Ribbie Reporter -- Immolation

If you look up the word “immolation” in the Oxford English Dictionary, you’ll see a picture of the home bullpen at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Yep, things hit a new low Tuesday and Wednesday for the Royals as they blew 5-1 leads on back-to-back nights. The wheels came off Tuesday after Royals reliever Ron Mahay got two quick outs. After a walk, Mahay coaxed a groundball to short, but First Baseman Mark Teahen botched the throw.[1] Then Milton Bradley doubled home two runs, which finished Mahay. Brett Tomko came in and gave up a pair of RBI singles before the inning finally ended. Unsurprisingly, Texas added another run in the 9th after Ian Kinsler doubled, went to third on a single and then scored on a passed ball. Perhaps knowing what was about to happen, Manager Trey Hillman went and got himself ejected in the bottom of the 9th. Closer Joakim Soria was apparently unavailable of fatigue.

But it gets worse
Anxious to put this disaster behind them, the Royals turned to Kyle Davies on Wednesday. In his last two starts, Davies has stopped bad losing streaks. Lo and behold, he left after six innings and handed the bullpen another 5-1 lead.[2] Not surprisingly, this lead was not enough. Jeff Fulchino came out to start the 7th.[3] A triple, throwing error and walk later, Fulchino headed for the dugout, giving way to Jimmy Gobble. Gobble’s first four batters: Single, walk, Grand Slam, double. He then managed to get the next three batters out, with another run scoring on a sac fly. Texas had a safe 8-5 lead.
Anxious to put the game out of reach, Millman turned to Tomko for the 9th (clear proof that the team was giving him more rope to hang himself with). Tomko obliged by giving up a lead off homer to David Murphy, the same gent who had hit the slam in the 7th. After that he allowed two more runs to score on another two hits. The tidy little inning raised his ERA up to 6.97, and the team cut him Thursday morning. Soria was not available because of, as the Kansas City Star delicately put it, “tightness in his backside.”

Duck!
Jose Guillen is kind of a scary guy. He’s known for having a bit of a temper.[4] Anyway, Guillen has been absolutely killing the ball for the last few weeks. He’s always said that he doesn’t hit well in cold weather, and the AL Central has plenty of that in April. On May 5th, Guillen was hitting .155. After the game on Thursday, June 12, he was hitting .283 and was on pace for 125 RBIs even though the Royals number three hitters (mostly Teahen, Billy Butler and Alex Gordon) are hitting .222 in the number three spot.[5] Guillen had four home runs in three games against the Yankees at the start of the week, and followed this up by going 7-13 during the three games against Texas. His OPS is a sickening 1.331 this month. So yeah, even though the Royals can’t pitch all of a sudden, at least they have a crazy good hitter right now.
[1] Teahen is really an outfielder these days, but he’s playing first because the Royals sent Billy Butler to AAA and because Ross Gload is a miserable hitter this year.
[2] Davies himself pointed out that he would have been able to not rely on the bullpen had he not run up his pitch count by walking five batters.
[3] I thought I knew every player on the Royals Major League roster and most of their top prospects, but who the heck is Jeff Fulchino?
[4] This is sort of like saying Albert Einstein was a bit of a scientist or that Greg Maddux was a bit of a control pitcher.
[5] All are hitting about .250 or .260 overall. They just become truly bad when they hit 3rd. Butler, incidentally, is down in AAA right now trying to fix his approach.