The Object of the Game

The object of a baseball game is to score more runs than your opponent. Do you think that the Royals offense knows this? Perhaps someone needs to do an Al Pacino on our hitters. You know the one. The great speech that he gives toward the end of the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. Here is a pertinent part of it:

"What you are hired for is to help us...does that seem clear to you?...To help us, not to (bleep) us up."

The Royals bats have fallen silent. They finally broke their string of 24 consecutive scoreless innings on Sunday in the first inning. With the loss on Saturday, they lost 11 out of their last 14 which included a 6 game winning streak. The difference in nearly all of those losses during this stretch were due to a lack of runs scored. On May 7 after a six game winning streak they led the division by 3 games. They fell to four games out May 23.

Worse yet, they have nearly the same record as a year ago. The Royals are better, are they? The pitching is vastly improved over last year but you also need hitting to win. They have shown more patience at the plate. At times their hitting at times has been...well...timely. But they still have not turned that into more wins then last year.

This division right now is there for the taking unless Detroit starts to run away with it right now. Before the season started it seemed that a 3rd place finish with at least a .500 record would mean a successful year for the Royals. A little over a month into the season all of the sudden it looked the the Royals had a legitimate change to win the division. They still do. But the team needs to start to produce runs like right now.

The first place Tigers come into Kauffman Stadium for a 3 game series. The Royals are 3 games out. They really need to sweep all 3 games from the Tigers to make up for the slump in the standings the past couple weeks. In order for that to happen, they need to get on base and score runs. If they can sweep and start to win consistently again like earlier in the season then they will be that much better once Joakim Soria and Alex Gordon come off the DL. Gordon will need to show that he can be the catalyst for this team like he was in the minors and in college. All Soria needs to do is continue to close. But, in order to close you need a lead.