Royals vs A's
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Not by coincidence the NHL playoffs are just starting.
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I swear I’m always late to the party
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@VoyagingJayhawk did you see the game? Not much action here, I was mostly talking to myself.
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@Crimsonorblue22 Yes I did, very thrilling. By the 8th with Kazmir coming back out to the mound I was a little in doubt, just seemed like we didn’t have it. You would think I would have learned by now to never count these guys out.
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I just caught the 8th inning on. Just in time to see us smash the gas!
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Herrera was out of line I agree, but the amount of HBP the Royals have seen and the injury to Escy on that slide seem out of line. I know someone has to lead the league in HBP’s but the Royals are getting treated like a hated team. From my perception the Royals are anything but that, making the playoffs after 30 years and an underdog run to the WS last year made them a fun story. This year you would think we were the hated Yankees or something. Blows my mind. In the words of Cain, I just need a break. I have appreciated the Royals players having one anothers back and hope that the injuries end for the Royals.
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@Jayrawks1 Dumping Gatorade when on an opponents field isn’t exactly gaining popularity from their opponents. Also Ventura likes to play the “I’m the cock of the walk” game & stare down guys (Trout) when they manage to get a hit off of him. Quite likely Lawrie may have been plunked regardless of the Escobar incident after Riddick took Ventura deep just the last batter prior. Maybe Ned needs to have a couple of them tone it down a notch or so. 162 games is a marathon-not a sprint, so there’s plenty of time to pick your spots for celebration. I’m all for letting kids be kids, but now they’ve been there before & need to carry themselves more like professionals. If they allow their playing to do their talking it should gain them much more respect over the long haul. JMO, but I’ve never been fond of guys hot-dogging. Just too old school I guess.
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The Royals have a lot of high energy emotional guys. The silly unwritten rules of baseball say you can’t play the game like that because that doesn’t “respect the game”.
I think a lot of teams are trying to push the Royals buttons and get them to lose their composure. It doesn’t seem to be working because a lot of the players seem to feed off that emotion, while some of the other teams seem to lose focus trying to get the Royals fired up.
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@justanotherfan I agree 100% that Ned allows them to play that way because it has proven to be successful. The best example I can recall of emotion accomplishing the seemingly impossible in recent decades is when Buster Douglas beat the holy crap outta Mike Tyson. But leading MLB in HBP’s is not going to be a stat that is precipitous to winning another pennant when combined with the usual attrition of season long losses to injury. The double whammy is creeping up on them every day. Infante & Holland are already banged up less than 3 weeks in & who knows how Esky will be when he comes back. They simply cannot afford to lose another key guy to the DL.
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@justanotherfan And I’ll also add that the very first time I ever recall watching a contest when I thought that "fist pumping was cool, were the 88’ Jayhawks & Danny Manning rubbing salt in Billy Tubbs gash at Kemper after he scored the “and one”. That was as sweet as it gets, but Mario’s shot was a damn close second !!
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@globaljaybird
Completely agree, although we have seen that they have more depth than they previously had. If nothing else, this weekend drew some attention to what is going on with MLB, so if the Royals continue to get dinged by opposing pitchers, we may start seeing some action by the league, because the Royals have shown they will fight back.
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@justanotherfan They’re completely full of piss & vinegar & aren’t about to back down. I also thought the coaches getting tossed yesterday was great for the team’s confidence. They aren’t going to punk out either, so the league now is on guard for action.
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@globaljaybird piss and vinegar!!
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Huge Royals fan here. I hope there is a board for the Royals put up soon!
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I missed most of the game but I did see Herrera get thrown out. Sure, he deserved it… but he was sticking up for his guys. It is refreshing to see so much enthusiasm from a Royals team. Haven’t seen this much swagger since Brett.
The rest of the league is testing them out to see if they are willing to back up that swagger. So far, so good! Hey… we can throw at guys right back, and we will. And most of our pitchers have real heat. Big difference in getting hit with a 100-mph fastball over a 90-mph pitch.
It is always going to be a showdown this year with the As because they feel robbed from last year. Very good team and good teams don’t like coming up short. It gives them an advantage because they carry a chip for us, and we carry a chip for the Giants, but can only work that out in the WS.
Meanwhile… we aren’t going to back down a hair against the As. Frick no!
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And it was very frustrating watching this series.
It was old school style to slid hard into Escobar. And I’m fine with that. But it’s also old school to plunk the player who did it. That retaliation should have been expected and move on. But that did not happen.
And the umps are just ridiculous. They don’t give a pregame warning and throw out Ventura when the expected plunk was done, then give warnings when they hit Cain. Throw out Yost before he set foot on the field! If the management has control over who umps, then I would make sure they never set foot in Kaufman again!
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@drgnslayr not to mention, we have more pitchers that can get up to the 98-100 mph in the league!
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Any suspensions handed out today? Fines? Hope we have plenty of pitchers.
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Most-likely Ventura. Perhaps Herrera.
I hope so. It just helps build their chip. If this team stays healthy, watch out!
“Enter another of sports’ accepted traditions – take perceived disrespect, manufactured or otherwise, and turn it into a chip on your shoulder, the cliché version of a motivating force.”
No, I didn’t write that, but I could have.
Royals are ready to rumble, but they’re also hurting themselves
This all fits perfectly into the Royals being disrespected this year because everyone saying last year was a fluke. I hope everyone continues to say that!
BTW: The writer of that story may have had it right with the sentence above, but he missed it on his storyline… it should read: “Royals are ready to rumble, but they’re also helping themselves!”
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If Ventura was being suspended, i believe we would have been notified by now.
And Herrera might. Not for throwing behind the batter but for the gesture pointing towards his head.
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@drgnslayr I hope our basketball team is watching the Royals …
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@nuleafjhawk I know self loves watching the royals and commented last year how loose they played!
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@Crimsonorblue22 loose is good, but i hope they’re picking up on the " attitude ".
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Cain sitting tonight, hopefully safe in the dugout! Sexy esky back.
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@JhawkAlum I think you hit it right on the head. You want to go hard into second when there is clearly no chance of turning a double? Fine. That is a style of play that’s been around since the fiery and bigoted Ty Cobb terrorized the bases. You can play that way, but there is also a response to that type of performance that is just as old in the form of retribution.
I don’t know if the Royals are quickly becoming the most disliked team in the division or even maybe the league, but it sure does seem that way. Baseball is at it’s heart a conservative game. So maybe our boys in blue ruffle some grey feathers with their attitudes and swagger. I’m okay with that. They’re having FUN and it’s an absolute joy for us fans to see it. If the baseball establishment deems us the bad guys then so be it. When’s the last time the Kansas City Royals have been a good enough ball club to be disliked? Sure beats being the lovable loser.
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Here’s more from our favorite guy.
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Can’t believe he was allowed to assault an ump with his helmet. He’d be picking his teeth out of the back of his throat if he had done that to me.
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@VoyagingJayhawk Thanks for the link. Lawrie is just a hotheaded dick. The issue I & many others have with his slide on Esky was that his left foot/spikes were clearly aiming for the calf-at least a foot high & wide of the flippin bag. In my opinion it was an intentionally dirty play to hurt Esky & dislodge the ball. Also there are countless ways to get even without suspensions Even if it takes months or years-just saying he’ll eventually get what’s coming.
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@globaljaybird
The right play is for the second baseman to jump in the air to avoid the collision and come down with his spikes on the top of his legs. Talk about old school.
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@drgnslayr you mean ss?
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It happened to me once when I was playing little league. I was playing second base when the kid did the same thing to me. He slid hard with his cleats up. Well I still threw the ball, but I threw it at his face. The ball bounced off his face, Blood start coming out of his nose and tears out of his eyes. I got tossed from the game. Yet for some reason I never had that problem again. Go figure.
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@DoubleDD what a hard ass!
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Yep… sorry… SS… but on occasion it can work for a second baseman.
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I did the exact same thing, but I seriously was not trying to nail him. Guess my accuracy at throwing a baseball was at about the same level as my jump shot in basketball. I felt really bad about it because the runner wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t have been doing.
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Herrera pointing to the head will certainly cost him a suspension and I doubt Ventura will get one.
FWIW, Danny Mathews, who is well respected by Royals fans, was on 610 AM today and he indicated the slide was not that bad and 30 years ago nobody would have even blinked an eye about it and that typically when you slide into second it is practically impossible not to have one leg up, although Lawrie’s might have been a little too high He also indicated that the beaning of Cain did not seem to be intentional. It sounded strange to hear Danny taking a stance not favorable to the Royals…maybe he has a point?
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@JayHawkFanToo nope, I’m on the good guys side!
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Pitch that hit cain
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You know I wasn’t sure it was intentional at first, I thought maybe it was. And as the game wore on and Kazmir was showing complete command of his pitches, the pitch that hit Cain seemed more and more suspicious.
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I was simply relaying what Danny Mathews, who we can all agree is a very knowledgeable analyst and one who played 2nd base in college, said. We might not agree with his comments (I am not saying I do or I don’t) but no questions that you have to at least consider his opinion.
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@JayHawkFanToo Denny has been calling Royals games since the team’s inception and I would almost always defer to his opinion. he’s a saint in my family’s home. He absolutely has a point about Lawrie’s slide being a part of the game, though less prevalent today. Regardless, Lawrie has a reputation and I think it was not just a dirty slide, but an idiotic one as well. If he makes a normal slide he’s safe at second. Instead he drives his spikes into Escy’s calf, overslides the bag and costs his team an out. I needed no more reasons to dislike Oakland and everything that transpired after that from the Royals side I was okay with.
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I agree with you on Danny and because I value his opinion I posted his comments. I also thought the slide went over the line and as I posted before, sometimes you have to go old school. It will be interesting to see how the series goes in Oakland with all the “extreme” fans they share with the Raiders…
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Good comment. Right on!
