It was a frustrating ugly game for the Royals saturday at Kauffman Stadium. The Royals 6 game winning streak was ended tonight by the Cardinals by the score of 5-1. The Royals struggled to get anything offensively and looked like the pre-interleague play Royals with 1 run and 5 hits in the game. Kyle Davies pitched well in the first few innings before the Cardinals scored the first run of the game on a throwing error by Mike Aviles that looked like an easy double play ball but Aviles threw it into the dirt and the ball bounced away from 1st baseman Ross Gload.

Aviles bad throw was not the only defensive play that cost the Royals. Joey Gathright lost a ball in centerfield that dropped amd scored a run. Miguel Olivo made a pretty horrendous error by dropping the ball after tagging out a runner at home. No it was’nt a ball jarring collision at home that caused Olivo to drop the ball, he just dropped it. But the Royals lost this one not entirely because of these mistakes but more because they could never really put anything together. They never had a rally the whole game. In the 7th inning it looked like a rally was beggining but on a run scoring hit Olivo was sent home by 3rd base coach Luis Silverio. Olivo was thrown out by a mile by Cardinal catcher Yadier Molina.

Billy Butler was called up from triple-A Omaha today before the game but was not in the line up on saturday night. After struggling at the major league level recently Butler was sent down and hit very well. Alberto Callaspo was placed on the 15 day DL after he was arrested for running a red light late at night and was charged with a DUI. It is unknown whether the arrest has anything to do with the arrest.

Luke Hochevar looked like the #1 overall pick that he was in 2006 in wednsday’s 8 innings that he pitched against the Colorado Rockies. With this 4-2 win by the Royals it is a sweep over the Rockies at Kauffman Stadium. The Royals are no longer in last place and have the best record of any team in interleague play.

Luke only allowed 2 runs in his 8 pitched innings, which was his career high for innings pitched. But Hochevar was aided by the suprising play of Ross Gload who went 3-3 on the night with 2 RBI’s. Gload has not hit well at all this year and after tonoghts game he is hitting .261 with 8 RBI’s in 176 at-bats. The Royals have had everyone on the team contributing during these last 5 series that they have won.

Jose Guillen was booed by the fans at Kauffman Stadium on wednsday as he jogged down the first base line on what ended up being a pretty close play. But Guillen has had some hip injuries this season and it was a ball that appeared to be a sure out. I’m not saying that players should’nt try their hardest but this was a groundball that 99% of the time is an easy out.

The Royals continued their winning ways on tuesday night with a 7-3 win over former Royals starter Jorge De La Rosa and the Colorado Rockies. It was a game that looked like a pitchers dual early between De La Rosa and Royals starter Zack Greinke. But in the 4th inning the Royals got on the board only to be answered by the Rockies scoring 1 run in the 5th inning and 2 in the 6th. The Royals stretched their 7 runs out between the 4th and 7th inning where they scored atleast 1 run in every inning.

Zack Greinke had a good start, going 6 innings with 10 strikeouts. Ramon Ramirez also had 3 of the 14 strikeouts by the Royals tonight. Other than Davies 1st inning blowup against the Giants the Royals starting rotation has really gotten on a roll and has been pitching pretty good.

The pitching has been there all year for the Royals though and while it has helped with the wins the Royals bats have picked up a lot from earlier in the year. In the last 3 games the offense has put up 26 runs. The Royals have even pick up the home run pace and they are no longer the worst in the league in home runs. They are also now 9-1 in their last 10games and are 7.5 games back of the White Sox for first. Hopefully the winning has not been because of weaker opponents from the NL and the team can continue on against AL opponents.

What looked like a no doubt loss to the SanFransisco Giants half way through the game ended up being an amazing comeback win by the Royals. Down 10-3 going into the 5th inning the Royals scored 2 runs in the inning. But it was the 6th inning that got the Royals tied with the Giants after a 5 run inning. In the 7th the Royals would score the run that would put them ahead for good as they won 11-10.

The young phenom pitcher Tim Lincecum had the Royals struggling early and go scoreless through the first 2 innings. In the 3rd the Royals were able to get 2 runs on the board. Lincecum went 5 innings with 8 strikeouts and gave up 5 earned runs. Kyle Davies started the game for the Royals and he did not get very far into it. After 1.1 innings and 5 earned runs Davies was taken out. This was dissapointing with the good starts Davies has had recenlty.

In a game that ended 11-10 you would expect atleast a couple home runs, but that was not the case in this game. There was not a single home run out of the 21 run game. In saturdays Cubs-White Sox game that had 18 runs scored there were six home runs. Now I realize that these 2 teams are pretty much the polar opposites of the White Sox and Cubs right now, but still it’s pretty surprising that not a single run came from a homer. There were a lot of players with RBI’s today but Dejesus and Aviles have continued hitting well today, with Dejesus having 2 RBI’s and Aviles despite only getting  1 hit had 3 RBI’s.

The Royals have now won 3 strait series and will face the Colorado Rockies at Kauffman stadium next. The Rockies are 32-44 on the season.

After this week at Bush Stadium in St. Louis, all of the Cardinals fans saying that this is not a rivalry may have some different feelings now. The Royals just swept the Cardinals in a 3 game series. And with how Kansas City had been playing before interleague play this is very exciting to see. The Royals are now 7-2 against National League teams this year and 5-1 in their last 2 series.

Todays game was a 4-1 win that Zack Greinke pitched great in. The Royals allowed their fewest amount of hits in a game for the season with only 2 allowed. The only run by the Cardinals came on a home run. All 3 games of the series were close with the other to games being 1-run games. Mark Teahen was able to give the Royals two insurance runs in the 9th inning while they had a 2-1 lead. It was Mark’s 7th home run on the season.

Even with this sweep being over a injured Cardinals team it still feels pretty good to be a Royals fan today. Now the Royals will come home to play a series against the Giants and then the Rockies. Both of these series seam winable for KC. After the 12 game losing streak that really hurt the Royals hopefully they are playing well enough to get back in the division race.

Man, where were all these runs in yesterday’s game. After being shutout yesterday in a 10 inning game the Royals were able to put up some big numbers today against Randy Johnson and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Royals won 12-3 tonight in what may have been the best performance of the year for the Royals.

The Royals hit 3 home runs in this game with two of them being back-to-back to start off the 6th inning from David Dejesus and then Mike Aviles. The other home run came from the bat of John Buck for his 3rd home run of the season in the 5th inning. It is great to see the Royals hitting well during the last week or so considering how bad the hitting was early in the season. Jose Guillen also came through with 2 RBI’s to put him at 52 for the season. That is good enough for 3rd in the American League in RBI’s and it looks like he could break last year’s RBI leader Emil Brown’s 62 before the All-Star break.

It was an all around well played game for KC. Pitcher Luke Hochevar pitched 7 innings with 2 earned runs and 6 strikeouts. It was also good for Luke to get some run support, which he hasn’t gotten any of this year. Carlos Rosa made his major league debut tonight and got his first strikeout after being called up from AAA Omaha earlier this week in place of Brett Tomko.

This was somewhat of a ugly game tonight for both teams, but especially for the Royals who lost on a walk-off home run. Even with the game going into extra innings in a 1-0 win for the Diamondbacks the pitching wasn’t as good as you would think. Both teams left a lot of men on base and also a lot of men in scoring popsition. Zack Grienke got out of a bases loaded jam in the second and third inning where he threw over 30 pitches but did not let a run in. Doug Davis was the pitcher for the Diamondbacks and pitched well but like Greinke allowed too many runners on base and was lucky to keep the Royals scoreless.

Yasukio Yabuta gave up the game winning home run in the 10th inning to Chad Tracy. The Royals pitching gave up way too many walks. There were 8 in total, 7 from Greinke and 1 from Yabuta. Included in the 8 walks were 3 to Diamondbacks young outfielder Justin Upton. Also for the Diamondbacks Chris Young went for the golden sombraro with 4 strikeouts.

Tommorow is the second game of the series in Arizona. Luke Hochevar will be pitching for the Royals against Randy Johnson for the D-Backs.

The Royals pulled off a 6-5 win over the Texas Rangers in the eighth inning. Going into the bottom of the eighth the Royals were down 5-4. Alberto Callaspo reached on a single and that brought Alex Gordon up to bat. Alex hit a double that landed right on the right field foul line. Frank Fransisco pitching for the Rangers threw a wild pitch over Jose Guillen’s head in the next at-bat that pinch runner Tony Pena Jr. scored on. Pena went right away and looked like he would be out after the ball bounced strait off the backstop to Rangers catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, luckily for the Royals, Saltalamacchia slipped and was not able to make a throw home. Gordon also made it to third on the play. Jose Guillen hit a fly ballto right center field that Gordon tagged up on. The throw home looked like it would be in time but Gordon dove just out of the way of the tag.

Brian Bannister pitched for the Royals against Eric Hurley. Bannister did not have a great game but did well enough to keep the Royals in the game. The first home run for the Rangers was a three run homer by Duran, the next batter was Ian Kinsler who went back-to-back on a solo home run. He went 7 innings and gave up 4 earned runs on 2 home runs. Hurley also gave up 4 earned runs in 6 innings and 2 home runs. Joakim Soria came in for the 9th inning and got 1 strikeout and the save for the Royals.

Other than the runs in the 8th the Royals scored 4 runs off of home runs. Alex Gordon had a two run shot in the 1st that landed in the fountains in  right field. Mike Aviles went deep for his first career home run, it was also a two run home run.

For the second strait night the Royals were able to get out to a 5-1 lead. Also for the second strait night the Royals blow there 5-1 lead. Tonight the final score was 11-5 after the Royals bullpen was hammered for 10 runs.

The Royals have really showed that you can never count the other team out. The bullpen that has been one of the more dependable parts of the team over the past few years, and now has been responsible for some pretty amazing blown leads. There was the game against Minnesota that we had a 5 run lead in the ninth with one out, they gave up 5 runs in the inning and lost in extras. There was the game in New York where Jose Guillen hit the grand slam late in the game to make it a 10-6 game, the Yankees won that one 12-11. Then there was last night when they had a 5-1 lead late in the game, and we gave 5 runs and lost 6-5. Now tonight the Royals decided to have a repeat performance of last night.

Going into the 7th inning the Royals were up 5-1. Because of Kyle Davies pitch count the recent call-up Jeff Fulchino came into the game. Fulchino gave up 3 runs and left the game with a 5-4 lead. Jimmy Gobble then came in, still with no outs and 3 runs scored. Gobble loaded the bases, and with the way things have been going it was not surprising what happened. David Murphy hit a grand slam, and put his team up 7-5. The Royals continued to give up runs and lost 11-5.

One bright spot tonight was Mark Grudzielanek, who had 4 RBI’s including a 2 run homer. Mark also helped the team on defense by making a great play on a double-play. Jose Guillen also stayed hot as he got 3 hits on the night.

Well, I’m not really sure what to think of this game. The Royals lose 11-12 to the Yankees, and showed great offense. Unfortunatly as you can see by the score it wasn’t a great pitching day for KC though. Brian Bannister pitched today going against Andy Pettitte of the Yankees.

In the first inning Jose Guillen hit a two run home run to left field, where the wind was blowing out. The Yankees got a run back as a ball hit by Jason Giambi to second baseman Alberto Callaspo, who was playing in shallow right field had the ball bounce off of the grass and over his head. The Royals came back and put up three more runs to give them a 5-1 lead. Brian Bannister had appeared to look pretty good up until this point in the fourth inning when the Royals gave up 5 runs. After the game had been tied up at six Jose Guillen steped up to the plate with 3 RBI’s already on the day and the bases loaded. Guillen then hit his second home run of the game, a grand slam, giving him 7 RBI’s for the game. The Royals then blew the lead they had and gave up the winning hit to former Royal Johnny Damon in the ninth that got a run home.

It’s really tough to watch the Royals have the best offensive game of the season and still lose. The Royals have shown what makes them a losing team in this series. Yesterday when the pitching only gave up 1 run, the hitting was only able to produce 2 runs. Even though they got the win yesterday they missed some chances to score. And today when we are able to actually produce a lot of runs (which almost never happens) the pitching gives up 12 runs. Imagine how Jose Guillen would feel now. He has a career game with a grand slam and still loses. It is embarassing to lose a game that a player has 7 RBI’s in.