Rolling Along

Another impressive outing for a Royal starting pitcher, another journeyman righthander shutting down an impatient and inept Royal offense, and a patented bullpen implosion led to a 2-1 loss yesterday.

Once again, the most important thing to take out of yesterday's loss was Greinke's strong six innings. He wasn't dominating, with just two strikeouts, but as usual his control was impeccable and he kept opposing hitters off balance. Pena set an 85-pitch limit for him yesterday, and Greinke threw 86. Fair enough. Cerda gave up a couple of seeing-eye singles, and MacDougal's shaky mechanics did the Royals in.

We all knew the offense, as a unit, was going to stink. Let us not worry about it. The lineup is a strange mix of youthful inexperience and below average veterans. I'm going to focus on the growth curve of the players who will be the core of the team 3 years from now - DeJesus, Gotay, Teahen, Berroa, Buck - and it will take the entire season to measure their progress. Emil Brown, Terrence Long, Eli Marrero and, yes, even Calvin Pickering are just filling in until something younger and better comes along.

Setting aside Lima's two performances, here are the aggregate statistics for Royal starting pitchers:

IP      H    BB   K   HR   WHIP  K/9  K/BB
36 2/3  29   6    23   2   0.95  5.6   3.8

The team is probably getting a bit lucky on BABIP (batting average on balls in play), and the K rate isn't where you'd like it to be, but overall these are solid numbers to start the season.

We can't judge this team by wins and losses; we need to look ahead to 2006 and 2007. So far, I like what I've seen.