Kansas City Royals

Juan Cruz is really bad right now. Seriously. Very, very, very bad. Even by the Royals-of-the-21st-century standards, he's going really bad right now. You can see it in these numbers: 22 innings, 22 earned runs, 12 walks, 28 hits since May 21.

Or you can see is in this anecdote: after his latest bomb last night, two guys who follow the Royals and know baseball said some variation of, "Cruz has to be hurt, right?" But there has to be some reason that Cruz has gone from electric, dominating, overpowering 8th inning guy -- he struck out 158 batters in 112 2/3 innings the last two seasons in Arizona -- to something more resembling Albie Lopez. There just has to be something, right? Something other than manager Trey Hillman's assertion that it's just location?

Mellinger's Blog

Royals’ skid hits eight as they lose doubleheader

I'd like to get a collection of these type of scouting reports going. If you come across any scouting reports for prospects, post em, shoot me an email or pm, something. The more the merrier.

SUMMARY: Still on course to become solid every day major league player with All-Star abilities in best years; grades as a definite prospect. Should have 20 HR power. Can’t teach hands and ability to drive ball; smokes balls he gets to. Will probably be pitched consistently away as ML hitter; needs to make that adjustment but see no reason why he should not.

Baseball Beginnings

Yet, another guy I wouldn't touch this season.

Alex Gordon went 1-for-4 with one strikeout in his return to the Royals lineup. He had been on the DL since April after undergoing a labrum repair in his right hip. For the next month, expect Gordon to play two or three games a week while hitting in the bottom half of the order as he regains his comfort level at the dish. AL-only managers want to snag him now, while mixed leaguers will want to keep an eye on his progress. If he strings together a few multi-hit games with a handful of doubles, jump on the opportunity to stash him on your bench.

Quentin Activated; Reyes’ Return is Distant

Lots opinion here ..

Betancourt does nothing well on a baseball field. He can't hit and has lost bat speed since reaching the majors. He hacks at everything he sees, and even swings at pitches thrown to other hitters. He has next to no range at short. And he never hustles on anything -- not balls hit in his direction, not ground balls he might have a chance to beat out (well, before he let himself go physically). Other than all that, he's Honus Wagner.

Keith Law

H0rt, if you are reading this, now would be the time to trade Zack. His value will never be higher. ever. never. Sell, sell, sell.

Zack Greinke is about half way through the 2009 MLB season and to date he has been worth 5.5 wins. He is roughly on pace to accumulate 11 wins. As a pitcher. In the last four years, no pitcher has broken past the eight win mark. Since 2002, the first year our win values start, the highest recorded mark is Randy Johnson’s 9.9 wins in 2004.

In fact, aside from Grienke’s fabulous season, Tim Lincecum is also on pace to better Johnson’s mark. With 5.1 wins so far, he is set up to squeak by with 10.2 wins in total, but that is another time and post. From 2004-7, Greinke averaged about a 7.2% swinging strike rate. He improved that to 9.0% last year and is at 10.1% so far in 2009. Those extra missed bats have allowed Greinke to significantly raise his strikeout rate, up above 25% of all batters faced this year.

FanGraphs Baseball

Chris Davis Had a Hard Time Making Contact

Every day I come across another Newspaper blog that is using modern metrics. There is hope for the industry after all.

Hochevar pitched another nice game tonight. That makes four perfectly acceptable-to-very-good games out of his last five. You hate to get too excited (been there, done that), but imagine if he can remain consistent along with Greinke and Meche! Royals’ fans can’t exactly be compared to Cubs’ fans, but in our little world, hope springs eternal.

Here are Luke’s starts this season in chronological order. As I have discussed before, the simplest way to evaluate the game performance is by Game Score. He had a 71 tonight – his second highest of the season.

Upon Further Review

Love me some Jimmy Scott.

Jerry Seinfeld once had a joke, based on truth. He said that the #1 fear of Americans was speaking in public. #2 was death. "So you'd rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy."

This isn't a hypothetical. In 2006, Kansas City Royals pitcher Zack Geinke was diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. And on June 29th of this year, St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Khalil Greene was placed on the 15-day disabled list with the same thing. Each player deals with the disorder differently. In Greinke's case, he said performing in front of 30,000 people isn't the hard part. "Talking about it is."

When they don't have a handle on their minds and emotions, they can't perform. They can't do what they've trained themselves to do for 20+ years. They can't throw. They can't hit. They can't catch. Greinke's teammate Brian Bannister suggested, half-jokingly, that Greinke might have pitched badly sometimes just so he wouldn't have to deal with the pressures of success.

So how do you get better? How do you overcome this? First, you need time. It can take years to change the way you think; the way you deal with certain situations. You need counseling and time to talk (ironic that you may have a fear of speaking yet that's one of the only ways to cure yourself). You could take medication too. The most important thing, however, is time. Zack Greinke was diagnosed in 2006 with Social Anxiety Disorder. It took until the end of the 2008 season for him to finally start to master his game. For Greene, it's likely going to take a lot longer than 15 days.

Jimmy Scott's High & Tight

Lately it seems that everybody I talk to is really down on Mike Jacobs. The guy can't run. The guy can't hit lefties. The guy can't hit breaking stuff. The guy can't field. An so on. All of this is more or less true, of course. The thing is, no one should have been surprised by this. When the Royals made this trade, there was noise about how they had seen some things that Jacobs could work on and Seitzer would turn him around, etc. And in the spring, they worked hard at getting Jacobs to improve his approach.

He is what he is. He's Mike Jacobs and no one should be surprised by anything he does. If you thought he was going to become sort of a middle of the lineup anchor, you're as crazy as the governor of South Carolina.

Jacobs has a .585 OPS against lefties. Big shock -- he's at .670 for his career. He's got a .314 on-base percentage. I'm stunned. His career number is .317. His strikeout-to-walk ratio is 2.8. Go figure. For his career, it's 2.8. Again, Mike Jacobs is Mike Jacobs. He is a guy that can DH against certain kinds of right-handed pitchers. No more. The Royals will become a lot more successful when they start acquiring players based on what they are, instead of what they think they can become.

Upon Further Review

So Trey Hillman pulled a La Russa tonight and hit Zack Greinke eighth. It’d didn’t backfire on him, nor did it help much. Both Greinke and Mitch Meier, who hit ninth, were 0-for-3. Greinke had a good night on the mound though, pitching eight strong innings and picking up his ninth win of the season.

After Billy Butler crushed a solo home run in the third inning to give the Royals a 2-1 lead, I didn’t think it would hold up, but it did. Greinke didn’t have great control of his fastball, but he was able to get outs when he needed them. And the defense wasn’t horrible behind him. At least they didn’t commit any errors.

Joakim Soria wasn’t exactly stellar in the ninth inning. He gave up a single to Miguel Tejada and another single to Lance Berkman. But he got two big strikeouts and a ground out to end the game.

Royal Reflections

Torn labrum ends season for Crisp

The most puzzling part of the nosedive has been — at least by his standards — Greinke’s slump and the Royals’ 0-4 record in his last four starts. Greinke has thought plenty about that. He doesn’t have a sure answer, only ideas. Wasn’t too long ago he was the Sports Illustrated cover boy, the hottest story in baseball. He is still in the midst of a remarkable season, 8-3 with a 1.96 ERA overall, but his ERA is 5.68 and opposing hitters are slugging .519 off him in his last three starts.

“Two games I didn’t pitch (inside) enough,” he says, still shuffling those cards. “But when you’re going good, everything seems to work. That’s kind of how it was early on. I could do stupid stuff and it would just work. Now, when I make a mistake, they capitalize on it. “That’s how normal pitching is.”

Kansas City Star