So, chances of Dyson getting cut? We have tons of OFs

I'd personally like to keep Dyson for insurance. Also for base stealing.

Zero. He has some value to this team for his pinch running for Billy as well as a fill in for Cain.

I have always believed from the beginning of the offseason that the odds of Dyson getting traded or cut were almost zero. Something has to give, but I don't believe it will be him. Dyson is faster than everyone but maybe 4 or 5 people in the entire game, and for a team who ostensibly wants to make the playoffs, a super pinch runner who can play center field is worth something even if his bat isn't very strong.

edit: and as far as his bat goes, his offense is not embarrassing at all, either.

About zero, unless they really believe in Aoki's ability to play CF for more than a day here and there.

As of right now, my bench is (insert random backup catcher here), Maxwell (4OF), Dyson (pr/ Def CF), and Valencia (if Moose sucks), and I'd ask Escobar to do his best Cal Ripken Jr impersonation for the first 2 months. He played 158 games last year and 158 games 3 years ago, so he apparently doesn't need much rest. Injuries or something will happen at some point to open up a spot to temporarily shuttle Ciriaco or someone up and down to rest him later. If Moose looks good, we can probably trade or cut Valencia loose for a true UTIL later.

edit: woops, Ciriaco has no options. Unless he accepts a minor league assignment, we may have to figure out whether Moose can do it quicker than I thought.

edit2: Infante is nowhere near the horse Escobar is. We may have to have a backup middle infielder to start the season. I seriously doubt we'll start with 11 pitchers, so I dunno.

If only they'd had access to a player who could play 2B, SS AND CF...

Who could play a game a week at 2B, two a week in CF and one here or there at other spots.
Oh, wait...

:clap:

This is really kinda tight. I think Valencia has to make the team as moose insurance unless he sucks in spring. I believe Dyson is on the team, and I'm now starting to think we need Ciriaco or someone like him, because I don't think Infante can play every day in April into half of May.

Is Maxwell really the odd guy out? Maybe we can try to start the season with 11 pitchers, and try to decide between Moose and Valencia ASAP?

edit: and of course Maxwell has no options either. Screw it, they all make the team. We'll have to start the year with 11 pitchers probably, and get that bus to and from Omaha fired up and ready to go.

Valencia is making this team; like it or not. Don't know if he could spell Escobar and Infante at times, but I would imagine he could occasionally.

I'm not so sure. He has never played 2B in the majors, and he has played a middle infield position for a grand total of 1 game in his minor league career.

Which tells us that Ned is salivating at the possibilities.

Valencia is a stiff everywhere but third - and he isn't great there. He is a guy who hits lefties and that is about it.

There was a pretty simple solution to this roster crunch problem staring them in the face:

Pay Emilio Bonifacio and use him as the backup CF (2 starts a week), and IF (2 starts a week at 2B/SS/3B).

Cut ties with Dyson.

One of the hard truths with Dayton Moore is that he has ALWAYS been bad at roster construction. He has ALWAYS held onto guys with much less real value than he perceives for too long.

Dyson is just the latest example. He's probably the best player they've held onto too long - he at least has some useful skills - but his mediocre D in CF and speed are not that SPECIAL/RARE.

Dyson was never going anywhere. If we sign Boni, we don't need Ciriaco or Valencia.

Oh, I know that. Even though Valencia is a more strategic piece than Dyson when you have a Bonifacio available, they were never going to walk way from him.

There are all kinds of lightning fast guys who can play a mediocre CF and be a pinch-run weapon but not really hit in baseball. And they're cheap and easily acquired.

Ned: "Can he bunt? Is he a good bunter??? FAP FAP FAP...."

If the Bluejays arent going to sign Erv, then who will at this point?

From USATODAY.COM from about 20 minutes ago…

Story is where they think Stephen Drew, Nelson Cruz and Ervin Santana will sign –

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/02/nels...b-free-agents/


http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/02/nels...b-free-agents/

Oh come on, not the ****ing White Sox. I'd almost rather see him with Detroit than those Chicago strokes.

Fixed

I don't want Santana on the White Sox.

I'd really hate it if Santana was in the Al Central

Meh, seeing an AL central team sign Santana would be a roll of the dice. He is either a big piece toward hurting the Royals, or he is a money pit that goes back to his 5 ERA and costs them a chunk for a few years.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/minor...rospects-free/


4 Royals in the top 100:

Saw this on mlbtraderumors.com this morning.

Scumbags in Philly.

Complete bullsh%t. And can the NCAA be a bigger joke? So sick of hearing about ridiculous stuff like this while they laugh with tons of $$$ in the bank.

On the other hand, good luck to Philly in getting any youngsters to believe and trust you again. Hopefully it bites them in the ass for awhile.

Somewhat surprised there's no Almonte on the list but he made a couple of the others. No real surprises on the list for me. Was a little surprised at some of the ETA's on these guys. When I was looking it over it seemed like 40 out of the top 50 had 2014 ETA next to their names. Somewhat ambitious if you ask me.

Overall, nice to see us back in the top 10 after graduating so many 2 and 3 years ago. Latin America has been good to us :)

+1

That's pretty terrible. Only 4? With where we've been drafting, and with the resources we've been allocating to the farm system? Brutal.

Jonathan Gray rhp 3ds_rockies85 22 2014 After drafting him third overall in June, the Rockies limited Gray from using his devastating slider in his pro debut so that he could focus on fastball command. If Gray learned that lesson, watch out.


We drafted Gray a few years ago but couldn't (or wouldn't) sign him. Huge blunder. At least we blew money on Tim Melville and Bubba Starling.

Of note, Mondesi is the highest ranked 18 year old. Austin Meadows, also 18, is a couple of spots behind.

The offered him a lot actually, he turned it down. He's bee. Drafted 3 times, methinks.

Andy McCullough ‏@McCulloughStar 18h
Highlights of day: Players debate whether curling is a sport; Yost considers the merits of YouTube; Dyson homers in BP, endures catcalls.


The new beat writer has been substantially more enjoyable on Twitter than Dutton ever was...

I approve.

100/30 = 3.333

"Terrible"? "Brutal"?

Seems a bit rash.

howsabout 3 in the top 50?

Another one from the new beat writer:

Thats awesome, I liked Dutton, but this is an upgrade so far.

He's been outstanding. His piece on Escobar was full of advanced metrics. I hope he stays for awhile. He left the NY market to come here, so hopefully he likes the Midwest and settles in.

Kyle Zimmer said he was learning from "the old guys", and in response this happened.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bg70sSjCAAAdtX6.jpg

That controversy with the Phillies is turning out to be a complete disaster. Here's the reaction from one agent:

What's been going on?

kids decided to go to school and the Phillies supposedly turned them in to the NCAA for infractions

Whoops. Guess I skipped over the posts about it.

here is the post and link I think

I've read a bit more on this, this won't have any impact outside of Philly, but this is swiftly spiralling out of control for the Phillies, and they are gonna have to take action soon with the next draft coming up.

Apparently, almost every agent in baseball is now telling the Phillies that they will not talk to them nor allow them to talk to their player before the draft. The Phillies are not going to be able to operate that way, sure it sucks for them that a couple kids changed their mind last year and went back to school, but every team has got to be able to talk to kids to get a feel for how signable everyone is.

I'm betting some people in Philadelphia are going to be fired, and then the Phillies will beg the agents for forgiveness.

Yeah, they're getting blasted (rightfully so) on twitter by NATIONAL writers. If there's a hush hush don't talk about it going on across the board in MLB. Then they were idiots by turning in two mid round prospects because they were butthurt.

Any chance he makes it to KC this season?

I think we'll see him after the all star break.

Just a guess. :shrug:

This season? I'd say at least 95%. April? maybe 5%.

I'm still worried about his elbow. There are reports out there that he was still experiencing some tightness and discomfort in December and January.

Who's 68?

I looked him up to see who was the "really old guy". He's 41 years old. I stopped caring at that point.

LMAO

It is his shoulder that is the issue. I don't believe he is healthy either, I think there's more reason on why he hasn't started throwing yet other than "we're saving him for the end of the year."

Of course I can't prove that, just my speculation.

#60? is that the beastin Seattle OF, dude is huge

that's Rausch, I think.

No thanks, my back is fine.

#60 is Rauch and #68 is Guillermo Mota

Saw an interesting story suggesting that the NCAA may be playing with fire here if they decide to suspend that Oregon State pitcher. This happened before a few years ago at Oklahoma State with a player named Andy Oliver. (In that case it wasn't the pro team, but a rival agent who called the NCAA)

Andy Oliver sued the NCAA and actually won in court because what the NCAA is basically doing is interfering with the right to counsel. The NCAA then quickly settled and paid him $750,000 to prevent the court from striking down the no agent rule.

Is Gio ever going to do anything for this team?

Doubt it. He's had several chances already and blown all of them.

A few minor league players have filed a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball, primarily complaining that, aside from the few who get large bonuses, they are getting paid a lot less than minimum wage.

They also complain about the draft and other MLB rules, but thats probably going to be covered by the antitrust exemption. They might have something on the pay, though. It doesn't matter if you sign a contract or not, you generally can not pay someone less than minimum wage even if they agree to it.

What a bunch of babies. They're getting paid to play a game they've loved since they were kids, whom any of us would gladly quit our jobs in a heart-beat for a chance to play pro baseball. Have a problem with the money? Get better!

interestingly enough, aside from MLB, Selig, and the MLBPA, the Kansas City Royals are also a named defendant because one of the three players suing baseball is in our minor league system. The other two teams named are the Giants and Marlins.

edit: correction, he (Michael Liberto) used to be in our minor leagues. A current minor leaguer would never dare sue for obvious reasons.

I did some rough math, 6 minor league teams in our system, probably about 150 players, I'm assuming we make them work about 60 hours a week for 7 months and about 20 for the other 5, and assuming we pay them roughly $6,000/year now...

I think we currently pay our minor leaguers about $1MM/year, and the cost to pay them minimum wage would be about $2.5MM/year. So there really isn't much at stake here.

If I was MLB, I'd just settle and make this bad PR nuisance go away. Just pay everyone 1 year of back wages, start paying $7.25 from now on, and move on.

I'm heading up to the morning workout tomorrow.

Any chants/jabs I should yell at the guys? I'm thinking of asking Ned what it will be like to have a real second baseman this year and see what he says.

Yell at Butler to run some extra laps

Keep it good-natured. The 2B one is probably fine. I've never been a fan of heckling at a ballpark.

Are you going to get any pictures like last year? Those were pretty awesome.

Lol. Billy barely signed or took picture last year. I got one with him but he acted like it was a huge inconvenience....you know, me and the 10 other fans there.

I agree. I'll ask Hoz if he knows if Dayton and Frenchy will be continuing a long distance relationship.

Hopefully! Getting the wife to go with me tomorrow. Pictures and some balls/bat to get some autographs. I'm actually not sure they will be there but they were on Saturday last year so I'm hoping it's the same. They don't release the workout schedule so I'm just guessing.

Hoz is young and cool still. Once you get to be a vet you become an asshole.

I had no idea minor leaguers got paid basically nothing. When do they start making any money?

After their rookie contract is up in the bigs. Im sorry but I don't feel for these guys at all.

Eric Hosmer's rookie contract wasn't for 6K a year. I'm talking about the guys making that amount and wondering if they get a raise for being promoted through the system without making the majors or if they just have to hope to be resigned for more.

Well, thats fine for them, but well over 90% never make it, and end up toiling away for years at less than 3 bucks an hour. Its not going to break the Royals or any other team to pay them minimum wage, I think they should just do it.

The best AAA veterans who aren't good enough to break into MLB can top out at roughly $60K or so. A few guys might get a bit more than that. Thats the ceiling, single-A rookies usually get about $5,000. AA players might get $6-7K. They usually need either a spouse/girlfriend who works, or they sometimes live with families who agree to put them up for the season.

I had no idea. I always just assumed they got around 25-30K a year, even in the low levels.

Ouch, in my opinion they deserve more than that, even if they are playing baseball. Some of these guys didn't even go to college, right? Or are only the best prospects drafted straight out of HS?

Walk with shuffled feet, stare into the distance and mumble "29 years" every 30 seconds.

Nelson Cruz to the Orioles, 1/8MM. Thats got to sting. Thats 2 players now who declined a QO and later had to sign a 1 year deal for less.

The Orioles might be a good fit for Santana, they are now giving up both their 1st and 2nd round picks, and I don't think they have anything else left to lose.