Many times in life you look back at a particular time and realize how good it was. Some don’t realize how good it was until it’s gone.
Those are my feelings about the Kansas City Royals bullpen.
Back in the good ol’ days (2013-2015) it was Kelvin Herrera in the seventh, Wade Davis in the eighth and Greg Holland closing the game in the ninth.
It was perfect formula that won the Royals many games. If Kansas City had the lead going into the final three innings, it was nearly impossible to get past the three-headed monster of HDH.
The starting pitchers knew all they had to do was have the lead going into the seventh inning and the game was essentially over.
Nothing could be more opposite this year.
The bullpen has been absolutely awful and has costed the team many games, and it’s only mid-April. It ranks up there with the worst bullpens in the major leagues, and there isn’t much hope for the rest of the year, either.
The Royals already sent one bullpen pitcher down to the minor leagues — Brandon Maurer, who gave up six runs in four innings pitched.
The woes don’t stop there though.
Justin Grimm and Blaine Boyer should catch the next bus to Omaha, Nebraska, as Grimm is currently sporting an 18.90 earned run average while Boyer is averaging 25.20 ERA.
You don’t have to know much about baseball to realize that this is really bad.
The worst part is that manager Ned Yost keeps on putting them in as if one day they will just get better. I don’t see that happening, and they need to go get help down in the minor league system.
The rest of the bullpen hasn’t been nearly has bad as these three guys, and I hope they can find hope in Omaha.
But how nice it would be to have Herrera, then Davis, then Holland waiting at the back end of every game again.
Avery Osen is a graduate student in mass communications. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Collegian. Please send comments to opinion@kstatecollegian.com.
