Daily Archives: September 4, 2006

When the Yankees last played Kansas City, the Royals were a historically bad ballclub. When the team bus pulled up at Yankee Stadium back in late May, the Royals had a .222 winning percentage. Had they kept up that pace, the Royals would have surpassed the 1916 Philadelphia Althetics as the worst team since the arrival of the twentieth century.

Of course, they weren’t really that bad. Their Pythagorean record at the time was .261 and by June 15 they had indeed pulled their actual record up to .262, which would merely have been sixth worst since 1901. Since then, however, Royal baseball has been a whole new ballgame, as the team has played at a comparatively world-beating .466 clip.

So what changed? Well, most obviously, they fired general manager Allard Baird and replaced him with former Atlanta Braves assistant GM Dayton Moore at the end of May. Not that Moore can really be said to have been responsible for having turned the team around on his own. During his first month on the job, Moore reinstated Mark Teahen at third base, acquired Joey Gathright from the Devil Rays, claimed Todd Wellemeyer of waivers from the Marlins, bought Brandon Duckworth from the Pirates, and restored tonight’s starter Luke Hudson to the rotation.

Teahen has been a revelation, hitting .318/.390/.568 with 16 homers, 58 RBIs while being a perfect 8 for 8 on the bases and playing outstanding defense, but the other moves have had minimal impact. Gathright has hit just .234/.319/.291 and been caught in five of his eleven steal attempts. Wellemeyer leads the Royals pen with a 3.98 ERA (ouch), but has walked more than he’s struck out. Duckworth posted a 6.11 ERA before landing on the DL. In fact, the 29-year-old Hudson has been the second most successful of Moore’s initial fixes, going 7-2 since his recall despite a 5.01 ERA.

But then, it’s not fair to judge Moore on his short-term results. The Royals are such a bankrupt organization that there’s very little anyone could have done with them mid-season. Rather, Moore has been the early beneficiary of a few lucky breaks, such as the 24-year-old Teahen exceeding the expectations he’d previously failed to live up to, and David DeJesus and Mike Sweeney getting healthy. That said, he does deserve credit for bringing in first baseman Ryan Shealy from the Rockies, who has since hit .312/.363/.456. With Shealy and DeJesus replacing injured underperforming vets Doug Mientkiewicz and Reggie Sanders, Sweeney replacing the underutilized Matt Stairs, and Teahen replacing miscast utility man Tony Graffanino, the Royals have shown signs of life on the field, sweeping the Red Sox in early August and going 4-2 over their last six games against Wild Card contenders Chicago and Minnesota. In Kansas City such signs of life are a major accomplishment.

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While a distinct autumn chill has been felt in New York for much of the past week, Sunday was a reminder that summer isn’t quite over yet. It was a brilliant afternoon, sunny but not hot, and Yankee fans were treated to a 10-1 romp in the park over the Twins. Combined with a Red Sox loss, the Bombers now lead the AL East by nine games. The only Twins run came when Torii Hunter blasted a 3-0 fastball off starter Darrell Rasner in the second inning. Otherwise, Rasner, who has pitched well in the minors this season, had a fine outing in just his second big league start (and his first in pinstripes), allowing just four hits over six innings.

As for the offense, Robbie Cano, Jorge Posada, Alex Rodriguez and Bobby Abreu all had three hits. Rodriguez crushed two home runs–one into the black–and added an RBI single. The Twins’ centerfielder thinks Rodriguez is pretty okay. According to Larry Brooks in the Post:

“They showed every bit of why they got A-Rod. The way he hit the ball today was not even right,” Hunter said after Rodriguez had pounded a solo shot in the fifth to the right-center bleachers and then a three-run blow in the seventh into the black. “It’s not even human. He’s not human.

“Why dwell on the negative? You know what he can do. Why even dwell on what he did? He’s not human, but he’s going to have his slumps. He is one of the best hitters and might be the best hitter on the team.

“If y’all don’t want him, we’ll take him. How about that? If you don’t want A-Rod, we’ll take him. Well, we can’t afford him. Give him to us, and y’all pay the salary.”

Abreu tied a career-high by hitting three doubles. The most impressive came when Abreu led-off the bottom of the seventh and fouled the third pitch of the sequence off his lower leg. Abreu hobbled around the plate and eventually, Joe Torre and trainer, Gene Monahan came out to look him over. Abreu stayed in the game, and after taking ball two, slapped a ball into the gap in right center field. The ball was not that deep but Abreu turned-on-the-jets and beat the throw to second. He slid into the base head first and had to hang on to the base so as not to come off the bag entirely. It reminded me just a little bit of Paul O’Neill’s desperate double in Game 5 of the ALDS back in 1997. The fans appreciated his hustle and gave Abreu a nice ovation as he came out of the game for a pinch-runner. After the game, Torre hoped that Abreu would be fine, adding, “He looked pretty good going from home to second.”

Just about everything the Yankees did yesterday looked pretty good. They even had promising news to report about Hideki Matsui, who will play a rehab game this Wednesday in Trenton. We could see the return of Godzilla as soon as sometime next week. Bam.