Baltimore Orioles at Kansas City Royals
July 1, 2004
(by PHIL RIPPA)
Since there is no Red Sox/Yankees coverage in the area, I had to settle for this game, which isn’t as horrific as usual since the Royals are starting 20 year old wonderkid Zack Greinke. The pimping has been hard and heavy on young Greinke so might as well take advantage of the opportunity. Plus, Baltimore constantly provides the high hanging curves (both in actual game play and in comedic value).

Before we get to the game, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the entertaining exchange on Baseball Tonight that is still making giggle as Peter Gammons was insistent that no one would sign Hideo Nomo after the Dodgers (reportedly) release him. Karl Ravech pointed out that someone was going to take a flier on him and you would have thought that he had personally punched Eddie Vedder in the face. If it wasn’t for the fact that it would have taken Ravech two weeks to run around John Kruk, he would have wrapped his meaty hands around Gammons throat.

Baltimore juggled around its lineup from what I am usually tormented with. Orioles’ flavor of the month David Newhan was hitting first with Brian Roberts plunging down the lineup. For some inexcusable reason, Rafael Palmeiro is hitting cleanup so instead of having the Os only two decent bats hitting back to back (Miguel Tejada and Javy Lopez) you have the little blue rally killer choking the top half of the order. (Oh, we are provided with a fun little tidbit about Newhan. Buck Martinez barely contains the snicker in his voice as he relays the fact that Newhan’s path to the majors awhile back was being blocked by Ben Grieve of all people. Aww… the memories of failed prospects past.)

Wait a second… failed prospects… As. HEY! WE HAVE A MATT STAIRS SIGHTING! Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff. Stairs’ head rivals that of Bonds but since he is white and plays in Kansas City, no one really cares. I like this version of the Royals a lot more than any other version. This version being the one were Juan Gonzalez, Benito Santiago and Joe Randa are crippled. I heart Mike Sweeney a ton. He is easily my second favorite pasty white boy first baseman in the majors. Plus Dee Brown, instead of defending his slam dunk crown, is still starting in the outfield. If only Jose Lima was still around. And Dan Quisenberry wasn’t dead.

Greinke has pitched well but only has one win due to the pathetic run support provided to him by the KC offense. His average so far on the season was just over two runs per game. So, of course, the Royals jump all over Baltimore starter Rodrigo Lopez in the first, getting Greinke his two runs early. It could have possibly been more but Brown forgot to pump and comically got thrown out at second trying to advance on a throw to the plate. (On the play, Sweeney did one of the more groin straining slides you will ever see. Oh yeah, there was no need for the Comcast production team to rerun that. There might not be any little Sweeney’s coming any time soon.)

The most shocking thing about Greinke is that he doesn’t come out to the mound with Rob and Rany clutching at his ankles. Yeesh… Though, at least through two innings, Greinke has been just as advertised – mixing up pitches, hitting his spots 95% of the time, making opposing batters look foolish and bringing the MOUND PRESENCE~!

You could spend pages just talking about the recent trades that these teams were involved in and how it has changed the makeup of each team. The Royals no longer have Carlos Beltran but they do have John Buck starting at catcher now (I was still hoping it was going to be Joe Buck.) These teams swapped relievers last week with KC actually making Baltimore look foolish as they swapped Jason Grimsley for Denny Bautista. I am sure one of those guys will play tonight. Then there is Jose Bautista (Man, Bill so hit the nail on the head. There needs to be some collusion by the owners to stop signing guys named Bautista /Batista.)

Bautista was a Rule 5er that the Os stole from Pittsburgh when the Steel City decided to expose their entire minor league organization in the draft. The Orioles figured they could plug him in at third since they had to keep him on the roster all season. I mean the Melvin Mora experiment was bound to fail. The one fly in that ointment was that Mora finally flourished. Suddenly there was no room for Bautista because all Angelos' run teams must keep BJ Surhoff employed and get a spot open for the usual Jeff Conine sighting each season. The Orioles dumped him off to Tampa Bay for some spare parts, who in less than a week did the same thing to the Royals. KC turned out to be the perfect fit because anything is an upgrade over Joe Randa – crippled or not.

All of this was a setup to allow me to tell you about Buck Martinez and Fred Manfra lamenting about the horrors of the Rule 5… err… rule. This is a very sensitive subject for folks in Charm City. Jose Morban was the Baltimore Rule 5 roster spot waster last year. This year, he just got demoted from double A to single A. Ouch.

Greinke is still cruising through five innings. He has five strikeouts and only allowed two hits. He throws a TON of strikes. And the pace of this game is amazing as both Greinke and Lopez work relatively quickly and neither team is very good at hitting or taking pitches. One hour in and we are through 5 ½ innings. The Os threatened in the fifth thanks to a Jerry Harriston Jr. double and Bautista continuing his miserable night with an error. No harm no foul though.

Before I forget, what the heck is the deal with Mazzilli not wearing a jersey? He just wears the windbreaker pullover every game. It looks even stupider when you realize that thanks to the colors of the Orioles, Lee appears to be wearing a Glad bag. This really confuses me. He is a sorta slender man so it isn’t as if they wouldn’t be able to find a jersey in his size. I mean, they can pour Rick Dempsey into a uniform every game.

I really hate myself sometimes. It is so easy to jinx things. I needed to walk the dog so I put my wife in charge of paying attention to the game “in case someone hits a homerun”. Additionally, I had started to mentally write section of this write-up talking about how while Greinke looked good it was against the Orioles lineup which isn’t exactly the Yanks or Red Sox. I get back and Palmeiro had hit a home run (which was also karma for the little blue joke earlier) and a few base hits later the game is tied. Plus, Greinke suddenly unable to find the strike zone and is rattled by base runners. This goes so far that even after successfully trapping Harriston off of second; he doesn’t throw the ball allowing Baltimore an extra out. (Zach must have been watching tapes of Giambi from Saturday. Oof.) After Baltimore loads the bases, Greinke is done and now the comically Royals bullpen is in to make this an ugly affair. All in all, the Orioles score three runs to take the lead – which should have been more but Mora grounds into a double play with the bases loaded. The top half of the seventh takes nearly as long as the rest of the game.

Now we can see if the Orioles equally inept bullpen can hold the lead for three innings as Lee Mazzilli makes the decision that he doesn’t need his one decent pitcher still in the game. B.J. Ryan is the first on and he has been the only consistent Os arm out of the pen. Certainly more reliable than Mike DeJean (Yeah, you can again chalk that pimping up to me being a fool). Grimsley will probably be up in the 8th and I can talk about how crazy Theo Epstein has gotten then. And if someone can confirm that Jorge Julio is still on the Baltimore payroll let me know. Geez, when is the last time I saw him pitch in a game? Poor little PVCs on bad teams.

I think a lot of the praise of Greinke is justified. Of course, he is really being overpimped just because right now the poor fans of the Royals need someone to pin the future of the franchise on. Honestly, Greinke appears to me to be what John Stephens would have been like in a perfect world. Well, along with a fastball in the 90s. I love Greinke’s ability to change speeds and there is nothing more entertaining than the wicked curve that drops five feet off the table. The former players love babbling about his poise which I guess is true. All I know is that the one time I saw he get into trouble, he was all sorts of rattled and it lead to him being taken out of the game. Being in the AL Central will benefit him though as a he is going to get lots of starts against some not so great teams.

Ryan gets one out in the bottom of the eighth to run the number to 19 consecutive Royals retired. And on comes Grimsley. There is nothing better than Grimsley getting so bitter at the KC management when they released Curtis Leskanic (we are going to ignore the fact Leskanic is crippled and retiring at seasons end. Actually, no we aren’t since that makes this story all the more delicious) that he threw a chair. Now he is with Baltimore since somehow the GM tandem that is Beattie/Flannigan convinced themselves that they were still in playoff contention and adding Grimsley was the final piece to that puzzle. (Ignoring facts that their best starting pitcher was a fella they had to call straight up from single A). All this is getting away from why I love talking about Leskanic. There is absolutely no reason Curtis Leskanic should be in the major leagues right now. He needs surgery on his arm but refuses to get it since it is basically known that since surgery will end his career, he is trying to hang around long enough to finish the season. KC finally got around to dumping him – 4 months too late. But the Red Sox proceed to snap him up for reasons that I can’t begin to fathom. (I really really stink at math so a lot of the precepts of sabermetrics fly over my head. So maybe there is something in the DIPS formula that factors in number of tendons torn.) Still the Leskanic signing didn’t stop Theo from going insane as he then went and signing Pedro Astacio. This is screaming that they would also sign Hideo Nomo if he was released. He could be sent to find BYK. That signing would number one and the best because I really don’t think Gammons could handle it. The Yankees weren’t immune since they went and grabbed C.J. Nitwoski. I guess Willie Banks was unavailable. Boy, I should really wrap this graph up.

Rick Camp… err… Shawn Camp fails to be the most comforting of RPs for the Royals. He gave up the go ahead hit (though the run was charged to Greinke), was saved in the 8th by two outstanding defensive plays and then plunked Harriston and gave up a hit to ??? when he was trying to keep the deficit down to one. With each passing game, you see how far over their heads the Royals played last year. Mike McDougal is so stinky this year; he isn’t even with the big league club anymore. The 03 wins leader is now the 04 closer and oh yeah – he is hurt. Anyhoo, Jaime Cerda is brought in to try and keep the Royals in the game. Baltimore pinch hits for Robert Macado, who was starting at catcher (Javy Lopez was the DH). This leads to lots of entertaining television as you watch the Orioles try and figure out how they are going to insert the pitcher into the lineup now.

Okay Dokey, Jorge Julio isn’t dead. And on he came in the ninth to get three straight outs for only his 11 save of the season. Aww saves…. The secret fantasy killer, right behind steals. Anyway, that meant that Baltimore hitters retired 24 straight hitters after Lopez’s difficulty in the first. So KC gave Greinke his standard two runs and then got out of Dodge. Poor little AL Central.