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.