know that the Royals aren’t going to win a damn thing so long as they’ve got a GM who isn’t willing to cut losses on a contract that was a mistake the moment it was signed, and a manager who doesn’t understand that just because you have a pitcher on your roster doesn’t mean you have to use him in tight situations.

Horacio Ramirez sucks, guys. The sooner you accept that fact, the sooner we can get around to the business of putting together a winning roster.

Kauffman Stadium.

Alright, the intervention didn’t work. Time to call in Father Merrin.

I’m writing this from the American Eagle flight back to Chicago, a flight that I came precariously close to being bumped from. So I’m calling the fact that I made the flight home a win. It’s pretty much my only victory of the day.

We’ll get to the game later; I figure some of you will want my impressions of the park itself. Fortunately, a trip that had me leaving my house just before 8 AM had me at the ballpark around 11:20 – no longer a trip than it used to take to drive from Wichita, really – which gave us plenty of time to explore K2* before game time.

*: Sam Mellinger’s quest to name the renovated park The Kougar has gained sufficient traction within the clubhouse that I feel it would be inappropriate to try to fasten another name to the stadium – particularly given my own shameless attempts to make other nicknames into canon. But I understand and respect that the reaction to The Kougar is almost visceral with some fans. So you will see me occasionally slip in a K2 reference, which I think is by far the best of the other nicknames suggested. I love nicknames that convey multiple meanings, and K2 is not only a nod to the 2^nd iteration of Kauffman, but conjures images of a massive and foreboding mountain for opposing teams to climb. But the nickname requires that Kauffman Stadium actually becomes a place that causes opponents to tremble in fear. The way the Royals played on this homestand, Kauffman Stadium was less K2 than Flint Hills.

I was surprised by just how different the ballpark looked from the highway as you turn into the complex – the new jumbo-jumbotron, the outfield seats, and the reconfigured fountains serve to create a tangibly different look from a distance. Parking’s the same – and that’s a compliment – but up close the exterior of the park was different in places, less concrete and more glass and steel, adding a little character to what previously was a somewhat soulless shell.

Once inside, the gestalt I got of the new Kauffman Stadium was that of the old Kauffman Stadium, only better. We walked along the narrow inner concourse from home plate all the way around the park. We stopped in left field to check out the Hall of Fame, where we told by an usher (who was surprisingly helpful and talkative; the years in Chicago have clearly jaded me) that construction would not be completed until after the All-Star Break. Immediately past the Hall of Fame came the kids’ section, which you occasionally get glimpses of during live look-ins on Royals broadcasts: the mini-K where kids can take their hacks, the speed pitch guns, the batting cages, the carousel, and the running lanes where kids can compare their 90-foot dash times against a variety of Royals players. (Though unfortunately not Jose Guillen. Perhaps there’s a section for toddlers that I missed.)

A carnival-like section for children is de rigueur at major league stadiums today, but it’s hard to balance the desire to keep kids happy and separate their parents from their wallets with the need to keep the focus on the baseball game being played. What I liked about the Royals’ setup was that while you could not see the field of play from most of these events – most of them are located beyond the batters’ eye in dead center field – you only need to move 40 or 50 feet to see the field in most places. Contrast that with Comerica Park in Detroit, where they have a kids area (including a much larger carousel – I believe it’s a double-decker) that is cordoned off from the rest of the stadium to the point where it’s easy to forget that you’re at a ballpark.

Continuing our walk around to right-center field, the view from directly above the fountains was excellent – I imagine the view from the Dri-Duck seats is terrific. We only glanced inside Rivals Sports Bar, but clearly the view from inside is more than adequate to watch the game – particularly for the type of people who want to sit down in a restaurant while a game is in progress.

We then headed around the outer (i.e. enclosed) concourse, which was wider than before (and enormous compared to the ones at U.S. Cellular Field) and featured the usual array of different food stations and menu items. Our tour ended in the Diamond Club behind home plate, where our seats were located thanks to my friends at WHB.

I hesitate to even talk about our experience in the Diamond Club, because I’m sure I’ll sound like the person raving about the width of the seats in first class, but…it was impressive. The Club, which I believe is accessible only to fans sitting in the four sections immediately behind home plate (126-129), is an air-conditioned, glass-partitioned sitting area with several food stations, and tables to eat at that face directly out towards home plate. The view was good enough that you could watch the entire game there without complaint – and in point of fact I did watch a few innings from this spot once it became clear that my pasty-white skin couldn’t take any more sun exposure without risking a nasty (and, for a dermatologist, embarrassing) sunburn.

Before gametime I ordered an $8.50 reuben off the menu, and while it wasn’t the best reuben I’ve ever had, it was very good - better than a lot of reubens I’ve ordered from actual restaurants (ones that charged more than $8.50) in the past. It came with a side of chips, which was enough to keep me from being hungry for the rest of the game.

Fluid intake was another matter. For some reason the Royals have decided to serve soft drinks in one size only. I understand that I’m going to get ripped off at a ballpark, but at least give me the choice of how I get ripped off – I’d rather pay $5 for a 48-ounce bucket than $4 for the 32-ounce ice-filled cup that I’m going to polish off in 10 minutes on a hot day.

But that’s a minor gripe. Kauffman Stadium has always been one of the most underrated places in baseball to watch a game, and if that changes in the new Kauffman Stadium, it’s only because people will stop underrating the park and realize that it is one of the very best baseball stadiums in the country.

The best thing I can say about the new park is that it feels like many of the other new parks in the majors. I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy the unveiling of two new ballparks in my backyard. In 1992, at the end of my freshman year at Johns Hopkins, the Orioles unveiled Camden Yards. I was on hand when the future of American stadium design was opened to the public (granted, it was an exhibition game against the Pirates), and it was immediately clear to me and everyone else there that day that every other ballpark in the major leagues had suddenly become obsolete. I moved to Michigan for medical school in 1995, and enjoyed the quirks of Tiger Stadium (old, lots of obstructed view seats, but the most intimate stadium I’ve ever been to) for several years before Comerica opened.

My point is that over the last 20 years, the standard for ballparks has shifted, not just in terms of design and architecture but in terms of things like culinary offerings. And on every issue, the new stadium appeared to at least meet that standard. I don’t know if it exceeds that standard, at least in terms of food – I would need a lot of trips to sample ballpark fare, and even then you would want a less gastronomically inhibited person to try all the pork-based barbecue items. But the new stadium does not appear to be deficient in any way. The infrastructure of the park is 21^st-century caliber, while the soul of Kauffman Stadium has been kept intact.

And by overlaying the new stadium design on an existing structure, the cost of the project came in at roughly half of what most other municipalities have spent on new ballparks. That’s what makes the Kougar (sorry!) so impressive to me – the park itself may not be better than places like Comerica and Miller Park and Jacobs Field (though it’s certainly better than the Cell) – it’s that the new Kauffman is a hell of a lot cheaper than pretty much every ballpark built in the last 20 years, while measuring up in every other way.

I sympathize with the people who wanted the Royals to build a downtown stadium, and frankly if Kauffman Stadium had been destroyed by aliens or something and the team had to start from scratch, I would think a downtown location would make the best sense. But it’s hard to argue, even for someone like me who’s an out-of-towner and doesn’t bear the tax burden, that it makes sense to build a downtown stadium when you can get the same structure built at the Truman Sports Complex for half the price.

The bottom line is this: when it comes to everything I look for in a new ballpark – good views from everywhere, wide concourses, an open design that allows you to walk all the way around the stadium and watch the game from multiple venues, a variety of high-quality menu items, amenities for the children and non-baseball fans who must inevitably attend games without distracting from the stadium’s central purpose – the new Kauffman Stadium does not appear to suffer any fatal, or even sickening, flaws.

The product in the middle of that stadium is a different story. We can talk about the product that I saw on Sunday at a later date.

Day Trip!

I think it’s time I witness this carnage for myself.

In a plan that was hatched late Thursday night, agreed to by exasperated wives on Friday afternoon, and finalized on Saturday morning, I am booked on a flight to Kansas City early Sunday morning with my friend Eiman and his ten-year-old son Yusuf. (Tragically, both father and son are White Sox fans. I can report that, at least judging from their complete lack of tattoos and avoidance of alcohol, they have no relation to the Ligue family – Rusty Kuntz has nothing to fear. In fact, judging from their overall pleasant demeanor and attention to grooming, it is entirely possible that they are not White Sox fans at all.)

The singular purpose of this trip is to see the Zack Greinke Experience up close and personal. Mind you, this trip does not come without risk. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Greinke win a game when I’ve been present, and the last time I saw him pitch live was this game. This risk is mitigated by the fact that Yusuf is something like 0-for-9 in watching the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field. We’ve never watched a Royals-White Sox tilt together, and now that the irresistible force and the immovable object meet, it’s quite possible that the outcome will turn out something like this, with the game not decided until after we’ve had to return back to the airport.

If Greinke puts up his first stinker of the season tomorrow, you’ll know who’s responsible for the smell. But the way things have gone the last three weeks, I’m thinking it’s time for an intervention. If not an exorcism.

Zack Stat Pack: Start #10. And Some Odds and Ends.

Well, it’s official now: Zack Greinke is off to the best start to the season by any pitcher since the Royals came into existence.

He came into this game needing to allow no more than one earned run (in seven innings or less), or no more than two earned runs (if he went more than seven innings), in order to keep his ERA under 1. That possibility looked to be in danger when he gave up a soft run in the first, on a bloop double that caressed the left-field foul line, and a bloop single that shattered Magglio Ordonez’s bat. Fortunately, Greinke spent the next eight innings proving that run to be the aberration it appeared to be, and even more fortunately, the Royals finally found some offense in the sixth inning when the Tigers proved that even after the 2006 World Series, they still need to work on PFP.

(The bunt is a poor-percentage play overall, but in addition to the odds of beating out a bunt for a single, even a slight chance that the pitcher throws the ball past the first baseman makes the play look a lot better – particularly when the bunter is Luis Hernandez, whose career batting average in Triple-A is .214.)

Ten starts into the season, Greinke is 8-1 with a 0.84 ERA. He broke the team record he shared with Kevin Appier by making his 12^th consecutive start without allowing more than two earned runs. Even more impressive, Greinke has now made 12 consecutive starts without allowing more than two runs, earned or not; Appier and Paul Splittorff held the previous record with nine in a row. (The longest streak of starts with two or fewer runs allowed in the Retrosheet era is 14, by Greg Maddux in 1993 and Mike Scott in 1986.)

Going back to last year, Greinke has not allowed a home run in 14 consecutive starts, which is not even the longest streak set this year – the Astros’ Wandy Rodriguez had a stretch of 15 starts that ended last week. The Retrosheet record is 21 in a row, set by wormkiller Zane Smith between 1985 and 1986. (Smith walked 75 batters in 139 innings in that span, which may explain why he went just 7-9.)

The Royals’ record is 16 in a row, set by Al Fitzmorris in 1976. Mark Gubicza and Dick Drago both had 15 starts in a row without a homer as well.

And finally, and most importantly, is this, which (as best as I could research) is the list of the lowest ERAs after 10 starts since 1954:

1966 Juan Marichal 0.59

2009 Zack Greinke 0.84

2000 Pedro Martinez 1.05

Greinke has the best ERA by a starting pitcher after ten starts in over 40 years.

In his 11^th start, Marichal gave up three runs, raising his ERA to 0.80, and he got pounded for six runs in his 12^th start, whereupon his ERA jumped to 1.29. Aside from Marichal, I can find only three pitchers whose ERA dipped below 1.00 at any point after they had made 10 starts. One was Hoyt Wilhelm, who in 1959 made 10 starts (and two relief appearances) to start the year, and gave up 10 earned runs in 90.1 innings, for a 0.996 ERA. Bob Gibson’s ERA famously touched 0.99 after 29 starts. Finally, Pedro Martinez, as I mentioned before, threw eight shutout innings in his 11^th start in 2000, lowering his ERA to 0.95.

So if I’m doing the math right, then if Greinke throws four or more shutout innings in his next start, he will have a lower ERA than Marichal did after 11 starts, meaning lower than anyone in the Retrosheet era (and possibly in the history of baseball) has had at any point with more than ten starts. If Greinke allows no more than two earned runs in his next two starts combined (assuming he throws at least ten innings combined), he will undercut Pedro’s ERA after 12 starts in 2000, giving him the best ERA of any pitcher with 12 or more starts.

Yeah. He’s good.

- I forgot to link to this in my last post, but last Thursday’s radio show can be downloaded, as always, here.

You will notice that last week’s show was surprisingly Will Leitch-free, as our scheduled guest declined to answer his phone despite numerous attempts to have him do so. Afterwards I learned why: Leitch was not in possession of a phone, thanks to a story that involved him, an iPhone, a New York City street…and an entrepreneurial thief on a bicycle. Don’t take my word for it: here’s Leitch’s long and rather entertaining explanation for what happened.

The moral, I think, is clear: New York City is an evil place, filled with thieves on bicycles, rapists, murderers, and even Yankees fans. Don’t make the mistake of moving there – Leitch, a salt-of-the-earth Midwestern kid from downstate Illinois, did and now he loves Woody Allen movies and once wrote a book called “Life as a Loser”. Sad, really. So heed my advice and avoid New York. It’s enough that the Royals get mugged every time they visit – going back to 1995, the Royals are 12-49 in New York.

- Note that this week’s show will start a little early, at 6:30 CDT, to avoid conflicting with the Cavaliers-Magic game being carried on 810 WHB. Mind you, we all know that the Magic are winning. Poz has taken care of that.

- One section of my last post became obsolete almost immediately after it was posted, when the Royals announced that they were only sending Luke Hochevar down to Omaha until the next time they needed a fifth starter, on June 6^th.

Obviously, that changes the calculus of this move significantly. I have long been an advocate of the four-man rotation, or failing that, the five-day rotation, where a team’s top four starters pitch on four days’ rest whenever possible, and the fifth starter being used as a swingman when his start day gets passed over. There are 182 days from Opening Day to the final day of the season. In theory, a pitcher who starts on Opening Day and pitches every fifth day should be able to make 37 starts if the off-days and the All-Star Break fall just right, or 36 at the very least. Unfortunately, not one major league team has had the guts to keep even one of their pitchers on an every-fifth-day schedule in six years; Roy Halladay and Greg Maddux are the last two pitchers to make 36 starts in a season, back in 2003.

Greinke and Gil Meche have both vocally expressed their preference for sticking to an every-fifth-day schedule. Whatever advantage is gained by getting a day off to rest is lost by disrupting a pitcher’s off-day schedule. And if you read the studies I linked above, you’ll find that there is no evidence to suggest that pitchers do better on four days’ rest than on three days’ rest, so I can’t imagine why they’d do better on five days’ rest than four.

The Royals started the season with an obvious Big Three, and Brian Bannister, to his immense credit, has worked his way back from being the team’s seventh starter in spring training to being a very capable #4 starter – really, the team’s second-best starter this season. But the Royals have struggled to come up with a fifth starter all year. Hochevar, Sidney Ponson, and Horacio Ramirez have combined for ten starts, and in those ten starts have gone 1-7 with a 7.59 ERA. By comparison, the Big Four have gone 16-10 with a 3.04 ERA.

By going to a four-man rotation – even if it’s only for two turns through the rotation – Hillman is basically replacing a 7.59 ERA with a 3.04 ERA twice. That’s an absolutely enormous difference – even in just two starts, that works out to about seven fewer runs allowed, which is worth nearly a win. I’m not sure there’s anything a manager can do to improve his team’s record more efficiently than simply finding a way to get a few more starts to his best starters.

I still think that if this were a long-term decision, that Hochevar would be better served by going to the bullpen than continuing to start in Omaha. Some commenters have made the argument that you want a starting pitcher to practice being a starting pitcher, essentially. That sounds great in theory, but baseball history is strongly on the side of letting a promising potential starter learn how to get major league hitters out in the bullpen, where he can gain the confidence that comes from throwing a little harder and focusing on his best pitchers, before being asked to stretch things out over time. It worked for the many Oriole pitchers that came up under Earl Weaver, it worked for Johan Santana, and yes, it worked for Zack Greinke, who needed a bullpen stint in 2007 to realize that he could actually throw 95 without sacrificing control.

But over a two-week stretch, that’s a moot point. Hochevar should be back when the Royals need him. Let’s hope that this won’t be the last time that he gets skipped if it means moving The Zack Greinke Experience up a day. That guy’s good.

Another May. Another Mayday!

Alright, that’s it, I’m done – no more positive posts the rest of the season.

If we’re not losing six games in a row immediately after I write Game On, we’re losing four in a row – the last two by shutout – after I write about the Game of the Year. I realize that pride goeth before a fall, but this is ridiculous.

(As an aside: the next time someone talks to you about the importance of “momentum” in sports, point them to the events of the past week. The Royals staged their biggest ninth-inning comeback in over five years on Tuesday, against a team that had been blowing late-inning leads all year long. Any definition of momentum worth its salt would have you believe that the Royals, playing on an emotional high, would crush the distraught Indians over the next two games. Instead, the Royals were the ones that blew a 3-0 lead the following day. And after they got to Kerry Wood in the ninth, loading the bases on walks with one out…Wood suddenly found his breaking ball and struck out the next two batters. The Royals lost again the next day despite having Greinke on the mound and a lead after six innings.

Momentum means NOTHING. Momentum is a post ipso facto term: it’s a term that explains things after the fact, not in the moment. Momentum is used to describe which team has played the best in the immediate past – the problem is that people use it to predict which team will play the best in the immediate future. Yes, it’s true that the Royals had the “momentum” after Tuesday’s game, but what people mean when they say the Royals have momentum is that the results of Tuesday’s game make the Royals more likely to win on Wednesday. And that is bunk. It should be patently obvious to any serious sports fan that momentum is a ridiculous concept, but it’s not, for one simple reason: when the team that has the momentum suddenly stops playing so well, we say THE MOMENTUM HAS SHIFTED. Momentum can switch at the turn of a dime – but if momentum can shift back and forth so easily, doesn’t that imply that it’s meaningless?

People who believe in momentum remind me of conspiracy theorists, who argue that the fact that every NASA official denies that Neil Armstrong’s moon landing was filmed on a sound stage is proof of just how big the conspiracy is. Momentum believers will argue that the fact that Cleveland won on Wednesday is proof that momentum is important – it’s just that the Indians somehow recaptured the momentum during the game.

And in fairness, I should point out that I was the one who argued after Tuesday’s game that it might have buried Cleveland’s season. I didn’t make that argument based on momentum, but based on the fact that the Indians’ bullpen was so hopeless that it was hard to see how they could overcome it to win the division.)

So anyway, for the second straight year the Royals have watched their season crumble before their eyes in late May. Last season, the Royals went into Boston one fine May evening and got no-hit by Jon Lester, which catapulted them into a 12-game losing streak. This year, the Royals started a roadtrip in Anaheim with a loss to a 30-year-old rookie named Matt Palmer, which started a stretch of 11 losses in 14 games.

But I would submit that these are two very, very different things. I know that half of Royals Nation is ready to throw in the towel, but this is nothing like 2008. As I write this, the Royals stand 21-22. Last season, at the start of their 12-game losing streak, the Royals were 21-22. They went into Boston in third place, 1.5 games out of first – when the streak ended, they were 9 games out and buried in last place. This year, the Royals were 18-11 and had a three-game lead on the division when they went into the tank – and even today, they still hold second place to themselves, and stand four games behind the Tigers.

The Rockies finally pulled the horseshoe out of Detroit’s ass last night, ending the Tigers seven-game winning streak that included back-to-back one-run wins that ended with the tying run on third base. So if the Royals get a favorable outcome today, they would need only a three-game sweep of the Tigers at home – with Meche, Greinke, and Davies starting – to be back atop the division by Wednesday night. That’s not likely, mind you. But the mere fact that it’s possible is testament to how silly it is to be giving up on the season already.

(The Royals really can’t afford to lose the series with Detroit, because after this week the Royals have just three more home games against the Tigers – with all nine games in Detroit yet to be played.)

Yes, the Royals have the same record after 43 games that they had last year. But to argue that this means they’ve made no progress is as silly as arguing that they’re going win more than 102 games because – as Martin Manley points out – they have a better record after 43 games than the 1977 Royals did. Last year, after losing 12 games in a row I wrote this. Today, I'm writing this. There's a big difference.

I planned to write about the moves that the Royals needed to make to shake themselves out of their slump, but since the Royals went ahead and made a bunch of transactions after yesterday’s game, I’ll talk about those instead.

Robinson Tejada to the DL, John Bale promoted.

The first transaction I was going to recommend was for the Royals to promote Bale and release Horacio Ramirez. Bale has been a rumor for most of his two-plus years in Kansas City; after signing from Japan in 2007, he didn’t debut until mid-July, and last season, after the ill-fated attempt to make him a starter landed him on the DL after three starts, he didn’t return until September.

The thing is, when he has pitched out of the bullpen, he’s pitched awfully well. He had a solid 4.05 ERA in 2007, with 42 Ks and 17 walks in 40 innings (and just one homer allowed), and threw 11 scoreless innings in relief upon his return last season. This season was once again delayed by health issues, this time for an overactive thyroid, but in six appearances in Double-A this month he has allowed just one earned run and five baserunners in 6.2 innings. He doesn’t have a huge platoon split, so like Ron Mahay he’s not ideally suited for a LOOGY role, but he’s competent enough against both sides of the plate that he makes for a nice second lefty in the pen.

The problem is that he’s not replacing Ramirez, who has been tried both as a starter and as a reliever and found wanting in both roles. I may have been wrong about the merits of signing Willie Bloomquist, and I’ll even accept the argument that the judgment is still out on Kyle Farnsworth, even though it so happens that his scoreless streak has come almost entirely in low-pressure situations. But I (and every Royals fan I know) was dead right about HoRam, whose $1.8 million contract looks even dumber today than it did when he first signed it. Ramirez’s ERAs in his last four stops look like this: 7.16, 2.59, 7.62, 7.64. The fact that the second number in that sequence came with the Royals is no excuse for ignoring the first and third numbers. The Royals did anyway, which is why the fourth number has also come in a Royals uniform. Ramirez is an inexcusable waste of a roster spot, and an even more inexcusable waste of money.

But Ramirez stays for now, though hopefully not for long. Instead, the Royals lose the services of Tejeda, who has probably been their best reliever all season – he leads the bullpen in strikeouts, and ranks second behind Jamey Wright in ERA, only Wright has given up seven unearned runs to Tejeda’s zero. Despite pitching well all year, Hillman has been extremely reluctant to use him in tight situations. Baseball Prospectus has a stat called “Leverage” for relievers, which measures the importance of the game situation in which a reliever is brought in to pitch. Of the nine relievers the Royals have used this year, Tejeda’s Leverage ranks seventh, ahead of only Farnsworth (barely) and Doug Waechter, who pitched in only three games. I mean, Sir Sidney has a higher Leverage score than Tejeda. Hillman has made a lot of mistakes with the bullpen in the micro sense, but in the macro sense, no mistake looms larger than his complete refusal to use one of his best relievers in important situations.

Hillman won’t have to worry about making that mistake for a while, because Tejeda is out with a “strained rotator cuff”. This injury comes out of the blue, and the Royals did backdate his DL stint to his last appearance, but let’s be honest: “strained” and “rotator cuff” are not words that you like to see connected. Tejeda’s the kind of maximum-effort pitcher that is prone to this kind of an injury. If we see him back before July, I’ll be surprised.

Luke Hochevar to Omaha, Roman Colon to Kansas City.

Yeah, I don’t like this one much at all. Hochevar didn’t pitch particularly well yesterday, but neither he did pitch all that bad, particularly after the first inning – he did get 12 groundball outs, which is a sign that his sinker was working. The Royals picked an awfully strange time to send him back to Omaha – if he didn’t earn a demotion after his first two atrocious starts, I don’t see how he earned one yesterday. More to the point, I don’t see how sending him to Omaha helps any, as he’s already proven he can pitch down there. He’s likely to learn more pitching out of the bullpen than he would in Triple-A. This demotion strikes me as punitive, which makes me wonder if there’s something to the story we don’t know about.

(Oh, and the next time the Royals make a statement about one of their players, feel free to believe the exact opposite. Let’s face it: honesty isn’t always the strong suit of this front office. Joakim Soria wasn’t hurt, except that he was. Twenty-four hours after Moore waxes poetic about Hochevar’s ability, he sends him down to Omaha. I don’t know what – or who – to believe anymore.)

It doesn’t help that the Royals are replacing him with Roman Colon, a.k.a. Latin Bowel, who Moore has had a fetish for since his Atlanta days, even though Colon’s major league record is mediocre at best. In three major league seasons, Colon has a 5.03 ERA in 127 innings, and has allowed 23 home runs. He hasn’t pitched in the majors in three years, and in the interim he was suspended from the Tigers’ Triple-A team because he got into a fight with his teammates, a fight that led to another player getting his jaw broken. Colon turns 30 in August, and his 2.84 ERA in Omaha notwithstanding, I see no reason to think that he’ll pitch better in relief than Hochevar would. Unless the point here is to get him to provoke a tussle with Jose Guillen, I don’t see how this transaction makes the Royals any better – now or in the future.

The upside to this transaction is that it opens up a spot in Omaha’s bullpen. I’m still waiting to hear who gets promoted from Northwest Arkansas. If it turns out that Omaha catches Disco Fever, then I approve. Official Friend of the Blog Chris Hayes, you recall, had a 1.64 ERA in Double-A last season, which impressed the Royals so much that they…sent him back to Double-A. This year, he has a 0.68 ERA – yes, better than Zack Greinke – and has allowed just 25 baserunners in 26 innings. He has a G/F ratio of better than 4 to 1. I’m not sure what else he can do to earn a promotion short of rushing into a burning building or working as a Wal-Mart greeter to earn extra cash.

Mike Aviles to the DL, Tug Hulett promoted.

Now this move I can get behind. Aviles should have been put on the DL as soon as he revealed his forearm strain, but the Royals’ crack medical staff used the same wisdom it applied to Joakim Soria, figuring a few days of rest would do the trick. After a 1-for-12 stretch upon his return, someone got the crazy idea that Aviles might actually need some time to heal. I’ve already advocated for Aviles to go back to Omaha in order to rediscover his swing, so if this DL stint is followed by some rehab time in Nebraska, his season might actually be worth saving.

In his place, Hulett is a nice use of a roster spot. He’s a left-handed hitting middle infielder, which in itself is a nice mix of talents, but he can actually hit - .296/.381/.461 this year, .298/.380/.518 last year. He’s played mostly second base in Omaha this year, but last season made 45 starts at shortstop in Triple-A. Given that Willie Bloomquist isn’t the world’s greatest shortstop to begin with, it would be nice to see the Royals add some pop to the lineup by starting Hulett at shortstop against right-handers. Sadly, this may require more creativity than Hillman is capable of.

The short story here is this: I wouldn’t panic by the fact that the Royals are in the midst of a tough stretch. But I would worry that the Royals’ response to this slump is to make a bunch of moves that don’t materially improve the ballclub. The Royals are still capable of getting things in gear – but instead they seem content to spin their wheels.

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.