Royal Reactions

Two Deals Left for Royals

2012-01-18T08:12:00.001-08:00

I say two, of course, because the only deal the Kansas City Royals have to get done is signing Alex Gordon.

Arbitration figures were exchanged and the club and player are about $1.3 Million apart. Or, as Mitt Romney would call it: peanuts.

A one-year contract would be a disappointment, and if Gordon plays well, it could be prohibitively costly. The good news is that the two sides both appear to be talking long-term. The smart money seems to be on Gordon getting signed for 4-5 years very soon, which would wrap up the To Do list for Dayton Moore if he wants to let his young team show him what it can do in 2012.

Of course, there is one more thing Moore could do to show his young team how much he believes in them and give the fans a real reason to believe Kansas City will be in the playoffs before the Mayan Apocalypse.

A phone call to Roy Oswalt and Edwin Jackson's agents certainly couldn't hurt. If previous years are to be believed, the payroll threshold for a non-contending Royals team is around $70 Million, and depending on how the Gordon negotiations turn out, the current roster shouldn't be over $60 Million going into Spring Training.

What do you say, Mr. Oswalt. Wanna become a folk hero in KC before you retire and make a cool ten mil while you're at it?

Make the call, Dayton.

Catching Up on the Royals

2012-01-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everybody.

One of my goals this year is to start writing about the Kansas City Royals again. It's something I've always enjoyed, and the team has been more fun to watch this past year than any since 2003.

Previous bits of my baseball meanderings can be found here, here and here.

This is, of course, a terrible idea.

The main reason is that I am about to become a father for the first time. Our little girl is due on March 27, which is basically opening day. I don't know much about raising children (I do have a DVD from the California Children & Families Commission that I'm hoping will be helpful), but my guess is that it won't lead to more free time, and I certainly wasn't a prolific writer before.

At any rate, I'm going to give it a shot. Starting with a look at the main transactions that have taken place since the season ended.

That's right, cutting edge analysis only two months after something has happened. Count on it!

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Moves to Address the Abysmal Starting Pitching Situation.

11/07/11 Kansas City Royals traded CF Melky Cabrera to San Francisco Giants;

San Francisco Giants traded LHP Jonathan Sanchez to Kansas City Royals

Richmond Flying Squirrels traded Ryan Verdugo to Northwest Arkansas Naturals.

11/18/11 Kansas City Royals called up Ryan Verdugo from Northwest Arkansas Naturals.

11/23/11 Kansas City Royals signed free agent LHP Bruce Chen.

11/29/11 Kansas City Royals signed free agent RHP Jonathan Broxton.

12/21/11 Kansas City Royals signed free agent LHP Jose Mijares.

In 2011, the Royals had a team ERA of 4.44, which was 12th in the American League. That is not good. The bulk of this awfulness came from the starting rotation, who contributed a 4.82 ERA versus 3.75 from the relievers.

Having this information on hand, you may look at the transactions above and wonder why only one of the signings actually addressed the starting pitching situation.

I'm not saying that adding Jonathan Sanchez to the starting rotation isn't a nice move. But, it's sort of like putting a new rug in the living room to spruce things up, but leaving your beer-stained couch and milk crate coffee table as the centerpiece.

Bringing back Bruce Chen is nice, as he was probably the best starter last year. Bringing in Broxton and Mijares certainly adds more depth to a very good bullpen. But, at the end of the day, four-fifths of the rotation of suck that took the mound last year will be doing so again this season.

On a positive note, the starters for Kansas City did drop their ERA from 5.13 before the All Star Break to 4.44 after.

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Minor League Moves

11/11/11 Kansas City Royals signed free agent LHP Alejandro Viloria.

11/15/11 Kansas City Royals signed free agent LHP Tommy Hottovy.

12/08/11 Kansas City Royals claim Cesar Cabral off waivers from Portland Sea Dogs.

Kansas City Royals traded Cesar Cabral to New York Yankees.

12/12/11 LHP Aaron Laffey elected free agency.

12/13/11 Kansas City Royals signed free agent RHP Juan Gutierrez.

Kansas City Royals signed free agent C Max Ramirez.

Kansas City Royals signed free agent OF Greg Golson.

12/14/11 Kansas City Royals signed free agent RHP Devon Lowery.

I don't know who any of these people are.

This is the kind of in-depth analysis you can expect about the minor league moving forward.

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Utility Infielder Option #1

11/30/11 Kansas City Royals designated SS Jeff Bianchi for assignment.

12/09/11 Chicago Cubs claim Jeff Bianchi off waivers from Kansas City Royals.

Jeff Bianchi had a promising season in between single and double-A ball in 2009, but lost all of 2010 to injury, and just never put it together last year at Northwest Arkansas.

I list him here, because as somebody who has played both shortstop and second base, he could have been a usefull player for the Royals if the bat ever came around.

Oh, and he's probably going to become a hall of famer in Chicago. That Theo Epstein kid is wicked smart.

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Utility Infielder Option #2

12/08/11 Kansas City Royals traded 3B Yamaico Navarro to Pittsburgh Pirates

for RHP Brooks Pounders and 3B Diego Goris.

Brooks Pounders assigned to Wilmington Blue Rocks from Kansas City Royals.

Diego Goris assigned to Burlington Royals from Kansas City Royals.

Yamaico Navarro was in a great position to be the Royals super utility player this year. But, he was an a-hole. And what happens to a-holes? They get traded from Boston to Kansas City to Pittsburgh. Unless they can hit. If they can hit, they get to keep being a-holes all they want.

Better learn how to hit, Yam.

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Utility Infielder Option #∞

12/20/11 Kansas City Royals signed free agent SS Yuniesky Betancourt.

Joe Posnanski says it best here.

Rany Jazayerli has a good take on the signing here.

I'll just link to what I wrote when theRoyals picked up Yuni the first time.

Thankfully, I was way wrong about Cortes's future. The jury is still out on Yuni, though.

Maybe It Pays to Think Outside the Box

2009-09-09T19:37:00.001-07:00

10 games scattered throughout the minor leagues doesn't really portend anything, but you've got to think you couldn't ask for better results from the Tony Pena, Jr. pitching project.

clipped from mlb.mlb.com

Pena adjusting to new role as pitcher

Everything went very well. He started with the Rookie Surprise team for two games, pitched seven times for Class A Burlington and wound it up with one outing for Triple-A Omaha. His totals in the Minor Leagues: 10 games, 19 1/3 innings, 12 hits, five earned runs, six walks, 18 strikeouts, 2.33 ERA, 1-2 record.

Royals Pushing DeJesus for Award. What about Zack?

2009-09-03T15:20:00.001-07:00

Let's make one thing clear: David DeJesus is my favorite player on the Kansas City Royals. Has been for years. He wears the same number I did when i played ball in high school, and I've said so while sponsoring his page on Baseball-Reference.com.

But in the Royals tradition of mis-allocating resources, they have apparently decided to make a PR push for David to get a Gold Glove award for his work in left field.

The fact is, if DeJesus wins a Gold Glove and Zack Greinke does not win the Cy Young award, then this horrible, horrible season will be even more of a waste than it already is.

I'd better see a headline that reads "Club officials demand Greinke win Cy Young award or they will remove food from press box" and I'd better see it soon.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Royals notebook: Club officials say DeJesus merits Gold Glove consideration

DeJesus stretched his streak of errorless games to 136 in Wednesday’s 10-4 loss at Oakland, which includes the final nine games of last year. He has handled 278 chances this season without an error while accumulating 10 assists.

Gordon Demoted - Teahen Back at Third?

2009-08-18T17:11:00.001-07:00

A much larger study has probably already been done on the effect of playing position and batting results, but on the surface, it appears that the Royals may get a small boost in offensive production just by putting Mark Teahen back at third and keeping him there.

His splits from playing in right field.
His splits from the hot corner.

For 2009 alone, his OPS+ at third is 108 compared to 67 in the outfield.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Gordon demoted to minors to work on timing, Moore says

The Royals optioned Gordon to Class AAA Omaha prior to Tuesday’s game against the Chicago White at U.S. Cellular Field. The move cleared space for reliever Kyle Farnsworth’s return from the disabled list.

“It’s an opportunity for him to regain his sense of timing offensively and his rhythm defensively,” general manager Dayton Moore said. “It gives him a chance to do that in Triple-A where it’s not as fast.”

Laughingstock Status Achieved

2009-08-06T07:43:00.001-07:00

Just caught a bit of Sports Center. The were showing the top three teams in the American League central along with little fun facts about each. The Tigers are below .500 since the All Star break. The White Sox have been on a streak. And the Twins have 12 games remaining against the Royals.

Seriously? F-you, Sports Center.

Royals begin retooling for 2015.

2009-07-10T13:53:00.001-07:00

Yuniesky Betancourt career line: 279/302/393
Willie Bloomquist career line: 266/324/334

For a marginal (at BEST) upgrade at shortstop, the Royals have traded away one of their top pitching prospects, a guy who would have been competing for a rotation spot next year and is only 22 years old.

Unless there is an injury to Cortes that we don't know about, this is just an abysmal trade that makes no sense for a team struggling to stay out of last place.

Uhg. I mean... ugh...

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Cortes, 22, was the organization’s minor-league pitcher of the year in 2008 but is just 6-6 with a 3.92 ERA this season at Class AA Northwest Arkansas. He joined the Royals in the 2006 trade that sent reliever Mike MacDougal to the White Sox.

25-34 : Rany Nails It

2009-06-12T14:15:00.001-07:00

I don't think the season is lost, because I never realistically thought the Royals would win the division this year. That said, it was nice to be competitive and in the hunt early in the season, and it would be nice if the team wasn't comically bad every year.

I think Rany nails it in his post below. I would say that I am still positive for this team to stay within shouting distance of .500, because the starting pitching is solid and getting Gordon and Aviles healthy and in the line up should help the offense and the defense quite a bit.

clipped from www.ranyontheroyals.com

The Five Stages of Being a Royals Fan, Using Only Blog Quotes.

21-18 : Be Gone Ye Demons

2009-05-20T08:31:00.001-07:00

I'll just quote Ryan Lefebvre here:

"One year ago today, there was an enormous ovation for the home team. But, it was for Jon Lester's no-hitter at Fenway park. Tonight, it's for the Royals after a four run bottom of the ninth inning. ... So, what's the difference between this year and last year? There you go."

The camera was panning across the jumbo-tron showing the words "Royals Win!"

That no-no last year started a twelve-game losing streak for a Royals team that had crawled to one game below .500. This year is different.

You can go to the game recap from Bob Dutton at the Star below.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

What a night! Royals storm back in ninth for 6-5 win over Indians

By BOB DUTTON
The Kansas City Star

Prospectus Idol Submission - Vlad vs. Russ

2009-05-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I submitted a story to Baseball Prospectus to enter a contest they are having to find new writing talent. They have since posted the ten finalists, and as I am not one of them, I am assuming it is okay to post my submission here.

You can check out the finalists for the Prospectus Idol contest here.

-----------------------------------
To whom it may concern:

Below is my submission for the BP Idol contest. My goal in life was never to be a baseball writer, but I have found myself spending more and more of the free time I have writing about baseball. I feel that I am a very good writer, and I currently spend my days working in advertising, crafting well-reasoned emails to my superiors and doing my best to convince people they should buy things they do not need. I was going to include a photo of myself wearing a Royals hat, because that is my team, but I felt the picture of me with a stuffed octopus on my head probably gives you a better idea of who I really am.

You can learn much more at hgmiller.com.

Your consideration is appreciated.

Sincerely,
H.G. Miller

The idea is for a weekly column that focuses on a long at-bat, using the sequence of foul balls and pitch changes to dissect the match up, the teams, or any other interesting and funny facts.

Vlad the Impaler vs. Some Guy Named Russ

Casey: We usually just show the pitch that puts the ball into play.
Jeremy: But then you miss the battle.
Casey: The battle?
Jeremy: He started him off with a fastball up and in, then slider away, slider away, comes back with a split finger change, drops the curve off the table, sets him up off speed, then... jams him high and tight, that's what got him out.
Casey: It was a ground ball to the shortstop.
Jeremy: The inevitable conclusion to a job well done.

-Sports Night, "The Apology" -

This week's epic battle took place at Angels Stadium where the Oakland Athletics took on the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The season is young, but everyone knows that inter-division wins are worth twice as much in the standings. Maybe more if John Kruk is doing the math.

In the bottom of the seventh inning, designated hitter Vladimir Guerrero faced off against right-hander Russ Springer. The Angels were winning 4-0. It would be an epic battle.

Pitch #1: Ball

Springer starts Guerrero off with a slider down and away. It's the kind of pitch that even a free swinger like Vlad won't go after this early in an at bat. Although, there is a slight chance he doesn't know the at bat has started. With the extended Spring Training this year and the dry air in Anaheim, Vlady may not even know the season has started yet.

Pitch #2: Strike Swinging

A 90 mph heater on the outside edge of the plate. Guerrero can't catch up to it and Springer evens the count. Things are looking up for the wily right-hander.

On the surface, it certainly doesn't seem like a fair fight. Russ Springer epitomizes the average relief pitcher. After 800 innings of major league action, his ERA+ sits at 97. Guerrerro has swatted at flies with better credentials than this.

Pitch #3: Foul Tip

Another slider down and away and Guerrero nicks it. He's mad at himself for swinging at the pitch. Over the course of his career, the Dominican slugger only sees 3.24 pitches per plate appearance, so there's a high likelihood that the next pitch will be the last of this at bat.

Pitch #4: Ball

Another slider way outside and Guerrero let's it go. Springer tried to stretch the strike zone and got too greedy. He's been tasked with striking out one of the premier power hitters in the game, and he should have known that it wouldn't be easy. Nothing ever is.

Drafted by the Yankees, Springer surely had visions of wearing pinstripes and entering the hall of fame. 17 seasons and 8 teams later, those dreams have faded and now he's forced to hang on at the fringes, moving from contract to contract, amassing millions of dollars as an anonymous middle-inning relief pitcher.

Pitch #5: Foul

Fastball, on the upper outside corner. The count stays at 2-2. The storm clouds are gathering as this lengthy at bat is just getting started.

Usually, its some pesky second-stringer who barely made the 25 man roster that will keep flicking pitches into the stands, but it appears Guerrero is finally awake and motivated. The fans paid good money for their seats. He's ready to put on a show.

Pitch #6: Foul

Springer tries to move the ball a little further off the plate and Guerrero still gets some wood on it. He may be a free swinger, but the man's got some plate coverage. Russ is about to learn, it's not easy to just blow one by the younger Guerrero brother.

Pitch #7: Foul

A nasty cutter on the outside of the plate and Guerrero sticks with it. This is a new pitch. Still on the outside, though. He knows this guy won't try to throw something inside to him. He may be older, but he can still crush an inside fastball. It's a skill his older brother could have used in his professional career.

Wilton Guerrero is without a team this year and his career is probably over. Vlad keeps on swinging.

Wilton - 282/308/369 in 678 games.
Vlady - 323/389/574 in 1757 games.

Genetics can be a funny thing.

Pitch #8: Foul

Another fastball on the upper corner. Guerrero is getting frustrated. Springer is getting tired. He averages well over 4 pitches per plate appearance in his career, but it's early in the season and he doesn't want to get worn out.

Springer is forty this year. He and Guerrero are old men in this league. Now that steroids are out of baseball, they have nothing but BENGAY and old stories to keep them going day after day.

Pitch #9: Ball

Springer tries to stretch the strike zone again and fails. His frustration is building on the mound. He can hear the announcers in his head: "The two can go no further."

If there is one thing announcers love, it's a long at bat. Foul ball after foul ball creating tension and providing enough time to get in useless biographical information about each player. The announcers get to keep talking and the research staff gets to demonstrate just how hard they worked the night before preparing for the game.

Somebody would pull out some nugget about how Springer has faced only one batter in a game 52 times in his career. It would mean nothing.

The crowd noise is growing. Springer bears down.

Pitch #10: Foul

Outside fastball fouled away.

Guererro steps outside of the box to collect his thoughts. He digs into his memory for past experiences against this pitcher. He can't remember if this is Russ Springer or Dennis Springer.

He hit a home run off of Dennis Springer back in 1999 when he was with the Expos. He wonders why they don't ever play the Expos anymore and then remembers that he's in the American League now. Wait, that's not it.

Anyway, after he tied up the game with the homer, some guy (Anthony Telford) blew it in the bottom half of the inning. He remembers the coaches being very sad.

Pitch #11: Foul

Outside fastball fouled away. Springer won't give in and Guerrerro won't give up. He's faced Guerrero four times in his career and given up two hits. The crowd cheers louder. They want another hit from their hero.

Russ Springer will not allow it. Not this time. Not tonight.

Pitch #12: Swinging Strike

A high fastball finally does him in. It's over the middle of the plate, but almost to Vlady's eyes. He can't lay off. He chases it, twists in the wind and catches only air.

Springer doesn't celebrate. He's a veteran who just did his job. Inside, he's smiling though. He loves how the crowd noise quiets as their hero is vanquished. He knows they will fight another day.

8-7 : Greinke Takes the Mound

2009-04-24T15:20:00.001-07:00

A nice bit about Zack's scoreless inning streak from The Hardball Times. It shows just how important having strike out pitchers is. Greinke has given up some hard-hit balls, but his ability to miss bats means those base runners don't end up getting very far.

We'll see if he can keep the streak alive tonight against the Tigers.

clipped from www.hardballtimes.com

When looking at line drive rate, Greinke trails only Cliff Lee (35 percent) in the American League. Hitters are getting good wood on the ball, and as we would expect, most of those line drives appear to be falling for hits. So how has Greinke been so successful?

First, he’s not allowing too many balls to be put into play to begin with. For the year, he’s faced 80 batters and with 26 strikeouts, five walks and one hit batter, just 60 percent of all hitters have made the defense work behind him.

Then, once hitters reach base, Greinke is really bearing down. In 38 plate appearances with runners on, Greinke has allowed only four hits—a .111 batting average. Five times, runners have been on third base with fewer than two outs. In those rare occasions, with his opponents needing only a fly ball to plate a run, Greinke has been dominant, striking out four of the five hitters and inducing a weak ground ball to third from the other.

Tony Gonzalez Traded

2009-04-23T16:49:00.001-07:00

This makes me sad.

It makes me sad because Gonzalez will still be a productive player in the NFL and is a known quantity compared to a draft pick.

It makes me more sad because he's the last guy left who I really connect to as a fan of the Chiefs. Matt Cassel and Dwayne Bowe may be Montana and Rice for the next five years, but Tony, Trent and Priest were the guys I spent most of my time rooting for over the last ten years.

It has been hard to follow the Chiefs since Vermeil left, and I suppose a complete shake-up is called for, but it will be hard to let this one go. I will be a fan of the Atlana Falcons this year. Until they play the Chiefs.

As Seinfeld said, in the end, we just root for laundry.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez has never won a playoff game, and he has made his wishes clear that he wanted to play for a team that could contend for a championship.

Gonzalez got what he wanted on Thursday as the Chiefs worked out a deal with the Falcons. But general manager Scott Pioli said the Chiefs weren’t shopping their 10-time Pro Bowler.

7-5 : The Smart Guy is Back

2009-04-21T10:55:00.001-07:00

Since manager Trey Hillman seems to have no intellectual ability when it comes to managing a bullpen, the Royals have brought up right-handed pitcher Brian Bannister to help with in-game decision making.

Oh, and he'll start on Wednesday against the Indians.

Bannister had a rough go of it in 2008, when the league talent caught up with his smarts. Here's hoping that a refresher course in AAA has given him some new tricks to try out on the big kids.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Bannister, 28, was 9-16 with a 5.76 ERA last season in 32 starts and lost his job in the rotation by continuing to pitch poorly in spring training. He struggled in his first start at Omaha but pitched seven shutout innings April 14 at Round Rock.

7-4 : Greinke Dominates

2009-04-19T10:12:00.001-07:00

4 years for $38 Million is starting to look like a steal.

Aside from a few mercy runs in Friday's game, the Royals have completely shut down the Rangers in Arlington, which is no small feat. Greinke was masterful, and good for Hillman to let him finish the game even after a runner got on base in the ninth.

Talk about Cy Young awards is always premature before the season starts, and it's still a little early, but the Kid has to start showing up on the radar soon.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Greinke delivered the best game of his career with a seven-hit shutout in a 2-0 victory at the Ballpark in Arlington. He improved to 3-0, took over the American League lead in strikeouts and, still, has not allowed a run this season.

Royals Place Gordon on DL

2009-04-16T15:33:00.001-07:00

The diagnosis is a cartilage tear in his right hip, which doesn't sound good. Gordon has had a slow start to the season, but his expected progress was to be a huge part of the Royals contending this season.

The decision to hang on to Mark Teahen looks wiser with this move. The second base experiment will continue to be put on hold and Mitch Maier will take over as the fourth outfielder.

clipped from sports.yahoo.com

The Royals plan to recall outfielder Mitch Maier from Triple-A Omaha to fill
Gordon’s spot on the roster. The 26-year-old Maier has hit .370 with two homers
and nine RBIs through six games in the minor leagues.

3-3: Slow Rollers and High Heat

2009-04-13T07:43:00.001-07:00

The Royals lost the series but may have turned a corner by finally scoring some runs on Sunday in a win over the Yankees. Fielding prowess was not on display as both teams botched routine plays to give up leads.

It's interesting to me that the scoring "outburst" occurred with Butler, Gordon and Guillen out of the lineup. Though, Butler did draw a key walk in a pinch-hitting appearance.

It was nice to see John Buck get some good wood on the ball and show a little fire. It's early in the season and while the team doesn't need to dominate, it would be nice to avoid a long losing streak.

.500 after the White Sox and Yankees? I'll take it. Bring on the Tribe.

2-1 : Davies Throws a Few More Zeroes on the Board

2009-04-09T14:36:00.001-07:00

That grumbling you hear from the rest of the division might have something to do with the fact the Royals starting pictures haven't allowed a run since the second inning of the season.

Kyle Davies kept up the good mojo by blanking the White Sox for seven innings. Ron Mahay got his chance in the eight inning and Soria closed things out, despite making it a little interesting.

Manager Trey Hillman deserves some credit as well for pinch-hitting Alberto Callaspo for Willie Bloomquist against the tough Chicago bullpen. Not only did Callaspo have a left-right advantage, but he can also, um... well, hit.

Let's enjoy this one before Sir Sidney Ponson introduces his fastball to the Yankee's bats tomorrow.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Alberto Callaspo started the winning rally with a one-out double against Jenks into the right-center gap. Crisp followed by pulling a first-pitch fastball over the right-field wall.

1-1 : Pitching Wins Championships

2009-04-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

And close games in the Chicago cold.

Grienke, Cruz & Soria. Done and done and done.

Mike Jacobs took a walk (on pace for 82!) and the best hitter from last season is still batting ninth. Mike Aviles scored both runs, getting on base ahead of the guys at the top of the lineup. So, one of Trey Hillman's moves is working.

Kyle Farnsworth was unavailable, as he was still searching for the spot where Thome's ball landed.

Royals Add Some Pop to Omaha Roster

2009-04-08T16:49:00.001-07:00

Dayton Moore added some insurance for Alex Gordon today.

Travis Metcalf may not be a superstar, but he's a nice pick up from the Rangers. A quick look at his minor league stats shows that Metcalf struggles in his first year at a new level before adjusting. This will be his second full year at AAA.

These are his numbers from two short stints in the majors:
2007 - 255/307/435 in 181 PAs
2008 - 232/279/589 in 61 PAs

Here are the numbers I think matter:
2007 - .308 batting average on balls in play
2008 - .179 batting average on balls in play

That is some bad, bad luck in 2008. Small sample size makes the numbers worse than they would be over a full season, but it seems to me that a little regression to the mean would give the Royals a back up third baseman who can bang a few homers if given the opportunity.

clipped from sports.yahoo.com

CHICAGO (AP)—The Kansas City Royals claimed third baseman Travis Metcalf on
waivers from the Texas Rangers on Wednesday.

Metcalf, 26, was added to the Royals’ 40-man roster and assigned to Triple-A
Omaha. The University of Kansas product batted .249 with 11 homers and 35 RBIs
in 217 at-bats with the Rangers over the last two seasons.

0-1 : Farnsworth does what Farnsworth does

2009-04-07T16:47:00.001-07:00

The Royals lose to the White Sox on opening day.

The post title could just as easily be Jim Thome does what Jim Thome does. A lot of digital ink will be spilled on the fact that manager Trey Hillman left Kyle Farnsworth -- he of the 2.2 HR/9 ratio last year -- in to face the guy who has more long balls against the Royals than any other player.

Watching the game, I can't really argue with the decision. Farnsworth made Carlos Quentin look silly in the at bat prior and let's not kid ourselves, Thome could just as easily hit that jack off of any relief pitcher and nobody would be surprised.

Now, signing Farnsworth in the first place? That question can't be answered because of one bad pitch to a future hall of famer. But, I've got my doubts.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

“As soon as (Farnsworth) struck Quentin out,” Hillman said, “I sat Mahay down because I was planning, if Kyle was throwing strikes, to leave him in. Ronnie has never been a left-handed specialist…It was just a matter of location.”

The location turned out to be 400 feet away from the plate. It was Thome’s 542nd career homer, which ranks 14th on baseball’s all-time list.

Royals 30 in 30

2009-03-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Just caught the last half of the Royals "30 in 30" special on the new MLB Network and had a couple of favorite moments to point out:

- Mitch Williams predicting the team to finish above five hundred and in last place
- The host guy asking if they could finally get out of the cellar this year and showing the standings where they weren't in the cellar LAST YEAR.
- A graphic at the end of the show touting which fashion label the "womenswear" was provided by. I'll assume it was referencing the field reporter lady, but I think it would be funny if MLB Network was embracing a cross-dressing trend bubbling up among the commentator crowd.

Sports - All Time Royals Teams

2009-03-04T10:11:00.001-08:00

I've missed the chance to talk about the signing of Juan Cruz in any newsworthy way, so I'll pass along this instead.

A great post at Sully Baseball about the all-time home grown team of the Royals versus the all-time acquired team. Brings up some great memories of players past, and he hits upon something that has bothered me for a few years...

The mock anger Boston fans had with Johnny Damon for joining the Yankees. See the remarks below.

clipped from sullybaseball.blogspot.com

When Red Sox fans screamed about Johnny Damon's lack of loyalty after signing with the Yankees, I'm sure it was amusing to Royals fans. After all, Damon only played 4 years in Boston but played 5 1/2 seasons in Kansas City.

If he needed to show loyalty, it would be to the team that drafted him and the one where he developed into a .300 hitter, a 40 stolen base guy and an MVP candidate.

But that would be asking my fellow Red Sox fans to be logical and think things through... which we know isn't happening.

Royals Terrible Year is Finally Over

2009-02-26T22:41:00.001-08:00

I love Spring Training for story leads like this one. The lead calls out the fact that the team hasn't beaten the Rangers -- in spring training games, ahem -- since, well... last spring.

No words in the recap about Teahen stinking it up at second base, though I saw in the box score that he played there again. I think the best hope for him now is that he tears it up on the Canadian team in the World Baseball Classic.

Ross Gload hit a triple, which means he's as fast as Mark Teahen and deserves to play first base over slow pokes like Billy Butler and Mike Jacobs.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

SURPRISE, Ariz. | The Royals finally proved they can beat Texas Rangers in rolling to a 7-2 victory Thursday at Surprise Stadium. It marked their first spring victory over their campus neighbors since March 29, 2007.

"Opening Day" Line Up

2009-02-25T07:37:00.001-08:00

Actual baseball games start today in Surprise, as the Royals take on the Texas Rangers. Hillman's starting lineup is listed below.

It looks like the team is wasting no time in getting Teahen some reps at second base. I guess the best case scenario is that he gets four or five balls hit his way, handles them well, and is immediately traded to a team like the Cubs who still want to find a lefty bat for their lineup.

The next best thing would be for Wee Willie Bloomquist to get lost at the Home Depot, so that Alberto Callaspo or some other player who can actually hit gets the nod at second base when Guillen's toe is healed.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

The revised lineup to face right-hander Kris Benson:
CF Coco Crisp, SS Mike Aviles, LF David DeJesus, DH Mike Jacobs, 1B Billy Butler, DH Mike Jacobs, 3B Alex Gordon, 2B Mark Teahen, C Miguel Olivo and RF Willie Bloomquist.
The only notable absence is Guillen.

Actuall Baseball Action Begins in Surprise

2009-02-23T08:03:00.001-08:00

The Royals held an intra-squad game on Sunday and the big news was Ross Gload and Ryan Shealy hitting home runs. Shealy was held at first base so they team could work on a situational drill, while Gload was allowed to circle the bases after his blast.

At least, that's what they told the two players. I think that manager Trey Hillman just realized Gload wouldn't get too many opportunities to round the bags with a long ball, so he let him go.

One more note from the recap. Apparently, Alberto Callaspo is going to be referred to as Bert, which is an awesome baseball name and portends great things for him as a second baseman this year.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Alberto Callapso had two hits and scored two runs.
"Bert can hit," manager Trey Hillman said. "I think he's one of those guys who can hit just falling out to bed. It's not surprising to see him go up there and go base-hit, base-hit."

Royals Ink Greinke

2009-01-26T13:08:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.kansascity.com

The Royals reached agreement Monday morning with right-handed pitcher Zack Greinke on a four-year contract that buys out his first two seasons of free-agent eligibility.

In an off-season that has featured many less-than spectacular moves, the Royals finally made a big splash.

Financial terms aren't out there yet, but if Greinke continues to improve as he has the last two seasons, any dollar amount will be a steal for what the free agent market is likely to be when he would have been eligible after 2010.

Dayton Moore has just gotten out of Rany's doghouse.

2008/2009 Roster Comparison

2009-01-23T18:48:00.000-08:00

Taking the work of Clark Foster at Royals Authority and playing around with it a little bit.

Below is a chart of the 2008 opening day roster and the projected 2009 squad.


2008   ERA/OPS 2009   ERA/OPS (CHONE Proj.)  
Grienke 3.47   Greinke  4.20  -21%
Meche   3.98   Meche    4.21  - 6%
Bale    4.39   Hochevar 4.97  -13%
Banny   5.76   Banny    5.01   13%
Tomko   6.97   Davies   5.26   25%
                                0%
      
Soria   1.60   Soria    3.10  -94%
R. Ram  2.64   Tejeda   3.95  -50%
Nunez   2.98   Bale     4.24  -42%
Mahay   3.48   H. Ram   4.70  -35%
Yabuta  4.78   Gobble   4.73    1%
Peralta 5.98   Farns    4.73   21%
Gobble  8.81   Mahay    4.74   46%
                              -22%
      
Olivo   722   Buck      703   - 3%
Buck    669   Olivo     677     1%
                              - 1%
      
Gordon  783   Butler    800     2%
Grudz   744   Gordon    789     6%
Callas  732   Jacobs    787     8%
Butler  724   Aviles    742     2%
Gload   665   Callaspo  731    10%
German  641   German    720    12%
Pena    398   Bloom     664    67%
                               15%
      
Dejesus 818   Teahen    767   - 6%
Guillen 738   DeJesus   760     3%
Teahen  715   Guillen   745     4%
Gath    583   Crisp     732    26%
                                7%

Yes, it's getting late at the office and it's crazy math time!

A few minor notes:
- Matt Tupman was on the opening day roster due to a suspension for Miguel Olivo last season, so I have replaced him with Joel Peralta to give a better look at the team as it was actually constructed.

- I'm giving Esteban German the nod over Ross Gload as a back-up infielder, because it's my blog and I can do what I want.

- Each group is ranked from best to worst. The 2009 projected numbers come from the CHONE system.

- the percentages are for how much better or worse the position is expected to be this season. For example, the best starter is expected to be 21% WORSE this year than last. The worst outfielder is expected to be 26% BETTER than last year.

- I've also broken down each group so as to draw some wild conclusions based on math that is faulty at best.

A few wild conclusions:
- While the starting pitching may not break exactly as shown (I think Grienke is about to have a break-out season), the overall improvement of 0% seems about right to me. Meche may be in for a small regression, Banny should be a little better, and the 4-5 starters will probably be a mish-mash of talent from triple-A and the free-agent scrap heap all season.

- The relief corps has a chance if Soria and Tejada can keep up their mojo from last season and the damage from the rest of the pen is minimized. This will be Trey Hillman's greatest challenge this season.

- Willie Bloomquist may suck, but he's not the black hole that Tony Pena Jr. was last season. If he's used properly in a back up capacity, his signing should not kill the team, just wound them. Somebody needs to volunteer to hide all the liquor bottles from Callaspo so we can see what he's capable of over a full season.

- Replacing Joey Gathwright with Coco Crisp is an improvement, and not a small one. I will miss the possibility of Joey jumping over two or more players in order to escape a rundown at some point in the season.

Have a great weekend.

Royals Exchange Arbitration Numbers With Four Players

2009-01-20T18:04:00.000-08:00

The Royals exchanged arbitration figures with four players today. My quick thoughts on how they should handle each case.

Pitcher Zack Greinke
Asked: $4.4 million
Royals: $3.4 million
Midpoint: $3.9 million

Hey, Zack. How would you like to make $7 million dollars next year? And the year after that? And the year after that? Why don't we just pencil you in for about $35 million over the next five years and all the bloggers out there will sleep a little better tonight?

Outfielder Mark Teahen
Asked: $3.85 million
Royals: $3.05 million
Midpoint: $3.45 million

I'd see if Teahen is willing to negotiate for the midpoint or a little less here. While two of his "home runs" last year were really just doubles that took funny bounces in the outfield, he is a versatile fourth outfielder who might become an important trading chip if he shows a little pop and plays a little third.

First baseman Mike Jacobs
Asked: $3.8 million
Royals: $2.75 million
Midpoint: $3.275 million

The guestimate when the Royals traded for Jacobs was that he would cost them about $3 million dollars this year. I'd hate to start off on the wrong foot by having to put a new player through the arbitration wringer when he was playing for another team last year. If I thought the Royals would just dump Gload, I'd say you offer him a bit more for the next two years to have it settled. As it is, I think you offer a little less than the midpoint and throw in an official MLB rulebook with the section about the strike zone highlighted.

Pitcher Brian Bannister
Asked: $2.025 million
Royals: $1.45 million
Midpoint: $1.7375 million

Bannister has probably the best make up to understand that the arbitration process is only business and nothing personal. Of course, he'll probably represent himself and win. I'd take him to the mat and try to keep that $575,000. If he finds his lucking socks from 2007, he'll be a steal at either price.

Royals Fail to Sign Dunn; Settle on Bloomquist

2009-01-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

It seems the Willie Bloomquist deal has sent the Royals blogosphere into a bit of a tizzy.

For the record, I don't like the move, either. Bloomquist is one of those players whose names I have heard, but never had any idea who they were. My initial reaction to the signing went something like this: Willie who? Didn't he play defensive back for the Raiders last season? What's that? Baseball? Infield? Poorly? Oh... okay.

Most of the bad blood directed towards General Manager Dayton Moore has been targeted around the money going against a bunch of average to below average players who, in total, are getting more money than it would take to sign Adam Dunn or another proven slugger like him. I find two faults with this logic.

1.) These signings were made over a period of time, beginning before the effect of the economy on every baseball team not owned by a Steinbrenner was fully understood. When the Royals traded for Mike Jacobs, Adam Dunn wasn't even tossed out as an option, because it was assumed he would cost more than the Royals could spend. I won't blame GMDM for addressing one problem and moving on.

2.) There was more than one problem. Hoarding money for one big time player while hoping you can get replacement-level talent from the minors to fill other holes is problematic. Players get hurt. Underperform. Turn into Andrew Jones in the blink of an eye. Some of Moore's moves won't work out and that's the point. The Royals can't afford to make just one move.

I don't agree that Bloomquist is the guy, but the fact is Tony Pena Jr. sucks, neither Callaspo or German has played a full season at second, and Mike Aviles might see his chariot turn into a pumpkin when the clock hits midnight in Spring Training. Somebody will need to play in the infield and Wee Willie is just a bit of insurance.

The fact is, the Royals have gotten better this offseason, which is all I ever hope for.

Mike Jacobs hit 32 home runs last year. Ross Gload hit 3. Mike Jacobs is better.

Coco Crisp hit 283/344/407 and stole 20 bases. Mark Teahen hit 255/313/402 and stole 4 bases. Coco Crisp is better.

For the Royals to make a big impact in 2009, Greinke and Meche will need to repeat their performances from last year, and the young guys like Butler and Gordon will have to show significant improvement. Even with somebody like Dunn in the lineup, that needs to happen for the Royals to have any chance.

Pitchers and catchers in 30 days. I can't wait.

Royal Awards Announced

2009-01-08T07:28:00.001-08:00

clipped from kansascity.royals.mlb.com

But there will be other awards for the dinner at 6 p.m. CT on Friday, Jan. 16, at the Sheraton Overland Park Hotel in Overland Park, Kan. Tickets, $75 each or $750 for a table of 10, are available online at Royals.com or by calling 816-504-4040.

The mad Hawaian picks up the George Brett award for best hitter in the organization last year, despite fighting with the likes of Ross Gload for at bats after being called up to the big leagues.

More interesting to me is this nugget about pricing. Apparently, the Royals don't believe in giving bulk discounts, even in a down economy.

New Name for the New Year

2008-12-30T09:40:00.000-08:00

As always, I am boldly planning to increase my output in the new year.

To help encourage myself, I am renaming this blog and moving to a new address.

Royal Reactions by H.G. Miller can be found here:

http://royalreactions.blogspot.com

Cheers.

Sports - Royals Trade Nunez for Jacobs

2008-10-31T22:01:00.000-07:00

clipped from www.kansascity.com

“We need to get better now,” Moore said. “We can continue to develop at the major leagues, and we’re going to continue to get the same result we’ve been getting, and that’s not something we’re prepared to do anymore.”

This quote from Dayton Moore says it all. No more using the major league club as a place for figuring out if a player "gets it" or not.

I am fine with this trade. Moore has already shown a knack for putting together a fine relief corps, so Nunez is not great loss. The logjam at first base is really only in potential. What guys like Billy Butler, Kila Ka’aihue and Ryan Shealy "might" do.

Jacobs will not walk a lot, but he can hit the long ball. He's proven that. If Butler et al can prove they have the capabilities, then I am certain Moore will find a place for them.

In the meantime, I only hope a youngster like Butler is given time to prove he can do it ahead of somebody like Ross Gload, who has proven he can't.

Sports - Royals Shopping Teahen

2008-10-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

clipped from www.kansascity.com

The Royals are discussing a possible trade with the Cleveland Indians in which they would acquire an outfielder in exchange for Mark Teahen, according to sources with both teams.
Talks are believed to center on three possibilities for the Royals in the deal: Franklin Gutierrez, Ben Francisco and minor-leaguer Trevor Crowe.

The first major rumblings of the off season from the Royals camp. Teahen is now two years removed from his 2006 tear and it appears the team is ready to move on.

A quick look at the numbers makes this kind of a wash regardless of who the Royals end up with. Guitierrez is a year younger than Teahen, but other than that, they all put up similar stats last season:

255/313/402
266/332/438
248/307/383

Can you tell me who you'd rather have?

Sports Guy Calls It

2008-09-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

It's going to be a long year for the Chiefs. After a long summer for the Royals, I guess I can look forward to seeing how KU does without the hooligans who helped win the national title in March.

ESPN's Bill Simmons is not predicting good things for the Chiefs, as well. This quote from his season preview says it just about right:

clipped from sports.espn.go.com

I can't think of a better Week 1 opponent for the Pats than Kansas City, the team that recently launched a rebuilding effort by trading its 26-year-old stud defensive end for draft picks. And you thought the Royals were the worst-run team in town? Watch this!

Double Dip on Double-Digit Wins

2008-09-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big fan of the whole Pitcher Wins statistic, but I think it says something when it's been NINE YEARS since two pitchers on a team have gotten ten or more wins in a season.

I will be using this statistic heavily when trying to write a positive preview of the Royals chances in 2009.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Greinke allowed just one earned run in his three previous starts and still ended up with one loss and two no-decisions. His 10th victory extended his career high and matched Gil Meche for the club lead.

It also marked the first time since 1999 that two Royals reached double figures in victories. José Rosado and Jeff Suppan each won 10 that year.

Who are These Guys? - 2008 Royals Season Preview

2008-03-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

A new job and extended jury duty have kept me from doing the kind of preview my five loyal readers are used to.

So, as the 2008 season begins, I’m going to do an abbreviated “Who are these guys?” preview, focusing on the players who are most-likely to contribute to the team on a daily basis, with a little love given to those who made the opening-day roster (sans catcher Matt Tupman, who we know is getting replaced by Miguel Olivo four games into the season when his suspension is done).

Each player will be followed by three sets of numbers – Batting Average/On-Base Percentage/Slugging Average for their career, the 2007 season and the Marcel projection for the 2008 season.

More info about the Marcel projections can be found here. Stats are from Baseball-Reference.com and projections are from FanGraphs.com.

Here we go.

Catcher
John Buck
Car: 237/297/408 OPS+ 82
’07: 222/308/429 OPS+ 90
’08: 244/311/411

John’s career OPS by month:

Apr  732
May  715
Jun  794
Jul  579
Aug  635
Sep  803

If Buck can keep from stepping in that hole he seems to find every July and August, the Royals may have a legitimate big-league backstop this season.

Miguel Olivo
Car: 239/275/405 OPS+ 76
’07: 237/262/405 OPS+ 72
’08: 247/280/408

Miggy may get some time in the outfield this year, most likely against lefties, whom he hits to the tune of 291/319/524.

Infield
Billy Butler – 1B
Car: 292/347/447 OPS+ 105
’07: 292/347/447 OPS+ 105
’08: 298/361/465

Calling Butler an infielder is a bit of a stretch, but Buddy Bell (a six-time Gold Glover who should know) did say Billy had soft hands. The slugger from Florida will play a little first, but will most-likely end up as a full-time DH by the end of the season.

Mark Grudzielanek – 2B
Car: 289/331/395 OPS+ 90
’07: 302/346/426 OPS+ 100
’08: 285/327/403

Grudz returns for another season league-average performance. A solid second baseman, Grudzielanek won a gold glove in ’06 with the Royals. He should anchor a solid infield defense once again (at least on the days that Butler isn’t playing first) and will keep the position warm for prospect Alberto Callaspo.

Tony Pena Jr. – SS
Car: 264/282/354 OPS+ 65
’07: 267/284/356 OPS+ 66
’08: 270/303/379

The former manager’s son was a revelation at short after what I like to call “the Berroa years.” While hardly adequate at the plate in the age of A-Rods and Jeters, TPJ manages to put the ball in play often enough to make his spectacular play in the field enough to keep him right at replacement level value.

Alex Gordon – 3B
Car: 247/314/411 OPS+ 87
’07: 247/314/411 OPS+ 87
’08: 262/331/427

Considered the future at third base since he was drafted, Gordon overcame a difficult start to his big league career to post solid numbers in the second half last year.

A lot has been written about his current skills and potential, so I’ll just add this from my experiences seeing Gordon come to the plate in Anaheim and at spring training in Surprise: the dude looks severely stoned in his press photo. I mean it. The red eyes, shaggy hair and “are you taking my pictures for real” smile. Baked to the bone, I’m telling you.

Look, I’ve been to Nebraska. There’s not a lot to do there. I don’t blame him if he’s growing a little something in his apartment on the Plaza. Man, does he have a pretty swing, though.

Alberto Callaspo
Esteban German
Ross Gload

German has been the uber-utility man for a few years now and has a career on-base percentage of 373. Callaspo had some personal issues in Arizona, but hit like mad in the minors and is looking for a fresh start in KC. Gload is steady with the bat like Grudz, and will probably spend some time at first, outfield and designated hitter. Let’s just hope he stays out of the four hole this year.

Outfield
David DeJesus
Car: 282/358/415 OPS+ 102
’07: 260/351/372 OPS+ 89
’08: 276/353/414

A lot of people (myself included) pegged DeJesus for a breakout season in ’07. Didn’t happen. He lost a little something, but did manage to play in 157 games, a career high. Let’s see if the center fielder can bring his production up and stay on the field this year.

Jose Guillen
Car: 274/325/447 OPS+ 101
’07: 290/353/460 OPS+ 116
’08: 272/333/448

The Mets go Carlos Santana. The Tigers got Miguel Cabrera. The Yankees re-signed Alex Rodriguez. Kansas City picked up Jose Guillen and quickly made Mike Sweeney only the third highest paid Royal ever.

Guillen is not a bad player, but he alone is not likely to be a savior for the team’s offensive woes any more than Emil Brown was. However, if Butler and Gordon continue to impress, Guillen should be a solid bat along with them in the line up.

Mark Teahen
Car: 274/340/429 OPS+ 100
’07: 285/353/410 OPS+ 98
’08: 282/350/439

Teahen’s numbers took a step back last season as he learned how to play a few outfield positions and a little first base. Considered one of the better base runners in baseball, Marky Mark also showed off a canon arm in right.

The canon has been moved to left, but Teahen will likely be jerked around from left to right to first to DH in order to keep his head spinning whilst he also attempts to pull the ball more at the plate.

Joey Gathright
Car: 266/333/314 OPS+ 71
’07: 307/371/342 OPS+ 88
’08: 273/342/352

Joey Gathright is fast and he can jump over cars and the occasional Japanese pitcher. His skills at getting on-base have been quite good for a while, and his goal this season is to steal 60 bases. A quick look at his minor league numbers shows that he was a much better thief there than in the majors.

Let’s see if new manager Trey Hillman gives him the green light more often that Buddy Bell did.

Starting Pitchers
Gil Meche
Zack Greinke
Brian Bannister
John Bale
Brett Tomko

Pitchers always seem to have more questions than answers going into the season.

Can Meche keep up his solid stuff? Can Grienke stay sane? Will Bannister stave off regression to the mean? Who is John Bale? Why is Brett Tomko being given $3 million to make my stomach churn every fifth day?

Relief Pitchers
Joakim Soria – Closer
Jimmy Gobble
Ron Mahay
Leo Nunez
Ramon Ramirez
Yasuhiko Yabuta

A few new faces in the bullpen this season. A few familiar culprits.

Soria looks like another Mariano Rivera in the making. Gobble should be a solid LOOGY again. Ron Mahay will be… let’s just say interesting. Nunez and Ramirez both bring the heat, and Yabuta is a Japanese import likely to fall somewhere between Dice-K and the crappy version of Hideo Nomo (who we happen to have on “the DL” right now… wink, wink-nudge, nudge).

SEASON PREDICTION

I’ve seen 76 wins thrown about most often as the realistic best-case scenario for this year’s Royals squad. A definite improvement over last year. Still not quite ready to compete with the big boys in the division.

As I am an eternal optimist, I think I’ll push my predicted finish to 86 wins. In contention for a large part of the year, but falling just short of the postseason in a very competitive American League Central.

It’s easy to forget that the Royals played very competitive baseball for a long stretch last season. Using Poznanski-like math skills, I showed at the halfway point of the season how the team had a chance to win as many as 79 games.

Of course, the team faltered late in the year and finished five games off of their Pythagorean record of 74 wins. I say that if the team’s true talent level last year was that of a 74 win team, and the core players are back and almost all are expected to show improvement, then a .500 record is no great stretch of the imagination.

Let’s play ball!

Sports - Buck the Starter

2008-02-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

Before we get into the player previews (which will probably come before the season when the roster is more solid), let's look at some of the news as it comes along.

I like Trey Hillman already for how he is treating John Buck. The quote below says it all. If the backstop can recreate the first two months of last year, he's going to be the man behind the plate. If Johnny Boy posts another sub-.600 OPS, he'll be benched.

Let's hope Hillman treats all veterans this way. Performance matters.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

"Anything is possible, sure," Hillman said. "What I told John Buck is you have to maintain a certain level of performance to maintain your status as a starter. For me, that's a no-brainer. That's for everybody."

Dayton Can't be Done

2007-12-05T15:43:00.000-08:00

The most famous Royals optimist out there, Rany Jazayerli, has hypothesized that the Jose Guillen deal is but one domino in a long chain of moves that General Manager Dayton Moore plans over this current off season.

It had better be.

According to Dan Szymborski’s early projections for next year, the best lineup the Kansas City Royals can produce in 2008 is this:

Name     P   Age  AVG  OBP  SLG  OPS
Butler   dh  22   288  360  471  831
Gordon   3b  24   264  339  453  792
DeJesus  cf  28   287  355  431  786
Teahen   rf  26   279  351  431  782
Gload    1b  32   292  332  447  779
Guillen  lf  32   262  327  432  759
German   2b  30   284  364  383  747
Buck     c   27   232  301  394  695
Pena     ss  27   270  294  354  648

Running the numbers through the lineup analysis tool on Baseball Musings, the most this lineup could hope to produce is 4.90 runs a game.

In 2007, the Royals averaged 4.36 runs a game.

If these projections were to hold true, the Royals would end up with approximately 89 more runs in 2008 then they had in 2007. The quick and dirty rule is that 10 runs equal one win, so let’s say that through the addition of Jose Guillen and the projected improvement of other young players, the Royals will be tacking on nine extra wins next year.

That would put them at 78 wins... 83 if you want to go by Pythagorean record.

83 wins will not get it done in the American League Central.

Dayton needs to do more.

Royals "Win" Bidding for Guillen

2007-12-04T15:07:00.000-08:00

Eager to continue the fine pharmaceutical heritage that began with Ewing Kauffman, the Kansas City Royals signed outfielder Jose Guillen to a 3-year, $36 million deal on Tuesday.

The potential steroid suspension aside, are the Royals spending David Glass's new found money wisely? How about some charts!

Below are two charts showing Guillen's On-Base Percentage (OBP) and Slugging Average (SLG) by age. The difference between the top chart and the bottom chart is that Guillen's partial years have been removed (in '99, '01, '02 and '06, Jose appeared in fewer than 100 games for the season).

By removing the partial seasons, we can see that the Dominican fellow has followed a pretty standard career path, peaking at age 27-28 in the power department while maintaining some positive growth in the ability to get on base.

Walks as a percentage of plate appearances:

Again, Guillen has shown an improved eye at the plate over the course of his career.

Extra base hits as a percentage of hits and plate appearances:

Here is where it gets sketchy for the Royals. At first glance, Guillen appears to have a somewhat erratic ability to hit the ball hard when he makes contact, but overall looks like he is trending upward.

However, when you remove the years most likely to be affected by small sample size blips, he begins to look like any typical player. In terms of full-season ability, Guillen's power potential seems to have peaked when he was 27.

The Royals have just "fixed" their middle order power problem with a guy who looks to be on the decline in terms of hurting the baseball over the next three years.

The good news is that while Guillen now becomes the highest-paid player in team history, his contract is not exorbitant in the current market. Three years is a short enough time frame that Kansas City can cut their losses if Guillen fails to find rejuvenation in the fountains at Kauffman stadium.

That said, I'd still rather see them go after Miguel Cabrera.

Sports - Royals Hire Hillman to Manage

2007-10-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

I don't know what a Ham Fighter is, but there are several things I like about this hire.

1.) We may have actually beat out the Yankees on getting this guy. It always feels good to beat the Yanks.

2.) Beyond the track record of success, there are stories about Hillman being able to adapt his style to the players he has. He went to Japan as a walks and homers guy, and found out he had a speed team, so made it work with good pitching and defense.

3.) It's nice to have the team do something a little out of the box. Rather than hire another retread manager, they went and got a guy who is on his way up.

Hillman may eventually crash and burn, but it's better than watching Buddy Bell get burned night in and night out when you already KNEW he was going to struggle because that's how it had been the time before and the time before that.

clipped from www.kansascity.com

Hillman interviewed last year with Texas, San Diego and Oakland after leading the Fighters to their first title in 44 years. He managed 11 years in the Yankees’ minor-league system before heading to Japan.
That connection to the Yankees prompted the Royals to accelerate their negotiations Thursday after New York’s managerial job came open when Joe Torre rejected a one-year extension offer.
“He’s won at every level of the minor leagues,” Moore said. “He’s been manager of the year at every level. He took a team over there in Japan that had never won and in year No. 4, they won the Japan series.
“This year, they’re back in the Japan series with a team that’s last in basically every offensive category.”
Hillman becomes the 15th full-time manager in the club’s 40-year history.

Re-signing Mike Sweeney

2007-08-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

While traveling for business last week, I missed this little item in the Kansas City Star: “Royals could re-sign Sweeney if Butler proves capable of playing first.”

The reasoning goes something like this: The Royals have very little power in their lineup. Signing a free agent with power will be expensive. Mike Sweeney has power and is already here.

I am curious about two specific aspects of this story. 1.) Does Mike Sweeney still have power? And 2.) How much should the Royals pay him for this?

I am leaving out the question of Billy Butler’s ability to man first base, because I think that he can certainly play it as well as Ken Harvey and... er... well, Mike Sweeney did.

Does Mike Sweeney still have power?
Joe Sheehan made a comment in a chat at Baseball Prospectus the other day that I found interesting: “[Y]ou should consider extra-base hits together as a group (or in a rate like XBH/H, XBH/AB, ISO) as opposed to isolating one category of hits. Guys can see doubles turn into homers one year and back the next for no real reason.”

Let’s see how the original $11 million Royal has done at hitting for power consistently over his career.

Year  AB   XBH  XBH  ISO
           /H   /AB  
1995    4   0%   0%  000
1996  165  30%   8%  133
1997  240  26%   6%  121
1998  282  36%   9%  149
1999  575  37%  12%  198
2000  618  29%  10%  190
2001  559  44%  13%  238
2002  471  35%  12%  223
2003  392  30%   9%  174
2004  411  38%  11%  217
2005  470  43%  13%  217
2006  217  41%  11%  180
2007  204  36%   9%  162
CAREER     36%  11%  194

Not bad. Sweeney has lost a bit of isolated power the last few years, but his extra base hit percentages are still in line with his career numbers.

Before his latest trip to the disabled list, Sweeney had 7 home runs in 204 at bats. That put him on pace for 15 round trippers if he could have managed to stay healthy enough for 450 at bats. Don’t look now, but that would put him one behind John Buck for the team lead.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that the power is still there for Mike. A healthy Mike Sweeney could put 25 dingers on the board in a season, and while that won’t get him into any Barry Bonds debates, it would certainly help a team as anemic as this current Royals squad has been with the long ball.

Of course, the phrase “a healthy Mike Sweeney” is akin to “I want a pony” for most Royals fans. But, the fact is Sweeney is playing rehab ball in the minors right now. He will be able to play baseball next season and somebody will sign him.

How much should the Royals pay him for this?
Using some quick and dirty math along with the Play Index over at Baseball Reference, I cobbled together the following list of players I felt were having comparable seasons to Sweeney.

Name    PA  OPS+ Age HR BA  OBP SLG  Salary 
Erstad  274  80  33  2  272 331 354  $  750,000 
Redmond 270  86  36  1  289 344 350  $  950,000 
Zaun    285  79  36  6  228 310 378  $3,500,000 
Blum    255  83  34  2  256 327 352  $  900,000 
Graffy  260  83  35  9  238 315 390  $3,250,000 
Piazza  247  93  38  5  276 316 405  $8,500,000 
Valent  192  88  31  2  290 339 409  $3,800,000 
Cora    200  84  31  2  254 309 395  $2,000,000 
Gomez   203  94  36  1  305 338 390  $  850,000 
Conine  253  85  41  6  268 325 411  $2,000,000 
Delluc  196  83  33  4  234 301 389  $3,750,000 
Pod’nik 170  84  31  2  257 323 382  $2,900,000 
Cirillo 193  86  37  2  254 326 373  $1,500,000 
Clark   176  82  35  11 230 278 453  $1,034,000 
Barajas 141  86  31  4  214 343 376  $2,500,000 
Valentin183  79  37  3  241 302 373  $3,800,000 
Mientk  141  80  33  4  226 292 379  $1,500,000 

AVERAGE 214  84  35  4  255 319 386  $2,557,882 

Sweeney 225  82  33  7  245 307 407  $11,000,000

It’s good to know the Royals aren’t the only team overpaying for below-average production and disabled list time.

Taking a quick average of Sweeney’s last three years, how does he stack up with your average older, oft-injured player?

        PA  OPS+ Age  HR BA  OBP SLG  Salary 
AVERAGE 214  84  35   4  255 319 386  $2,557,882 
3 Years 326 102 30-33 12 268 334 454  $?,???,???

And some of this year’s numbers just for fun...

Player  Age OPS+
Sweeney 33  82
Gload   31  99
Brown   32  65
Costa   25  77*

*Costa’s OPS+ is from last season, when he spent significant time at the big league level.

Gload and Costa are relatively cheap. Emil Brown is getting paid $3,450,000 for his contributions this year. The Oakland Athletics have paid Frank Thomas and Mike Piazza $500,000 and $8,500,000 respectively over the last two years to man the designated hitter post with varying levels of return.

It’s funny to say it, but if the Royals can get Mike Sweeney’s average production from the last three years for Emil Brown money, I say they make that deal.

If We Can Only Avoid Playing the Yankees

2007-08-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, May 8th, the Kansas City Royals lost to the Oakland Athletics by a score of 6-1. Jorge de la Rosa took the loss, giving up 10 hits in just over four innings of work, and the Royals season was already over with the team sporting a 10-23 record, on pace for 100 losses yet again.

The Royals managed to eek out a 3-2 victory the next day, but dropped the series finale in style, giving up 17 runs to the A’s while Luke Hudson, the team’s best pitcher in 2006, took a beating in his only outing of the year before heading back to the disabled list.

A few more losses to the White Sox followed, but that May 8th game signaled a turning point in the season. From that point forward, the Royals have put up a win for every loss. In their last 80 games the team stands on even ground at 40-40.

A .500 record won’t win you any medals in the American League, but for this Kansas City team, it shows real progress over an extended period of time. For half a season, the Kansas City Royals have been a respectable ball club.

Is it the Offense?
The Royals have scored 4.96 runs a game during this stretch, against a league-average of 4.90.

Joey Gathright has been getting on base at a .415 clip since his first call-up on June 6th. Here are the team leaders in this category:

Gathrgt 415
German  373
DeJesus 365
Teahen  360
Grudz   345
Butler  342
LEAGUE  341

The people who are supposed to be getting on base are, and the people who are supposed to be driving them in? Here are the team leaders in slugging:

Buck   494
Gload  467
Grudz  445
Butler 439
LEAGUE 422

John Buck has come crashing down after his hot start, putting up a 218/283/400 line in July, but Ross Gload has filled in the sink hole that was Ryan Shealy by posting a 320/330/490 line since coming off the disabled list in mid-July.

Young Billy Butler has been swinging a big stick since his return from the minors, going 309/365/.478 since his second call-up.

Is it the Pitching?
The team has been giving up 4.86 runs a game, against an American League average of 4.79.

Brian Bannister leads the starters with a 3.32 ERA, followed by Million Dollar Gil at 3.96. New pick up Kyle Davies looked like a world beater in shutting down the Twins on Thursday, but the good money says he’s probably somewhere between that outing and the gas can he was for the Yankees last Saturday.

The relief corps continues to be outstanding. A quick look at the ERA leaders:

Soria  2.22
Riske  2.34
Gobble 3.13
Peralta 3.72

Odalis Perez (5.87), Jorge de la Rosa (5.46) and the rotation of random fifth starters has been the biggest culprit in keeping this team from being a winner.

The deal for Davies is one of many in which general manager Dayton Moore has brought young arms into the Kansas City system. Every player on these leader lists will be with the team next season, and most of them are under obligation for much longer than that.

A strong finish to this season will speak volumes about how stable the foundation of this team is. The push for a title begins in earnest in ’08.

Royals Trade Dotel for Davies

2007-07-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

The Salary number is a little rough, but for approximately $2.5 million, the Kansas City Royals got this from Octavio Dotel:

23 Innings Pitched
11 Saves
29 Strike Outs
3.94 ERA
Kyle Davies from the Braves

Who is Kyle Davies? There are two ways to answer this questions. First, with the quick and dirty stats: 4-8 record, 5.76 ERA, 6 strikeouts a game (decent), 4.4 walks (not good).

The other answer is simply "a right-handed version of Jorge De la Rosa."

To illustrate, I'm going to use a favorite stat called "Game Score."

From Baseball-Reference.com:
"This is a value created by Bill James that evaluates how good a pitcher's start was. Start with 50 points. Add 1 point for each out recorded, (or 3 points per inning). Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th. Add 1 point for each strikeout. Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed. Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed. Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed. Subtract 1 point for each walk."

The idea is that 50 is average, above 50 is a good start and below 50 is a bad start.

In descending order, here are the game scores for Davies and De la Rosa this season:

       De la
Davies Rosa
67     73
64     69
63     68
62     67
62     64
58     55
50     55
41     52
40     49
39     44
39     44
35     39
35     39
29     35
26     30
24     23
15     20
       13
       10
AVERAGE
44     45

For what it's worth, Davies is also about 3 years younger than De la Rosa and at 23, has plenty of potential left in his arm.

Like De la Rosa, it all comes down to control. If the Royals coaching staff can manage to keep the new guy around the plate, he has the potential to be a strong contributer to the team.

Royals Week in Review - 7/20/07

2007-07-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

After sticking it to the Red Sox, the Kansas City Royals prepare for a showdown with evil next week. But, before the Yankees come to Kauffman stadium, the boys in blue must first vanquish the front-running Detroit Tigers in the Motor City.

Ivan Rodriguez’s ninth inning homer must be avenged!

Month by Month
Thanks to the hard work of people like Sean Forman, hacks like me can find stats like this almost instantly:

       W   L   RS   RA   WP
April  8   18  99   132  .308
May    11  17  112  159  .393
June   15  12  145  117  .556
July   7   6   74   56   .538
Courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com

God, I love the internet.

As you can see, the Royals have turned into a winning ball club over the last two months. The results for July are difficult to judge, as the team hit a lucky stretch playing in Boston against two of the Beantowner’s lesser pitchers.

Playing on the road against the division leaders and then against a New York team that smells blood in the water should be a truer test of the progress the team has made.

Trading Deadline
Thanks to the internet age, pretty much every major leaguer can count on his name coming up in a trade rumor about this time of year. Both of my dead grandmothers have been linked to talks with the Cubs about a mid-level prospect.

The fact is, only Octavio Dotel is likely to get any serious scratch back for the Royals this season.

Dotel has a 3.15 ERA in 20 innings with the team this year, and it looks like bringing him back is not an option. If Dayton Moore can flip the Dominican for some top-level farm help, then his one-year contract will have been worth the gamble.

Future Stars
A quick refresher on some common stats I use.

AVG – Batting Average. Most people are familiar with this metric.
OBP – On Base Percentage. This takes into account walks and hit-by-pitches to give a better look at ability to get on base.
SLG – Slugging Average. This accounts for a player’s power by giving credit for each base reached with a hit. 1 for a single, 2 for a double, etc.

Currently, the American League is batting 269/340/419 (AVG/OBP/SLG).

Here is how some of the young players on the Royals stack up:

Billy Butler – 348/400/580 since being called up June 20th
Alex Gordon – 303/358/434 since the first of June
Mark Teahen – 366/487/548 with runners in scoring position
Joey Gathright – 315/390/370 before being sent down when Reggie Sanders came of the disabled list

Reggie Sanders is 377/450/623 on the season. AVAILABLE NOW!!! DIRT CHEAP!!!

Of course, Reginald is a career 267/343/489 hitter, which is nothing to sneeze at, but lends one to believe his current numbers may not hold up.

On the pitching side, there are several players to be excited about.

Brian Bannister – 3.87 ERA Ambriorix Burgos, whom the Royals traded straight-up for Bannister before the season, has put up decent numbers with the Mets as a reliever, but is currently on the disabled list.

Joakim Soria – 1.98 ERA Don’t forget, this guy through a perfect game in winter ball. Here’s hoping he won’t be relegated to the bullpen forever.

Jimmy Gobble – 2.67 ERA It’s easy to forget that Gobble is only 25 years old. His splits are heavily favored against left handed batters, but there’s something to be said for finding a role for a player who failed to meet expectations with regularity over the last four years.

Royals Week in Review - 7/14/07

2007-07-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

Kansas City Royals come out of the All Star Break with a ton of momentum and a killer schedule. A few minor moves this week show that General Manager Dayton Moore may be warming up to be a player as the trade market heats up this month.

All Star Game
The Royals sent their $55 Million Man to San Francisco to represent this week. Mr. Meche's line:

DNP

Good work, Gil.

For a rundown of recent Royals in the mid-summer classic, check out Royals Review.

Perception vs. Reality
Now at the halfway point of the season, let's take a look at how the main players have compared to their pre-season projections.

OPS     Curr  Proj  Diff
Gthrght 796   665   19.70%
Buck    872   739   18.00%
Pena    668   573   16.58%
Grudz   749   709    5.64%
German  768   745    3.09%
DeJesus 783   786   -0.38%
Butler  767   786   -2.42%
Teahen  765   810   -5.56%
Gload   681   817  -16.65%
Gordon  679   834  -18.59%
Brown   608   781  -22.15%

ERA     Curr  Proj  Diff
Soria   2.21  6.21  64.41%
Riske   2.21  4.36  49.31%
Gobble  2.70  5.17  47.78%
Banny   3.71  5.84  36.47%
Meche   3.54  4.90  27.76%
Peralta 3.64  4.50  19.11%
Dotel   3.50  4.17  16.07%
dlaRosa 5.16  5.55   7.03%
Greinke 4.63  4.76   2.73%
Perez   5.68  4.75 -19.58%

As you can see, the pitching staff has blown away the projections so far this year. There will most certainly be a regression to the mean for most of these pitchers, but the staff has already proven to be a bigger strength than most people expected.

The offense is a more of a mixed bag. John Buck has been in breakout mode for most of the year, still hitting for power even though his average has gone down. Tony Pena Jr. will most certainly come crashing back to earth, but the rest of the batters should be able to improve their stats as the second half rolls along.

Thug Royals
The GM started the trading season with a couple of minor moves, but both will affect the big league roster soon.

Aside from his pending charge for felonious assault, Roman Colon has put up decent stats in the minors and with Atlanta and Detroit. Out of options, he will need to be put on the 25 man roster next week.

Colon was used as a starter often early in his minor league career. One has to wonder if a few more bad outings by some of the team's lesser starters will put him in the prime scoring card location soon.

Jason Smith has already taken over the role of utility infielder on the team since being picked up from the Diamondbacks organization earlier this week.

Aside from a good season at AAA Colorado Springs last year, Smith has been exactly what you'd expect from a journeyman utility player.

Projecting the Second Half

2007-07-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

As Independence Day nears, the Kansas City Royals have passed the midpoint of the season looking remarkably like a good baseball club the past month.

There will probably be many moves in the next month -- injured players returning, veterans getting traded, Buddy Bell giving Tony Pena Jr. a ten game shot at batting cleanup -- but for the moment, I want to focus on four numbers:

68, 72, 77 & 79

Sixty-Eight Wins
If you simply take the current winning percentage of the team and put it against 162 games, the final record will be 68-94.

Avoiding 100 losses is an accomplishment unto itself given the recent history of the franchise, but doesn't this team feel like it should win more than 68 games? After winning 62 games last year, a six game swing would be quite disappointing.

Seventy-Two Wins
I use the following formula to calculate "Pythagorean" wins:

(RS*2)/(RS*2)+(RA*2)

Statheads generally look at Runs Scored (RS) and Runs Allowed (RA) as a "truer" picture of how well a team has played.

People much smarter than me have suggested that a factor of 1.78 is more accurate, or even a factor that changes depending on the scoring environment of a particular season. Me? I'm happy to just square everything up and go with that.

What that gives us is a team that is actually good for about 72 wins on the season. Still not remarkable, but markedly better than the 62 of Ought-Six.

Seventy-Seven & Seventy-Nine Wins
The team has been playing much better lately, and I wanted to give them credit for that. Luckily, I have way too much free time today because the whole world is already on vacation for the 4th of July, so I decided to look at the pythag record for the last ten games and the last twenty five.

This chart shows the season so far in terms of real wins and the various calculations.

As discussed in an earlier post, the "10 Day Py" line shows those stretches when the team really plays well (and when they don't). In contrast, the "25 Day Py" line is perhaps a better predictor of future performance as it takes into account a larger sampling of games.

Now, 10 and 25 are purely arbitrary numbers. I still think this provides a good snapshot as to how the season has really gone for the team. Two really good stretches, culminating in one of the better months the team has had since 2003.

If the team finishes out the year winning 53-55% of their games (as they have for the last 10 and 25, respectively), they will finish the season with 77-79 wins.

Those totals won't bring home any hardware, but they'll come from a young team that will remain intact and improving for the next several years.

That's something to cheer about.

Royals Week in Review - 06/29/07

2007-06-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Having swept the California Angels of Southern Antiqua, the Kansas City Royals look to the Chicago White Sox, a team that is one bad weekend away from taking over the cellar position the Royals have held for so long.

As this weekend will mark the halfway point of the season, let's take a look at some of the notable stats from the first 79 games.

Offense & Defense

Mo   RS   RA   OPS  ERA
Apr  3.8  5.1  700  4.32
May  4.0  5.7  699  5.27
Jun  5.4  4.5  730  4.30

The offense has shown dramatic improvement in the last month, while the pitching has come back strong after an off month in May. Even the defense has stepped it up from the first month of the season, with only 5% of runs allowed being unearned in June, compared to 17% in April.

Leaders

Reggie Sanders will probably end the season as the team leader in OPS (On-Base Percentage + Slugging Average) as long as his sore hammy keeps him on the disabled list. These are the top three players looking to take over his 1.059 showing.

Buck      907
Gathright 851
Teahen    795

Even better for the Royals, the hot hands in June all look to play a significant role in the team's future.

OPS June
DeJesus   885
Gordon    885
Buck      880
Gathright 851

Joey Gathright has been getting on base at a .446 clip since his call up on June 6. While he does only have three extra base hits, the speedster has also stolen five bags while only getting caught once.

From a pitching standpoint, the relief staff has an overall ERA of 4.06 compared to the starters at 4.95.

A look at June ERA shows that while the bullpen has really been heating up, the rotation still needs some serious work.

ERA June
Soria   0.00
Riske   1.42
Peralta 2.08
Dotel   2.53

Banny   3.00
Meche   3.98
DL Rosa 6.41
Perez   6.66
Elartn 11.15

Gil Meche has slipped a little, but still looks like a win for Dayton Moore, while Brian Bannister has held his own.

De La Rosa is a fantastic pitcher to have if the game were still being played without stadium lights (a 3-0 record in day games); Odalis Perez is looking a lot like the devil, and Scott Elarton can stay in Omaha forever as far as I'm concerned.

Winners & Losers
Thanks to the wonderful stats over at Fangraphs (track a game live and see how your emotions look in a line chart), we can see who has contributed the most to the Royals wins and losses this year.

The stat Winning Percentage Added (WPA) gives credit for every play made that increases or decreases a teams chance at winning a game. As such, it puts greater importance on plays made late in a game, where the outcome of the game becomes more certain.

Team WPA
Offense  -5.43
Starters -2.15
Relief   +1.08

Most observers believed that Kansas City getting a reliable bullpen would be a sign of the apocalypse. No four horsemen yet, but keep your eyes peeled.

Individual WPA
Soria   1.40
Grienke 1.27

Meche   0.95

DeJesus 0.54
Teahen  0.52

Elartn -1.18
Pena   -2.04

After some poor outings as a starter, Zack Grienke has ratcheted up his WPA by getting some big strikeouts as a reliever. Soria has been an absolute steal for the team, and one wonders if they shouldn't begin stretching him out to be a starter like Minnesota did with Johan Santana.

The two guys who have hurt the team most have one distinct difference: fielding. While TPJ may flail away at the plate like a tee baller facing the high school kids, he has flashed some pretty good leather this season, something that isn't accounted for much in these numbers.

Scott Elarton just stinks. One good outing in AAA will not convince me otherwise.

A young offense is coming around, and the bullpen has been a revelation. Dayton Moore must continue adding to the starting rotation. That is the key to this team becoming a threat in the American League in the very near future.

MLB Piques My Interest in Women's Apparel

2007-06-28T13:46:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me say that I love my wife.

Let me also say that it is easily apparent this is a photoshop job, as I found the same picture for all MLB teams with the logo switched out.

Lastly, for the record: I don't care. As somebody who grew up on "Who's the Boss," watched "Charmed" in spite of the ridicule from my roommate, and recorded the episode of "Spin City" when Alyssa Milano played the mayor's daughter (watch, and you'll know why), this photo is a dream come true.

Now, if I can only win the contest without my wife leaving me.

Royals Week in Review - 6/22/07

2007-06-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

Something happened to the Kansas City Royals bats around June first. I don't know what it is, but after losing seven in a row, the boys in blue have pretty much taken Pythag out behind the woodshed the last few weeks.

The following chart has two lines:

The RED line represents the Royals running pythagorean record based on runs scored and runs allowed as the season progresses.

The BLUE line is a rolling ten game snapshot of their pythagorean record.

Basically, the blue line spikes whenever the team has a particularly good stretch of games (e.g. putting 17 runs on the board in the space of five days), and drops when they struggle (the aforementioned seven game losing streak).

The Royals are currently riding their second wave of sustained success. It's good to see the team bounce back after that disheartening stretch in May, but the real key to sustained improvement lies in the moves General Manager Dayton Moore makes between now and the trading deadline.

Addition by Subtraction
Whoever kicked Scott Elarton in the ankle is this month's MVP if you ask me. 2-3 with a 9.17 ERA in eight starts? I watched him pitch against the Cardinals the other night and I'm pretty sure I could have taken him yard, his stuff was so bad.

Despite Joe Posnanski's push for a four-man rotation, the Royals have signed John Thompson to take Elarton's place in the rotation.

The Royals opted for Thomson after choosing to keep Zack Greinke and Joakim Soria in the bullpen. They also resisted any inclination to promote any of their three top pitching prospects: Billy Buckner, Luke Hochevar and Tyler Lumsden.

While I'd like to see Grienke get another shot at the rotation, I'm okay with this move right now, as Zack seems to have found a groove coming out of the bullpen.

Thompson is your standard issue fourth starter, with a career ERA of 4.69 with four different teams. As seems to be the case with many of Moore's moves, he had some success in Atlanta, going 14-8 with a 3.72 ERA in 2004.

Sweeney Out
I'm done with jokes about Mike Sweeney's ailing back and annual trips to the disabled list. He will leave as one of the most productive hitters in Royals history and one of the most frustrating. I think big Mike's heart really was dedicated to making the Royals a better team, but his body could not shoulder the strain.

Thus, young Billy Ray will be getting another chance to taste the bright lights and lavish buffets of big league baseball. The Royals have officially taken the glove away from their top prospect, but plan to give him an opportunity to impress with the stick.

Butler will pinch-hit the next five games and then DH every day until Sweeney returns. KC considered other players but Butler was the only option who was on the 40-man roster that could be called up and then sent back to Minors without passing through waivers.

Now that Alex Gordon is hitting like the hype (333/361/507 since June 1st), the Royals young offense may be exciting to watch the next few months.

All Star Voting
Personally, I'd like to see John Buck named as the Royals representative at the upcoming All-Star game. He has been the team's most productive hitter, looks like a bad-ass with his new hair do, and maybe it would force the team to stop making their All Star split time with Jason LaRue.

As it is, the Royals will probably have to settle for one of their pitchers milling around the bullpen in San Francisco, waiting for the chance to serve up a Barry Bonds homer in front of the home crowd.

If that's the case, then Jim Leyland would have to give Gil Meche his top consideration. Despite last night's wobbly start, Meche has been everything the Royals could have hoped for so far this year, and thanks to his contract, he is a name some people might have heard of.

I could see Leyland giving the nod to David Riske. He's go an ERA under three and was nice enough to serve up that game winning homer to Ivan Rodriguez on April 8th.

Royals Week in Review - 6/8/07

2007-06-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Royals decided to take a week off from playing baseball, reflect on the lives they’ve led and generally kill any positive momentum from taking eight of ten contests before their big slide.

How badly did the recent seven game losing streak suck?

Here it is in sparkline form (Black bars are games decided by more than two runs):

On May 23, the Royals stood at 19-28, on pace for 65 wins and looking like a team with a future.

After failing to play even a close game for a week, they had a 19-35 record and were once again staring down 100 losses.

We won’t examine the run differentials during the losing streak because some people read this blog over lunch.

On to the week that was.

The Draft
Royals Authority has a nice breakdown of the Royals picks from the first day of the draft.

Dayton Moore’s focus was mostly on high school pitchers. Given that the roster he put together for this season is currently running neck in neck with Texas and Cincinnati for the worst record in baseball, I think it’s fair to say that Dayton has a strong affinity for young boys.

Transactions
RIP: Angel Berroa’s Career.

While it’s true that the hack master may clear waivers and put enough balls in play at AAA to get another call up, I’m still willing to put good money on Berroa’s career with the Royals being over.

to replace the former rookie of the year.

Gathright has been an on-base machine at Omaha this year, getting on at a .456 clip. He has already stolen two bases in two games with the Royals, so it looks like Buddy Bell is planning to use his new toy often.

Joakim Soria has also returned from the disabled list. The plan for now is to have him set up closer Octavio Dotel, but if OD keeps putting 2.5 runners on for every save he gets, the young Mexican may soon find himself finishing ball games again.

John Buck
The Hardball Times has a nice look at the big catcher’s season so far. Conclusion: Buddy Bell is an idiot for sitting him two out of every five games.

Royals Week in Review - 6/1/07

2007-06-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

There's nothing much you can say about getting outscored 856 to 12 or whatever it ended up being while losing seven games in a row, so let's just drop it for this week.

Royals Week in Review - 5/25/07

2007-05-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Royals once again stunned the world by putting together another winning week. The overall record stands at 19-29, on pace for 64 wins, which still sucks but at least shows signs of improvement.

The last two weeks have seen the Royals go 7-3, giving them an 11-11 record for the month of May.

Most encouragingly, the bats of Alex Gordon and Ryan Shealy have both started to come around, while John Buck continues to play at an elevated level.

Baird’s Signature Trade
On June 24, 2004, the Royals, Astros and Athletics swapped some players in what was widely viewed as Allard Baird’s biggest move as general manager. Here is what the Carlos Beltran Trade looks like today:

   Belt  Buck/Tea
Yr VORP  VORP
05 17.6  0.7
06 68.5  26.9
07 19.0  28.1

Of course, Carlos has been putting those numbers up for the Mets, not the Astros, and at a significantly higher rate than what Buck and Mark Teahen are costing the Royals.

“Gil Gauge” Replaces “Meche Meter”
Craig Brown at Royals Authority is going to use the classic “game scores” stat to keep track of how Gil Meche is paying off for the Royals.

In my opinion, tonight’s start is going to be a true barometer for Meche. The team covered his terrible start last week against Colorado by pulling out several comeback wins.

Unfortunately, getting spanked by Cleveland last night is the kind of thing that can turn a couple of good weeks into a bad month.

This is what your number one pitcher is required to do: Win games like tonight. Stop the bleeding and fast. Not just keep the team in the game, but shut down the opponent and let the offense know that they aren’t required to drive in five runs in the late innings every night.

Meche can really put his stamp on the season by shutting down the Indians tonight.

Other Stuff
Mike Sweeney has expressed interest in continuing his career as a catcher. Hey, stop laughing. I think he’s serious. No, you’re right. That is laughably ludicrous.

Club officials revealed plans for stadium renovations. Work will begin in the off season and the final product will debut in 2009. Among the plans are seats along the outfield fountains. I think this will be cool until the first strong wind starts blowing mist into the faces of a few wealthy patrons.

All Star voting is open. Next week, we’ll take a look at who might be the Royals most worthy representative.

Royals Week in Review - 5/18/07

2007-05-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Royals are winners. There’s just no other way to put it. Check out the week-by-week record.

4/2  – 2-4
4/9  – 1-5
4/16 – 3-3
4/23 – 2-5
4/30 – 2-5
5/7  - 2-4
5/14 – 3-1

It has taken seven weeks to make it happen, but the Royals are finally a winning ball club.

Pitching
Million-dollar Gil has been earning his dollars so far. Take out his horrid start on April 7, his numbers look like this:

G IP   H  R  ER BB SO HR ERA
8 54.1 49 14  7 14 43 3  1.16

Even adding in those seven unearned runs only puts his RA at 2.33 over that period.

Hitting
Last week, we pointed this out about John Buck.

Dates       G  AVG OBP SLG OPS
4/2  – 4/20 14 429 529 893 1422
4/22 – 5/10 14 175 286 300 586

Apparently, John reads this blog, because he went on a six game hitting streak with three homeruns and seven RBIs. Mr. Buck, duly noted.

Transactions
It’s getting to that point in the season when a lot of players are shuffled between the big league roster, the minor leagues and the disabled list.

Here are some of the notable transactions from this past week.

5/10 – Reinstated RHP Luke Hudson from the 15-day DL
5/13 – Placed RHP Luke Hudson on the 15-day DL

Two innings, four walks and five runs allowed. Thanks for stopping by, Luke.

5/13 - Recalled SS Angel Berroa from Triple-A Omaha and placed INF Ross Gload on the 15-day disabled list with strained quadriceps.

The out machine is back. Here is how Angel Berroa and Tony Pena, JR stack up after 41 games.

    YR AVG OBP SLG Fld%
TPJ 07 250 285 340 957
AB  06 238 248 331 969

Range stats are still an inexact science, but most scouts will tell you that Pena is getting to a lot more balls than Berroa would have. From an offensive standpoint, TPJ will keep the advantage as long as he keeps slapping those triples.

5/16 - Recalled 1B Ryan Shealy from his injury rehabilitation assignment and activated him from the 15-day disabled list; Optioned OF Billy Butler to Triple-A Omaha.

It’s being commented elsewhere that Billy Butler is getting the Justin Huber treatment, but I don’t think that’s fair. The team called him up because he was ready and has been upfront about the fact he rode the bench to avoid injury as soon as they knew that he would be sent down when Shealy came back.

If Reggie Sanders isn’t on the DL, I think Emil Brown is touring Triple-A facilities for some other team right now. Alex Gordon playing first base isn’t anything we want to see for an extended period of time and putting Mike Sweeney there everyday is a ruptured disc waiting to happen.

Shane Costa can fight it out with Emil for the corner outfield spot until Reggie Sanders comes back, and it won’t be the organization’s top prospect getting sporadic playing time. I imagine Butler will be back sooner rather than later and at season’s end, the average age of the Royals lineup will be sitting somewhere south of 30.

Royals Week in Review - 5/11/07

2007-05-11T15:18:00.000-07:00

Rather than try to comment upon a week that saw the Kansas City Royals get outscored 34-11, let’s just pull out some notable stats. These and many more can be found at Baseball-Reference, The Hardball Times and Fan Graphs.

Offense

Line Drive Percentage

Butler  25.9%
LaRue   25.0%
Pena    21.9%

Young Mr. Butler has been putting some good wood on the ball so far in his pro debut. Not shown is LaRue whiffing 38% of the time and Pena pounding 52% of his hits into the ground.

Plate Appearances / Outs

        PA   OUTS
DeJesus 157  102
Pena    132  101

Pena has ended his at bats with an out as many times as DeJesus in 25 fewer chances. Expect that gap to widen over the next 127 games.

BA/RISP

Teahen  407
German  375
Sweeney 367

One thing to credit Buddy Bell, he has managed to get German into 26 of the team’s 35 games this year. Esteban has responded well after missing four straight games in late April, hitting 286/423/571 in the last nine games.

HR/F

Buck  24.8%

Just thought I’d point out that 1 out of every 4 times John Buck hits the ball in the air, it goes out of the park.

OPS

Sanders 1059
Buck    930
Teahen  821
German  816

Of course, Reggie Sanders is on the disabled list and John Buck… Well…

John Buck

Dates       G  AVG OBP SLG OPS
4/2  – 4/20 14 429 529 893 1422
4/22 – 5/10 14 175 286 300 586

Since forcing Buddy Bell to make him the number one catcher, Buck has gone back to hitting like John Buck. Unfortunately, Jason LaRue is hitting like my grandmother, God rest her soul.

Sweeney

Dates       G  AVG OBP SLG OPS
4/2  – 4/20 14 229 309 292 601
4/22 – 5/10 15 296 350 537 887

It’s good to have you back, Mike.

Winning Percentage Added (WPA)

Sanders .53
Gload   .52
Teahen  .45

Over the course of the season, these are the only hitters who have a net positive effect on the outcome of games.

Pitching
WPA

Soria      .85
Meche      .81
De la Rosa .27
Ducky      .11


Soria gets high marks here because he pitches in the situations with the most leverage. Meche has been more than solid as a starter. Now, if we could only run him out there every day.

ERA

Gobble    1.35
Meche     2.15
Duckworth 2.18
Soria     2.87


With Greinke joining Duckworth in the bullpen, there may be a chance yet for the Royals to close out a few games. Of course, if Luke Hudson continues to give up five runs every two innings, Ducky and Zack G may find themselves back in the rotation.

LD% vs. K/9

Meche   14.3% 7.4
Peralta 30.6% 8.5

Gil Meche is striking people out and keeping them from hitting the ball hard when they do make contact. Joel Peralta is striking people out, and providing a rocket launcher to opposing hitters when he doesn’t.

Back next week with good news from the road.

Royals Week in Review - 5/3/07

2007-05-04T16:55:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Royals front office decided to shift attention from the poor on-field performance of the team by executing several questionable roster-management decisions this week.

The ploy seems to have worked, as nobody noticed the Royals winning two games in a row for just the second time this season as the weekend creeps upon us.

Standings
Heading into game 30, the boys in blue have put up a 10-19 record, which projects to 106 losses. Things aren’t quite that bleak, though. Over at Baseball Prospectus, they project a team’s “real” level of production based on stats that I am not nearly smart enough to understand, and they peg the Royals expected record at 13-16.

Those three wins would work out to a 73-89 record by season’s end, which is what any reasonable person should expect from a young team getting better.

Of course, the team is really 10-19 and warrants a 5% chance of making the playoffs in BP’s latest standings.

Trends
Below is another way of looking at the season, courtesy of The Hardball Times Sparkline Generator. Every up tick is a win, and those marked in red are games decided by two runs or less.

Half of the Royals games this year have been close contests, including three of six losses in a brutal mid-April stretch.

Comparables
Here is how the Royals bats match up against the rest of the American League.

   R/G  BA  OBP SLG P/PA LD% BABIP BA/RSP
KC 3.86 250 325 390 3.86 17% 305   243
AL 4.67 256 331 405 3.83 18% 291   258

After starting the season about as offensive as a litter of kittens cuddling up to a sleeping Saint Bernard, the team is catching up to the league in rate stats, although runs per game are still woefully low. The big culprit appears to be batting average with runners in scoring position.

Roster Construction
The hamstring bug caught the Kansas City Royals this week, sending first baseman Ryan Shealy and right fielder Reggie Sanders to the disabled list. Despite a glut of corner outfielders, the Royals called up top prospect Billy Butler and everyone’s favorite Cal
State Titan, Shane Costa.

Clark Fosler over at Royals Authority has a look at the teams current roster set up. He notes that with Shealy and Sanders on the disabled list alongside Octavio Dotel and Dayton Moore’s Plan for the Future, the team has a very odd configuration.

[N]o backup shortstop or backup centerfielder, three leftfielders, a utility man who can’t play defense but hits like a DH and six, soon to be eight starting pitchers.

My guess is that Costa will be asked to spell DeJesus in centerfield, or perhaps cover for Teahen if he goes over there. Emil Brown is looking more and more like the odd man out and may only get a reprieve from outright release because of Sanders torn hammy.

Oh, and Gil Meche is still earning his money.

Butler Called up from AAA

2007-05-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Royals have called up Billy Butler from Triple-A Omaha to replace Ryan Shealy, who in typical Royals fashion, was injured while trying to score in last night's game against the Angels.

Butler has been considered the best hitting prospect in the Royals system for a few years, with only his defense keeping him from a big league roster spot. Through 25 games in the Pacific Coast League, he has a 337/445/584 line with six home runs against 12 strikeouts.

A look at his splits so far this year shows that his only problem has been some bad luck on balls in play against left handers.

Justin Huber would seem to have been the most likely candidate to replace Shealy, but he is off to a very poor start in Omaha, hitting a paltry 200/294/333 so far.

Ennuipundit provided this scouting report on Butler earlier this year.

Unless this move is just to give Butler a taste of the big league life while Shealy rests his hammy, one has to believe that the kid will be given some significant playing time in the next two weeks. Hopefully, his bat in the lineup will help to spark Alex Gordon. The two combined for 44 homers and 197 RBIs with Double-A Wichita last year.

Yeah, I played a pretty good second base in pee-wee ball...

2007-05-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

I'm saving this link forever.

"Heath Once Subbed for Frank White."

Royals Week in Review - 4/27/07

2007-04-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year when it gets difficult for Kansas City Royals fans. When the tough losses start piling up and all of the pundits are proved right for predicting another miserable year for the Kauffman Faithful. When the boys in blue have lost five one run games and the training staff still can't get Octavio's oblique to oblige.

When somebody puts their fandom up for auction and scathing editorials like this get posted to the internet.

Anyway, on to the big questions from the week that was.

How Bad are They?
Here is the Royals record for each of the first four weeks of the season:

4/2  – 2-4
4/9  – 1-5
4/16 – 3-3
4/23 – 1-3

The current record of 7-15 translates to a 52-110 season. Using runs scored and allowed as a measure, the team should be at 8-14, staring down a 102 loss season, which is certainly nothing to brag about.

So far, 12 games have been decided by two runs or less, with the Royals sporting a 4-8 record in those contests.

Is Anybody Doing Well?
David DeJesus leads the team in plate appearances with a cool 100 going into tonight’s game against Seattle. With a line of 315/390/517, David is giving Buddy Bell no reason to remove him from the top spot in the lineup.

Bell has quietly increased John Buck's playing time, giving the nod to the catcher in four of the last five games. Buck leads the team in most statistical categories a month into the season.

Reggie Sanders is still playing only half of the time, despite having the second-highest on base and slugging percentages on the team. At least he's taking it like a man.

On the pitching side of things, Gill Meche has been worth his paycheck so far and Zack Greinke came back from two poor outings to put up seven scoreless innings against the Twins last night.

Brandon Duckworth has been taken out of the rotation to solidify the bullpen, which is a lot like Britney Spears using a three dollar platinum wig to distract from her new nose job. That is, effective but still a three dollar wig.

How Bad is It?
Well, the Royals are starting to lose games in creative ways, which is always a bad sign. For example, this is the play by play with two outs in the ninth inning against the White Sox on Tuesday night:

Walk
Single
Infield Single due to throwing error – One run scores
Wild Pitch – One run scores

The bats have finally started to come around, but the relief corps is desperately inadequate. If anybody besides Joakim Soria can step up (10 Ks per nine innings), then the bullpen may become less of a liability and losing fewer than 100 games may not be such a pipe dream.

Twins' Hunter Keeps Promise, Breaks Rule

2007-04-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

Minnesota Twins center fielder Torii Hunter has found himself in a little bit of hot water for making good on a promise he made to the Kansas City Royals after thier sweep of the Detroit Tigers gave the Twins a Division Title.

Hunter had four bottles of Dom Perignon delivered to the Royals clubhouse in response to some comments from Royals designated hitter Mike Sweeney before the two teams played earlier this week.

Of course, there is no opportunity for bad press that MLB will let slide by.

From ESPN.com:

[B]aseball has rules about this sort of thing.

Namely, rule 21-b, which proclaims "Any player or person connected with a Club who shall offer or give any gift or reward to a player or person connected with another Club for services rendered ... in defeating or attempting to defeat a competing Club ... shall be declared ineligible for not less than three years."

The Twins have asked the Royals to return the bottles so as to negate the "reward" from Hunter. As if losing out on the number one pick in this year's amateur draft isn't reward enough.

This will be an interesting case for the commissioner.

While it's pretty clear from this article about the Twins clinching the division last year that Hunter made the offer in jest, the offer was made.

Minnesota Twins center fielder Torii Hunter, running through their raucous clubhouse celebration Sunday afternoon, vowed to not only win the World Series but to deliver a present to his newest best friends. "Kansas City is going to get a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne from me," Hunter screamed.

Does the ghost of Joe Jackson haunt Hunter for the next three years, or will Bud Selig's better PR instincts kick in to keep this incident from exploding?

Royals Week in Review - 4/20/07

2007-04-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Royals did win a game this week, which may not sound like a lot, but means something to their loyal fan base, so I wanted to bring it up. Here's a quick look at what else happened.

The Beginning

Despite Zack Greinke's horrendous start against the Tigers, the Royals starters have a 3.55 ERA three weeks into the season, placing them square in the middle of the major league pack.

Million Dollar Gil and Zack G are leading the way, with five quality starts out of seven so far.

The Middle

Dismal Run support has been a problem. Kansas City is averaging only 3.4 runs a game and has below average numbers across the board. The best hitters have been John Buck and Reggie Sanders, two guys who are only playing in half the games.

The team leads the league in strike outs, while sitting at fourth-to-last in walks.

The End

The relief staff has kept Buddy Bell hooked on Rolaids, sporting a 5.74 ERA and blowing leads late in four games this season.

Joakim Soria has been given the closer's job until Octavio Dotel returns from the disabled list. Soria picked up his first big league win by striking out four batters over the last two innings Thursday against Detroit. On the season, Soria has 11 Ks against 4 walks in 8.3 innings of work.

The Rest

Forbes has released its latest franchise valuations, including this scathing article about David Glass hording money from revenue sharing.

The club is currently valued at $282 Million if you would like to make an offer. My guess is that with some shrewd negotiating, you can get the boys in blue for about $250M if you throw in a new black cloak for the Emperor to wear.

Craig Brown at Royals Authority shows that Mark Teahen has reverted to his old habits of taking the ball the other way. Fond followers of the fellow will recall that once he started pulling the ball more, his power numbers jumped way up last year.

Finally, Mike Sweeney knows his bat is slow, so you can stop making fun of him.

Royals Week in Review - 4/13/07

2007-04-13T14:15:00.000-07:00

Holiday travel meant a week off for the Kansas City Royals Week in Review, or KCRWIR, as I’m hoping the kids start calling it. That means this will be a season in review for the team as we prepare for week three of the young MLB season.

The Money Man

A quick recap: One earned run against Boston on opening day. Dayton Moore is a genius! Gil Meche is the greatest steal of the off season! Wait… 6 runs in seven innings against Toronto. Meche sucks! This is the worst contract ever – an albatross that will surely sink the Royals for good. Hold on… five Ks and no runs against Baltimore yesterday. Hmm… maybe Meche is a good pitcher.

All of the praise and panic aside, Meche has a 3.10 ERA with a 3.75/1 strikeout to walk ratio after three starts.

The KC Star is running a great feature now called the Meche Meter.

It basically assigns a dollar value to certain counting stats Meche puts up in each start. It may not be the most sabermetrically sound method of measuring a pitcher, but it’s not a bad way to look at the results a major league starter should be expected to post.

The Saviors

The nicest surprise so far has been the pitching of Zach Greinke. In two starts he has 12 strikeouts and only one walk to go with a 1.38 ERA. Any stats from so early in the season are to be taken with a grain of salt, but young ZG looks good so far.

Of course, the other future star hasn’t had it so great. Alex Gordon, he of the golden locks and the level swing, has managed just two singles and a home run so far, while striking out in a third of his plate appearances.

At the moment, the media vultures seem to be giving AG a chance to find his footing, but don't be surprised if talks of shipping him to Omaha start up if he has a bad weekend. (My money is on Flannigan firing the first shot)

Having watched most of the games so far, Gordon doesn’t look completely overmatched to me. He’s averaging 4.08 pitchers per plate appearance and at least making pitchers work to strike him out.

The Rest

It’s starting to look like those 15 strikeouts in Spring Training are all that Royals fans will get to see from Octavio Dotel for a while.

In sad news for Greinke, both of his maternal grandparents passed away. He expects to be back with the team for his scheduled start this Sunday.

Joakim Soria’s six Ks in six innings have garnered him a shot at the closers role.

Standings

Ten games into the season, the Kansas City Royals are at 3-7, last in the American League Central, 3.5 games back of Detroit and Minnesota.

A look at the sparkline for the season so far (thank you THT) shows that three losses have been by only one run, so there is no reason to sell all of your Jimmy Gobble memorabilia on eBay just yet.

Currently, Baseball Prospectus gives the team a 1.18% chance at making the playoffs based on their current record and projected results.

This is compared to the no chance that most people gave the team at the start of the season. The pitching has been league average so far. It’s time for the offense to step up.

Suck It, Sox! - BOS 1, KC 7

2007-04-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

Look, I don't know what river the Red Sox pulled Manny Ramirez out of before the game, but it didn't matter. Shilling looked terrible and Gil Meche looked like a legitimate major league pitcher today.

Tony Pena, Jr. will probably never hit another triple in the major leagues, but I think the core of the Royals line up can be reasonably expected to have more games like today’s than not.

Grudzielanek, Teahen and Sweeney all had hits in the heart of the order. DeJesus was just off and put up an 0-fer, but John Buck decided to pretend it was September and jacked a home run to the deepest part of Kaufman Stadium.

Defensively, the Royals threw out two Red Sox trying to advance, both by wide margins, which says more about the Red Sox on the base paths than the Royals in the field, but I'll take it.

All in all, a good day for the team and the beleaguered fans.

For one day, the Royals are tied for first in the American League Central, and the literati can shut up about Gil Meche and his millions of dollars.

Royals Week in Review - 3/30/07

2007-03-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

A look back at the week that was for the Kansas City Royals.

Roster Decisions

The opening day roster has been set. These are the twenty-five men Kansas City will take into battle against the Red Sox on Monday.

Rotation (5): Jorge De La Rosa, Brandon Duckworth, Zack Greinke, Gil Meche, and Odalis Perez

The great news here is that Zach Grienke came out of camp with his head screwed on straight and slotted in as the #3 Starter.

This spring, he’s been striking out over a batter an inning. My prediction is that Zach will be the #1 stopper by the end of the season. If Meche and Perez can keep their ERAs in the fours, then it gives the Royals three legitimate starters (not superstars, mind you, but quality guys).

Of course, anybody with a rudimentary understanding of baseball statistics can tell you that the days De La Rosa and Duckworth take the mound will be long ones for the KC bullpen. How quickly the farm system can develop solid starters to fill in the back of the rotation will dictate how long it takes for the Royals to truly be a competitive team.

Bullpen (7): Ryan Braun, Octavio Dotel, Jimmy Gobble, Joel Peralta, David Riske, Joakim Soria and Todd Wellemeyer

Dotel got roughed up near the end of Spring Training, but has been throwing bullets since he got to Arizona. I think the days of him putting up a 231 ERA+ are over, but he should be a solid player at the end of games.

The rest of the pen is a mish-mash of average to better-than-okay-but-not-great guys. The wild card is Soria, who has the potential to be the next Johan Santana of Rule 5 picks.

Catcher (2): John Buck and Jason LaRue

Mediocrity took on mediocrity and in the end, it was a battle that neither could win.

The good news is that both backstops have played well enough to be named the starter. Ideally, you’d like to see the younger Buck given a chance to blossom, but if a platoon arrangement keeps both players healthy and productive, it will be hard to complain.

Infield (6): Esteban German, Alex Gordon, Mark Grudzielanek, Tony Peña Jr., Ryan Shealy and Mike Sweeney

While the younger Peña gets his chance to check out the Kansas City MILF scene, perennial underachiever Angel Berroa has finally been sent to AAA.

This quote from Joe Posnanski’s terrific blog pretty much says it all about Berroa. Joe is quoting an anonymous scout:

“He’s awful. Horrible. I wouldn’t have him as a backup. … He still can’t recognize a slider, and he’s so spooked by that he will just watch fastballs go right down the middle of the plate. He has lost about three steps too.”

Outfield (5): Emil Brown, David DeJesus, Ross Gload, Reggie Sanders and Mark Teahen

Speedster Joey Gathright is the loser here, as the Royals have been unable to find any takers for Reggie Sanders, despite a professed willingness to eat most of his contract.

I feel a little bad for Sanders, because I think he can still be a productive major league player if he stays healthy. Unfortunately, he’s just too old for a team like the Royals to justify playing him over younger guys.

A quick story about Sanders from my trip to Surprise this spring:

Mark Teahen was starting the game in centerfield, with Sanders manning right. When somebody for the Diamondbacks hit a towering fly ball to deep center, Sanders ran over and began shouting directions to Teahen.

“BACK BACK BACK… okay, come in a little bit. You got it. You got it!”

Sanders was helpful and encouraging to the very person who was taking his job away. It doesn't say much about his ability to hit a chest-high fastball, but it says a lot about his character.

Postseason Odds

So, what does this group get us? Baseball Prospectus has published their first Postseason Odds report, based on projected stats and playing time of all major league teams. After running the simulations, the Royals Currently have a 3% chance of making the post season.

The End of Spring Training

The Royals will take on the Astros in Houston for something called the Wal-Mart Cup this weekend.

They finished Cactus League play at 11-16, though the team was second in hitting.

Ross Gload led the regulars with a 1.126 OPS. Billy Butler hit 419/514/774 and is set to terrorize pitchers in the Pacific Coast League until the outfield situation clears up.

Ryan Braun pitched his way onto the roster by only giving up 2 runs in 9.2 innings. Zach Grienke had the best ERA among starters at 3.32.

Now, it is time to put all of those numbers away and play some games that really matter. The Royals will take on the Red Sox in Kansas City at 4:10 p.m. EST on Monday, April 2nd.

Play ball!

One More Arm for Omaha

2007-03-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Royals traded minor league catcher Maxim St. Pierre to the Milwaukee Brewers for right-handed pitcher Ben Hendrickson today.

Despite having a kick-ass name, St. Pierre was one of a bevy of backup catchers clogging the Royals minor league system.

Of course, any trade that doesn’t involve the names Emil Brown or Reggie Sanders isn’t likely to make Royals fans happy in the near future, but for now, let’s take a look at what they got.

Ben Hendrickson has been working his way up through the Brewers farm system since 2000. A few brief stints with the big league club in ’04 and last year haven’t gone so well for young Ben, but in the minors, his numbers look solid if unspectacular.

His best talent seems to be avoiding the long ball, giving up only 0.57 home runs per nine innings over his minor-league career. He appeared to wear down over the course of the season last year, his key stats rising with each passing month until September, when every batter he faced looked like Roy Hobbs swinging a magical wood bat.

Hendrickson will start out the season with AAA Omaha, but he looks like another young arm that general manager Dayton Moore is stockpiling for when Jorge De La Rosa continues pitching like he did today.

Royals Week in Review - 3/23/07

2007-03-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

A look back at the week that was for the Kansas City Royals.

Notable Stats

Record: 9-12
Spring training records have little to no correlation for the regular season, but it’s worth noting that the Royals current pace would give them a 69-93 record over 162 games.

OPS:
Butler 1.288 (37 Plate Appearances)
Gload 1.257 (40 PA)
LaRue 1.233 (26 PA)

Billy Butler has been hitting in the last half of most games this spring, which means that production has come against mostly minor-league competition. Still, the boy can hit.

Ross Gload has been getting starts and looks like a lock to keep Justin Huber from getting out of Omaha this year, while Jason LaRue appears to have found his stroke this spring. John Buck is not far behind, but LaRue has proven he can hit in the big leages… Johnny Boy? Not so much.

ERA:
Dotel 0.00 (6 Innings Pitched)
Soria 2.57 (14 IP)
Grienke 3.86 (14 IP)

Assuming he doesn’t wet his pants when a game that means something is on the line, it looks like the Royals may have found a bullpen solution with Dotel.

With Luke Hudson heading to the DL and Brian Bannister sucking in his last two starts, both Zach Grienke and Joakim Soria may begin the season in the starting rotation. Grienke is still giving up the long ball on occasion, but both of the young pitchers are striking out a batter an inning, which is a welcome sight.

Position Battles
Angel Berroa may have finally worn out his welcome with the big club. He has put up a 263/300/342 line this spring, mirroring his career stats, which are terrible.

BREAKING NEWS:The Royals just picked up Toney Pena Jr. from the Atlanta Braves.

Pena is a good fielding shortstop who doesn’t get on base much and doesn’t hit for any power. His best OPS in the minors was 671. Basically, the Royals have just replaced Angel Berroa with Angel Berroa.

At catcher, both John Buck and Jason LaRue have made good cases for themselves at the plate. I wouldn’t be surprised to see LaRue get the opening day nod over Buck due to his experience, but my guess is they will split time evenly this season.

In other shocking news, Alex Gordon was named the starter at third base, beating out the ghost of George Brett and Phil Hiatt’s flash in the pan.

2007 Predictions
Nearly everybody is predicting the Royals to finish dead last in the American League central with between 92 and 97 losses.

The Hardball Times puts them at 67-95, one game back of Tampa Bay for the worst record in the league.

Arm Chair GM has them at 70-92.

Replacement Level Yankees ran four projection systems through the Diamond Mind simulator to get these results.

CHONE: 64-98
Diamond Mind: 65-97
PECOTA: 66-96
ZIPS: 65-97

This comment puts it bluntly: “[In 4000 simulations, the] Royals are the only team who failed to make the postseason at least once.”

BoDog.com puts the team at 85/1 odds to win the world series.

Place your bets now.

Pine Tar Videos

2007-03-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

This Video Dog post from Salon.com collects a couple of different videos about the famed George Brett "Pine Tar" Incident from 1983.

A few brief comments.

1.) God, I love You Tube.

2.) I'd never seen the entire sequence like this before. It really is funny to watch. Could the two announcers have been any bigger homers for the Yankees?

3.) Rick Dempsey as George Brett. This Rick Dempsey. High-larious.

4.) I feel like a 7-Up.

23 days 'til Opening Day!

Royals Week in Review - 3/9/07

2007-03-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

A look back at the week that was for the Kansas City Royals.

Grudzie Goes Gimp

The Esteban German experiment at Short took a break this week when Mark Grudzielanek went down with torn cartilage in his left knee. German will take over the starting job at second base until the gold glover is ready to return, which according to reports is anytime between next Thursday and 2009.

Leaving defense aside, German projects as a much better choice at second than Grudzielanek. Last season, he was worth three more runs a game, according the classic formula developed by Bill James.

Of course, German was worth 5.5 more runs than Angel Berroa, who is thus far having a decent spring.

Other Injuries

Joe Nelson has injured his labrum again. Similar injuries kept Nelson from becoming a major league regular in the past. As noted here, Nelson faded badly in the second half for Kansas City last year after pitching brilliantly at the start of the season. The competition for bullpen roles is a lot tighter this year, though, so Joe may find himself hanging out in Omaha for a long time if he makes it back from this latest surgery.

Position Battles

Spring statistics are about as useful to us as J. Howard Marshall’s money is to Anna Nicole Smith, but like Smith, they are fun to look at sometimes.

Player AVG OBP SLG
Buck   600 750 1400
LaRue  400 400 1300

Jason LaRue has shown some nice power in his first healthy Spring Training since knee surgery last year. John Buck has been taking a few walks.

Both players look like locks to make the opening day roster and we may see Buddy Bell use his catchers in tandem like NFL teams are starting to use running backs.

Player AVG OBP SLG
Butler 667 714 1083
Gordon 353 450  588

Billy Butler is treating baseballs like Ron Artest treats his women. Unfortunately, he’s doing so at the plate and in the field.

Alex Gordon looks more like the real deal every day.

Player AVG OBP SLG
Berroa 333 375 533
Blanco 467 467 667

Neither shortstop has taken a walk this spring, though Berroa has been plunked already.

Craig Biggio has made a pretty good career for himself getting on base via the ol’ HBP. Of course, he also hits for power, fields at an adequate level and has that cool tar stain on his helmet.

Other News

Garth Sears rounds up a who’s who of Royals baseball writers for a discussion at Baseball Think Factory.

Bob Dutton discusses options, and reminds us all that crappy players will always make the team so that they don’t go stink it up for some other franchise.

Royals Week in Review - 3/2/07

2007-03-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

A look back at the week that was for the Kansas City Royals.

Games!
It’s been five cold months since the Kansas City Royals gave up the first pick in the 2007 draft by winning the last game of the season in Detroit. Finally back on the diamond, the Spring Training schedule started with a loss to the Angels and a win over Texas.

We won’t get into much heavy analysis over a couple of exhibition games; especially since ten players who weren’t even good enough to get profiled in the Spring Training Preview series took the field.

In the first game alone, 18 different players had at bats, and seven pitchers were used.

Of note: Mark Teahen started in right field for the Royals, allowing Alex Gordon to fight for the starting spot at third base in the same way President Bush had to fight his way into Yale.

Top Prospects
Baseball America released their 2007 Top 100 Prospects list on Wednesday. The Royals placed three players on the list, with Alex Gordon landing the number two spot behind Daisuke Matsuzaka, the shiny new Japanese pitcher the Red Sox plunked down $100 million to get in the off season.

Here's how they ranked:

2. ALEX GORDON, 3b, Royals
College Player of the Year in 2005, Minor League Player of the Year in 2006 . . . Rookie of the Year in 2007

25 BILLY BUTLER, of, Royals
His bat will have to carry him, but it can--he's a career .344/.417/.564 hitter in pro ball

32 LUKE HOCHEVAR, rhp, Royals
After a celebrated holdout, he improved his stock in indy ball and went first in the '06 draft

The Rockies and Devil Rays had 8 and 7 players on the list, respectively, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Dayton Moore is talking up the fresh mountain air or the booming real estate market in Florida to Reggie Sanders.

Other News
Jorge De La Rosa has the inside track on the #4 spot in the rotation. His 3.33 ERA in the last month of the season made an impression on manager Buddy Bell.

Mike Sweeney won’t be allowed to visit Tucson this spring. Fans of the Diamondbacks, Rockies and White Sox must be disappointed, but it’s their own fault for always trying to get horsey-rides from the major leaguers who come into town.

Finally, the players are all a bunch of ninnies when it comes to wearing synthetic polyester hats.

"Who are These Guys?" 2007 - Relief Pitchers

2007-02-23T15:58:00.000-08:00

Previous Installments: C - 1B/DH - 2B/SS - 3B - OF - SP

And here we are. The end of the line for the Kansas City Royals Spring Training Preview series. It’s fitting, then, that today we look at the men who will be tasked with finishing the games.

Last year, the Royals were abysmal in the final innings.

Rk Tm  Save%
1  MIN 80.00
2  LAD 79.37
3  DET 74.19
League 65.88
29 KC  53.03
30 CLE 51.06

Kansas City blew 31 saves in 2006, more than any other team in baseball.

If the team had been able to convert saves at the league average rate, they would have added another eight wins, and while that still would have left them well out of the playoff chase, it would also have kept every single team preview this year from leading off with the “KC has lost 100 games or more in four of the last five years” stat.

Granted, it’s a moral victory, but one worth achieving.

Since these guys don’t play as many innings in a game (and since there are so damn many of them), they get shorter player profiles.

Octavio Dotel
0-0, 10.80, 2.90
ERA+ 41

Don’t let the stat line scare you. Those numbers were compiled over just ten innings last season. Dotel has only thrown 25.3 innings in the major leagues the last two seasons due to injury (that is the stat that should scare you).

Throwing out last year, Dotel hasn’t had an ERA+ lower than 123 since 2000. If he’s truly mended, he should be a stable force at the end of ball games this year.

Todd Wellemeyer
1-4, 4.14, 1.51
ERA+ 114

Wellemeyer put up a 3.63 ERA in 57 innings after the Royals picked him up off of waivers last year. He’s always had strong strike-out-to-walk ratios in the minors, but that has yet to translate to the major league level.

If he can give away a few less free passes this season, he will have been a steal for Dayton Moore.

Joakim Soria
n/a

After the Royals made Soria the second pick in the Rule V draft this off season, he responded by pitching a perfect game in the Mexican Pacific League.

Solid stats are hard to come by for Soria, who has spent most of his time on the disabled list or pitching in the MPL, but according to this Wikipedia entry, he was 9-0 with a 1.77 ERA in 11 starts last season, striking out over a man an inning.

Jimmy Gobble
4-6, 5.14, 1.48
ERA+ 94

Gobble has always been a finesse pitcher with decent control. Last year, he led the team in strikeouts, a stat that probably says more about the Royals than himself.

He also led the team in wild fluctuations in performance month to month.

Mth  G   ERA
Apr  10  6.75
May   9  3.00
Jun  12  2.25
Jul   5  6.85 (5 starts)
Aug  12  1.64
Sep  12 12.00

Only turning 25 this season, Gobble still has a chance to decide who he wants to be... the ace from August, or the September schmuck.

Joel Peralta
1-3, 4.40, 1.24
ERA+ 110

Peralta spent a long time in the Angels farm system, putting up good K/BB ratios and decent ERAs. Unfortunately for him, the Angels have been loaded with talent in their relief corps, so he was waived and picked up by the Royals.

He was solid if unspectacular with the team last year and is one of many arms that will have a shot at a set up role going into this season.

Ryan Braun
0-1, 6.75, 1.50
ERA+ 72

A high strike out guy, Braun was moving up through the Royals farm system nicely until he lost 2005 to injury. Last season, he put up ERAs of 2.21 in AA and 2.16 in AAA.

The numbers above are from his cup of coffee call up in September last year and are skewed by a particularly bad outing against Detroit.

Ken Ray
1-1, 4.52, 1.54
ERA+ 97

Does that name sound familiar, Royals fans? It’s because Ray pitched 11.3 innings for the team in 1999.

Since that time, he’s bounced around the minors as organizational filler for the Giants, Brewers, White Sox and Braves.

Dayton Moore has brought him to Kansas City because he saw something he liked in Ray while he was with the Atlanta organization.

Leo Nunez
0-0, 4.72, 1.50
ERA+ 102

Nunez was jumped from AA to the big league club in 2005 after showing a few flashes of brilliance for the Wichita Wranglers. Those flashes turned out to be the “in a pan” kind and he struggled with the Royals that year.

Last season, he came up briefly in the summer, posted some promising stats, and spent the rest of the year progressing from AA to AAA, where he posted a 2.13 ERA in 38 innings with Omaha.

Turning 24 this season, Nunez still has a chance to grow into a fine MLB pitcher.

John Bale
n/a

A solid pitcher in the minors for several organizations, Bale could never make his big league opportunities stick and wound up pitching in Japan the past three years.

His walk rates have been declining along with his ERAs while in Japan, so he may have finally figured something out in the Far East.

David Riske
1-2, 3.89, 1.30
ERA+ 120

A solid relief pitcher, Riske was signed in the off season to give the Royals at least two guys in the bullpen with proven major league success (Dotel being the other).

He pitched 3.7 innings of scoreless baseball in the 2001 postseason while with Cleveland, so he’s got way better clutch stats than A-Rod if the team can make it past the regular season.

Joe Nelson
1-1, 4.43, 1.37
ERA+ 109

Another one of those guys who was on track to become an MLB regular until injuries derailed him in 2000 and 2003.

Last year was the first time Nelson saw sufficient action at the major league level. After a strong start to the season (1.11 ERA in his first 22 games), he tired towards the end of the year, posting an ERA of 8.41 in his last 21 appearances.

The feast or famine nature of Nelson’s season pretty much sums up the entire Royals squad going into camp this year. Every player on the roster has had moments in their career in which they looked like a superstar on the verge of breaking out, and most of them have had soul-crushing reality checks.

Over the next month and a half, Buddy Bell and his staff will need to do their best at sorting out the true talents of each player and assembling a team that can produce results, not just hope for them.

Denny Matthews to Enter Hall of Fame

2007-02-22T13:27:00.000-08:00

Fantastic news for Kansas City Royals fans today: Denny Matthews has been announced as the winner of the Ford C. Frick Award by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

From the Royals website:

Matthews has been with the Royals since the franchise's inception as an American League expansion team in 1969. He initially won the job after beating out more than 250 applicants for the No. 2 announcing position alongside veteran Bud Blattner.

I first started listening to Matthews calling Royals games when I was mowing the lawn as a kid. When I moved to Los Angeles seven years ago, I began listening to the Royals games over the internet and really discovered what a great play by play man he is.

Here are my two favorite Denny moments:

1.) During a Royals-Rangers game, the announcers were discussing Nolan Ryan and his accomplishments as a player. They talked about the strike outs and the no hitters and then Matthews finally chimed in that his favorite moment was when Robin Ventura charged the mound and Ryan put him in a headlock and basically showed him who the boss was.

Matthews doesn't sugar coat things. That's everybody's favorite memory of Nolan Ryan and he didn't pretend otherwise.

2.) During the magical run towards respectability in 2003, the Royals were about to lose to the Seattle Mariners in the second game since coming back from the All Star Break. Mike MacDougal had come in to save a 3-1 lead in the ninth inning, but walked a few batters, gave up a few singles and was facing Ichiro Suzuki with the bases loaded.

Ichiro drove the ball to right field and Matthews started yelling, "Come on wind! Come on wind!"

It was a grand slam and the Royals lost the game.

Matthews is most often criticized for not showing enough emotion during a game. To me, this is his greatest quality. Routine grounders are treated like routine grounders. Likewise with lazy fly balls and singles over the second base bag.

When it really counts, Denny's voice will rise, and he will shout at the wind to help his team win, just like a great flagship announcer should.

Congratulations, Denny. You belong in Cooperstown.

"Who are These Guys?" 2007 - Starting Pitchers

2007-02-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

Previous Installments: C - 1B/DH - 2B/SS - 3B - OF

The Kansas City Royals have done more than just remodel the pitching staff in the last year. General Manager Dayton Moore has basically demolished the whole thing and started over with his own guys.

Three of the top five starting pitchers on the current depth chart weren’t with the team coming out of camp last year and the other two spent significant time in the minor leagues.

Like with the hitters, the player’s name will link to their career stats page, and I will list the 2006 won-loss record, ERA, WHIP and ERA+ for each.

Gil Meche
11-8/4.48/1.43
ERA+ 97

Meche is going to make a lot of money over the next five years and everybody is going to make fun of the Royals for it.

His career comparables through age 27 include guys like Jason Marquis, Chris Carpenter and Jason Schmidt – sort of a mixed bag of results.

He did see a significant spike in his strikeout rate last season, and Lord knows the Royals could use a few more pitchers who know how to miss bats.

Year K/9
2003 6.28
2004 6.98
2005 5.21
2006 7.52

Meche was on his way to becoming a superstar before injuries derailed him in the early part of the century. Since coming back to the big leagues in 2003, he has been consistently almost average.

That kind of performance may be worth $11 million a year in baseball today.

Odalis Perez
6-8/6.20/1.58
ERA+ 76

In 2002, the Atlanta Braves included Perez in a trade with the Dodgers in order to get Gary Sheffield so they could win another division title.

Perez responded by putting up ERA+ of 126, 87 and 127 over the next three years. The Dodgers then signed him to a $24 million contract and he proceeded to stink up the joint, act all disgruntled and get himself traded to the Royals.

Take that, Odalis.

The Royals are only on the hook for about $5 million of Perez’s remaining contract, and he showed signs of life pitching for the team in the second half of last season.

Luke Hudson
7-6/5.12/1.44
ERA+ 95

After a middling career bouncing between the minors and the majors with the Colorado and Cincinnati organizations, Hudson joined the Royals in Spring Training last year and left Arizona with a big league job.

After putting up an 8.74 ERA in the first month of the season, he was sent down to Omaha. I’m guessing he dined on some of the finest steaks America has to offer for the next two months. I’m not really sure.

He did acquit himself nicely when returning to the Royals at the end of June, going 7-3 with a 4.67 ERA to finish out the season.

Jorge de la Rosa
5-6/6.49/1.71
ERA+ 72

De la Rosa was another one of Dayton Moore’s mid season pickups. I think you can learn a lot about a player by looking at who he was traded for in his career.

For example, in a three day period near the end of 2003, Jorge was one in a group of players exchanged by the Red Sox to get Curt Schilling and then the Diamondbacks to get Richie Sexon.

By July 25, 2006, the Royals were able to get him straight up for Tony Graffanino.

He does have a very pretty name, though.

Zach Greinke
1-0/4.26/1.58
ERA+ 114

Excuse me for breaking out the Gnarls Barkley...

“Maybe I’m cra-zay... maybe I’m cra-zay...”

Greinke was a coveted prospect coming out of high school and did well in his first full season of minor league ball. At 20, he cracked the Royals starting rotation and was named the team’s pitcher of the year in 2004.

2005 was a down year and then he left spring training before last season to attend to personal issues. Those personal issues are still a mystery to most, but the Royals seem to have handled the situation well, as Zach is back in camp this year, throwing easy and apparently having a good time.

Mental make up is a hard thing to measure, but Greinke was pegged with Cy Young potential early in his career. If he can stay focused enough to take the mound every fifth day, the Royals may still have a solid, above average starter in the quirky kid from Florida.

"Who are These Guys?" 2007 - Outfield

2007-02-16T17:20:00.000-08:00

Previous Installments: C - 1B/DH - 2B/SS - 3B

How old can an outfield be? The San Francisco Giants trotted out a creaky-kneed trio aged 39, 41 and 41 last season and lost 85 games.

This year, the Kansas City Royals might feature a 39 year old veteran roaming the grass at Kauffman Stadium along side a 25 year old converted third baseman.

A couple of twenty-something speedsters could provide great defense one day, while men who will never get closer to a Gold Glove than Mark Grudzielanek’s locker could be chasing down doubles the next.

Playing time at first and third base will come at a premium this season, with the gentlemen below feeling the squeeze.

David DeJesus
295/364/446
OPS+ 103

Generally speaking, baseball players improve over their first few years in the league, peak at age 27 and slowly decline after that.

Here is how DeJesus has tracked since becoming a full time player in 2004.

Year Age Games AVG OBP SLG
2004 24  96    287 360 402
2005 25  122   293 359 445
2006 26  119   295 364 446

Last March, he signed an extension through his age 30 season in 2010 for an average of $2.76 million per year. If he can manage to stay injury free and make the leap in production many expect this season, the Royals will have made a very good deal.

Assuming Buddy Bell doesn’t take any blows to the head this Spring, David will be leading off for the Royals on April 2nd. He’s had some pop in the one hole, hitting six home runs to lead off a game in his career.

Last year, DeJesus was moved to left field when Joey Gathright came over from the Devil Rays.

According the research done by John Walsh at The Hardball Times, DeJesus was one of the best defensive outfielders in both center and left field in 2006.

Emil Brown
287/358/457
OPS+ 104

Emil Brown was not one of the better defensive outfielders in 2006 or any year for that matter.

However, he has managed to carve out a nice career for himself after toiling away in the minors for many years.

If Mark Teahen gets moved to the outfield to make room for third base prospect Alex Gordon, then Brown could find himself in the thick of a mean battle for the remaining corner outfield spot.

Reggie Sanders
246/304/425
OPS+ 81

The other highly-paid option to man right field, Sanders has always been an above average hitter, and a bit of a nomad.

Since leaving Cincinnati in 1998, he has never signed more than a one or two year deal with any team.

While Sanders has managed to put up highly productive seasons despite being on the wrong side of the age curve, the following trend is of concern:

39 year olds who aren’t pitchers don’t have much history contributing at the major league level.

A highly comparable player to Sanders is Ron Gant (who the Royals could have had once).

Gant also bounced around at the end of his career, put up his last useful season at 37 and saw injuries end his career.

Joey Gathright
262/332/328
OPS+ 68

Yes, the batting line is atrocious, but he is fast, or so I’m told whenever I see his name mentioned in any story ever written about him.

Gathwright hit for average and got on base at a respectable clip in the minors (315/391/360 in five seasons), but has yet to see that translate in the bigs. He will never be a power hitter, but if he can start getting on base and stealing at a 75% clip, he will be a valuable fourth outfielder.

Shane Costa
274/304/405
OPS+ 77

Costa beat out Aaron Guiel for the fourth outfielder spot out of spring training last year, and I was none to happy about it.

Costa is another player who put up good but not great numbers in the minors. After being sent down last season, he put up his best line yet going 342/398/593 in 52 games with Omaha, bouncing back and forth with the big club all year.

He’s a Cal State Fullerton Titan, so my wife likes him; though she hates baseball, so I don’t think Shane is gleaning much positive karma from his time in southern California.

Pitcher previews next week.

"Who are These Guys?" 2007 - 3B

2007-02-15T17:17:00.000-08:00

Previous Installments: C - 1B/DH - 2B/SS

A quick look at all of the Hall of Famers who have played for the Kansas City Royals will leave you with two lingering thoughts:

1.) Orlando Cepeda and Harmon Killebrew played for the Royals? Really?

2.) Thank God for George Brett.

With a breakout performer and a sure-fire prospect competing for a spot on the hot corner, this may be the most interesting position battle since Ken Harvey and Calvin Pickering went head-to-head over the buffet table in 2005.

Mark Teahen
290/357/517
OPS+ 117

Perhaps the last great thing Allard Baird did as general manager of the Kansas City Royals was send Mark Teahen down to Omaha after his horrid start to the 2006 season.

Team AVG  OBP  SLG
KC   195  241  351
OMA  380  500  658
KC   313  384  557

Faced with fading away or fighting back, Teahen did the latter. He got angry at our little white friends with the red stitching and began thumping whenever one came across the plate.

Dayton Moore brought Teahen back up to the big league team to see if his hot streak would hold, and it did until a labrum tear ended his season in early September.

What remains to be seen is how the shoulder surgery will affect Teahen’s ability to progress this season. Mark is already a candidate to decline – his minor league stats show a lot of patience, but not as much power.

With a log jam in the outfield and golden boy Alex Gordon standing on third base in the minors, Teahen cannot afford to have another April like last year.

Alex Gordon
325/427/588 (AA)

Ahh, the golden child.

Gordon has pretty much raked the ball as far back as the stats go.

Check out his splits while at Wichita last year and you’ll see that the only time he didn’t really produce was in twelve at bats as a first baseman. (Note to the Royals, Alex Gordon is NOT a first baseman)

Most observers assume that Gordon will be the starting third baseman coming out of Spring Training, forcing Mark Teahen to the outfield.

Ideally, the two players will push each other to greatness and force the Royals to trade away some of the excess baggage in the outfield.

Realistically, the 23 year old Gordon will have a few struggles against his first taste of MLB quality competition. How few are up for debate.

        2007 Projections
        AVG OBP SLG OPS AB
PECOTA  282 364 511 875 541
ZIPS    275 361 473 834 491
CHONE   273 353 465 818 485

A 21 year old George Brett put up a 282/312/363 line in 457 at bats in his first major league season and finished second in the MVP voting at age 23.

Can the chosen one keep up?

"Who are These Guys?" 2007 - 2B/SS

2007-02-15T09:42:00.000-08:00

Previous Installments: C / 1B/DH

The Kansas City Royals have had five different leaders in games played at second base in the last five years, and only one guy manning the other side of the bag (forgive me if I pretend the Neifi Perez year never happened.).

Yes, it has been a long time since Frank White was racking up Gold Gloves in the powder blue, but last year saw the Royals get a nice trophy and nearly-adequate production from their second sacker.

Angel Berroa continued to suck wind, but we'll get to him in a second.

Mark Grudzielanek
297/331/409
OPS+ 85

If Grudzielanek doesn’t put up a 295/330/400 line with solid defense this year, then something has probably gone horribly wrong with the space/time continuum and we’ll all have bigger things to worry about than baseball.

A contact hitter, Grudzie doesn’t walk much, strike out much or really do much of anything except put the ball in play.

See these nifty charts from Fan Graphs, if you want the proof.

With a good defensive reputation, the Royals had Grudzielanek move over to shortstop at the end of four games last year. He hasn’t played the position regularly since 2000, but I wonder if he won’t see a little more time over there this season if Angel Berroa can’t get his act together.

Angel Berroa
234/259/333
OPS+ 48

Excuse me for a minute while I shake my head and sigh. Those ugly numbers you see were produced over 500 plate appearances in 132 games last year.

By the end of the season, the Royals were regularly pinch-hitting for Berroa at the end of close games, which was a good idea because his lifetime OPS in the ninth inning is .504. (He hits like Babe Ruth in extra innings, but that is more a product of small sample size than actual clutch talent)

The team is on the hook for another $8.5 million, but it appears Dayton Moore has the flexibility to consider those sunk costs if Berroa doesn’t show improvement early in the season.

Estaban German
326/422/459
OPS+ 122

Aside from getting hit in the face by what most observers considered a routine fly ball, German exceeded every reasonable expectation for the Royals last season.

With a strong history of getting on base in the minors, German led the team with a .422 OBP in 2006.

At 28, German is too old to be considered a prospect anymore, and one would guess that his production will slip after a career year, but he appears to be a solid back up for Grudzilanek.

In my perfect world, German would be moved to the other side of the bag and take over for Angel Berroa at short stop, providing patience and power and probably a few more errors. General Manager Dayton Moore has hinted at this possibility in recent radio interviews.

"Who are These Guys?" 2007 - 1B/DH

2007-02-13T17:26:00.000-08:00

As the march toward daylight savings time continues, we continue our look at the players who will be competing for spots on the Kansas City Royals opening day roster.

Previous profiles: Catchers

Since 2003, the likes of Ken Harvey, Matt Stairs and Doug Mientkiewicz have all spent time chasing down Angel Berroa's errant throws and subbing for Mike Sweeney. Who will be the lucky contenders for that role this year?

Mike Sweeney
258/349/438
OPS+ 97

Any discussion about the Royals 1B/DH situation begins and ends with Mike Sweeney.

When healthy, he has easily been the most productive hitter on the team over the last eight years. Of course, even the casual observer can tell you that Sweeney has hardly been healthy since he became the highest-paid player in team history.

Just to recap: While Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye and Carlos Beltran found riches elsewhere, Sweeney signed what many agreed was a good deal for the Royals in 2002.

His numbers since the signing:

Year  Games  OPS+
2003  108    115
2004  106    123
2005  122    127
2006   60     97

Sweeney will be 33 this season. His offensive numbers should rebound from last year, but he is definitely entering the decline phase of his career. He will be the designated hitter whenever his back is up to it; when it isn’t, the remaining names on this list will be vying for his time in the lineup.

Ryan Shealy
277/333/450
OPS+ 95

Shealy came to the Royals last year as part of a mid-season trade that sent pitchers Jeremy Affeldt and Denny Bautista to Colorado to breathe the mountain air and search for their lost potential.

A strong performer in the Rockies farm system, Shealy was stuck waiting for Todd Helton to catch Mike Sweeney’s back virus so he could have a shot at playing time in the major leagues.

After a short adjustment period, Shealy really started raking for the Royals in the final months of the season.

Dates    AVG  OBP  SLG  OPS
8/01–15  255  328  309   637
8/15-31  339  371  525   896
9/01-15  333  393  686 1.079
9/15-24  107  194  143   337

His last week was marred by illness and he was benched permanently with a case of hives to end the season.

Assuming the mystery hives don't come back with a vengeance, Shealy should have a lock on the first base job coming out of spring training.

Ross Gload
327/354/462
OPS+ 107

Another off season pick up for the Royals, Gload gives the franchise four of the top-eight finishers for Rookie of the Year voting in 2004.

I haven’t decided yet whether this is a good or a bad thing.

In the minors, Gload has always hit for average and power. In two full seasons in the major leagues, he lost a little power, but still managed to keep his batting average up.

As a role-player backing up first base and the outfield, there is really nothing wrong with Gload. However...

    Gload    Player X
Age Lev OPS  Lev    OPS
19    N/A    RK     943
20    N/A    A      878
21  A   712  A/AA   830
22  A   865  AA     901
23  A   793  AA/AAA 953
24  AA  827  AAA    838
25  AAA 845
26  AAA 852
27  AAA 873
28  MLB 854
29  AAA 1073
30  MLB 816

Wow! Who’s that wonderful Player X that showed he could handle professional baseball at such a scorching pace? I sure wish my team would give him a shot at a big league job!

Justin Huber
200/273/300
OPS+ 45

By age 22, Justin Huber looked like he was capable of taking Mike Piazza’s place as the best-hitting catcher in all of baseball. (He's Player X, by the way.)

A trade to the Royals, a knee injury and two years later, Huber has become another player lost in the logjam at 1B/DH.

If he can bounce back from a disappointing season with Omaha last year, then the Aussie may become a valuable trading chip later in the season.

As it stands now, he is probably going to be manning first base in Omaha come April. The team has moved Huber from catcher to first base to occasional stints in the outfield since acquiring him in 2004. Most likely, he’ll be called up ahead of Billy Butler in order to save some time on that young man’s service clock.

"Who are These Guys?" 2007 - Catchers

2007-02-12T16:31:00.000-08:00

Geeks like me who routinely check in with the home team's website can tell you that we are only 3 days, 19 hours and 4 minutes away from the opening of spring training.

There are twenty new faces on the Kansas City Royals forty man roster since the last time pitchers and catchers were asked to report, so I will now continue with one of the grandest traditions of this blog: "Who are These Guys?" 2007!

It's my way of introducing you to the men who will be vying for playing time under the Arizona sun.

Each player name will link to his stats from baseball-reference.com, followed by his 2006 numbers (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging average and OPS+).

Let's start with the men behind the dish.

John Buck
245/306/396
OPS+ 76

Not long ago (2004), Buck finished tied for 8th place in rookie of the year voting, behind fellow teammates David DeJesus (6th) and Zack Greinke (4th). No doubt, his single vote was probably cast by Jeffrey Flannigan.

Buck’s OPS by Year:

2004  704
2005  676
2006  702

Buck’s OPS by Month:

Apr/Mar  553 
May      683 
June     780 
July     552 
August   680 
Sept/Oct 864

That June number is helped by his .993 OPS in June last year.

Buck’s MO is to start off slow and then figure things out. Unfortunately, aside from the aforementioned June and August of 2004, he has only posted an OPS over .800 in the month of September.

If I were Buddy Bell, I’d hire several “players” to stand around Buck at all times, wearing thermals, complaining about how cold it’s getting and talking about their fantasy football drafts non-stop.

Jason LaRue
194/317/346
OPS+ 65

LaRue was making steady progress as an offensive threat over the course of his career...

OPS+ by year:

... until last year, when pre-season knee surgery kept him out of the opening day lineup and rendered him relatively ineffective.

That’s one scary hole his productivity fell into, but there is hope for a rebound this year.

Here are some of LaRue’s numbers from the last three seasons, courtesy of The Hardball Times:

AVG  OBP  SLG  LD%   GB%   BA/BIP
251  334  431  19.7  42.3  .313
260  355  452  22.5  41.6  .325
194  317  346  20.0  43.6  .220

For reference, that's line drive (LD%) and ground ball percentages (GB%), as well as batting average on balls in play (BA/BIP).

A quick glance at those numbers shows that one of these things is not like the others.

Despite the knee surgery zapping his power, LaRue still hit line drives with the same consistency as previous years. Even a terrible player will have their BA/BIP regress to the mean (the NL average BA/BIP was .301 in ’06), and LaRue was not a terrible player before his knee injury, which could mean a nice bounce back for the man slated to back up Buck.

Paul Phillips
277/284/369
OPS+ 63

In seven minor league seasons, Phillips has put up a marginal 280/326/392 line in 532 games. Seeing action at the major league level almost exclusively during the September call-up period, he has hit 270/279/380 in 50 games.

After missing two entire seasons to injury, Phillips has done well to find himself a home in Omaha and will probably continue to work with the pitchers who aren’t quite ready for prime time yet.

I'll be back with a look at the tall, slow guys standing by first base tomorrow.

Who's on Third? A look at the '07 Royals lineup

2007-01-17T11:13:00.000-08:00

Now that Dayton Moore has satisfied fan lust for more minor-league depth at shortstop by signing Alex Gonzalez, the Kansas City Royals offensive unit is pretty much set.

One could reasonably expect the following players to take the field on April 2nd, 2007:

DeJesus  CF
Grudz    2B
Teahen   3B
Sweeney  DH
Shealy   1B
Brown    LF
Sanders  RF
Berroa   SS
Buck     C

By taking the average on-base and slugging percentages from two of the better freely-available projection systems on the net (ZIPS and CHONE) and plugging them into David Pinto’s very cool lineup analysis tool, we find that this lineup should produce about 4.70 runs a game.

More info on these calculations can be found through Pinto’s site.

Last year, the Royals scored 4.67 runs a game, so the above projection seems reasonable given the modest offensive activity this offseason.

This isn’t to say that Buddy Bell doesn’t have options.

Simply sitting Angel Berroa and plugging Esteban German in at shortstop would boost the production to 4.91 runs a game.

Also, as has been discussed before, there are reinforcements coming from the minors.

If Alex Gordon makes his case this spring and Mark Teahen moves to the outfield, pushing Reggie Sanders to the bench, then the lineup puts up 5.03 runs a game.

In an ideal world, the Royals will put their best foot forward with the following fellows:

Player   Pos  Age
Gordon   3B   23
Sweeney  DH   33
Teahen   LF   25
Gload    RF   31
Shealy   1B   27
DeJesus  CF   27
German   SS   29
Buck     C    26
Grudz    2B   37

This lineup should score 5.11 runs a game.

So, what’s the big difference between 5.11 and 4.70 runs a game?

Pitcher projections are much less accurate, so let’s take a leap of faith and assume that Moore’s many pitching moves this off season have given the Royals staff a chance at mediocrity.

Rather than giving up a league-leading 5.99 runs a game like last year, let’s say the staff regresses to the mean and only allows five runs a game. (The American League average in 2006 was 4.87, so this shouldn’t be too much to ask.)

Now, using the pythagorean method to predict a final record, here is how the team would net out over the course of the season:

R/G   RS   RA   W   L
4.70  762  810  76  86
4.91  796  810  80  82
5.03  814  810  81  81
5.11  827  810  83  79

Unfortunately, even a team that is capable of winning 83 games needs a lot of luck, some shrewd moves during the season and the National League West as it’s home to have a chance at the playoffs.

However, even sniffing .500 would be a major improvement for the Kansas City Royals in 2007. This team is capable of putting a legitimate major league batting order together, featuring only a few players past their prime, and that hasn’t been the case for quite a few years.

Royals Make Off-Season's Most Insignificant Trade

2007-01-10T22:11:00.000-08:00

The Royals have traded Jeff Keppinger, an infielder that most people have never heard of, to the Cincinnati Reds for a pitcher nobody has ever heard of.

With Mark Grudzielanek locked in as the starting second basemen and Esteban German seemingly able to field grounders without using his face, Keppinger had become a superfluous asset for the team.

Russell Haltiwanger is the prize for GM Dayton Moore. Yet another pitcher added to the stockpile, Rusty will probably be hanging out in Wilmington to start the season, maybe Wichita if he really impresses.

Aside from having a last name with the word “wanger” in it, here’s a quick run down on what else Haltiwanger brings to the organization.

Here are his rate stats since college:

Year Team     Level Age  IP    ERA   H9    HR9   BB9    K9    WHIP
2004 Newberry NCAA  20   62.1  6.06  9.71  0.14  4.20   8.41  1.55
2005 Newberry NCAA  21   52    3.29  8.83  0.00  4.33  10.21  1.46
2006 Dayton   A     22   82.1  4.15  7.87  1.09  4.92   8.53  1.42
2006 Sarasota A+    22    4    2.25  2.25  2.25  9.00   4.50  1.25

For the uninitiated, the “9” stats are hits, home runs, walks and strikeouts per nine innings pitched.

The two best things about Haltiwanger are his age and his ability to strike out almost a batter an inning. He was able to keep his ERA respectable when moving from college to the pros last year and according to this profile from May, his goal is to some day pitch for the Cincinnati Reds.

I guess he'll have to give up on that dream now.

One final tidbit. Check out this interesting split from his time pitching for Single-A Dayton in ought-six:

        IP    OPS   WHIP  W/9   K/9   HR/9
None on 39.7  .729  1.71  7.03  8.39  1.36
Men on  42.7  .650  1.08  2.53  8.44  0.84

With men on base, he walked fewer batters, gave up fewer home runs and clamped down on the overall offensive output of his competition.

It looks like Rusty might be a little clutch.

The Royals Unoffensive Off Season

2007-01-03T17:09:00.000-08:00

Since the crickets are chirping on Royals coverage while the Chiefs make their “miracle” run into the NFL playoffs, let’s take a moment to examine what General Manager Dayton Moore has done with the offense this off season.

Given that the team finished near the bottom of the league in runs scored last year, you’d think Moore would be stockpiling bats in the same manner he’s been picking up arms.

However, the only additions so far have been 1B/DH Ross Gload and Catcher Jason LaRue.

Of course, Moore did spruce up the lineup a bit during the season, and a look at the OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging average) month-by-month does show some modest improvement.

Apr 681
May 732
Jun 743
Jul 760
Aug 764
Sep 762

Unfortunately, their best month was barely average.

David Cohen over at The Good Phight has posted a list of the stats for each lineup position on every team and here is how the Royals stacked up in 2006:

Rank   Pos   AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS
47      5   .293  .365  .498  .862
122     3   .280  .355  .425  .779
126     1   .289  .351  .423  .775
128     6   .273  .338  .437  .775
145     2   .290  .342  .416  .758
152     4   .253  .319  .436  .755
218     7   .262  .312  .375  .687
240     9   .258  .309  .346  .655
251     8   .236  .289  .327  .616

The overall OPS in 2006 was .765. That means that over half of the Royals lineup was worse than league average, and in the case of the #8 spot, barely better than the pitchers hit in the National League.

Ross Gload and Jason LaRue? Really?

Okay, let’s not panic just yet.

Here is a look at some 2007 projections using Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections:

Name    P    AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS
Shealy  1b  .288  .349  .479  .828
Teahen  3b  .277  .349  .461  .810
Sweeney dh  .275  .338  .470  .808
DeJesus cf  .287  .355  .431  .786
Brown   lf  .281  .343  .438  .781
Sanders rf  .252  .312  .438  .750
Buck    c   .251  .307  .432  .739
Grudz   2b  .288  .327  .382  .709
Berroa  ss  .252  .288  .365  .653

BENCH
Gload   dh  .302  .350  .467  .817
German  2b  .290  .359  .386  .745
LaRue   c   .234  .331  .411  .742
Gthrght cf  .269  .335  .330  .665

MINORS
Gordon  3b  .275  .361  .473  .834
Huber   1b  .272  .337  .456  .793
Butler  lf  .292  .339  .447  .786

First of all, simply keeping Sweeney healthy and having Mark Teahen not turn into a pumpkin will help the Royals offense tremendously next season.

Hopefully, having Gil Meche make as much money as he does will stave off the pressure that seems to land on Sweeney’s bad back every season.

The jury is still out on Joey Gathwright, but Ryan Shealy looked like a good addition in the second half last year, and Szymborski’s system seems to like Gload’s potential.

However, the biggest reason for Moore’s focus on the pitching staff is that there is real promise coming from the minor leagues.

Alex Gordon, Justin Huber and Billy Butler all project to hit better in the big leagues than almost the entire 2006 lineup.

With all of that potential piling up at triple-A and Emil Brown and Reggie Sanders both on the wrong side of the age curve, I imagine there may be a few more deals before pitchers and catchers report.

Royals Continue to Pick Up Pitchers

2006-12-21T10:10:00.000-08:00

Originally Posted to OTB Sports.

The Royals added veteran set-up man David Riske to their bullpen today.

From the Kansas City Star:

Riske, 30, has made a name for himself as one of the better setup men in baseball. He is 18-14 with a 3.59 ERA in 328 appearances in a seven-year career with Cleveland, Boston, and the White Sox.

...

Riske appeared in a total of 140 games in 2003 and 2004, and since has seen his strikeout totals diminish. He struck out 76 batters in a combined 116 2/3 innings the last two seasons.

This makes six pitchers General Manager Dayton Moore has signed this off season who will likely make the opening day roster, completely overhauling what was the worst pitching staff in 2006, a season in which the Royals allowed seventy-two more runs than the second-worst team in the majors.

The Royals also signed Zach Day to a minor-league contract. Day fell of a cliff the last two seasons after showing promise early in his career, though part of that may have been due to a shoulder problem.

Day is 28 and missed the last half of 2006 after undergoing surgery to repair a partially torn rotator cuff. He went 2-5 with a 6.75 ERA in eight starts for Washington and Colorado and made $600,000. He is 21-27 with a 4.66 ERA in his career. His 2.25-to-1 ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio is baseball’s seventh highest since 2002.

Groundball pitchers tend to do well when they have good defenders playing behind them. Mark Grudzielanek may have won the Gold Glove last year, but Angel Berroa did not, so we'll have to wait and see if this proves to be a steal for the Royals.

Of course, if Day's shoulder is healed, then it certainly can't hurt to have another pitcher with actual major-league experience on the team.

Breaking down Sisco for Gload

2006-12-19T16:38:00.000-08:00

So, all that stuff I said about Sisco returning to form. Yeah, um, forget about that.

Since it's getting to be old news already, I'll just throw my two cents in here.

First, a look at the pertinent stats:

Andy Sisco
Year Games ERA+
2005  67   139
2006  65    68

Ross Gload
Year Games OPS+
2004 110   115
2006  77   107

Gload put up a 364/416/657 line at AAA in '05.

Oh, and then there's this: Sisco is going to be 24 years old in 2007, whereas our boy Ross will be 31.

So, the Royals trade a young power pitcher with proven upside (albeit with a bit of an attitude problem) for a position player who has proven to be slightly above average playing the field at 1B/OF, where the team is already overloaded.

Not to bead a dead horse, but the Royals already HAD this guy:

Aaron Guiel
Year Games OPS+
2005 33    114
2006 63    102

The general consensus on the web seems to be that GM Dayton Moore is sending a message by shuttling off underachievers like Runelvys and Sisco, and generally I agree with the philosophy. However, Ross Gload, while of comparative value to Sisco from a numbers standpoint, is older and unnecessary.

I'm trying to hold off on judging the off season activity until we get closer to Spring Training, as it looks like Moore has no intentions of slowing down.

For all we know, Reggie Sanders, Emil Brown and Justin Huber will all be on other teams by the time pitchers and catchers report to the desert. However, this trade certainly looks like a bad one to me at the moment.

With Billy Butler, Alex Gordon and Justin Huber all performing well in the minors, I have to believe the focus should be on stockpiling as many live arms as possible, rather than sending them to rival teams.

The Pitching Picture

2006-12-15T14:48:00.000-08:00

Wow. Fifty-five mil for Gil?

I don’t know if Big Money Meche is going to lead us to the promised land in this year, or the next, but I do feel like the offense will continue to improve and any, ANY move towards mediocrity by the pitching staff will be a step in the right direction.

Here’s a quick look at where we were and where we might be going.

Starters

2006           2007
Player   ERA+  Player   *ERA+
Hudson   95    Greinke  101
DeLaRosa 93    Ban'ster 101
Elarton  91    Meche    97
O. Perez 86    Hudson   93
Redman   85    O. Perez 86
Elvys    75    DeLaRosa 74

Relievers

2006          2007
Player  ERA+  Player  *ERA+
Peralta 110   W’meyer 110
Dessens 108   Peralta 110
Gobble  94    Nelson  93
Burgos  88    Bale    92
Sisco   68    Ray     92

*Please note: The ’07 ERA+ number is simply the player’s 2006 ERA+ divided by their career ERA+. ERA+ is a quick-read stat that compares a pitcher’s ERA to the league average. Above 100 is good, below 100 is bad.

My projection is not grounded in any proven sabermetric theory, just something I could do quickly while whiling away the hours at work.

Of course, the staff is not set in stone, and there will be a variety of other pitchers who grace the mound at Kaufman stadium next year, most notably Octavio Dotel, who sports a career ERA+ of 121 from his pre-injury days.

If someone like Andy Sisco can find his form again, or Rule 5 pickup Joakim Soria can build on his stellar showing in winter ball (I make the bold prediction that he will NOT throw a perfect game for the Royals in 2007), then there really is hope for a shot at winning some of the closer games next year.

Please... say it again, Jeanne

2006-10-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

Congrats to the Cards for winning the World Series. Now that the curse of Donnie Dek has been avenged, I am looking forward to the Royals getting into the post season and kicking ass next year.

On another note, it's beginning to get uncomfortable how many times Jeanne Zelasko keeps asking the owners and players to say "World Champion St. Louis Cardinals." She keeps repeating the phrase, then asking whoever she is interviewing to repeat it, then they ignore her and thank their teammates and the fans.

Ahh, the value of TV personalities.

Finishing Off the Season

2006-09-29T17:32:00.000-07:00

Now that the team has “achieved” the 100 loss plateau, I suppose it’s time to recollect on the season.

I will be getting married in a week, so I wish to purge myself of these trifling, depressing thoughts before a few weeks in Tahiti with my new wife set my mind straight and get me ready for next year.

To start with: a few tables for you.

Run
Diff G W L W%
1 38 14 24 36.8%
2 34 17 17 50.0%
3 19 6 13 31.6%
4 18 8 10 44.4%
5 16 6 10 37.5%
6 11 5 6 45.5%
7 8 0 8  0.0%
11 5 0 5  0.0%
8 4 2 2 50.0%
10 3 1 2 33.3%
13 2 0 2  0.0%
9 1 0 1  0.0%

This is the Royals’ record depending on the difference in final score. As you can see the team has played more one-run games than any other kind and has only managed to win 36.8% of the time.

Don’t read too much into this. If they just flipped a coin at the start of each game to determine a winner in the close contests, then our boys would have gone 19-19 and still been 35 games under .500 at this point in the season.

What I find most interesting is that the team has played in more games decided by 11 runs than eight. They’ve been blown out by seven eight times and crushed by THIRTEEN twice!

Imagine where we’d be if the team didn’t at least put up a fight in those two, four and six run contests?

Now… where to lay the blame?

This next chart is taken from Baseball Prospectus’s VORP numbers, short for Value Over Replacement Player. This number is designed to give you an idea of how many runs a player is worth above or below the average AAA journeyman who may or may not be playing first base for the Yankees tonight.

Player   PA   AVG   OBP   SLG   VORP   VORP/PA
German   313  326   420   455   25.1   .080
Teahen   439  290   357   517   29.3   .067
DeJesus  533  292   362   433   24.0   .038
E. Brown 583  287   358   455   28.0   .036
Grudz    586  297   331   409   19.2   .033
Stairs   262  261   352   429    6.3   .024
Guiel     59  220   339   460    1.3   .022
Mient    361  283   359   411    7.0   .019
Shealy   210  280   338   451    3.7   .018
Graffy   250  268   346   409    3.6   .014
Sweeney  242  240   339   409    2.6   .011
Costa    251  271   301   403    1.0   .000
Buck     403  244   306   397   -8.0  -.002
Sanders  358  246   304   425   -2.5  -.007
Gathrght 245  249   319   315   -4.7  -.019
Berroa   488  235   260   337  -15.6  -.032
Bako     167  209   261   229  -13.3  -.080

Using my mad math skills, I have taken the VORP of each player with more than 100 plate appearances and divided it by the number of PAs to see who produces the most value per time at the dish.

(Okay, so I cheated and kept Guiel in there just because he was my favorite player and I want the front office of the team, who I KNOW read this, to see what value they just dumped for nothing.)

What’s encouraging is to see a few of the younger guys at the top of the list. Teahen and DeJesus are going to be the cornerstones of a very good offense over the next couple of years. It is obvious that German has been woefully underused, but who knows, maybe he would have lost some effectiveness from the wear and tear of playing everyday.

There is, of course, an obvious sink-hole at catcher, but Buck has a mean-looking goatee and since he’s got the balls to take on Elvys in a fight, I say his gumption is worth the eight runs he’s given to the enemy this year.

And then there’s Berroa. Ahh, Angel. You’re going to make some mad cash in the coming seasons and my hope is that you’ll be doing so while striking out in picturesque Coors Field or a nice, homey place like Wrigley. If Dayton Moore isn’t prepared to eat your salary (and I mean ALL of it) this off season in order to trade you for some kind return value, then I hope he at least makes you go to Mike Sweeney’s back doctor for some off-season training advice.

I won’t show you the pitching numbers. I think we all know how that story goes.

Maybe Roger Clemens will take $12 Million from us next year to pitch in the games we play against the Rangers.

Maybe Zachary has his head on straight, and maybe Hochever is worth the year out of organized ball.

Maybe Elvys can keep the ball down, and maybe Joe Nelson is for real.

Maybe I’ll be so happy in Tahiti that I never come back and start learning the rules of soccer or cricket or whatever it is they play out there, and I find a new team to obsess over.

Nah… if moving to LA hasn’t killed the Royals fan in me (and Lord knows the losses haven’t), then I guess I’ll always be thinking about the maybe.

Have a good off-season, everybody.

Adam Bernero - My New Hero?

2006-08-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

So, if you follow the Royals (and, if you’ve found this blog, then you probably do), you are probably asking yourself something along the lines of “Who in the hell is Adam Bernero?”

Maybe you saw something like this.

Year  IP    ERA
2000  34.3  4.19
2001  12.3  7.30 
2002 101.7  6.20
2003 133.3  5.87
2004  32.3  5.57
2005  47.0  6.51

Then, you would have rightfully thought, “Man, Adam Benero sucks!”

Of course, then you would have gone back to what brought you here in the first place:

Date IP  H ER BB K  
8/16 6.0 5 0  0  6
8/11 5.2 7 1  0  5

Well, then… now you don’t know what to think. Does he suck, or is he the kind of K-an-inning guy that the Royals so desperately need in their starting rotation?

Here are his career minor league stats, along with his splits from this year.

In parts of six seasons in the minors, Bernero has given up about a hit an inning, while posting a k/9 of 7.13, which is above average, but not great.

In 80 innings with Omaha this year, his numbers look like this:

IP   H  BB K  WHIP K/9  ERA
79.3 63 23 47 1.08 5.33 2.84

Again, nice, but not fantastic. Especially for a guy who’s a few years older than most of the competition.

My guess is that Adam will have one of those patented eight-run innings that all Royal pitchers are contractually obligated to have, and his ERA will end up in the 4-5 range… giving us one more guy who “might” be a solid fourth starter next year.

I do hear that Grienke is finally pitching well, so hip-hip-hooray for that.

What is Dayton Doing?

2006-07-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

As today's trading deadline nears, I thought I might take a quick look at Dayton Moore's first real action since he sent J.P. Howell to Tampa Bay for Joey Gathwright.

To the uneducated observer, the motivation for Moore's moves may be hard to pin down, but I'm guessing that after he took over as general manager, he did a google search on the Royals farm system and found a page that looked like THIS.

What that list shows is that the best pitcher the Royals have drafted over the last ten years is probably David DeJesus, whose 7 outfield assists this year show the kind of velocity and accuracy that Jeremy Affeldt can only muster when he isn't allowed to pitch more than one inning at a time.

And so, Moore has jettisoned a couple of middling veterans (Tony G and Everyday Elmer) and one of our most oft-injured pseudo-superstars (Mac the Ninth) for the following collection of live arms:

Odalis Perez - 126, 127 ERA+ in '02 and '04. Needed out of LA in a bad way.
Blake Johnson - 3.33 ERA in A ball last year. 4.92 this year.
Julio Pimentel - Over a K an inning in A ball this year.
Jorge de la Rosa - A good track record in the minors. Hasn't put it together in the bigs yet.
Tyler Lumsden - Basically, J.P. Howell (A better ERA, but fewer strikeouts).
Daniel Cortes - A strikeout pitcher who's still learning the strike zone.

Hmm... seems like Moore thinks the team might need some pitching.

The Gathwright acquisition was mostly about defense (he also draws quite a few walks) and the Gotay for Keppinger swap was pretty much a crap shoot move. All of the trades from the past week have had one clear goal: improve the rotation in next year and 2008.

With big boppers like Billy Butler, Justin Huber and Alex Gordon waiting in the wings, this may be an exciting team to keep track of in the next couple of years.

The Devil Feels a Draft

2006-07-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

Last night, Angel Berroa was given two free passes by Ervin (not "Magic") Santana.

I don't want to overplay the magnitude of this information, but it was perhaps the worst pitching performance against the Royals ever.

Seriously, how do you walk Angel twice? Don't you know his stats? Last night's two unintentional walks now represent twenty-two percent of his total for the entire year!

I mean, if you think you're on the verge of walking Berroa a second time in one game, don't you just plunk him instead? He gets hit by pitches all the time. Nobody would suspect that. I say you groove one right between the rib cage and the hip. A nice soft breaking ball that puts him on base and saves your reputation.

Ervin? Are you listening to me?

In other news, the Royals traded Ruben Gotay to the Mets for Jeff Keppinger. Both players have put up similar career numbers, but Keppinger is a little bit older, so I don't really know what the point of this trade is.

Probably the biggest news in Keppinger's past is that he was included in the trade that sent Kris Benson from Pittsburgh to the Mets and unleashed the Anna Benson publicity firestorm upon the world. No word yet on whether Keppinger is married and if his wife is a semi-attractive publicity whore.

I guess we all can dream.

Joe Torre is an Idiot

2006-07-14T18:44:00.000-07:00

Let's get one thing straight: I hate the Yankees. It's been hardwired into me since I was a kid and the annual Royals/Yankees tilt in the postseason was something people expected.

However, there is one Yankee player I will root for with gusto the remainder of this season: Aaron Guiel.

Guiel deserves to play for a winner. To play on a team where he'll rack up RBIs and runs scored because everybody surrounding him is a future hall of famer.

I wish Aaron nothing but the best in his new opportunity with the Yanks.

Today was Guiel's third game with the pinstripes and through the first seven innings he went 2 for 2, with a walk and a home run.

Than, according to Yahoo! the following happened:

- A. Rodriguez singled to left 
- M. Thornton relieved J. Contreras 
- J. Posada singled to left, A. Rodriguez to second 
- B. Williams walked, A. Rodriguez to third, J. Posada to second 
- A. Phillips hit for A. Guiel 
- B. McCarthy relieved M. Thornton 
- A. Phillips struck out swinging

What the hell!

A man is killing the ball and comes up with the bases loaded. He's playing in a stadium built for left-handed hitters, and you pull him for some dude hitting 250/277/405?

Joe Torre is an idiot. That righty/lefty match up he put so much effort into creating evaporated as soon as the White Sox made a pitching change.

Aaron Guiel earned the chance to drive in some runs in that at bat.

Man... why am I writing about the Yankees?

Winning Baseball? What!?!?

2006-07-07T17:30:00.000-07:00

With the All Star break approaching, I thought I’d take a quick look at the improvement our lovable Royals have made.

To do this, I’m going to take a look at the Pythagorean Record of the team, which is based on runs scored and runs allowed. (For a further explanation of the formula, please click here and here.)

For those so interested, I’m using the ^1.83 model.

Currently, the team’s pythag winning percentage is 37%, which puts them on pace for just over 100 losses this season.

However, on a month by month basis, the boys in blue have made incredible strides towards becoming a respectable team.

Month  Pyth %
April   28%
May     29%
June    46%
July    59%

July’s results are of a negligible sample size, but the improvement for the month of June is certainly encouraging. That’s a 75-87 team over the course of the season, which is far from fantastic, but much closer to the league-average expectations many of us had heading into the season.

The chart below shows the winning percentage as a ten game rolling average.

Man, did April and May suck.

A 4-0 loss to the White Sox on April 19th had the Royals looking at a 14% winning percentage over the previous ten games. That’s a 23-win season. That’s beyond bad.

Luckily, the schedule requires teams to actually play the rest of their games. By May 2nd, the team seemed to have turned things around, posting a ten game pythag percentage of 43% despite losing to Detroit 4-1.

This being the Royals, though, they promptly lost 14 of their next 18 games and hit another low point on May 23, playing like a 30-132 team (18%) and losing to Detroit 8-5.

Thankfully, all has not been lost. From that point forward, we have seen a steady climb to mediocrity with a high point of a 65% pythag record over a ten game stretch from June 16th through the 27th (capped off by a 9-8 victory at Cincinnati).

Heading into the All-Star break, the Royals have managed to impersonate an above average major league baseball team. Over the last 30 games, the numbers say the Royals should be winning 53% of the time. That’s an 86-76 ball club only needing a few more pieces to contend.

That’s a team that’s fun to root for.

Enjoy Pittsburgh, Mark Redman.

J.P. Traded to the Devil Rays

2006-06-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

Looks like Dayton Moore is finally on the job.

J.P. Howell (Career ERA+ 70) for Joey Gathwright (Career OPS+ 72) plus a minor leaguer with a line of 280/336/358 in five minor league seasons. I guess that sounds about right.

Gathwright is a speedster with good on-base skills and plus defense in the outfield (way plus when compared to some of the guys we've thrown out there this year). At 25, there's still a chance he'll improve on his career numbers.

Howell was one of many, many, MANY young arms the Royals have been shuttling between Omaha and the bigs in an effort to build a respectable major league pitching staff. A strong K rate in the minors hadn't translated to big league success for J.P. and he's been having shoulder problems lately. At 23, he still has some potential in the tank, though.

My guess is that Moore has some deals on the table for Emil Brown, Reggie Sanders or both. Gathwright and DeJesus would make for some nice table setters at the top of the lineup, so I think I like this deal.

It also looks like Moore may not be too high on Baird's scouting of pitchers. Might Grienke be next?

RIP Allard Baird

2006-05-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

The Royals finally fired Allard Baird today.

Baird talked a good game for a few years, and I think he made tremendous strides as a GM with the Royals, but this was a move that had to be made. The Royals need a complete overhaul of their management structure. Let's hope Dayton Moore is up to the task.

I will say this, though: Moore's request for complete control over baseball operations makes me think that there is a lot less blame on Baird's shoulders for this mess.

My guess is that in the inner circles of Major League Baseball, everybody knows that his hands have been tied and a lot of moves couldn't be made. I wouldn't be surprised to see Baird get picked up quickly by another team (probably Atlanta now) and put in a high-ranking Assistant GM position.

His knack for finding above average fringe players will be very useful.

What Would You Have Done?

2006-05-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

Anthony Giacalone at Baseball Think Factory gives a pretty good rundown of the Royals offseason moves and how they really did have a decent plan going into this season.

It's easy to knock the Royals these days, but there have been some moves that have worked out this season.

Sweep!!!

2006-05-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

KC 10, Cle 8

Sure, we gave up runs late to let Cleveland back into it, but the pitchers K'd nine in nine innings and Guiel hit another homer to put the good guys in front for good.

Burgos has done a good job of not getting fazed by trouble and the fans get to eat some more free donuts.

Today is a good day.

So, You Can't Hack it as a Royals Fan

2006-05-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

What a pu$$y.

This guy.

Two or three hundred loss seasons and he's selling his "fandom" for a few hundred dollars. I hate to tell it to the people who put up the cash for this transaction, but that "loyalty" ain't worth the eBay server space it was loaded on.

I hate to break it to all the naysayers out there, but every owner wants to make money. Every General Manager is trying to put a winning team on the field. Every player thinks that they should be getting paid more than the other guys.

And, every fan has a right to bitch and moan as long and loudly as they want to about the failings of all of these people.

But, no one has the right to call themselves a loyal fan if they are willing to give it all away for a few hundred dollars.

Rooting for the Royals takes balls. If you can't take the pain, then we don't want your sissy-ass hanging around here anyway. Everybody knows going into the season that an incredible amount of things must go right for us to have a chance at even breaking 500.

The true fan accepts that the following things will happen:

Mike Sweeney's back will go out on him. The pitching staff will be disabled, ineffective and oftentimes both. The young hitters will be overmatched. The veterans will be past their prime because anyone really worth a damn can make a lot more money on one of the coasts.

For Christ's sake, Paul Byrd took LESS MONEY to play for a team that wasn't the Royals, did you really think that this was the year things would be different?

Look, I hate watching this team lose games in ways previously unimaginable (Future headline: "Royals Pitchers Walk Nine Straight Batters, Lose Five-Run Lead, Game"), but I'm sticking around.

I'm watching the minor leagues. I'm wearing my powder blue Bo Jackson jersey. I'm going to drive through three hours of rush hour traffic to watch my boys play the Angels in June.

I'm a Royals fan because it's about the past thirty-seven years, not just the past ten.

To steal a line from J Rob: Go Royals! 143-19! You're the best!

Wow... This Sums it Up

2006-04-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

From today's KC Star:

"Singles by Mark Grudzielanek and Sweeney marked the first back-to-back hits this season by the Royals in the first inning."

Keep Ya Head Up

2006-04-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

You know it's hard out here for a Royals fan
When he tryin' to help his team to get one little win
For the Yankees got the money and the Rays got a plan
And a whole lot of columnists keep on talkin' shit

So, I'm trying to find something positive in the Royals sorrowful start to the season, and Estaban German putting up an OPS over 1.000 doesn't seem to cut it since most of his playing time is going to Tony Graffanino, anyway.

Instead, I'll point you to an awesome site called Fan Graphs, which has a cool Win Probablility feature that shows which team has the best chance to win throughout a game based on similar score/inning/runners on base scenarios from the last season.

The first thing you'll notice is that it's bad form to spot your opponents five runs in the first inning, but you probably knew that already. What I'm trying to focus on is this:

In Seven of the 12 games played so far this year, the Royals have had a better than 50% chance to win the game in the sixth inning or later.

Now, true to form, the Royals have found many ways to lose games late (wasn't our bullpen the only GOOD thing from last year?), but if you look at their season on a game by game basis, the team has actually been competitive.

I won't lie to you. Losing eight in a row hurts. But, it is too early in the season to get bogged down by some bad breaks. EVERYBODY is underperforming for the Royals right now. The playoffs were never a real possibility for this team, but I still think a run at .500 is possible.

Hang in there.

The Sucking of Sisco

2006-04-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sisco had another poor outing for the Royals today.

I'm wondering if it isn't best to handle Sisco this year the way he was handled last year. Only bringing him in during non-critical situations. Let him build up his confidence and control. Then start trusting him in tight spots.

I admit, up three runs isn't a tight spot, but he was obviously shaky after the first couple of batters. The dude needed to be lifted and fast.

Guiel Gets Cut

2006-03-29T15:56:00.000-08:00

Shane Costa won the 4th outfielder job with the Royals.

This isn't that big of a deal, but Guiel is one of the guys I like to root for. I hope he gets a call earlier this year than last if anybody goes down (Laverne, I'm looking at you).

My man AG was having a great spring, putting up a 351/479/622 line in 37 at bats.

Joe McEwing was also cut after posting 436/500/667 in 39 ABs. Super Joe put up a fuss (I haven't seen any Guiel quotes yet).

Let's take a quick look at each player's OPS this spring against last year, along with those of the guys who stole their jobs, and see who has more right to complain.

Player  Spring  2005
J-Mac   1167    558
Graffy  712     791
-------------------
AG      1101    805
Costa   738     621

I'm sure they'll both have plenty of time to debate their merits while waiting at the bus station in Omaha.

Graffy's Back

2006-03-28T15:22:00.000-08:00

The Royals picked up Tony Graffanino today.

Tony Graffanino

309/366/425

OPS+ 161

I'm a big fan of this move. Graffy has a solid track record as a utility infielder and the Royals are only obligated to pay for him this year.

Hopefully, this move will keep Joe McEwing in Omaha and give Estaban German a chance to prove he can do something.

For all of the bitching I keep seeing on the internet about the Royals pickups this off-season, I don't see anybody offering a better solution. Last year, the team was derided for bringing up young players too soon.

What the moves from this off season have done is given every prospect more time to develop in the minors and avoided crippling the team with long-term contracts.

I, for one, am excited to have at least semi-competent big leaguers to watch this season while following the progress of guys like Alex Gordon and Billy Butler in the minors.

Who are These Guys? - Outfield

2006-03-24T15:37:00.000-08:00

Our final installment for the position players will look at the men patrolling the vast amount of turf at The 'K' this year.

David DeJesus
293/359/445
OPS+ 114

David’s biggest drawback as a professional ballplayer has been his susceptibility to injury. A shoulder injury kept him out for the last month of last season and he missed significant time early in his minor league career.

The Royals just inked DeJesus to a long-term deal that will buy out his first year of free agency. If he can stay healthy, then this will be a really good move by the team, as he has maintained both his patience and his pop at the plate. The key will be getting Buddy Bell to realize that he is not a natural base stealer so that his times on base are not all wasted.

Reggie Sanders
271/340/546
OPS+ 126

Reginald, or Laverne as I like to call him, is the kind of power hitting corner outfielder Allard Baird has been trying to get for years. The problem is, he needed to get Sanders several years ago.

At 38, the Royals will need to be careful with the slugger from South Carolina. When he’s in the lineup, he will be a definite threat behind Mike Sweeney, but he needs to get more than the 295 at bats he cobbled together with St. Louis last year while battling leg problems.

Here is another fun site that shows how Sanders stats compare against the league. You can see that he is an average on-base guy, but almost always bests the league in power.

Emil Brown
286/349/455
OPS+ 113

Why did Emil Brown spend so much of his life languishing in the minor leagues, only to explode (if hitting .286 can be considered “exploding”) as a thirty-year old sensation with the Royals?

Let’s just say that last year wasn’t Emil’s first crack at the majors:

OPS     Min    MLB
1996    900    DNP
1997    DNP    588
1998    895    575
1999    865    357
2000    891    635
2001    974    583

’98 and ’99 were cup of coffee call ups, but Brown received significant opportunities to prove his metal in the Bigs before he was labeled a quadruple-A player and languished as a spare part for the Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Houston farm systems.

The hope for this season is that Emil doesn’t fade back from his first real progress as a major-league hitter. If he can post solid numbers for the Royals in left field (and maybe catch just a few more balls), he will help provide some extra pop behind Sweeney and Sanders in the lineup.

Aaron Guiel
294/355/450
OPS+ 114

Another player who languished for years in the minors before finally getting a chance with the Royals, Guiel was derailed by the cruel hand of fate when he developed vision problems during spring training in 2004.

A few laser surgeries later, he spent most of 2005 tearing up triple-A (OPS of 909) while luminaries such as Terrance Long (699) and Eli Marrero (563) manned the outfield of Kaufman stadium.

Aaron is one of my favorite Royal players, and while I know I should want them to give the 4th outfield job to the younger Chip Ambres, I really hope that one more Canadian makes the team.

Chip Ambres
241/323/379
OPS+ 88

Acquired in the Tony Graffanino trade from the Red Sox last year, Ambres is a high OBP guy with a little speed and some power. His rate stats have held up well in the minors over the last few years, but Chip has not had a great spring so far and was only so-so in his first bit of major-league action last year.

Given the fragile nature of the Royals outfield (Sanders rarely plays a full season and DeJesus pulled a hamstring the other day), Ambres will definitely have an opportunity to prove himself this year.