Game 24 vs. Minnesota

Thanks to my recent trip to Chicago, more than a week has passed between the game and this entry. To make matters worse, the extreme heat forced me to leave my iPad at home and score on paper. Thus I don’t have a super complete record of the game. On the other hand, the game wasn’t super memorable.

The highlight was the Royals debut of Jeremy Guthrie, whom we got in a trade with Colorado in which we unloaded Jonathan Sanchez. On paper it looked like a fairly even swap of equally dreadful players, but at least we could hope that Guthrie looked worse than he really was thanks to starts in Denver’s rare air.

Nope. He did fine in the first, but Ryan Doumit led off the second with a home run. Then in the third Minnesota really went to town on us, scoring four on hits and walks. Guthrie settled down and threw shut-out ball in the third and fourth, but of course by then we were trailing by quite a distance.

Tim Collins came in to start the sixth, giving up another solo shot to Doumit. Though we put together some offense in the eighth and ninth – including home runs by Billy Butler and Yuniesky Betancourt – it was another case of too little too late. We don’t come back from deficits. We just don’t.

The Goat of the Game was second base umpire D.J. Reyburn. He made a bad call on a steal attempt by Alcides Escobar in the first. He made an even worse call on a fielder’s choice in the seventh. Then in the ninth he ejected Escobar (and Ned Yost as well). To be fair, Escobar getting caught stealing and then grounding into a fielder’s choice were both close calls, and most likely the latter wasn’t connected to the player’s griping about the former. And as an extension to the official comments for Rule 9.02(c), players aren’t supposed to keep griping about calls innings later. Still, Reyburn should have been able to account for the heat, the players’ frustrations and the very real possibility that he blew one or both of the calls.

So perhaps it’s for the best that the record of this one is somewhat incomplete. There’s no box score, as the iPad generates those automatically. But the Buck seat was another “Hey, My Kid’s Got Cancer” W-, the color guard was KU Air Force ROTC, and the anthem performance was good (and not accompanied by any audible “Chiefs!” at the end).