Royals Authority

Need A Win? Call Gil

By Clark Fosler | July 25th, 2008

One of the very few intelligent things Buddy Bell said during his tenure as Royals’ manager was ‘we paid Gil Meche a lot of money to stop losing streaks.’ How true, Mr. Bell. How very true.

Last night, with his team on the back end of a really bad three game losing streak, Meche took the mound and spun shutout ball for seven innings. Five days ago, Meche allowed just one run over six plus innings to end a two game losing skid for the Royals and twelve days prior to that, he battled his way through a tough Tampa start to give his team a chance to win and break another three game skid. Yep, THAT’s what Dayton Moore had in mind when he signed Gil to a five year/$55 million contract two winters ago.

In fact, lost in all the gushing over Zack Greinke’s performance and certainly his future potential, it has been Gil Meche who has once again been a rock for this rotation. Starting on May 4th, when he shutout the Indians over seven innings of work, Gil has allowed three runs or less in 12 of his 16 starts. He has worked in the sixth inning in all but two of those starts and into the seventh in eight.

Since enduring a truly awful April, Meche has thrown 100 innings and compiled an earned run average of 3.33. During that time, Gil has struck out 75 batters, walked 29 and allowed just 90 hits. The Royals have won seven of Gil’s last eight starts and are 9-7 in games started by him since the beginning of May (not bad considering this is a sub .500 ballclub overall).

Despite his early season struggles, Meche is still 9th in the American League in innings pitched, 14th in strikeouts, 28th in ERA and, for what it’s worth, tied for 12th in quality starts.

Zack Greinke, sooner rather than later, will be the ace of this staff: a title that few pitchers can really lay claim to. While never an ace, Meche was clearly the Royals’ number one guy last year and may well be that guy again this season, too. Ace? No. Worth every penny of that $55 million? You bet.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 7:08 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.

12 Responses to “Need A Win? Call Gil”

Ryan Brown says:

July 25th, 2008 at 9:11 am

I will take Gil Meche as our #1/#2 guy for the next three years, because he is truly a stopper. I love Grienke as much as anyone, but due to his past psychological issues, and his relative inexperience, can we really trust him to throw a team on his back to put an end to a losing streak?

No one else on this team besides Guillen seems to care when the team loses - except Meche. Bannister makes Scott Elarton-esque excuses, Kyle Davies isn’t really that good, and Hochevar is still learning how to be a big leaguer.

(Don’t get me started on the offense - some days they look like Sunday night beer league softball guys who are just trying to stop from throwing up because they’re so hungover.)

Meche is the team’s #1 pitcher - no question about it. He also provides something the team is sorely lacking - competitiveness and fire on the field. If Alex Gordon or Mark Teahen actually showed some emotion for once, I don’t think many of us would be disappointed.

Good post, Clark. Well said.

Go Royals!

RB

www.mvn.com/nfl-chiefs
steve y says:

July 25th, 2008 at 10:25 am

Need for Gload and Teahan to get the Disability Flu like Gobble and Gathright and bring up Shealy or Kila (or both and platoon theme) to see if either can become another Aviles, we know that Gload is not major league average for 1B, let’s see if we have one, glad to see Maier show what he can do, hopefully we leave him out there for at least a week instead of jerking him out after just one game like we did Aviles the first time
Jon says:

July 25th, 2008 at 11:38 am

I think they are showcasing Gload right now. Gload is a great role player for a contending team. I think they will trade Gload and bring up Shealy. I wonder how Shealy can hit HR’s in the minors, but seems to be a “punching Judy” when he gets to KC. Meche really looked solid last night. Davies could learn a thing or two about how to compete from watching Meche. 30 pitches in the first inning, and he still makes it 7 innings.
Adam says:

July 25th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

Comparing Bannister to Elarton is really quite low. The two aren’t even in the same stadium of competency.

Also, it always confuses me as to why people complain about Bannister giving details to the media — it’s not like he doesn’t call his own performances bad when they are, and would you rather he didn’t say what he thought caused it?
John says:

July 25th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

I don’t care how much Bannister wants to talk. He is a smart guy. What bothers me is he always has some execuses. I have this problem, I pitched well, just gave up HR, I did this and that and it was good while he gave up seven runs. I am sure he works hard to improve but how about for now, shut up and focus on pitching better to give your team a chance to win? Now this new thing he claimed he found out about the bad stretch on KC star today. How many of you want to bet he would have to eat his own words tonight again? I don’t have high expectation of him going in this season, so his performance does not come as a shocker to me but his attitude really rubs me the wrong way.

One thing I like about Meche is you never hear him whine, complain, making execuse. If it is a loss, he blamed himself, a win, he always mentioned some of his teammates for the win. That’s what I called a leader and a team player.
Ryan Brown says:

July 25th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

Adam - I wasn’t comparing Bannister to Elarton in terms of skill. What I was saying is that they both had the annoying/frustraing habit of saying that they thought they pitched well after going “3.1 innings, 11 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 0 K, 3 BB”.

John - you hit it on the head. Meche takes the blame, even when it’s not his fault entirely. When they do well, he’s quick to credit good defense and a supportive offense.

RB

www.mvn.com/nfl-chiefs
Adam says:

July 25th, 2008 at 5:00 pm

I don’t see Bannister’s explanations as whining. I have never seen him say that bad outings are an unqualified success; just that he saw some good things.

I suppose he should just “man up” and refuse to talk to reporters when they, I don’t know, ask him about his outing.
awitt says:

July 25th, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Nobody wants a Lima-like excuse and Banny has been using the “I saw a lot of swing and misses” and “If it weren’t for that one inning,” for a month now and well, pretty sure you could say that about any bad Major League starts, it’s a total John Madden comment. He better figure something out.
Adam says:

July 26th, 2008 at 9:57 am

Let’s look at Bannister’s excuse for last night’s loss:

“This was something to build on,” Bannister said. “When you’re struggling, you need baby steps. It was definitely that.”

Man, what a whiner!
gbewing says:

July 26th, 2008 at 10:22 am

It’s really frustrating to see these trades go down and KC nowhere near them
Pitt picks up 3 decent pitchers and the Yankees #1 prospect power hitting outfielder Joes Tabata-for what - a middle reliever Marte (fill in Mahay) and X Nady -Nady is decent but no superstar-the Royals have Nady type talent- why not us?

Cleveland trades an old near washed up Casey Blake to LA for J Meloan- closer or SP take your pick-the heir to Borowski just came into the division

Hey GB we have a closer already so what- - so 1 can move into the rotation or God forbid we think 2 moves ahead for once and turn Meloan into filling a need- he came cheap that’s the point Royals players cheap- we’re missing opportunities-
front office is paralyzed
scutch says:

July 26th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

I’m sure you’ve done it all ready, check out the other MVN sites. The content, insight and regularity of the posts are exceptional. Not to mention the contributions of knowledgable fans. I really look forward to reading these each day. Thank you everybody and keep up the good work.
Ryan Brown says:

July 27th, 2008 at 8:25 am

Adam - relax.

I will agree with you that last night, Bannister pitched well.

I don’t recall ever calling him a “whiner” or “crybaby” - in fact, last night was one of the first times I can remember hearing him say something I agree with after a game in quite some time.

Yes, he did pitch well. Yes, he had been struggling. Yes, last night WAS a baby step. But it’s also a lot easier to get away with those comments if you don’t give up 6 runs and don’t get out of the 4th inning.

Go Royals!

RB

www.mvn.com/nfl-chiefs

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Clark Fosler

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