Pink Bats and Time for a Change?

Series Analysis

Kansas City @ Chicago

Friday May 11 KC 1-2 CHW

Saturday May 12 KC 4-5 CHW

Sunday May 13 KC 11-1 CHW

The losing end of a pitchers duel, a blown save and a blowout. That sums up not only this weekends series, but the Royals season as a whole. At least the Royals broke their losing streak at 3 and won in big fashion Sunday avoiding the sweep at the hands of the South Siders.

The Royals bats finally broke out of their slumber Sunday in the win, but the Royals timely hitting...hell, even their hitting in general is awful. Their strikeout rate stands at 7.25 K's per game and their team batting average is at .249. I could keep going on the inability of the Royals bats for quite some time, but I am going to get to my point.

Fire Mike Barnett. Plain and simple. If hitters aren't hitting then obviously fire the hitting coach. I'm not sure that it is all Barnett's fault, but something needs to be done to light a fire...or just a change in the hitting philosophy. Earlier this year when all the Yankees were getting injured, what did they do? They fired their strength and conditioning coach because his only job is to basically keep guys healthy and he didn't do it, so they fired him. Barnett's job is to get the Royals to hit and they aren't, so fire him. Barnett is an Allard Baird guy, so why not let Buddy get his own hitting coach anyways? They front office needs to do something to wake up the bats and firing the hitting coach is the obvious and easiest...you can't send everyone down to the minors...or maybe the Royals should just use pink bats all the time.

Game Time:

Friday's game the Royals wasted a good start from Perez(7 IP 2ER 2K 1BB 4H). Perez kept the Royals in the game and they showed in support 4 hits and 1 run. That run came in the 9th inning off of Jon Garland and then Sweeney grounded out with the tying run on 2nd to end the game...Timely hitting?( I will give Sweeney a pass on this one though...he did have a game winner against the A's).

Saturday's game was the brutal loss. It sounds so familiar. Royals had lead, lost lead and lost. The game was Elarton's welcome back to the rotation(5 IP 3R 2ER 1K 2BB) and he should have got the win. Greinke looked good out of the pen throwing 3 shutout innings, but then Soria blew his 2nd save of the year and the Royals lost in 10 innings. The Royals scored 4 runs in the 4th inning and no more and it wasn't enough...and it never is. They also stuck out 11 times.

In the series finale the Royals broke out the pink bats in honor of Mother's Day and Breast Cancer Awareness. Along with those pink bats, they also broke out the offense. The Royals scored 11 runs on 15 hits. De La Rosa also had an excellent bounce back start(7 IP 1ER 4K 3BB) and earned the win.

Column Update:

David DeJesus in the 2 losses: 1/9

David DeJesus in the 1 win: 4/6 3R 2RBI 2 Doubles

...Weird.

Other Notes

- John Buck hit his 5th homerun of the year

- Mark Teahen hit his 4th homerun

- All 9 starters had a hit in Sunday's win

Next to Oakland for 4 games.

Royals Fact: I think that the trade of Jermaine Dye to the Rockies for Neifi Perez really, really sucked.

Royals 2007 Record: 12-26