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.…
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think someone is going to trade for Homer Bailey. It seems crazy to say since he was a train wreck of injury and ineffectiveness for four years, but he’s found some glimmer of his old self in Kansas City. And it looks like that might pay off…
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…
Royals fans don’t have a lot of faith in the front office to make bold, innovative, and ultimately effective decisions, especially when it comes to the draft. Sure, they won a World Series, but the Dayton Moore front office has spent more years below .500 than they have competing for rings. And the origin for…
With the 44th pick in the 2019 MLB Draft, the Royals selected Brady McConnell, a shortstop from the University of Florida. McConnell is a very Royals pick, an athletic up-the-middle defender who, despite being a college player, has plenty of upside. As a draft eligible sophomore who missed most of his freshman season, McConnell doesn’t…
Bubba Starling has received plenty of attention from Royals commentators wondering if this is the year he makes it to the big leagues. It makes sense that Starling is a frequent topic. He’s a hometown kid. A top-5 pick. A former, future superstar. So, naturally, the media and fans root for him as a comeback…
The Royals are Cactus League champions. Hooray! But Spring Training isn’t about winning; it’s about getting ready. The players get themselves ready, and the general manager gets the team ready. Dayton Moore still has a couple of difficult decisions to make before Opening Day on Thursday. How many starters to carry. Final bullpen guys. What…
If you remember the wise words of Kunu, Paul Rudd’s character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, you know sometimes it’s better to “do less.” As I was perusing the recently released MLB Pipeline rankings of Royals prospects and bemoaning how conservative and traditional they are, while envying the excellent way they’re presented, I decided commentators’ assessments that…
Leading up to the 2014 and 2015 World Series runs, the Royals faithful heard a lot about “the process.” It was a way of explaining the slow timeline of a rebuild and eventually, like all things on the Internet, became a joke, a way to poke fun at some of the team’s head scratching decisions.…
The numbers game playing out in the Royals’ bullpen doesn’t look great for Royals fans or farmhands. Not great for the farmhands because it may mean a trip back to AAA. Not great for the fans because it may mean another season watching horrid relief pitching cost the team wins. In fact, it’s entirely possible…
Baseball is almost here, and I desperately wish I had plans to attend spring training, camp out near the backfields, and watch the next wave of Royals talent emerge. Alas, I have a job … and responsibilities … and no money. So, I’ll have to wait for the minor league seasons to officially start before…
Every season a handful of prospects within a system put together breakout performances that force fans and commentators to sit up, take notice, and start dreaming dreams that will some day be crushed. It’s a circle of life type thing. In 2018, Daniel Lynch, Seuly Matias, and Nicky Lopez were among the group of Royals…
Since it’s the offseason and Royals news comes in drips and drabs, plenty of digital ink has been spilled to discuss the team’s newest vessel of hope, Sam McWilliams, including great work from RFR writers Patrick Brennan, Alex Duvall, and Drew Osborne. But I want to focus on the other guy, Chris Ellis. With the…
The buzz around trading Whit Merrifield is extensive with passion disproportionately allocated to the analytics-minded fans who are in favor of maximizing return for him and strengthening the team’s chances with their next wave of talent. I understand that argument, and in principle, I agree with it. Teams should think pragmatically about how best to…
Perhaps, maybe, possibly, I erred. It’s possible I was too pessimistic, too closed to the idea that a player with raw tools could develop even into his mid-20s. Maybe I should have seen what could be instead of what had been. Kelvin Gutierrez truthers (if such a group exists), I was wrong. When the Kelvin…
