Really quickly...

I'll say that I understand the move to take Joakim Soria out of the closer's role, but I do hope the Royals realize this is unlikely to solve the problem with him.

There has always been (and will probably always be) the mystical and magical significance to the closer's role. That's all well and good, but there's a truth to things that I don't think can be ignored.

If Soria's going to give up a lead or blow a game in the 9th inning because he's not right, he's fully capable of giving up a lead and blowing the game in the 8th, too. If he can't "handle the pressure" of the 9th inning (when, I'll remind you, nobody is usually on base when he begins the inning), then how is he going to react if called upon with two men on and one out in the 7th?

Can anyone reasonably expect a different result? Sure, it's possible, but again -- if he's not right, we should expect the same results, no?

So what does this mean? Well, truth be told, if the Royals are going to remove him from the closer's role because they don't trust him, the only role for him right now is mop-up duty...which, with the Royals starters, will be a necessary role and one that should afford Soria enough opportunity to fix things, if indeed they can be fixed.

I wasn't really expecting Soria to just tank in this fashion -- I was thinking he'd still waffle for a while longer until something definitive could be seen, sort of like he had done through the first month and a half of baseball. Even though I think the logic behind simply pitching Soria in a different, possibly high-leverage inning other than the 9th is flawed, I do understand the Royals feeling a need to try something in order to shake things up.

One thing is for certain -- it's indeed a bitter pill to swallow to think that the player we all likely would have picked as Most Reliable before this season started has turned out to be anything but. We could probably put the Royals at about a .500 record if Soria had kept up his Mariano Rivera-like consistency, but what-ifs are what all losing seasons are made of. On the bright side, it's better that this happened this season than in 2012.