KC Royals - September

[SubGod22]

2012 Starts Today

That was a fun wild card race, wasn’t it? Someday, maybe next year, maybe the year after, us lowly Royals fans might have more than a passing interest in these late season games. THAT will really be fun.

I plan to continue my series on teams making the leap from bad to good seemingly overnight (we broke down the 2000-2001 Twins on Monday) next week. It’s a relevant topic given that this off-season is really going to be one big discussion over whether the Royals can really contend in 2012 and what they should do about it if they are. We will wait until Monday for that, however. Today, we’ll hit some quick, somewhat lighthearted topics as the most enjoyable 71-91 season has come to an end. And yes, that sentence was written without sarcasm.

Some interesting questiones in this one...

[shoxlax]

Was that the greatest night of regular season baseball ever?

[ShockerFever]

Future is bright!!!

The future has been bright for the last 15 years supposedly.

[ShockerFever]

Was that the greatest night of regular season baseball ever?

Yes it was. I wonder if the Royals got to catch any of it after their exit stage left?

[SubGod22]

Hosmer improves Rookie of the Year resume

In a final bid for the Rookie of the Year Award, Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer first added the Gillette Presents American League Rookie of the Month Award for September, as announced Thursday.

Hosmer, who also received the award in July, collected the September honors after recording the best offensive month of his impressive rookie campaign. The 21-year-old Hosmer led all AL rookies with his 37 hits and 21 runs scored, while also recording five home runs. His 19 RBIs also tied White Sox third baseman Brent Morel for the highest total among AL rookies.

The highlight of Hosmer's month came on Sept. 20 when he turned in a 5-for-5 performance against the Tigers. The third overall pick in the 2008 First Year Player Draft had four singles and a three-run homer in that contest as the Royals routed the Tigers, 10-2.

I haven't seen anything, but someone in the comments section mentioned that both Moose and Sal got votes for Rookie of the Month as well. Can't wait for next year!

[SubGod22]

Yost Flexes Muscle, Dumps McClure

The Royals held their end of the season press conference and used it as an opportunity to announce pitching coach Bob McClure wouldn’t return for the 2012 season. Ned Yost had the honors:

“We threw too many balls, we walked too many hitters. We fell behind in the count too much. McClure did a phenominal job here for many, many years. Had a great working relationship with these young pitchers. We just felt as an organization it was time for a different voice.”

Yost is absolutely correct on this count. Royals pitchers threw a grand total of 24,376 pitches this year. No team in baseball threw more pitches. League average was 23,595. Think about that one for a moment… Royals pitchers threw almost 1,000 more pitches than the average major league pitching staff. That’s like playing a 170 game schedule.

Taking this further… Royals pitchers threw a strike 62% of the time. Although major league average is 63% (and all teams threw a strike between 65% and 62% of the time) the Royals tossed the fewest strikes percentage-wise of all teams in baseball. Here’s the list:

Oakland – 62.5%
Toronto – 62.4%
Baltimore – 62.3%
Houston – 62.2%
Kansas City – 62.1%

To be the team with the highest number of total pitches and the lowest percentage of strikes… Yeah, that’s not so good.

So who swung the hatchet and sent McClure to the unemployment line?

[SubGod22]

Friday Notes

With the season over and me being a pretty opinionated sort of guy, I thought I’d make this notes edition one in which I talk about where I was right and where I was wrong. I wish I could be proud to say that I’m right more often than wrong, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s probably fair to say, though, that this Royals team made more people feel silly about their predictions than ones in the past, so I don’t feel quite so bad. I suppose it’s a great thing that so many people were wrong about so many things. Well, some of them are great things anyway. See, I’m not always pessimistic about the Royals and there were some good things I predicted that didn’t happen, so that sort of sucked.