Intro

Hello and welcome to The Pipeline, which as listed above will be dedicated mainly to the Kansas City Royals organization but will hopefully at some point touch on the other things that interest me. I've been a Royals fan since the early '80s, when the main stories were the team's success, the Pine Tar Incident, losing to the Tigers in the '84 ALCS and the unforgettable run to the world championship in 1985.

Now isn't the most obvious time for people to be jumping on the Royals' bandwagon as far as weblogs go, but I know there are many out there and thought I'd add my perspective. At the point of this writing, the Royals are 13-33 and 19 games out in the AL Central. The manager who started the year, Tony Pena, is gone and his bench coach, Bob Schaefer, is the interim manager. The team has suffered 13 1-run losses in 46 games and is toward the bottom of the MLB team rankings in many hitting and pitching categories. Long story short, there isn't anywhere to go but up.

The good news is there are some young players in place who could be the pieces to a team that within five years may be a contender -- Zack Greinke, Denny Bautista, David DeJesus, Mark Teahen, John Buck, Ruben Gotay -- and some promising players in the minors including Justin Huber, Billy Butler, Mitch Maier, Kila Kaaihue, Donnie Murphy, J.P. Howell, Luis Cota and Edward Lucas. I plan on doing periodic minor league updates here as the season progresses. With the way the Royals' season is going, it helps to focus on what could be in the team's future.

I, for one, was glad to see Pena quit with the team floundering early in the season. He had sufficiently proven to me he didn't know what he was doing with his decision-making at bat and on the pitcher's mound. I'm pulling for the team to hire an experienced manager that doesn't need to learn on the job. My top three would be Larry Dierker, Davey Johnson and anyone but Schaefer. He's done a nice job as interim but doesn't have the experience the team needs in a permanent manager.

Tonight's game was another poor one for KC as a Matt Stairs homer tied the game at 2 and it was all Rangers from there as Greinke dropped to 0-6. I was at his start Friday night (5/20) against St. Louis and watched him give up 6 ER. Tonight he only gave up 4 but was hurt by a fielding error by DeJesus in CF when he misjudged a ball hit by Richard Hidalgo. He later made a great catch running into the wall but the damage had been done. Then Jaime Cerda comes in and gives up a 2-run shot to Hank Blalock after Leo Nunez had held the Rangers pretty much in check for an inning and a third. Mike MacDougal also came in and was his usual self with 2 wild pitches helping give up a run. Captain Mike Sweeney, who has been one if not THE lone bright spot on the Royals' offense this season, was 0-4. Buck and Terrence Long's 0-fers dropped them to BAs of .200 and .203. Only three full-timers and three part-timers are hitting above .250 and the players are swinging at first pitch after first pitch. The invincible Pedro Astacio took them out tonight....ugh. That pretty much sums up the season thus far.