There is a national crisis: Matt Harvey is not pitching well. Given the MLB Radio’s Inside Pitch spent almost two hours discussing Harvey yesterday morning, I cannot fathom that it is anything less than a crisis. A NATIONAL CRISIS, by the way.
Okay, I’m joking. I completely understand the ‘New York’ factor, the eyes (and ears) math of the biggest city in the country. Heck, I like New York the city. I don’t like the Mets, nor do I like Matt Harvey. It goes beyond his Game Five machoism. I don’t think he is a good teammate. I do think he is a glory hound. He is not even the best pitcher on his own team, godssake, and that was true even before his troubles began.
Anyway, you know what you haven’t heard much about outside of the Kansas City zone of operations? The Royals. I don’t offer that up as yet another small market whine, just a fact. There are a number of teams having better seasons. There are teams with more problems. There are teams who keep causing a ruckus (Toronto). The defending champion Royals are a brief mention here and there on the national scene. And I like it.
The champion Royals are a team that likes to be noticed and likes to prove points to other people. A little obscurity might have been just what this group needed. Struggling to some extent (five years ago did you think Kansas City playing around .500 baseball would be described as struggling?) in baseball’s background noise might have been a positive. Now, having won seven of ten and pushing back towards the top of the division, the Royals might well be wanting some attention. Will they take being an afterthought as motivation? Perhaps that is a silly reason to get fired up, but a motivated Royals team is a fun team to watch.
Speaking of motivated and fun to watch. With this corner of the internet and many other sources beating the drum for change in right field, Paulo Orlando and Jarrod Dyson have recently combined to go 11-17. Time to bench Alex Gordon to get both these guys in the lineup, right? No, stop it. You know better.
While most – I mean, I hope ‘most’ – know that neither Orlando or Dyson will keep up anything resembling this pace for very long, it does point out how just a few hot bats can help the team. Over this last stretch of winning baseball, Kendrys Morales and Alex Gordon have done little and Mike Moustakas was hurt, yet the Royals have been winning. For the Royals, getting five innings of decent starting pitching and having just three holes in the lineup instead of four or five seems to be the solution, at least for now.
Finally this morning, has the balance of power shifted in baseball? Is the National League the dominant league now? If you were to do your very own power rankings, how far down the list would you go before you got to an American League squad? I think fourth at best, maybe fifth.