Meh. That's pretty much how things work. You lowball the young talent because you get them for 6 years...and then you have to overpay the vets when they start getting to their 2nd and 3rd contracts.

Smart organizations, and we do this, just extend the youngsters right away and buy their first two or three years of free agency for a huge discount.

If you're 1 year of service in and know you won't get paid diddly for 2-5 years...you might as well take $6M per year up front in case you start to suck or you get drilled in the face by an Arodlis Champman fastball.

Maybe we can trade Frenchy, Hoch and Chen for 1/2 of the Pittsburgh Pirates?
Seems like a fair deal.

yeah, and aside from the injury or failure risk, some kids who make it want the nice house and fancy cars right away. Boras might preach to his clients to be patient, but sometimes they don't want to wait and they'll give something up later to get paid more now.

at least those contracts are one way for the "little guy" to compete.

From Bob Dutton today:

#Royals list Johnny Giavotella as 2B at Class AAA Omaha but classify Christian Colon and Irving Falu as 2B/SS...

RHPs Yordano Ventura and Jason Adam will open at AA Northwest Arkansas along with SS Orlando Calixte and CF Brett Eibner...

John Lamb will begin first full season back from TJ surgery at Hi-A Wilmington.

Joins Kyle Zimmer, Sam Selman and Kyle Smith in rotation. Wilmington roster also includes 3B Cheslor Cuthbert and RF Jorge Bonifacio...

Lo-A Lexington gets three of #Royals' top young prospects: CF Bubba Starling, SS Adalberto Mondesi and RHP Miguel Almonte.

Spring training is over. Time to get excited.

The best way is to not horribly miss on our draft picks for over a decade.

Baseball's economics are unfair, but its not quite as catastrophic as some Royals fans believe. What we went though in the 90's and 2000's is not normal. We are given the right to have every player we ever draft through his likely peak year. Any free agent that the large markets gobble up are on the decline. The large markets can still win because even though they are buying declining players, if they are all declining superstars, you'll still win plenty of games before they get too old.

If we keep drafting well and early-extend any good player we can who wants to be paid sooner, we should be able to at least generally be mediocre most years with some periods of crap and some periods of glory. Two decades of crap takes some supremely un-talented GM's.

Mendoza will be made available on Monday as a long reliever. If we don't use him, he'll pitch on Saturday.

Not sure what we do on April 6th if for some bizarre reason we use Mendoza on opening day, hopefully we'd just skip #5 and let Shields pitch since there's a day off mixed in there.

that'd sure be nice for those of us coming from out of town, and tired of the hoch treatment!!!

goooooooooooo royals!!!!!
:)

Well, Shields wont pitch the home opener. That'll be either Santana or Guthrie, depending on whether we skip the #5 start.

There is also the time value of money to consider.

Yeah baby!

Hey, I've got a new drinking game. Every time James Shields gets inverviewed, you have to slam your beer every time he says "I tell you what...."

welp, that sucked. (KU's loss to Michigan)

Oh, well. 2013 was always going to be the year of the Royals, it is destiny. If you are a casual, kinda sorta Royals fan, you should get on the bandwagon now because for the first time in over 20 fricken' years, this baseball team looks really, really good.

The lineup is powerful, the rotation is.... well, its not going to be the best but its the best we've had in a long time, and our bullpen this year is going to be absolutely rock-solid. I honestly don't think any team in the entire AL has a better bullpen than the Royals. Hopefully they can actually give them leads to hold.

Royals season!