The Blame Game

So I keep watching the Royals, and I will continue to watch the Royals, but I keep noticing something that I think a lot of people are getting wrong. Everyone, analysts included, keeps saying how the Royals' starting pitching has been their Achilles tendon. Now, I'm not saying that the starting pitching has been great, but I think that the blame placed on many of our starters has been incorrect. Now, I know what you're thinking: 'this guy's crazy, look at the starters' ERA's!' And, frankly, you'd be right. Our lowest ERA for a starter is Jimmy Gobble at 4.32, but most of that was out of the pen. So our lowest full time starter ERA belongs to Mark Redman with a 5.27. This is definitely not Cy Young material in any league. But, the Royals can't ask for Cy Young stuff from their pitchers... We're not there yet. As a team at the bottom of the league we have to make small steps. That means that all we can hope to ask of our pitching staff is to keep the opposing team within striking distance so that our offense, which has moments of brilliance, can score just enough for a win.

I know that you're all still wondering where in God's green earth I am going here, because the pitching is still bad, really bad. What I want you to do is look back at the first few starts of all of our pitchers (don't look at Joe Mays or Mark Redman; they're the exceptions). What were the problems in those games? It was one of two things: offense or bullpen. Really, we have gotten some quality outings from our starting pitchers when they stepped on the field the first few times. Again, we're not talking Cy Young, we're talking work-horse: give me 7 innings or so without giving the game away, pitching. What happened is this: our starters game us a good outing, an outing we could work with, and then the offense forgot that they have to actually score runs to win or the bullpen forgot that they play baseball and that they are supposed to get people OUT, not loft meatballs so thick and juicy that even the strictest vegan couldn't resist tearing through a platefull with the bloodlust of a T-Rex. I mean, look at Elarton's first 3 or 4 starts... How did he not kill a single teammate?!? He should have won at least, and I mean AT LEAST, 2 of those. It's tough to throw 7 scoreless innings and still lose. And what about poor Bobby Keppel? This guy goes out and throws a shutout into the ninth (and if my memory serves me, he only gave up a couple of hits) and still gets saddled with the loss!

Which brings me to why we cannot blame the starters for their poor performances now. When you go out and throw a gem and still lose, you lose confidence in those around you. When that happens, and any analyst with any sense at all will tell you this, you start to try to do it all by yourself. You start to over-analyze hitters and over-throw pitches. You think that if you don't throw a perfect game with 27 strikeouts there ain't no way your team is going to be able to get you the win. It becomes immensely frustrating and it is tough to correct once you get to that point. So, take a look at our starters now. Those who are struggling (and started earlier in the year) all seem to be leaving the ball up... Why? Because they are trying to add extra velocity to insure that they can strike guys out, because they have no confidence in their offense, or their bullpen. Now, the irony in all of this is that by leaving balls up batters are just going to send the ball into a different zip code, and that our offense and even at times our bullpen are starting to come to life. They just showed up to late for our starters. My only hope is that they can get themselves on the same page as everyone else and come out with all cylinders firing, then maybe we can turn this season around and start moving this franchise in the right direction.

brandx