DoolittleBrothers

Royals fall

The Royals fell to the White Sox 5-2, dropping them back into the AL Central cellar. The boys in blue need to finish out this season strong if for no other reason to maintain the good will built up with their fan base this season. I get a sense that people really believe the team is trending upwards. I believe that, too, though there is plenty of work left to do. Meanwhile, the same day this appears in the KC Star, this news comes down from the Royals. Coincidence? Seriously, I’m going to have to send them a bill for my standard consulting fee.

Chiefs ink LJ

The Chiefs signed Larry Johnson to a monstrous contract. In my humble opinion, this was a massive error on the part of Carl Peterson. However, it’s quite likely that the Chiefs will be better this season with LJ than without. And since Carl Peterson, you would think, is winding down his tenure as Boss, perhaps he doesn’t care about the last 3-4 years of that deal that may well paralyze the roster. Ah well. With Brody Croyle apparently on track to start at quarterback, a thin receiving corps and a potentially crappy offensive line, I put the over/under on Johnson’s yards per carry at 3.4. That’s what Edgerrin James posted for Arizona last season.

Ten RBI!

Last night, we sat around the office at the paper watching the 18-5 Angels’ blowout of the Yankees with unusual interest for such a lopsided affair. For, you see, Garret Anderson had 10 RBI. When the bottom of the eighth rolled around, the Angels needed to get two baserunners for Anderson to get another chance. A Jeff Mathis double and a four-pitch walk by Reggie Willits did the trick. So not only did Anderson get another at-bat, but he was a longball away from breaking the record for RBIs in a game. For whatever reason, I’ve never been much of a Garret Anderson fan. I guess I just don’t like the Angels in general because it sounds like Anderson is an all-around good guy. I suspect my dislike of him extends back to a gnawing feeling that he’s overrated — he’s one of those poor plate discipline hitters whose high-RBI totals have exagerrated his stature in the eyes of the mainstream. Nevertheless, I found myself rooting for a home run. Alas, Anderson grounded out up the middle, settling for just the sixth 10+ RBI game in the Retrosheet era.

I pulled up the list of highest RBI games last night on the play index at Baseball-Reference.com and a couple of things jumped out. First, Anderson’s performance was the 77th game of eight RBIs or more since 1957. Three of those players managed the feat in a losing effort: Lee Thomas in 1961, Mike Epstein in 1970 and Jason Bay in 2003. Also, of those 77 performances, one player drove in all nine runs for his team: Mike Greenwell drove in all nine runs for the Red Sox in a 9-8 win at Seattle in 1996.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 9:30 am and is filed under Blogroll, NFL, Royals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.