Time to find a new skipper
For the record, I was adamantly a Buck Showalter proponent the last time the Royals made a change.
Over the next couple of days, I'm going to be crunching some numbers regarding Royals manager Tony Pena. Before I do that, I want to record one entry that is straight from the gut.
We need a new manager.
What a sad sack team this is. Pathetic. This Web site is supposed to be, among other things, full of playful banter as Brian and I prop up our respective teams. I knew I was getting the short end of the stick in that arrangement but for the love of God - this is ridiculous.
My expectations for this season were low - PROFITS had them at 97 losses. But the way this team is playing, they'll do well to avoid exceeding last season's 104-loss disaster.
Here's Tony Pena, when asked after Thursday's debacle why Angel Berroa tried to steal third base with the Royals up by one run, two men out and John Buck, who was 4-4 on the day, at the plate:
"I don't know."
That game Thursday was a summation about what the Royals have become under Pena. This is supposed to be a team that is built around executing fundamentals (a crappy way to contstruct a team anyway). But the Royals are, by far, the most fundamentally unsound team I've seen going back to the beginning of last season.
How is it possible that Mike Sweeney, after more than a half-decade of learning first base, can't execute a simple tag play when the Royals have a runner picked off? Never mind if the umpire blew the call. When Anderson threw the ball to Sweeney, Torii Hunter was dead in the water. Sweeney could have ordered a hot dog from a vendor, paid him and waited for his change in the time he had to tag Hunter out. Instead he just waved at him while his feet seemed to be planted in cement. Then, to compound the problem, he failed to get Hunter at second base. It's just one play but one which typifies how the Royals play defense.
Pena has little feel for how long his starters can go in a game. He always removes them too early or too late. Far too often, he is caught with his pants down when a reliever enters a tight game, pisses his pants only to stay in one batter too long because Pena had no one warming up behind him.
These are just in-game faux paus. This ignores his borderline-insane deployment of players and sophomoric construction of lineups.
When we were kids, Brian and I had a board game called Sports Spectacular. It was six games rolled into one: baseball, hockey, basketball, football, tennis and auto racing. This was no Strat-O-Matic. The baseball version had three pitch cards: fastball, curveball and changeup. The pitcher would lay down a pitch card, which would be cross-referenced with a generic lineup of fictional players and then a dice roll would determine the outcome of a play. You could employ actual baseball tactics but it was a silly exercise, totally determined by random chance because the players were not imbued with real characteristics.
This is how Tony Pena manages - as if he had a roster full of generic players, devoid of strengths and weaknesses.
And I've seen enough. Fire him.
Over the next couple of days, I'm going to be crunching some numbers regarding Royals manager Tony Pena. Before I do that, I want to record one entry that is straight from the gut.
We need a new manager.
What a sad sack team this is. Pathetic. This Web site is supposed to be, among other things, full of playful banter as Brian and I prop up our respective teams. I knew I was getting the short end of the stick in that arrangement but for the love of God - this is ridiculous.
My expectations for this season were low - PROFITS had them at 97 losses. But the way this team is playing, they'll do well to avoid exceeding last season's 104-loss disaster.
Here's Tony Pena, when asked after Thursday's debacle why Angel Berroa tried to steal third base with the Royals up by one run, two men out and John Buck, who was 4-4 on the day, at the plate:
"I don't know."
That game Thursday was a summation about what the Royals have become under Pena. This is supposed to be a team that is built around executing fundamentals (a crappy way to contstruct a team anyway). But the Royals are, by far, the most fundamentally unsound team I've seen going back to the beginning of last season.
How is it possible that Mike Sweeney, after more than a half-decade of learning first base, can't execute a simple tag play when the Royals have a runner picked off? Never mind if the umpire blew the call. When Anderson threw the ball to Sweeney, Torii Hunter was dead in the water. Sweeney could have ordered a hot dog from a vendor, paid him and waited for his change in the time he had to tag Hunter out. Instead he just waved at him while his feet seemed to be planted in cement. Then, to compound the problem, he failed to get Hunter at second base. It's just one play but one which typifies how the Royals play defense.
Pena has little feel for how long his starters can go in a game. He always removes them too early or too late. Far too often, he is caught with his pants down when a reliever enters a tight game, pisses his pants only to stay in one batter too long because Pena had no one warming up behind him.
These are just in-game faux paus. This ignores his borderline-insane deployment of players and sophomoric construction of lineups.
When we were kids, Brian and I had a board game called Sports Spectacular. It was six games rolled into one: baseball, hockey, basketball, football, tennis and auto racing. This was no Strat-O-Matic. The baseball version had three pitch cards: fastball, curveball and changeup. The pitcher would lay down a pitch card, which would be cross-referenced with a generic lineup of fictional players and then a dice roll would determine the outcome of a play. You could employ actual baseball tactics but it was a silly exercise, totally determined by random chance because the players were not imbued with real characteristics.
This is how Tony Pena manages - as if he had a roster full of generic players, devoid of strengths and weaknesses.
And I've seen enough. Fire him.