Royals at A's (game I)

The Royals conclude their 7 game road trip in Oakland where they will be reunited with former Royals Mike Sweeney, Emil Brown and Donnie Murhpy. Brian Bannister(3-0, .086 ERA) will be taking the mound for the Royals and looking for his 4th straight win. Chad Gaudin(0-1, 7.20 ERA) will be making his second start of the year for Oakland, he was knocked around in his last start against Toronto.

Box Score

It had to happen eventually, Brian Bannister finally had a bad outing. Bannister was cruising through 5 innings giving up only 1 run, but something was missing, and that was Bannisters control. While he only walked 1 batter he was all over the place, usually in the middle of the plate, and that caught up to him in the 6th as he allowed 4 runs and recorded no outs.

Mahey and Peralta came in and stopped the bleeding pitching 2 innings allowing no earned runs...Then it happened, the two headed Japanese monster known as Yabunomo came in and suddenly the swinging A's were back in business. Yabuta started the 8th but allowed 5 runs to score on only 1 hit, then Nomo came in to clean up and get the final out except that he allowed 3 runs to score first. Just in case you were wondering Yabuta's ERA is 10.13 and Nomo's is 18.69.

The Royals offense was just as terrible as Yabunomo. The only managed to score 2 runs on 4 hits and nobody had more than 1 hit. Billy Butler ended what could have been a promising inning by running into yet another out at second base in the third.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Nomo just doesn't have it and I would guess by Sunday Nomo is no longer on the Royals roster and we see one of Hochevar, Davies, or De La Rosa.