If we can take the start of the season as a microcosm of things to come the rest of the way, it is going to alternate between glimmers of hope and frustrating hours spent watching the Royals trudge their way through this season. The main problem is that we're watching almost the exact same team that we watched come up short last year; good defense and pitching contrasted against a pathetic offense. Not coincidentally, this is just about what everyone picked for the Royals going into the season. There just wasn't enough improvement to make them a real contender unless they got very lucky and the Tigers slipped. These things could all still happen, but nothing so far has made us believe that the Royals are anything but a .500 team, give or take a few wins. Obviously watching an average-ish team play baseball is much more enjoyable than a complete loser. However, you wonder where help is going to come from going forward and even more scary is that it's easy to see the Royals suddenly falling behind the Twins and White Sox as soon as next year. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, here is the PBR's Spaghetti Western™© analysis of the team's performance so far:
The Starting Pitching
The Good: This area has been as good as possible so far. James Shields seems like he will pretty much go the whole season pitching 6-8 innings and giving up 1-3 runs every fifth day, even if he won't quite finish in the top 5 of Cy Young voting this is as close to an ace as we're going to get. Jason Vargas is taking over the Ervin Santana surprise pitcher of the year/make Dayton Moore look smart role. While Jeremy Guthrie is still inexplicably escaping major problems the most important part of the rotation is that we can still dream on the talents of Yordano Ventura based on his first three starts. We'll get to the bad and the ugly soon enough, but it should be stated that if this is your top four in the rotation, you can win the wild card or even a weak division. It may not be quite as good as Detroit, but the results aren't that much different. While we expect Jason Vargas to come back to normal at some point and after his last start Yordano Ventura my not be ready to be called "The next Pedro" it still seems pretty safe to say this area is covered.
The Bad: There are innings eaters and then there are innings eaters. Last year Jeremy Guthrie was the good version of this illustrious title, however this year he's headed toward its bad incarnation. Last year it was 200+ innings of 4.00 ERA, this year that ERA doesn't look so hot at 4.7. Nothing much has changed with Guthrie, but going from lucky to unlucky makes all the difference in the world. This difference is exactly the kind of slight change that the Royals can't afford to have, they are a team built to win precisely because they aren't BAD anywhere. If the year continues exactly like this it will be hard to look at Jeremy Guthrie and say "He's the problem!!!," but if they turn it around and fall just short, him being bad instead of good enough is just enough to tip the scales.
The Ugly: After a fifth inning implosion in Cleveland yesterday which lead to the Royals falling under .500 and losing a four game series to the Indians, Bruce Chen's ERA is a cool 7.45. This clearly qualifies as Ugly. As good as Bruce Chen was down the stretch last year for the Royals, he is still surviving by the slimmest of margins at all times. Bruce Chen has bought himself enough good will in KC to be given a couple more starts to right his crafty lefty ship. However, the same applies here as in the case of Jeremy Guthrie; a simple shift in luck is enough to move the Royals season into the disappointing category. Every year the Royals seem to have at least one pitcher who is among the worst in the league: Kyle Davies, Luke Hochevar, Johnathan Sanchez, Wade Davis and lets not forget Chen is only one year removed from 34 starts of a +5.00 ERA. Needless to say, winning teams usually avoid having these types of pitchers on their team. The Powder Blue Room has decided that Bruce Chen is off limits as far being the brunt of criticism and we wouldn't be surprised if he throws two complete game shutouts in a row on his way to a solid year as the #5 starter, but one more bad start and all Bruce Chen lovers will be foaming at the mouth to get anyone else into his rotation spot.
The Bullpen
The Good: Lots of strike outs and Greg Holland 6/6 in saves. What more could you ask for? When the Royals are winning the Herrera-to-Davis-to-Holland trio is unstoppable. These guys performing well should have been expected, but the Danny Duffy domination is really the best thing we can point to in the bullpen category. It means one of two things: either he's ready to take it to the next level as a starter or at the very least he might have found a very useful role for himself if it doesn't work out as a starter. Lets be perfectly clear, the PBR strongly advocates for a return to the starting rotation as soon as possible, but if Guthrie and Chen pitch well enough to deserve a spot in the rotation, this role works for now.
The Bad: Way too many early season appearances from Justin Marks and Micheal Mariot. Collectively, they have done just fine. However, dings to Luis Coleman, Fran Bueno and Timmy Collins (not to mention born again Luke Hochevar) show that the Royals can be vulnerable here and are just another twinge or tweak away from AAA cannon fodder pitching meaningful innings. Still, without these dings the Royals might not have called up Duffy and if Fran Bueno going to the DL means that Duffy finally "figures it out," it's a win for the Royals. The other bad here is that this bullpen has no choice but to be one of the best in the league. With a rotation of innings throwers and a non-existent offense, the Royals have to allow nothing from their bullpen. NOTHING.
The Ugly: It's difficult to really come up with anything ugly other than Tim Collins' one inning of work this year. However, there have been a few leaks which have led to some early season losses. Herein lies the dilemma mentioned previously: you can't expect them to be perfect, but unfortunately when your team doesn't score any runs, they have to be. This means you can't allow any inherited runners to score, you can't blow any saves, no walks, no HRs, no bad nights, no Aaron Crows and accepting that a two run lead is a blowout. Basically it means nothing less than perfection and a repeat of last season. Unfortunately, that is a tough act to follow.
The Offense
The Good: Just as expected Alcides Escobar is the Royals' best hitter. Also, Moose leads the team in HRs. Since this is the best I can do, you know The Bad and The Ugly are going to be hideous (But if you're reading this blog, you already know that much). I guess if we want to be glass-half-full people, you could say that Infante is doing pretty much what he's paid to do. Nothing fancy, but SOOOOOOOOOOOO much better than seeing Chris Getz out there. So that's a big win, but only by default and unfortunately that's about it for the good...
The Bad: Sifting between the bad and the ugly requires making some difficult decisions, but the #1 thing the offense is missing relates back to the good category. The lack of anything to write there is what makes this team near the bottom in most offensive categories. Hooray, Eric Hosmer is hitting .300, but he's slugging .373 and still hasn't hit a HR. Alex Gordon just keeps making sliding/diving/running catchers all over left field and he's hitting doubles again, but he's still just an average offensive player. Aoki has the same OPS as Wil Myers!!!!!!!!!!, unfortunately it's .656. This extreme mediocrity from their best players is going to hold the team back just as much as any of what we're about see...
The Ugly: Oh Billy! Billy, Billy, Billy. Watching Butler just smash the ball into the ground seemingly every AB easily ranks as the most disappointing thing so far this year. Two extra base hits, an average under .200, this is not the Billy we need. Just like Bruce Chen, Billy and his BBQ sauce have bought him enough leeway with the fan base to keep letting it go for another month or so before we get too worried. However, a bad season from Billy would undoubtedly lead to a quick end to his tenure as a KC Royal given the $12.5 million team option left on his contract. Also, if this happens, he will go out just like Joakim Soria, leaving us wondering if he could have brought something back in a trade? Could we have sold high on Butler and got a future star??? We'll never know and hopefully we won't have to worry about this as Billy turns it around and finishes second behind George Brett in all offensive categories as a lifetime KC Royal. However, from a personal standpoint, if we ever have to watch him ground into a double play swinging 3-0 again, we're making him PBR enemy #1! It will make our handling of Jeff Francouer/Chris Getz look very lenient. In this category we could have also thrown in Sal Perez's spiral from league leading hitter into John Buck territory or Moosey's .153 average, but really it's Butler by a mile.
The Team
The Good: It was questionable as to whether or not the team could pull off the extreme pitching and defense mantra two years in a row, but so far it seems to be working. Branding the team as such at least gives the Royals an identity. A relatively healthy team is also reason to be happy; knock on wood, fingers crossed, etc., etc., etc. I guess you could also say that there is a lot of room for improvement and we just need a few players to turn it around. I'm drawing a blank...so lets move on.
The Bad: While it's pretty irrelevant at this point, it's still worth noting that they are currently in last place, so a hot start is out of the question for now. Why are they in last place, how about a combined 3-9 vs. Detroit, Minnesota and Cleveland. So far, not so good against some of our division rivals. They'll be playing these teams about 50 more times so they have some time to get revenge, but if they keep that pace up James Shields will be on the trading block by July 1st.
The Ugly: YOU AREN'T GOING TO WIN ANYTHING IF ALBERT PUJOLS HAS ALMOST AS MANY HRS AS YOUR ENTIRE TEAM A MONTH INTO THE SEASON!!!!!!!!!! It can't be overstated, but the extreme lack of power and overall offense is frustrating. It's not fun to watch, it puts so much more pressure on every other part of the team and we have to listen to our hitters continually talk as if the fences at Kauffman were 500 ft. Alex, Billy, Hos, hit the ball over the fence, it's not that hard, you've all done it before; 1 HR every 260 PAs is not going to cut it from you three. I realize that its not that easy either, but if the year continues like this and they're battling the minor league Astros for the worst offense in the league there is no way catching a few extra fly balls, being able to pitch 200 innings and striking out 50% of hitters in the 8th and 9th innings can save them.
