Face Lift

Like a movie-starlet who one day wakes up to realize that she's 45 and the girls getting the parts are 25, the Royals decided to go under the knife. It can be painful and will almost certainly look ugly at first, but the hope is that after the bandages come off there will be a newer, younger looking YOU that can start to put the pieces back together from your career which looked so promising 20 some years ago. Back then you were Scarlett Johansson, now you're Glenn Close trying to use a new series on FX to get you back into the lime light. The Royals accepted their plight and decided that if they're going to try to compete you need to get young and here we stand wondering if it is going to work.

The early signs were encouraging; a game winning home run from Alex Gordon, Mitch Maier was hot for a bit, but after that Baltimore series at home which provided some hope that things might get better quick we went on a road trip that saw us go 2-7 are we faced with the reality that this might take a little while.  Scott Posednik was the nose job, it looked fine but not the schnoz of a young lady it just needed a little work and the early results are good, with added playing time for Alex Gordon and Mitch Maier we have seen enough good signs to be optimistic about what it will look like after the bandages come off.  Ankiel and Farnsworth were a big time nip and tuck.  Those bags under our eyes and wrinkles on our forehead weren't going anywhere and soon would have been an inoperable detriment, no matter how painful it was they had to go.  Jose Guillen was serious liposuction; it was expensive but that extra flab HAD to go if there were any hopes of seeing a big improvement.

The scars are showing - a road trip where they averaged under 2 runs/game, Greinke and Butler's words, Kila's rough start - and there still remains that receding hairline (Jason Kendall) and lost hearing (Willie Bloomquist) but do you really miss those extra pounds and wrinkles?  Are these guys the ones who will do it? Probably not, but it just looks better than it did a few weeks ago, I feel like I want this team to do well and win games and I just didn't have that feeling with the likes of Guillen, Farnsworth, Posednik and Ankiel.

The Yanks are coming to town - for the second straight 4-game series vs. NY they miss Greinke - and this should be a good test, we've had the surgery and hopefully the bandages are starting to come off and we can get a better picture of where this organization is going.  We've seen that its not going to be an overnight solution, but we need to give it a chance.