ORoyals notes: Shealy hurt, Rosa’s weird season, etc.

• Ryan Shealy sat out the last four games, and I wasn’t sure why. Turns out (via Greg Schaum) that Shealy has hurt his knee, but he doesn’t know what he did to it.

My guesses were much scarier after Shealy disappeared from the dugout during yesterday’s game. I wondered if he had been traded, or worse yet, released.  That’s usually the kind of story that surfaces after someone is in the dugout at the start of the game and then vanishes. Anyway, Shealy is still listed as ‘Active’ on the ORoyals roster, so I’m not sure how bad this knee situation is. More on that as I get it.

• Carlos Rosa had a bizarre line in yesterday’s soul-crushing loss to Nashville: 1.2 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 K, 0 BB. He actually came into a 3-3 tie and let two inherited runners score, and Omaha lost 5-3. 

Rosa has two saves, two blown saves, and has blown an Omaha lead or tie in four of his 10 appearances. For some reason – maybe because I have seen some of his more depressing outings – I was thinking Rosa was having a down year. Actually, though, his peripherals all look good so far compared to 2008, except for a small increase in BB/9.
K/9: 7.82 in ’08       9.98 in ’09
BB/9: 2.13 in ’08     2.35 in ’09
K/BB: 3.67 in ’08    4.25 in ’09

Also, check out Rosa’s BABIP on his FanGraphs page. This season, it’s at .331, comparablee to last year’s .327 at Omaha and .319 in the Majors. Those are all pretty small samples, but I wonder if Rosa is unlucky at all. For whatever it’s worth, his LD% when he was in the Majors last year was 33.3% (small sample size alert), but I don’t have that data handy for his minor league career. Surely his minor league LD% isn’t THAT high, but if he does give up more line drives on average than most pitchers, then don’t expect his BABIP to shrink much.

• With Luke Hochevar up, what will Omaha do with their rotation? Currently, they have Brandon Duckworth, Bruce Chen, Lenny DiNardo, and Heath Phillips. Will they stick with the 4-man rotation and do a starter-by-committee thing every 5th day? Will they put Roman Colon into the rotation like last year, and call up some reliever (please be Disco, please be Disco!) from NW Arkansas? I’m not sure, but it’s something to watch during Omaha’s 8-game road trip to Salt Lake and Colorado Springs.
• On that note, the next Omaha home game is Thirsty Thursday, May 21 against Sacramento. Be there!

Related posts:

1. Dear Trey Hillman: the Shealy edition
2. Monsoon season?
3. Inevitability: the Farnsworth edition (plus some Minors notes)