Depressing Royals Seasonal Tidbits June/July 2002:
6/2/02: The Royals have been awful in walks received and team on base percentage, horrendous in team ERA, walks and home runs allowed. Now their defense is going down the tubes. At the end of May the Royals were in the top three AL teams for errors committed with 43; only Toronto and Detroit are worse.
6/17/02: Royals pitchers really sucked at the plate during the first inter league match-up in a National League ballpark. In the St. Louis series, Royals pitchers were zero for five with one sacrifice bunt. Cardinal pitchers were four for six with three RBIs.
6/18/02: Citing "Philosophical Differences," Allard Baird and Tony "baseball bean berry good to me" Peña whack pitching coach Al "The Nipster" Nipper. Peña decides to be pitching coach for a day; and in typical Royals fashion, loses an inter league game to Montreal 5 to 4. The hideous Royals bullpen blows a two run lead, culminating in the team's fifth straight loss. On this date the Royals also officially throw in the towel on Jose Rosado, giving him his unconditional release. Rosado was the last Royals pitcher to win an All-Star Game.
6/24/02: The Royals did their impression of the Bataan Death March this week with a pitiful inter league road trip to St. Louis, Montreal and New York, going 1-8 with a single win against the Mets. The Royals dropped twenty games under .500, and are only 1/2 game out of the cellar in the A.L. Central, baseball's weakest division. Never fear, the other stinky team in the A.L. Central, Detroit, comes to KC for a three game set on Tuesday. By the way, how does Lamar Johnson keep his job?
7/8/02: The All Star Break arrives to find our boys in blue taking the gas pipe again. Mired in next to last place in the worst division in baseball (only one AL Central team - Minnesota - has a winning record at the break) the miserable Royals are 15 games out, and on pace to lose 100 games. They are 2-11 against the AL East. The good, bad and ugly at the break: Good: Mike Sweeney leads the AL in batting average at .361, Joe Randa has 52 RBI's, Raul Ibanez is hitting .294 and Paul Byrd is 11-6 with a 3.99 ERA. The bad: Carlos Beltran continues to disappoint with 75 K's, only 35 BB's and is hitting .254. Former number one draft pick Dan Reichert continues to slide into oblivion with a 5.01 ERA and 75 hits given up in 64 2/3 innings. Ugly: Neifi Perez, the 4-million dollar man, is hitting .230 with a god awful on-base percentage of just .249. Chuck Knoblauch has played in 42 games, hitting .167. Blake Stein is 0-2 with a 9.11 ERA, giving up 37 hits in 26 2/3 innings. Even Uglier: During the first half of the season, Royals Manager Tony Muser and Pitching Coach Al Nipper were fired. This week the Yankees bought another starting pitcher (Weaver) and a starting right fielder (Mondesi). Oh, and as an extra present for the fans, Don Fehr and the MLB Players Association are rumored to be meeting over the All Star Break to set a strike date for August. Happy Happy, Joy Joy.
7/12/02: Over the All Star Break, with the Royals 20 games under .500, the Glass family extended the contract of GM Allard Baird through the year 2004. On the field, the Royals puked up on themselves to start the season's second half, being shut out in their first game back 1-0 and losing their second game 11-3, both to Anaheim. Thursday's loss is the eleventh time the Royals have been shut out this season. Meanwhile, In the wake of the All Star Game disgrace, here's part of a story that appeared in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel :
Area Fan Sues Baseball
By TOM KERTSCHER of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff, July
12, 2002:
Major League Baseball didn't only make a mistake, it committed
breach of contract, deceptive trade practices, negligent representation
and misrepresentation when it ended the All-Star Game in a 7-7
tie, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Milwaukee County
Circuit Court. The allegations are made in a 22-page complaint
brought on behalf of Wayne Zenecke, a 27-year-old Cudahy resident
and Milwaukee Brewers season ticket holder.He sued Major League
Baseball, Commissioner Bud Selig and the Brewers.The suit, filed
by the Ademi and O'Reilly law firm of Cudahy, says it was illegal
to advertise the All-Star Game as a major-league game and then
end it in a tie.Article 1 of MLB's own rules "has as its
sole objective a winning team," the suit says, and fans "would
not have purchased tickets to the game had they known that the
game would not be played consistent with the rules." The
suit asks Judge Michael Sullivan to declare it a class action
so that anyone who attended the game with tickets could be added
as plaintiffs. An unspecified amount of damages is being sought.
7/17/02: The Royals are in the midst of a season best winning streak, taking their 6th straight game, beating Chicago 8-6. Amazingly, all six games have been won without Mike Sweeney in the lineup. A four game sweep of the Rangers was especially sweet, considering that Ranger Shortstop A-Rod makes almost twice what David Glass paid for the entire Royals team. I guess money can't buy happiness as the Rangers are in the cellar of the AL West, 17 games behind Seattle. The positive spin: With the victory, the Royals move within 5 games of 2nd place in the AL Central, which really doesn't mean all that much since the only team in the division with a winning record is Minnesota. Reality: Only two teams in the entire AL have a worse record than the Royals; Tampa Bay and Detroit. Meanwhile, trade talk rumors swirl around Royals veterans Paul Byrd, Chuck Knoblauch, Neifi Perez, Michael Tucker and Roberto Hernandez as the team looks to dump payroll in the wake of another losing season.
7/21/02: The Royals had their best week since 1989, winning nine straight games and pulling to within one game of Cleveland and two games of Chicago in the AL Central. The positive spin: Raul Ibañez has been great during the stretch, moving from the outfield to first base, covering for injured Mike Sweeney. Ibañez batted .387 (12-for-31) with three homers and 18 RBIs, starting with two big homers -a grand slam and a three-run homer against Anaheim- and currently leads the Royals with 58 RBI's. Reality: Only two teams in the AL have a worse team batting average than the Royals current .251 average, Tampa Bay and Cleveland. Only three teams in the AL have a worse team earned run average than the Royals current 4.92 ERA, Toronto, Tampa Bay and Texas.
7/28/02: Back to Reality Time: Tony "Chico Esquela" Peña said folowing the Royals nine game winning streak that the new team goal was to focus on catching and and passing the Minnesota Twins. The team responded by going 0-6 on this week's road trip, being swept back to back by Detroit and Chicago. The Royals were outscored 41 to 8 in 6 games. The Royals road record is 14 - 38, tied for worst in the majors with Tampa Bay.