FanHouse JoePosnanski

It's not often that we approach the end of April and the Kansas City Royals are hovering around first place, but that's the situation the team currently finds itself in as they trail the Detroit Tigers by a game in the AL Central. Still, it's not that rare, considering that on this date in 2003 the Royals were 17-5 and 4 1/2 games ahead of the White Sox.

No, what's truly rare is seeing a Kansas City Royal grace the cover of Sports Illustrated during the baseball season. The last time it happened was when Bo Jackson was taking the country by storm in 1989, and now, 20 years later Zack Greinke will be carrying on the tradition for the Royals.

From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

The results of the baseball Hall of Fame voting will be revealed Monday (2:00 PM ET), and there's a good chance Jim Rice will finally make it. Andre Dawson almost certainly will not. While I believe Rice has a good case to be in the Hall of Fame, I am left wondering how he's become so much more qualified than Dawson -- at least by the electorate. Really, if you factor in all aspects of play, they are equally deserving of entry into Cooperstown.

Let's take a look at the case of Rice and compare him to Dawson.

The Royals, on a national level, are drastically undercovered. That's due not only to their talent-bereft lineup but to their small-market, flyoverland location -- without consistently interesting baseball, a team like the Royals is pretty boring. No mystery here.

Thank goodness, then, for Kansas City Star (and recently syndicated SI.com blogger) Joe Posnanski. Posnanski's ability to make the Royals semi-readable is a true gift, the sort of thing every writer envies but few actually have. Today, Posnanski has an especially important, and perhaps unforeseen, Royals update: Manager Trey Hillman, wunderkind of the Japanese major leagues, has been a giant disappointment:

No, the troubling part is that all of those things that Dayton Moore and so many others saw in Hillman - his bustling energy, his likeable personality, his sense of perspective, his ability to inspire and motivate the players - those things have been missing in action. The Royals have played lackluster baseball. They have gone backward defensively. They are so unfocused that Hillman last week made a point to say they're catching pop-ups better. They have by far the worst plate discipline in all of baseball. The Royals' young players have not improved enough and in some case regressed. This is not a well-managed baseball team.

Yeesh. As Posnanski mentions, that's not the Trey Hillman people saw in Japan -- the guy who looked like the perfect manager for the small-market, post-Moneyball era. Whether or not Hillman has responded to his team, or his team is responding to Hillman, or whether this matters at all is yet to be seen, but if stuff like this keeps coming from credible places like Posnanski, Hillman's days in Kansas City will be short-lived.

For those of you that don't know, Joe Posnanski of the KC Star does these "Banny Logs" on his personal blog, where he chronicles each of Royals pitcher Brian Bannister's starts. Joe -- and everyone else -- is infatuated with Bannister for a few reasons.

First, he's a good pitcher. Second, he's smart as hell. He combines both of those to be a rare breed of baseball player -- one who truly cares about the pajama/basement Sabermetric numbers, and a guy whose mental approach to the chess-like game of pitching is similar to that of Greg Maddux. That's not a direct comparison, but it's certainly valid. Anyway, Joe mentions a hilariously awesome text message exchange after the game.

It was like that. Banny was mostly working fastball as he does when he's successful, but his secondary pitches were generally not coming in the red-zone 84-85 mph range. Plus, it looked like Banny had a really good fastball. He got 11 swinging strikes, which is a lot for him, and most of those came on fastballs. He had his command too. I sent him a text after the game, and he wrote back to say: "Just had to let my Babip regress before I started dealing again."

Seriously, how can you not love this guy?

No. Seriously. How can you not? A major league pitcher -- arguably the ace on a major league team, depending on how you feel about Gil Meche -- totally monitors his BABIP. Most regular baseball fans don't monitor BABIP, but Bannister, he is all over that mess. The guy knows his stats; instead of some tangent about the changing world of baseball, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy it.

Via Vegas Watch

Painfully, the Chiefs are not out of the playoff picture yet. With the Bengals' loss, the Chiefs are basically at the bottom of what seems like a 100-team pile at either 7-7 or 8-6. The Kansas City Star details what needs to happen for the Chiefs to make the playoffs (scroll to the bottom), and while somewhat complicated, it's not impossible to figure out.

But Joe Posnanski, who, in my opinion, is always a good read, posits what a lot of Chiefs' fans must be feeling: does it really matter? In his opinion, these Chiefs are simply not that good, and he may be right. Within his piece, he notes that the Chiefs have made the playoffs only once in the last nine years. As Posnanski also aptly notes, that fact comes as an initial shock, but you realize that it is absolutely correct without needing to look it up.


What happened? Why do the Chiefs still sell tickets? Why are they always considered a potential playoff team? Here's Posnanski's theory:

I think the answer is more complicated than "he [Carl Peterson] isn't trying" or "he doesn't care." My quick explanation is that the hardest thing to do in football is a build a team with the right balance between offense and defense, and Peterson has never found that balance. Good teams can beat you more than one way. The Chiefs, under Peterson, have not had that variety.

But what Peterson has done - I think better than anyone in sports - is convince everyone that his mediocre teams are actually good and promising. How? He has kept the Chiefs from having one of those comical 3-13 seasons. He has always found players with star quality - Derrick Thomas to Joe Montana to Marcus Allen to Tony Gonzalez to Priest Holmes to Larry Johnson. And the Chiefs have just missed the playoffs enough times to keep everybody coming back for more.

I think Posnanski is spot on. Nobody could say that Peterson doesn't try. Some say that he doesn't spend the money, but that would be false as well. Peterson's strength has always been his ability to manage the salary cap well, which is why you don't see the Chiefs constantly cutting good players from their roster every year.