Wednesday night's loss to the White Sox didn't help the Royals' playoff chances one bit. It was a sobering night for Royals fans, who now have to come to terms with the possibility that their team might not be playing baseball late into October.
Google has rendered private detectives largely unnecessary. The video game revolution has brought tough times upon jump rope manufacturers. And now, as Lackey reports, a pair of baseball-playing robots have been built. Yes, it's only a matter of time before today's baseball players are disenfranchised for the benefit of a weird-looking arm thing that sits on a table and chucks a baseball. 
So far, The Dugout has established three relatively static "straight man" characters on the Royals: pitchers Zack Greinke, Brian Bannister, and Joakim Soria. This season, of course, they're joined by perennial Dugout man-children Kyle Farnsworth and Sidney Ponson. So we can say that the Royals have a Full House, Aces full of Jokers, and shovel this terrible poker-centric joke on top of the massive pile of poker-centric jokes that the Royals have had to suffer over the years.
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.
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