A Hair Off Square   custom cards

1991 Fleer makes its very yellow appearance felt again here today. I did a Billy Butler version first when I made the design, I posted the Rays new leadoff hitter Sam Fuld first however. This is a nice studio shot of Butler and I though it fit the card well. I don’t think the picture really fits with the original concept of pictures for 1991 Fleer but I’m not too concerned with that.

I wanted to post a Royal today because I have a couple things I would like to voice my opinion on regrading the Royals. First of all just a little catch up if you haven’t been paying attention. Robinson Tejada went on the DL today and Blake Wood was called up to replace him, it would appear Aaron Crow might be Joakim Soria’s setup man for a bit. The Royals are at the moment of this post 9-4! If you asked Royals fans, even optimistic ones before the season started if the Royals at any point would be 5 games above .500 they likely would have said no. A great start has been led by a great bullpen through 13 games who’s worst perfomer to this point is likely All-Star closer Joakim Soria.

Lets discuss Joakim Soria. Nick Scott of the great broken bat single podcast mentioned that something could be wrong. He mentioned maybe being fatigued as well as something being medically wrong. Soria struck out his third batter of the season tonight. He already has four saves and one win but only three strikeouts; that isn’t the Soria we have all come to love in KC.

He just doesn’t look…right so far. I really don’t think anything is wrong myself but tonight Aaron Crow started warming in the bullpen behind Joakim Soria, how often has that happened in the last three years? Not often when the Royals have the lead I’m sure.

My main topic on this post is the April 14th game against the Mariners. The game was called after 8 1/2  innings due to rain. The Royals got a win with Bruce Chen getting credit for a complete 8 inning game in which he looked really good against a really bad team. I mention the fact that the Mariners are bad because that is what this post is about.

I don’t know exactly how long the umpires waited to call the game in Kansas City on the 14th but it wasn’t too awful long. I’m glad, the Royals won and the bullpen got a little extra rest. I contest that if it were the Red Sox or Yankees in town on that night, the Royals bullpen would not have gotten that rest. I think Major League Baseball wouldn’t let that game be shortened if one of the “marquee” teams would have been losing to the consistantly bad Kansas City Royals.

The Seattle Mariners get cheated out of a long shot to rebound from being down four runs is not a big deal. If the Yankees were down four runs in that situation, the end of that game would have been played. It is not right but I truly believe that statement is true. Call it an East Coast bias or whatever but the I know that the rain passed and I believe the end of that game could have been played that night. If there were a chance that Derek Jeter would have came up with the tying run on, the umpires/Major League Baseball wouldn’t have denied him that chance.