Royals 3, Blue Jays 2 (F/11): Et tu, Mark Rzepcynski?

Juan Rivera, feeling about this game like I feel about Juan Rivera

Before I get into minding last night's extra-innings loss to the Royals, there are a couple of other things I would also like to mind. First off, I know Alan Ashby is covering for Buck Martinez on the TV side of the broadcast right now, but do they have to replace the absolutely first-rate Ashby with Gregg Zaun as Jerry Howarth's number two in the radio booth? The drop off from Ashby to Zaun is the difference between listening to an insightful adult or a smug bro. I enjoy insightful adults. I do not enjoy smug bros at all. Also, I think part of why I fail to care at all about the plight of the Royals -- in addition to lingering bitterness over the 1985 ALCS, plus the obvious fact that the reason the Royals have been almost entirely bad since then isn't about economic problems plaguing the game so much as utterly inept management that can't seem to develop enough talent to be competitive in the straight-up embarrassing AL Central while Tampa managed to surpass four teams with vastly larger payrolls in the AL East -- is that the games start an hour later when the Blue Jays are in Kansas City and I always forget, so when I turn on the radio at the appointed hour I get nothing. All of these things need to stop but I worry that they won't.

To last night's game, then: a really crisp affair in the early going, with both Morrow and Paulino throwing very well. When the Blue Jays scratched out a lone run in the fourth on an error, wild pitch, and two ground outs, it looked to me like that might be the difference. Not so, of course, as  Eric Hosmer reached on an error in the bottom of the inning, and came in on a Mike Aviles triple (oh man triples!). Another Blue Jays run on a groundout in the seventh should have meant nothing but good times, but my man Mark Rzepcynski kind of didn't get anybody out and walked three dudes in relief, including walking in the tying run. This is a shame, in that it is on its own awful, but also in that Scrabble has been terrific out of the bullpen this year. Alas, and also alack. 


Why even mention that it was The Closer Frank Francisco who gave up the walkoff hit to Eric Hosmer in the eleventh? Everybody knows. Francisco is awful, legitimately awful. You don't even need to get fancy about it: 6.06 ERA, 1.78 WHIP. That's brutal, and brutal in a way that is easy to understand. End this. Someone. Please.


Finally, I couldn't help but notice that Fangraphs ran a neat thing on the worst players in baseball by WAR yesterday. I recently did the same, but I'm going to take this as a loving tribute rather than anything untoward. Here's what Seidman wrote about our dude E5:


Edwin Encarnacion (-0.9 WAR): Some players are on here as a direct result of their suckitude with the bat. Encarnacion, aptly nicknamed E5, makes this list primarily on the lack of merit of his glovework. In just 43 games his UZR is a spectacularly bad -9.1. If you’re more into the fielding percentage metric, consider this factoid Dave Cameron discussed recently. As of May 27th, Encarnacion had a .784 fielding percentage. The next worst was Andy LaRoche at .892, a gap of 108 points. Encarnacion is one of the worst fielders in baseball history, and if he can’t even match the lower league average with the bat, what actual purpose does he serve?


Aside from using "factoid" in the debased and subliterate sense that indicates no understanding of the meaning of the "-oid" suffix, the man has some valid points. Also, I am a dick.


KS