If there were anything else new to say about the Royals opening day laugher I'd probably be writing for something other than a not-yet-recognized Royals' blog. So with that disclaimer lets have a laugh and re-live the aches and pains of Monday's foreshadowing to a long season.
So we start the year off by somehow going through an amazing three third basemen - along with second base the one place you might actually say the Royals have under control - to end up with Willie Bloomquist in the starting line-up. If you were a Royals fan, one thing that would lead you to believe that we were in trouble, would be this, he obviously played too much last year and did so because of injuries and such. So to see him anchoring 3B and the six-hole in the line-up on opening day was cringe-worthy indeed but then to have him commit an error in the first inning thus giving up an unearned run for Grienke was flat-out hysterical.
Moving along, DDJ leads off the game for us with a hit and then promptly Tokio Trey, master of the head-scratchers, has one of our new acquisitions bunt in his first AB of the year. Predictably, following the sac bunt neither Butler nor Ankiel drove in the run and you're saying to yourself, a $2 million bunter is what we got this off-season...actually I thought it was because he gets on base and scores runs.
Then this is where it gets good (not sarcastic good but hopeful good): Grienke rights the ship and Yuniesky hits an out-of-nowhere bomb and suddenly you're like I might actually watch a few more innings. Then it seems as if they are doing things like a real baseball team: Grienke puts it on cruise-control and in the fifth a two-out rally that gives fans and coaches orgasms; our new pick-up singles and steals a base, our veteran leader does the same, previously mentioned new addition that gets on base coaxes a walk and our bright young star delivers a two-out, two-RBI single off opposing teams number one starter. This is baseball, this is why fans are so loyal, 4-1 lead with Grienke rolling, ball game over, Right?
Grinke follows by getting tapped around a bit and you're on pins and needles until he reminds us of his Wooderson-like cool and all is well, 4-2 heading to the 7th.
Then you would have been rightfully struck by surprise in the seventh inning when chess master Hilman elected not to send out Grienke. But on the other hand...its a long year and you too have been reading about this new un-hittable slider that Roman Colon has, so you say lets test our new and improved bullpen. Colon was well...still hittable. Okay Tejada, lets see that guy from last September...guess what he's still on vacation. J Cruz, bounce back year...not exactly. Dust settles and the Royals go to bat in the bottom of the seventh down 8-4 and are quickly reminded of how meager their offense is. As a side note, our $4.5 mil power reliever/starter had a nice inning of clean-up duty.
Was this as bad as it could be for an opening day? Pretty much. Do we still have hope for this year? Much, much less. Completely crushed? Not quite. I think that about five more games like this would do the trick.
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