Kansas City Royals

As seasons and almost more importantly aimless offseasons pass by, we Royals fans have had to adjust our expectations for contention, with the carrot on the proverbial stick predictably staying two years away. Not so long ago, we were looking to 2010 as the year that .500 would be attainable—the year that respectability would be ours.

Yesterday, the Kansas City Royals gave phenom Stephen Strasburg his first loss in the major leagues as they defeated Strasburg’s Washington Nationals 1-0. The Royals did to Strasburg what they have tried to do to most teams in 2010—bludgeon them to death with singles.

The Royals mustered nine hits off of Strasburg yesterday and all of them were singles.

Rather than watch the Royals offense not give Zack Greinke a win last night, I elected to head up to Round Rock (roughly 20 minutes outside of Austin, for you non-Texans) to see the Omaha Royals take on the Round Rock Express (the Astros' Triple-A affiliate, for you Royals-only fans).

The Kansas City Royals finally have something to celebrate. The commissioner has awarded Kansas City the 2012 All-Star Game.

The Royals haven't made the playoffs in 25 years, just missing the playoffs in the 1995 season. But now the team will finally be able to have some true acknowledgement by all of baseball.

The team which had a former All-Star Game MVP in Bo Jackson (1989) and former star George Brett, will be hosting the event from the newly revamped Kauffman Stadium.

Billy Butler had started 89 consecutive games for the Royals, but that all ended on Thursday night at Target Field in Minnesota.

Butler hasn't been swinging the bat well, hitting just .176 over the past nine games. In that same span he has only one extra-base hit and three runs batted in.

Second Round (74 overall) Jarrett Parker OF Virginia:   Parker actually hit better his sophomore year than he did this year.  In 2009 he hit .355 with a 1.114 OPS.  Both numbers fell this year to .338 and 1.033, which is probably why he fell to the bottom of the second round.

It is a process, isn't it?

This whole "spend your money in the draft in order to rebuild" theory would be a lot easier to stomach with a major league team already in place.

That said, we are beginning to see the fruit of our labors.

One year ago, the Kansas City Royals had zero options for an ailing bullpen. They had to ride the same beat up horses day in and day out. The only direction for the team to turn was toward retreads like Bruce Chen and Lenny DiNardo.

As I watch the entirety of the Royals team fail to support their ace for just the latest in what has been a career of having been let down for Zack Greinke, one thought keeps returning to me. I actively loathe half of this team. From The Yunicorn to Guillen to nearly all of the bullpen, this Royals team plays baseball in a manner that is not befitting a Major League baseball team.

While I don't have much time (I am being extremely irresponsible in writing this as it's 3:15 AM and I work at 8:00 AM, I just thought it would be nice to post something positive for a change. According to Bob Dutton and Terez A. Paylor at the Star, Danny Duffy is set to return to camp. In electing to resume what had been a very promising career, the pitcher who was widely regarded as being the most advanced top-tier pitching prospect in the system heading in the season is reportedly about three weeks away from pitching competitively.

When a pitcher has a bad outing, you shrug it off. If you get lit up by the Colorado Rockies, you definitely let it go.  Even for a Cy Young Award winner, a bad outing is part of the game.

But when a dominant pitcher gets tagged for eight runs in less than four innings against the team his old catcher plays for, you know what’s going on.