MVN - Most Valuable Network

The Good Stuff

How about that?

Good pitching plus timely hitting equals an extra inning win.

The Royals hadn’t scored a single run in the ninth inning all season, so it’s a good thing the Royals finally broke through. Two runs in the ninth? Awesome.

It was a great game with a ton of interesting subplots. Let’s get right to it:

– After watching Mark Teahen’s first at bat of the day against Jeremy Bonderman, I think it’s officially time to be concerned. His first two swings were absolutely horrible, chasing a breaking ball that was down and in and then trying to go the other way with a fastball.

He looked so futile that it immediately hit me that he was falling back into his old habit of trying to take everything the other way. Looking at his hitting charts, my fears are confirmed.

Mark Teahen, 2007 Hitting Charts

A few things can be gleaned from these charts:

1) Before Wednesday’s game, he’s pulled one ball in the air all season and it left the park. It’s hard to spot, but it’s on the Kauffman Stadium graph, right on the 385 number in right-center.

2) Of course, another thing that jumps right out is that he hasn’t been putting the ball into play. With another whiff on Wednesday, Teahen is now tied for the league lead with 18 strikeouts.

3) He’s gotten away from pulling the ball in the air. He’s still occasionally pulling the ball, but when he does he’s rolling his wrists which results in a ground ball. This is not good.

A large part of Teahen’s success last season came when he began generating bat speed and stopped taking everything the opposite way.

I’ve posted this before, but it bears repeating. Here are Teahen’s hit charts from his last two seasons at Kauffman Stadium. The big difference between the two is concentration of fly ball outs in left field from 2005. That was when he was happy to inside-out his swing and take everything the opposite way. He was generating zero power and spent that year hovering around .240.

Mark Teahen, 2005-2006 Hitting Charts

On this road trip he was consistently behind on fastballs and has become susceptible to the hard sliders that are breaking down and in. Those sliders are becoming his Kryptonite. Publicly, he says he’s not worried because he proved he can hit. But damn, he’s falling into some of the same bad habits.

He recaptured some of the spirit of ’06 with his at bat in the ninth. It was vintage Teahen. He pulled the ball into right, and since it wasn’t hit directly at the right fielder, Teahen was thinking double all the way. His hustle ultimately paid off as he scored the tying run on the Ross Gload fielders choice. This is the Mark Teahen we need to see if the Royals are going to win ballgames.

– It was a dead heat coming out of spring training, but is there any doubt John Buck has won the right to get the majority of playing time behind the plate? He’s having a monster start to the season and after Wednesday he’s now hitting .440/.520/.905 in 25 at bats. He’s hit in seven of his eight starts and has seven extra base hits.

Now the question has to be asked: Is the fact that he’s splitting time with Jason LaRue part of the reason for this hot streak? Or is he raking despite sharing the catching duties?

Either way, I like what I’m seeing.

(AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

Now the Royals need to take the next step and shift the majority of playing time to Buck. Let him play five times a week and let’s see if he can keep hitting. Buddy was looking for a winner in his catching sweepstakes. It’s time to declare one.

– Another great outing by Gil Meche:

8 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 6 SO

I’ve maintained all along that Meche is not a “true” ace. That’s he’s basically a number three starter thrown into a number one role. But he’s sure pitching like an ace. At least in three of his four starts.

It was truly a dominant performance, with his only rough spot coming in the sixth inning. It’s one thing to give up a leadoff walk, but it’s another thing when your defense completely lets you down following that walk. Meche did an excellent job battling back after the Alex Gordon error, but he couldn’t get the fourth out right away and it looked like the Tigers had the game in hand.

Basically, he did everything right. He got a ground ball for a double play to get out of the first, he got a couple of strikeouts after walking the leadoff hitter in the third and made the right pitches at the right time. Just the kind of performance you would expect from your ace.

– Speaking of the sixth inning, although the guys on RSTN were trying to sell the audience that the error by Gordon was partially German’s fault, I’m not buying it. In that situation where the second baseman is sliding over for the force out, Gordon’s throw has to be on the base, with a little bit of lead. In this case, Gordon’s throw was well to the side of the bag – too much lead.

I still have faith in Gordon. He’ll be fine, both offensively and defensively. But right now, everything he does is going to come under close scrutiny. Errors will happen, it’s just unfortunate his led to three runs in a tight ballgame.

– Nice bounce back performance from Joakim Soria. After allowing a leadoff single, he made a nice play coming of the mound to field a bunt, throwing out the lead runner. He then showed his filth by striking out the next two hitters.

And good call by Buddy letting Soria back out to pitch the tenth. He needed just 12 pitches to get through the ninth. He had to work harder in the extra frame, but struck out Gary Sheffield and Carlos Guillen to win the game.

For the game, Soria threw 31 pitches, 21 for strikes. I’m thinking the only reason Soria remained in the game was because of the off day tomorrow.

Any thoughts of David Riske getting a save opportunity while Dotel is out should be forgotten. Right now, Soria is just about the only guy out of the pen that has Buddy’s confidence.

Can we give Soria the win and the save?

(AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 12:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.