With Opening Day just four days away, it seemed like an excellent time to begin the 2008 edition of "Blogging With the Enemy."  And since this could be one of the most exciting seasons the Detroit Tigers have ever had, I thought I should start off strong.  Who better to talk to about the Kansas City Royals than the Kansas City Star's resident baseball blogger, Sam Mellinger? 

As his bio states, Mellinger has been writing at the Star since 2000 and been covering the Royals since 2006.  He began Ball Star almost two months ago, and has been posting must-read stuff ever since.  (Highlights include the first interview with Michael Schur after he outed himself as Fire Joe Morgan's Ken Tremendous, getting Brian Bannister to admit he listens to Michael Buble, and a Royals blogger roundtable.)

Sam was generous (bored?) enough to take a break from his Spring Training coverage to answer some questions via e-mail.

BYB: Last year, Billy Butler hit .383/.420/.638 against Detroit.  Did the Tigers just have trouble pitching to the guy or is there a sense he rises to the competition?  And just between us - in quiet moments, have you ever caught him talking trash about that?

SM: I do think Billy's a guy who rises to the competition (.967 OPS against C.C. Sabathia, for instance), so maybe there's something to that.  Haven't caught him talking trash about it, but now that you mention it, I wrote a more in-depth-y story on him for our baseball preview section (on your interwebs Sunday!) and it does mention in there his study of Kenny Rogers and knowledge of Detroit's bullpen.  Besides, if you read the story, you'll see that Billy gets trash talked a lot more than he trash talks.

Billy won two batting titles and finished second the other year in three minor league seasons.  He'll probably put up some good numbers against a lot of teams.  He has his share of shortcomings in baseball, but the kid can effing hit.

BYB:  With the great expectations of his rookie season out of the way, should we look for Alex Gordon to follow up with a strong year?

SM: Alex was terrible at the beginning of last year, but from June 7 on had an .808 OPS.  Not outstanding, but certainly respectable.  One of the other stories I'm doing for our baseball section is on Alex, and he's finally admitting that the expectations got to him a little bit.  Those expectations aren't going to stop any time soon (the story describes a bizarre encounter in a sports bar bathroom) but Alex feels like he can deal with them a little better the second time around.

He's an introvert and tends to internalize his frustrations so you'd never know.  The Royals really like his presence and think he can still develop into a star.

BYB: Jose Guillen hasn't played very much this spring.  How is he fitting in with his new teammates and does the Kansas City press corps tread lightly around his locker, not sure what to expect?

SM: Well, hell, you just hit the trifecta of the stories I'm doing for our baseball section.  I don't think anybody's treading lightly; maybe some are, but if so, they're missing a fascinating guy.  I talked to him for about 45 minutes the other day about everything from his raw feelings about how people perceive him, to why he sometimes asks teammates to slap him across the face, to why he owns ostriches and tigers and lions.

He won't take any (crap), but the Royals checked him out pretty hard before giving him all that money and feel comfortable with the type of person they added.  Honestly, I don't know how many people agree with me on this, but I think Guillen's attitude is something the Royals could use more of.

You're right about him not playing much this spring.  They gave him the vet treatment and let him start a few weeks late, then he missed a little more than a week with a nasty flu.  I think he's fitting in fine.  And as one player told me, "He's been fine as a teammate in the clubhouse or whatever, but what I care more about is that he's a great teammate the four times he's in the batters box every night."

BYB: I was a big fan of the Royals' powder blue road uniforms, and am thrilled they're coming back.  (I don't know what it is about that color; the Chargers look cool in it, yet the Cardinals and Blue Jays didn't.  Go figure.)  What's your feeling on the powder blue revival and how excited are the people of Kansas City about it?

Honestly, I'm not sure there'd be more excitement if the Royals signed Bo Jackson, circa 1987.  The Royals won a lot of games - hell, they won championships in those powder blues - and if you could see the way fans here still love Brett and White and Saberhagen and the rest of them, you'd know that any reminders of the 1980s are welcome.  Maybe that's why you still see Zubaz pants and Camaros in the Arrowhead parking lot.
 
OK, just kidding.  Kind of.
 
Anyway, to understand the love for the powder blues you have to understand how bad it's been for a baseball fan in my dear city, and any Tigers fan who goes back at least four or five years can surely relate.  Baseball fans here are just starved for anything they can embrace.  ANYTHING.  The Royals finished last (again) and lost 93 games last year and people are *optimistic.*  John Buck hit .181/.265/.301 over the last 3 1/2 months last year, and I saw a message board where people were predicting 30 homers this year.  Billy Butler had an OPS+ of 104 and someone gave him a 72 percent chance at 3,000 hits.
 
For years, the loudest cheers at home games have been the 7th inning hot dog race.  One of the rowdiest nights was when they gave away t-shirts with the names of condiments on them, and that's no lie.  Alex Gordon received what some think is the loudest ovation they've ever heard for an individual last year and that was before his first freaking big league at bat.
 
I say all of this with genuine respect for the baseball fans here, because they've been through too much and they will turn my city inside out if/when the Royals are legitimate contenders.
 
In the meantime, yeah, they're effing psyched about the powder blues.

BYB: How is our old friend, Mike Maroth, doing?  Does he ever ask about us in Detroit?  Is he looked upon as kind of a leader, given the revival that he was a part of with the Tigers?

Mike is doing well, and as I type this, I'm expecting him to be sent down to Omaha any day now.  You guys know him well, so you know there's not a lot of margin of error in the way he pitches.  His control has been off this spring, which obviously kills a guy like that. I think the Royals are still hopeful he can regain some of the touch he had before, but if not, it was very much a low-risk deal to bring him in.

I can't say he's looked at as a leader, only because he probably fits in at Triple A.  But he does have respect in the clubhouse, and the Royals have a lot of inquisitive guys who ask a lot of questions.  Did you know he blogs, too?

BYB: Where do you see the Royals finishing in the AL Central?  Is third place and an over-.500 record attainable for this club?

It's attainable, sure, but that's toward the high end of what they're capable of, I think.  If I had to predict, I'd say this is the year their last-place run ends.  I'm thinking 75 wins or so, which would be a six game improvement from last year.  They were 51-49 for a stretch of the middle of the season, but bookended it with a terrible start and terrible finish (sure looked like they mailed it in some nights after Buddy Bell announced his resignation).


The Royals relied heavily on five rookies last year (not to mention the Guillen signing) so this is a team you'd expect to get better when it's a year older unlike, say, the White Sox.

BYB: What have you enjoyed most about blogging thus far?  Do you feel like there's much difference between your blogging voice and your column/feature voice?  Do you enjoy getting to write in the different forms?

The best part I'd say is the interaction with readers.  That's one of the reasons I wanted to start the blog, and something we need more of in newspapers.  As for voice, I'd like to think I have at least a few different pitches I can use, but my natural voice (on and off the keyboard) is pretty casual, so this probably fits me well.

And yeah, I do enjoy the different forms, though there have been a couple instances this spring where I could feel myself losing the balance between writing for the paper (my primary focus) and doing the blog.

BYB: Is there a particular type of post that you've come to enjoy writing more than others?  Maybe one in which you get pass along a bit more information than made it into the Kansas City Star or one that allows you to try something quite a bit different than you'd write in print?

Yeah, exactly.  One of the other reasons I wanted to do this is for that very thing.  There's a lot of stuff you see or hear or think in this job that just cannot make it in the paper for a variety of reasons, most of which I agree with.

There are also a ton of excellent blogs out there doing statistical analysis and the like.  I might do a little of that in the future, but I feel like my blog's advantage, the thing I can bring that most others can't, is the access I'm granted because of who I work for.  I like the idea of being able to pull the curtain back a little and let people see something they otherwise would miss.

Sometimes it's something relevant, like Jose Guillen telling me he feels like he's going to vomit so that's why he won't play today. Sometimes it's something goofy, like Dayton Moore explaining the double standard he uses when evaluating ballplayers as opposed to his favorite sandwich artist at Quiznos.  And sometimes it's something painful, like John Buck talking about the time he took a foul tip so hard it split his cup down the middle, and I apologize for not warning you before I typed that.

This blog is still very much in its infant stages, so I'm still kind of feeling it out.

Big thanks to Sam for taking time out of his schedule to answer my constant e-mails and giving me much more than I expected. If you haven't made it a regular habit, check out Ball Star to keep up on one of the Tigers' AL Central opponents.