Sometimes, Sunday On The Deck happens at night…in the rain. Let’s just hit some snippets this evening as we wait for the boys to provide the good content tomorrow morning.
THE HORROR OF LOSING TWO IN A ROW
What was poised to be a fantastic road trip after the Royals’ fourth win in five road games became, sigh, just good as Kansas City dropped the last two in Oakland and fly home with a 4-3 road mark. That’s right, a 4-3 road trip has now become a disappointment.
Of course, it should not be and once you get past the shock of seeing the Royals’ pen actually give up a game, it was exactly what winning baseball teams do: play .500 or a little better on the road and win at home.
Last season, after starting 7-0, I wrote more than once that the Royals really just needed to go 7-6 over each 13 game stretch from that point on to make the playoffs. You can backdate this season a touch and note that a a team that goes 9-7 over every 16 game stretch will find itself 90-70 with two games to play. (I really had the ole IBM XT humming to run that equation!).
Kansas City, at 8-4 with more road games than home games under its belt is doing just fine.
SORIA, GORDON AND YOUNG
Good guys, fan favorites and not exactly launching themselves with gusto in this 2016 campaign.
Joakim Soria is, of course, the primary whipping boy of the hot reactors and casual fan right now. That comes with the territory of being a late inning reliever. While he has struggled to some extent, all of Soria’s transgressions can be traced back to some spotty control and a couple of bloop hits, one home run ball and some bad luck on a triple on Sunday. One can make legitimate arguments about who should pitch the eighth inning, but none of those arguments should be based upon the first 12 games of this season.
Alex Gordon? With two strikeouts on Sunday, Gordon has 19 on the year, but was unable to overtake Justin Upton for the American League strikeout lead as Upton also flailed twice to stay one up on Alex. It is early and Gordon is a noted slow starter, but he is striking out enough that we have discussed it around the BP Kansas City watercooler.
While the early returns on the Royals’ starting rotation have generally been good, Chris Young has been tagged for 12 runs in 13.2 innings spanning three starts. Ummm, well, it’s still early?
SABREMETRICS
Why do people hate sabremetrics? And why are those most vocal about it so horribly uninformed on what exactly sabremetrics really are?
I particularly enjoy the argument that the Royals winning somehow proves something wrong about advanced statistics. You know, those statistics that tend to value defensive ability, speed, on-base percentage and ways of measuring pitchers (especially relief pitchers) my some other means than earned run average. Hmmm.
THE DYSON EQUATION
Sooner or later or sooner, Jarrod Dyson’s rehab stint will come to an end and someone’s tenure on the Royals’ big league roster will come to an end. Will it be Reymond Fuentes or Terrance Gore or, less likely, Paulo Orlando?
Conventional wisdom would say Gore, but the Royals are a tad unconventional and as I offered before the season started, he is as likely to make a real contribution off the bench as a more traditional 24th or 25th man might. In fact, I used SABREMETRICS to project that Gore might be worth 5-6 runs above average when used solely as a pinch runner over a season.
This will be an interesting move when the time comes. I mean, as interesting as deciding who your last bench player is can be.
COMING UP
Detroit, Baltimore, Angels, Seattle and Washington. That is the Royals’ next fifteen games. The water gets deeper from here on out.