Royals - April News and Notes

[SubGod22]

Glass voices optimism despite slow start

KANSAS CITY -- Royals owner David Glass, after a ceremony to launch the All-Star Game balloting for the 2012 event at Kauffman Stadium, has an optimistic outlook for his struggling team.

The Royals have lost seven straight games, including all six at home, to start the season with a 3-8 record.
"Baseball is an up-and-down game," Glass said on Thursday. "If you had a losing streak like we have right now in the middle of the season and your record was decent, you wouldn't think much about it. It's the fact that we started this way.

It's frustrating, but it is early. And they're not getting blown out. Things will turn around.

[SubGod22]

Moose homers in series opening defeat

Mike Moustakas got the Royals' first run with a home run into the right-field bullpen off right-hander Kyle Drabek. That was Moustakas' second homer of the season and must have provided him a sigh of relief. Last year Moustakas homered in his second game after being called up and didn't get connect again until 74 games and 281 at-bats later. This time, the gap between homers Nos. 1 and No. 2 was a mere 11 games and 37 at-bats

Fun With Small Samples

The Small Sample Size rule says these stats don’t mean a thing. Still, I found them interesting.

Hitting

– The Royals are second in the league with 29 doubles and second in the league with three triples. Yet, rank tenth in the league with 168 total bases.

– Royal batters have been hit by a pitch four times. Two of those led to the benches clearing. Alcides Escobar has been hit twice, but has yet to instigate a bench clearing incident. He must be a coward.

– Unfortunately, Escobar is tied for the team lead in grounding into double plays with three. He’s tied with Jeff Francoeur, who is looking slower than Country Breakfast on the bases.

– Alex Gordon has struck out in just over 30 percent of his plate appearances. Yes, that’s a crazy, high rate. But for his career he whiffs in almost 22 percent of his PAs.

– Here something only The Yunigma could accomplish… Even in a small sample. He currently leads all Royals by putting the ball in play in 88 percent of all plate appearances. Yet his line drive rate is a wee four percent. And his ground out to air out ratio is 0.5.

– Speaking of line drive rate, Eric Hosmer is at five percent. That’s the kind of stat I look at and immediately think a correction is coming. And when it does, it’s going to be a helluva hot streak.

– Royal batters are seeing 3.66 pitches per plate appearance. League average is 3.87.

Baserunning and pitching samples as well. This is getting depressing.

[SB Shock]

Things will turn around.

It would be nice if they just started playing a stretch of 0.500 ball, 10 games losing streaks will quickly end any hope of even being a pretender.

[SubGod22]

Jeffress returns to Royals with new approach

KANSAS CITY -- Right-hander Jeremy Jeffress, who replaced injured Greg Holland in the Royals' bullpen, feels he's matured as a pitcher since he was last with the Kansas City club a year ago.

"I've gotten more mature and I've changed my mechanics but it's all about maturity in the mind. It's all about going after hitters and not backing down," Jeffress said.

Commanding his blazing fastball has been an ongoing challenge for Jeffress, and too many bases on balls led to his problems last year with the Royals and after he was sent to the Minors.

Holland was placed on the DL with a bone bruise on his ribs I guess. Could be out for up to a month...

Surely Something Has Gone Right

Ten straight losses. Nine straight at home. New and inventive ways to lose every day. A player to the disabled list every week. Welcome to the 2012 Kansas City Royals, ladies and gentlemen.

There have been a lot of things that have gone wrong through 15 games. In fact, at one time or another, almost everything has gone wrong. Enough, in fact, to have Ned Yost remark that changes may be on the horizon. It is a deep, dark hole and there really is no way around it. Losing 12 of 15, while accentuated by having it happen to start the season, would be a bad stretch and extremely noticeable at any time in the season. Three and twelve is three and twelve, folks. If you are not panicking just a little, then you are just being a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

All that said, the Kansas City Royals could reach .500 by the end of the season by simply winning two more games than the lose in each month. Of course, that assumes they right the ship and manage to play it even until we get to May Day. Sadly, that is a rather optimistic, sunshine pumping assumption right now.

As bad as the 2012 campaign has begun, some things have gone right.

[WuDrWu]

Has there ever been a team in MLB history that didn't record their first home win before the month of May in a full season?


Edit:

I didn't realize the Royals leave on a 9 game road trip after the game tonight against the Jays. They return home to play the Yankees and Red Sox.

Win tonight, or it could be May 16 (or later) until the first home win. Ouch.

[SubGod22]

Funny thing is they usually seem to play alright against NY and Boston. I'm not sure what's going on with them. The talent level is better than what the record shows. Things just have not come together yet. They can still be a .500 team this year.

On a positive note, kinda, Lorenzo Cain started his rehab assignment Sunday for NWA and Paulino should be joining him in the next few days. The way things have been going, if Paulino pitches well after a few appearances, he could get a quick promotion to KC and Mendoza can get sent back down to Omaha.

[ShockerFever]

If the Royals are a .500 team this year, I'll be buying Sub a brand spanking new house.

[SubGod22]

Royals get Cain back on Friday

KANSAS CITY -- Center fielder Lorenzo Cain is expected to rejoin the Royals on Friday for the weekend series in Minnesota. He's been out since April 9, when he banged into the wall in Oakland and strained his left groin.

Cain is now on a rehabilitation assignment with Double-A Northwest Arkansas.
"He's fine. He made a nice play in center field and went 1-for-3 [on Sunday] so he looks good. It'll be nice to get him back," manager Ned Yost said.

Royals fall to 0-10 at Kauffman Stadium

[SB Shock]

Royals have just did something that hasn't been done for 99 years - start the season 0-10 at home. Last team to do it was '13 Yankees.

[Downtown Shocker Brown]

You know im tire of all the false starts and false hopes feom the Royals.

Glad to see them struggle out of the gate.

[SubGod22]

Sanchez can't prevent 12th straight defeat - Sanchez getting wild and walking a bunch of batters is no surprise. Not sure why Yost left him in when it was obvious he was not in control either. Although, I've questioned a lot of things from Yost...

What am I supposed to say here?

My primary responsibility as a commentator is to put things into context. I try and keep things on an even keel. If people get too high or low on one thing or another, I’m there to point out why they need to take a step back. I like finding some interesting things in the numbers to bring a new fact to light. I really enjoy and take pride when I can have someone say that they hadn’t thought of it that way. But what am I supposed to do with this, this, this….hell I can’t even come up with an adjective….this streak?

Last week I said it was too early to make conclusions. It’s still too early, but things have become worse and it’s not as early. Here at RA, we’ve run the gamut. We’ve nitpicked games to focus on the micro level and we’ve said there are a lot more games and focused on the macro level. We’ve focused on the positive, the comical, the farcical and the minors. I don’t know what’s left. I’d consider this close to rock bottom, but I’ve written THAT article at least twice already.

This baseball team has problems. We all knew that. It had holes in the rotation, the lineup and on defense. We expected the bullpen to be great, but they lost one of the most effective relievers in baseball and everyone knows the bullpen Gods are fickle. But this? 3-13? No wins at home? Former Royals starting at shortstop for the Red Sox and throwing perfect games? It’s too much.

The Dirty Dozen

I figured that Jonathan Sanchez would have outings where he bordered on horrible. His lack of command combined with his electric pitches, mean he can strikeout a ton of hitters while giving away free bases. It’s like he’s a member of the Flying Wallendas.

Sanchez entered the game averaging 89.6 mph on his fastball this year. On Tuesday in Cleveland, 89 mph was his maximum velocity as he averaged just 87.2 mph. To go along with the drop in speed, Sanchez is moving away from that pitch. Of the 115 magnificent pitches he threw, only 30 of them were classified as fastballs. That’s just 26 percent. Unreal. He’s going away from the fastball in favor of his change-up. As Hudler pointed out in the key at bat against Jack Hannahan, when Sanchez is throwing almost exclusively off speed stuff, they just wait… And wait… And wait.

Sigh. More on that plate appearance in a moment.

Not that Sanchez is any kind of great pitcher. He’s not… Because he can’t locate consistently. However, it’s baffling as to why he would move away from the fastball. Is this a coaching call? Or is this something he’s doing on his own? In the postgame, he simply said he “didn’t have his fastball.” Velocity, location… All of the above. I suppose in the grand scheme it’s accurate that he didn’t have his fastball. He didn’t generate a single swing and miss of the 30 he threw and only 12 of them were strikes. That’s just a brutal pitch. Here’s his velocity chart from Tuesday, courtesy of Brooks Baseball.

[SubGod22]

Changing Course

This is probably the most disappointing stretch of baseball in as long as anybody can remember. The build-up to this season was huge with slogans that indicated the organization was no longer a laughing stock. All the analysts predicted this would be the season that the Royals began the final legs of their ascent to the top of baseball. This was supposed to be the year when the Royals actually won more games than they lost or at least came relatively close to it. You can argue that our dreams as fans are a little bit too low, but after the start to this season, any outside can agree. One thing that can’t be denied is that there is a boatload of talent on the big league roster and in the organization. The part that can be argued is whether or not that talent is being handled correctly.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Yost, but he was such a step up from Trey Hillman that it was easy to overlook some of his shortcomings. There were lots of concerns about him coming into his stint as manager that began with his getting fired while leading the National League wild card race. That doesn’t happen for no reason. But I was willing to give him a shot, and early on he seemed pretty average. He looked like a manager who would not cost the Royals games, and that was almost enough for me in the early going. Having watched him through this losing streak, fidgeting through lineups and making questionable bullpen decisions, I can see why he was let go in Milwaukee. This post isn’t really to bash Yost, though. It’s more to take a look at the honeymoon effect and changing managers and how effective it has been since 2003.

[SubGod22]

I've seen on Twitter that the Royals have called up Tommy Hottovy and are demoting Jeffress back to Omaha.

[newshock1234]

Sweet, when the last time a former Shocker has played for the royals?

[BostonWu]

Sweet, when the last time a former Shocker has played for the royals?

Bluma?