The Baltimore Orioles came into Kauffman Stadium Thursday night to begin a four game series, providing quite a stark contrast from the Royals previous series opponents, the Twins. This was a game between two bad teams, one riding a four game losing streak, the other on a five game skid. But somebody had to win, and unfortunately for Royals fans it was the Orioles, 6-5, in eleven innings.

The Royals purchased the contract of Greg Holland from Omaha today to fill the vacancy left by the newly departed Scott Podsednik.  A strikeout pitcher, the right handed Holland has an average fastball and a decent breaking ball.  He tends to induce more groundballs than flyballs, as well (46.5/36.8 split in 2010).

Scott Podsednik has been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers for two minor leaguers: catcher Luke May and right handed pitcher Elisaul Pimentel. Rumors had been picking up in the last week that Podsednik was garnering heavy interest from National League Western Division teams and those whispers turned out to be true.

As a result of John Lamb’s promotion to Double A Northwest Arkansas, the Naturals needed to clear a roster space.  The solution: lefty Rule V pick Edgar Osuna gets to move up to Triple A Omaha.

With his recent poor performance, Victor Marte was optioned to Triple A Omaha before today’s game against Minnesota.  To take his place, Bryan Bullington returned to Kansas City to pitch in long relief.

On June 28, Marte had a 2.95 ERA.  One month later, his ERA had ballooned to 9.76.  In eight of his ten July appearances, Marte gave up 2 or more runs, surrendering 24 earned runs over 9.1 innings in that stretch.  That July ERA of 23.14 earned him a trip back down to Omaha.  He gave up five homers in July and while he was unlucky to an extent (batters hit an unreal .526 on balls in play against him), he still walked ten batters.

Bullington made three appearances for Kansas City before being sent back to Omaha at the end of May.  He pitched three innings, walking five batters and giving up a homerun and four earned runs (a 12.00 ERA).  The former number one overall pick (2002) produced a 2.82 ERA over 102 innings in Triple A, making 15 starts and 5 relief appearances.

He pitched today against the Twins, giving the Royals two scoreless innings in relief of Brian Bannister.  Bullington walked one, struck out one and surrendered two hits in the loss.

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In other news, water continues to be wet, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, and Jay Leno will continue to not be funny.

News is going around that Gil Meche will require surgery on his shoulder and miss the rest of 2010.  He was on the 60-day DL and appearing in two rehab starts in the minor leagues, including a start on Monday in Omaha where he got rocked in four innings, giving up seven runs.

Despite last night’s monstrosity of a game, the Royals minor leagues are providing a steady stream of good news.  In what is becoming a feature here at Kings of Kauffman, another Royals prospect is taking the next step.  In fact, it’s the second next step for this player.

We’re just past two weeks past his 20th birthday, and John Lamb has been promoted from High A Wilmington to Double A Northwest Arkansas.  This follows an earlier midseason promotion, as he was advanced from Low A Burlington to Wilmington back in May.

The Royals got the chance to face the AL East, with a three game series against Toronto and a four game trip to New York.  As the trade deadline approached, the Royals made one move, sending Alberto Callaspo to the Angels, while many other players were linked to rumored deals (though the best trade chip, David DeJesus, was lost to a season-ending thumb injury).

All that drama almost overshadowed the returns of Rick Ankiel off the disabled list and Alex Gordon from Triple A purgatory.

With due respect to all you Molly Hatchet fans out there (thanks to you both for the visit!), there are some disturbing rumors floating around out there as the trade deadline approaches that really make my stomach turn.  Chief among them is a deal where the names Jeff Francoeur, Oliver Perez, and Luis Castillo are involved.

MLBTradeRumors.com passed along the first hints of potential Mets/Royals discussions, via Ken Rosenthal.  You’ll notice the names on the Royals side: Gil Meche, Jose Guillen, and Kyle Farnsworth.

And while no specific offers have been leaked or made, that’s a 3-for-3 deal whose finalization would surprise nobody.

And that’s the scary part.

But with proper treatment, and a little bit of hope, one can still live a meaningful life in spite of this chronic condition. I speak of course of YDS – Yankees Derangement Syndrome, also commonly referred to as Yankeephobia: An incurable affliction marked by a deep-rooted, unadulterated hatred of the New York Yankees, and an unnatural repulsion of all things and people affiliated with that organization in any way. While YDS manifests itself differently in each of its victims, there are several predominant features of the condition shared by most sufferers:

News just came in that David DeJesus suffered a complete tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right thumb and will require surgery.  Standard recovery time is ten weeks, so he’s out for the rest of the year.

The first reaction gave a worst case scenario of six weeks of recovery time for the injury, so unfortunately, the extent of the problem was underestimated.  It’s a terrible situation for the Royals as they lose out on the potential bounty they could have received in a trade for him, plus his performance was borderline for a Type A free agent before the injury and missing two months of production won’t help that cause.

The Royals still hold an affordable $6 million dollar option on him for 2011 and that may be the best way for them to go, unless they’re sure he’ll a) refuse arbitration at season’s end and b) recovery goes well enough for other teams to sign him (and give the Royals some supplemental draft).

Over on Call to the Pen, Nathaniel Stoltz is our minor league expert and author of our every-Thursday column, This Week in Prospects (TWiP) .  On top of all of that, he also handles our in-depth analysis of most of the major trades that occur. Along those lines, I encourage you to check out 1,241 words on the Alberto Callaspo trade that you may enjoy, brought to you by the mind and keyboard of the one and only Nathaniel Stoltz.

Yes, this is a bit of shameless self promotion.  And yes, you may have found your way to the article by way of the trackback link in the comments of Michael’s article on the deal.  Regardless, I truly value Nathaniel’s thoughts and opinions (though we often disagree) and wanted to make sure everyone was aware of them.