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Patience Wears Thin With Royals’ Pen
This is starting to get old. With last night’s game against the White Sox knotted at three, the Royals turned to the bullpen to start the eight inning. Five relievers and two innings later, after surrendering four runs on four hits and three walks, the Royals were 7-4 losers.
I do not blame Buddy Bell for going to the pen at that point. After all, Gil Meche had been good, but not great (allowing 3 runs in 7 innings) and had chucked up over 110 pitches at that point. I cannot even assess any logical blame on the Royals’ skipper for playing reliever roulette. Who of the first four relievers gave you any reason to warrant an extended look? Bell’s quandry is ably summed up in Joe Posnanski’s article in the KC Star this morning.
Frankly, you cannot really blame management for the current bullpen problem. After all, Dayton Moore’s vision for the 2007 pen included Octavio Dotel, John Bale and probably Joe Nelson who have cumulatively given the Royals zero innings so far this year. I do not know if any of the three would solve this problem, but they certainly could not be much worse.
Therein lies the issue of patience. Almost to a person, Royals’ fans are willing to be patient as Alex Gordon struggles along well below the Mendoza line (his line out as a pinch hitter last night proves that bad hitting and bad luck go hand in hand, by the way). Most are even willing to continue given Ryan Shealy at bats as he flails at thin air. We will tolerate Tony Pena’s sporadic production at the plate because of his defense and ‘the need to be patient’. Count me among all of the above. I have even written that I am willing to let Shealy go an entire season and part of 2008 before running out of patience (i.e. the Justin Morneau plan), but when it comes to the bullpen….well, patience is scarce.
The difference in perspective is actually quite logical. Hitting is all about failure: making an out seven out of ten times up makes you one of the better players in the league. Pitching is really the opposite. If good hitters make outs seven out of ten times, then all you really need to do as a pitcher is get one extra out every ten times. Obviously, easier said than done.
Kansas City’s bullpen has been particularly inept at getting that one extra out. Of the eight pitchers who have worked in relief in 2007, SIX of them are allowing opponents to hit .300 or better. Only Joakim Soria (.156) and Ryan Braun (.143) have limited enemy batters to below average hitting and as we are painfully aware from last night, Braun has erased his effectiveness by allowing seven walks in just over eight innings of work.
The Royals went to the minors to get the best available and quasi-ready reliever they had and that turned out to be Neal Musser who has faced four hitters so far and retired just one. Tonight, they will call up Brian Bannister to start and push Brandon Duckworth into the pen, not because Duckworth had performed poorly as a starter, but because the team needs someone besides Soria that they can rely on in relief.
As of right now, there is no timetable for the return of either Dotel or Bale. There is also little hope for further help inside the organization. Perhaps, as Dayton Moore has stated, you just need to grind out 40 games to get an accurate handle on your team and that statement probably was meant to include the bullpen, too. While it may be true, it does not make watching any easier.
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9 Responses to “Patience Wears Thin With Royals’ Pen”
April 24th, 2007 at 8:11 am
In actuality, the best hitters only make SIX outs every ten times up at the plate, when you measure in terms of plate apperances. It’s true that .300 hitters are generally good, but if they never reach base via walks or HBPs, they’re not all that valuable. Meanwhile, if a hitter can sport anything close to a .400 OBP, they’re extremely valuable. So I would adjust the old adage and say that hitters who fail 60% of the time are All-Stars.
Great summary of the current KC situation, by the way.
April 24th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Mike MacDougal
Ambiorix Burgos
Andrew Siscoe
Jeremy Affeldt
Not that these 4 were anything great, but I think you can see why we are a little thin in the bully now. Not to mention the injuries to Bale and Dotel…
April 24th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Yeah, and how did Andy Sisco and Mike MacDougal fare last night? Sisco went 0.1IP, 2BB and 1ER. MacDougal gave up that run on an inherited runner, but then got the next out. MacDougal was fine, but I think everyone in KC had grown pretty tired of his rollercoaster-ride of a pitching career.
The bullpen has been about this bad for the last few years, even when we had Homerun-Burgos, Taco-Sisco, Mac the Ninth, and Blisterboy. The biggest problem last night was that they just couldn’t even seem to throw strikes. Between Musser and Braun, they yielded 0.1IP and 3BB. Tremendous.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:13 am
A great, sane post. I’d say 25 of 30 MLB teams have some bullpen problems.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Bull pen woes aside, I can’t get over John Buck’s at bat that produced the home run. Works a 3-2 count after being down 0-2 against Buehrle. Then hits a no-doubter.
Buck is burying LaRue statistically. Why doesn’t he play more? I guess it’s the “patience” thing. I have patience with the pen because the pen is always “pitch by committee”. What drives me crazy is having patience with 3B by committee,…..and catcher by committee, …and left field by committee…and…
April 24th, 2007 at 11:03 am
I guess the Royals are just a bastion of freedom and democracy, with all these committees.
In other news, MLB is cracking down on the vast Twins-Royals conspiracy that resulted in the Royals’ sweep of Detroit last year and the Twins winning the division. They’re making Torii Hunter take back the 4 bottles of Dom Perignon he sent the Royals like he said he would. Luckily, there’s no conceivable way that the Royals can be penalized. What, barred from the playoffs this year? DAMN!
April 24th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Danny - I was going to comment on the Hunter-Perignongate deal. Yet another case of a Bureaucracy making sure reality and common sense don’t get in the way of their rules.
Guys - My wife and I both commented on Sisco and MacDougal pitching against us (looked familar didn’t it?). We said “it was bad enough watching them pitch for us when we didn’t expect to be good, imagine having to watch them when you expect to make the playoffs!.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Clark, I think we should all remember one of GMDM’s edicts: A good team begins and ends with starting pitching. In trading away most of the previous bullpen arms he inherited, he did acquire several potential starter candidates, for both the near future and the long term future. (Bannister, Lumsden, and several lower minor leaguers)
The cost of this, in the short term, is perhaps a less stable bullpen than we had before. (hard as that is to fathom!)
I am also of the opinion that a healthy and effective Dotel would make a huge difference, in that pitchers would all be pushed back into their expected (and presumably more comfortable) roles…
April 24th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Sure the Dotel (and other) injuries hurt, but the Royals had no right to expect Soria to be so good. Imagine what this would be like if this Rule 5 guy were just average?
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