The Royals can finish 162-0. Or 1-161. Or somewhere in between.

"WhiteFanposts Fanshots Sections Royals Trade Rumors & Hot StoveRoyals Minor Leagues & ProspectsRoyals Review ClassicRoyals Review Users GuideThe 100 Greatest Royals Of All TimeSome Opening Day overreactionsNew http://www.metsfanproshop.com/authentic-tim-tebow-jersey ,29commentsThe Royals can finish 162-0. Or 1-161. Or somewhere in between.EDTShareTweetShareShareSome Opening Day overreactionsPeter G. AikenOpening Day is just the best. Baseball is back, and so is our ability to analyze, nit-pick and second guess. Damn the sample size! We have fresh data!The Royals held on to a 5-3 victory over the White Sox on Thursday in a game that featured results that you could imagine extrapolating over a full slate of 162 games. So, why not? Let’s jump to half-baked conclusions!Brad Keller is good鈥eller leaned on his fastball when he fell behind in the count, throwing it about half the time in that situation. He started lefties off with a slider in half their plate appearances and did the same to hitters from the right side 20 percent of the time. As expected, he turned to the slide-piece as his put-away offering, going to it 50 percent of the time when he had two strikes on right-handed batters and a whopping 83 percent of the time when he held the same advantage against lefties.According to data collected by Brooks Baseball, Keller spun 30 sliders on Thursday. Of those, batters offered at 14. They missed at seven. That’s a healthy swing and miss rate. A bit of the caveat on slider usage. Keller completely abused Eloy Jimenez in his major league debut. Jimenez saw 12 pitches total from Keller—nine of which were sliders. Still, a slider is a slider is a slider. It’s a weapon for Keller. We saw that on Thursday. Four of his five strikeouts were tallied on the slider.Ned Yost was full of praise for his number one after the game and said he expects Keller to front the rotation for years to come. It’s not difficult to imagine that actually happening. The bullpen is badWhen Ian Kennedy walked off the mound after recording three outs on seven pitches, I thought to myself that he should go back out for the ninth inning. (I have no proof of this, as I was watching the game by myself at that moment. Such is the scourge of the second-guesser.) My thinking of this is two-fold. One, he’s used to multiple inning stretches of work. Take advantage of what the situation gives. Second, being in the position of potential swingman, he needs to stay stretched out if at all possible. Give him two or three innings a turn. Yes, the knee-jerk reaction is to comp him to Wade Davis. Don’t do that.Despite my feelings of extreme logic, I knew Ned Yost would not agree and we would see a different pitcher for the ninth. Yost’s logic, like mine, was sound. It had been several days since any reliever had thrown a pitch in anger. They need work. Especially with the opening week off days sprinkled through the calendar. Yost said as much himself in his postgame comments where he mentioned his thought was to dry-hump Jake Diekman and Brad Boxberger in the ninth.He did not expect to have to use four pitchers to get three outs. Therein lies the problem with the Royals bullpen. The names on the back of the uniforms are new Pedro Martinez Jersey , the results are too familiar. As mentioned earlier this week, the bullpen figures to be improved from last year if only because it can’t get much worse. What if it’s not improved enough? Mondesi and Merrifield are the spark plugs鈥or my money, the triple is the most exciting play in baseball. Adalberto Mondesi would’ve justified my price of admission had I not wimped out because of the rain. The dude went from home to third on his first three-bagger in an insane 11 seconds. Come on.Whit Merrifield had a hit, a walk and swiped two bags. He clearly let us down because we don’t get to use the Two-Hit Whit moniker today, but overall, it wasn’t a bad day at the office.With the table-setters doing their thing by reaching base four times in eight trips to the plate, Alex Gordon and Jorge Soler did their part by bringing home three runs between them. Gordon crushed one that went 384 feet according to Statcast. Unfortunately, the fence in the part of the park where he hit it is 385 feet from home plate. Not difficult to imagine if the wind wasn’t howling in from right that that would have left the yard. Unlucky.The bottom half is a rusted engine blockFrank Schwindel put the ball in play (and, as a result, made things happen), but that’s about the only positive you can draw from hitters five through nine. Combined, they were 0-21 with two walks and three strikeouts. Chris Owings did scorch one at 105 mph that had an xBA of .910, but he was robbed by shortstop Tim Anderson. Schwindel brought home a run via an error on a batted ball he hit at 103 mph. Beyond that, the bottom half rarely put good wood on the ball. Game two is Saturday promising more data and more overreactions. So glad baseball is back. ATLANTA (AP) — Already a three-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove Award winner, Brandon Phillips learned this summer as a 37-year-old minor leaguer to relish playing baseball “until I wake up.”Added Phillips: “I’m still dreaming.”Phillips’ two-out, two-run homer in the ninth inning off A.J. Minter highlighted his long-awaited season debut on Wednesday and capped the biggest comeback by the Boston Red Sox this year for a 9-8 win over the Atlanta Braves.“Honestly that was the most fun I’ve had all season, just watching the last few innings,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said.Phillips took a big swing and then rocked back as he watched the ball head toward the left field seats.“My favorite part was the lean-back that he had,” teammate Brock Holt said.Said Minter: “I missed by an inch with the pitch and he made me pay.”After the game Phillips stood at his locker Max Kepler Jersey , attempting to untangle chains left knotted when Red Sox players dumped a cooler filled with a sports drink over his head. He kept grinning even when he gave up on solving the knot.“For us to come back like we did, that was amazing,” Phillips said.The Red Sox overcame a late six-run deficit and seesawed past Atlanta to sweep the three-game series between division leaders.Boston, with the best record in the majors, scored six times in the eighth to make it 7-all. After Freddie Freeman hit a solo homer with two outs in the Braves eighth, the Red Sox bounced back for their 97th win this year.Phillips sat out the first half of this year, signed a minor league contract with Boston in late June and was called up from Triple-A Pawtucket on Tuesday. He didn’t play that night, but started at second base in the final game of the interleague set.“When I was in the minor leagues with the guys, they really showed me why I still play this game,” he said. “… Just keep on having fun. You never know what might happen. Your career could be over.”After becoming the first player in Red Sox history to wear No. 0, in one swing the guy with the zero became a gameday hero. Andrew Benintendi singled with one out off Minter (4-3) and Steve Pearce struck out, bringing up Phillips, who homered on the first pitch.Braves left fielder Ronald Acuna Jr., who hit another leadoff homer in the first, didn’t move as Phillips’ shot sailed over his head. Phillips scored three runs, drew two walks and made the most of his first hit with Boston.Braves stadium organist Matthew Kaminski played “Welcome Back” before Phillips’ first at-bat in the second inning. Phillips, a high school star in the Atlanta area who played most of last season with the Braves, tipped his helmet and then walked.“To be in Atlanta in front of my family and friends, that was pretty awesome Zach Duke Jersey ,” he said.In a game packed with momentum shifts, Freeman hit his tiebreaking homer off Brandon Workman (4-0). Freeman was given his first break from the starting lineup this season before coming off the bench in a defensive switch.Atlanta led 7-1 before Boston scored six times in the eighth to tie the game. Atlanta reliever Dan Winkler gave up four hits and four runs without retiring a batter. Christian Vazquez got two hits in the inning, Blake Swihart hit a two-run double and pinch-hitter Ian Kinsler tied the game with a two-run single. The Red Sox sent 12 batters to the plate in the inning, using five pinch-hitters and batting about 40 minutes against four relievers.Craig Kimbrel pitched the ninth for his 38th save.Ozzie Albies hit a two-run triple in Atlanta’s five-run fifth inning that made it 7-1.With the sweep, Boston has won 25 of its last 29 games against National League teams. Boston began the day leading the second-place Yankees by 8 ½ games in the AL East. NL East-leading Atlanta was three games ahead of Philadelphia.The Braves scored five runs in the fifth off reliever Drew Pomeranz, who recorded only one out.TRAINER’S ROOMBraves SS Dansby Swanson didn’t start and struck out as a pinch-hitter after he was hit on his helmet by an 85-mph slider from Rick Porcello in the second inning on Tuesday night. Swanson had ringing in his ears but passed the concussion tests.LEADOFF MAGICAcuna homered off Hector Velazquez’s second pitch, giving the rookie a franchise single-season record eight leadoff homers. Acuna was tied with Marquis Grissom, who hit seven leadoff homers in 1996. Overall, Acuna has 24 homers, including 17 since the All-Star break.NOT FOLTY’S FAULTThe collapse by the Braves’ bullpen wasted a strong start by right-hander Mike Foltynewicz, who gave up only two hits and one run in six innings. He provided stability, with two walks and five strikeouts, one day after Braves pitchers combined for nine walks in a 5-1 loss.UP NEXTRed Sox: LHP David Price, who suffered a bruised left wrist when hit by a line drive in his last start against Miami on Aug. 29, will start when Boston opens a home series against Houston on Friday in another matchup of first-place teams. The Red Sox are off on Thursday.Braves: RHP Anibal Sanchez (6-5, 2.98) will face RHP Zack Greinke when the Braves open a four-game series at Arizona on Thursday night.