Royals Win Monday, Don't Lose Tuesday

Ah, a day off to bask in the 1-0 record. The defeat of the future Hall of Famer, the justification (for one start at least) of the huge Gil Meche contract. Life is good on April 3rd, 2007, for Royals fans.

1-0 is a ridiculous thing to be excited about...but I am. Hey, I'm a Royals fan--a game over .500 is pretty damned good. Even if it is only one game. Of 162. That's .00617 percent. It's like a K-State basketball fan getting excited because they're up on KU by a bucket, 15 seconds into the game. But as a Royals fan, you've got to take what you can get -- especially lately.

I was shocked to realize that this win actually makes the Royals 19-19 all-time on opening day, because it seems like they always lose the opener. So I had to do some other research at baseballrace.com to confirm that, even though they don't lose every opener, they do pretty much suck every April. First I have to say that in 2003 the Royals got off to a fantastic start, they were 17-4 at one point, and that start almost carried them to a playoff berth, but injuries and a lack of pitching, and injuries to pitchers took their toll. Anyway 2003 happened, I know it happened, but it's hard to believe it happened because the Royals just don't play well in April.

According to Buster Olney (gotta be an Insider) the Royals have the toughest April schedule in MLB. Great, just what this franchise needs--even more reason to struggle out of the gate. 20 of their 27 games are against teams that finished over .500 last year. (The Royals were 62-100.)

I decided to see what the Royals record has been over the last several seasons after 27 games:

2006: 7-20
2005: 7-20
2004: 8-19
2003: 18-9
2002: 8-19
2001: 10-17
2000: 13-14
1999: 12-15
1998: 12-15
1997: 13-14
1996: 9-18
1995: 13-14
1994: 14-13

1994 was the first year of the Wildcard. So, semi-randomly taking 27 games as the measure--since that's how many April games they have this season--they've managed a winning record only twice! Once thirteen years ago--by one game!

And the Royals don't stop in April, oh no. The Royals just keep tanking. With the exception--again--of that beautiful, wonderful, hard-to-believe-it-ever-happened 2003 season, where they actually finished with a winning record (they finished third in that Shangri-La of a year) the Royals just keep plummeting.

One more list for you--how quickly they fall 20 games out of first place. I'm going to do this one in reverse chronological order, because 2006 was so spectacular. In '98 the Royals had a good season, by their recent standards, and finished 3rd in the Central, 16.5 games back. I'll use that year as a jumping off point.

In '99 they were 20 games out after 80 games.
in 2000, it took 152 to fall 20 games out.
In 2001, only 86.
In 2002, 104.
In 2003 -- another third place finish baby!
In 2004, it took 98 games to fall 20 back.
in 2005, they were 20 games back after playing just 50 games.

But in 2006 they were incredible. They managed to be 20 games out of first on the 23rd of May. Their 43rd game of the season.

It's hard to believe that any team has ever fallen 20 games back quicker. Of course, mathematically you could do it in 20 games. But you'd not only need to lose 20 straight, another team in your division would have to win 20 straight. The Royals really did their part, though, going 10-33. 10-33! And not only that, in their historic Plummet to Twenty, they put together an 11 game losing streak to get to the mark. And they added two more losses right after that--a 13 game losing streak. Detroit chipped in as well, going 31-14 (It takes two tango--but, then again, they had only a one game lead over Chicago at that point).

In 2005 the Royals were pretty pathetically spectacular--20 games back by May 29, but 2006, that was really one for the ages. Needless to say, those kinds of starts don't do much for attendance. Especially when you're out of it--and I mean way out of it--before school's out, and families start looking for things to do with their free time.

And that's all the Royals need to do this year--be reasonably competitive until school's out. Give the fans something to hope for, because hope has really been lost for...well, since divisional play. Right now there is some excitement--Alex Gordon looks like he could be the second coming of George Brett. Mark Teahen was their best player last year, he moved to rightfield to accommodate Gordon--and didn't even complain! And, of course, a free agent cashed in on a big payday with the Royals. Does Meche deserve the money--who cares? For all the critics who complain he's merely a league average pitcher, I can only say, after watching game after mind-numbing game, league average pitching would be like a cool waterfall on a hot August day. Sure, I hope he does better than that, but average would be a huge improvement on what Royal fans are used to.

Quick takes on Game One:

Top of the first Grudzielanek singles to right with one out, then Teahen singles up the middle but Grud falls while making his turn to round second and so can't get to third. Then Sweeney lasers a single to JD Drew in Right and Grudzielanek can't score. The ball was hit too sharply, got to Drew too quickly. If Grud had just not fallen trying to round second, he would have scored on Sweeney's single. And I'm thinking here we go again. But after Schilling K'd a battling Alex Gordon, Ryan Shealy worked a walk. Only the 2nd walk with the bases jacked that Schilling has given up since 2004. And even though it was the only run the Royals were able to push across in the first, at least it was the run that misfortune seemed to have cost them. And that's not how things have been going the last few years.

Gordon looked great. Oh for three, two strikeouts, hit by a pitch, an error that was scored a hit and still he looked great.

Tony Pena, Jr. crushed two balls -- which is about how many people expected him to crush all season. He almost missed out on his second triple of the day by not busting ass out of the batters box, though. It was strange, he wasn't in a home run trot, but you would think after hitting one triple, he would have been thinking triple again once the ball started sailing toward the left-center gap. Kauffman Stadium is a great place for triples, he should get a few more--other teams won't be playing him deep.

In the fifth, with lefty Javier Lopez, Buddy Bell opted to let Ross Gload hit. But he didn't hit, he made an out. Gload is the somewhat surprising platoon partner with Emil Brown. Brown's unsurprisingly not happy about getting the short end of a platoon after leading the team in RBI last season--and he really can't be happy about Gload staying in there vs. the lefty. I realize it was only the fifth, but Brown hits righties pretty well. He hits lefties for more power but gets on base better vs. the right.

Meche taking the mound in the eighth. Joe Posananski, the great columnist for the KC Star did a live diary on his blog and wondered in the moment if it was just so Buddy could pull him after his warm-up pitches and let Meche have the applause. But it wasn't.

Meche had thrown 96 pitches through seven, so it figured he was done (especially on opening day). But Buddy Bell knew how bad it was last year, he was there for some ugly times and he knew the bullpen was eminently capable of blowing that game--especially with Octavio Dotel out for the next few games. (Side note: there is no team in the majors who tease you with the, "He should be fine, we're being extra cautious, he'll probably be available day after tomorrow" type of injury than the Royals. Mike Sweeney has seemingly spent this century one day away from being ready to play.)

Anyway, it's the eighth inning, Meche is dealing, they'd knocked Schill around--I can totally see Bell regarding it as a "must win" at that point. Saying, "Let's send Meche out there until he lets someone on." And Meche managed one more out before Pedroia singled--and then Meche got his applause, a standing O.

And then Joel Peralta did his best Joe Nathan imitation. He stuck out David Ortiz with two on and two out in the eighth, and during that Ortiz at-bat, you really got the feeling it was the ballgame. That if Ortiz crushed one, then the Royals were going to blow it--despite the fact that it was 7-1 at the time.

It felt like the Bartman moment. If something bad happened right there, then despite the lead--and the worst Ortiz could have done is make it 7-4--the Royals would have been caught in a vortex of loserdom, and gotten sucked right down into its stinky bowels.

But Peralta K'd Ortiz, (just like Grudzielanek scored after falling down), and, for a day at least, Royals fans can have some hope that this will be a season free of sucking vortexes and stinky bowels.