Nutshell: Last night the Royals led the Twins 8-3 after eight innings. They hadn't lost a game all year in which they'd led after seven innings. The Royals had lost nine straight games, but they were going to win this one. Manager Trey Hillman summoned, from the bullpen, sinkerballer Ramon Ramirez, who's been great this season. Ramirez struck out two of the first three batters he faced, then gave up three straight singles and suddenly the score was 8-5. It's a save situation, but super-closer Joakim Soria had thrown 31 pitches 24 hours earlier, and Hillman didn't want to use him. Hillman did want to change pitchers.
And now I'll step aside in favor of
Joe Posnanski (I was in Seattle watching the M's beat the BoSox) ...
And then -- I realized what Hillman was doing. And then it was much more than simple cringing. He was bringing in Joel Peralta. And at that very instant, I absolutely knew without any doubt that [Craig] Monroe was going to hit the home run. I mean, I had NO doubt. Part of this was just what I like to call Royal Vision -- when you watch the Royals, you come to expect the worst because you will almost always get the worst. But another part of this was pure and simple baseball logic -- Peralta is a fly ball pitcher who had given up three home runs in 16 innings. He has been used in a mop-up role all year, so there was no doubt in my mind that he would be too pumped up and would elevate his pitches even more. Plus Monroe (who already had one homer against Peralta) would be up there to take three full-bodied hacks at the ball.
And there was also some very bad managing karma going on. I had absolutely no idea what Trey Hillman was hoping to accomplish. Why would you send a gopher-ball pitcher who has not been in a meaningful situation in a long, long time into this game with a nine-game losing streak on your back and a swing-for-the-fences slugger at the plate? Maybe Trey just missed me and wants to see me at the park Thursday night.
Peralta naturally fell behind Monroe 3-0. I knew the shot was coming -- and I found myself, in my father's voice, thinking: "OK, go ahead and get it over with. It won't hurt as much as you think." I instant messaged a couple of my Kansas City Star colleagues with stuff like, "OK, so who do the Royals have coming up in the bottom of the ninth because this ball is about to get hit out." Monroe fouled off a pitch and swung through another to lengthen the agony.
And then, of course, Peralta elevated a 92-mph fastball on the inside half, and Monroe turned on it, pulled it over the left-field fence, and, well, at least it was over with. Tie score. Shock. Pain. All that. Then, to prove a point, [Ron Gardenhire] used three pitchers in the bottom of the ninth to get the Royals out -- the point being, "See, my bullpen is fine!"
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Things got worse for Peralta, who gave up a leadoff homer to
Justin Morneau in the 10th. And the Royals went down meekly in their half.
Everybody watching the game was blaming Trey Hillman because he didn't use
Leo Nunez. Nobody knew until after the game that Nunez, who lost on Tuesday night, was heading for the DL with a strained muscle. Hillman didn't want to use Joakim Soria. He didn't want to use
Jimmy Gobble or
Ron Mahay, because both of them had pitched two innings Tuesday night. Which left Peralta and
Yasuhiko Yabuta. And Yabuta's been awful.
Posnanski's point, though, is that among the options Hillman
did have in the ninth, Peralta was the worst. And relying on Ramirez to get just one more out was the best.
My friend Rany Jazayerli is a bit more forgiving, describing Peralta as the Royals' "third-best reliever," which he might be. Or he might be the fifth-best. Depends on how seriously you take ERA (5.40), and how seriously you take K/W ratio (15/2). Joe's point is that in
this particular spot, where only a home run beats you, the choice is obvious because Peralta gives up home runs and Ramirez doesn't (or at least hasn't this season).
Anyway, they lost. What does it mean?
Jazayerli:
Tonight wasn't the beginning of anything, nor was it the end. It was just another loss in a series of losses, some spectacular, some excruciating, but all of them the mark of a team that has no business calling itself a major league team. If 2005 is any indication, tonight may in fact just be the middle: the middle of a really, really long losing streak.
Only this time, there's no silver lining here. No one is going to lose their job over this. Ten days ago, this team was a game under .500, two games out of first, and we all thought that [Dayton] Moore and Hillman had managed to do the impossible -- they had managed to overcome the perpetual stink of loserdom that had overwhelmed this franchise since Billy Butler was in third grade. Turns out it really was impossible after all.
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After 32 years I'm still a Royals fan, though just mildly. Perhaps that's why I'm not as mercurial as Rany, who is smart enough to know that 10 games don't mean a whole lot, one way or the other. Yes, a bad team is quite a bit more likely than a good team to lose 10 straight games. But when Rany says that 10 games ago "we all thought" the Royals really had turned the corner, who exactly does he mean?
Not me. Ten games ago the Royals had the same front office, the same manager, and the same players. I didn't believe in them then, and Royals fans hated me for it. I don't blame them. For most fans, being a fan means checking your objectivity at the door. But I just don't know how to do that, and so for the last dozen or so years I've been right about the Royals over and over and over again.
I believe I've been wrong only once. At the All-Star break in 2003, the Royals were in first place, seven games ahead of the second-place White Sox. As you might guess, most teams with seven-game leads in the middle of July wind up in the playoffs. I thought the Royals would hang on. Shock the world.
They finished the season seven games
out of first place.
I haven't been wrong about them since, as they've finished last, last, last, and last. Right now they're last, again.
I'm sorry, Royals fans. I know you're going to hate me for saying this. But while the franchise has showed a few signs of life since Dayton Moore took over as GM, this organization is now indisputably the worst in the American League. They have two good pitchers (Soria and
Zack Greinke) and one good hitter (
Alex Gordon) and very, very little talent in the farm system. I'm not sure how one gets from here to respectability in the foreseeable future.
Rob Neyer
