Royals Authority

With yet another loss, the Royals dropped to 4-9 in September. With 19 games remaining, they will have to go 12-7 to just finish .500 for the month (plus a little of October). It is an arbitrary timestamp to divide up team or player performance by simply turning the page on a calendar, but it is a handy (and easy) way to analyze a chunk of games.

In the case of September records (and for the purposes of this article, that will include the smattering of games that have been played the first week of October), they do give us some indication of how a team is playing as the season winds down. It can be fools’ gold, where a bad team has, say, an 18-8 September and makes moves in the off-season based on the idea that they were better than they were, but we are not talking about bad teams today. We are talking about playoff teams and your Kansas City Royals are having a somewhat irrelevant September, not because they are bad, but because they are already a playoff lock.

I’ll digress for a moment and make fun of the following people:

• Those worried about the Minnesota Twins catching the Royals. If the Royals win just five games the rest of the year, the Twins would have go 15-4 just to tie them. FIFTEEN and FOUR, people.
• Those certain Johnny Cueto is on the take with Vegas. Yeah, because that happens with professional players making millions.
• Those that believe all Cueto cares about is the money. Hmm, seems like a pitcher headed into free agency would likely want to pitch well in order to make, you know, more money.
• Those that don’t care about Cueto because ‘he’s not a Royal’. I don’t know where that line of crap came from (feels like a Texas A&M or The Citadel kind of thing), but then you also are not allowed to care about Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Wade Davis, Edinson Volquez, Ben Zobrist, Ryan Madson and Kendrys Morales. You know who else isn’t ‘a Royal’? Dayton Moore and Ned Yost.
• Those, and this is the ‘look at me, I’m a super smart contrarian’ crowd, that ‘were worried about this happening with Cueto when we got him’. You were worried about Cueto imploding? Even though there is six seasons worth of data (including the first four months of this season) that give no indication of this? So, you were guessing then, right? Hey, I like to gamble and I like to guess, too, it doesn’t make me smart.

Anyway…..

Rany Jazayerli brought this up last week, but you can take some comfort in the Royals recent tailspin by looking at the 2000 New York Yankees. That team lost its last seven games of the regular season, giving up seven runs or more in six of those games and never scoring more than four runs. They then proceeded to win the ALDS, the ALCS and the World Series. I have written several times about how a baseball team can not just ‘flip the switch’. The 2000 Yankees stand as an example of ‘wanna bet?’.

Let’s take a look at some more playoff teams. Below are all the teams that have made the playoffs in the last ten years, sorted by best September record to worst with their post-season results included:

Not surprisingly, teams that make the playoffs are usually pretty good teams and pretty good teams usually win lots of games. As such, many of the past playoff teams played winning baseball in the last month of the season. A fair number because they had to, just to get in, but there are teams with big leads that on that list that had big Septembers as well. Probably worth noting is none of the best ten September records of the last ten years won the World Series. Although to be fair, three of those teams did make the Series.

Sorting the list by post-season result (and this doesn’t sort out right as far as success, other than it puts the World Series winners first and the World Series losers second - I could do better, but I won’t) we get this:

Twenty teams made the World Series in the last ten years (math!) and only three of those twenty had losing Septembers and only one, the 83-79 2006 Cardinals, won the championship. Now, I should not be so greedy, given my adult life pretty much began with the 1985 World Series and was followed by a barge fulls of crappy baseball, but just making the playoffs this year is not really a big deal for me. I can live with getting to the World Series and losing, but I will feel like 2015 is something of a disappointment if the post-season ends for Kansas City before that.

More years would give us a better taste without question. The 1980 Royals were not great down the stretch and they made the Series. If the Royals continue to swoon in September, maybe I’ll be motivated to dig deeper or, better yet, maybe someone younger will allocate some time away from Clash of Clans (or whatever, I don’t care) to give us twenty, thirty or forty years of data that will make us feel better.

I am concerned, but not panicked. The above numbers are hardly absolutes, but they are not exactly reassuring, either.

The Royals and Twins combined for seventeen hits and twenty-seven baserunners, yet still managed to accumulate a grand total of five runs in twelve innings of play. Games like last night are full of missed opportunities and what ifs. They can eat you up, unless your team is 11 games up in September, in which case you would just like the damn thing to get over.

The Twins’ bullpen allowed just three hits and a run in six plus innings while Royal relievers pitched five straight scoreless innings before Franklin Morales served up a two out home run to Miguel Sano in the twelfth. By then, Ned Yost had gone deep enough into the bench that the Royals sent Orlando, Escobar and Dyson to the plate in the bottom of the inning (with Omar Infante on deck if anyone got on). Hey, if you can’t score with those three….

None of that is a criticism of Ned, who deployed Gore and Dyson in situations that had a chance to get the Royals an edge. After the ever reliable Ben Zobrist reached base for a third time in the tenth, Yost went to Dyson, who stole two bases to get to third with one out and Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer coming up. That seems optimal, until Cain chopped one to the pitcher to get Dyson thrown out at the plate. Managers do effect the outcomes of games, but sometimes they also do things right and still not win.

Random thoughts from last night, the past, the future and beyond:

• The umpires got the Dyson call at the plate right. If Kurt Suzuki does not have the right to go out and catch a ball, even when it is in the path of the runner, without getting called for blocking the plate, then we might as well give up on the tag play. Home plate umpire Greg Gibson was erratic last night, but he got that call right and even the guys in New York knew it.
• In case you had any doubt as to how poorly Jonny Gomes hits right handed pitching these days - or at least how Ned Yost perceives him to be - that he did not pinch-hit in the 12th with his team needing a blast to tie the game is probably a pretty good indication.
• Kris Medlen threw his hat back into the post-season rotation ring with a outstanding outing last night. It has been said a thousand times, but how nice is it to have the choice for your number four starter to be between Danny Duffy and Medlen as opposed to Jeremy Guthrie starting Game Seven of a World Series?
• No, I don’t give a flying damn about whether Johnny Cueto missed a public appearance at BBQ shop.
• Alex Rios got a hit last night. Seems notable due to rarity.
• Speaking of rightfield, what would you do in the post season. I am aware of a segment of Royal fandom that believes Omar Infante is some defensive wizard and Ben Zobrist doesn’t even own a glove. There is really nothing sabremetrically or via the eyeballs that supports that theory, but I imagine some say start Infante at second ‘because of his great defense’ and put Zobrist in right. Thankfully, Ned Yost is not one of those and has pretty much installed Zobrist as his every day second baseman - where is outstanding with the bat and above average with the glove. People love Paulo Orlando, who has a bookshelf of dramatic plays this year. He also has a library of sub-par hitting for most of the year as well. Dyson can hit righties decently, but then you lose his speed for just the right late game situation. Gomes can mash lefties, but really should not be allowed near fly balls in front of small children. Can the Royals carry all four in the playoffs? Will they? Should they?
• No, I don’t give a flying damn what your favorite Kansas City BBQ place is.
• Greg Holland threw seven pitches last night, none faster than 91 mph. This on the heels of throwing ten pitches the night before with, again, none topping out above 91. The results were two scoreless innings. A change in a approach or the approach of doom?
• I like this lineup and batting order (Alex Rios is the exception, but don’t really mind giving him a handful of games just to be sure his bat really is just a noodle), let’s take it out on the road and really see what she can do.

The Royals have lost four in a row: basically taking the Labor Day weekend off just like you and me. They have been outscored 31-9 in those four games. They have lost six of their last eight. It may be the end of times…or probably not.

The last time Kansas City dropped four in a row, they proceeded to win three of the next four games with walk-offs on their way to winning nine of the next eleven. They still have an ELEVEN game lead in the division and a four game lead for the best record in the American League. You don’t care about having the best record? You’re not paying attention. That said, remain calm. (Insert Kevin Bacon picture from Animal House here because I’m too lazy to do so this morning).

You can easily compile a list of all the teams that have lost four games in a row by simply writing down pretty much every team in baseball. These things happen, especially when your starting rotation goes into a collective funk (which happens pretty often as well, by the way) and especially when you are a team with huge lead resting, well, everyone.

Since September 1st, the Royals have not started the same nine position players in consecutive games. Paulo Orlando, who likely won’t even be on the post-season roster has started five of the last seven games. Jonny Gomes, who might not be allowed to bring his glove to the ballpark in the post-season, has started four games in rightfield. Ben Zobrist has started at three different positions (meaning Omar Infante got three September starts and no, his defense is STILL not good enough to justify that bat) and Alex Gordon has only played three games in the field. That is not exactly a prescription to be an offensive juggernaut.

Nor is any of the above a criticism. I wrote some time ago that the tricky thing for Ned Yost for the rest of the season was to decide how much to rest his team and when to stop. Some talking heads have stated that none of September matters, but I would not go that far.

While I have beat this horse enough already, the Royals do not want to give up the best record in the AL and have to travel to Toronto to play Games 6 and 7 of the ALCS. They should want no part of Rogers Centre with the World Series on the line. Additionally, I do put some stock into the ‘dome’ aspect of the game of baseball. It exists because humans, however highly paid, are the test subjects. How much? That is an unsolvable debate for another day, but I do know that a couple of good Johnny Cueto starts at the end of September would be nice to have in the back pocket come Game One of the ALDS.

Therein lies the trick: you want to be rested and healthy going into the playoffs, but you do not want to be rusty or (gasp!) plagued by a little mental doubt. Sure, the Royals could play around with the lineup the entire month and score eight runs in the first two innings of Game One. That said, I would feel better (and it IS all about me) if the Royals had a good week or two of decent production from their playoff lineup heading into the post-season. I would feel better if the bullpen was back in their roles and back in sync well prior to calling on HDH with a 3-2 lead in the top of seventh. I would feel better if Johnny Cueto had gone seven innings his last two starts of the year while allowing just a run or two and if Yordano Ventura had struck out ten…..and not walked five in his last start.

No matter one’s belief in the mental side of the game, you are going to have a hard time convincing me that Kansas City can flounder through September and just flip the switch come the post-season. Flounder away for the next ten days, I say, but then let’s lock in the lineup and batting order and the bullpen and play like it matters.

To his credit, I will give Ned Yost the benefit of the doubt on this one. He has already (or at last, maybe) come around to the idea of batting Zobrist and Gordon one-two in the order. He has essentially benched Omar Infante. He may well be anticipating a plan of action along the same lines. We may very shortly see a set lineup three or four days in a row, followed by a couple of days of ’40 man stuff’ and then back to the set lineup for another string of games. As the season winds down, I expect to see more HDH, plus Madson and Morales, and less Alexander, Chamberlain and Almonte.

Your cautionary tale, however, is last year’s Angels. Who won ten in a row in early September to go up 11 games in the AL West and then lost nine of their last fourteen (including the last three) and then were swept by your Kansas City Royals in the ALDS. The circumstances are not exactly the same as the Angels did not have the luxury of having the first half of the month (or all of August for that matter) to rest regulars.

There probably are instances of teams just ‘flipping the switch’ and the Royals could quite possibly be one of them. I, for one, would not mind allowing a couple of weeks to not only flip the switch, but to change a bulb or two after doing so.

Edinson Volquez gave up six runs in three innings last night. An agonizing 78 pitch outing in a game that was full of runs, hits and took just this side of forever to complete. A game the Royals won by eight runs and it wasn’t even a surprise.

A starter and one of your best relievers out with the chicken pox? No problem. Your All-Star leftfielder playing at something less than 100%? Not an issue. Your third baseman out with a minor injury and your regular shortstop resting? All is well. Your most consistent starting pitcher being flat out awful and leaving after just three innings? Yawn. An eight run win to go 31 games over .500 and 13 games in front of the AL Central? Of course.

Welcome to dream world, kids.

The Royals, after a tough loss to Justin Verlander on Tuesday, have used 28 position players to score 27 runs over the past two nights. Sure, Detroit only kind of sort of cares at this point, but Kansas City just plain pummeled the Tigers and did so while employing more of a Spring Training approach to the games than a ‘coming down the stretch’ style. I remember the mid to last seventies. I liked those years. 2015 feels a lot like 1976 through 1980. There was a time not long ago when I was uncertain the Royals would ever thrill us like that again.

Kansas City finds itself with a six game lead for the best record in the American League this morning and that is really about all there is to play for at this point. I think there is some importance to maintaining that advantage as I have no desire to play Games 6 and 7 of the ALCS at Toronto. Yes, I know there is a playoff series before that one and yes, I bet the Angels were thinking some about the ALCS when they ran aground against the Royals in the ALDS, but I would very much like to have home field advantage in my back pocket. I would also like to see Toronto, you know, lose a game once in a while.

Upsets can and do happen. Houston is a weird-tough matchup for the Royals (should they not win the West) and the Yankees would be interesting just from a historical perspective, but the Royals will be favored in any ALDS series. The scary team is Toronto. The one team in the league I look at and actually wonder if they might be better than the Royals is the Blue Jays. The remainder of the month is, and here is some striking new analysis, about Kansas City getting healthy and getting primed to beat Toronto.

Encouraging signs that the Royals are getting there:

• Alex Gordon is back. His bat looks good, but does anyone else feel like Alex is not quite ready to go full force after balls in the outfield? I don’t blame him and frankly, he probably shouldn’t be laying out for a line drive against the fence with his team 30+ games over .500, but at some point I think Alex has a bit of a mental hurdle to get over. That is not a criticism, it is just pointing out that Gordon is human.
• Ned Yost intimated that he might consider batting Gordon lead-off, Zobrist second and Escobar somewhere else. Just when you think Ned is stubborn and doesn’t get it, he does. Look for the Royals to actually bat their two best on-base guys one and two come the post-season.
• Yordano Ventura has his mojo back. Oh yes, my friends, mojo exists and Yordano has it.
• Lorenzo Cain is a star. Over the winter, I said, you said, we all said “If Lorenzo Cain can parlay his post-season success into regular season performance than the Royals are going to have some fun in 2015”. He did, they are.
• Eric Hosmer is a star. Over the winter, I said, you said, we all said “If Eric Hosmer can parlay his post-season success into regular season performance than the Royals are going to have some fun in 2015”. He did, they are.

Warning signs that the Royals could encounter post-season trouble:

• Johnny Cueto has arguably had the worst three game stretch of his career. Some are panicking. Of course some panic every time Cueto has the audacity to give up hit. ‘Not an Ace’ is the mantra and it is stupid because everyone defines an ‘ace’ differently and most that say cannot be bothered to look up Cueto’s stats, game logs or anything that didn’t happen further back than the previous inning. That said, it is a bad time to have a rough patch for Cueto. He is simply not able to locate any of his pitches with any consistency and in the battle to fix that, Johnny has gone away from using his variety of deliveries and, hell let’s just say it, he has lost his mojo. There are way, way too many great starts (years worth if you bother to look it up) in Cueto’s history to panic quite yet. Concern? Yes, you can be concerned and I won’t scold you.
• Who is the closer? Is it Greg Holland? Is it Wade Davis? Does Ned Yost know? Certainly, we know the company line, but who do you trust with the Royals up one and Troy Tulowitzki at the plate and Josh Donaldson on deck? When Herrera returns, I pretty much expect Yost to go back to the traditional HDH and that might be okay. Are most of Holland’s past issues the result of a minor injury (early) or too much rest (more recently) or is he ‘losing it’? While we like to discount the mental side of the game as it cannot be quantified, it does exist. In the odd world of bullpen minds, certainty of roles seems to be critical. If it is HDH or bust, so be it, but the Royals need to decide well before the end of the season.
• Who plays rightfield? Will Jarrod Dyson hit? Will Jonny Gomes catch the ball? Will Alex Rios be interested? And no, Paulo Orlando has not done enough to ‘deserve’ a spot on the post-season roster. Unlike the delicate mind of a reliever, Yost can mix and match at this spot. Dyson and Gomes have been part-time players most of their careers and Rios? Well, he can’t be worse than when he was out there everyday as the Royals surged to an 82-51 record can he?
• The fourth starter. Ventura’s locked down the third spot in the playoff rotation, so it comes down to Medlen or Duffy. Hell, that’s NOT a problem.

So, remember when we used to have ten bullet points that should the Royals be able to solve them they MIGHT get into contention? We are down to four - three really - that if they are solved the Royals should end up in the World Series.

Don’t wake me up, I like this dream.

Seven innings, one run, eleven strikeouts, just one walk. That was Yordano Ventura’s Wednesday night. That will get a guy into the playoff rotation.

Last night was the fifth decent to great outing in a row for Ventura, covering a stretch of 32 innings in which he has allowed just 20 hits and four runs. Along the way Ventura, who struck out 11 batters for the second straight start, has fanned 43 while walking 13. If you eliminate the August 11th start that began this run - a somewhat odd two hit, six walk outing - Ventura has struck out 35 and walked just 7 in 26 innings. THAT is the guy we saw on Opening Day and the pitcher we expected to see throughout the year.

No need to chronicle Ventura’s string of odd injuries and occasional mental hiccups in 2015. We know them all too well and, knock wood, they all seem to be behind Yordano at this point. Without getting too complicated, Ventura was throwing hard last night:

Of course, Ventura always throws hard. Yet, according the Brooks Baseball, his fourseam fastball is actually slower in August (96.55 average) than it was in July (97.1), but his two-seam or sinker is faster. In fact, what Brooks calls a sinker is averaging 96.97 mph in August: faster than the fourseam fastball. You know what that tells this uneducated onlooker? It tells me the computer is having a hard time distinguishing between Ventura’s four and two seam fastballs and/or all his fastballs have some sink to them.

If that kind of data confusion was happening to a guy getting lit up, that would be one possible indication that a pitcher was throwing piles of slop up to the plate. When it happens with a pitcher on a run of domination, I am going to tend to believe he is throwing some nasty stuff up there and confusing (or maybe just flat out overpowering) batters as much as the machines. That is breakfast table analysis, but something to think about…for a few seconds.

Perhaps it is as simple as using a better mix of pitches. Since July 20th, Ventura has thrown his curveball at least 20% of the time in each of his starts. Last night, he threw it 28 times and induced six swing and misses. At the same time, Ventura has gone less and less to his changeup, particularly in his last four starts.

Oversimplification? You betcha. Funny thing is, when you have Yordano Ventura’s stuff, sometimes it really is simple.

The Royals traded a minor leaguer most prospect hounds didn’t even know much about and got cash back from the Braves last night. Oh, and Jonny Gomes, too. While minor in scale, this is a big boy trade. One we are used to seeing from the big market teams as they stock their bench for the post-season. Your Kansas City Royals are stocking their bench for the post-season….in August. Savor that for a while.

Here is what you need to know about Jonny Gomes:

• He destroys left-handed pitching. For his career, Jonny has a .275/.378/.483 triple slash against southpaws and a 133 wRC+. With the possible exception of Ben Zobrist, Gomes is probably the best hitter against lefties on the Royals roster right now.
• Gomes swings and misses a fair portion of the time (27% career strikeout rate), but he walks as well (10.4% career walk rate) and has gotten better at working the base on balls late in his career, posting a walk rate above 12% in three of the last five seasons.
• He cannot field. You can put him in left (4033 career innings) or in right (1173 career innings) and pick whatever defensive metric you want and it all comes out with a negative sign in front of the number.
• By all accounts, Jonny is helluva a guy in person and in the clubhouse. Some discount chemistry almost completely, some agonize over it way too much. Whatever your position on the issue, most agree the Royals have a ‘good’ clubhouse right now and nothing in Gomes reputation would seem to be a flag that he would do anything to disrupt that.

And you’re just plain wrong if you don’t know it.

Last night, Cueto was not good. After a remarkable display of pitching to get out of runners on first and third with no one out in the second, Johnny gave up three two-run homers on his way to a second bad outing in a row. Two bad starts in a row? You’re right, he’s a bum.

Let’s ignore, as Twitter strikingly did last night, the four starts before that. You know, a complete game shutout, a one run over eight innings performance before that, two runs over seven the start before that and three runs over six innings in his first Royal start. That first start, by the way, coming against the Toronto Blue Jays in Toronto. Not impressed by six innings and three runs? Do note that the Blue Jays AVERAGE 5.5 runs per game and are 17 games over .500 at home. Since acquiring Troy Tulowitzki, the Blue Jays have scored less than three runs in a game THREE times with only one of those occurring at home. Buy yeah, as one tweet went last night: Cueto’s a bum, bad in 3 of 5 starts. Weird, looks like six starts to me, with four of them being good, but math is hard.

Now, I fully understand Twitter is built for the instant, knee-jerk reaction and also that anyone talking baseball on Facebook is likely to be firmly over on the very casual side of baseball fandom. I also know the need to be a contrarian and so, like the Cueto trade, when something occurs that most people like, there is the group that wants to be different. They were out last night, too. The ‘I was worried about this with Cueto’ or ‘I didn’t see why everyone is so excited about this trade’ group. Yes, you are all so insightful.

Listen, if you want to debate that three months of Cueto is not enough to trade Finnegan, Lamb and Reed, I will acknowledge that opinion. I personally don’t think it was, but there is an argument to be made. You can also express concern that maybe Cueto would not stay healthy for half a season and have some standing. Johnny did, after all, miss portions of both the 2011 and 2013 seasons. If your reason is because you don’t think Johnny Cueto is not that good, then you are just not paying attention.

Since 2010, Johnny Cueto:

• ranks 16th among all pitchers in total fWAR
• ranks 4th in ERA
• despite missing parts of two seasons with injury, he is still in the top 25 in innings pitched
• ranks 6th in batting average against
• led the league in innings pitched and strikeouts in 2014
• pitched seven innings or more in 24 of his 2014 starts
• pitched seven innings or more in 16 of his 25 starts this season and six innings plus in six others

Now, Cueto’s FIP and SIERA numbers for 2010 through 2015 rank in the twenties for all starting pitchers. If you want to make an argument that Cueto is not an ‘ace’, whatever that really means, you have some standing. He isn’t Clayton Kershaw, but do be aware as you dance the ‘he’s not an ace’ line of the following:

• Kershaw has started eight post-season games in his career and allowed five runs or more three times and given up five runs in a start twice in 2015
• Zack Greinke, between winning the Cy Young in Kansas City and going to the Dodgers, posted an ERA of 3.48 or above in three straight seasons. He also has given up five runs or more in start twice this year
• Felix Hernandez has allowed five runs or more in four starts in 2015 and did so three time in 2014
• Dallas Keuchel? Two starts allowing five runs, three more allowing four.
• Chris Sale has allowed five runs or more five times this season

After the second inning escape last night, I tweeted ‘Johnny Cueto just gave us a lesson in what it means to be an ace’. Like I said, Twitter is made for the instant reaction and, if pressed and if you demand some adherence to the nebulous ace, one, two, three, five rating system of starting pitchers, I might lean to saying that Cueto is not really an ace. He is certainly a ‘number one’ and at the very high end of whatever scale you might use to designate who a ‘number one’ is. An ace? I don’t know, man, define ace. However you define it, be careful or you will end up describing no one. Every ace has his warts. Every ace and every number one has a bad start or two….and sometimes they come back to back.

Now, if you want to say Cueto is a ‘bum’ and ‘not that good’ and ‘has not been very impressive with the Royals’, then I do have to ask very sincerely, ‘What the hell color is the sky in your freakish, odd little world?’

Kris Medlen’s first start as a Royal did not start out in storybook fashion. His first pitch was ripped by Manny Machado (who is pretty good, by the way) to the wall in right-center. Lorenzo Cain, as he is known to do, ran about four miles only to have the ball go into and out of his glove, off the wall and back into his glove. Seven minutes later the umpires in New York figured out what everyone else knew after the first replay and Medlen got to throw a second pitch.

After inducing a groundout, Medlen gave up a complete bomb to Adam Jones (who is pretty good, by the way). It was not a particularly bad pitch, a curve ball down, and was really more of Adam Jones being a good hitter. Funny thing about Medlen’s curveball, after that it was almost unhittable (to everyone but Jones, who would single his next time up) and the ‘out pitch’ on four of his six strikeouts.

While the reaction to Jones’ home run was predictable, because it is 2015 and we hyper-react to everything or, even better, react to the hyper-reaction by indicating how little we are reacting (get off my lawn, kids), cooler heads prevailed. Specifically, Kris Medlen had the coolest of heads.

He struck out Chris Davis, who was the only Oriole to get to a three ball count against Medlen all evening, and then struck out Clevenger to end the first and then just got silly good. It took Kris just 8 pitches to work around an infield single in the second. Fourteen to get through the third and eleven to escape the fourth allowing just one run thanks to two strikeouts and a Steve Clevenger base running vapor lock. Seven pitches got Medlen through the fifth and just eleven more to get through the sixth. After the first inning, Medlen never threw more than three balls in any inning. Hell, he even managed to get Adam Jones out once.

How consistent was Medlen? Here’s a very boring release point chart for you:

While repeating his delivery well, Medlen was also giving hitters a wide variation of speed:

When you combine the variation of speed with the ability to throw all four pitches for strikes, well, you saw the result.

After a seven run explosion in the bottom of the sixth, Ned Yost went to his bullpen to finish off the game even though his starter had only thrown 69 pitches. No harm with being cautious with Medlen, who had not gone more than four innings since being added to the major league roster. That is the luxury of being thirteen games up in August.

The last time Kris Medlen was a full-time starter (2013) he went six innings or more in 24 of his 31 starts and allowed three runs or less in 22 of those. This was just one start, but if the Royals have added a pitcher that in any way resembles the 2013 version of Kris Medlen to a playoff rotation that will start with Johnny Cueto. Well, folks, October just got even more exciting.

Before scores of fans, the Royals defeated the Reds last night the ‘Royal Way’: four runs and five innings of relief pitching.

The official attendance was 18,078 in Cincinnati. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the actual number of people in the seats last night was closer to half that number. As Royals fans we can make fun of that and smirk at how of may of those who actually did attend were cheering for Kansas City. We can do that this year because the Royals are averaging 33,609 people per home game and, already past the two million mark, currently are fourth in the league in attendance.

Those attendance numbers are the ‘good team spike’ for an organization that has seen a steady rise in attendance for the past five years and a far cry from the paltry 16,928 average per game back in the dark days of 2005. The Royals are very likely going to break the all-time franchise attendance record set in 1989 of 2,477,700. For a team that ranked no higher than 10th in American League Attendance in any year since the strike, this is heady stuff.

Of course, it brings out the snark as well. Those ‘die-hard’ fans who count themselves among the core 16,000 that showed up night after night to watch the Royals lose 310 games in three years might sneer at the ‘newbies’, some of whom have the audacity to not know who the number three started in Northwest Arkansas is. Where were you back then, they ask. I don’t probably at home watching on television until the game inevitably turned into a pile of garbage. I don’t know maybe taking a bike ride instead of seeing if Shawn Camp could get the Royals out of the sixth inning while keeping them within four runs. Maybe a portion are just bandwagon fans who are showing up because the Royals are hip and fun right now. Most are somewhere beyond bandwagon, but not quite die-hard in fandom. That’s how the world works.

Outside of Kansas City, we have all seen the comments. The ‘oh look, there are Royals fans now’ and other classic dumbassery. As if the Royals are unique in having more fans now that they are winning as opposed to when they were, and let’s be honest, pretty much a joke. Weird, winning teams draw better than losing teams. Who would have thought? If you are cocky enough to think your franchise is immune, you might want to check the record book.

That last sentence might have seemed pointed at the Cardinal Nation. You can hate St. Louis all you want, but you cannot deny the organization’s competence. They have posted a winning record in 17 of the last 20 seasons, made the playoffs 12 of those years and won the World Series twice. They have been no worse than fourth in National League attendance in all but one of those seasons (weirdly the year they won 105 games they finished sixth). To their credit, Cardinal fans have shown up in the losing seasons during that time, but if you go back to the last time the Cardinals posted back to back losing seasons (1994 and 1995), they sank to 7th and 8th in attendance.

How about the Angels? They have been second, third or fourth in AL attendance since 2003, but prior to that they were solidly entrenched at 8th or 9th for years….in a market that is pretty much people as far as you can see. I am a farmer, so I can say this, but you drive by a lot of corn and cows on the way to Kaufmann Stadium. Been to Anaheim lately? Lots and lots and lots of people. When the Angels were going 70-91, they drew 1.7 million.

Detroit? They have been consistent winners since getting to the World Series in 2006, but the four years prior to that? You know when the lost 91, 90, 119 and 106 games. The Tigers were 10th, 9th, 13th and 12th in AL attendance. To their credit, they were never last in attendance, but then the Royals were last in that category just one season. Hell, even the Yankees, who have led the league in attendance every season since 2003 fell as far down as 11th in the early nineties when they had three straight losing seasons.

There is no new information here. More people are fans of teams that win or, maybe more accurately, more people express their fandom of a winning team than when it is losing. I live in Nebraska and, like it or not Kansas and Missouri, the Royals are the dominant franchise up here and where before Alex Gordon was drafted, by the way. Royals gear, always around, is being worn with full fury up here these days. Some are bandwagonners, most are just paying closer attention. There is nothing wrong with any of that and nothing unique about it.

Royals fans, welcome aboard or welcome back or thanks for not being ashamed of being a KC fan anymore. There’s room for everybody, even those of you who don’t realize there are two Morales’. Fans of other teams? Get over yourself and get used to it. There are more of us this year and we are making more noise…. just like you do when your team is really good.

The Royals signed Joba Chamberlain and Wandy Rodriguez to minor league deals the other day and I had to chuckle at some of the reactions. Why? Some asked. Keep them in Omaha, please, others said. Hey, I understand some of the wonder/concern/angst. I’ll make fun of it because I am only a marginally nice person at best, but I do understand.

Not too very long ago, Chamberlain would not be headed to the minors to try to revive his career but instead would be pitching tonight in Cincinnati…in the seventh inning…of a tie game. One does not have to reach back too far into history to a point when instead of trading for Johnny Cueto to win the World Series, the Royals were signing Wandy Rodriguez to start eight games down the stretch just to get through the season.

Now, Rodriguez gets a month to show if he has anything left as he assumes the role of a warm body in the Omaha starting rotation which was thinned out thanks to the trades of Aaron Brooks, Brandon Finnegan and John Lamb. While I think the end of a good career is well within sight for the 36 year old Rodriguez, there is no harm in giving him a look in AAA. Curiously, Wandy’s strikeout rate is up this year, but sadly most of the bad stats are up, too. If you see him in September, which I highly doubt, it will be because of a catastrophic string of injuries (knock wood!) or simply a spot start to get the rotation aligned for the playoffs. His role is really just to eat up some innings for a AAA team short on starters and maybe do well enough to earn a 2016 Spring Training invite.

As much as it appears that Wandy Rodriguez is well into the twilight of his career, I feel as though Joba Chamberlain is pretty much past the bed time of his own. After a passable year for Detroit in 2014, Chamberlain was ineffective in 2015. He was victim to a big (and likely to regress in a good way) home run rate (21.7% of flyballs became home runs), but it is hard to look away from the fact that batters hit line drives off him almost 30% of the time. His is a career that basically has gone down hill via injuries and just plain non-performance since 2008 and shows no real sign of getting better. Yet, the guy was basically sitting 50 miles up the road from where the Stormchasers play, so what is the harm in taking a look?

There is no harm in either signing because, quite frankly, if either Rodriguez or Chamberlain pitches a meaningful inning in a meaningful major league game for the Royals, the team has far, far bigger problems. I think it is unlikely that we see either in a Royals’ uniform this September and quite possible that the month they spend in the system will be their only time with organization. Maybe we’ll see them in Spring Training - again, no harm in having a bunch of arms in camp in March.

It is easy to overestimate the amount of angst contained in a Tweet or a comment on the internet, but if you had any - even one brief sliver of it - over these two minor league signings, you need to note that the calendar says 2015, not 2009. It is not like it used to be. Oh, and by the way, after years of very logical questioning of Dayton Moore, who are we to criticize the signings made by a GM who picked up Chris Young, Ryan Madson and, yes, even Joe Blanton for virtually nothing this year?

Among other things….

• When would you let Omar Infante play second base again? My answer would be next April, but I fear Ned Yost will re-insert Infante as soon as tonight or tomorrow. Some have defended Infante playing every day by siting his defense. Sure, Omar ranks as high as sixth in the majors among second basemen defensively (depending on your preferred defensive metric). You have all watched him and Infante is a good defender, but he is not a great defender. He is no Frank White or Cookie Rojas. Frankly, he is no Mark Grudzielanek. And, by the way, you CANNOT play good enough defense at second base in the 21st century to justify the batting line that Omar Infante carries. You want to play Zobrist over Rios and keep Infante? I’ll listen. It is a pick your poison choice, but lose no sleep over Omar sitting. Also, Ben Zobrist can play some defense at second as well.
• Fun story of the day. My seven year old discovered that our next door neighbors are Cardinal fans - he was appalled. They have a ten year old who was lecturing Max on how the Cardinals had a better record than the Royals, to which Max responded, “Well, we have Johnny Cueto now.” and walked away. Johnny Cueto: fun to say, fun to have on your team.
• A fair portion of you have a distaste for Nebraska. I have said in the past that you cannot find four states that are more similar than Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa or, best I can tell, four states from which people are so certain they are different. As an aside, you know the difference between a die-hard Kansas basketball fan and a die-hard Nebraska football fan? Me neither, there isn’t one and you are fooling yourself if you think there is one. At any rate, the Stormchasers will certainly enjoy a nice little attendance bump should Alex Gordon do a rehab stint in Omaha AND Joba Chamberlain is in the bullpen. Even I (keep in mind I live in Lincoln) will think that might be a few too many Husker fans.
• Speaking of Gordon and again, knock wood, he would seem to be right on track for an early September return. It seems like perfect timing: three to four weeks for Alex to get back in the groove in the majors and the same amount of time for Ned Yost to settle into his post-season lineup. As I wrote last week, I don’t have major issues with Yost resting players liberally and maneuvering the lineup around through the end of this month and the first part of September. Come the weekend of September 19th, however, I believe Yost needs to know and play ‘his playoff nine’ and part of that is putting Ben Zobrist at either second base or in rightfield full-time.

It’s August 18th and we are already talking playoffs. It truly is not like it used to be.