GO ROYALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bobbyhawks]

Thank you Hoch for destroying our hopes for a spirited home opener before most fans found their seats.

Here's to a run an inning if the game isn't called under some inane mercy rule before the Royals get a chance to bat.

[smh]

#thisfeelsfamiliar

[AllThingsKC]

Man, I hate this team.

[kcmetro]

If Hochever and Chen are the best pitchers we have, the Royals aren't going anywhere this season anyway.

[mean]

Is that the same Hoch that pitched against the Angels?

[shinatoo]

Is that the same Hoch that pitched against the Angels?

Yes, but with Yuni and Dyson backing him up, which directly accounted for at least 4 of those runs.

[pash]

.

[pash]

.

[AllThingsKC]

Will the Royals get above .500 again this season?

[phuqueue]

Maybe. The pitching is bad, but it shouldn't be this bad. The bullpen in particular should be much better than it has been. The offense basically seems to be there, although getting shut out twice in the first week was a little troubling. If the pitching can be merely mediocre, like it should be, the team will be a lot better than what they showed this weekend. The Indians aren't actually very good themselves, which means they probably aren't going to dominate the season series despite sweeping this particular series. Plus there should be some opportunities for garbage wins against the White Sox and Twins to boost the final total. Getting swept a week into the season is disheartening but it doesn't mean a whole lot. The bullpen should settle down and the offense should continue to improve as the season goes on considering both how young it is and that it stands to benefit from getting guys back from injuries later on (Cain, Perez) and demotions (Giavotella). I don't really have a ton of faith in the Luis Mendoza experiment (although I don't really have a big problem with the Royals trying it), but I share Rany's optimism about Paulino, so there's a chance for the rotation to potentially get better too when he comes off the DL. The rotation is obviously not as good as it looked last week (and it was frankly a little silly when the Royals were touting their AL-leading ERA on TV before the first game of this Indians series, even before seeing how the series turned out), but Hochevar is not as bad as his outing on Friday and I mean, we knew what we were getting with Sanchez when we made that trade, a guy whose control is erratic but who also has a no hitter on his resume -- he'll have his good days and his bad days and so far we've seen one of each. After three series, I'll stick with 78 wins for this team, and if they finish the season that close to .500, they could easily hit it at some point during the season, maybe in the next week if they go on a sudden hot streak, maybe not until the middle of August, but it's not out of the question. Can't overreact to games 7, 8, and 9 of the 162 game season.

[chingon]

Can't overreact to games 7, 8, and 9 of the 162 game season.

Exactly. This is no different than the flukey April hot streaks we've seen (or really any hot/cold streak that teams get into in any given season). Demoralizing, obviously, but not really a good data set on which to base expectations for the season.

[AllThingsKC]

I know it's only been 9 games, but most of those game have been a complete disaster. Even worse, they had chances to WIN games and find ways to lose. We've seen this before. We all know what's going to happen, and that's why it's extremely demoralizing.

With the way the Royals handled Frank White and their embarrassing start (again) makes it too difficult to be a Royals fan right now. I can handle the team sucking. I have for years. But their off-the-field issues make the losses much harder to take.

After 27 years of this, I am losing hope.

[mean]

Don't lose hope! Like Hud said, these guys are going to win it all... yeah...

[pash]

.

[phuqueue]

I think it's weird to say that the games have been "complete disasters" while acknowledging in the same breath how many of them were winnable. In each of these Indians games the team was done in by a single bad inning -- take out Hochevar's first inning and the Royals win the first game 3-1, take out Sanchez's third inning and the Royals win the second game 9-4, take out Mendoza's third inning and the Royals take the final game into extras with a 7-7 tie. Obviously it's not really totally fair to say "if the Royals hadn't been catastrophically bad for this part of the game, they'd have won!" but the reality is that no pitching staff gives up five, six, seven run innings with any regularity. It's baseball and weird shit happens sometimes. The Indians series is not representative of what we should expect out of this team.

The bullpen has been a lot less reliable than expected so far, and that is a little troubling. I still think they'll pull themselves together though. The offense hasn't gotten off to a particularly hot start, but they just put up 16 runs in two games and there's every reason to expect them to improve this year on what they did last year (when they ranked 6th in the AL in runs scored). We knew the rotation would be the Achilles heel coming into this season and that's basically still true. It's just hard for me to see "losing hope" and "complete disaster" as anything more than a crazy overreaction, especially after we've already weathered the storm of Eli Marrero and Scott Elarton, Angel Berroa and Odalis Perez -- now you're losing hope?

[KCMax]

Why don't we put Mitch Maier in the rotation?????

[bobbyhawks]

I'm sorry, but good teams, even just average teams, do not have managers that let a guy stay on the mound while he gives up 6+ runs (unless they are already down 6 runs). I don't care what inning it is, that is a sign of a manager with few options and little confidence in his team's long-term prospects. I realize that the season is not a sprint, and that we need to save guys, but if we spend the entire first half of the season saving guys, what will it matter if we are 20 games below .500?

Our offense has performed adequately. Not suprisingly, though, since our management has not historically valued OBP, we are in the top half of MLB in BA and in the bottom half in OBP. Consequently and as expected, we are in the top half in hits and only average in runs scored per game.

Our defense has shown weakness where our most expendable players reside, and that is not a good sign at all. If you are bringing in subpar talent to fill gaps, they better be strong fielders. Hence, Dyson down already.

There are only 6 teams in MLB with a worse team ERA than the Royals, and we were just swept by one of them. Say what you want about how we were one out here, or one out there, from preventing huge innings, but that is the difference between good teams an bad teams. It is a razor thin difference sometimes that separates them, and over the course of the season, preventing the big inning is a huge difference maker as far as Ws go.

Albert Pujols is the best player in baseball, and last season, he was worth only +7 wins (in WAR). Alex Gordon was worth +6. I think this shows how many things you have to have go right to amount to 90+ wins. If the Royals were the Yankees this year, the sky would be falling in NYC. Of course that is an overreaction, but I don't think it is much of one. Through 5.5% of the season, we have not shown an ability to close out a game, and someone needs to flip on the switch to change that. I don't see Yost as that guy at all. His self-imposed blinder-viewed look at how a baseball team should be managed is going to destroy the will of some guys with great natural chemistry, and it is really hard to watch. We can still turn things around, but right now it only looks like we will if our pen averages 5 innings a game.

[KCRoyal]

0-5 at home, 3-8 overall.

The two nights the pitching is more than mediocre is when the offense falls asleep. Great starts by Duffy and Chen, but no offense against Verlander (well, okay) and Drew Smyly (WHO??). Combine the team losing to listening to Rex Hudler makes me want to bang a shover on my head.

[KCPowercat]

Not a fun start....especially after the first series left me with more hope than I even had in the preseason....

[AllThingsKC]

The All Star Game will be our World Series.