Royals make it rain runs in Minnesota

   
   Photo courtesy of Kingsofkauffman.com

Everything is right in the world. I’m back doing my blog thing tride and true and the Royals are over .500. Ok, the latter is probably a little more exciting so I’ll focus on the Royals. A 40-minute rain delay didn’t stop the Royals and it didn’t stop all-star catcher Salvador Perez either. All he did was go perfect to the tune of a 5 for 5 night, in helping drive the Royals to a 10-4 victory over the hapless Minnesota Twins. With the beat down of the god awful Twins (I called it), the Royals sit at 23-21. While their record suggests that they aren’t setting the world on fire, it’s definitely nice to see them back to their old ways. After a sluggish April and beginnig of May, the Royals look like they are ready to come out of their slump. They’re 7-3 in their last 10 games and their pitching seems to have fixed itself. After Kris Medlen and Chris Young went down with injuries, things looked bleek for the Royals rotation. I never freaked out like a lot of fans did for the simple fact that Young and Medlen were probably the worst starting pitchers in the league. Young had a perky 6.68 ERA (bad) and Medlen had a dazzling 7.77 ERA (horrible). So replacing those bums with just about any breathing human being would be an upgrade. And that’s proven to be the case with replacements Dillon Gee and Danny Duffy. Gee has looked impressive winning his last start against the first place Chicago White Sox and posting a 2.9 ERA for the season. Duffy has been better even with manager Ned Yost putting him on a strict pitch limit. His last start he only threw 63 pitches and the start before that Ned only wanted him to throw 40 pitches. The important stat is the zero runs in his last two starts. As long as Duffy and Gee keep performing like they are Medlen and Young do not need to rush back to the team anytime soon.

   So there’s the good. Just after their series win after the White Sox, the clouds were starting to open up and the sun was starting to peek out. Then they got the news earlier Monday that their gold glove left fielder Alex Gordon broke bones in his wrist and was going on the disabled list. Reports say he will miss at least four weeks. Some fans will say good riddance and tell you we don’t need him. And there’s some validity to that point. Gordon was hitting .211 with just 4 homers and 50 strike outs. There’s no secret that he’s been bad and one of the reasons why the Royals had a sluggish start out of the gates. His absence was not even felt tonight, as the offense did more than enough without him. Short term, that could give off the illusion that the Royals are better without Gordon. To fans that have that thought, they either don’t understand how baseball works, or are one of the “new money Royals fans” who jumped on the bandwagon once the Royals started making trips to the World Series. Over the course of a month we may begin to notice a void. His injury means more playing time for recently called up Whit Merrifield who just got his first major league hit on May 18th. Although he’s looked solid since joining the team baseball will humble everyone and it’s hard to believe the rookie will improve on his current .308 average. He will slump at some point and people will be begging Gordon to hurry back. The Gordon injury also means extended playing time for Jarrod Dyson and Paulo Orlando. Dyson has been OK while Orlando has been living on the sun. He’s hitting .480 with a homerun in his last seven games. So for the Royals to continue this hot streak, they will Orlando and Dyson to continue to hold down those corner outfield spots and “Two-hit Whit” Merrifield as he was known in the minor leagues, will need to be steady. The hope is that they won’t get exposed as average to below average players.

   There’s a lot of “if” involved with the Royals. You can poke holes in the Royals lineup and point fingers at Kendrys Morales, Alex Gordon and Omar Infante for being bad so far. Right now our team has plenty of moving parts and replacement players, but expectations should still be high. They handled business against the Twins and crushed them. That’s what good teams do to bad teams and the Twins have the worst record in the Majors. While the offense exploded with ten runs tonight, they won’t do this regularly.The offense will never be juggarnauts. The Royals will always be a pitching and defense ball club. As long as those two parts of their game stays relatively consistent and they get just enough offense to win, we will see the boys in blue in first place before you know it.