A Royal Deal - 5 in 1

Typically getting 5 for 1 is a good thing. When you are a Major League Baseball team and those 5 are hitting coaches and the 1 is a calendar year, something is dreadfully wrong.

That is what happened today. Dale Sveum became the 5th person in 364 days to try and “fix” this offense. The man he will be replacing, Pedro Grifol (who was hailed as a hitting guru, and the person responsible for fixing Eric Hosmer last year, and in charge of getting Mike Moustakas back on track), will now be the Royals catching coach.

It is interesting to note the Royals have not officially fired any of the previous 4 hitting coach. Rather re-assigned them within the organization. Both Jack Maloof and Andre David were demoted last season to Minor League assignments. George Brett was brought in on a short term basis only to turn the ship over to Grifol completely when the course was set and things were sailing in the right direction. He has since reclaimed his role in the front office. Now Grifol is relegated to catchers.

Not sure what this model of management is, but what the heck?!?! We really take that “LOYAL” thing seriously with the Royals.

It is interesting to note that the man previously holding the position, Kevin Seitzer, is the current Blue Jays hitting coach. He was fired after the 2012 season because he and Ned Yost differed on hitting approach. The Irony is that Ned thought the Royals needed to focus on hitting more homeruns.

To that note the Royals hit their 21 homer tonight off the bat of Salvy Perez (His 5th). Seitzer’s Blue Jays have nearly 4 times as many (including the 3 they hit tonight) at 76, and one of his players almost has as many as the Royals whole team, with Edwin Encarnacion at 18. Nelson Cruz of the Orioles is currently at 19 home runs. A post for another day, but this is a guy the Royals could have had in the offseason, and decided to pass on. Good call!

Maybe Rome was built in a day? Or at least that would be what the Royals brass would like you to believe. With the offensive outburst tonight there are some signs of life! And as Rex Hudler shoved down our throats 100 times tonight, a win like tonight’s could be what is needed to turn the “bus” around!

Here is the “Debbie Downer” from tonight. Though the Royals did have 5 extra base hits, they were all off a knuckleballer who missed up a lot tonight. Only one of those was a homer, and it was with no one on. We left DOUBLE DIGIT runners on base in the first 9 innings. The Jays left ZERO! I realize we won, and had a good offensive game…But this was a gift of a win. A broken bat single, mixed with a stolen base and an error on a very routine ball gave us the tie in the ninth. Then an unbelievably bad pitch selection by a mediocre pen on a full count gave the Royals the lead in the ninth. We cannot load up the bases as often as we have this season and score as few runs as we do!

14 hits is still 14 hits! I want my donuts! It is hard to deny though that the approach to the opposite field and to shorten swings was a good one! Especially against R.A. Dickey and his dancing knuckler.

All-Star watch has to be zeroing in on Wade Davis. This guy is lights out. He is currently discarding hitters at a 3-38 pace (an average of .078 batting average). He came in today and absolutely SLAMMED the door in the face of the Blue Jays including an absolute fooling of the hottest hitter in baseball right now Encarnacion. A move I still question, but when you are 2-22 against a guy, I guess the odds say pitch to him!

This team still has a lot of good players. They just have to put together consistent games before this TEAM becomes a good team!

I was VERY critical of the comment GMDM made that “The Royals offensive approach has been addressed” during the Padres series. It obviously wasn’t fixed, though I am sure he did address it. The question I have is where is the accountability here? One person has had almost 8 years to fix something, where 5 guys got a total of 1 year…….