I know I said the bullpen woes weren't Hillman's fault, but he sure ain't helping matters

LostThe circling flush that is the Royals' season hadn't gotten to me, before yesterday. There had been no tantrums, no fits of swearing, no banging on the furniture. As soon as B.J. Upton's bat connected with Jamey Wright's juicy, four-seamer, that all changed. I killed the television before the ball had cleared the fence, pounded the coffee table and issued forth such an echoing stream of expletives that my dog jumped up and ran downstairs. A few days ago, I wrote about how Trey Hillman wasn't to blame for the bullpen's woes. To an certain extent, that remains true. If you're forced into playing Russian Roulette, you just keep hoping for an empty chamber. But if you have a choice ... that's another matter.

Suffice to say, the Royals needed to win yesterday's game in the worst way. The losing streak had stretched to six games. KC had been utterly non-competitive in losing the first two games in St. Petersburg, not leading until Billy Butler's clutch double in the third inning of yesterday's game. Even that was a bittersweet moment. The Royals found themselves with the bases loaded and no one out after the Rays' Willy Aybar inexplicably tried to catch David DeJesus off of third base instead of taking what would have been a surefire double play. Alberto Callaspo then chopped a comebacker to James Shields for the old 1-2-3 twin killing. Butler salvaged the inning, but the Royals had again managed to produce the least from the most.

Gil Meche gamely kept the Royals in the game, pitching out of tough spots again and again despite lacking even a modicrum of the command that we've come to expect. He made it through six shutout innings on 107 pitches, striking out only two batters while walking five. He had the Royals up 2-0 even though he had been thoroughly outpitched by Shields. As unappetizing as it sounded, it was time to turn things over to middle relief and hope for the best.

John Bale was up and ready in the bullpen as the seventh inning commenced. An appropriate choice, based on recent performance and the fact that leadoff hitter Carl Crawford has a career OPS against righties (.799) that is more than 100 points better than his OPS against southpaws (.696). The second hitter, Aybar, is a switcher that is only a little better against lefties. The third hitter due up, the dangerous Carlos Pena, is at .899 career against righties; .757 against lefties. The other choices for Hillman were Horacio Ramirez and Ron Mahay. Ramirez is terrible. Mahay has a better track record than Bale, but he's been inconsistent this season and threw 33 pitches on Wednesday night. If Hillman's gut thought Bale was the best choice, I could live with that. As long as it was a lefthanded pitcher and his name wasn't Horacio Ramirez, I could live with that.

So ... wait, what's that? Is that Meche out there to start the seventh? Why!? Because he's been so picture-perfect? Because he doesn't look completely haggard and fashed? Three pitches later, Crawford clobbered a poorly-thrown change-up into the right-field stands to trim the lead to 2-1. And, lo and behold, Hillman ambles out to the mound and waves Bale in from the bullpen. Nice.

Bale did a good job getting through the seventh and after yet another scoreless inning against Shields, the Royals needed only to traverse the eighth inning to get the ball to Joakim Soria. If Soria had been healthy all season, this would have been a textbook example of a situation screaming for a two-inning save. However, Soria's shoulder problems have him on a pitch count and that clearly wasn't an option. With two righties, a light-hitting lefty and Upton, another righty, due up, the Royals needed a right-handed reliever.

Here's what Hillman had to choose from:

KEY: LI -- leverage index, a measure of the importance the situations a pitcher is used in with 1.00 being the average.
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Let's start with availability. Colon had pitched in two straight games and he's end-of-the-bullpen filler -- a player that has never been used in high-leverage spots. Again, this is a game the Royals have absolutely got to win. So Colon is out. Wright and Cruz hadn't pitched in several days. They're both available. Farnsworth pitched yet another mop-up inning on Wednesday, as Hillman burned through four relievers in a 9-0 blowout (Colon, Farnsworth, Mahay and Ramirez) instead of letting his scrubs (relatively speaking, of course) soak up the meaningless innings. Ramirez could have gone two or three innings; so could Colon. Anyway, the 11 pitches Farnsworth threw in putting up his 15th-straight scoreless appearance certainly did not disqualify him from pitching yesterday.

This was the perfect spot to run Farnsworth back out there in a high-leverage spot. That's what you're paying him to do -- at a rate of $4 million for the season -- and no one else has seized the set-up job during Farnsworth's banishment to the end of the bullpen bench. Wright has had some good outings this season, but Hillman likes to throw out the term "track record" even though I'm seriously starting to doubt whether he understands what those words mean. Wright has pitched 12 seasons in the big leagues and posted an ERA of 5.05, which translates to only 94% of the league average after you adjust for ballpark. He's been over-leveraged by Hillman this season but, for the most part, it's been out of necessity. However, Wright's performance has wavered of late. He pitched 1 1/3 clean innings on Sunday, but allowed 19 hits in 8 2/3 over his previous 8 outings. During that span, opposing hitters were hitting .442 with a .510 on-base percentage.

So Wright had quickly regressed to his career mean, which had to be expected. That's fine. You've already gotten more out of him than you could have reasonably hoped for. You didn't sign him to be the set-up guy anyway. He was just part of the flotsam and jetsam of baseball, a guy the Royals plucked off the scrap heap on a minor-league deal a few days before spring training began. He's got a track record -- 12 years of being below average. In a crucial game for a team that despite everything that had gone wrong was still only 5.5 games out of first place, he's the last person you want to bring out to the mound.

Cruz has also been a little shaky of late, so Farnsworth was the clear and obvious choice. I almost, and should have, turned off the television when Wright was brought into the game. But I decided to believe, one more time. Maybe he'd get three at'em balls and Soria would get his first save opportunity since May 7. A couple of batters later, I was screaming, my dog was running and the television had gone silent.

I know that I gave Hillman the benefit of the doubt with my bullpen analysis the other day. To a certain extent, I still believe what I wrote. Even a great bullpen tactician like Mike Scoscia would have a hard time with this collection of relievers. Nevertheless, I've become convinced: Hillman couldn't find the appropriate reliever to protect a lead with two hands, a map and a flashlight.