Well, here we are...14 games into the new season, and we sit at 3-11. The Royals have now dropped 6 straight and are 1-7 on the current road trip. Not pretty. At all. I'm looking for the silver lining, and it's really hard to find right now.
I know what you're thinking: "It's only 14 games. You can't give up yet". Well....I'm not really "giving up", but I've been through this before. If you're reading this, you're most likely a Royals fan and have gone through this as well. It happens every season (or at least every season in recent history). The Royals take the field, get slapped around like a high school team trying to play in the big leagues, and we're out of the race by May. I'm tired of it. This team seems to be looking for ways to blow games, and they always find a new and interesting way to do it. So....here's my look at our biggest problem right now, and some comments on whether or not it can be solved.
Problem: Our offense stinks right now. Most fans thought our offense would be just fine. With bats in our lineup like DeJesus, Grudz, Teahen, Sweeney, Gordon, Brown/Sanders, Shealy.....we looked to be okay. Actually, scratch that, we looked like we'd be really damn good!
Out of the group I just mentioned, only two are hitting worth a damn right now - DeJesus and Sanders (who plays part-time) and Grudz has been banged up (average is around .230 right now). Teahen, Sweeney, Gordon, Brown and Shealy are lousy at the plate right now.....none are hitting over .200 (Teahen is right at .200, the rest are below).
Along with Sanders, we've had a nice surprise in John Buck, who is currently hitting .429 with an OBP of .520 and a .905 slugging percent. This is way more than we thought we'd get from Buck, who is currently in a platoon at catcher with Jason LaRue (who is only batting .154).
Solution: There's not much we can do, really. Maybe Buddy Bell should juggle the lineup a bit, moving some guys into different slots. Teahen's our number three hitter, and he's batting .200. Maybe he should slide down to fourth or fifth, move Sanders up to three on the days he plays. I don't know what the answer is, but the bulk of our heavy hitters are in a terrible slump right now.
I'm sure they'll break out of it soon...but in the meantime, can we try something (anything) different? Of course, this opens up another can of worms....with most of these guys hitting poorly, you move a guy down and replace him with who? Another thing to consider: maybe we don't need to platoon Buck right now....he's currently hitting the cover off the ball and he's got the least amount of at bats on the entire team. Ummmm......what's the logic here, again?
I understand that for hitters, baseball is essentially a game of failure - If you hit .300, you're only succeeding at a rate of 30 percent, which, according to our education system, is a big fat "F". Players are going to have slumps, I get that.....but what do you want to bet when the bats come around, the pitching will stink? Just seems to be the way the ball bounces here in KC.
Hopefully my next post will have at least a hint of positivity to it.
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