2012 AL Central Catch-All thread

[Kyyle23]

As soon as someone can conclusively prove that guys get hurt more often when they're throwing 130 pitches a game than when they're throwing 100 pitches a game, I'll be happy to agree, but I sure haven't seen it.

 

Then it is obviously untrue and pitching counts don't matter.

[Balta1701]

Then it is obviously untrue and pitching counts don't matter.

I'm not sure they do.

 

They do if a guy isn't conditioned for something, where a guy used to throwing 100 throws 130, but if holding everyone in the 100-110 range was really key to keeping guys healthy then there ought to be some decrease in the injury rate for these guys as these pitch counts have become more strictly enforced, and that's absolutely not been the case.

[Kyyle23]

When are you going to publish your findings and get all of these pitching coaches fired? Nobody knows what they are doing in the MLB

[Balta1701]

When are you going to publish your findings and get all of these pitching coaches fired? Nobody knows what they are doing in the MLB

It's not like I"m the only one pointing this out.

It took one day to remind us that nothing in baseball, not even Bud Selig, is more powerful than the almighty pitch count.

 

Roy Halladay, Johnny Cueto, Justin Verlander and Ryan Dempster all had allowed no runs as Opening Day starting pitchers Thursday while throwing no more than 108 pitches when their managers yanked them from the games. Only half of them earned wins.

 

Ten years ago, in 2002, Randy Johnson, Freddy Garcia and Livan Hernandez all threw at least 115 pitches on Opening Day. In a full decade of Opening Days since then, it's happened only once: Curt Schilling threw 117 pitches for Boston Way back on Opening Day '06.

 

How is it possible that in 10 years all 30 teams agree on the same one-size-fits-all philosophy when it comes to pitching? How could Johnson, Garcia and Hernandez -- all of whom compiled prolific careers -- do in one day what the entire industry could not do in the subsequent decade? And how could every organization agree on the same philosophy while pitchers do not remain healthier and leads are not better protected under this bowing down to the pitch count? What does it say about advances in nutrition, biomechanics, medicine and other sciences that pitchers have become less productive?

 

Part of the answer falls to the money and prestige clubs use to cater to their closers. Detroit is paying Jose Valverde $7 million to be a closer. His usage is nearly entirely predicated on an arbitrary statistic, the save. So Verlander gets pulled to justify the investment and to pamper the closer. The pitch count also is used as an insurance policy against charges of misusing a pitcher when and if he breaks down. This passive approach can be directly tied to the industry-changing injuries to Kerry Wood and Mark Prior after their breakout '03 seasons.

 

I'm not advocating that pitchers be left out there to wither. I am questioning the illogic of how every pitcher could be treated the same way by every organization.

 

If Halladay finishes Opening Day with a complete game and 115 pitches instead of 92, will Charlie Manuel be blamed if he breaks down later? Is Jonathan Papelbon angry if he doesn't get the ball in the ninth inning? Is the Philadelphia front office, which is paying Papelbon $11 million this year, upset if Manuel doesn't give him a ninth-inning save chance?

 

Groupthink has overrun modern usage of pitchers. Here is one more look at how quickly and universally the game has changed in a decade: consider how often pitchers have thrown 115 pitches on Opening Day by increments of a decade:

115 Pitches on Opening Day

Past Decade (2003-12) 1

Previous Decade (1993-2002) 25

Another

No one wants to admit it, but the modern bullpen is a failure and the modern conventional wisdom of training pitchers is a failure. The modern specialized bullpen does no better job protecting leads than the pitching usage that preceded it. And though closers, like pitchers of all types, work less often, they break down more often. What industry would accept these failure rates -- the way baseball does?

 

• Sixty-six percent of 2011 Opening Day closers (20 of 30) are no longer closing for the same team 12 months later, with seven of them hurt.

 

• Fifty percent of all starting pitchers will go on the DL every year, as well as 34 percent of all relievers, according to research by Stan Conte, director of medical services for the Los Angeles Dodgers. That bears repeating: half of all starting pitchers will break down this year. ("When I did the research," Conte said, "I was so surprised I figured I must have done the math wrong.")

 

• Injuries last year cost clubs $487 million -- or about $16 million per team. The bill since 2008 for players who can't play is $1.9 billion.

 

Yet baseball keeps doing things the same way. It is addicted to the "theater" of having a specialized closer and the "theory" that an arm has only so many pitches in it -- and that everybody's arm will be treated exactly the same way. And when the casualties keep piling up, baseball keeps going about it the same way. The sport is so flush with money even wasting half a billion dollars a year doesn't set off any alarms.

 

The incidence of injuries went down slightly in one brief period: the back end of the steroid era, when sophisticated, cutting-edge use of illegal performance-enhancers -- not the industrial-strength, gym-rat regimens of the early adopters -- were keeping people on the field and aiding in recovery. But since 2007 -- right after amphetamines joined steroids on the banned list -- the rate of injuries has not improved despite the advances in science, nutrition and training. Walk into any major league clubhouse before a game and you will see all kinds of strength trainers, masseuses, massage therapists, doctors, whirlpools, hydrotherapy pools, hot tubs, cold tubs, weight rooms, gyms ... and injured pitchers.

 

"That means this method is not working," Conte said. "Injuries have not gone down. With all due respect to the medical professionals, and they're great, we're not putting a dent in it."

 

Conte is finishing a research paper on pitchers who undergo a second Tommy John surgery, a topical issue because of the injuries to Wilson and Soria as well as an epidemic of elbow injuries this year. Sixty-six pitchers began this year on the DL, about the same as last year (68). But 53 percent of the injured pitchers this year suffered an elbow injury, a jump from 23 percent. (Conversely, the percentage of injured shoulders went down. "I'm not sure what it means," Conte said.)

 

Conte's research on Tommy John surgery shows that 85 to 90 percent of patients return to pitching. For repeat Tommy John patients, the news is not so good. Seven of 10 relievers who underwent a second Tommy John operation made it back while only one out of seven starters returned. The data is only now coming in.

 

Wilson and Soria are part of a new generation of Tommy John patients. Each underwent their first procedure in 2003, with their reconstructed elbows holding up for about eight years. Wilson was 21 and Soria was 19. Tommy John patients are getting younger and younger, and so we're just now finding out in helpful numbers how the elbow holds up through a full run of professional baseball.

 

Wilson's injury was not a surprise given his history, usage and pitching style. The Giants rode him hard to a world championship in 2010. He made 80 appearances, including the postseason, and was asked 19 times to get more than three outs. He racked up 54 saves and 85 1/3 innings. The next season he wasn't the same, and the red flag to people like Conte was that he was shut down at the end of the season with elbow pain for purposes of "rest."

 

Another red flag: Wilson wasn't throwing as hard. The guy who threw 97 in 2009 was down to 94 last year. A loss in peak velocity -- a loss of three or four miles per hour is very significant -- is a dead giveaway that something is wrong.

 

But was Wilson really worked that hard in 2010? It depends on your perspective. For a modern closer, and for the way Wilson was trained, yes. Wilson never worked more than 68 games before or since. The Giants pushed the usual conveniences of the modern closer because they played so many close games and because they had a chance to win the franchise's first championship since it relocated to San Francisco.

 

But when you look at how closers were handled 20 or 30 years ago, no, Wilson was not overused. What seems to make no sense is that closers are asked to pitch less but they break down more often. Here's an example: compare four-year runs at ages 26-29 for two famously bearded closers: Wilson and Jeff Reardon of the Montreal Expos:

Name Games Saves IP ERA

Jeff Reardon (1982-85) 272 111 375.2 2.76

Brian Wilson (2008-11) 258 163 264.1 3.00

 

Look at the major difference in innings. Reardon pitched until he was 38. He ranks seventh all time in saves and games finished.

 

Closers such as Reardon pitched multiple innings often (and were not "saved" for save situations only), so asking them to get four outs did not become the heavy lifting it is viewed as today. They had to pitch, not just throw as hard as they can with maximum-effort mechanics in very small, well-defined windows. Take a look at this to get an understanding of how the job has changed: by decade, it's the number of times a pitcher saved 25 games while throwing at least 81 regular season innings:

Years Occurrences

1980-89 64

1990-99 27

2000-09 21

2010-11 0

 

The role is devolving, not evolving. The past two seasons mark the first time since the save statistic became official in 1969 that nobody saved 25 games with 81 innings in back-to-back full seasons. Bailey, with the 2009 Athletics, is the only closer to do so in the past four years.

 

Managers are motivated by the save statistic, throwing three-out save chances to their closer like bones to a dog. The game universally has embraced this idea that a closer can't come in to a tie game on the road -- better to lose the game with a lesser pitcher than run your closer out there without a save in hand.

 

What makes this groupthink so crazy is that the system isn't working. Closers are breaking down or losing effectiveness faster than you can say Joel Zumaya. (Quick, look around baseball: show me the high velocity, high energy closer with the obligatory, goofy closer-hair starter kit who has a long career. The job has a bit of planned obsolescence to it.)

 

Clubs can find closers; it's keeping them in the job that is the tough part. Over the previous five seasons, 53 closers saved 25 games at least once. Thirty-three of them, or 62 percent, no longer are closing. Only five pitchers saved 25 games three times in the past five years and are still closing: Jose Valverde, Mariano Rivera, Jonathan Papelbon, Heath Bell and Joe Nathan (with the latter two off to shaky starts). Mostly, closers just come and go, or they break down and virtually disappear (Zumaya, B.J. Ryan, David Aardsma, Brandon Lyon, Kerry Wood, Bobby Jenks, etc.).

 

The truth is we know little about why and how pitchers break down, other than that overuse and poor mechanics are two known risk factors. That may be changing as information becomes more available. For instance, Pitch F/X, which has been around in full force for about four years, can allow the study of the impact of velocity and pitch type on injuries.

 

"We're heading into a new era," Conte said. "It's one of the offshoots of the sabermetric movement. We can look at data and make determinations. In the past, we didn't have similar data to compare different eras. The radar guns, for instance, tended to vary by three or four miles per hour."

 

The pitchers who throw especially hard or have one special wipeout pitch are the ones who are judged to have "closer's stuff." And so they are sent to the bullpen, essentially told to come up with facial hair and theme music, make WWE-style appearances and throw as hard as they can and only with the game on the line. Does that sound like a job with staying power?

 

In general, closers are inefficient investments. It's not just that they break down; Wilson, Soria, Madson, Bailey and Farnsworth will earn $30.2 million combined this year, whether they pitch or not. It's that paying a guy $12.5 million to throw 60 innings -- but, good Lord, not when the game is tied on the road and only when about half the plate appearances against him are truly high leverage -- is a waste of a great arm.

 

Is anybody watching the Tampa Bay Rays? They don't have the money to waste nor do they waste a valuable young starter in a closing role. The team with the fourth best record in baseball since 2008 has done just fine with five different pitchers leading the team in saves over those five years: Troy Percival, J.P. Howell, Rafael Soriano, Farnsworth and Fernando Rodney. Total cost: $15.8 million. And all of them, to varying degrees, have broken down.

 

Imagine if every team in the NFL used the same 3-4 defense. That's essentially what is happening in baseball. Everybody runs their bullpen and their pitch count policies the same way. Everybody. Justin Verlander on Monday night became the first pitcher to throw 120 pitches, hitting 133 and causing manager Jim Leyland to crack on the mound that he was going to get him fired.

 

And yet the universally accepted system is a failure when it comes to reducing the rate of injuries. What can change it? A maverick organization. (The Rangers and Giants are loosening pitch count restrictions in the minors, but the evidence is not yet very apparent in the majors.) A maverick manager. (Why won't somebody use a closer -- say Sean Marshall or Aroldis Chapman in Cincinnati -- in the manner of a 1980s closer such as Jeff Reardon? And my personal idea: give each starting pitcher a 10-day vacation during the season. Recovery, both mental and physical, is an undervalued asset.) Stem cell treatments. (Baseball better be bracing for a whole new series of ethical questions as science blurs the line between performance enhancing and performance enabling.)

 

Who knows what the future holds? Not even Tony LaRussa, the father of the modern bullpen, likely could have envisioned a pitcher limited to about 60 innings being worth more than $12 million while representing a breakdown waiting to happen. But this much is certain: the injury rate will not be reduced if teams continue to treat pitchers the same way they do now.

[flavum]

Porcelllo gave up 9 runs in 1+ inning in the first 2 innings of a doubleheader. Wear 'em out, Rangers.

[Big Hurtin]

Porcelllo gave up 9 runs in 1+ inning in the first 2 innings of a doubleheader. Wear 'em out, Rangers.

 

I know it's FAR too early to say this, but it looks like everyone else is playing for 2nd place in the AL. Texas looks scary good.

[caulfield12]

Napoli with six homers in 5 games.

 

And he hits 8th. Unreal. Verlander tonight versus the Rangers sets up as the "can't miss" game of the early season, as right now the Rangers sure look like the best team in baseball, and it's not really even that close.

[chw42]

Napoli with six homers in 5 games.

 

And he hits 8th. Unreal. Verlander tonight versus the Rangers sets up as the "can't miss" game of the early season, as right now the Rangers sure look like the best team in baseball, and it's not really even that close.

 

Good thing we got Napoli when he was cold. Holy crap he's on fire.

[Benchwarmerjim]

congrats on a perfect game.

[caulfield12]

Thanks, Jim.

 

 

Royals about to go to 0-8 at home.

 

Tigers/Rangers game down to the top of the 9th, 3-2 Tiggers.

 

Runners on 1st and 2nd, one out, Valverde struggling to close the deal. Andrus up.

 

 

Verlander has had horrible luck with games he's held the lead or left with a lead this year. 131 pitches his last start, needed 115 to get through the 6th tonight.

N. Feliz pitched a very good game but fell apart in the 4th and gave up the 3 runs (Delmon Young with the key hit to tie, then Santiago blew it open with another to make it 3-1, Rangers just scored in the 8th).

 

Raburn stabs a vicious line drive that was hit right on the button by Andrus that would have scored both runners. Cold/crisp air saves Valverde, but still has to face Josh Hamilton here.

 

Hamilton K's on a 2-2 splitter. Papa Grande also had to get Napoli, the hottest hitter in baseball in that inning to lead off.

Edited April 22, 2012 by caulfield12

[southsider2k5]

Iirc he started slow in 08 and was back to his normal self after the ASB.

 

I do believe that he is a freak of nature in the mold of Nolan Ryan, but Leyland really should stop playing with fire. I can't imagine that Verlander throwing 100mph on an arm that just went 130 pitches is good.

 

A lot of it is conditioning too. Most pitchers in the game today aren't conditioned to be the marathoners of the old days, like Ryan was. Verlander is about the only one who is pushed to that point, which is why he can handle it.

[fathom]

Smyly looks like he has a chance to be a solid starter for Tigers.

[iamshack]

Smyly looks like he has a chance to be a solid starter for Tigers.

He looks like a guy we'd struggle with a lot...

[Balta1701]

Texas takes a 3-2 lead in the 11th on a squeeze bunt that went off the guy's knee and should have been called foul.

[Balta1701]

Because he's not on the Tigers and you're in the wrong thread

 

(I got caught last week, so now I get someone)

[Quin]

Because he's not on the Tigers and you're in the wrong thread

 

(I got caught last week, so now I get someone)

 

LOL @ me.

 

Wow.

 

I'm just gonna remove those...

 

(but leave this)

[caulfield12]

Smyly looks like he has a chance to be a solid starter for Tigers.

 

#3 prospect in their system and seemingly has blown past Jacob Turner, which was a surprise coming into spring.

 

He doesn't do anything amazing stuffwise (see Fister), but he's been super solid three outings in a row, including the nice recovery today after giving up the solo homer to Josh Hamilton.

 

If you're going to give up a homer, it might as well be to one of the best players in the game (when healthy).

[Cali]

10 losses in a row for KC... Maybe next year they will be awesome... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year...

[caulfield12]

0-9 at home to boot, that's very very hard to do, even for the 1962 Mets or Astros of recent yore....or that one really bad Orioles team

 

 

But they can’t be this bad, can they?

If you’re a pessimist — and right now, who can blame you? — maybe you see one of the most disastrous starts in franchise history, a young team with higher expectations channeling something out of those dark, dark days of 100-loss seasons and embarrassing baseball from earlier this decade.

But here’s the thing: In the moments after the Royals’ 5-3 loss to the Blue Jays on Sunday afternoon at Kauffman Stadium, it was pretty easy to see the glass of blue Kool-aid nearly all-the-way empty.

Last week, Royals manager Ned Yost warned against panicking. After 10 straight losses, the mood is starting to change.

“You keep pushing,” Yost said. “If we need to make some moves, we’ll make some moves. But, again, we’re trying to stay away from that.”

Still, Yost added: “We can’t continue this.”

On a drab and overcast day, 58 degrees at first pitch, the Royals followed with a performance perfectly in line with the conditions. In the process, they dropped to 3-12 on the young season, the worst record in the majors and the worst 15-game opening to a season since a 2-13 start in 2006. It’s also the third-worst start in franchise history. (That 1-14 mark in 1992 still can’t be touched.)

“We’re only 15 games in; a lot of season left,” designated hitter Billy Butler cautioned. “It’s not even digging out of a hole. It’s not even enough games to be considered a hole yet.

“We finished 32 games under .500 last year. That’s a hole. That’s when you dig yourself a hole. We’re not there yet.”

In truth, the Royals finished just 20 games under .500 last season. (The last time they finished 32 games under was 2009.) But Butler’s point remains. The Royals may have also dropped to 0-9 at home, tying the single-season record for most consecutive home losses, set May 19-June 7 in 2006. But it’s still only April. Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/04/22/35702...l#storylink=cpy

Edited April 23, 2012 by caulfield12

[LittleHurt05]

10 losses in a row for KC... Maybe next year they will be awesome... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year... or next year...

 

LOL @ KC. The more some things change, the more some stay the same.

[southsider2k5]

LOL @ KC. The more some things change, the more some stay the same.

 

The Royals are the ultimate dick tease.

[Steve9347]

The Royals are the ultimate dick tease.

Not really. You just have to learn to not get all hot and bothered by them. I mean, come on, and I state this every year when someone starts getting a hard on for their potential - they're the Royals.

[caulfield12]

Baseball hell is a gorgeous night and mostly empty stadium for a team everyone figured would at least be interesting and entertaining and occasionally promising. These Royals are none of those things, of course, at least not yet, and the effect is something like your car breaking down on the way to the party.

The sound bite for now is that the Royals just became the first team to lose 10 straight games at home since 1913, the same year a new constitutional amendment allowed the government to collect federal income tax.

Building the Greatest Farm System In The History of Upright Man is apparently no cure for historic stink, and the Royals deserve every bit of venom you can muster for a franchise that’s been a ubiquitous letdown for most of the last two decades.

 

Ned Yost says this is “phase two,” when player development makes way for winning, and the marketing folks sure haven’t helped with an #OurTime campaign that’s grown to be embarrassing.

 

This is the team we’ve been waiting on for six years of Dayton Moore’s planning, the one we’ve thought about watching for the next six years, and the one that right now looks a whole lot like 2006.

 

Only worse.

 

The Royals are again the laughingstock of baseball and the sport’s worst team, and for now that hurts more because this year was supposed to be different.

 

It’ll hurt much more later because these last two weeks of failure have consequences far greater than making a push at .500 this summer.

 

 

 

The first snapshot of baseball hell is Eric Hosmer — long face, straight glare and no smile — getting ready for a players-only meeting with a group of guys who haven’t won together since a rain-shortened game in Oakland two weeks ago.

Hosmer says he quit Twitter because “it’s just not important” and he only wants to play baseball. But a meeting is about to start, one where Jeff Francoeur will do all the talking and tell the guys to just keep playing hard, so Hosmer has to get going.

 

“This is something we’ve talked about in the clubhouse,” he says. “We’re focused just on winning games. All that other stuff, that’s something we can’t control.”

 

Hosmer does his part, actually. He homered down the left-field line — scouts always loved his ability to hit to the opposite field — and beat an infield shift with a bunt single. Mike Moustakas, Hosmer’s brother in Mission 2012 arms, hit a double and a single and made three highlight plays at third base.

 

The future may well be bright, still. But right now, it’s tough to see through a windshield covered in manure.

“These last 10 or 11 games have felt like a lifetime, I’m not going to lie to you,” Yost says. “It’s felt like three summers, this home stand alone. But you can’t get caught up in 10 or 11 games over the course of a 162-game season.”

 

The second snapshot of baseball hell is a man you’ve probably never heard of trying to take blame for the marketing campaign that’s gone straight into the sewer.

 

“I’ll own it,” Joe Loverro is saying.

 

He is the producer for the Royals’ television broadcasts, and maybe this is part of the job description. “Our Time” wasn’t his idea. Someone in marketing thought it up before Loverro came to Kansas City, but, as he says, “I definitely took some license and ran with it.”

 

The TV broadcasts have pulled back some on #OurTime, you might’ve noticed. Loverro says he doesn’t want to lose credibility, but the damage is done, especially as the club continues to roll out the videos at the stadium and the commercials on the broadcasts.

 

The whole thing might’ve worked just fine, in an alternative reality where the Royals weren’t playing the role as one of the city’s all-time sports buzzkills. “Our Time” was supposed to be a rallying cry. Now, it’s more like a reason to cry.

 

“The Our Time stuff,” Francoeur says, “if I could go back, I’d try to nip that in the bud.”

 

The third snapshot of baseball hell is a game that might best be summed up by the man sitting in perhaps the stadium’s best seat behind the plate reading a book.

 

Out in the right-field seats, someone dressed up as a character from a video game starts the wave. In the upper deck, a group fills a nearly empty stadium with organized and loud chants about bananas, and can you blame people for finding ways to entertain themselves?

 

On the field, the Royals’ performance is best represented by a failed sacrifice bunt in the third inning, a bad idea executed poorly, and there’s a pretty good metaphor in there somewhere.

 

The Royals went zero for 10 with runners in scoring position. This is a group of winners, we’ve all been told, guys who won’t stand for failure, who’ve won at every level they’ve ever played but must be feeling a bit like adolescents sent to fight grown men.

 

It wasn’t supposed to be relevant that Hosmer and Moustakas have never lost this many games in a row, not even close.

“We’re going to figure this out,” Moustakas tells reporters in the same clubhouse where many men have stood before in front of reporters and spoken optimistic words during long losing streaks.

 

 

The last snapshot of baseball hell is general manager Dayton Moore in a bright white shirt and Royal-blue tie standing in front of the cameras trying to preach optimism. He knows a lot of you have tuned this team out.

 

The Royals are clinging to what is either unshakable faith or outright denial, one of the two, and nothing tells the story quite like the moment Francoeur interrupts my conversation with Moore.

 

The general manager is talking about the benefit of a young team working through adversity, and how he told owner David Glass back in December that the team might get off to a slow start.

 

He’s even saying that if I could talk to Mrs. Moore, she’d tell me her husband is handling this losing streak better than any they’ve had in Kansas City. That’s about when Francoeur walks by.

 

“I’ve got something good for you,” he says. “Wait and see where we are at the end of May. That’s my quote.”

 

These are the kinds of things you hear around this team, faith or denial, either way, and this is how they will try to keep this from being the most disappointing season in the history of a franchise that’s taught its fans to measure such things.

We’ll see soon enough if it works, but for now, there’s a bigger point. Because no matter what happens the rest of the summer, the Royals have lost something very real and completely irreplaceable.

 

They had an opportunity here, one for which they’ve spent millions of dollars on amateur players and waited six years of drafting and developing to seize. That opportunity is largely gone now, an April party of anticipation that turned into anger and frustration with shocking speed — even by the Royals’ standards.

 

What we’re left with is more than bad baseball, more than an awkward marketing slogan and more than a mostly empty stadium booing the home team off the field.

 

For a lot of reasons, this franchise relies more heavily on ticket sales than most and with Mission 2012 and the All-Star Game the Royals expected more than 2 million fans for what would be the first time in 1991.

 

Losing the first 10 home games is an awfully good way to keep from doing that, and if the Royals can’t take advantage of a precious chance to generate revenue along with what already feels like old excitement, then they’ve lost much more than a few games.

 

They’ve lost an opportunity that isn’t coming back.

 

“I said that very thing to (a fellow team executive) the other day,” Moore says. “We’ve got to win games. Because we can’t lose our fans for the summer.”

 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/04/23/35726...l#storylink=cpy

[caulfield12]

completed an almost unfathomable 0-10 home stand, which now occupies a slice of big-league history.

 

Only one other team has opened the season by losing its first 10 home games — and that was 99 years ago when the New York Yankees did it when, heck, they were in their first year of being known as the Yankees.

 

Those Yankees, previously tagged as the Highlanders, lost their first 10 home games before managing a tie (yes, really) against Boston. New York then lost its next seven home games before breaking through with a 3-2 victory over the White Sox.

 

So while those Yankees didn’t win until their 18th home game, they only lost their first 10. Now, the Royals are at 10 losses and counting after a series of crushing failures to execute with runners in scoring position.

 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/04/23/35725...l#storylink=cpy

[caulfield12]

Scherzer getting ripped up by the Mariners at home....

 

Royals in danger of losing yet another game, this time to the Indians in CLE.