Baseball In The Daytime: 5-14-08

We're going to stretch it out a bit today, like a long reliever who's getting shelled that the manager just leaves in. Takin' one for the team. Savin' the 'pen. Eatin' up the innin's. Please, just stop with the colloquialisms.

After the jump, along with the usual day baseball schedule, we'll take a peek inside the Kansas City Royals at (roughly) the quarter pole of the season.

Seattle @ Texas, 12:05 Mountain The Ballpark at Arlington is your venue for this not-so-thrilling clash of AL West foes. This is The House That W Built--back when his hobby was "owning" the Rangers with other people's money, our current president assembled baseball's juiciest club (here's the '93 roster) and a bandbox to go with it. Today, free of the cream and the clear, these Rangers go with the bad pitching and the bad hitting. Feldman starts today against the Mariners' Carlos Silva. Feldman!

Boston @ Baltimore, 1:05 This brief, annoying little two-game series concludes at Camden Yards with a duel of young starters. Jon Lester is your Soxer dealing from the left side, while Daniel Cabrera is your Oriole from the right. Let's play Crossfire! Boston's mini-swoon continued last night as Josh Beckett was uncharacteristically hittable and Manny Ramirez grounded weakly to the pitcher with the bases loaded and nobody out. On the plus side, my softball team rolled once again, so cash in those parlay tickets, kids.

Fun With Numbers, Royals Edition Operation Cellar Evacuation is complete, at least for now, as KC has relegated once-mighty Detroit to the AL Central basement. The Royals are not a lousy club, but they've certainly cooled off from their hot start. Can they sustain this pleasant mediocrity? Maybe.

The pitching continues to be a bright spot, particularly the bullpen. Royal relievers have posted a 3.81 ERA, which is good for 8th in the league. The 105 strikeouts from the pen is third best in the AL, but unfortunately that total represents 41 per cent of the staff's 255 K. They need more swings and misses from the starters.

Even though those starters' ERA is 10th in the league (4.53), new manager Trey Hillman is allowing his young arms to go fairly deep into games (just over 6 innings a start, comparable with the AL's elite teams). Overall, the Royals have the makings of a nice staff, but longer starts and a shutdown bullpen aren't much of a weapon if you don't score runs.

The Kansas City Offense has been dreadful. The boys in blue are last in runs (3.6 a game) and home runs (a dreadful 19) and 12th in the AL in both on-base (.314) and slugging (.362) percentages.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the cure for all of these problems is but a Dayton Moore phone call away--Barry Bonds. But the requisite balls to make such a call seem to be in short supply, so it's theoretically possible to trade for a stick or two--you could always take on Richie Sexson's enormous salary. Last year's No. 1 pick, shortstop Mike Moustakas, is languishing in A ball and there's little batting help on the horizon in the farm system.

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