Royals Buzz

[redsrbetter]

Royals' hole slowly turning into chasm
Jose Lima grabbed six $120 bottles of Dom Perignon champagne, popped the corks, and celebrated with his teammates, pouring into paper cups.

The Kansas City Royals finally won a game, beating the Oakland A's not once, but twice, last weekend. It might seem silly to celebrate a victory in August. But when you haven't won in 24 days ...

That's how far the Royals have fallen. Once the model expansion franchise and winners of the 1985 World Series, they have bottomed out.

It's so ugly in Kansas City that fans are calling for a boycott of Wal-Mart stores to punish Royals owner David Glass, a former CEO. They are wearing bags over their heads. Most painful, Kansas City doesn't seem to care.

"I've never seen people more mad and more upset in this town," says former Royals outfielder Brian McRae, a full-time Kansas City area resident who owns part of the Royals' flagship radio station (WHB 810-AM). "They're talking about boycotting. They're booing like I've never heard before. And when they see teams like Oakland, Minnesota, the Marlins and Cleveland getting it done, it upsets them even more.

'How come they're developing players and we're not? How come their players are getting better in the second half and ours are getting worse?' The scary thing is that these guys are going backwards. I was looking forward to the second half and seeing these guys get better. They're all getting worse.

"There is no light at the end of the tunnel."

Many franchises gone bad eventually turned it around. Minnesota lost at least 92 games four consecutive seasons. Oakland had six consecutive losing seasons from 1993-98. Cleveland was once the laughingstock of baseball. All three are playoff contenders.

But they had hope. The Royals are only getting worse.

The Royals (40-82, 35½ games out of first place through Aug. 21) are on pace to go 53-109 this season. It would be the third time in the last four years they've lost at least 100 games. They'd had one winning season the last 11 years, and will have lost at least 97 games in five of the last seven seasons.

It would cap the worst four-year run since the expansion Washington Senators went 239-407 in their first four years. They went eight seasons before losing 100 games again. The Royals could pull off the ignominious feat again in 2006.

The Royals are last in the major leagues in pitching, last in victories, saves and innings pitched and near the bottom in hits allowed. They are last in on-base percentage, hits, and RBI, and near the bottom in hitting, runs scored, slugging percentage, total bases and home runs. But hey, when it comes to fielding, they are only the 29th-worst team in baseball. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are the only team that has made more errors.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/bbw/c...htengale_x.htm

[Fishercat]

Sadly, the Royals are just a mess (I'm still astounded they took 2 of 3 from the Sox and A's). They have four good hitters, but the other five spots are giving them nothing (add another spot when Stairs doesn't play, the other three are pretty regular). It doesn't help when their two best pitchers are a relief pitching rookie (Sisco) and a guy with the first name Ambrorix.

[redsrbetter]

I agree fisher. Anyone have a plug on their future right now? I truly hope they can get something going soon. They are going to have to have one heck of an offseason.

[HuskerFan2002]

The Royals have yet to sign their number one draft pick. They were lucky because if Alex Gordon attended classes last Monday, he would reenter next year's draft where he could be drafted by the Royals again.

He's basically the start of something in Kansas City...