FanHouse TreyHillman

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
Jon Garland couldn't beat them. So he joined them. And then he beat the old them.

Traded from the fourth-place Diamondbacks to the first-place Dodgers earlier in the week, Garland on Friday faced Arizona in his first start for Los Angeles.

"It was fun. I grew up coming to games here, and getting a chance to pitch for this team is definitely a dream come true," Garland said. "It's kind of awkward the way it happened -- but nevertheless, it did -- and I was able to throw a good one up. I didn't leave too many tickets. I cut the phone off and told people if they want to come, they can pay for it and support the team."

---

---

Many former players get courtesy titles in the organizations they played for, but few of them take those jobs quite as seriously as George Brett, the Vice President of Baseball Operations for the Royals. That's a nebulous title that could mean a lot of time playing golf and shaking hands, but Brett still takes his Royals baseball seriously.

Check out his takedown of those critical of Trey Hillman, and you might wonder if the team should think about giving him a job as team spokesman. The video is after the jump. There's some language unsafe for the workplace, but it all gets bleeped by Kansas City's NBC affiliate.

Last Wednesday, esteemed reader Craig pointed me to a statistical pile of manure:

You realize the Royals are 7-6, but 6-1 in games that Kyle Farnsworth has not appeared in?

Entering Saturday, the Royals are now 8-2 without him. The Royals haven't been 8-2 in any context since, like, 1207. As a Royals fan and unconditional Farnsworth apologist, this is difficult for me to accept. It doesn't make sense. My guess is that they only trot Farnsworth out there because he's insufferable to be around in the bullpen. At least, that's what I've learned from spying on his chat room conversations over the last five years or so.

This evening's Dugout is after the jump.

They're only one game into the season, but Royals manager Trey Hillman is already feeling the heat that comes along with raised expectations. As I'm sure you've heard about or read about already, Hillman decided to leave Kyle Farnsworth in to face Jim Thome during the eighth inning of Tuesday's season opener with two runners on and a 2-1 lead, even though he had Juan Cruz and lefty Ron Mahay warming up in the bullpen.

Well, long story short, four pitches later Thome was launching a fastball into the left-center field bleachers and giving the White Sox a 4-2 lead and an Opening Day victory. As you'd expect, a lot of Royals fans and media were wondering what the heck Hillman was thinking, and I'm not even sure he knows.

There have been plenty of people, players and fans alike, who have expressed their displeasure with the World Baseball Classic this spring. Some people saw it as a distraction that only put their team's players at risk to injury, while some of the players in the WBC just thought it was a bit too boring for their taste. I'm guessing one player with no complaints about it is Sidney Ponson.

Ponson made two solid starts against the Dominican Republic while playing for the Netherlands and landed a minor-league deal with the Kansas City Royals. Now, after only a few weeks with the team and the recent demotion of Luke Hochevar, it looks as though Ponson has earned a job in the Royals rotation.

As longtime readers of The Dugout are aware, the Royals are one of our pet franchises. We tend to ignore teams like the Astros, mostly because we're too busy writing story arcs about an obscure Royals utility infielder possessing superhuman abilities, or the Royals' owner assuming the role of a contemporary Satan, or the Royals' manager living out of a grocery cart.

Kyle Farnsworth's acquisition certainly does not help with this. Neither does Sidney Ponson's. By the way, I'd like to point out that in the Dugout universe, the Royals captured acquired Ponson months before it happened in real life. Another example of life imitating Dugout. Sidney Ponson is horrible. Today's Dugout is after the jump.

Now that the Yankees know they're going to be without Alex Rodriguez for at least six weeks thanks to hip surgery, they can focus on finding somebody to replace him at third base. Unfortunately for the Bombers, replacing somebody like A-Rod is a lot easier said than done, but there are some decent options out there.

One of those options is Kansas City Royals third baseman/left fielder/first baseman/second baseman(?) Mark Teahen. The problem for the Yankees, though, is that while their desire for Teahen has increased, the Royals aren't exactly looking to move him.

Oh my God.

Pending a physical, journeyman relief pitcher and personal performance icon Kyle Farnsworth has agreed to a two-year, $9.25 million dollar contract with the Kansas City Royals. It is a deal that helps nobody, really. Unless you count us.

Step aside, respected bloggers. We got this. Tonight's Dugout is after the jump. Deep breath.

You bolt out into the wilderness. You don't know what Cuban has planned, but it can't be good. You go trudgin' across the tundra mile after mile for what seems like forever. You're getting colder and colder and you think it's all about to end. You see what appears to be a group of Eskimos in blue parkas playing baseball on a field of snow. You must be hallucinating. You sit down in a snowbank when suddenly one of the bundled blue characters approaches you.

"M-m-manny Ramirez? Is that you?" It's Trey Hillman, manager of the Kansas City Royals.

"What are you doing here?" you chatter.

"David Glass stopped paying rent on our field and told us that we could play for free here, so here we are, holding winter practice."

You stop. Something strange is happening.

"Trey, you're turning in to a penguin. Stop it."

"That actually is a penguin."

"Oh."

"You look awfully cold, Manny. I can get you a parka. Maybe some BP will warm you up."

You take Trey's parka and start taking batting practice. It's cold, but it feels good. You're warming up, launching blasts all over the plains of ice. You're just playing baseball. When Dayton Moore sends you a one-year contract for minimum wage, you sign it and go to Kansas City. The Royals still aren't very good, but they love you in Kansas City.

With no pressure, you hit 50 home runs and re-up for another year. You never win another World Series, but you hit 650 home runs. And you're happy.

THE END.

(Not sure how you got here? Want to begin again? Start Choose Your Own Adventure: Manny Being Choosey in Free Agency from the beginning.)

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.