Royals

Still the man.The Royals had a nice ceremony before the game where they introduced a little of ex-players that have donned the blue caps. It was hard to judge from the hermetically-sealed atmosphere in the pressbox, but it seemed like the biggest cheers were reserved for Freddie Patek, Paul Splittorff, Frank White and, of course, George Brett. Brett was introduced last, which reminds me of a story.

Beautiful day, crowded park.With first pitch about a half-hour away, it's turning out to be a nice afternoon at the ballpark. The new outfield plaza area looks absolutely jammed. Fans are huddled along the rails up behind the foundations and are shoulder to shoulder along the new party deck in right field. The Fountain Bar in left field is overflowing, the carousel looks to be full and the new Rivals Sports Bar is definitely SRO. Safe to say, commerce is live and well at the new version of our beloved ball yard.

Zack Greinke made Trey Hillman's night an easy one on Wednesday.One win. Just one and, already, Tuesday's loss doesn't sting nearly so much. There wasn't any situation on Wednesday that approached the gravity of the Kyle Farnsworth debacle from the opener. Thank heavens for that. And, realistically, most games this season will go like that. The best thing a manager can be is to be like a good umpire: go unnoticed. There were only a couple of managerial gray areas from Wednesday's game, none of them in crucial situations. Hillman pulled his starter at the right time and used his bullpen well. A win for the Royals and a win for Hillman.

Season 41 for the Royals.Here are some of the thoughts I had during the Royals 2-0 win over the White Sox on Wednesday. None of these items is worth a post in themselves and most fall short of true analysis. But, hey, I typed them and I have a blog, so it's not costing anybody anything for me to throw these out there. I don't even know if they make sense. I typed them. Copied them. Posted them. Enjoy. Or don't.

Travis MetcalfThe Royals picked up former KU Jayhawk Travis Metcalf on Wednesday and assigned him to Class AAA Omaha. The move to the team that I presume Metcalf, a Manhattan, Kan., native, rooted for growing up is a nice story. I'm not sure what the Royals see in Metcalf, but you never know. He does have some power, but he's strictly organization depth at this point.

The Royals' braintrust has a more expensive club this season.The Associated Press released its annual opening day payroll figures today and, in a rarity, aggregate salaries have actually declined since last season. Should we blame the recession or are baseball owners just getting smarter? OK, it's the recession. Overall, payroll is down $47 million, a decline of 1.75% over last season. After the jump is the complete list, which I matched up with my figures from last season.

Disastrous debut.The Royals went meekly in the ninth, so KC starts off with a really hard-to-swallow 4-2 loss on Opening Day. Excellent outing from Gil Meche. Nice days at the plate for Alex Gordon and Mark Teahen. The bullpen ... oh well. Be back later with the first "Trey Weigh" and, thankfully, the Royals skipper has done me a favor by giving me plenty to dissect.

The White Sox started getting better swings against Meche in the seventh, but for the second time in the game, Chicago aided the Royals' cause with faulty baserunning. With one out (a solidly-hit at'em ball to Crisp in Center), the detestable A.J. Pierzynski hit a hard grounder down the line that skipped into foul territory and then bounded towards left fielder David DeJesus. Pierzynski went for two, but DeJesus easily threw him out. Then Meche made Alexei Ramirez look like a small child, striking him out with a two-strike curve ball. Royals lead 2-1 through seven.

Octavio Dotel is on for the Sox in the eighth and after the way Clayton Richard was throwing, it's a relief to see Dotel. Billy Butler hasn't had a good day at the plate and could use a good at-bat here. Dotel had him lunging at a 1-1 slider -- a pitch that Butler needs to lay off of. He fouled it off, to go down 1-2. After wasting a pitch, Dotel got Butler swinging on a 2-2 fastball on the outside edge. So it's an empty day for Butler. Only one game, but you'd like to see him get off to a good start. Nothing doing after that, so we're headed to the bottom of the eighth with KC still up 2-1. I have a feeling we're about to get a taste of the Royals' ballyhooed bullpen.

The Royals ran Buehrle out of their after five innings because of their solid collective approach at the dish. Hope to see lots of that this year. Gil Meche, judging by the bottom of the fifth, still seems to have plenty in the tank. Perhaps escaping that second-inning jam with just the one run was all he needed to turn in a high-quality start. Remember, so often when Meche struggles, it's the big inning that does him in. ... Meche gave up a hit in the sixth but got through in good shape. Now here is Trey Hillman's first big decision: Does he bring Meche out for the seventh? It's early, and the pitchers aren't stretched out as much as they will be in a month. I say, yes. Meche's pitch count is good and in the sixth, his velocity was stable and his breaking pitches were still biting. Let him go -- it's a one-run game, after all. The shorter that bridge between the starter and Joakim Soria, the better.

OK, I'm almost an hour behind real time, so I'm going to concentrate on catching up on the action. I'll post this AL Central projection, then check back in a little later.

With the baseball season (finally) underway, the tedious process of tweaking depth charts is over. It's time to go on record with my projections for the upcoming campaign. These projections are a product of MLBPET, my system for projecting, evaluating and tracking the big leagues. I've been doing this for several years and I put these together to establish a baseline of expectation for each team. To put it another way, these projections tell me whether or not they should be surprised. For each division, I'll the projections in tabular format, then I'll list the "consensus" picks, using ESPN.com to serve as a proxy for the mainstream perception of each club. Next up is the AL Central.

The Royals continue to work Mark Buehrle and have their best chance to take control of this game so far. Mark Teahen's approach continues to look great, as he went the other way with Buehrle pitch and laced a double into the left-center gap. Jose Guillen snuck and grounder into left and Mike Jacobs was hit by a pitch. Bases juiced. No body out. Buehrles is on the ropes. Will the Rs take advantage?

Baseball-reference.com is still ironing out some issues from its re-design, so I can't look up how the Royals did in bases-loaded/nobody out situations  last season. We have to forgive BR it's inevitable bugs because: 1) it has my vote as the greatest Web site ever created. Yes, even better than this one. 2) the amoung of data they had to re-organize is massive -- almost incomprehensible. You know that they'll have things humming along within a couple of days. Oh wait -- it's started to work. They actually don't have that split, but in situations with a runner on third and less than two outs, the Royals had an .868 OPS, which ranked 10th in the league.

The Royals are making Mark Buehrle work -- 82 pitches through four innings. That's good. Stranding seven runners in four innings -- that's not. Buehrle came back from a 3-0 hole to get David DeJesus with runners on second and third and two outs, retiring baseball's best clutch hitter in 2008. Meche, meanwhile, rolled through the fourth. He's been outstanding. Let's hope he doesn't hit that mid-inning wall that bites him from time to time. Still 1-1.

With the baseball season (finally) underway, the tedious process of tweaking depth charts is over. It's time to go on record with my projections for the upcoming campaign. These projections are a product of MLBPET, my system for projecting, evaluating and tracking the big leagues. I've been doing this for several years and I put these together to establish a baseline of expectation for each team. To put it another way, these projections tell me whether or not they should be surprised. For each division, I'll the projections in tabular format, then I'll list the "consensus" picks, using ESPN.com to serve as a proxy for the mainstream perception of each club. Next up is the AL East.