Royals Recap

It's been quite a bit since my last Royals recap, and a lot has happened to Kansas City in the meantime. For instance...

...uh, well, for starters...you see, what's important to remember is...um, er...

Stop looking at me like that, will ya?

I was thinking of starting this recap with some your-mother-is-so-fat jokes, some New York/L.A. jokes, some political/religious jokes...and if those don't work, I'm going to go straight for the bullet points.

Alright, first bullet point:

• With things going as poorly for the team as it has been, it's always nice to look at the bright spots -- like Mike Sweeney, for instance, who's been running an OPS near 1.000 for about...well, he's still running that high OPS, but in the surprise story of the early baseball season, Sweeney had to sit out a few games with a strained oblique. Basically, Mike had another back injury. In terms of offensive production relative to his teammates, Sweeney is pretty much Barry Bonds to the Royals anemic offense. If memory serves, they were expecting Sweeney back in the lineup today. We'll see how all that goes.
• Another bright spot is Zack Grienke, who's proving last year was no fluke with numbers like these: 1.14 WHIP, an over 3 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio, opposing hitters are running a Mike Matheny-like .653 OPS against Zack thus far, a 3.09 ERA, and...zero wins to show for all those shiny, candy-like numbers. Reason? Grienke has the dubious distinction of having the worst run support in the majors.
• Dark spots: After a couple of flashy outings, Ambiorix Burgos has crashed back to reality with (surprise, surprise) control issues. Every pitcher on the roster with the exceptions of Grienke and Andy Sisco has had control problems this season. Burgos has shown enough flash to let the baseball world know that he could be a very good pitcher in a year or two, but not right now.
• Speaking of not-quite-ready-yet, another great arm with control issues, Denny Bautista, has hit the DL because of shoulder problems (cue foreboding music), along with (surprise, surprise part deux) Kyle Snyder, who was the first to jump into the shoulder-problem swimming pool.
• I'm on the verge of admitting the Royals are simply snakebitten when it comes to hopeful young pitchers.
• Also slightly hopeful on the hitting side of things, Emil Brown seems to be snapping out of his SlumpFunk. His batting average is still very low, but his OBP is still very good and his ISO SLG is still good, too. It's just too bad he's one of only three Royals hitters with an OPS of over .700. Yeah, folks, it's that bad. None of the young guys are hitting their weight.
• That comment made, some credit must be given to Mark Teahen, the Royals' hopeful at 3rd base to take the steady-3rd-baseman torch from Joe Randa. Teahen looks more confident at the plate, but is really showing his stuff at the hot corner lately with several nice plays to his credit since coming off the DL.
• Other mentionables in the perhaps-he-isn't-a-horrible-player category this week are: Mike Wood, who's picked up a couple of saves and pitched nicely from the 'pen, and Leo Nunez, who's another good, young arm the Royals threw into the bullpen cauldron and didn't fry his first couple of times out. We'll see if he eventually goes the way of Andy Sisco or Ambiorix Burgos afterwards, however.

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Also, I've links to Giants apparel-paraphenalia (say that 10 times fast...wait, no, don't) and Royals apparel, too, as well as links to buy the music of my fave musical artists or the books of my fave authors. Which is something I know you all are just burning to do. I know it. (anybody see my meds?)