On Tuesday, preliminary voting results for the American League all-star team were released, and five Kansas City Royals players are tops at their respective positions: catcher Salvador Perez, shortstop Alcides Escobar, third baseman Mike Moustakas, center fielder Lorenzo Cain, and left fielder Alex Gordon.
The day before, Royals pitcher Jeremy Guthrie dropped a stink bomb at Yankee Stadium, giving up eight runs in the first inning en route to an eleven-run, three-homer disaster. The last time a Royals pitcher had given up eight runs in one inning, it was late 2006 and Mark Redman was on the mound.
What do these two things have in common? In 2006, Mark Redman was an all-star for the Kansas City Royals. Keep in mind the following things about Mark Redman and his 2006 season:
In 167 innings that year, Redman would only strikeout 76 batters for a tear-inducing 1.21 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He would finish the season with an astounding WHIP of 1.587. Lastly, despite a WAR that would suggest the Royals should have just trotted out a AAA pitcher instead, Redman somehow made the all-star team.
As those numbers percolate, ponder these questions: How bad were the Royals in 2006 that their lone all-star not only had no business being on the team, he had no business being on ANY team? How bad were the Royals in 2006 that they gave their “all-star ace” 29 starts, even though his ERA flirted with 6.00 into September? How much would any of you have paid to hear American League all-star manager Ozzie Guillen browse through the Royals 2006 roster, muttering to himself, “I have to pick one of these ******* guys?”
And what must have been running through Mark Redman’s mind as he was introduced to 40,000 baseball fans at a sold-out PNC Park in Pittsburg alongside Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Manny Ramirez? Probably something similar to what obscure vice-president candidate James Stockdale famously said during a debate: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
Predictably, Redman didn’t throw a pitch in that game. After the player introductions, the smart money says Redman took off his uniform, hit a local restaurant for some pierogis, and watched the game perched on a barstool.
But let’s not pile on Mark Redman too much. Amazingly enough he isn’t even the worst Royal to make an all-star team. That honor goes to Ken Harvey, the Royals’ lone all-star representative in 2004. By 2005, Harvey was back in AAA after not even making the major league roster out of spring training. By 2008, Harvey was playing for the other professional baseball team in Kansas City, the independent league T-Bones.
But it’s 2015 now and the Kansas City Royals are a different organization. The Mark Redmans and Ken Harveys have departed, and they’ve been replaced by actual, honest-to-god, real-life major league ballplayers. When the final votes are in, it’s unlikely we’ll see five Royals starting for the 2015 all-star team. But long gone are the dark times when a lonely and undeserving Royals player was forced to become an all-star for just one day.
