ST. LOUIS | So, it&rsquo;s the All-Star break now. And in the final weekend of the first half:</p><p> &bull;The Royals lose three games in a row.</p><p> &bull;They average three runs per game in the losses, only they do it the hard way, by scoring zero runs, nine runs and zero runs again.</p><p> &bull;With the bases loaded, they get a runner (Miguel Olivo) forced out at home plate by <em>an outfielder. </em>Well, that&rsquo;s new.</p><p>&bull;They have another player (Jos&eacute; Guillen) lose track of the number of outs. By my unofficial count, that&rsquo;s the fourth time that has happened to a Royals player this year.</p><p> &bull;Tony Pe&ntilde;a Jr. picks up both his fifth hit <em>and</em> fifth error of the season.</p><p>&bull;They trade for a shortstop, Yuniesky Betancourt, who has the lowest on-base percentage in all of baseball among regulars since 2007.</p><p> &bull;They finish the first half with a 37-51 record &mdash; two games worse than last year, even though they actually started this season 18-11.</p><p> It all went so wrong. Nobody was demanding that the Royals win a championship this year. But I do think people expected this team to put away the embarrassment of the past and be a reasonably good team. A .500 record seemed a reasonable goal. A few meaningful games in August seemed a plausible hope. This team has pretty good starting pitching. This team has a dominant closer. This team has spent more than $50 million the last couple of years to improve this offense &mdash; think for a moment about what you could get for <em>50 million dollars</em>.</p><p> And then the Royals got off to that good start, and Zack Greinke was the talk of baseball and &hellip; it all went so wrong. Injuries. Travesties. Comedies. You name it. At one point, the Royals got blown out by five or more runs on five consecutive days &mdash; first time that happened in team history. Another time, they scored one or fewer runs in four consecutive games &mdash; tied a team record there. In just the last two months, they&rsquo;ve had an eight-game losing streak, a six-game losing streak, a five-game losing streak and two four-game losing streaks. That&rsquo;s some seriously bad baseball.</p><p> There were the moments. Jos&eacute; Guillen got hit in the face with a ball while trying to field it. Mitch Maier tackled a third baseman who was trying to field a ground ball. In one game, two different Royals got doubled off first base on routine fly balls to the outfield. In another, the Royals hit into double plays in <em>six consecutive innings</em>.</p><p> The Royals opened an entirely renovated Kauffman Stadium, and their pitcher for that celebratory first game was Sidney Ponson. The Royals lost a game in Cleveland when the game-winning hit bounced off a seagull.</p><p> There were the injuries. Catcher John Buck got hurt picking up a batting helmet. Pitcher Kyle Farnsworth got hurt by breaking up a fight between his dogs. Guillen decided to play doctor and remove his own ingrown toenail.</p><p> And then, special category, there was the fun relationship between Royals manager Trey Hillman and starter Gil Meche. Early in the year, Meche complained of back trouble. He pitched through it. And then, one day, Hillman allowed Meche to throw 132 pitches &mdash; most of his career. Meche wanted to do it and said it did not affect him at all. But his next two starts were terrible, and Meche said his arm felt dead. He didn&rsquo;t think it had anything to do with the 132-pitch outing. He really didn&rsquo;t.</p><p> Meche thought about skipping a start. Instead, after resting a couple of days, Meche said he felt better. He would start, though the Royals (obviously) said that they would monitor his pitch count. And they did &mdash; Hillman monitored while Meche threw 121 more pitches &mdash; a ton of pitches for anyone, much less someone with a bad back and a dead arm.