Weekend Wonders

After taking two of three from the Angels, the Royals are just 6.5 games back of first place. It feels like they're out of it and has for a while but still, 6.5 isn't all that much, even with three teams in front of them. I think the starting pitching will continue to hold them back but right now they are still relevant, despite their 29-37 record.

After failing to have back to back multi-hit games all year Alcides Escobar rattled off three in a row against the Angels. He went 6/11 with 4 runs in the 3 games. In his last 6 games he's hitting .476/.500/.619 with 3 doubles and 2 stolen bases. The bat may actually be starting to come around, we can only hope. For June he's at .270/.295/.349, those are numbers that I would gladly take over the course of a full season. An OBP near .300, with his plus defense, would be great. It's easy to forget, since he's been so dreadful, but he did show some promise with the bat in the minors (unlike TPJ, so let's quit with that comparison). He hit .298/.353/.409 in 487 AAA plate appearances.

Mike Moustakas had a pretty nice weekend too. He went 3/10 with 3 runs and a very surprising 3 walks, and of course he hit his first career home run on Saturday. His start was fairly similar to that of Eric Hosmer, who also had 3 hits and 3 walks in his first 3 games. These two are going to provide Royals fans with some memorable moments the next half decade or so.

Vin Mazzaro pitched 7 shutout innings in an outing that defied conventional wisdom. He gave up 5 walks and failed to strike out a single hitter. I searched b-r's game finder to see how many times that's been done, now the data runs back to 1919 so it could've been done before that, but Mazzaro is the only one who's done it since. I then set the criteria to 7+ innings, 5+ walks, 0 K's, and 0 runs and got a few more results, 21 more to be exact.

Rk	Player	Date	Tm	Opp	Rslt	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO
1	Vin Mazzaro	2011-06-12	KCR	LAA	W 9-0	7.0	5	0	0	5	0
2	Scott Olsen	2008-04-25	FLA	MIL	W 3-0	7.1	4	0	0	5	0
3	Doyle Alexander	1989-04-24	DET	SEA	W 1-0	9.0	7	0	0	5	0
4	Ed Halicki	1979-05-17	SFG	HOU	W 3-0	9.0	2	0	0	5	0
5	Bill Parsons	1973-04-13	MIL	BAL	W 2-0	7.1	1	0	0	6	0
6	Rich Beck	1965-09-19	NYY	DET	W 3-0	9.0	9	0	0	5	0
7	Jim Wilson	1957-05-15	CHW	WSH	W 5-0	9.0	4	0	0	6	0
8	Vern Bickford	1952-07-17	BSN	CHC	W 1-0	9.0	7	0	0	6	0
9	Johnny Sain	1951-08-07 (2)	BSN	PHI	L 0-1	10.0	5	0	0	5	0
10	Howie Fox	1951-07-13	CIN	BSN	W 2-0	9.0	5	0	0	5	0
11	Gene Bearden	1950-05-24	CLE	WSH	W 5-4	7.1	4	0	0	5	0
12	Red Munger	1944-05-14 (2)	STL	PHI	W 1-0	9.0	6	0	0	5	0
13	Elmer Riddle	1943-07-02	CIN	BRO	W 8-0	9.0	7	0	0	6	0
14	Steve Sundra	1939-08-25 (1)	NYY	SLB	W 11-0	9.0	4	0	0	5	0
15	Joe Krakauskas	1937-09-09 (1)	WSH	PHA	W 13-6	7.0	1	0	0	7	0
16	Ray Benge	1935-07-02	BRO	BSN	W 5-0	9.0	3	0	0	5	0
17	Ed Brandt	1933-09-19	BSN	CIN	W 3-0	9.0	4	0	0	5	0
18	Sheriff Blake	1929-07-30	CHC	BSN	W 4-0	9.0	5	0	0	5	0
19	Percy Jones	1927-04-15	CHC	STL	W 1-0	9.0	6	0	0	5	0
20	Stan Coveleski	1925-07-03	WSH	BOS	W 11-0	9.0	4	0	0	5	0
21	Eddie Rommel	1923-05-24	PHA	NYY	W 1-0	9.0	7	0	0	6	0
22	George Uhle	1921-09-24	CLE	NYY	W 9-0	9.0	4	0	0	6	0

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used

I think the moral of the story is that walking 5 and striking out zero is not exactly a recipe for success, despite yesterday's success.