Did that really happen?

If anyone wants to tell me what Brayan Pena was thinking as he made no attempt to apply anything other than a chest-high tag while standing on the plate to Mike Napoli in the bottom of the 9th inning of the Royals loss today to the Texas Rangers, please let me know.

I've watched plenty of baseball in my life and offhand, I don't think I've seen a more singularly stupid baseball play than Pena's besides Ruben Rivera's brain-bleed-inducing attempt to run the bases while he was with the Giants in 2003 (personally, I believe Rivera simply forgot everything he knew about the game of baseball on that particular play).

In any case, Pena's lack of understanding of what a catcher does on a play at the plate beyond catching the ball ranks, for the moment, a distant yet clear 2nd place on my list. I believe Napoli was prepared for a collision with Pena, but when he saw Pena both make no attempt to come up the line nor to squat in front of the plate despite having time, he simply decided to do a normal feet-first slide to avoid the lame tag attempt by Pena.

Game over.

Not to be ignored, Joakim Soria continues to try and convince the Royals organization to trade him as soon as possible. I'm not sure if the Royals would have chosen to try and trade Soria this Summer if he'd have had something approaching a Soria-like season so far, but he's getting near the point where he's going to destroy his trade value.

As I said several days back, the Royals don't have much choice but to keep running Soria out there for a while longer, for either: 1) to establish beyond a doubt that yes, something is seriously wrong with him and he needs to be fixed, or 2) to see if he can right the ship enough to where he'd be worth it to keep or be worth more than a bag of baseballs at the trade deadline.

In addition, the Royals will want to get more of an idea what they have in someone like Aaron Crow. With Soria's struggles I'm sure many would like to dub Crow the closer, but the reality is that he's pitched for two months in the big leagues, and anyone claiming to project how good Crow will be in any role from his performance in 2011 is, quite honestly, full of crap.

Besides, if Crow really is as good as his 29-ish innings of work suggest, he should be a potential starter-of-the-future, not the closer-of-the-future. But before any of that can happen, the Royals should look for more data to evaluate. And remember, the reason Soria was in a position to blow the Royals' lead this afternoon was because Crow allowed the Rangers to tie it in the 8th.