What Makes Gavin Cross Such a Good Hitter?

Recently, a follower of the Royals Farm Report twitter account named “Ryan Heffernon” expressed concern after watching a clip of a Gavin Cross home run. He quote tweeted the clip with the comment “I cannot unsee Ryan O’Hearn’s in his swing and that terrifies me.” Understandable. Royals fans are conditioned to expect the worst. Years…

Marcus’ Personal Top-50 List

First, if you haven’t yet, check out the consensus midseason top-50, which is an aggregate of the rankings from a few different Royals prospect writers. Honorable Mentions 50-31 30-21 20-11 10-6 5-1 I was one of the people asked to contribute a top-50 of my own, and I must say, my thoughts differ significantly from…

Kansas City Royals Draft Shows Signs of a Plan

Take a bow, Danny Ontiveros. You played this one beautifully. One of the persistent cries of Royals fans and commentators alike voices a desire to see a coherent plan for roster building by the Royals front office. As outsiders, it’s often difficult to know if the Royals have a good plan (unlikely given the team’s…

The Heart (and Shadow) of the Matter

Hear more from Marcus on the Royals Weekly Podcast and follow him on Twitter and Facebook @RoyalsWeekly The Royals offense looks like egg salad that’s been sitting in a flaming dumpster for 3 weeks … very bad. They have the lowest BB% in baseball and the second lowest wRC+.  There are plenty of simple explanations…

The Case Against “Best Player Available”

When any draft nears–MLB, NFL, NBA, whatever–the phrase “best player available” immediately takes root as a central tenet of the discourse. All the professional and amateur pundits shout from the rooftops about the wisdom of taking the best player available and foolishness of drafting for need. And I get. I completely understand the reasoning behind…

A photo of Kauffman Stadium

Where did all the Center Fielders go?

Uh, we may have a problem. Recently, I was looking through this excellent draft rankings comparison from Alex Duvall and day dreaming about who I want the Royals to draft when it occurred to me that the Royals’ system might be light on outfielders … specifically center fielders. I thought I must be forgetting someone…

Cord-cutters vs. Sinclair is a lose-lose-lose

In the broad scope, this is as much a debate of old media ideas versus new ones. Traditionally, media companies maximized profits through vigorous and rigid control of access to their content, but young people grew up in a world of flexible and free media content. And they aren’t going back. Most of them will give up on baseball and find something else before they give up on cheap, flexible media.

The Curious Case of Kowar

To be clear, most people are wrong about Jackson Kowar.  They try to fit him into a well-worn narrative about pitcher development that contradicts every bit of information we have on him. As is the narrative for so many young pitchers, the conventional wisdom on Kowar holds that an underdeveloped breaking ball is all that…

Five Prospects I’m Following This Year

It’s baseball season, and people approach that in different ways. Some dive head first into spring training hope. Some ignore it until the regular seasons starts. Some make up increasingly elaborate stories to coverup cheating scandals. To each his own. I’m starting this spring by thinking about which prospects I want to follow this season.…

5 Day-Three Picks to Watch

Day three of the MLB draft is where teams make serious money plucking gems from obscurity. Nolan Ryan, Albert Pujols, Kenny Loften, Brett Saberhagen, Ryne Sandberg, and so many more (including the fabled Jarrod Dyson) were taken after the 10th round. For teams like the Royals, small-market teams that need to excel at drafting to…