I think Cabrera's body might be wearing out, he was really dragging in the post-season. As great as he is I don't know why he is assured to put out triple crown numbers forever. Pujols fell off the map, hopefully it happens to Cabrera this year. Like you, I found their entire offseason plan to be puzzling.

This one would have been more appropriate for this year.....

http://www.i70baseball.com/wp-conten...ime_Banner.jpg

And on a side note, I'm surprised that Bronson Arroyo is still on the market. I figured a team would have snatched him up, since more than likely he'd be cheaper than Ubaldo and Ervin, and he doesn't cost a draft pick.....

He won't fall off this year. He won't put up triple crown numbers, but he'll still be a beast at the plate. But I do see him fading away fast though.

I think there's more than enough money there to go get Santana or one more player of that salary level... but it's really hard to say with any certainty how much money is a windfall from the increased pay out.

I think it's easy for all of us to "Clay Travis" the money and overlook some costs (since the owners won't disclose them).

I want them to spend more... Dayton Moore has repeatedly said Glass has always approved money that will improve the club, and Glass has always said he will go over budget to get a player that is the final piece.

Would seem to make the Santana signing something that SHOULD happen.

Don't get Rany's hang up on Phil Hughes, though. LIke him, I was a big fan of getting Hughes on a short-term, less risky deal to see if getting away from Yankee stadium could make him a higher performer. But it's not like we're talking about a guy that was a monster away from Yankee Stadium... his career splits show him at 4.10 ERA with 305 Ks in 375 2/3 IP and a whip around 1.25.

Worth taking a gamble on with little to no risk... but three years at $8 million per? When the guy also is not proven to be durable?

At least with Vargas you know he's going to give you 200 IP of around league average pitching.

Buster Olney ‏@Buster_ESPN 14m

The asking price for pitcher Ervin Santana is said to have dropped significantly, perhaps to a three-year deal. Was over $100m in November.

Looks like DM jumped way too quickly, the pitching market is a lot cheaper than almost anyone expected. Vargas is starting to look a little bit overpaid.

From hearing him talk the other week, he likes to move quickly in FA when they can get a deal done early, are comfortable with the player and with the value. It's an attempt to avoid bidding wars. Same thing with offering extra years. It was pretty clear they'd rather add another year to keep the AAV in a reasonable realm than try to win a bidding war on the same years as another team.

Might end up biting them here. Don't think anyone saw the draft comp. attached to Santana and Jimenez and etc. devaluing them this much. Also don't think anyone saw Garza's medicals being bad enough to run his value down that far.

It shouldn't be a crippling deal, though. $8 million AAV for a guy who's going to throw 200 innings a year and give you league average pitching still doesn't seem crazy to me.

Also don't think it should keep them from making a Kyle Lohse-type deal for Santana. But that's on Moore and Glass.

That's where the failure of the system in developing pitchers bites you, though. You don't have to spend medium money in FA on an innings eater if you develop some of those guys internally...

Not even "some" - just one... ONE. Just develop ONE FREAKING PITCHER.

LMAO

Yeah, I'm not necessarily second-guessing the decision to move quickly, I'm just a bit frustrated that it worked out this way. Its easy to complain that we should have waited, but I think back in November most of us thought the value of pitching was going to be sky-high, and if you really think pitchers will get paid a ton then you should grab the first guy whose contract demands are anywhere close to reasonable because you don't want to be one of the last teams scrounging around in that musical chairs game. Next year acting quickly could be the correct move.

There's no financial reason why the Royals could not sign Santana. None.

Injury concern? Productivity? Valid reasons. Financial? Bunk.

Oh, and it should be noted that Royals threads are easily some of the best on CP since the great douche migrations of '09 and '13.

Agreed.

If you're looking at paying him 60-75 million over 4-5 years? OK, sure, the injury concern/inconsistency combined with the cost might not make sense.

But when you're talking 3 years at what you paid him THIS season? A Kyle Lohse deal? That's definitely within the realm of affordability for KC.

Worried about payroll? Flip some of the payroll waste spots (Luke Hochevar, Wade Davis, Bonifacio - though I wouldn't consider him waste) for whatever you can get out of them. Even if that's a bucket of balls.

I love the Royals threads. The mood level is fun to watch from game to game. The level of extremes are intense and funny. :thumb:

Projected 2014 rotation (with Santana on 3 year deal - moving Hochevar and Davis for Salary relief):

Shields
Santana
Vargas
Guthrie
Chen (to start year - 10-12 starts)/Ventura

Duffy works out of the pen or at Omaha.

2015:

Santana
Ventura
Vargas
Guthrie
Duffy/Zimmer

2016:
Santana
Ventura
Duffy
Vargas
Zimmer

If we can get another 1/2 season of production out of Chen as a Starter, I will be absolutely amazed. I would have guessed that we had squeezed about as much blood out of that turnip as humanly possible.

:LOL:

Fan graphs was good with th Vargas deal. And they hate Dayton Moore with a passion and they hate the Royals and almost everything we do. That says a lot.

Oh, and BTW, BIG shout out to Duncan and AL for their Royals and Baseball input/knowledge. You two are fkn amazing when it comes to working the stat lines and analyzing the data. Many thanks, especially for those of us that are more challenged in that arena.

Mellinger today talks about "Royals Slogans." This has been one of my favorite topics for a long time. First, his article, then, a list of all the Royals Official Slogans over the years:

Here’s why the Royals’ new slogan is bland
February 3
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star

NEW YORK — They say the roads are as bad back home as they are here, where the sidewalks are like a war zone of puddle-shrapnel and the airport is full of suckers like me with canceled flights.

Which means you and I are in perfect position to take part in one of Kansas City’s most time-honored traditions.

Making fun of the Royals’ new slogan.

The club is going with “Be Royal” this year, which is sort of … meh … which, actually and sadly, is the whole point. “Royal” rhymes with loyal, and (even if the team won’t say it out loud) ties into that “Royals” pop song the kids like. So, fine.

This slogan doesn’t make any promises about the team, and even if it opens up the club for jokes — doesn’t this team need to be better than what the Royals have been over the last generation? — it’s mostly just empty calories for highway billboards.

Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge how senseless it is that the Royals (or any other team) hire a bunch of suits in cubicles to come up with marketing slogans that follow the first rule of medicine: Do no harm.

And all teams do this, by the way. The gazillion-dollar Dodgers are going with “Live. Breathe. Blue.” Breathing means living, and not breathing sometimes means turning blue, but whatever. It’s better than “Your Mortgage Payment is Our Players’ Dry Cleaning Bill.”

The problem with a slogan is that in the best-case scenario, people will forget it. Quick, can you name the Royals’ slogan last year? I’ll wait.

“Come to Play.”

That was a relative success, a vast improvement over the year before, when “Our Time” became a boilerplate punch line for people to throw stones at a team that was supposed to be strong but instead lost 90 games.

The Royals backpedaled when that season turned to mush, forced to try some revisionist-history spin that the slogan referred to holding the All-Star Game, not the actual team. But you can bet that general manager Dayton Moore and others in baseball operations are now given a heads up before the marketing department goes public with a check the team may not be able to cash.

This is how it goes. Marketing departments are bigger (and often more detached from baseball) than ever before. And those billboards aren’t going to fill themselves. So men and women sit around and bounce ideas off each other until — and this really is the goal — they find one empty enough that it can’t be used to hang a losing team. In 2011, the White Sox bumped up payroll and went with “All In,” which turned into a disaster when they finished 16 games out of first place.

There is just no winning here. No profit in slogans. No traction to be made. If the team loses, the slogan is remembered only with irony. If the team wins, chances are something better and organic comes along to replace it. Had the Royals experienced more success last year, you can bet James Shields’ weird neon deer in the clubhouse would’ve become a thing. They didn’t, but 86 wins were the team’s most since 1989 and enough to keep “Come To Play” away from infamy.

But baseball teams feel like they need these things, even if a T-shirt giveaway and fireworks can put twice as many people in the seats as any slogan (and a winning team does much better).

Can we guess the runners-up to “Be Royal?” And remember, you can’t overpromise.

“We’re Due.”

“Ned’s Actually Very Funny Away From The Cameras.”

“Kids Under 12 Race Billy Butler For Free.”

“Our Last Playoff Appearance Is Old Enough To Be A Doctor.”

“C’mon, There’s No Good Movies Out.”

Actually, this is kind of fun. Come up with a marketing slogan that wins, but only if it doesn’t lose. Sort of like a teenager who throws a party when his parents are out of town and doesn’t get caught.

I tried that once. I was 16.

And I got caught.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/03...#storylink=cpy

1976: Star Spangled Summer
1977: Super Summer
1978: Catch Royal Mania
1979: Catch Royal Mania: What the Good Times Are
1980/1: We’re Where You Want to Be!
1982: Go for the Action
1983: Turn on the Action
1984: Something Special in the Air
1985: You’ve Got a Hit on Your Hands
1986: The Thrill of It All
1987: Get in the Swing of it!
1988: A Major League Attraction
1989: It’s a Hit
1990: Catch the Thrill
1991: Turn on the Good Times
1992: It’s Here
1993: 25 Years
1994: For the Fun of It All!
1995: Bring It On!
1996: Get in the Game
1997: Come on Home
1998: This…is Hardball
1999: Be a Part of it All
2000/1: You Gotta Love These Guys!
2002: Join the Fun!
2003: Your Hometown Team/Believe!
2004: Together We Can
2005: It’s All About Royals Baseball
2006: Your KC Royals
2007: True. Blue. Tradition.
2008: New. Blue. Tradition.
2009: You Belong at The K/40th Anniversary
2010: It All Happens Here
2011: Major League Moments
2012: Our Time
2013: Come to Play
2014: Be A Royal

Wow that list is great, I remember so many of them. But 1985 was "The Thrill Of It All" no? I have an old VCR tape of the Royals 85 title and it was titled that. What is that all about?

2004 was not Together We Can. It was latinized: "Nosotros Creemos". 1998's "This...is Hardball" generated more jokes than I'd care to repeat here.

Did you go on meds or something?

Que?

I'm pretty convinced you get get average to above-average 4/5 starter innings out of him for about half a season. Maybe longer, if you limit him to 5-6 IP and never ask him to stretch too much.

What he gave them as a starter last year was above average (3.61 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 15 starts). If he can give them 12 starts of 3.75/1.25, I think you take it and run... and drop in someone else.

for sure.


im just glad we didn't get a ton of douches following shields around, although im worried some good posters might have followed getz out the door...

I remember this from when I was a kid. I thought their little jingle was the greatest.

"Roooooyalllls baaaaaseballll...catch the thrill!"

My favorite Royals radio jingle comes from the mid-2000s. "Kansas City Royals basebaaaaal... sit where ever you'd liiike!"

I'm not second guessing the decision to move quickly as well, since as you stated above, but I honestly thought the pitching market would have been insane.

I'm beginning to wonder that the teams are getting into the habit of not interested in giving up their first round pick for a "suspect" pitcher on the market. If the Royals didn't give Santana the QO (Qualifying Offer), more than likely Santana would have been off the market. So the QO is a great tactic for the team.

If my memory serves me right, the Royals gave the QO to Santana of $14 million. At this rate, I would imagine that it's looking more and more likely that Santana could end up having few suitors coming into spring training, and be forced to negotiate a team friendly contract with the Royals, possibly less than $14 million.

I wonder if Santana is kicking himself for turning down that QO.....

While we have a relatively educated fan base, we don't get paid 7 figures to make these judgments. If GMDM made a bad call on the market, that goes in the loss column from a performance standpoint.

It amazes me how much smarter of a fan base we have for the Royals as opposed to the Chiefs.

Agreed, other than the owner is a greedy, penny pinching, no good SOB.

Yost says this will probably be his lineup, and he doubts he'll be tinkering with it.

1. Aoki
2. Infante
3. Hosmer
4. Butler
5. Gordon
6. Perez
7. Moustakas
8. Cain
9. Escobar

So, L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R, R

I predict that "no tinkering" BS will last until AT LEAST the 5th game of the season.

That simpleton just can't help himself.

Hopefully the Getz wife posters remain

Lineup is great as long as Infante puts together a solid .330ish OBP. If he starts falling below that, you're not using an optimal lineup for run production.

I'd still go:

Aoki
Gordon
Butler
Hosmer
Perez
Infante
Moustakas
Cain
Escobar

But that's not a BIG deal.

Hos was lights out after his first two months.. I mean his overall numbers were great for a 23 year old. .801 OPS.

However, those first two months were so bad... I mean.. we'll just call that "Prison Bitch time" because the PB hate was justified... after that, he was so polar opposite it's scary.

.858 OPS over the last 2/3rds of the season.

Again, just 23 years old at the time.. That's a phenomenal turnaround. Damned exciting to think about.

That doesn't look half bad. Especially if Moustakas and Escobar get their heads out of their asses this year.

Two big ifs.

I'm more worried about Butler\Gordon. The team can still put up some runs withotu Mous\Esky... they showed it last year. They are basically a non-factor because they've never really been relied upon... Gordon\Butler on the other hand... those guys we have a lot of money invested in because they are both proven commodities. We need those investments to pay better dividends than they did last season.

With Hosmer's emergence last year, Perez showing his flashes, the additions of Aoki and Infante... the stage is set... Butler and Gordon have GOT to put it together this year for KC to win... it starts with those two...

Now, if mous\esky do anything this season... Bonus.

I like that much better. I hate ****ing with Gordon in the 5-hole. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Freddie Freeman is about to sign a $100M+ extension, so we have a ballpark for Hosmer. Oof.

Freeman has been the better player, but Hosmer is a similar player who is trending up.

The rumor is now 8/125

True. They both need to produce more than they did last year.

Ned Yost is obsessed with traditional lineup roles.

He wants a RH hitter who can run, who has good bat control, who preferably plays 2B, in the 2 spot in the lineup. Regardless of whether that person can get on base at a respectable clip or not.

Modern baseball logic tells you that type of player is NOT as valuable in that spot if he is not adept at getting on-base. At least at a decent .330-.340 level.

One of the reasons the Royals played so well with Bonifacio in the lineup is that he hit second in the lineup and produced a .350 OBP in his 40 games with KC in 2013.

If Infante is posting a .325 from the 2 spot while Gordon is doing his usual .350-.360 out of the 5, the Royals are PROBABLY leaving runs on the board. Not a TON, but some.

Have I mentioned yet in 2014 that I don't give much of a damn about the lineup? Maybe one-fifth of a damn, but no more.

You should generally have your better hitters earlier to give them more AB in a season, and its probably a good idea to alternate left right, but neither of those things make that much of a difference, and fans freak out about lineup changes way more than justified.

As long as you write 1. Aoki and 9. Escobar in indelible ink, and as long as Butler, Gordon, Hosmer, and Perez are somewhere in the top 6, I don't care beyond that. Yost could literally change the lineup every single day for all I care, with names in a LH box and in a RH box, drawing them out one at a time from each box.

Sure. I just look at it like this... OBP is less important out of your 5 and 6 hitters (being followed by Moustakas, Cain and Escobar) than it is out of your 1-2 hitters (being followed by Hosmer, Butler and Perez).

Stacking

.355
.365
.350
.375

1-4 for Perez and Infante

should create more runs than stacking

.355
.325
.350
.375

For Gordon and Perez.

I'm not saying it makes no difference at all. I'm saying it makes almost no difference at all, and I can usually find 10 other things to complain about after a loss before I finally work my way down to the lineup.

I agree almost completely.

It honestly probably bothers me more that hitting Infante second instead of Gordon symbolizes Ned Yost's stubborn old school attitude and approach to managing, which sometimes is to the detriment of the team's success.

Quick example in case anyone reading this is scratching their head at this whole "lineup doesn't make much of a difference" thing I have.

Lets say you are a manager and you have two players, one of them will lead off, and one of them will bat 9th. Lets make this example extreme: one player has a .400 OBP, and the other has a horrible .250 OBP. Lets also say that you have gone insane and decided to lead off with the crappy hitter.

A leadoff runner at first scores roughly 1/3 of the time. The batting order only makes a difference once per game (since after the first inning your sluggers might lead off for your bottom guys, and your bottom guys might lead off for the top guys, etc). That whopping .150 OBP difference means you are probably not scoring a run that you would have scored with the better leadoff hitter about once every 20 games. (.150 / 3 = .05 = 1/20) 10 combined runs scored and defensively saved generally equal a win.

Over a full 162-game season the horrible, insane lineup will win about 0.8 fewer games than the best lineup.

Freeman got 8/$135

Welp, doubt we see any spring training articles about BB getting "in the best shape of his life".

BB

We should all just forget about extending Hosmer. Boras is taking him to free agency, and that'll be the end of it.

Agreed...no way I see Hosmer even considering staying. He loves him some NYY's

Luckily, he plays the most easily-replaced position, unless he goes all Pujols on us.

We can't lose Hosmer. So we lose Hosmer and Shields in same year were back to a 60 win team.

:spock:

uhhh...

He only has 2 years of service time. He isn't a free agent until 2018. Also, first basemen aren't hard to replace.

Belly's got it covered.

lol right, atleast we got 4 more years or so

To have extended Hosmer, we would have needed to have Brauned him in year one, month one.

Even then, I don't know that Boras would have let him accept it.

Could be.

This will be one of those situations where it's going to be tough to fault the Royals too much when the player walks, but, make no mistake, some dipshits will scream about things "being the exact same."

It will be disappointing, but not exactly like years past.

What?

Right. The real question will be what they have available from within to step into his role.

I mean, people still scream about things being exactly the same and how the Royals immediately trade off all their "good" players when they get too expensive... despite the fact KC has extended every internal "good" player beyond his first FA years since Moore got here.

So yes, of course, the first time Moore fails to get that done, I'm sure the boo birds will jump all over it.

That's been GMDM's strength, that and building a bullpen. If people don't realize that, they're not paying attention.

I still don't know how DM got that deal done with Salvy Perez, thats highway robbery right there. If the upcoming players in the next few drafts were smart, they'd cross his agents off their list.

Don't worry about Sal. He'll get his money when Hudler takes him to the Yanks

Oh, and if anyone feels like yelling at a sportswriter this morning, David Schoenfield from ESPN picked the Royals to finish #18, with a record of 79-83.

Dayton talked about this the other week when I saw him.

When they're working with a young Latin player who didn't sign for much initially, those guys are more willing to sign extensions early that pay them much more in the non-arb years but less down the road.

For Sal, he has made much more in 2012, 2013 and 2014 than he would have otherwise ($3.25 million compared to about a million in non-arb salary). That early security is worth a lot.

In COMPLETELY UNRELATED NEWS... Yordano Ventura originally signed for $28k...

He's probably all about the ZIPS projections (which are awful, IMO).

Whatever formula ZIPS is using makes no sense to me. It's extremely conservative and particularly hard on young players.

I mean, it predicts Mike Trout - a guy who has hit .326 and .323 in the major leagues - to be a .302 hitter this year. Just silly.

There are some legit reasons to think we might lose even without injuries (Guthrie's ability to get outs with RISP may have just been blind luck in 2013, who knows with Vargas, maybe none of our young hitters improve), but to me thats at the 10-15% point of the probability distribution. To actually predict 79 wins seems kinda bold. We did get rid of Getz and Frenchy, and our #5 spot won't feature Mendoza, come on, thats got to be worth whatever number of wins he may be dinging us for having the AL's best ERA last year.

Regarding Boras\Hosmer... Boras is unique in all of sports. I read somewhere (years ago on the ESPN boards I believe) that he and his clients treat their relationship as a partnership, not a client\rep like most agents. He is there to make MONEY, period... he factors things like, exposure, longevity, playing time etc... but for monetary considerations alone... not the sake of the player. Certain players have told him things such as "I'd be willing to go here because i like so-and-so" and Boras has been stalwart in reminding the player that this is business and will be treated as such... He will not negotiate special deals (aka Hometown discounts, etc).. He maximizes everything, short term and long term and he handles it ALL.. Most his players have little to no say until it's time to sign the dotted line.

Not sure how true most of that is.

Projection systems have a few major flaws, IMO:

1) Consistent underrating of young players (have no ability to show progression for young guys)
2) Blindness to outliers (Guys like Guthrie or Chen, who have outpitched peripherals their entire careers - 5+ years - can't be separated from guys like Jeremy Hellickson, who don't have the background of outpitching peripherals.
3) Inability to track defensive effects. (Because defensive metrics are bad/unreliable, there is no good way to plug them into a projection tool. This hurts defensive clubs like the Royals in terms of projecting run prevention).

Fielding Independent Pitching is great on paper and tells you some about a pitcher as an individual. But in real life, there actually IS a defense behind that pitcher.

The 2013 Royals were not lucky.They were not fluky. Their record was right where their runs scored/runs allowed said it should have been.

Just realized something with all his Hosmer free agency in 4 years talk. The new rules with QO's are going to make those situations where a team trades off a player they think they will lose in the last year of arbitration much less common.

That first round draft pick is going to be worth something, teams are probably going to just let their players play it out, extend the QO, and let them walk. If we were contemplating a Greinke type of deal today, you can't just look at the players you are trading for, now you mentally have to factor in that by making the trade you will not be getting that sandwich pick, and the other side probably won't be willing to boost their offer to make up for it.

If I was a good player, I would want Boras. If I was an agent, I would try to be Boras. I completely 100% agree with his basic philosophy, which is often in conflict with my desire as a Royals fan to see our best players leave some money on the table and stay.

Boras' philosophy is pretty simple: it is impossible to know what your value is unless you test free agency. There is obviously a risk of being injured or declining, but if the stats predict that a decline is unlikely, then what you are giving up for security is often too big of a price to pay.

Even if you love your team and you want to stay, even if you want to give the team a "hometown discount", Boras would still advise you to test free agency. Maybe you were thinking you were worth 10AAV so you were thinking about offering to stay for an extension of 8.5AAV as a friendly hometown discount. If you go to free agency though, you might find out to your utter shock that the market has changed and you are now really worth 18AAV. You had no idea and maybe even Boras didn't know, but you don't find out until you test it, then you go back to the team you love, forget about that 8.5AAV nonsense and say "listen guys, I can get 18. Come on, you gotta help me out here, at least offer me 15 and we can talk".

Yes but at the same time, it's going to give the player more value on the short term. Not only are you getting the renta-player, but you're getting a pick at the end of it too. So he could be potentially worth "more" to a team than previously. So i'm not sure how much it's gonna sway it one way or another.

Oh I agree wholeheartedly, the players are now treating the "game" as a straight up business as well. Before this was almost exclusively the Owners' rights.

Sucks for the fan at times, as you want to become attached to the great players with teams.

Only if you trade for the player before the start of the season. Half-season rentals don't bring back the comp pick.

True, but the trade would have to be made before the final season begins in that case. No more deadline deals and half-year rentals.