1) WHY THE HELL IS EMIL BROWN ON A MAJOR LEAGUE TEAM? If you watched tonight's game, you saw Emil, once again thinking he is a H.O.F. left fielder, half-assedly drop a fly ball while basically standing still. A major league baseball player should NEVER, NEVER EVER not make that play. Most MLB players should be able to freaking make a bare-handed catch of that ball.
2) Joey Gathright was optioned to AAA today. I understand the logic in bringing up Reggie Sanders for a couple weeks to increase his trade value, and then trade him...but Bob Dutton made a good point in his Royals notebook (http://www.kansascity.com/sports/story/191514.html):
The Royals are trying hard to trade Sanders, who has roughly $2 million remaining on his contract, and appear willing to eat the contract and accept little in return. Oddly, they show no inclination at this point to release Sanders, which amounts to much the same thing.
BUT ALTERNATIVELY, HERE'S AN IDEA: DEMOTE EMIL BROWN'S ASS. Gathright has an OBP of .390 over 25 games. Brown's is .297 over 65 games. A nimrod (read: Buddy Bell) might make the argument that Brown is a power-hitter, and Gathright is not. Well, Brown's slugging percentage is .330; Gathright's is .370. That breaks down to an OPS for Brown of .627, and .760 for Gathright. Now the [hopefully temporary] reversion to AAA for Gathright couldn't have unilaterally come from Mr. Bell, but I have a sneaking suspicion he had a role in that. But nonetheless, even if it was completely Dayton Moore's idea (unlikely), a manager with a modicum of intellect would have likely vociferously objected to the Royals' sending Gathright down. But I guess that excludes Mr. Buddy Bell.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2007
The Hex
Well, we did it, friend. We officially dropped a hex on the Boys in Blue. That's right, the intrepid Bell-loathing bloggers, B and Blue Wave, ventured to the K on Saturday night to see if the Royals could notch their sixth victory in as many games. The result? Two straight losses and a grand total of two runs in nineteen innings. I wonder how many consecutive losses it would take for Dayton to drop the ax on BB? I'd be willing to sit through fifteen or so to get that dunderhead removed from the dugout.
I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't make a couple of comments on this weekend's Battle for the Basement. And since I'm being paid so well for this, and our readership is so far-reaching and influential, the last thing I want to do is underachieve. Let's begin with the victory on Friday, an 8-1 shellacking in which there was nary a Bell mistake (we should start calling Buddy's gaffes "Bellies" or some such clever term). There was, however, a glaring and tragic lineup hiccup: Shane Costa hit cleanup for the SECOND EFFING TIME THIS SEASON! Care to guess how many home runs Costa has this season? Well, he has one double, one triple, and exactly one fewer HR than either of those categories. He also has an OBP of .210 and a SLG of .250. Buddy, COME ON! I know you don't have A-Rod available, but there are better options, such as, for example, my favorite catcher and yours, Mr. John Buck. Buck, despite being in something of a slump lately, is currently third in baseball in fewest AB per HR, sitting being only A-Rod and Carlos Pena. I wish Bell would just give Buck the starting job and leave him alone, so that we could see what our catcher-of-the-future can really do. At the very least, I wish he would've played him Friday and Saturday this weekend, instead of Friday and Sunday. I guess Buddy figured that letting Bucky (as he calls him) establish any sort of rhythm at the plate would've been much too logical.
Okay, one more gripe and I'll leave it for tonight. What was Octavio Dotel doing in the ballgame Saturday night? In case you didn't see the game, the Royals and White Sox were knotted in a 1-1 tie heading into the top of the tenth, when BB decided to go to his closer, who presently surrendered two runs, thus effectively ending the baseball game. I'm not even going to get into my view on closers; it's long, unconventional, and not too much fun. And I understand that Buddy is an old baseball guy (read: knot head) who will always go to a "closer" with the game on the line in the ninth. But this was a non-save situation, and Buddy never uses Dotie (as he calls him) for more than one inning. So, had Dotie made it through the tenth, who did he play to go to after that? What if he had needed a "closer" in, say, the top of the thirteenth? But, I'll leave you with a more important question, Why didn't he simply stay with Soria, who had cruised through the ninth and appeared to have his best stuff? I'll expect satisfactory answers to these questions within the next 24 hours.
Till then, fight the good fight, and pray that one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, Dayton will FIRE BUDDY-FREAKING-BELL!!!
I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't make a couple of comments on this weekend's Battle for the Basement. And since I'm being paid so well for this, and our readership is so far-reaching and influential, the last thing I want to do is underachieve. Let's begin with the victory on Friday, an 8-1 shellacking in which there was nary a Bell mistake (we should start calling Buddy's gaffes "Bellies" or some such clever term). There was, however, a glaring and tragic lineup hiccup: Shane Costa hit cleanup for the SECOND EFFING TIME THIS SEASON! Care to guess how many home runs Costa has this season? Well, he has one double, one triple, and exactly one fewer HR than either of those categories. He also has an OBP of .210 and a SLG of .250. Buddy, COME ON! I know you don't have A-Rod available, but there are better options, such as, for example, my favorite catcher and yours, Mr. John Buck. Buck, despite being in something of a slump lately, is currently third in baseball in fewest AB per HR, sitting being only A-Rod and Carlos Pena. I wish Bell would just give Buck the starting job and leave him alone, so that we could see what our catcher-of-the-future can really do. At the very least, I wish he would've played him Friday and Saturday this weekend, instead of Friday and Sunday. I guess Buddy figured that letting Bucky (as he calls him) establish any sort of rhythm at the plate would've been much too logical.
Okay, one more gripe and I'll leave it for tonight. What was Octavio Dotel doing in the ballgame Saturday night? In case you didn't see the game, the Royals and White Sox were knotted in a 1-1 tie heading into the top of the tenth, when BB decided to go to his closer, who presently surrendered two runs, thus effectively ending the baseball game. I'm not even going to get into my view on closers; it's long, unconventional, and not too much fun. And I understand that Buddy is an old baseball guy (read: knot head) who will always go to a "closer" with the game on the line in the ninth. But this was a non-save situation, and Buddy never uses Dotie (as he calls him) for more than one inning. So, had Dotie made it through the tenth, who did he play to go to after that? What if he had needed a "closer" in, say, the top of the thirteenth? But, I'll leave you with a more important question, Why didn't he simply stay with Soria, who had cruised through the ninth and appeared to have his best stuff? I'll expect satisfactory answers to these questions within the next 24 hours.
Till then, fight the good fight, and pray that one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, Dayton will FIRE BUDDY-FREAKING-BELL!!!
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