Royals Realm

Where does Daniel Cabrera get off?

The man is without question, a mediocre pitcher, as he sports a 4.90 career ERA in just over four years of Major League service.

Well try telling that to the Kansas City Royals, a team who he owns.

Cabrera, who has a 2.57 career ERA against the boys in blue, stifled his whipping boys yet again Thursday night in the form of a 4-1 victory.

The 6-foot-7 right-hander improved his career record to 4-0 against Kansas City, as he struck out seven and allowed just three hits. In utterly humiliating fashion, Cabrera became the second pitcher to toss a complete game against the Royals this week. Ervin Santana did so on Monday in less than 100 pitches.

While I thought the Royals would suffer a letdown after Tuesday night’s 9-4 throttling of the Angels, I surely did not see this coming. Cabrera made the Royals’ lineup resemble the anemic 2006 version of itself, making Billy Butler and Mark Teahen resemble Matt Stairs and Angel Berroa in nightmarish fashion for Royals Nation.

It was so bad that the only run was driven in by the human rally-killer himself, Tony Pena Jr., which is awful because that just bought the AL’s worst position player at least another two weeks of faith from his manager.

While the Royals may have two young budding stars in Butler and Alex Gordon and they may have signed a $36-million outfielder, nights like this are a continuing reminder that they have a long way to go. These are exactly the kind of games the team made a living losing during their horrific ‘04-06 stretch; getting utterly silenced by average pitchers.

This is almost as bad as the night Jon Libber struck out 13 Royals last June, but it’s up there. If there was ever a game that screamed to the team that its current lineup cannot compete, this was it. With an abundance of quality relief pitchers and so few teams possessing the kind of bullpens Kansas City does, the logical thing to do is trade for someone else’s product, because the Royals do not have a single power bat in their system.

The team does not need Jimmy Gobble and Ron Mahay, just like it does not need two backup second basemen (Alberto Collaspo and Esteban German). Packaging Mahay and German may net a AAA bat that is blocked by a quality player at the Major-League level. Because at 15-19, the team miraculously is still just two and a half games out of first place, but if it continues to have consistent hideous games like this, the “GB” column in the newspaper will quickly begin to grow.

More nights like tonight and it won’t be long before that number reaches 10 games and the team starts shifting into annual fourth-place or bust mode.

This team has too much talent for that.

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