by Matt Barr

Royal wee wee

Kansas City Royals beat writer Joe Posnanski solicited column ideas from Baseball Primer in spring training. Evidently, he got enough good ideas separated from the snark that he's back looking for what the brighest minds... reading blogs during the workday would do if they were running the sad-sack team.

Below is what I posted, not because I think it would save the Royals, but because it's an idea that's always intrigued me. Just not enough to do a lot of research on whether it would work.

If things are that hopeless, they need to try things that have never been tried. Sort of the pulling the batting order out of the hat for the information age.

When you're losing 100+ games, your highest-leverage pitching situations are not often near the end of a game. Bringing in a high-leverage reliever in a close game also makes him susceptible to pinch hitters with some kind of situational advantage. And he's never guaranteed to face the other team's best hitters.

So pitch your best young arm at the first five batters of a game. Pitch a mope reliever for the last four. Then pitch your second best young arm at the first five batters in order the second time around. Then bring in Grienke. Your best strikeout, least hittable pitchers thus face the other guys' best hitters twice through the order. Your "starter" (now long reliever) then takes over for the next few innings.

If it works, you've given yourself the advantage of neutralizing the other team's best hitters their first two times up, instead of saving your best young arms for a "hold" or "save situation." Sisco, say, or Burgos, or even Affeldt, thus take on Sizemore, Crisp, Peralta, Hafner and Martinez instead of possibly, if you're lucky, Jose Hernandez, Aaron Boone and Casey Blake in the ninth inning.

I certainly wouldn't recommend a good team do this, but if your chances of winning are literally not that good anyway, see how it goes. With Sisco and Affeldt, you may even get the Jim Leyland starting Ted Power in the playoffs platoon counteraction advantage going, making the other guy deplete his bench.

I'm serious about this.

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