A Brief Hiatus; Same Sad Result

I apologize if this is too cliche for all of you nonexistent readers out there, but I just looked up the Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as the "Five Stages of Grief," on Wikipedia. I paste them below for your review:

1. Denial -- "I feel fine, this is not happening to me."
2. Anger -- "Why me?? It's not fair! Who is to blame??"
3. Bargaining -- "I will give my life savings if..."
4. Depression -- "I'm so sad, why bother with anything? What's the point?"
5. Acceptance -- "I can't fight it; I might as well prepare for it."

Guess which stage I'm at with the Kansas City Royals.

Zack Greinke gave a solid performance yesterday against the Tigers. Indeed, he probably had the strongest performance among any of the big AL aces -- Justin Verlander, C.C. Sabathia, Josh Beckett, and Felix Hernandez. Greinke's stat line was 6 IP, 6 H, 1 ER*, 4 K, 1 BB. His ERA rests at a cool 1.50.

*Greinke actually allowed two runs, though one was unearned. In one particularly hilarious (and very typically Royals) play, Willie Bloomquist dropped an infield fly ball in the first inning that allowed the first run of the game to score. Ryan Lefebvre, the Royals play-by-play guy, noted how strong the wind was and proceeded to treat every fly ball as if it was the most difficult play ever made.

But was there any doubt about what would happen when Zack was pulled before the start of the 7th? Let me say that I did agree with the decision, given that Greinke was at 96 pitches and it was Opening Day. You don't want to run your ace into the ground on the very first game of the year. Also, the Royals had a 4-2 lead.

But what happened next was extremely predictable, and tying this all back to the stages of grief, I had the appropriate 'acceptance' reaction -- "I can't fight it; I might as well prepare for it."



See that point at the start of the 7th inning where the huge miserable-looking free fall begins? Interestingly enough, that coincides perfectly with the point in the game when the Royals' pitcher's named switched from "Greinke" to "Colon."

Roman Colon's ERA is infinite at the moment. ESPN has to put a #### symbol in place of where the numbers would usually be. Robinson Tejeda, the following pitcher, now has an 81.01 ERA. The Royals surrendered Zack's lead before even recording an out.

The only criticism I can give out with regard to the handling of the bullpen is this: why not use your best reliever (Joakim Soria) in the highest leverage situations? To be fair, this criticism applies generally to all managers, as Trey Hillman is one of 30 who are guilty of this kind of mishandling. But why not bring in Soria to put out the fire rather than having Colon, Tejeda, and Cruz dump gallons of gasoline on it?

Zack Greinke is the Barry Sanders of Major League Baseball. Call me a traitor for saying this, but let's hope he gets traded to a team with better players before he retires out of sheer frustration.