Visiting an old friend

[Gene Honda Civic]

I decided to check out the garbage that Posnaski had to spew so far this season --

 

4/20/04 -- Royals record = 4-8 4GB

Don't panic, but it's time to bring up Greinke

 

JOE POSNANSKI

 

 

Baseball is a game designed to destroy people that panic. There are 162 games in a preposterously long season that stretches over six months. That means no matter how good your team, you will lose 50 games. No matter how dominant your pitching staff, you will get ripped sometimes. No matter how much talent you have, you will have awful weeks.

 

There will be bad moments. Losing streaks. Tough stretches. Giveaway games. The best teams, without fail, do not panic when things go bad. The hitters do not try to hit 10-run homers. The pitchers do not lose faith after a couple of bad outings. The fans do not jump off the bandwagon screaming. The front office does not make wild and short-sighted trades or call for prospects who are not ready. The managers do not bench good players who are simply stuck in slumps.

 

The worst teams, without fail, do all those things.

 

The key in baseball is to stay calm through the rough times.

 

All that said, I think it's just about time the Royals bring up Zack Greinke.

 

Royals general manager Allard Baird says he won't bring up Greinke as some sort of panic move. I agree. But I don't see this as a panic move. I think this is the right move right now. Greinke, as you certainly know, is the Royals' 20-year-old pitching phenom. A year ago, while pitching in Class A Wilmington and Class AA Wichita, he went 15-4 with a 1.93 ERA. He walked 18 batters in 23 starts. He was so dominant he would sometimes throw batting practice fastballs to hitters, just for fun.

 

One scout said Greinke was the most advanced 19-year-old pitcher he had seen since … well, he could not remember. But there had to be somebody.

 

Greinke had a chance to make the team in spring training. He did not pitch well enough to do that. Now, he's pitching in Class AAA Omaha. The Royals want him to get some seasoning. They expect him to be good and seasoned in a couple of months.

 

And hey, I'm all for seasoning, but the Royals could use Greinke now. And this has nothing to do with the Royals being in the middle of a six-game losing streak. That's nothing. It's mid-April. Defending world champion Florida had two six-game losing streaks early last season. The 1961 New York Yankees, perhaps the best of the Mickey Mantle dynasty Yankees, once lost nine out of 12 in May and found themselves in fourth place. It's too early to worry about losing streaks and the standings.

 

No, this is more about the Royals' personality. Yes, they have played lousy at times, they have pitched poorly, they have given a couple of games away, they have played shoddy defense at big moments, they have not hit well with runners in scoring position.

 

But you can tell the Royals' lineup will be fine. You can see it. You can see Carlos Beltran is putting it all together, Mike Sweeney is hitting with runners on base, Juan Gonzalez is finding his home-run swing, Joe Randa is still hitting, Angel Berroa will be back soon, etc. This team will score runs. They know it, too.

 

The bullpen will be fine also. There are four or five pitchers you can throw who can get people out. And Mike MacDougal will be back soon. The bullpen will win games.

 

Then there's the rotation. Yes, they've struggled. But it goes beyond that. The Royals' philosophy is that they can win with four or five pretty good pitchers. And then they hope one or two of them will emerge to be an ace. Jeremy Affeldt has the stuff. Brian Anderson has the makeup. Darrell May has the toughness. And so on.

 

Trouble is, so far at least, Affeldt has been tentative, Anderson has been giving up bunches of hits, and May, until his last outing, seemed unwilling to throw inside. None of them has won a game. There is a feeling among the Royals' front office that once one of them pitches well and wins, it will have a snowball effect and all the starters will start pitching with more confidence.

 

Maybe. Maybe not. The truth is, the rotation could use a spark. Someone to get everyone going. Last year, the emergence of rookie pitcher Dontrelle Willis turned around the Florida Marlins. He got his teammates excited about coming to the park. He got the few fans in Florida who cared excited. He changed the whole complexion of that team.

 

Greinke might be able to do some of those things. Who knows? He has the talent, the personality, the pitches, the maturity. The fear, of course, is that if you rush a young pitcher, you could ruin him.

 

“I can't be selfish here,” Baird says. “As a general manager, sure, I'd love to bring him up. But I can't put his development second to our short-term needs.”

 

That may be true. But Greinke seems oblivious to those kinds of pressure. He's a different kind of kid. He doesn't talk much, he doesn't seem fazed by things, he has his own Web site ( www.zackgreinke.net) with the slogan, “On the road to the big show.” Also, his greatest strength as a pitcher is his maturity. The kid knows how to pitch.

 

Are there things he could learn? Sure. In many ways, though, he might develop even better in the major leagues, with older pitchers watching out for him, than he would bouncing around in Class AAA.

 

“The thing is, we have to let the readiness of the pitcher determine when he comes up,” Baird says. “If we bring him up, people will look to him to be a savior. That's not fair. It's not going to come down to one pitcher.

 

There's a point to that, too. But no matter when the Royals bring up Greinke, he will be viewed as a savior. There's no way around that. Greinke is the Royals' best pitching prospect since a young Bret Saberhagen. And we all know what Sabes did.

 

Point is, the Royals should think hard about bringing up Greinke. If not now, then soon. Real soon. Sure, he might struggle. He might get hit hard. But he also might pitch real well and make a big difference. You never want to panic in baseball and certainly not two weeks into the season. But this isn't about panic. This is about doing everything you can to win. You would sure hate to leave a winning lottery ticket in Omaha.

 

4/26/04 -- Royals record = 6-11 5GB

Peña knows this slump is more than misfortune

 

JOE POSNANSKI

 

 

There were no stunts by Tony Peña after the game Sunday. He did not shower with his clothes on. He did not turn up the stereo and dance in the middle of the clubhouse. No, the Royals' losing spell, now entering its third long week, has stretched beyond stunts, beyond pep talks, beyond Vince Lombardi speeches.

 

Peña, the Royals manager, just sat in his office and looked at his pitcher's chart.

 

He looked just about as serious as I've ever seen him look.

 

“We just got to snap out of this,” he said softly. “We are a much, much better ballclub than this. It's like when our bullpen has been good, our starting pitching has struggled. When our starting pitching was good, our bullpen has struggled. Today, we get good pitching and defense, and we can't score runs. It's crazy.”

 

Sunday, clutch hitting was the culprit. The Royals left eight men on base. They left four men at third base. They hit into double plays. They could not lift easy sacrifice flies to score runs. After the game, like every Sunday, children were allowed to run around the Kauffman Stadium bases. And maybe it was just an illusion, but from up in the box it looked as if most of the kids were left stranded in scoring position.

 

No, you cannot consistently leave runners abandoned at third base and win. And the Royals didn't win. They lost to Minnesota 4-2, their third heart-wrenching loss in four days and their ninth loss in 11 games. This time, people left the ballpark cursing the lack of clutch hitting.

 

Then, on Friday, the problem was the bullpen. The Royals blew a four-run lead in the eighth. Thursday, the problem was also the bullpen; Jason Grimsley could not throw strikes, and the Royals could not hold a 4-2 lead in the eighth.

 

Then, a week ago, the problem was starting pitching. And injuries. The Royals have lost a couple of games because of shoddy defense at the wrong time. Peña is right. The problem isn't any one thing. The problem is that a certain fog hovers over this team right now. Every baseball season has its own rhythm and character. The season is barely three weeks old, but right now, the Royals play well enough to lose.

 

This is their identity until they change it.

 

“Everybody in that clubhouse knows that we are good,” Peña said. “They know it. I know we are good too. You put us on paper, and we are a good, good ballclub. Look at us. We can hit. We can play defense. We can run. We can pitch. We are a very, very good ballclub.

 

“But in baseball, all that stuff doesn't matter. We have to do it on the field. I know we will do it. But we need to get going. It's a long season, but we can't let the season get away from us, you know? We need to start playing like the team I know we are.”

 

People talk a lot about team chemistry, and they are usually referring to how well players get along. I think team chemistry does not have much to do with that. Stockton and Malone, Whitaker and Trammell, Montana and Rice, Jordan and Pippen — they weren't necessarily great friends. They drove each other to greatness. That's chemistry.

 

When a pitcher has a bad outing and gives up eight runs but his team scores nine, that's about team chemistry. When the lineup is getting shut down, and the bullpen throws four shutout innings late in the game to give them a chance to win late, that's about team chemistry. Four or five great defensive plays that help a starting pitcher complete a shutout, that's team chemistry.

 

And the Royals don't have any of that at the moment. They seem to get along great. The Royals have a bunch of great guys. But they don't have any chemistry at all right now. They scored an impressive 36 runs in five games this week but spent 25 of them in two blowouts (and lost the three other games). They have not won a close game in quite some time. Their rallies have fallen just short, and they have not been able to get the one pitch or make the one play to get out of trouble.

 

It's just like that for the Royals now.

 

“We've got players trying to do too much,” is how Peña explained it. “We just need to win back-to-back games. That's all. We haven't done that for a while. We need to win a couple of games in a row.”

 

Last year, for most of the season, the Royals played beautifully together. Peña was a big reason why. He gave his players rest. He stayed with them through slumps. And more than anything, he stayed positive and happy through injury plagues and losing times. Sunday afternoon, he was visibly frustrated for a moment or two.

 

But as it goes with Peña, that did not last long.

 

“That's it,” he said Sunday after the loss. “Crying time is over. I can't let my players see this face. It's a long season. We'll snap out of it. We'll win on Tuesday. We'll win. We'll win. You'll see. We'll win.”

 

5/02/04***My Favorite*** -- Royals record = 7-16 7.5GB

A desperate guarantee

 

Tony Peña vows the Royals will win the AL Central. That's how bad things are.

 

JOE POSNANSKI

 

 

NEW YORK — Here it was: The last stand. This was on Saturday, just 45 minutes after the Royals played a sloppy, dreadful, lifeless game they had no chance of winning. Last year's American League manager of the year, Tony Peña, stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist.

 

“We are going to win the Central,” he said.

 

Um, excuse me? “We are going to win it.”

 

Is that a guarantee?

 

“Look into my eyes,” he said. His eyes looked quite serious or at least as serious as eyes get. “We are going to win it,” he said again.

 

And there it was: The last stand. The Hail Mary. The desperation shot. This Kansas City Royals baseball season has gone very, very wrong, and Tony Peña had tried everything in the first month to get his team going. He tried showering with his clothes on to loosen everyone up. He tried boisterous team meetings to get everyone excited. He tried inspirational talks. He tried it all. Saturday in New York, his team flopped again and lost to the Yankees 12-4 and burrowed deeper into last place.

 

Something in Peña snapped.

 

He pulled out the manager's nuclear weapon.

 

He guaranteed that the Royals will win the championship.

 

“(The losing) will stop tomorrow,” he said. “I'm telling you right now we're going to win the Central Division. We're going to win it.”

 

***

 

There is a noble history in the guarantee. The first recorded guarantee seems to come from the serpent who told Eve that if she ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge “Ye shall surely not die.” It's pretty apparent how that one came out.

 

The guarantee grew through time. Stores guaranteed the lowest price in town. There were guaranteed rust-free paint jobs, and guaranteed-for-the-life-of-your-car mufflers, and lifetime-guarantee windows. In a breakthrough, the money-back guarantee was invented, then the double-your-money-back guarantee, then the Ginsu knife, which could cut through a can or your money back.

 

John Kennedy guaranteed that man would make it to the moon. The Jackson 5 guaranteed that you won't be hurt again. Blockbuster Video guaranteed that “School of Rock” would be on their shelves (But it wasn't! They gave me some coupon, but that doesn't make up for it. Some guarantee).

 

Satisfaction was guaranteed. Complete satisfaction was guaranteed. One hundred percent satisfaction was guaranteed. I don't think I've ever been 100 percent satisfied with anything.

 

And Joe Namath guaranteed the Jets would win Super Bowl III. That brought sports into the guaranteeing business. He wasn't the first sports athlete to guarantee (by then, Muhammad Ali was not only guaranteeing knockouts, but doing it in rhyme). But Namath's guarantee was the most famous because nobody thought the Jets had a chance.

 

The Jets did indeed win Super Bowl III. Namath became a legend. What is not as well known is that some of his teammates were plenty ticked off at Namath for his guarantee and wished he would have shut up. “We all thought, deep down, that we were the better team,” one of those Jets players, Emerson Boozer, said a few years back. “We just didn't want to go around bragging about it.”

 

Anyway, after Namath, there was a frenzy of guarantees in sports. Mark Messier guaranteed a Stanley Cup. Jim Fassel guaranteed the New York Giants would make the playoffs. Pat Riley guaranteed the Lakers would win back-to-back championships. Chad Johnson guaranteed his Bengals would beat the expansion Houston Texans. And so on. There have been thousands of sports guarantees, most of them failed, Super Bowls lost, NBA playoff series dropped, knockouts that never happened, a million warning-track fly balls that were promised as home runs to sick children in hospital beds.

 

Now, we have Tony Peña's guarantee. Is it desperation? Of course it is. But these are desperate times for the Royals. This is one last-ditch effort to save the season.

 

“I don't think any of us could have imagined being 7-15,” Royals center fielder Carlos Beltran says. “It's like right now, we don't know what we're supposed to do.”

 

***

 

Saturday's game was an utter disgrace. Of course, it was pretty obvious coming in that the Royals never had a chance. They started some Class AA pitcher named Eduardo Villacis, who was not on any prospect list. Villacis was not even at spring training with the Royals, and the Royals had 66 players in camp this year, including a country singer.

 

Royals general manager Allard Baird had some notion that Villacis, a cocky 24-year-old kid, might be able to handle the pressure of pitching at Yankee Stadium. The kid handled the pressure fine. It was the Yankees lineup he struggled with. He was pulled in the fourth inning. He walked four and gave up five runs and that did not include two home runs that hooked just foul and a lined shot that barely missed hitting the foul line. He was lucky to give up five runs.

 

And the Royals sleepwalked through the rest of the game. On one play, Mendy Lopez, who is on the team entirely for his defense, forgot to cover third. On another, Carlos Beltran ran four steps in on a ball that bounced just in front of the center-field wall. On another, reliever Curtis Leskanic hung a breaking ball to Ruben Sierra with the bases loaded; it was easier to hit than that stupid Reggie Jackson “Hit Away” contraption.

 

That ball ended up in the right-field upper deck.

 

It was bad. Before the game, Baird had talked about how this was a crucial game. He said it was not crucial to win, but it was crucial that the team played well. The team did not play well, to say the least. They were embarrassed in the biggest city in America.

 

Afterward, everyone talked softly. “Everybody's playing hard,” seemed to be the general theme. Peña said right after the game, “Go talk to my players! You'll see. They are not hanging their heads.” Only they were. There were so many heads down in the Royals clubhouse after the game that you kept waiting for someone to say grace. Nobody spoke angrily. Nobody kicked their locker. Nobody challenged the team. There was just shock.

 

“We're better than this,” Mike Sweeney said quietly.

 

“We will come out of this,” Beltran said almost inaudibly.

 

Shock was everywhere.

 

Peña sensed it too. And so, he pulled out the guarantee. He said that Jeremy Affeldt will pitch a brilliant game today (“We are going to win 1-0.”). He said the lineup can score more runs than any team in baseball. He said that this team will get hot and win lots and lots of games.

 

And he guaranteed that the Royals will win the American League Central.

 

Will the guarantee work? The odds are against it. This Royals team seems doomed right now. But it's a bold move. The Royals need something to snap them out of this malaise. They meandered through April, losing games they had no business losing, making little mistakes that turned big, leaving the bases loaded, failing to get the big out, getting injured. Peña has tried to coax them out of it. He has tried to joke them out of it. He has tried to scream them out of it. He has had enough.

 

“We will win the Central,” he said enough times to make sure we knew he was not kidding. And now it's there in black and white. Cut it out. Put it up on your wall. Other teams will. Fans will. Cynics will. Everybody will. Guarantees get people's attention.

 

“We are going to be unstoppable,” Peña said. This is his last stand. If this works, and the Royals start playing inspired baseball, they will be talking about Peña's guarantee for a long, long time.

 

And if this fails, well, people will be talking about Peña's guarantee for a long, long time. Peña knows he will be a laughingstock. His team will be a punch line. Everyone will be embarrassed. And it will be a long, bleak, hot summer. Guaranteed.

 

 

More to come --

[Gene Honda Civic]

5/03/04 -- Royals record = 8-16 7.5GB

Yankees fans think Beltran will be theirs

 

JOE POSNANSKI

 

 

NEW YORK — Yankees fans watched him. They watched him with greedy eyes. They watched him hit a line shot down the right-field line and then cruise around second base like Michael Andretti taking turn three at the Indianapolis 500.

 

They watched him crack a long fly ball that hooked just foul and smashed off the upper-deck façade. They watched him chase line drives into the gap, gliding as smoothly as, dare ye blaspheme here at the grand cathedral of baseball, DiMaggio himself.

 

Oh, Yankees fans watched him all right.

 

“Daddy,” you could hear them saying, sounding an awful lot like Veruca Salt from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” “Daddy, I want my own Carlos Beltran.”

 

Yankees fans are the most spoiled fans in all of sports. Nobody is close. They make Paris Hilton look like a monk. They make the Kennedys look like the Swiss Family Robinson. Then, it's been that way for a long time. The Yankees have won 39 American League pennants. They have won 26 World Series championships. Colonel Ruppert, who owned the Yankees during the Babe Ruth years, was asked once to describe the perfect day at the ballpark. He said, “When the Yankees score eight runs in the first and slowly pull away.”

 

Yes, Yankees fans have long been spoiled by success. But now success is not enough for them. Championships are not enough. A $180 million team (fully loaded with 62 All-Star appearances, 16 Gold Gloves, two MVP awards, two World Series MVP awards, three batting titles, two ERA titles) is not enough.

 

No, they want to knock you down, kick sand in your face and steal your girl.

 

They want Carlos Beltran.

 

“I heard some fans say, ‘Hey, you know, you can come play here next year,' ” Beltran says. “I told them I want to play in a place where I'll be comfortable. They said, ‘We'll give you a lot of money. You'll be very comfortable.' ”

 

It's fairly discouraging. The Yankees swept Kansas City over the weekend. The Royals never really came close to winning one of the three games. They were beaten down Friday. They were embarrassed Saturday.

 

Then Sunday, just a few hours after Royals manager Tony Peña guaranteed that his team will win the American League Central, his team lost a rather bland 4-2 game. It didn't feel like baseball. It was like watching an accountant total up numbers. Jason Giambi ($12.4 million) set it up with an upper-deck home run. Hideki Matsui ($7 million) clinched it by singling in Jorge Posada ($9 million). Derek Jeter ($18.6 million) and Alex Rodriguez ($22 million) cheered.

 

And as always, Mariano Rivera ($10.8 million) closed the door.

 

Through it all, though, the most exciting player on the field was Carlos Beltran. He is that in every park he plays. These days he just seems to burst out of the scene, as if he's playing in 3-D. He does everything. He makes diving catches. He hits long home runs from both sides of the plate. He steals bases at will.

 

Stats Inc. lists dozens of statistics, and Beltran is among the leaders in just about every one. He leads the American League in important sounding statistics like secondary average (which attempts to measure all the secondary variables not included in batting average) and power/speed number (which attempts to measure, uh, power and speed) and runs created (which attempts to measure how many, you know, runs were, like created).

 

Beyond the numbers, he's just plain thrilling to watch. At any moment, he might steal a home run or steal third or throw out a runner or hit a triple or blast a home run. It's like anything you want, anything you love about baseball, this guy can do.

 

And, as every Royals fan knows, this is his last go-around in a Kansas City uniform. These days, Beltran does not even talk about the possibility of coming back next year. His talent is simply too big, his market value too high, his agent too determined. At the moment, Beltran is on pace to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases and score 150 runs and so on. He probably won't do all that. But he will do plenty. And as everyone has known for two years, the Royals can't afford him.

 

“I don't know where I will play,” he says. “It depends. Obviously, there's the business side. And I want to play on a team that can win — I want to play in pennant races. And like I said, I want to play on a team where I can be comfortable.”

 

Well, New York has two out of three. The Yankees will undoubtedly make the biggest money offer. The team of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Bernie Williams does not have a center fielder. They will offer Staten Island.

 

And, of course, the Yankees offers a chance to play for a winner. As long as George's green is accepted in all 50 states, the Yanks will win.

 

But comfort? Beltran is not so sure. He is a sensitive guy. He admits that. And this is no city for sensitive center fielders. Beltran says he likes playing in Yankee Stadium more now than he did three or four years ago, but that's because three or four years ago he would have sooner played baseball in shark-infested waters. Hey, sharks don't yell the stuff those people in the Yankee Stadium bleachers yell.

 

“I used to look back at them and get mad,” he says. “But I don't do that anymore. I just ignore them. I don't mind it as much as I did.”

 

So, he doesn't know. Los Angeles might be a better fit for him. Or Atlanta. Or Seattle. Or Miami. Shoot, there are a lot of places, and he's not thinking about all that right now.

 

“That's the business side of the game,” he says. “I've learned not to think about that side. I play baseball. That's what I do. All of that will work itself out later.”

 

In the meantime, Yankee fans are already penciling him into next year's lineup. Some have figured out that the Royals are out of it (“Hey, Mac, did you even know the Royals were still playing in Kansas City?”) and are penciling him into this year's lineup. The newspapers throw his name into stories. Some baseball insiders are calling Beltran to the Yanks a done deal.

 

Sunday, when the Royals' lineup was read off by the public-address announcer, nobody had any reaction except when Beltran's name was announced. Then there was a definite buzz. This is what it's like with the Yankees these days. They don't want to just beat the Royals. They want to buy the Royals. At least the best part. And they just might.

 

It's hard to watch. This Royals season so far has been a fiasco on many levels — Sunday, their record officially dropped to the worst in the American League. But the hardest part is watching Beltran on his farewell tour. It would not be so bad if the Royals could get into contention. Then, at least, we could watch him play under the bright lights.

 

But if this season just keeps spiraling downward, and the Royals keep losing, and fans stop coming out, and people stop caring, then it will be sad to watch Beltran steal his bases, hit his home runs, make his great catches, all for nothing.

 

Then, next year, when the Royals come back to Yankee Stadium, he might be out there in center field, wearing pinstripes, making $16 million or $17 million, hanging with A-Rod and Jeter. It could happen. He might even hit the home run that beats the Royals. And then these spoiled Yankees fans will chant his name. They will ask for a curtain call. They will cheer him wildly. They will treat him as if he's one of their own.

 

And then, no doubt, they will start watching Angel Berroa very closely.

 

5/07/04 -- Royals record = 8-19 8.5GB

What's wrong with the Royals

 

JOE POSNANSKI

 

 

All during spring training, there were reasons to believe. Improved bullpen! Juan Gonzalez! Lefty pitching! The karma of Garth! The emergence of Beltran! March in Arizona was a month long Mardi Gras, a spring-training spectacular, a Royal Wedding.

 

Then April came along. And the Royals flopped.

 

“I don't know,” Royals captain Mike Sweeney says when asked what went wrong.

 

“I can't tell you,” Royals star center fielder Carlos Beltran adds.

 

“It's tough for me to say,” Royals general manager Allard Baird sums up.

 

Well, that clears up everything. Not only are the Royals losing, they're stumped. During spring training, I was able to come up with 10 reasons why the Royals were going to win. Now, the Royals are 8-18, the worst record in the American League, they are buried in last place, they look utterly helpless.

 

And we have to do the other list.

 

Here are five reasons why the Royals are losing.

 

• The Royals are the worst travelers since Patrick Ewing. They have actually been fine at home. They are hitting .300 at Kauffman Stadium. They have a respectable 4.21 ERA. Their 6-6 home record should be better (they blew two games in the ninth) but that's not the problem.

 

No, the problem is they need a GPS because they get lost on the road. They have the worst road record in the game at 2-12. They have a league-worst 6.50 ERA on the road, which is bad enough, but they have also given up an astonishing 17 unearned runs in 14 games. Also, the last six games (all on the road) they are averaging three runs per game. They are a well-rounded road fiasco.

 

“I don't think we play any different on the road,” Baird says. “I think it's just been the timing of things. But that's just my opinion. Right now, we're searching.”

 

• Games start in the first inning. The Royals are an abysmal early-inning team. Part of this is because their starters have a 6.25 ERA, among the worst in baseball. But the problem goes beyond that. The offense has trouble scoring early (partly because, if you take away Tony Graffanino, Royals leadoff hitters are hitting a cool .110 with three walks). The defense has been sloppy early (and late, actually)

 

In 26 games this season, the Royals have had the lead after five innings in exactly six of them. They have been outscored 105-60 in the first five innings.

 

You can't come back and win games consistently. Which leads to …

 

• The Royals are always behind. Doesn't it feel that way? Doesn't it seem like the Royals are always trying to get back into the game? Well, that's a fact: The Royals have led after just 57 innings this season. They have trailed after 130. Beyond the obvious problems associated with being behind all the time, it also wears on a team. Everybody tries to do too much. Everybody tries to hit home runs. The Royals are on pace to set a team record for home runs. But nine of the Royals' last 10 homers have been solo shots.

 

“Last year we did all of the little things,” Baird says. “We got the big hits. We didn't try to do too much. Now, everybody's pressing. Everybody's trying to bring us back. You can't play like that.”

 

• The Royals are not making the big play. The Royals have given up more unearned runs than any team in baseball (20). Only Detroit has made more errors. But what hurts just as much is there have been numerous times when they failed to turn the double play, could not quite make a diving catch, barely missed getting a called strike three to end an inning. They are hitting .172 with the bases loaded.

 

“It's hard to quantify,” Baird says. “But I can think of four, five, six times off the top of my head where if we had made a play, we might have won a game. It's like I tell people: We are not playing to our talent level. But I can live with that. I believe talent will work itself out over a long season.

 

“But we are not making the little plays. And I can't live with that.”

 

• Together we can (lose a lot). Here's an example: The first 14 games of the season, the Royals hardly ever had an early lead. They managed to come back and win a couple of games, they had one easy win in Cleveland, but for the most part they spent the first 2 1/2 weeks behind on the scoreboard.

 

Finally, in game 15 at home against Minnesota, the Royals built a commanding 5-1 lead. Finally. An easy victory. They needed it. The bullpen, which had been good up to that point, could close the door. The crowd would go home happy. It was easy. Only when things are going bad, nothing's easy. The Royals did something inconceivable. They gave up three runs in the eighth, three more in the ninth and lost the game.

 

That, in many ways, has been a microcosm of this season. Somehow, some way, this team finds ways to lose games. This is what losing teams do. Get a great pitching performance from the starter, the bullpen collapses. Get great bullpen work, and the offense can't score. Get a lead, and the defense can't make a play with the bases loaded.

 

Everybody wants a scapegoat. And there have been some early-season disappointments, sure. Juan Gonzalez has not yet provided the power everyone counted on. Brian Anderson and Darrell May have not built off their solid 2003 seasons. Mike Sweeney is pressing so hard you can see the sawdust fall when he grips his bat. Aaron Guiel, after emerging as an everyday player last season, is hitting .063 in the leadoff spot and is striking out more than twice as often as he walks.

 

Curt Leskanic keeps pitching with his heart, which is inspiring, except a pitcher really needs to pitch with his arm.

 

But the losing goes beyond any one guy. Tony Peña's antics, so charming and effective in 2003, seem to be leaving players cold. The decisions to bring up struggling rookies David DeJesus and Eduardo Villacis have left players scratching their heads.

 

Right now the Royals look hard for a leader, too. They have a lot of guys who are wonderful leaders when the team is winning. Numerous leaders stepped up last year. But this year, as the losing mounts, as the season slips away, the Royals, like Jimmy Caan in “The Godfather” need a wartime consiglieri, someone to jolt them out of this fog.

 

And they need it right now.

 

“We still have time to get back in it,” Allard Baird says. “I know people are ready to give up. But I believe we have the talent and the time to get back in this thing. But let's face it. We don't have forever.”

[Harry Chappas]

Guarantees and the response the media gives to them are the stupidist thing in journalism.

 

I guarantee we win, if you don't, well I will never believe a guarantee you make again.

 

Just plain stupid. Thank Broadway Joe for the pub they get.

[CSF]

This guy should get together with Mike Kiley for milk and cookies.

[Texsox]

I do like the guy.

[southsider2k5]

Posnarski= KC Cubs fan.

[WSox30]

Posnarski= KC Cubs fan.

[witesoxfan]

I think one time, Posnanski has to write an article that says simply...

 

"The Royals suck."

 

It would save all this sugar-coated s*** and would actually make him look like he atleast a little common sense.

[WSoxShuf]

Sox lose their fourth in a row today, they may have these same articles tomorrow.

 

Slump time sucks.