Royalties & Cardinalate

Looking for a needle in a haystack

So Mike MacDougal is not the closer. That’s what Tony Pena says. It’s been an open competition all the while. he says. How so? MacDougal got sick in spring training and didn’t pitch for the last month or so in Surprise, Ari., and then had some up and down outings in the minors on a rehab stint. Once he was activated from the D.L, voila!, he was handed the job as closer.

To be fair, using Curt Leskanic in the role wasn’t working. But you’d think that they would have found some low-leverage situations for MacDougal to pitch in, to get his feet wet. Goodness knows, they’ve been behind in nearly every game. For the Royals, low-leverage situations abound. MacDougal went one ten day stretch where he pitched only one inning. The he was called into the middle of an inning and asked to protect a one-run lead with men on base. He failed, of course, and his confidence had to be shaken.

To make matters worse, Pena annoints Nate Field as the ‘backup closer’. No one yet has explained to me the role of ‘backup closer’ to the point that I can understand it.

That brings us to last night’s debacle. First, Pena leaves in Jeremy Affeldt too long. He can’t seem to find the middle ground – he either pulls pitchers too soon (<90 pitches) or too late (>120 pitches). Grimsley comes on and does a nice job of getting through the eighth inning with the lead still intact. But MacDougal makes short work of the lead by walking Johnny Damon and giving up a two-run blast to Mark Bellhorn.

A couple of things: MacDougal was getting squeezed by home-plate umpire Joe West. The same thing happened Monday night. My fear is that MacDougal’s reputation for wildness is so embedded that he doesn’t get border line pitches. Border line, hell. He doesn’t get pitches that are clearly strikes if they miss the target set up by the catcher. That was the case last night. Twice MacDougal threw strikes that Benito Santiago has to move his glove to catch. That’s what happens when your rep is that you can’t get the ball over the plate. But, still, MacDougal is not that far away – all the more reason to use him in low-leverage situations to get his mechanics in working order. Now, though, with his confidence roughly worth a unit of Enron stock, it might take him a half-season to straighten out.

Scott Sullivan came in after MacDougal. What happened to Field? Well, I guess once MacDougal gave up the leads, it was no longer a save situation. Hence, no need for a ‘backup closer’. When will managers forget about the fucking save rule (it was made up by a sports writer!) and just use their best relievers in the situations where they can do the most good? Pena’s mismanagement of the bullpen has been egregious this season. It was last season, as well. But since he falls into lockstep with the post-Eckersley school of bullpen management, he removes the onus from himself. Nope, it’s Mike MacDougal who is getting skewered. It’s MacDougal who is being dipped in tar while the chickens are being plucked.

And you know what? MacDougal never had a chance.

Royals blowing another one

The meltdown isn't complete - yet. I thought I'd better weight in before my ire is raised to the point I can't think straight. A couple of items from the BoSox bottom of the eighth, which the Royals began with a four-run lead.

Affeldt's pitch count: Affeldt had thrown 110 pitches entering this inning. That's enough. Without checking, I believe that would have been close to his career high. He had no business starting the eighth inning. Luckily the Sox jumped on him early in the count, before the pitches could really spiral out of control. Affeldt threw 122 pitches in the game.

Defense in left: Four run lead. Six outs to go. Fenway Park. Do you really want Matt Stairs as your left-fielder? I don't, especially with Aaron Guiel and David DeJesus perched on the bench. By the way, Juan Gonzalez was in right. Stairs dropped a wind-blown flyball early in the inning and made a throwing error a couple of batters later.

Poor game management by Tony Pena.

High Times in Quebec?

Will the Expos draw 20,000 for this weekend’s series? Maybe, but you will still be able to hear the crickets. I love watching games in Montreal. You can hear individuals yelling and the crack of the bat hitting the ball reverberates like at no other stadium. As for who will likely represent Monteal in the All-Star Game, I would guess a pitcher, maybe Zach Day or Livan Hernandez. Their top RBI guy is Jose Vidro with 10. He would rank sixth on the Redbirds.

I am extremely pleased to see Brad posting again. He is a very busy man, so it always nice to see him give some love to this baseball blog. As cruel as it sounds, the Royals’ season has been all downhill since the glory of Carlos Beltran’s Opening Day blast. I still think they can reel off six or seven straight wins to get back to respectability, but, damn, they cannot play nine straight innings of solid baseball. The White Sox’s luck will soon run dry and the Twins will be around .500 all season, so maybe there is hope.

Of all the players in MLB to potentially ground into a double play, Padres outfielder Kerry Robinson - a speedster who bats lefthanded! - is among the ten least likely to do so. So how in the hell did he GROUND into a TRIPLE play on Thursday? I saw the highlight and thought he should have beaten the throw, but it was not like he Manny Ramirez’ed his way to first. K-Rob hit a sharp grounder to third and the Braves turned the around-the-horn triple play. It seemed rather ordinary, but I would not have believed it had I not seen it.

ESPN correspondence

Installment number twelve for 2004 is up.

Stat Guy

The last two Stat Guy entries generated Baseball Primer links, which was nice. They actually weren’t my first two links. One of my Northern League notebooks for the Star last summer, when I built a case for the level of Northern League play as being around Class A-1/2, generated a link. Thus far, none of the discussions have been very extended. Ah, well. One thing, though. My little gimmick of referring to myself in the columns as Stat Guy seems to be a point of contention for some. There’s a couple of reasons I do this. One is a sort of an inside joke in the sports department – my primary job at the Star is, literally, the stat guy. My official title is statistics editor. I put together the standings, box scores, etc., and design agate-laden pages such as Daily Data and the baseball standings/boxes page.

The main reason I started off in this vein is that among most readers of the Star, I’m an unknown quantity. I felt like it was important to remove myself from the articles and, thus, resolved to avoid the first-person pronoun. I don’t mean to proclaim myself as THE stat guy or anything like that. It’s just supposed to be light-hearted and fun. Of course, writing about the Royals right now is anything but.

What needs to be done

It’s a little too early to pull the plug on the season. First off, the team isn’t as bad as their record – just as last year’s squad was as good as theirs. According to Baseball Prospectus’ third-order standings, which make all necessary adjustments to determine the true talent level of team, the Royals are the second-unluckiest team in baseball. In a nutshell, they’ve playing like a team that ought to be 11-15 instead of 8-18. 11-15 wouldn’t have us making any playoff reservations but that would be awfully nice at this point.

Is it likely that the Royals will rebound to the point that they are division contenders? No, it’s not. But it’s possible. If they can turn it around and get back to .500 by the end of June, they’d still have a shot. Chicago is 11-1 in one-run games and has outscored their opponents by only seven runs. Cleveland is playing well but, at best, can expect to hover near or at .500 all season. Detroit is well on their way to finding their true talent level. Minnesota will need to drop some games, though. The Twins worry me. Of course, the number one thing that will have to happen is that the Royals will need to start winning some games. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter what anybody else in the division does.

The first thing that needs to be done is that the team needs to stop dicking around with Zack Greinke. Give the kid two more starts with a reasonable pitch count and then get his ass up in the big-leagues. Greinke and Affeldt would give the Royals a fighting chance in two of the five rotation slots. Darrell May has been inconsistent but also effective in pockets. He has the capacity for turning things around. I can’t say the same about Brian Anderson but the Royals are stuck with him. I didn’t like the signing when they got him; I like it even less now. Jimmy Gobble has been outstanding but his 7 K’s in 31 innings raises a big red flag. Ugly as it has been so far, I still think the pieces are there in the organization for a decent rotation.

I can’t say the same about the bullpen. The team needs to find out if Mike MacDougal can get it together or not. The recent one appearance in ten days stretch they put MacDougal through is unacceptable. If any pitcher needs regular work, it’s that guy. They need to pitch Scott Sullivan as often as possible and spot Nate Field in low-leverage situations. Jason Grimsley – I wish he weren’t still here but he is. And if Curt Leskanic is hurt, then he needs to go on the DL, no matter how much he wants to avoid it. Look at his numbers (14.43 ERA!). An injured Leskanic ain’t doing nobody any good. (All those double negatives were intentional – I’m not sure why.)

Here are a couple of radical suggestions: release Juan Gonzalez, make David DeJesus the every day right fielder and recall Dee Brown to play left. Release Mendy Lopez (why is he on the team?), recall Andres Blanco to play second, use both Graffanino and Relaford as utility types. And play Kelly Stinnett more over Santiago.

Another idea: stop babying players. For God’s sake, STOP BABYING PLAYERS! Mike Sweeney hurts his wrist – a little – doing a routine exercise and misses four games. Juan Gonzalez has a touch of the flu and misses three games. Jimmy Gobble has to leave a start because of cramps. It’s not like these kid gloves are helping any. The team is still likely the most injured in baseball. I can’t quantify that yet but when I can, I’ll write about it.
The last thing I’d do is forget the name of Eduardo Villacis and never speak of him again.

Wait, I have a blog!

Yeah, it’s been a while. I’m sure most of you (or both or you, as the traffic numbers sometime suggest) probably thought I was swinging from the chandelier. Not so. It was only a call for attention. Not that my dear brother has expressed any concern. Nary a peep from him.

What’s to say about how the Royals have played so far? It’s been putrid. They’ve been bad. They’ve been unlucky. Their ill fortunes have already seemed to have impacted their effort. Tony Pena sounds in interviews like somebody ran over his dog. When they hit, they can’t pitch. We they pitch, they can’t score. When they get a lead they blow it. When the defense has a chance to help them out of a jam, they boot it. Every night, I hear in my mind the hypnotist’s speech in “The Natural”: ‘Losing is a disease.’ The Royals aren’t terminal, yet, but they're definitely comatose.

No More Phillies

Colin’s Odyssey: It might not have meant much, but rookie Colin Porter had me fist pumping the air this afternoon when he hustled his way around the bases in the ninth inning. First, he rolled a soft grounder to the right side and beat the throw to first. It was a very close play – and he was actually out - but his hustle went rewarded. There was plenty of grittiness and gutiness to follow as Porter went from first to third on Ray Lankford’s single to RF, narrowly beating Bobby Abreau’s throw to third. That eventually set up a bases loaded roller to first by Jim Edmonds. Jim Thome hesitated and then could not throw out Porter at home on yet another very close play. Three close calls, three times Porter was running hard and three times he was called safe. He earned that R.

Phils starter Randy Wolf had a 21-inning scoreless streak snapped when the Birds scored five in the first inning. This is where the game was decided as the Cards scored five runs, capped by Hector Luna’s three-run blast. Luna’s blast was a no-doubter to LF, but previous to that was an assortment of bloopers and a key error by Placido Polanco. Luna hit only two home runs in 462 at-bats last year for Double-A Akron. His HR was the only the second hard hit ball of that five-run inning.

So let us hope the Redbirds will go to 12-3 on the road with a Quebec weekend sweep.

Star watch: Philadelphia reliever Ryan Madson has started his career without allowing an earned run in 19 innings. The Fox broadcast mentioned he might take Brett Myers’ spot in the rotation. At 6-6 and with some nasty stuff, he is one to keep an eye on.

No more Thome: Jim Thome cannot ‘Babe Ruth’ the Redbirds any more this regular season because the teams do not play again in 2004 (unless it is in the postseason). Strange reality on May 6, but true. Thome only went 2-for-9 this series, though both hits were HRs. His career slugging is now below 1.100 against STL.

Reg-gie, Reg-gie: Reggie’s honeymoon has ended. As good as he was in April, he has been awful in May. After an 0-for-4 on Thursday, he is in an 0-for-22 slump with 11 strikeouts. He is down to .260. I always thought of him as being streaky, and that appears to be the case.

No cow for TLR: Greg “Bull” Luzinski, who is now operating a barbecue stand at Citizens Bank Park, had a plate of ribs delivered to La Russa in the Cardinals clubhouse on Thursday. Apparently Luzinski forgot that La Russa is a vegetarian and animal activist, thus does not eat flesh. Bull played for La Russa with the White Sox.

High Drama in Philly

Tuesday’s game featured one of those endings where you wake up the following morning (or early afternoon, as is often my case) and the first thing that enters in your mind is, ‘Did that really happen?’

I often have certain scripts for game endings running through my head, such as game-winning grand slams or a triple play or a steal of home (Glenn Brummer, baby) or the hidden-ball trick. But Tuesday’s circumstance is something I’d never seen, or really thought of as a potential wild ending. I super slow-motioned that final play and Matheny indeed threw out Pat the Bat Burrell by a very slim margin. Alberticus’ stretch certainly helped.

But the entire bases loaded jam probably should not have occurred. Jason Isringhausen struck Tomas Perez on a nasty curve and then walked weak-hitting Marlon Byrd on four pitches. However, the last two called balls were strikes and it is likely had Izzy gone 2-1, or 2-2, that he would’ve had a much easier ninth. But that walk and a Placido Polanco single set up a great duel between Izzy and Bobby Abreau, who struck out after going up 3-0. That set up TLR’s boldest move of 2004: he walked Jim Thome to load the bases – and put the winning run on second.

Not a wise move in terms of logic and percentages, but I confess I was glad he did it. No player in MLB kills another team like Big Jim does to STL. No one.

So, bases juiced and Burrell is up. Any wild pitch, passed ball, error, swinging bunt, any number of things could have tied the game. But it was a 2-2 pitch (after three fouls) that created chaos. Burrell fanned, but MM was crossed up on the pitch and had to go blazing after the ball near the backstop. He quickly retrieved it and threw out Burrell, whose stumbling out of the box helped to decide the game since he was out by a fraction of a step. Wow.

"Coming out on top of close games becomes contagious, just like being on the losing end of close games becomes contagious," Matheny said.

Agreed. Just look at 2003. So the Birds are 8-2 on the road. If Woody Williams avoids walks and HRs, they should be 9-2 after Wednesday. But since they have been at .500 nine times already . . . .

They’ll get whiplash: After allowing back-to-back-to-backers, Chris Carpenter (8) is now one behind Matt Morris for the second most HRs allowed in baseball.

Roy Hobbs: Thome now has 34 RBI and 15 HRs in 21 games vs. STL. His slugging is over 1.100. That is about equivalent to Roy Hobbs’ slugging percent in his ABs that were actually shown in The Natural.

Clutch Bullpen: The bullpen threw four scoreless innings and Cal Eldred finally looked decent, tossing 1.1 perfectos. Steve Kline, Julian Tavarez and Ray King did their jobs before the late drama.

Keep an Eye On: By the way, OF Roger Cedeno is still on the roster and is back in action, rehabbing at Memphis. Pitcher Brad Thompson continues to shine at Double-A Tennessee. He pitched a seven-inning shutout in the second game of a doubleheader on Tuesday and has now pitched 30 1/3 innings in 2004 without allowing a run. Thompson is 4-0 and has 25 strikeouts and three walks.

The Party is Over

In 36 innings at home over the past four days, the Cardinals had exactly 0 innings in which they scored two or more runs. In their first 15 games, the Cards averaged over seven runs per game. In their past 11 games, they've scored less than three per. So while the starting pitching has hit a nice extended groove, the offense is now stumbling. But at this point the only important thing is to stay in the race.

As enjoyable as it was being at Busch Stadium this afternoon, I had the same nagging feeling one might have when arriving at a raucous keg party about three hours after the fun peaked. (I was not at the previous three games.) Still good times but everyone is talking about what happened earlier. The fact the Birds lost reinforced this feeling. But I was glad to catch the series finale and it was a game that did feature a lot of intrigue and abundant bleacher shenanigans.

Greg Maddux went seven innings on just 84 pitches for win No. 291. But seeing his leaping stop on Womack’s chopper to begin the game and his ridiculous steal on Marquis - when he was already near second base as Mike Matheny swiped at Marquis’ wild pitch – proved how athletic and cerebral Maddux still is. His seven K’s were impressive as well. Jason Marquis had his fifth straight solid start and now features a nifty 3.82 ERA.

Marquis also stole a base (and could not hide his grin afterward). The last time both starting pitchers had a SB in the same game was on June 11, 1950 when Warren Spahn of the Boston Braves and Bob Rush of the Cubs preformed the feat.

K Watch: I’ve discussed Albert Pujols’ ability to avoid the K, but overall the Cards have struck out 189 times, fourth worst in MLB. With Jimmy Edmonds at 30 and Reggie Sanders at 28, it is obvious who the primary culprits are. Edmonds does see 4.3 pitches per plate appearance, fourth in the NL.

Up next: These next six games at Philadelphia and Montreal are scary. The road trip should be good for four wins, three would be acceptable. But these are two losing teams and the Expos are the worst team in baseball. To lose four or more would potentially have a negative snowball effect.

Radar shot down: The radar-gun readings at Busch have been turned off the past two games. TLR does not like them, so we will see if they make a return.