Here’s the thing: It’s hard to lose 100 games in one baseball season.
The Colorado Rockies have been awful. They’ve never lost 100 games in a season.
The Anaheim/Los Angeles/California Angels don’t have a storied history. They’ve never lost 100.
The Houston Astros have never lost 100.
The Montreal Expos of the last decade were baseball’s joke.
They didn’t lose 100.
The Chicago Cubs, everybody’s favorite losers, have not lost 100 in almost 40 years. They have lost 100 twice in their history.
The Royals are about to lose 100 games for the third time in four years.
This is a series of Royals thoughts and opinions, each exactly 100 words long. The Royals have been so bad for so long they merit their own form of prose. Call these Kansas City Royals haikus or Roykus, if you prefer.
Some will be angry, some will be mocking and some, perhaps, will even be hopeful. I cannot overcome my weakness for hope. In Cleveland, in my childhood, the Indians were perpetually dreadful, yet every year I believed Johnny Grubb would blossom and Neal Heaton would win 20.
The names become Mark Teahen and Denny Bautista.
The kid keeps hoping.
The adult, though, gets angry. Nobody likes associating with a team this awful. The last seven years — even including the mirage 2003 season — the Royals have lost 202 more games than they’ve won. That’s 29 more losses than wins every year.
No fan deserves 29 more losses than wins every year. Life’s tough enough.
How did it get this bad? Here’s a quick recipe: Take an unfair game, add poor scouting, mix in colossal blunders, add a pinch of pennies and top it all off with a loser’s glaze. That’s how you lose 100 games three out of four years.
To lose 100 games in a season, you have to lose about 17 times per month. That’s four or five every week.
If you go on a five-game winning streak, you have to lose eight to keep up.
That’s a 100-loss pace — five wins, eight losses, five and eight, that same march to the grave all summer long.
The Royals have been too inconsistent for that. They played awful. They hired Buddy Bell. They swept the Yankees. They played pretty well. They lost 19 in a row.
The Royals are not even consistent enough to be bad all the time.
Here’s what I mean by “loser’s glaze.” Going into the last game of 2002, the Royals had 99 losses. They had never lost 100, not even in their first year.
That day, they sent out a minor-league lineup with Kit Pellow batting cleanup, and Dusty Wathan, son of former Royal John Wathan, making his only major-league start. The Royals lost.
After the game, Royals general manager Allard Baird said it didn’t matter, that 99 losses were fundamentally no different than 100. “They’re both really bad,” he said.
True. That attitude seems like a good way to lose 100 every year.
People often say the Royals are being run like Wal-Mart. I don’t think that’s true at all. People say that because Wal-Mart cuts costs, I guess.
But Wal-Mart is the biggest and most dominant company in America.
Wal-Mart has invested billions into cutting edge technology — for instance, the temperature in every store across America is being controlled in Bentonville, Ark.
Wal-Mart does not ask anyone to share and certainly does not share with anyone.
Wal-Mart relentlessly tries to get bigger and better.
Wal-Mart tries all sorts of new things to beat the competition.
And say what you will: Wal-Mart wins.
Poor scouting? Here are the Royals’ top draft picks (not including the last three who are too young to judge or unsigned):
2002: Zack Greinke. He’s 4-16 with a 5.95 ERA. He’s the success story.
2001: Colt Griffin. Will probably never pitch in the big leagues.
2000: Mike Stodolka. Will probably never pitch in the big leagues.
1999: Kyle Snyder. Had Tommy John surgery and two major shoulder surgeries.
1998: Jeff Austin. Sat out a year, got big bonus, never won a game for Royals.
1997: Dan Reichert. Won 21 career games. He also led league in wild pitches once.
I asked the thoughtful baseball fans on the message board called “Baseball Think Factory” (
www.baseballthinkfactory.org) to tell us what they would do to save the Royals.
This item comes from a poster called “Albert Pujols 4 Pope.”
“Hire the wife of the owner and have her implode the team. Bring in a convict with a 100-mph fastball, a catcher with gimpy knees, a prima donna third baseman who will go out of his way to avoid getting injured, a center fielder who would get 120 stolen bases if he only got on base, and a power-hitting outfielder who practices voodoo.”
Royals manager Buddy Bell said something frightening the other day. He was talking about shortstop Angel Berroa and his unique talent for swinging at every pitch. Anytime you pitch an idea to a client, for instance, Angel Berroa is swinging a bat somewhere.
Berroa has 22 errors. He has 16 walks.
Here’s what Bell said: “I love plate discipline and on-base percentage. But I just think if you stay aggressive — if you’re always ready to hit — then you’ll get on base.”
I can’t imagine worse advice.
This is how you end up 28th in on-base percentage and 29th in walks.
Here is what is so infuriating about the Royals: They don’t do a single thing well. They don’t hit for power (28th in slugging percentage, dead last in home runs), and they don’t have any speed (they will steal fewer bases than any Royals team ever).
Their pitchers get smacked around (dead last in batting-average against) but they also have no control (dead last in strikeout-to-walk ratio).
They are a dreadful fielding team (only the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have made more errors).
And they are at their worst in close games (they have the worst one-run record in baseball).
The Royals’ all-encompassing awfulness is what makes you wonder if there’s a plan. If the Royals sent eight Andres Blancos out there — that is, eight guys who can’t hit but do play superior defense — that would be a plan. It might be a bad plan, but at least you would be able to say: “OK, the Royals believe in strong defense.”
If the Royals had four starters who threw plain 87-mph fastballs but always threw strikes, that would be a plan. You could say, “OK, the Royals believe in control pitchers.”
Right now, there’s no telling what they believe in.
Everybody likes catcher John Buck. He’s a solid person, a team guy; he has all the attributes to become a leader. Except one. This season, Buck has shown that he cannot hit. His average is .229, and his .276 on-base percentage ranks 51st among catchers with at least 100 at-bats. That’s bad.
The Royals hope this year is a fluke. They hope he will hit.
Then, this often seems to be the Royals strategy: Hope. Here was the headline with the Royals 10 games into their 19-game losing streak: “Bell hopes day off will help.”
It has come to that.
More save-the-Royals ideas from Baseball Think Factory: From Der-Komminsk-sar: “Redesign Kauffman Stadium. … Swap the ‘R’ and ‘E’ columns on the scoreboard.”
From Death to Immobile Things: “1. Increase concession prices: Beer, $1 million; Hot dog, $5 million; Nachos, $3 million. 2. Send free tickets to Bill Gates, Paul Allen, the Waltons.”
From Devin McCullen: “Tear down the outfield fences, plant corn, hope the ghosts of the Kansas City Monarchs show up.”
From Sweeper: “Live up to nickname. Fire all existing players, hire real nobility.”
From Joshuacottrose: “(A) Stockpile young talent; (B) Develop young talent.”
How did Josh get in here?
When you’re the worst team in baseball, everybody assumes you are wrong about everything. I think the Royals are right about No. 2 draft pick Alex Gordon.
The Royals have offered Gordon $3.8 million. That’s a lot of money. It’s substantially more than the third pick. It’s more than last year’s second pick. I understand the Royals are also willing to give Gordon a major-league deal.
Gordon and his people realize the Royals are in bad shape. They’re trying to cash in. You can’t blame them, I guess. But at some point, you either want to play or you don’t.
I wish Royals owner David Glass would speak out more. Many people wish Glass would sell the team, but that’s a silly dream. Nobody in Kansas City wanted to buy the Royals then. Nobody wants to buy them now.
I wish Glass would tell us what he’s thinking. Is he angry? Embarrassed? Is he really spending all of his revenue sharing? Does he go to bed grumbling about a Berroa error or Jose Lima or the Dance Off?
Nobody even knows how he feels about the stadium.
I wish he would talk. Royals fans would like to know he cares.
I didn’t mind when the Royals signed 37-year-old Matt Stairs for another year. Stairs is a good ballplayer. He takes a walk, hits with some power and plays defense enthusiastically.
The problem comes when Baird says he would consider bringing back Jose Lima, Terrence Long, Joe McEwing and other veterans for lesser contracts. Baird will only say, “I won’t rule anything out.” He’s surely just being nice.
Look: Fans are panicked. These Royals are going to lose more games than any in team history.
Nice or not, it might be good to start ruling out some of the people responsible.
Richard Dodson writes in. He wants reasons to dream.
Well, Zack Greinke could develop into a frontline pitcher. Denny Bautista has the stuff to dominate. David DeJesus is a good player. Mike Sweeney is a terrific hitter when healthy. Mark Teahen has improved. Ambiorix Burgos, Andrew Sisco and Mike MacDougal might make a fierce late-inning bullpen.
Justin Huber looks like he can hit. Billy Butler is one of the five best hitting prospects in the game. Andres Blanco could win a Gold Glove at second or short.
Nobody said dreaming is easy. Not with 100 losses. Not in 100 words.
