Wednesday, May 14, 2014

It’s raining home runs



The Royals won their second game in a row on Tuesday night, a solid victory behind two home runs and 8 strike outs from James Shields. That is correct, the Royals hit two home runs FOR THE SECOND GAME IN A ROW. Is the world coming to an end?!?!?!?

That is a valid question and it remains to be seen what will happen to the world, but even with the 4 home runs in the past 2 games, the Royals still have the fewest in the league with 18, only 5 behind the Cardinals.

In other notes:

James Shields stifled the Rockies hitters all night, giving up only 5 hits and one earned run. Although Shields is expected to be an ace every night, the Rockies are leading the majors in home runs, batting average, runs scored and on-base percentage, so shutting them down is fairly impressive. Hopefully Jason Vargas is up for a repeat performance tonight so the Royals can make up some ground on the Tigers and further distance themselves from the White Sox, Twins and Indians.

If you did not watch the game, you missed some very entertaining baseball. In the sixth inning, Shields struck out Troy Tulowitzki, which was his 1,500th career strike out. There was a pause as the scoreboard flashed the milestone and the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Shields had no idea what was happening and his hilarious reaction is at the link below:


He finally figured it out, and tipped his cap before striking out the next batter. What a stud. He will be missed next year.
The Royals relievers also looked fantastic, and have not given up a run in the last 17 innings. In addition, Aaron Crow still has not allowed an earned run and his sparkling 0.000000000 ERA remains intact. Below is an equation for determining Crow’s ERA:


How you figure it out is simple: take pi and multiply it by the number of runners that cross the plate which is 0. JK, I don’t know what I’m doing. Anyway, this ERA is somewhat misleading as he has allowed plenty of inherited runners to score. Wouldn’t that be something though if he went the whole year with a 0.000000 ERA? He might make his second All-Star game. Below is a picture of Crow, my fiancée, and me at Target Field in 2012. I told him that day that he needed to be amazing in 2014 for the Royals to make the playoffs. I guess he listened...


Danny Valencia had one hit last night, giving him 12 hits in 13 games. In comparison, Mike Moustakas has 16 hits in 34 games. I was not comfortable with Valencia covering third base earlier this season, but since Moose couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat, I think I prefer Valencia now. In addition, Johnny Giavotella had another hit last night, giving him 4 hits in 5 games. Those aren’t incredible numbers, but considering how poorly Moose has hit, they seem monstrous in comparison. 

Despite the hitting woes, Moose remains on the team. There was hope that he would be sent to Omaha to destroy some minor league pitching for a while and then return, presumably with the ability to hit major league pitching. This is the same thing that happened to Alex Gordon and he turned out to be pretty good. I guess the Royals really are sticking by his defense at third base and his POWER POTENTIAL. 

The Royals need to do well on this 9-game homestand, so hopefully they start a winning streak tonight.




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