Rollercoaster Sunday

As can be determined by the four posts today, today's game was a series of peaks and troughs.

Jacobs play in the field was less than impressive. It is a long season, so I am going to forgo getting upset about any individual offensive deficiencies, but one does have to hope that Jacobs will start to put some balls out of the park. That rip down the right field foul line was encouraging.

The Royals finally put some runs on the board, and a lot of that was thanks to John Buck, who maddened me enough in the first to fire off that first blog entry of the day. He drove in three runs today and had quality at-bats all day long. He certainly redeemed himself for his first inning gaffes behind home plate with his offensive output today.

Meche pitched better than his four runs allowed (three earned, although the boxscore on Yahoo! is saying that Meche had four earned which couldn't possibly be the case as Swisher scored on Jacobs's errorat first). The Yankees were not exactly crushing the ball, and there were countless at-bats in which Yankees hitters looked absolutely flummoxed. Swisher was utterly fooled by a curveball on a two-strike count. Cody Ransom looked lost at the plate all afternoon.

Juan Cruz pitched a one-two-three eighth to keep the Royals within striking distance. The Mexicutioner came in and struck out the side in the ninth to record the save, alleviating any slight concerns that may have arisen after the rocky save he recorded Thursday.

Their offense was oddly sparked by a two-out Billy Butler walk earned from Jose Veras, who struck out Butler the night before, followed by a Brayan Peña double scoring TPJ (pinch-running for Butler, of course. Then Bert Callaspo drove in Brayan and advanced to second on the throw home. With a one-run lead, Buck doubled home Bert, and there was your offensive rally.

If you had told me before the game that those five players would have been the key cogs in the Royals offensive machine today, engineering a come-from-behind win against the Yankees, I'd have likely laughed at you. But I don't care where the runs come from, just that they appear on the scoreboard.