Optimism From A Royals Season Ticket Holder
Posted: March 2nd, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 65 Comments »
A few years ago, when the Royals were really floundering — you know, unlike now — I started something that became a weird and unexpected tradition: In The Kansas City Star, I picked the Royals to win the American League Central. The next year, I did it again. And then again. And again after that.
The inspiration (if you can call it inspiration) came from a longtime Kansas City humor columnist named Bill Vaughn who in the 1950s and ’60s, as a lark, would pick the Kansas City Athletics to win the pennant every year. Bill meant it as a joke — he was, after all a humor columnist — and the Athletics never once even approached a .500 record when in Kansas City so it was a joke that just kept on giving.*
*It’s a weird thing … people sometimes talk to me about how LUCKY I am to have been writing baseball in Kansas City when the Royals were so comically bad. I never really saw it that way. Now, maybe I’d feel that way if I had I had written baseball during the KC Athletics time — when the A’s were ALWAYS bad, and the team had a pet mule and a mechanical rabbit brought baseballs to the umpire, and Satchel Paige pitched for them once, and at least ten future managers played for the team — Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog, Tony La Russa, Tommy Lasorda, Dick Williams, Dick Howser, Joe Morgan the Red Sox Manager, Hank Bauer, Doc Edwards, Rene Lachemann … not to mention hitting guru Charlie Lau, and pitching guru Dave Duncan, and all-round baseball guru Bill Fischer, and announcing titans Hawk Harrelson and Joe Nuxhall. It seems like that would have been a perversely fun team to write about.
It was probably easier for Bill Vaughn to do his annual “Athletics will win it all” column because everyone was so clearly in the joke. He spent his days writing funny and charming columns about tax day and the way trees changed colors and the fact that people all over the country long for the food of their hometowns. Writing a “This is the year for the Athletics!” column kind of fit into his daily work.
I had a different combination of hopes for my columns. I hoped these Royals Will Win columns would be taken as jokes but not ENTIRELY as jokes. Call it the Jon Stewart conundrum. I know people have different feelings about Stewart, but my impression is that Stewart wants to be funny and serious at exactly the same time. It’s a tightrope walk, and it’s one I think Stewart does better than anyone ever on television.
I cannot claim to have been nearly as successful with my “Royals will win” column. On the one hand, I guess I expected that people understood I wasn’t entirely serious when I picked the Royals to win. I do spend a fair amount of time studying baseball. I talk to a lot of people around the game. I write hundreds of thousands of words about the game every year. I suspected people would know that, yes, I was fairly aware of the Royals’ place in baseball.
On the other hand, I DID want to be taken somewhat seriously because, more than anything, I believe that there should be hope in baseball. When I was a kid in Cleveland arguing with my father about the varying talents of Rick Waits, Rick Manning, Rick Kreuger, Rick Wise, Rico Carty, and the rest of the Cleveland Ricks, I wanted to believe — I NEEDED to believe — that if the world tilted just so the Indians could win it all. I desperately looked for optimistic paragraphs and promising sentences in the baseball preview magazines. I talked to neighbors in search of even the the dimmest glimmer of hope.
And as an adult charged with writing columns about the Royals, I wanted to give Kansas City kids (and adults) a few of those optimistic sentences because, hey, it’s hard enough being a Royals fan. April showers bring May flowers and May flowers bring mathematical elimination day to Kansas City. You gotta have hope in February and March.
I think the Royals columns have generally worked — I say this because I tended to get an equal number of “You are crazy if you think this team is going to win because the Royals are going to suck,” emails and “You need to quit clowning around and write serious columns about how the Royals are going to suck,” emails. It’s always good when you’re getting an equal number of angry emails on both sides of the fence. And, to be fair to the concept, I also got mails from nice people saying that they looked forward to the “Royals are going to win” column every year. I still get those. They seemed to get what I was trying.
Well, it’s no longer my job to write the “Royals are going to win” column this year. I’m no longer columnist for the Kansas City Star — and big congratulations to Young Jedi Sam Mellinger who was hired to replace me. He will do a great job. He can decide how to handle the whole “Royals will win” column idea.
But I have to tell you: Because I am no longer columnist at the Star, because the Royals are no longer a big part of my work life, and because my daughters are getting to that age where baseball might start making sense to them … I took the plunge and bought Royals season tickets. Well, check that, I only bought the 21-game pass — I mean, hey, I’m not CRAZY or anything — but that still does make our family official Royals season ticket holders.* This was punctuated by an email from the Royals stating that, as season ticket holders, we are entitled to buy more tickets, which I must admit does not seem like much of a perk.
*I’m not all that crazy about parents who go around saying “Oh, our child said the cutest thing today,” but I must share with you our 5 year old Katie’s reaction when we told her that we bought Royals season tickets. She said, and I quote: “I’d rather go to Hawaii.”
On this blog, I have been pretty blunt about how I have not liked just about anything the Royals have done this offseason. My view on this remains unchanged. Basically, the way I see it, the Royals went out and picked up the Chicago White Sox’ best prospects from 2005 and spent real money on a handful of 30-somethings nobody else really wanted. Basically, the way I see it, the Royals are moving at least four new players into the lineup, and not one of them had a 100 OPS+ last year, and not one of them has a 100 OPS+ over a career, and last I checked 100 OPS+ suggests an AVERAGE hitter. No, it doesn’t seem like a great plan.
BUT … now I’m a season ticket holder too. And as a season ticket holder, well, I have to look at things a bit differently. I have to find a little optimism in this team.
So, here is that bit of Royals’ optimism. You can stop now, if you like.
To begin: I’m going to take you back to one of my favorite teams, the 1991 Atlanta Braves. I was 24 years old that year and I had just started writing my first sports column for the Augusta Chronicle. And because 1991 was the year that the Braves went from worst to first — from a 65-97 record to 94-68 and a World Series appearance — I was freed up to write about that team quite often. I was there at Fulton County Stadium when from Atlanta pitcher Zane Smith shut out the Braves in Game 5 to give Pittsburgh a 3-2 lead and the series shifted back to Pittsburgh. I was watching on TV* when Steve Avery (with a little Alejandro Pena help) and John Smoltz shut out the Pirates in back-to-back games to go to the Series. I was there when Jerry Willard hit the sac fly to score Mark Lemke with the game-winning run in Game 4. I watched the Jack Morris-John Smoltz duel on TV.*
*Well, we didn’t have much of a travel budget.
That 1991 Braves team was not much like the dominant Braves teams of the mid-to-late 1990s that most people remember. There was no Maddux, no Chipper, no Andruw, no Javy, no Millwood, no Klesko, no Rocker.
No, that team was really not very different from the 1990 Braves. How do you go from last to first? Well, the Braves made five key moves that don’t even seem so key looking back on it.
1. They traded Dale Murphy in August of 1990. This was a huge move … and a sad one. The Murph was Mr. Atlanta, a great and classy player who had been one of the few shining lights for a franchise that spent most of its time losing. He should have been there when the Braves became good. But that was the point … he could not be there. He was finished as a player by then, and the Braves had the choice: Stick with Murphy for sentimental reasons or trade him off and try to move ahead as a franchise. Never an easy choice. The Braves traded him to Philadelphia. They did not get much in return, but really the value was in moving Murphy and moving on with their lives.
2. The Braves signed 30-year-old free agent third baseman Terry Pendleton. At the time, Pendleton was viewed as a very good defensive third baseman (a two-time Gold Glove winner) with limited offensive skills (his career OPS+ up to that point was 84, not that anyone knew what OPS+ was at the time). He didn’t hit with power, didn’t have much speed, didn’t get on base and was coming off a season when he hit .230.
I suspect the Braves had no idea what what they really were getting with Pendleton … but when you get lucky, the proper response is to act like you knew it all along. Pendleton in Atlanta led the league with a .319 average, he led the league with 303 total bases, he hit a career-high 22 homers and he played his typically outstanding defense at third base. People buy into leadership at different levels, but there seems no question that his teammates fed off his energy, enthusiasm and professionalism. Pendleton won the MVP award.
3. The Braves signed first baseman Sid Bream and shortstop Rafael Belliard. I remember the Braves talking about getting Bream as a “veteran presence.” To be honest, he didn’t have much of a season in 1991. But he was steady enough defensively, and his signing allowed the Braves to move David Justice to the outfield to replace Dale Murphy. Belliard too was steady defensively and even a bit better than that … an upgrade over Jeff Blauser who could hit a bit but was grandfather clock immobile as a shortstop.
4. They signed 36-year-old reliever Juan Berenguer, who pitched well as a closer (2.24 ERA and 17 saves).
5. They basically went to the four-man rotation — Tom Glavine, Charlie Liebrandt, John Smoltz and Steve Avery made 141 of the 162 starts that year. It didn’t hurt that Glavine, Avery and Smoltz all picked the same season to emerge.
That’s pretty much it. The rest happened naturally. The Braves offense — in large part because of Pendleton — scored 67 more runs. They became much more athletic and aggressive (they stole 73 more bases in 1991) and walked a lot more (90 more walks and a few more hits meant moving from last in the NL in on-base percentage to second).
The Braves run prevention improvement was staggering. They jumped from dead last in ERA to third. Their gave up 178 fewer runs. Why? Well, obviously and most importantly there was the emergence of Glavine, Avery, Mike Stanton and John Smoltz (actually, Smoltz had about the same season he had in 1990). But you can guess that another key was an improved defense. The Braves went from allowing the most hits in the National League to the fewest.
OK, so now you ask: What does any of this have to do with the Royals? Well, nothing. But it’s a fun story. And anyway, we all know that Dayton Moore loves using the Braves as his model. The Royals in 2009 did not do anything well. Not a thing. They did not hit for average, they did not walk, they did not hit with power, they did not even hit sacrifice flies well. On the pitching side, they walked more batters than any team in the league and finished 12th in ERA despite a No. 1 starter who won the Cy Young Award. They did the little things as poorly as the big things. It was bad all the way around.
So, how do you fix it in a year? Well, you can’t. Or can you? The Braves did it. Of course, the Braves had some pieces in place — they had three brilliant young pitchers and a couple of brilliant young hitters too, Ron Gant and David Justice.
But, hey, the Royals are not without some pieces too. They had the best pitcher in the American League in 2009, Zack Greinke, and he’s just 26. They have a brilliant young closer in Joakim Soria, and he turns 26 in May. They have an almost 24-year-old first baseman, Billy Butler, who hit 50 doubles and 20 homers last year. They have a 26-year-old third baseman, Alex Gordon, who seemed to building toward stardom before an injury took him out for almost all of 2009 — he looks healthy now. David DeJesus is just a sound ballplayer all the way around.
And so, if you look at it through the Royals prism — admittedly, you may have to squint a little bit — you might see hope. The thing about the Royals is that they have been so bad for so long that it is easy to just bash anything they do. Chances are you will be right. But I find myself asking myself this: What if the Royals are right? It’s not impossible.
They got Chris Getz to play second base. Now, I hear from scouts who see Chris Getz one way — average defensively, good speed, below average bat. But the Royals think he’s better than that. And, heck, he might BE better than that. He’s 26 years old, he is a good athlete, the Royals think he has the tools and instincts to maybe be a poor man’s Luis Castillo — you know, hit around .290, steal 40 or 50 bases, play above average defense.
The Royals signed Rick Ankiel. Again, what I hear from the Royals and what I hear from my scouting and analysis friends is different. My people talk about Ankiel being an indifferent center fielder with an an incredible arm that he shows off by overthrowing cutoff men, and a hitter with enormous power that he conceals with that crater in his swing. The Royals see his athleticism, his arm, his power, and they think he’s extremely motivated — the Cardinals basically dissed him, he’s only signed for one year, he’s playing for his career. It could spell a good season*.
*I should point out here one thing that really works against Ankiel: He is a power-hitting lefty and he is going to a park that is TERRIBLE for power-hitting lefties. There were only 37 home runs hit by lefties at Kauffman Stadium all of 2009 — lowest total in the big leagues. To give you an idea, there were 80 hit at Yankee Stadium, 76 hit at the Metrodome, 62 hit in Oakland which has a reputation as a brutal home run park, and 54 hit at Fenway Park which is supposed to stifle left-handed pull power.
Here are all the lefties who hit home runs:
– Mike Jacobs hit 8
– Mark Teahen hit 6
– David DeJesus hit 4
– Alex Gordon hit 2 for the home team.
– Ryan Sweeney, David Ortiz and Justin Morneau hit two for the road teams.
– A.J. Pierzynski, Adam Lind, Aubrey Huff, Bobby Abreu, Curtis Granderson, Gerardo Parra, Ichiro Suzuki, Luis Valbuena, Mitch Maier and Travis Hafner all hit one.
On the bright side, one other lefty did hit a home run at Kauffman Stadium: Rick Ankiel.
The Royals think Jason Kendall brings veteran leadership and will sneak his way on base enough to help out the lower part of the lineup. The Royals think Yuni Betancourt can at least be passable as an everyday shortstop — he IS sturdy and knows how to stay out there for 150 games games. The Royals think Podsednik can more or less repeat what he did in 2009 (.304/.353/.412 with 30 stolen bases) and he will run down some fly balls in the giant Royals left field. The Royals think that between Jose Guillen, Alberto Callaspo and Josh Fields they will find some DH offense somewhere.
The Royals think that Gil Meche will return to being the good No. 2 starter he was in 2008 and 2009, and that our guy Banny will be the solid No. 3 he was before he wore down and got hurt late last year (he was 7-7 with a 3.59 ERA through 123 innings) and that something will click for Luke Hochevar.
They Royals think Greinke will be Greinke, Soria will be Soria, Butler will take another step into offensive superstardom.
Perhaps most importantly, the Royals think that Alex Gordon will become a good player in 2010. There is a lot of disagreement about Gordon, and I suppose that at times I have suggested that I don’t believe in him as a player. I have had my issues with him because he has shown a complete inability to hit lefties and because his attitude has at times struck me wrong. But, I will admit that I probably allowed those things to pull me too much in one direction. Gordon’s WAR in 2007 and 2008 (2.1 and 2.4) suggest he was better than he may have seemed, and fans predict a 4.0 WAR in 2010 which is about what Mark Reynolds, Denard Span and Michael Young offered in 2009. I think he’s probably the most important player on the team in 2010. And I really do hope he has a breakout year.
You can replace “Royals think” with “Royals hope” or even “Royals hope against hope.” But, hey, it’s spring training. And, hey, it’s the American League Central. And hey, any of these things COULD happen. They are not counting on miracles. They are not counting on angels carrying their outfielders to make catches or, even more unlikely, Yuni winning the MVP award. No: They are counting on playing significantly better defense. They are counting on being more athletic. They are counting on Greinke, Soria and Butler to be transcendent, they are counting on Gordon to emerge, Meche to come back, Banny to have a full year, they are counting on decent seasons from some creaky veterans and maybe one big or two big surprises. Is all of that likely? No. But shocking stories are never likely.
As a writer, well, you know what I think. As a season ticket holder? Hey, it’s spring training. Did you see that Ankiel hit two homers in an intra-squad game? Did you see Hochevar has reworked his wind-up to get more consistency? Did you see that Alex Gordon made some kind of Brooks Robinson type play at third base?
Reality is for summer. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming in February (and even early March).
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Young Jedi, Sam Mellinger, NEVER write that the Royals will lose! It’s too easy. Let Matt Klaassen or Bryan Smith write that column. This is Kansas City–proper. The Hoi polloi want to hear about the best case scenario. Please, pull the wool over our collective eyes!
Circle me, hope that springs eternal….
Circle me, Paul Splittorf
It’s March.
I just really liked this post.
Circle Me Sisyphus!!
Hopefully Joe the Season Ticket Holder means 21 more baseball related posts for my summer.
Joe,
You forgot about me taking back SS from Yuni, and continuing the awesomeness which I showed my rookie year.
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Optimism From A Royals Season … [...]
joe,
you forget boutme i healthy gain and gonn a be good for 295 30 and 100 to earn another 10 million contract
Damn, you got me all excited.
God bless you, Jose G. God Bless You. Forget about the money…just play…
Gotta love our spring optimism. Aren’t we due for some of these good luck breaks though?? At this point we are just hoping not to throw away the Royals schedule by May like we always have to do…Royals baseball, as the sports guy says….At least its outside
Joe, hearing that you are no longer writing for the Star is the saddest news I’ve heard in a while.
I translated this post into Ohioan and it sounds like you are saying the Indians have a chance this year. Hey, right now we have as many wins as any other team. Optimism is why we love spring training.
Spring training in most parts of the country means a love of the word “IF.”
If Carmona pitches like 2007
If Westbrook returns to form after TJ surgery.
If Sizemore is healthy and cuts down on strikeouts
If Hafner is healthy
If we find three more starters
If Choo doesn’t get drafted into the Korean army
If Peralta . . . . .
If . . . .
Ah heck, who am I kidding?
Joe, I have four grandkids who absolutely love the Royals and I think would rather go to a Royals game any day than go to Hawaii (because they probably don’t know where Hawaii is)! There is nothing better than watching three little girls ages 6, 5, and 2 decked out in their Royals attire chanting “Let’s Go Royals (clap,clap,clapclap,clap)”! And of course our 9 year old grandson goes to the games with his glove just hoping to catch that stray fly ball. Their love for the Royals is pure,unbiased and strong. Let’s hope us “older fans” can capture their enthusiasm this year!
….Carmona WAS money in ’07…
….Westbrooke HAS been solid 2 out of the last 4 seasons…
…Trevor Crowe IS (probably)better than Mitch Maier.
Shin Shoo Coo IS THE MAN (when healthy).
I’m almost on The Tribe Bandwagon this year…
…and by “Shin Shoo Coo”, I mean Shin Soo Choo…
I’ve never agreed with a 5 year old so completely in my life.
i guess, “announcing titan” does not mean you think he’s any good, but as a chicago resident who has muted many a white sox’ broadcast, let me be clear that hawk harrelson is NOT a good announcer. ‘fire joe morgan’ might’ve been ‘fire hawk harrelson’ if they could’ve listened long enough to build material. he’s WAY worse than morgan!
…. and May flowers bring mathematical elimination…
Priceless.
“OK, so now you ask: What does any of this have to do with the Royals? Well, nothing. ”
That made me laugh. Look, I’m a Twins fan and I generally feel sorry for the Royals and look back on the 1991 Braves with much fondness.
But that’s not why I liked this article – I don’t know how you keep the fire burning day in and day out on this stuff Joe, but as usual that was a joy to read.
When you take Katie to Hawaii, be sure to fly from the mainland to Kona (on the big island) rather than Honolulu.
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Don’t forget the safety goggles.
Joe, the time is ripe for the Royals to return to dominance. Detroit just doesn’t seem to have “it” to get it done, they don’t seem to get timely hitting or timely pitching when the game’s on the line. The White Sox have been the same way. Minnesota can hit a ton, but can they pitch? Cleveland is rebuilding and that leaves a huge gap of possibility for a Royals team who are finding an identity (finally). A speedy, pitching team that will have to have the stomach to play and win close games.
You bring up the Braves in 1990, how about some more recent history and the Rays of 2008?
I have lived in two countries in my life: the UK and Australia. I have seen games at two baseball stadiums: Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium. And this column makes me want to be at a Royals game in August – against Detroit, with the Royals three games back – more than almost anything I can imagine.
You forgot about the secret weapon – Edgar Osuna is the key that will take us over the top this year!
Seriously though, I know what you are saying. It is very easy and somewhat fashionable to dismiss the Royals as perennial failures, but having made the investment in season tickets does force one to maintain some optimism.
Whether the Royals are good or not, we get to watch major league baseball in one of the nicest parks in the game. And a bad day at the K beats a day at the office anytime.
I predict Luke Hudson beats out Gordon and Aviles for AL Comeback Player of the Year.
And that Sarah Palin (with Dick Cheney as veep) will be our next president.
And I’m gonna miss Frank White on the TV mic this year.
Just last night I asked my wife if she was excited for baseball to start….and she said no.
Ahh, but then I said “come on honey, the Royals are going to be in the race this year, all the way to the end!”
And she said “Who?”
Hope springs eternal, but it’s less eternal in someplaces I guess.
This years Cincinnati Reds sound like the 1991 Braves. They let go the aging superstar outfielder (Griffey). Great young pitching. Picked up a veteran 3rd baseman (Rollins) and another veteran at SS (Cabrera). It is spring and everyone has hope.
“Grandfather clock immobile.”
I like that.
So you’re saying there’s a chance?
Regarding the 4-man rotation, is there really any reason why the Royals wouldn’t try this? Greinke threw about 230 innings last season, averaging about 7 IP per start. If you went to a semi-4 man rotation, and increased Greinke’s starts from 33 (last year) to 36, you would increase his IP load to around 250. Before everyone cites the injury risk to Greinke, consider that if the Royals made the playoffs, they would have no problem giving Greinke 30 or so more innings to win a WS. CC Sabathia threw 230 innings in the regular season last year, and 36 innings in the postseason. Nobody’s talking about his arm falling off.
The beauty of this proposal is the Royals aren’t making the playoffs. If you give each of the top 4 starters 3 more starts, that amounts to 12 fewer starts by whatever terrible pitcher is the #5 starter. That means more wins, and perhaps an actual ray of hope for the fans that doesn’t require in depth analytical skills and an appreciation of rather unremarkable baseball history.
Astounding baseball knowledge by Joe. Circle me Bob Costas
I forgot that Senor Smoke was pitching for the Braves and not the Twins in 1991! He was the best! Not much to look at, but just hilarious.
Thanks Joe. The Royals will win column is one of the highlights of my year. You said it well, being a Royals fan is hard enough. It’s nice to read at least one column a year that gives me a little hope and eases my pain a little.
Please pass on to young Sam (who’s terrific, by the way) my fervent wish that he continues to write the column every year. It should be a KC tradition.
Add 1 homer from Jim Thome
Joe, your RWW column always made me feel good to be a Royals fan. This blog, however, left me a little empty inside. I’m not feelin’ it, bro.
(But then I think that maybe you’re just setting us up for a huge surprise…!)
“The Royals think he has the tools and instincts to maybe be a poor man’s Luis Castillo — you know, hit around .290, steal 40 or 50 bases, play above average defense.”
Sorry, Joe. As a Mets fan I can say authoritatively that the above from Chris Getz would officially make Luis Castillo the poor man’s Chris Getz.
Joe- Don’t forget, with your season tickets you also get “Postseason Ticket Priority”!!!
I am proud (ashamed?) to say I have a half season ticket package this year. At 26 years old this is the first year I could afford it. I still love finding all those little glimmers of hope.
Katie and her dad Joe are walking along the beach and find a magic lantern with a genie inside.
The genie says to them that they can have a single wish.
Joe turns to Katie and offers her the wish.
“Well Mr. Genie” she says, “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii and I hear it’s a really long way from Kansas and I don’t really like flying. Could you make me a road that goes to Hawaii?”
The Genie laughs “oh honey, no, my goodness do you know how long that road would have to be? Do you realize how much cement would have to be used in the piers to hold up the highway? I mean that would be a monumental task. I’m afraid I just couldn’t do it”
Katie frowns.
“How about you Joe do you have an easier wish?” asks the Genie.
“Well it is spring” Joe muses, “and hope springs eternal. How about you see if you can get the Royals to win the World Series. No wait that might be asking too much. How about just the division? No still too much. Oh i know how about if you could arrange it so the Royals don’t suck too bad this year, maybe not lose 100, not be eliminated by May? That’s not too much to ask is it?”
The Genie turns to Katie “gee honey would you like two lanes or four?”
[...] The rest is here. [...]
I find all you people’s lack of faith disturbing.
I’m from Baltimore and my fiancée is from Texas. We live in Dallas and we spend each baseball season complaining about our respective teams, the Orioles and the Rangers. She rightfully points out that the Rangers have never won a playoff game. Not a series, one single game. I’ll always have 1983.
We have “season tickets” at the Ballpark. The Angels look a little worse, the Mariners can’t be that much better, and the A’s stink. Feliz is throwing gas, Smoak and Davis are battling for the first base spot, and Borbon has learned to take a walk. It feels like this is the year. It really does. And I have to watch 20 games in the Texas heat. I have to drive to Arlington 20 times, which is a horrible drive choked with traffic congestion. And at the end the drive, I pay way too much to park, and worst yet, I’m in Arlington.
No one writes poetic articles about long-suffering Rangers fans. But it’s been 38 years and all her dad wants is one playoff win (she hasn’t been alive for all 38 of those years, her suffering is slightly less, though it has lasted her whole life which has to count for something). I really hope the Rangers win, for their sake. Not the World Series, not even a playoff series. Just one playoff game. Can’t Dallas just get a little bit of good fortune?
Because I’ve spent a lifetime rooting for the O’s, and I thought I knew what it was like to follow a hopeless franchise. But after just three years of going to Rangers games, I now know what true baseball depression is. It’s not just pining for the Glory Days, it’s wishing you even had Glory Days to pine for.
Thanks Joe, I needed that! Die hard Royals fan since my childhood in the late 70s early 80s. I always feel hopeful in the spring, but for some reason not this year. Perhaps it was because I have never been as disappointed in a team as last season, but now I see a bit of a silver lining. Of course my expectations are low, but hope springs eternal. I can’t wait for warm summer nights, baseball in the air…..Go ROYALS!!!!
[...] optimism of spring training suggests at least the possibility of something else. At his blog, Joe Posnanski explores the outer limits of spring-training optimism with a typically digressive post that dares to imagine [...]
If you take away Jack Cust’s 14 HR in Oakland (and he seems to be something of a freak in terms of being able to hit for power there), then the number of left-handed HR drops to 48. Still quite a bit more than in KC, but closer…
You missed an important Cleveland “Rick”! Rick Austin, a longtime successful insurance agent in Brookfield, Mo.
The troubling thing for is the Royals do have some really good pieces in place, but the other moves they make are just crippling. For every Grienke, Soria, Butler you have a Guillen, Farnsworth, Betancourt.
I could go on, but it’s Spring Training and hope springs eternal. 2010 AL Central Champion Kansas City Royals!!
I grew up in Atlanta, and I was 17 years old in 1991. Which means I had been eight years old in 1982, the last time the Braves had been even remotely decent (they won the NL West but were swept by the Cardinals in the NLCS). Which means I grew up on a steady diet of terrible baseball, watching a terrible team and reading SI cover stories that referred to Atlanta as “Losersville”.
Let me tell you, that 1991 season was *UNBELIEVABLE* – literally as well as figuratively. I was at the game where Kent Mercker, Mark Wohlers and Alejandro Pena pitched the first combined no-hitter in NL history. I was at the game where the Braves beat the Astros right before the Giants beat the Dodgers to win the NL pennant. I was at NLCS Game 5, the aforementioned victory for Zane Smith (a 1-0 win in which David Justice missed third base while coming home to score on a Mark Lemke single and was called out on appeal) – depressing, but hell, it was postseason baseball, and I was there! And then of course we won Games 6 and 7 and then proceeded to play in one of the best World Series of all time. I still get goosebumps just thinking about that season…you just can’t imagine what it was like to root for all of the crappy players I rooted for in my formative years as a baseball fan (and I could name a bunch of them) and then suddenly root for a team with four good starters and an MVP third baseman and good defense and two decent closers. (Berenguer was the closer for the first half of the season, but then Pena took over after, to quote Wikipedia, “Berenguer suffered one of Major League Baseball’s oddest off-field injuries while pitching for Atlanta in 1991 – on an off day, while he was home wrestling with his kids, he broke his pitching arm and ended up missing the remainder of the season, also missing out on the Braves’ Cinderella run to the World Series that year.”)
Point being: Joe, as usual, is spot on. I hope the Royals fans who have lived on a diet of subsistence baseball for so long don’t give up hope: it could happen to you, too. It probably won’t, but it *might*, and if it does…wow.
I think there should be an annual Spring Training Fantasy Forum. It will have nothing to do with rotisserie baseball, although the attendees can engage in it.
Simply put, fans of the Royals, Pirates, and Orioles will meet in Florida to talk baseball and reminisce about the “good ole days” that – like those who lament the end of the good ole days of use of whale oil in lamps – will likely never return, especially for the Orioles in the AL East. Former players, coaches, and executives from the last playoff team or +.500 teams can come to speak (if any are alive) and awards can be given out to the best team, coaches, and players amongst the three teams from the previous year, but the overall theme will be “Fantasy”. Since we know these teams are betrothed to sub-mediocrity we will all revel in hyperbole, wishful-thinking, and pompous and insanely positive prognostication. It can be like Fantasy Camp but with the added bonus of satyrical humor and two other teams emotionally crushed (from being a doormat) fans.
I’m thisclose to buying the Royals 21 game package. But, I do have a great opening day ticket!
Rangers win, the Rangers win!
Sorry Poseur, “your” Rangers do have a post-season win, back in ’96 over the Yankees of all teams
http://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/1996_ALDS2.shtml
then dropped three straight. But yeah, you’d like to set hopes a bit higher, maybe a series win first?
Brad [#52],
As a Blue Jays fan, I request – nay, demand (nay, request…we Canadians don’t really “demand” things) – that my team’s followers be included in the Fantasy Forum.
I’ve never seen such hopelessness going into a season as there is this year in Toronto. I think I might even have more optimism as a Royals fan. At least there, it’s conceivable that the team could overachieve its way to 83 wins and still be playing relevant ball in September. The Jays’ talent base is no great shakes but we have to deal with the added knowledge that even if we had one of the five best teams in baseball, we’d still probably be a fourth-place team in our division.
We also don’t have a set of stud, ready-for-prime-time prospects who could lift us to Rays-style prominence. I still support the team, but it’s gonna be a long haul in Toronto for as long as the team lasts here.
Brad, probably ought to add the Reds in that Forum too.
It is amazing that the best 4 teams by Division in the 70s were the Orioles, the Pirates, the Reds and the Royals (or the A’s, I suppose, the two teams dominated the division for half the decade each). Now, each year those teams have little chance in each of the their divisions.
Stranger things have happened, Lets Go… Roy…als!
This part brought me to a dead halt: Alex Gordon was building to stardom when he got injured. ???? Which Alex Gordon were you watching?
Now that we know the truth about your “Royals win the pennant” predictions, I have begun to doubt the seriousness of all those “Ravens Lose 55-0″ predictions in The Star. For your doctoral thesis, compare and contrast Art Modell and Charlie Finley.
@Poseur – the Rangers do get articles. Their Poz (so to speak) was a gentleman named Mike Shropshire, who also wrote for Sports Illustrated and contributed this article on the Rangers about fifteen years ago. He eventually published a book about his time on the Rangers beat.
I was an SI subscriber at the time and remember the article very well, as well as the accompanying illustration of the player holding the shower clog, staring into space, unable to be roused from his trance/stupor/Rangerness.
Lets at least take 3 from the Cardinals this year!
Great read as always Joe, I love anything baseball related and spring training is one of my favorite times of year, the time when optimism reigns supreme and anyone could win it.
On Ankiel, if he can make contact, hitting at the K won’t prove to be a detriment for him. He’s got that kind of power. Also, hitting the balls into the gaps could lead to a lot of doubles and some triples for him.
I must take offense at one comment, the Cards didn’t dis Ankiel or snub him, anything like that. They stuck by him for over 10 years and gave him multiple chances to make a go of it. Eventually they simply reached a point where it was time to move on.
There is one HUGE difference between the ’90/’91 Braves and the Royals. The baseball landscape is entirely different now. This is not the typical, tired, rant about how baseball’s system caters to the big market teams and the small to mid-market teams are simply filler in-between playoff runs for cities like NY, LA, Chicago and Boston. The facts are undeniable over the last 15 years. However, the Braves ownership did not have the burdens that owner now have (self-inflicted due to greed). And the baseball climate back then didn’t allow ownership to hide like cowards behind excuses like “small-market.”
The issue here is that the Royals owner David Glass is still the sad, sorry, cheap excuse for ownership that he was when he bought the club on April 18, 2000 (a day of infamy for Royals’ fans). He’s spending more now at the minors (finally) but that’s only because after 12 previous years of neglect of the farm system and allowing it to dry up, he had no choice. The franchise was dead when DM took over in ’06. It will take at least several more years on top of the 4 that DM has already invested to right the damage David Glass has done and that’s IF Moore knows what he’s doing and hits on most every draft pick. But Glass is, as always, neglecting the major league club that serves as a punchline or worse, an afterthought, to so many baseball pundits.
The sad part of all of this is that the Royals, just like in ’99, actually have a starting nucleus of a good team with Greinke (legit no. 1 starter), Soria (stopper), Butler (young firebrand hitter), DeJesus (serviceable major league outfielder that can complement others around him). But that team is being set up to be traded away just like the previous nucleus of Sweeney, Damon, Dye & Beltran. Glass refuses to take advantage of these quality players by allowing Moore to try to put team around them with a few impact free agents for the next 3 years until Moore’s saviors in the minors materialize around ’12/’13. Yes it will cost some money but only for the short term. Once these kids from the minors come up, the payroll can be pared back to something more reasonable for a market the size of KC. In the meantime, the long suffering fan base will have meaningful baseball to enjoy and most importantly Greinke will be enticed to stay.
I predict that due to the Royals’ stated goal of collecting as many “0-3 service time players” as possible, they have doomed this club to another stretch of 90-100 loss seasons. Greinke’s contract is up at the end of ’12. There is no way that after enduring sub.500 seasons of no-hope baseball in ’09, ’10 & most likely ’11 (on top of what he’s already endured) that Greinke will agree to another contract extension and career suicide. He’ll force DM to trade him which, if Moore is smart, will be by the trade deadline next year (2011) to maximize his value (or risk getting ‘Beltraned’). So another piece of the future is turned over for money’s sake and the ‘process’ starts anew.
It’s a vicious cycle perpetrated by the worst owner in all of professional sports and a sad joke played on a devoted but weary fan base.
Joe, it saddens me to hear that you wont be writing the Royals Will Win Column that has been my favorite for years. I really hope this wasnt all you have, and that you will give us a full on RWW column in the future! there is nothing better then that column
Joe,
Seriously, comedy has to be your second love, because that was laugh out loud funny. KC misses you JP.