You see that headline and go huh?  What?  I know.  It’s even funnier considering I wrote this piece when the Royals were 18-11 and everyone was talking about how they were on top of the world and had finally arrived.  But, considering that the team has gone 5-16 since then, I feel a lot better about my accuracy level.*

*Note that this probably means my accuracy is about to drop off a cliff.

Even after Grienke allowed a season high four runs today and the for the second consecutive day, the Royals blew a lead/tie late and Juan Cruz melted down in the 9th again.  Doesn’t matter.  At all.  Not any more than the comeback over the Indians did.  The team is going to start doing better.   And here’s why.

#1) Joakim Soria is back as of Tuesday.  So, no more 9th inning meltdowns.  That, in and of itself, is good.  But what’s really good?  The team now demotes its worst reliever (not John Bale, no matter what happened the last two days) and every other reliever on the staff drops down a slot.  The rap on Juan Cruz was always that he couldn’t handle being a closer.  Today and yesterday have rather amply demonstrated that fact.

Well, guess what?  We don’t have to use him as a closer anymore and from now on he just go ahead and pitch really well in the late innings as a setup man - just like he’s been doing all year.

#2) Meche looks healthy again.  This is big.  Dayton Moore built this team to be successful the only way he  knew how - the Atlanta way.  And when Atlanta started to get good again in the early 1990’s, the way was led by a couple of dominant starters.   For Dayton’s plan for KC to be successful, and for the team to improve, the Royals need a couple of big starters.  Greinke alone isn’t enough.  Meche + Greinke is two dominant starters.  You can piece together a third dominant starter out of Davies and Banny’s outings.  That leaves Hochevar to pitch a #4 level and the bad Banny/Davies outings to yield the fifth starter’s stats.

#3) Aviles and Gordon won’t be on the DL for too much longer.  Look, if you’d assembled a list of players from the Royals that the team wanted/needed to play at an all-star or at least very good level, Aviles and Gordon would both ahve been on it.  Aviles played hurt for most of the year, and it really hurt his numbers.  Once healthy, a return to his 2007 form is definitely possible.  And Gordon is almost back (by almost, I mean only about a month left away).  And as Alex Rodriguez has shown, this is not an injury that has lasting effects once the player is back on the diamond.

#4) David DeJesus is not a .237 hitter.  He just isn’t.  At all.  And we have lots and lots and lots of data to back that assertion up.  At some point this season, probably sooner rather than later, he’s going to start hitting his career numbers again.  When he does, the offense will pick up considerably (or at least noticeably).

#5) Trey Hillman is a better manager than he was last year.  Heresy, right?  I mean everybody loves to bag on Trey, and we all know that things like this don’t matter in a stats dominated world.  Blah blah blah.  There was a time when I thought the same thing.  But to borrow an example from the Army, morale is something that isn’t supposed to matter in an era of GPS missles and competing YouTube battle footage.  Except it does, a lot, in a lot of little ways that don’t show up at all except when they yield a big huge otherwise unexpected outcome.  Same with managers.  Hillman’s in-game moves don’t matter nearly as much as keeping the guys focused and motivated.  I think he’s gotten a lot, lot better at that this year vs. last year.

If for no other reason than there hasn’t been a single “bad Jose” moment this year so far.  Heck, even Farnsworth has behaved himself here.

#6) The farm system.  All of our good players are down in single and double A, but there is some help available at Omaha.  Namely Kila Ka’aihue and Ryan Shealy.  The two of them don’t fit on the roster at present, but they do allow Mike Jacobs to be traded, or are tradebait themselves.  And that means the potential for improvements to the big club.  Plus, if we really need to, we can trade some of the minor league pitching for good stuff in the bigs.

Like at said at the end of the last piece on this topic, I like the Royals this year, and I think they’re going to finish second or third in the division with a winning record.  But the team is built offensively around guys whose main skill is hitting for average.  Hitting for average is a streaky skill set.  And that leads to a streaky team.  The Royals have had a lot of injuries and have just gone through a very bad bunch of games.  Now, the streak should start heading in the other direction.  Because that’s what streaky teams do.  And remember, “No team is as good as it looks when it’s winning, and no team is as bad as it looks when it’s losing.”

Tags: alex gordon, ddj, disabled list, Royals, zack greinke