Late Innings

A few months back I wrote a piece on how I thought the Royals were making all of the right moves during the off-season. Most people criticized their free agent signings and activity. Any ways circle the wagons, because the Royals are suddenly 3-0 after sweeping the mighty Detroit Tigers. Of course out of this news came a few stories simultaneously expressing their man-love towards the friendly Royals, this little piece from Fox Sports and this nice writeup on Trey Hillman from CNN. The only question I have to ask now is why are we surprised?

Granted the Royals can’t be on a 162 win pace for ever, and they’ll most likely be under .500 at the season’s end. Still they’re definitely fun to watch so far. Some points I want to clarify on based on the above articles:

• During the off-season, almost everyone criticized the Royals for bringing aboard high-priced veterans like Jose Guillen and Ron Mahay. Now it’s nearly a 180 with the team winning. Many people criticized the Guillen signing in particular, especially since he had his name mentioned in the Mitchell Report. I personally loved these moves. The Guillen acquisition was important for many reasons, one it got Alex Gordon that much needed protection.
• Gordon has two homers so far in three games, and it’s interesting to see how quickly he was brought back into the spotlight, with people dropping off the Evan Longoria bandwagon.
• If there’s one thing that we can agree on, it’s that Joakim Soria is one of the best Rule V signings of all time.
• There will be improved power from Mark Teahen this year. He’s off to a great start so far. He’s basically where Jason Kubel of the Twins is today.
• The pitching looks nice so far as well. I expected Zach Grenkie to break out, I didn’t expect Brian Bannister to pitch as nicely as he did this week though.
• The Trey Hillman signing was one of the biggest moves of the offseason so far.

So we’ll see how the Royals do this weekend. If they’re .500 come Sunday night, everyone will most likely stop talking about them. Still it was good to see this spotlight on the team though. The thing to get out about any stories about the Royals is that the team is moving in the right direction (David Glass wants to spend, and Dayton Moore is spending it correctly.) This is even with them signing Brett Tomko over the off-season, and with them actively pursuing Carlos Silva.