No Quit

I’m still riding the emotional high that sweeping a doubleheader will give you, but I thought I’d quickly chime in with a stat that is interesting to me.

Six of the Royals ten wins have occurred in games where the opposing team has drawn first blood. That is six wins out of eleven games where the other team has scored first.

This may not seem like a big deal until you look at the first seventeen games of last year and notice that the Royals dropped all eleven games in which their opponents scored the first run(s) of the game. Granted many of these losses were achieved during the great winless drought of April 2012.

There has been plenty of talk about the struggles of this team. Hey, it comes with the territory. We KC fans are generally only happy when we’re miserable. People are worried about Holland after all of twelve games….he comes in and blows through the Red Sox for 2 saves in the doubleheader today. People worry about the unfortunate location of Kelvin Herrera‘s pitch yesterday and he comes in and goes two strong innings in the doubleheader’s nightcap. The small sample size rule is still in effect and the outcry I see on social networking (specifically Twitter) makes me cringe.

On the other hand, the struggles of Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer are legitimately troubling. I hope they can pull it together. If not, something needs to happen.* I would say that seventeen games is too small of a sample size for them too, but their struggles date back to last season.

*The amazing thing about saying that “something needs to happen” is that you can just say it without really having to back it up. Ok, maybe that’s not true. I guess the most logical option would be to send at least Moose down, if not both of them. The only problem with that is you are faced with starting Tejada, Johnson and/or Falu (if they called him up). I think I’d rather ride the Hosmer/Moose train for just a little while longer. Good grief, they need to get it going, though.

Yeesh, I got off track there.

I think the above stat is very important because it signifies that the Royals are still capable of coming from behind and winning tough games. They were unable to do this last April during that debacle of a losing streak and thusly, had an awful record at this point last year.

I think the capability of winning tough games like these will be a make or break factor for the 2013 Royals. So far, they’ve proven that they’re up to the challenge.