You had to figure playing Houston would at least give the Royals a chance to get out of their offensive slump. After all, the Astros are last in the majors in both ERA and opponent’s batting average. If the Royals can’t hit against the Astros, they can’t hit against anyone. Although, KC hasn’t exactly torn the hide off the ball, the team has scored five and seven runs in the first two games which is a huge improvement over the Oakland series. But, lowly or not, Houston has still managed to split the first two games. Read more
Streakbusters!
Is Miguel Cabrera in another category?
You may or may not recall that last season I wrote twice about who should be the MVP in the American League. I was adamant that it should be (part I) and then should have been (part II) Mike Trout of the Angels. I make no apologies for saying that anyone who did not vote for Trout does not have the faintest idea what makes a great ballplayer. Trout did things that nobody has ever done in major league history. All Cabrera did was win the triple crown – and because it had not been done since 1967 and you can wrap the words “triple crown” into a nice package and put a bow on it, it made it a simple choice for simpleton voters. But, triple crowns don’t measure defense and they don’t measure stolen bases. Taking the entire package, Trout should have been the MVP. Sadly, he wasn’t. But… Read more
Picking up the pieces
The Royals were swept by the A’s over the weekend. It makes Kansas City’s record 3-10 over the last 13 games. Long gone is the +7 games over .500 where KC was at on May 5th. Simply put, if KC’s hitting doesn’t improve, the club is almost certainly destined to be sub .500 – despite the starting pitching. I’m going to cover a few related issues in this post. Read more
This run-support issue is getting absurd!
The only thing more torturously boring than watching the Royals’ offense this year is probably reading about them… so I apologize! Nevertheless, if you are a KC fan and if you read SIR, then I hope I can provide insight that you simply won’t find elsewhere. Well actually, I’m 100% positive of that. Whether that insight is of any interest to you, only you can decide. Read more
Kansas State does the unimaginable!
By now, most area college sports fans know Kansas State won the Big 12 conference title in baseball Saturday. It is the first time the Cats have won the conference regular season baseball championship since 1933. That would be noteworthy enough, but for the fact that this was also the same school year in which K-State won (or shared) the conference regular season title in football and basketball. A baseball title… big deal. A title in all three… priceless. Read more
Stealing them blind
The Royals have been good at several things this year – specifically hitting with two outs and hitting with runners in scoring position. We’ve heard a lot about that, but one thing we haven’t heard much about is stolen bases and I thought it was time to look more closely at it. Read more
KU Recruiting 2013, Part V: What does it mean?
Now that there has been some time for the Andrew Wiggins euphoria to settle into reality, I thought it would be a good time to try to project what it might mean to Kansas. We know that barring injury – and that means a really major injury, Wiggins will only be at Kansas one year. Nevertheless, unlike Kentucky, I think it is safe to say most everyone else on KU’s 2013-14 team will still be in Lawrence the following season. So, although this is highly speculative, it’s a blueprint for what might happen. Read more
A Seven Run Inning – Who are these guys?
Light hitting Kansas City did what you have to do when you don’t hit home runs… get eight base-runners on base in the same inning. That will pretty much do it every time. Even if they were all walks, it would be at least five runs. As it was, KC used the 7-run third to jump out to an 8-0 lead and ended up winning the rubber match with Los Angeles 9-5. Read more
KU Recruiting 2013, Part IV: Who is the best recruit?
With Andrew Wiggins now a member of the “family”, it’s time to take a look at the recruits during Self’s tenure. I’ve already exhausted the “classes” and determined that KU’s class in 2013 is easily the best – not only under Self, but under Williams and Brown as well. And… it was the best even before Wiggins decided to take his talents to Lawrence. What I thought would be interesting now is to look at the best recruits on an individual basis. Read more
KU Recruiting 2013, Part !!! – WIGGINS!
Over the last two days, I’ve been discussing basketball recruiting – both in 2013 as well as all the way back to 1983. This is the first time I’ve been able to do historical research on recruiting before 2002 and I wanted to know what was the best recruiting class ever regardless of team. #1 recruit Andrew Wiggins chose to become a Jayhawk today and that pretty well sews up the recruiting process. By going to Kansas, it is an historic recruiting class! Read more
Billy Ball
Despite coming into the game with a .228 average, Billy Butler went 5/5 for the second time in his career and left the game with a .261 average. That’s a little more like it. Kansas City tied the club’s season-high in hits with 19. It was fun to watch the offense do its thing – a rarity this season. The Royals ended up beating the Angels 11-4 to take the opening game of the series. Read more
KU Recruiting 2013, Part II
NEWS FLASH: Andrew Wiggins to make decision Tuesday. Yesterday, I outlined the methodology for determining how good a team’s recruiting was in any given year. I also took a close look at 2013 in particular and came to the objective conclusion that Kansas had the second best recruiting class – behind Kentucky – with or without #1 recruit Andrew Wiggins. But, I also mentioned that I had the ability to go back to 1983 now, whereas in the past, I only could go back to 2002 or so. Thus, instead of 12 years to measure, I can measure 31. For this article, I’m going to look at KU’s recruiting over those 31 seasons and rank each. Read more
KU Recruiting 2013 – With or without Wiggins
As all Kansas fans know, KU has five basketball recruits coming into Lawrence next season. It will be a welcome relief having lost all five starters. Most so-called experts will say that Kansas could be a ranked team, but nobody should expect much beyond that. That may be accurate, but Self tends to outperform expectations every time KU isn’t considered a national power. And, no matter what the expectations are today, they will change considerably if #1 ranked recruit Andrew Wiggins ends up picking Kansas over Kentucky, North Carolina and Florida State. Read more
More on Power
Although the Royals lost last night 11-6 to the Yankees, at least there was some offense and at least KC looks like it might be pulling out of its season-long power outage. The pitching was terrible, but you know going in that when Wade Davis is on the mound, your odds aren’t going to be too good. Unfortunately, the bullpen wasn’t any better. Read more
Turning on the Power
The day before the Baltimore series, I wrote “Where has all the power gone?” The point of the article was that Kansas City’s number of total bases divided by hits was last in the American League and actually the worst ratio in Royals history. But, after six homers in three games, I guess the question… “Where has all the power gone?” can be answered in one word – Baltimore. Read more
Gordon and Moustakas – a closer look
Just in case you don’t know, both homered last night in KC’s loss to Baltimore – the third loss in a row for the good guys – the first time that’s happened this season. Alex Gordon has been outstanding so far in 2013, but Mike Moustakas has only recently looked like he’s turning it around. I decided I wanted to know more about both. Read more
Where has all the power gone?
Long time passing. Where has all the power gone? Long time ago. Where has all the power gone? Royals wiffing… everyone. When will they ever learn? When will they e…ver learn? As I type this, KC is in a 7th inning rain delay trailing 3-1. So, I’m going under the assumption it will be a loss. If so, I won’t be discussing this game in particular, but rather a single issue – that being the lack of power. Read more
NBA MVP – Top 50… plus a few other things
On Saturday, I showed the top-players by my MVP rating formula. Of course, Lebron James was easily the highest, but Kevin Durant was miles above anyone in second place. Thus, it’s no shocker that James received the most votes while Durant was second. In this post, I’m going to show the top-50 by my formula as opposed to the top-10 the other day. Plus, I’m going to give a couple amazing data points for James and Durant with respect to history. Read more
James not picked unanimously – A Rant!
LeBron James was awarded the NBA MVP yesterday, which was no surprise to anyone who had watched and read about the MVP over the last few weeks of the season. There is no denying he is the most valuable player… and the one idiot that voted for Carmelo Anthony should never be allowed to vote again… at anything! In doing so, it prevented James from being the first unanimous MVP in NBA history. Read more
Billy B and Alex G
I have to be honest. When KC’s relievers blew a 3-1 lead in the 7th inning and fell behind 5-3, I thought the game was over. When Kansas City was down to one strike in the bottom of the ninth still behind by two runs, I was all but positive the game was over… The Royals (duh) came back and won in 10 innings 7-6 and the two biggest hits of the game were by KC’s offensive bread and butter – Billy Butler in the 9th and Alex Gordon in the 10th. Read more
Why are there no comments on SIR?
Subcribe to our RSS feed