So at this point, what are the chances we actually bring Santana back, if any?

We have a $12.5MM team option with a $1MM buyout in 2015 on Billy Butler. If we let him go some fans will cry about same old Royals letting their best players leave, but honestly I don't know if he's going to be worth it. This feels like a contract year to me, where Billy needs to prove that we should keep him on another year as a full-time DH.

How good does he have to be for you to pay him 12.5 in 2015? Would it be enough if he repeated 2012 (.882 OPS, a little over 3 WAR), or would he need to do better than that?

The general consensus is that the odds go up every day we get closer to Spring Training. After the Garza signing, someone here said the odds went from about 1 in a 1,000,000 to about 1 in a 1,000, and I would argue those odds have since gone up to around 1 in 100 (Still a longshot, but the odds are increasing moving in our direction).

This was explained literally thousands of times on this board during the season to the Royal fans who love Billy, but it never sank in. He's slow and he GIDP like crazy and he makes $8M and he hit only 15HR and you can platoon other regulars in that spot and get the same production. Yet our fans still continued to think he was Miggy Cabrera's peer. It was pathetic.


A Butler who hits like he did in 2012 with 300-29-110 or whatever is a valuable DH. But even then he only had a 3.0 WAR. Numbers don't lie.

$12.5M for Butters seems a bit too steep.

We are also making a horrendous error in judgment if we allow Hoch and Davis' contracts to dissuade us from making a serious run at Ervin. His signing turns this team from a wild card hopeful to a team that could make a serious run in the postseason.

8M is too steep.

He has to be 4/5ths Cabrera good. As frustrating as he can be in pressure situations, or his bad habit of GIDP as PB pointed out, he's still one of the better hitters on the team. If he plays this season at 2013's level or below, you pull the eject lever on his ass for 2015, fan favorite or no. He HAS to step up at the plate this season. It is his ONE JOB.

This is great news. I'm going to do my best not to get overly excited, but it's nice to know that the chance is looking better and better (no jinx, dammit). Santana returning with the guys we brought in would almost be fap worthy.

I was wondering when you'd chime in.

2013: Billy had the second highest WAR for a DH.

You've never responded to this point, nor do I expect you to. In addition, please point us to alternatives who would have outdone or matched Butler's production in 2013.

Billy exceeded the WAR of Prince Fielder and Victor Martinez for 2013, so as usual, your argument holds little to no factual merit (you are a professional at this by now).

Now, 8.5 million is a perfectly reasonable amount to pay Butler at his level of production, but 12.5 million is a different story.

If he hasn't signed a few days or so after pitchers and catchers report, then I think our odds will be at least 1 in 10 or 1 in 5 at that point. I agree its 1 in 100 right now, which means I am fully expecting him to sign somewhere this next week

If he doesn't, then it could mean that he has quietly reached a verbal agreement with the Royals to sign for 1 year, but not until after the regular season has started. The only way to make sure you don't get a QO is to wait till after opening day to sign on for the year.

The double plays have to be drastically reduced. They just have to be. It would be nice if he could actually becoming a guy you knew for a certainty that was going to flirt with 30 HRs and 40+ doubles every season (no shit, right?).

Get in the ****ing gym and drop a 20 spot, Billy. Maybe then you'd be able to leg out a couple of those DP's you seem to be so fond of hitting into.

Who gives a shit about his 1.6 WAR? It was terrible. Pointing to crappy years by Prince and Martinez don't justify your argument. I already addressed Billy's "production" being replaced by a platoon of Justin Maxwell & Jarrod Dyson. It sounds laughably absurd, but put the numbers together. You'll see it is actually true. And all for the low low price of $1M.


Further, you can rotate Alex and Sal in there, which you'll need to do to keep your best bats in there for the aforementioned "half days off".

For me, I think Billy needs to do better than 2012. Keeping him means we give up on the chance to bat Salvy when he's not catching. Teams who don't have a catcher who can hit wouldn't care as much, but our catcher happens to be one of our best hitters, so freeing up the DH spot is worth a lot to us.

I think Billy would need to explode this year and become a 4-WAR player and an obvious all-star before I begin to think bringing him back for 12.5 in 2015 is a good idea.

Tub of goo making 12.5 M in 2015 makes me nauseous.

Using WAR to calculate the projected output from a player who played a partial season is a dishonest mechanism for evaluation.

Case in point: In 2004, Mark Teahan had an AWESOME 3.8 OWar with only about 400 PA's, his performance over a full season in 2006? 0.8.

Butler needs to hit for more power, even his doubles were down. That's pretty much it. I'm pretty sure he posted his highest OBP ever... he took a lot of walks last year.

If he hits between 20-30 HRs he is probably worth the 12 million a year. Especially in our ballpark. I do not believe platooning the likes of Maxwell, Lough and Dyson in that position will yield similar results. That kind of stuff hardly ever plays out like you think it will because bench players end up getting overexposed... i.e. Ross Gload syndrome.

A Ross Gload mention. Awesome. Who's next? Jacobs?

Aaron Guiel

Belly needs to lay off those low and away sliders and be able to get around on the high outer strike zone pitches and whack them to right field again. If not, don't see much use in keeping him after this year

LMAO

It won't, but for 11.5MM (we have to pay 1MM to buy out), its probably going to be good enough. If we're the Yankees or Dodgers and Butler posts his usual old .800-something OPS season we could just pay him and forget about it, but we're the Royals and that kind of money means something to us. If we were a hopeless losing team maybe you keep Butler around to sell tickets and give the fans someone to cheer for, but we're presumably still going to be in the playoff hunt in 2015 even without Shields, unless all of our young pitchers go straight to hell.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>The plan for Kyle Zimmer: He’ll start slow, and be capped around 150 IP. Hope is he’ll arrive midseason as a force. <a href="http://t.co/wBxErX6awU">http://t.co/wBxErX6awU</a></p>&mdash; Andy McCullough (@McCulloughStar) <a href="https://twitter.com/McCulloughStar/statuses/432232066256601089">February 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
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yep, was just about to post that, looks like his first article as the new beat writer.

The Royals are going to cap him at 150IP this year, starting slow, and hoping he triumphantly swoops in around July or so to power the Royals into the playoffs.

Not surprising this thread transitioned from Sweeney hate to Butler hate. Hand-in-hand.

Some facts from 2013 (which by all means was a down year for Butler):

Stat/Butler's number/AL rank

AVG: .289/3rd
OBP: .374/2nd
SLG: .412/8th
OPS: .786/2nd

The guy still gave the Royals the 2nd-best DH numbers in the American League last year, in his worst year as a pro.

He's not overpaid. He's not worthless. And the number of double plays into which he hits does not matter (lots of great hitters hit into a ton of double plays, regardless of speed, including: Dustin Pedroia, Matt Holliday, Victor Martinez, Paul Goldschmidt. Even speed guys like Jose Altuve and Darwin Barney were in the top 10 in 2013).

Butler needs to be better this year. The Royals need him to have 60+ combined 2B and HR again, something he's done in every full season except for last year. They will have a tough decision on his 2015 option. But thinking he's easily replaced and being glad he's gone... just silly things. Teams that have tried the new, in vogue platoon approach at DH have received mixed results from it.

Suggesting Jarrod Dyson gives you ANY value when used solely as a hitter/offensive player is ludicrous. The guy is not a full time player. He needs to have limited at-bats to prevent overexposure. You don't slot .258/.326/.366 hitters into the DH spot.

Feel free to point out which part of my post was factually incorrect.

Now the thread should be back on track, so that's good.

Hated the new beat writer's first effort. Unnecessarily cumbersome rhetoric in an effort to do little but show off. I'm not impressed, douche lord.

I was annoyed by the "Wacha" stuff

My final Sweeney Rave then I'll let it go:

Sweeney made about $73 million in his 16 year MLB career, about $70 mill of that came from your KC Royals.
Sweeney's final contract: 5 years, $55 million.

Let me put that in perspective: Royals highest paid player this year?
James Shields, $11 million.
They gave that same money FIVE YEARS in a row to Sweeney, and that was TEN YEARS ago. So in today's money, that contract would have been probably 15 to 18 million a year.

What did the Royals get in return for $70 million?

Royals all time history winning pct: .481
Royals winning pct while Sweeney was on the team: .414

Royals have had five years losing 100 games or more. Who was on all five of those teams?

Sweeney. For a man who has spent a literal fortune trying to prevent abortions, he sure allowed plenty of them here in KC, like the 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2006 Royals seasons.

How many playoff games did Sweeney participate in as a Royal in exchange for $70 million?
Zero.

What was the highest the Royals placed in the AL Central with Sweeney on the team?

Third Place.

Now let's consider Lonnie Smith:
Three World Series Rings with Three Different Teams.
Thought about killing John Sheurholtz and bought a gun to do so.

Those two qualities right there makes him vastly more qualified for this job than Sweeney!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Smith

I'm just saying, if you want to build a winning team, bring in winners. Plain and simple.

If you don't agree.....LOOK A SHINY OBJECT!

I just don't get your post. Top to bottom, left to right, all of it is a bunch of nonsense. The active roster has 25 players. A game usually involves about 13 of them, and this sport isn't like the NBA where one player can be a Kobe and really dominate, warping the odds of a team winning. (Maybe an ace pitcher, for 1/5 of their games?) In baseball, even a good player has a pretty small impact on the game.

And then you get into this whole "this player is not a winner" nonsense, what is that? That reads like superstitious, bone through the nose, primitive native stuff to me. You mean that if the Houston Astros added 1 or 2 "winners", whatever "winner" means, they'd suddenly be good? I think at best they would lose 92 or 93 games instead of losing 100.

Glad that's your last Sweeney rant, you finished with a ridiculous flourish. Blame Sweeney for the team's performance, that's logical on a team with a 25 man roster.

This is the 2nd time I've seen you use team wins as a reason to bring down a player. That argument is unbelievably stupid.

Sweeney played during a period when the owner's number one priority, literally, was NOT winning. He was working to change the economic structure of the game.

I honestly thought you were being a bit tongue-in-cheek with the Sweeney rants, but maybe I was wrong.

Blowfish, you're too good of a poster for this stuff.

Maybe you need to read it right to left, like Hebrew.

I will say, I have no idea why he wants to do this job. He already has $70 million of the Royals money. Maybe there IS something to that old saying about a criminal returning to the scene of the crime....

What will he do in his new job?

Hey, maybe we'll have more Promise Keeper Nights and Family Faith Sunday Games! Maybe a "fishes and loaves" night where everybody gets a free fish sandwich if the Royals win a game in May? Or maybe we can have wrestling matches on the mound between Sweeney and Jeff Weaver? Weaver can dress like the devil. Get thee behind me, Satan!

How about Milk and Cookie Night? First 10,000 in the gate get a Mike Sweeney Cookie Jar!

Maybe build a Mike Sweeney Chiropractic Clinic for fans next to the Royals Hall of Fame? You can find Mike in there usually about a third to half of the season.

How bout they put Sweeney in the booth to banter with Hud for all the road games? Let them have a contest to see who can be more blindly optimistic? Remember how riveting that was last year in the Anaheim Series? Must See TV!

Sweeney wants to win, gosh darn it. Dag Nabbit, he wants to bring October Baseball to Kauffman Stadium, although he hasn't the slightest idea how that happens exactly.

OK, I'm done now. No more Sweeney flaming.

LMAO

I'll be honest I don't give a shit about Sweeney's legacy all that much either way, those teams he was on were so bad he could've played 162 every year and they probably still would've lost 100, but that line made my day.

George,

We get it. You hate Mike Sweeney. Actually, you don't just hate him, you ****ING HATE THAT MOTHER****ER!

I'm not going to try to change your mind. I don't really care if you hate the guy or love him. I just find it curious that anyone would get so emotional about a player who was generally considered to be a good guy and whose only crime was to get injured and not live up to his potential. Is there something else going on here? Did he have sex with your wife or something?

Giving the benefit of the doubt, the only other thing I can think of to make that post less-crazy, is if you think a "leader" can inspire his whole team to be better, and that Sweeney was paid to be a leader who couldn't deliver.

Baseball isn't that kind of sport, though, its very different from football and basketball in that every player is almost an independent free agent who doesn't need help from other players to do his thing, and can't really help other players be better. There are exceptions like a good outfield can pick up a pitcher, and the SS/2B need to work well together, and maybe a catcher can help the pitchers but mostly the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts. Football has situations where a bad line or the lack of a running game can make a good QB look terrible, and a bad QB can make good skill position players fail. Basketball has their glue guys whose job is basically to make everyone else better, but baseball just doesn't have that.

Sweeney was a hell of a player when his back worked out...shit happens. Bad luck on the Royals that they chose him over Beltran. Everyone goes apeshit if they let Sweeney go who at the time was the face and playing elite ball

I'm pretty surprised by the extreme hate as well

I'm wondering if blowfish hates Sweeney as much as KU. :D

like him or not, i'll always remember seeing mike get hit in the back during a relay throw to the plate.
wish there was dvr back then. woulda been able to watch that trainwreck over and over.

one of my first WTF? royals moment......

I thought that was Ken Harvey

were there 2 plays like that? seriously. i distinctly remember the grimmace from his face. at shortly thereafter his back problems started up.

of course, i may have been exposed to some crack the other day and have no idea what i am typing or thinking.:D

George is a long suffering pissed off fan just like me. I get his anger, even if I don't focus it like he does, lol.

Mike Sweeney was hit while running the bases. Ken Harvey was hit in the back WHEN HE WAS THE ****ING CUTOFF MAN and was facing the wrong way.

there it is. makes sense. my senility is really showing through today.
how the hell are you looking the wrong way during a play like that? only the royals.

time to turn this thang around!!! amirite?! time to be royal, mother effers!!!!

harvey was turned around....on a play at the place...where the run was the winning run.

Running the bases wouldn't have shocked me LMAO

Harvey i remember seeing that relay play over and over...

I think all the hate should be towards him. I saw him live at a tbones game playing and he walked off the field after running to 1st base in the 1st inning. fail

maybe ken was thinking about gates or arthur bryants more than the game, i guess? ;)

Still hard to fathom that Harvey was our All-Star one year :doh!:

LMAO

And that poor tarp. It will forever be haunted by the ghost of Ken Harvey.

I remember Sweeny stealing home a long time ago. That was one of my first Royals memories.

Or Mark Redman

I remember sweeney fighting at 4:38
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Forgot about him. Man those were some dark dark years.

Billy Butler will have a career year and hit 30 bombs. Mark this post mother****ers.

Ken Harvey was at least a prospect. Mark Redman was basically a 4/5 starter. Harvey never really recovered after they sent him down for Calvin Pickering.

Back to the DH:

The thing about a full-time DH that you need to remember is that the replacement isn't the same as the replacement for a position guy. If someone like Infante, Cain, Gordon, or Perez goes down, we're screwed because their replacement is going to be a massive downgrade and may not even be on the active roster now.

If you don't have a full-time DH, his replacement is not a AAA player. His replacement is the rest of your team. You are giving all of your starters 5 or 6 games off anyway, if you have them DH then your starting hitters fill out 1/3 of your DH spot for the season. (especially since Salvy will get at least 20 games off from catching and he's a good hitter) The other 2/3 comes from bench guys who were able to hit well enough to make your team. You can't compare the DH to a replacement-level player, because the replacements will all probably hit well enough to put up decent numbers.

12.5MM is a ton of money to pay in 2015 for someone who will only be a marginal upgrade over the other guys on the team who would pick up the slack, Butler really needs to blow up for that to make sense.

Still amazes me that people think Sweeney was clean before he got his money. Of course he quit doing the 'Roids after he got his money. He quit working out, let himself go and of course when that happened he developed those injuries. I think once he got injured he really mailed it in and that was it. The losing wasn't his fault though, that is on the Glassholes.

???????

Normally accumulation of injuries isn't associated with STOPPING steroids?

Complete bullshit speculation without a shred of evidence to back it up.

Did A-Rod quit doing steroids after he got his money? Barry Bonds? Sammy Sosa?

Haters are gonna hate. Their "reasoning" doesn't have to make sense.

Sweeney started having problems once he stopped eating Captain Crunch and switched to Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Actually the injuries are associated with steroid use. I don't doubt the back injuries killed his career, but steroids were the reason for his back injury. Jason Grimsley was a big time steroid guy for the time he was here in KC. But it's all ancient history now, Sweeney is back and Royals fans can continue to love him.

How do steroids cause back injuries?

I obviously can't prove it but I think Frenchy used his first year in KC then quit when got paid.

Steroids can cause skeletal and muscle injuries simply because the strain of bigger muscles puts on them is far more than if you develop them naturally.

Do you have a link? I'm also guessing if anything Mike was taking test and hgh which would prevent injuries. He wasn't exactly Jay Cutler.

Gotta agree with George here. Sweeney is a loser. Bad karma having him around.

HE'S A LEGEND OF THE GAME. DON'T BELIEVE ME? JUST ASK HIM

Sweeney's body betrayed him for whatever reason. Bringing him in now makes little sense.

Craig Nettles is his father in law. Royals fans just love Craig Nettles.

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:thumb:

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Great find.

Unfortunately, that game wound up being the most crushing sports loss of my entire life.

I think so too. But that doesn't cause me to have such an obsessive hatred for the guy that I still can't get over it 10 years later.

I was sitting in the right field stands that game. I've never seen 40,000 people be absolutely silent at the end of a game. A few minutes later over half of the people were literally crying their eyes out.

I was sad and upset and disappointed, but I didn't cry like a teenage girl.

Was twelve years old and remember the shock of this loss like it happened today. Still haunts me.

I was 11 and cried like an 11-year-old boy.


Ditto.

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