Starting Rotation Redux

We had the Indians right in our crosshairs and it all fell apart last night.  I was really pulling for Kyle, he looked liked he was harnessing some of his abilities and looked really sharp out there - granted it was against the Indians - almost making you think he had a chance to be a decent starter at some point.  Not that it was rocket science, but at the beginning of the year we stated that the starting rotation of Greinke, Hochevar, Meche, Davies and Bannister had to be "solid" for the Royals to have any hope at winning this season.  Now the PBR's "solid formula" is still in the patent pending stages so I can't reveal all of the details on the calculations but basically we were looking for a very good Greinke, a good Hoch (or any of the other four), two average pitchers out of the remaining three (I was thinking Meche & Banny), leaving room for one slightly below average performance (I was thinking of Davies at the start of the year) = "solid". Obviously this didn't even come close to happening, let's do the math ((Greinke gets a rating of good) + (Meche at beyond horrible) + (Banny at just plain horrible) + (Davies - the only one who lived up to his billing - at slightly below average) + (Hochevar at mostly disappoing)) = Not good, bad, pathetic; it is hard to apply the perfect word to the starting rotation, but I'm going with just-shy-of-God-Awful.  The rotation has been "saved" by the bafflingly decent performance of Bruce Chen and the hopefully average performance of Bryan Bullington.  We still should give good Catholic boy Sean O'Sullivan a few more opportunities because he's young and some other good team actually deemed him a starter so, he's worth a shot.  But, surprisingly, this year's big problem hasn't really been a pathetic offense - based on the numbers, we are almost passable - but rather a starting rotation that just can't get right.

For fun let's do a little late season recalculation and see what we can come up with to go .500 or better in September - assuming the offense stays its average-ish course - with the end of the year rotation.  Again we have to first assume that Greinke will be very good and not have any more lapses going forward, second we, again, have to hope that Luke will be good when he comes back, now who does that leave out?  Obviously Luke will be given a spot in the rotation when he comes back so who is the odd man out between O'Sullivan, Davies, Bullington and Chen (let's not even discuss Bannister)?  Davies has proven over a few years now, that he won't quite be average, or will he?  Based on last night and time of service you would have to think that Davies is set, so that leaves Bullington, O'Sullivan and Chen with about two starts to prove they deserve to stay in the rotation.  Of course any one of the three could get hurt or shelled and make the decision easy, but barring that, what would make the most sense would be that Chen finally goes back to the pen.  However, having bet against Chen all year long, I'm going to use some reverse psychology and bet that he stays in due to Ned's love for "veteran players who do things that don't show-up in the box-score" (yes, I'm taking another shot at Jason Kendall, he is now slugging under .300 and is one of the two or three worst offensive players in the league).  So I will assume that O'Sullivan and Bullington are now in a duel for that 5th spot in the rotation and I'm going with Bully based solely on that one start against New York.  So, here it is your hopeful PBR equation for the Royals rotation to give them a good September, maybe draw a few extra fans on promotion nights, and give us a slight glimmer of hope for next year:

((Greinke very good) + (Hoch good) + (Davies average) + (Bullington average)  + (Chen lucky)) = 15 meaningless September wins!!!!!!   

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.