Please Don't Break, Alex; And Robinson Time

Can we set an over/under on how many days before he goes on the DL?  I mean, God bless him for how hard he’s playing.  But he’s just not a guy that can hold up to that many face-first dives.  How many of those has he made in the outfield so far?  And how many has he made sliding into second?  Feet first, my man.  Feet first, please.

Did you see the play he made on Monday hustling out an infield grounder?  We lost the game—it was all for naught.  But he hit a grounder (to 2^nd, I believe) and hoofed it hard down the line.  The 2^nd baseman made ha half-@$$ throw over to first and pulled the first basement off the bag, towards the catcher-side of the baseline.  He reached to tag Alex, but Alex made a sliding-evasive move to miss the tag and reach is finger tips far enough to barely touch first, making it a “reached on error.”   I seriously thought his arm was going to pop out of the socket, the way he went down on that.

Now, that still counts as an “out,” as far as his batting average is concerned.  9 out of 10 players likely would have just left it at that.  BUT that’s not the way he plays baseball.  God love him, but it’s going to cost him someday soon.

In any case, he had an awesome diving catch in the 9^th to effectively save the game.  Earlier, he already saved the game with an outstanding outfield assist at the plate—picture perfect.  Low throw, gave Pena a nice long bounce that him catch it 3 inches off the ground, a foot in front of the plate, and the runner was TOAST.  It was Alex’ American League-leading 4^th outfield assist of the season.  The guy is just OWNING left field like he’s played it for years.

WHILE WE’RE TALKING ABOUT DEFENSE…..I’m done with Kila altogether.  His bat has been practically worthless, and I see nothing in his three partial major league seasons to suggest it’s going to get hot all of the sudden.  He’s currently 6^th in the AL in strikeouts, and even his 9 walks aren’t enough to help his line.

But he’s playing because he’s, supposedly, a better defender than Butler.  I haven’t seen it.  I’ve seen him drop routine throws to first.  I’ve seen him TWICE this week fail to scoop playable short-hops that BOTH ended up costing the Royals runs (in the case of Monday, it greatly contributed to the Royals losing the game).

My buddy in the office and I were talking about this just yesterday, and he had a good idea:  Clint Robinson.  What more do we need to see out of Kila?  I’ve seen enough.  It probably isn’t time to bring up Hosmer yet, but why not give Robinson a shot to show that he might have some value in the bigs for us or somebody else?  Might as well—he’s not going to do any worse than Kila with the stick.  In fact, he’s OWNING AAA ball to the same degree he owned the Texas League, where he won the offensive triple crown a year ago.

With Robinson, you know he’s not going to be able to play the bag often, but Billy is serviceable enough to run out there.  He couldn’t be much worse than Kila lately, and I mean that in all sincerity.  And if you need a defensive replacement, you’ve got the “Gordon to first” shift.  Or you have Betemit out there.  You have options.

There isn’t going to be a more perfect time to give Robinson his shot.  When Hosmer is ready, it’s going to be Hosmer/Butler in the 1B/DH spots for a long, long time.  If we’re ever going to have the chance to prove Robinson is worth something, now is the time.

Is The Corner Too Hot For Moose?

This is all very early, but down in Omaha, you’ve got Robinson and Hosmer tearing the cover off the ball.  Good for them!  No surprises there.  The bad news, though, is not just that Moose is off to a very slow start at the plate (he does that sometimes), but that he’s been booting the ball around the field at an EXTREMELY alarming rate.  He’s on pace for 60 to 70 errors at this point—OUCH!

When the Royals drafted Moose as a shortstop, there was a not-uncommon thought that his defense was always going to be a question mark, and that he’d eventually become a first baseman.  The Royals are giving him every chance to make it at 3^rd, because there’s no disputing the arm is a cannon.  And if there’s one position where we don’t need ANYBODY, it’s at 1B/DH.

But if he’s not going to be able to handle the hot spot, the time to get him to start working in the outfield has to be SOON.  He clearly has a “right fielder” type of arm, although the speed is obviously going to be a concern out there.

The bottom line is that he’s gonna need to figure out what’s going on at the plate if he still hopes to make any kind of contribution to the major league ball club this season.  With the way Betemit is hitting so far, there really is no need to shove a guy into 3^rd any time soon.  It’s basically all on Moose—the Royals want him up here this year, but I’m sure they’ll be perfectly fine with leaving him down until he proves he’s ready. 

Very interesting.  If I had to guess, with the way that Kila is generally floundering away his last chance to be a major leaguer so far this year, I’d say the likelihood that Hosmer laps Moose to make it to the big leagues first is about 75% at this point.  Good for Hosmer—he deserves it.  But that would have to be a little disappointing for Moose, I would think.

Hopefully it will all work itself out.  Meanwhile, we’ve got ourselves an interesting little series starting today with the OTHER quick-starting American League team that nobody expected anything out of.  I like the idea that the Indians are the only team ahead of us in the Central.  It goes to show (at least in a small sample) that “being competitive in the division with inferior competition” isn’t necessarily a fluke.  Perhaps one of the two of us can remain competitive, and if so, why not us?

I have a feeling that this series will serve as a bit of a reality check for where the Royals are going to go this season.

Why Mess With a Good Thing?

Yost is giving Gordon the day off tonight.  Let me ask:  Would you do that in the middle of a 9-game hitting streak?  I don’t think I would.

Here’s the thing:  Yost wants to give each of his three outfielders a day off over the next 3 days.  He wants to sit Gordon tonight and let Maier play.  The other two will sit, one at a time, on Saturday and Sunday, and Dyson will play for them.

Here’s why I think this is a bad idea.  Tomorrow is a throwaway game anyway.  I don’t care how bad the M’s offense is.  O’Sullivan is going to make them look like the frickin’ ’61 Yankees.  It’s OK—we all know we don’t have a 5^th starter.  We don’t really have a 4^th starter, to be honest.  Any kind of wins we can pull with Steaming Pile Davies and Survivor’s Russell Hantz—er—Sean O’Sullivan on the mound are complete accidents.  O’Sullivan starts are PERFECT opportunities to rest your stars (or at least the players who qualify as “stars” for the Royals.  It’s relative).

So knowing we’re going to lose tomorrow, and understanding that there’s still going to be a relatively large Saturday crowd, regardless of who’s playing (it is replica road jersey night, after all), then Friday night’s game becomes a must-win for the series.  You don’t want to head into Sunday down 1-2 against the worst team in baseball.  Failing to win the series with the M’s could be the first momentum killer that sends the 2011 Royals into the tailspin we all assume is going to come, sooner or later.

I’d like to delay that as long as possible, please.  As my good buddy, Greg, texted me yesterday, “It’s so nice not to be out of it on Tax Day.”

BY THE WAY….Really quick here on Ichiro, since the M’s are in town.  I’ve always sort of had a bit of a small man-crush on Ichiro.  I’ve MOSTLY transferred that over to Alcides Escobar’s glove (you can only have so many baseball man-crushes going on at the same time, and I’ve seemingly-foolishly held onto my one for Alex Gordon too long to let it go now that it’s starting to look less foolish).  But I still appreciate Ichiro’s game.

Now, for a lead-off guy, Ichiro doesn’t get on base or score runs at a shockingly-high rate.  But he’s going to get into the Hall of Fame because he plays an historically good defensive outfield, and he’s historically unique (one of a kind) and gathering hits.  I keep expecting the wheels to fall off at some point.  I expect something to happen that affects his speed to the point where he goes from 200+ hits in a year to 150 the next.  I thought maybe 2009 was the year, when he opened the season on the DL.  But it didn’t happen.  Before yesterday’s game, he was hitting about .240, so I thought maybe he was slowing down.  He didn’t look slow yesterday, by golly.  There aren’t more than 3 or 4 players in the HISTORY of baseball that were going to beat out that amazing play that Escobar (man-crush) made up the middle.  But Ichiro was safe.

If he does manage to get to 200 hits this year, he will become not only the first person to get 200 in each of his first 11 seasons, or the first person to have 11 200-hit seasons in a row, but he becomes the first person to have 11 200-hit seasons PERIOD.

The only thing to wonder about Ichiro now is whether he’ll play long enough to get his 3,000^th Major League hit.  He’ll almost certainly fly past 2,400 this year, MAYBE approach get within 30 or so of 2,500.  But he’s 37, coming up on 38.  Again, the wheels are gonna fall of some time, and it’s difficult for me to imagine him hanging around long after he becomes an “average” fielder or hitter.  And he’s an OLD 37—his rookie year in the States was his 9^th year of professional baseball.

Now, I’m NOT one of those who spends a lot of time thinking about his hits in Japan and combining them with his MLB hits, or any of that nonsense.  After all, Japanese baseball is AAA level, at best.  And they play a shorter season, so there’s not an apples-to-apples comparison anyway. 

But I do lament the fact that he WASN’T playing in the States those 8 years, for the simple reason that I’d like to see SOMEBODY knock Pete Rose off the all-time hits chart.  I think Ichiro would have done it if he comes into the majors at 20 or 21 in stead of 27 or 28.

I mean, in 8 years in Japan, he averaged about 122 games a year and about 160 hits a year.  I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t have averaged AT LEAST 175 a year over that time in the States—longer schedule, for one, and he’s averaged some 220 for the 10 years he’s been here.  At that kind of a number, Ichiro would be sitting somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,800 hits as I sit and type this.

That’s a mere 400-500 short of Rose.  Even with BAD Ichiro seasons, he would easily blow past the record by the time he turns 40, and could conceivably put it so far out of reach that no one would ever think of approaching it.

But as it is, we have to appreciate Ichiro for the time we had him with us, and continue to marvel at the best hit “creator” of all time.

Royals Notes: 4/1

Torture for Gordo 

 

I was begging for that ball to stay fair.  I watched the second half of the game on my DVR last night.  When Gordon hit that shot to left with 2 on in the bottom of the 9^th, I literally got out of my chair and charged the TV.  What better way to start the year (on a night when hits were scarce) than with a walk-off dong—and to demonstrate what you’ve learned, by taking that pitch on the outside corner the opposite way!

It stayed fair a long time—the TV booth got pretty excited.  But it drifted just foul, and the game was effectively over.

161 more to go!

Chris Getz = Carlos Beltran

In Royals math.

I hadn’t really thought about this much, but was reminded of it in Nick Scott’s Royals Preview today. 

The Royals traded Beltran to Oakland and got back Mike Wood, John Buck and Mark Teahen.  We let both Wood and Buck go to free agency (and I don’t think we got a compensatory pick for either—not 100% sure on that), then we traded Teahen for Fields and Getz.  We cut Fields in the off-season.

So all the Royals have to show of the Carlos Beltran era is the presence of Chris Getz at 2^nd base.

That tells you all you need to know about how this franchise has been managed (well, if the record didn’t already tell you that).