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The Kansas City Royals are, pending today’s result, 0-5 against the Tampa Bay Rays this season.  That’s not all that surprising, in itself.  But what if I told you that, the Royals led three of those games at the end of seven innings?

The Royals have taken one run leads into each of the last three matchups with the reigning AL Champs, and they’ve blown saves all three times.  Most significantly, they haven’t been able to get the game to closer Joakim Soria, who was available to pitch in all three games.

Let’s assume that Soriawould have started the ninth inning in any situation where the team had a lead.  That might have been a stretch in the first game (June 3), becuase he would have pitched back to back days after coming off the DL.  It’s reasonable to expect that from the highest payed player in the bullpen, two consecutive pitching days, but you could make an argument that it’s not worth the potential risk.

Anyway, how often should a team be expected to get to the ninthinning witha lead when taking a one run lead into the eighth?  At least two out of three times is reasonable, no, the status quo.  It’s expected that most games that get that far should be converted into saves by the closer.  But you could argue that the Royals should actually be better than the status quo given the tool of Joakim Soria in the bullpen.

Blame for the failures of the team in this situation falls on both the players who are actually blowing the save (Jamey Wright, Juan Cruz, John Bale), but also on gross bullpen mismanagement by Royals manager Trey Hillman.  In defense of Hillman, he’s really got only three types of setup men to rely on: those who are posting out of character high home run rates, and those who are posting high home run rates that are perfectly in character, and those who walk so many batters that they can’t possibly be considered in these setup situations.

So, we’ve established that Hillman has his hands tied.  But we also know that if the problem is getting the game to Soria, the manager can choose to stretch his best reliever up to two innings to convert these close losses into wins.  It’s at least the logical conclusion for trying to convert those close games into wins.

Possible reasons that would prevent the manager from stretching his closer to a multi-inning role include the fact that it could limit options for pitching him in consecutive days, the need the establish a trust in the other members of his bullpen, and the decision to mitigate the risk of injury, choosing instead to pitch the player in a very standard role.  The motif that connects all these reasons: fear.

Fear of losing one’s job, of mortgaging the future for a win here or there, of losing the trust of the rest of the bullpen, of potentially limiting his options tomorrow.  Fear of failure, even if the right decision is made.

All those are legitimate reasons to avoid stretching your best reliever to his limits in order to convert those blown saves into saves.  But, in my opinion, they are also fears that are ignored by the best managers.  The best realize that their actions may have long term consequences, and make the decision in the best interest of the team anyway.  Trey Hillman may very well be treating 2009 as a lost season for his Royals, but if in a meaningless season, he’s too fearful of potential consequences to make the right decision, why would he be more likely to make the best decision in a situation with more scrutiny?

Instead of three potential wins, the Royals lost three games, and more embarrassingly, Soria did not pitch in any of them.  Not even in mop up.  Revisionist history might be screwing the Royals over here, and there’s nothing to suggest that if they once again fail to make the right decision, that the much-maligned bullpen won’t get it to Soria this time.  Anything can happen in baseball.

As I write this, the Royals currently lead the Rays by a score of 3-2 in the middle of the 7th inning.  It’s likely that the team, once again, will take a one-run lead into the eighth inning against the Rays for a 4th straight game.  And it’s probable that if they don’t learn from their past mistakes, they will once again lose to the Rays.  Ironically, it’s a different kind of fear that might save them: the fear of making the same mistake three days in a row.

But the damage has already been done.  The Royals play every game on the margins, and can not afford to blow as many saves as they do.  They need to treat every late inning lead like they are protecting it in the World Series, and only then will the team be properly managed.

UPDATED:  0-6.  Still no Soria.  What a crappy team.

13th, 1st, 3rd, 16th, 16th.  The chronological rank of the Bears’ defenses, ranked by points against, under head coach Lovie Smith.

If the Smith-era Bears fail to win a championship, they will be remembered as unique for two reasons: 1) having a consistently excellent special teams unit, with Devin Hester as the face of the unit, and having a historic scoring defense, despite considerable player turnover throughout the era.

The Bears have now missed the playoffs in two consecutive years, and Devin Hester’s career on special teams appears to have gone the way of, well, every other special teams superstar.  The Bears are still producing an excellent group of units, led now by Danieal Manning, a second round safety who busted on defense, but found his niche as a kick returner.

The Bears special teams is expected to be excellent again, but then again, I’m not writing about the Bears’ special teams.  With a viable, but still somewhat underwhelming offense, led by a developing gunslinger in Jay Cutler.  The one unit that very well may decide the fate of the NFC North is that unique Chicago defense.  This unit appears to have peaked in 2005 and 2006, the two years they went to the playoffs.  Since then, they’ve been middle of the pack in points against.  Since the long term trend shows a declining unit, would it be reasonable for us to conclude that Lovie Smith’s downfall will be marked by the collapse of a once great defensive unit?

Reasonable: yes.  Likely: not so much.

Points against simply doesn’t tell the whole story regarding the Bears defense in the Smith-era.  It suggests a lot of variance that I have reason to believe may have been overstated.  The Bears scored an average of 20.9 PPG in 2007 and all the way up to 23.4 PPG in 2008, good for 18th and 14th in the NFL respectively, despite high turnover totals in both seasons.  34 and 26 in those seasons respectively.  This just doesn’t jive with the prevailing logic of the team: that the 2007 Bears were a terrible offensive team, and that the 2008 Bears were improved-but-still-below average.

We can break down the offense: 3 QB changes + Cedric Benson’s team leading 4 rushing TDs in 2007, uninspired, but improved offense in 2008 led by Hester, Orton, and Forte; clearly though, you either have to believe that the Bears were lucky to have produced a positive point differential last year, or that they were good.  And by good, I mean, had a top defense, since that’s the unaccounted for variable that is the subject of this column.

Let’s say that the 2008 Bears weren’t lucky and consequently, their Expected Win total of 8.7 last year (for a 9-7 team, mind you) was well earned.  This implies–via process of establishing the offense, loosely, as belowaverage–that the Bears were a top-quartile defense in 2008.  In fact, if we apply the same standard and adjust for three downright terrible offenses in the Smith-era, we can extrapolate that the Bears have been a top quartile defense (or “top ten,” if you prefer) in each of the last five years.  Simply by their virtue of being able to score points with offense that have proven unable to get themselves on the scoreboard, I would imagine that up to a third of the total value of the Bears defense is simply not measured by points against.  It looks like the Bears have consistently outproduced this measure over the long run, and not to mention that this effect has held through a scheme change away from the cover-two.

Of course, you don’t have to buy this argument.  It’s far from established fact that having a point scoring defense is a repeatable skill, and the fact that the Bears defense has been such a prolific scoring defense does not mean they will continue to be one.  And frankly, if you don’t think the Bears are one of the defenses in the NFL who can consistently add to the team’s points scored total, then it’s more likely than not that the Bears will hover around the second quartile on defense (9th-16th) over the rest of the Smith-era, until say, a complete outlier season ends up outing Smith and his entire staff.

Of course, the defensive core on this team is as strong as it’s ever been, and most of the team is still in it’s prime, and they have not failed to add talent in the draft every season, often ignoring the offense in an attempt to add young pieces to the defense.  The amount of draft value alone would suggest that the Bears are NOT a declining defense.

But in the NFL, if you aren’t actively improving your team, the pace at which the game evolves will force your demise.  And the Bears have for 5 years managed to defeat this macro-trend, albeit in varying degrees.  The pessimist among us would certainly suggest that, sooner or later, futility will catch up to the Bears defensive unit, and for this to happen in the very year that they finally go out and get a franchise quarterback, well, you could sell some books with that narrative.  However, it just seems a little unrealistic to conclude that the Bears are a declining unit when a lot of the evidence suggests that they are more likely to vault to the top of the NFL this year than they are to fall into it’s bottom half.