royalsandcelebs

And now, coming into the game in the ninth inning,… whoever is seated in section 141, row w, seat 14!

Between Jeff Montgomery’s exit and Joakim Soria’s arrival, Royals fans have lived with 12 or so years of roller-coaster baseball in the ninth inning.  Names like Ricky Bottalico, Roberto Hernandez, Mike MacDougal, and Octavio Dotel has been placed in the shut-down position, with relatively little success.  Until this year with Soria, no lead has really been safe.  Bottalico bombed out in Philly, achieved a little success in St. Louis (not enough to be re-signed), and did a one-and-done in KC.  I don’t believe he even started out the year as “the guy.”  He played something like 62 games and had 16 saves.  That’s either a lot of set-up duty, or a historical amount of blown saves.  Hernandez was once one of the more competent closers in the game, but once he got here, he showed his age–he wasn’t the same guy.  MacDougal was productive for about half a season (and even secured an All-Star berth, his first of one), and then proved to be just as erratic as before.  Those clips of him striking out Albert Pujols, Frank Thomas, and Barry Bonds are great and all, but the Riechert-esque passed balls won’t fly.  Paul Splitorff even referred to one as “Little League,” and Split usually comes off as some kind of supportive father figure during his broadcasts (”Sure, the boy puts lit M-80s in mailboxes, but he’s just a terrific kid who needs boundaries”).  Dotel was fine for his half a season here, but he’s never really been the calming stopper everyone else has hyped him up to be.  Houston didn’t just dump him because they were so high on Brad Lidge.  Little known fact–Brad Lidge is old.  You don’t usually try and upgrade old for old.

All of those guys had been closers before, so they’d kind of earned the right to secure leads for this team at the end of the game.  The one guy who always comes to my mind, however, hadn’t earned his spots.  He bombed as a starter in the minors, was moved into the bullpen as primarily a set-up guy in Double-A, and was called up in 2005 because… well, because everyone who wasn’t named Aaron Guiel got called up back in those days (Shane Costa had a cot set up in the back–now it’s Neal Musser’s).  The Royals used the washed-up starter as an eighth inning set-up man, and when MacDougal pulled a MacDougal and tore muscles pitchers JUST DON’T TEAR (great form), Burgos became the closer.  Although he couldn’t hold onto the job once MacDougal came back, he was handed the reigns yet again when MacDougal was traded.  That was 2006.

Burgos had an ERA of 5.52, with 18 saves, and 12 BLOWN SAVES!  Excellent.  He also walked 68 batters in some 135 innings.  Doubly excellent.  After pitching only 12 innings his entire career at Double-A (an inning for every blown save), we brought him up.  He had great… wait for it… wait for it… stuff.  Apparently, his curve ball was good.  I don’t remember that.  I remember a breaking ball that didn’t move.  Are curveballs supposed to move?  I’m not sure.  I’m not a scout or anything, but I thought they were called “12-to-6 curveballs” because, you know, the face of a clock has a 12 at the very top, and a 6 at the very bottom.  I guess the metaphor is the pitch drops as severely as the weight of time.  Or, you know, “it goes down real quick.”  I think this is a fairly inaccurate description of the movement on an Ambiorix Burgos curveball.  If I were to compare his pitch movement to things on a clock, I’d say he had a “top of the minute hand to slightly below the top of the minute hand.”  You know, it technically moves, due to gravity and such, but not enough where someone trying to hit it would have to, say, adjust, or do anything differently.  They could just “swing away,” as Mel Gibson’s dying wife said in “Signs” (apparently, that information will help during an alien invasion, along with an asthma inhaler and a slip and slide–go ask MacGuyver).

Burgos was yet another rush job, brought onto the club with electric potential but a severe lack of training.  During these lean years of 2004 and 2005, the Royals brass seemingly decided to just pull players up from Double and Single-A, and just place washed-out former ballplayers in Omaha.  They thought Triple-A was for stalwarts such as Chris George, Joe McEwing (wasn’t he with The New Kids on the Block?), Denny Hocking, and Kerry Robinson, and Double-A was to be where “future stars” were plucked from and immediately inserted into a slot where most teams would want some form of seasoned production.  Triple-A?  No, we don’t need to use that for instruction.  Pretty ludicrous.  Bringing someone up from Double-A Wichita is pretty much the equivalent of hiring a middle school graduate for an entry-level position.  “Okay, this kid is a math wiz–he got a B+ in Pre-Algebra last year.  Electric stuff.  He still needs to learn how to balance a checkbook and not urinate when he talks to pretty girls, but I’m sure he’ll just pick that up on his own here in the real world.  If not, we’ll just fire him when he turns 16.”  I remember when we brought up Leo Nunez from A-ball and thinking, “Hey, if a zygote can play in the big leagues, why can’t I?”

Things are better now.  We’re far from the Burgos days.  Sure, it’s because of… well, because of a kid who jumped from Single-A into a major league bullpen, but hey, if you drill for oil on every stretch of land, I suppose you’ll eventually become a billionaire.  Thank goodness we signed Soria, our needle in a haystack, up long term.  If not, we might be stuck pulling some kid up from Burlington with a “nasty” change-up and an ERA that hover around 6.

That brings us to the end of my Worst Royals Line-Up of the Last 15 Years.  Man, that wore me out!  I’m glad we’re out of those sad, dismal, torture-inducing years where the Royals consistently had a losing record and were routinely 15 games out of first place by the end of July.  I’m glad that’s over wi… oh.  Well, at least Ruben Mateo isn’t batting fourth.  That’s something to hang your hat on, right?  Right?

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