Of course, that makes zero sense given how hypercompetitive the sport has beem the past 15 seasons. Since 2000, 1/2 of the 30 teams have played in the World Series. With multiple winners. There are only like 4-5 teams that haven't made the playoffs since then. So what exactly are you talking about?

Nice to see Shields leading the staff with the most wins. If he continues pitching like an ace, he'll either lead us to the playoffs or fetch something huge in a trade (see my last post).

GMDM Claims to have watched at least one of the '85 WS home games from near 1-70 (as a Royals fan). Something tells me he'll never see a championship game *inside* Kauffman Stadium

2-2 in July. Need to pick it up from .500 pace.

Need Dunn and Byrd. Make it so Dayton. A couple of good bats to replace Aoki and Butler and this team has a shot. If they stand pat im not seeing it

Honestly, we really do need two bats with pop. I just don't see that happening.

I think we should fire up "Part II" of this thread coming out of the break.

I like it. Who would we have to give up?

That's a Duncan question. Probably not much at all for Dunn but I'd guess trading for Byrd would hurt a bit if he waives the no trade.

So, I imagine I didn't miss much this weekend and haven't had a chance to read back through the thread yet. Spent Saturday and Sunday at home helping my dad finish the interior of my grandmother's new garage. It was a lot of tough work (sheetocking walls without a drywall lift sucks), but at least I missed the debacle Saturday.

Winning yesterday keeps the weekend series from being a complete disaster (it is just a minor one now), but the team has already talked so much about how it's a second-half squad, it had better deliver. Unless a move is made to add some punch to this offense, I hold out little hope for that.

It wouldn't shock me if Hosmer continues to hit and has a really strong second half. At this point, I'd be pretty shocked if Butler turns it around.

As for the costs on Dunn or Byrd, neither should be prohibitively expensive in acquisition cost. Dunn has one year left on his deal and is owed about $7 million over the rest of the season. I've never been a fan of his game and think the fanbase would quickly get annoyed with his 3 outcomes nature (think about how pissed people get now if a player doesn't deliver a runner from 3rd with less than two outs... that's pretty much Dunn's MO).

I can't imagine the White Sox market for Dunn is huge. He's a DH-only guy at this point, really. So you're limited to AL teams. I imagine it would be a very minor cost (something like Jason Adam, a lotto ticket who MIGHT eventually become a back-end starter).

Byrd probably makes more sense and is an easier fit for KC (as he brings more to the table than Dunn), but probably costs a little more to go get. And there's the no-trade clause issue, though he already has said he's willing to waive it to go to Seattle.

Being able to play Byrd in RF (something they should certainly be willing to live with considering they were fine with playing Ibanez RF) is a nice bonus, and his option for next year provides a little insurance for when Butler's option is not picked up. It would take more than Dunn - probably more like Adam plus another lotto ticket type -but Philly needs pieces and numbers to start its rebuild.

You could Byrd and not have to immediately cut ties with Billy Butler as part of the deal. Not really the case with Dunn.

Side note:

Kyle Zimmer is supposed to resume throwing today. We'll see how long this lasts!

Baltimore Orioles fans think this is a good trade, probably. But it's far off the mark in what it would take to get Stanton.

Why does Miami - a team that's going nowhere this season - want James Shields?

Why does Miami a middling reliever who's about to hit arbitration and become expensive?

Moustakas and Colon maybe have some value to the Marlins, but as throw in piecess.

This is one of those trades that might work on MLB The Show on Playstation but makes no sense for either team in real life.

You want to talk about a cheap owner who abuses his local fanbase? Talk about Jeffrey Loria, who swindled the city of Miami into building a new ballpark for him with public funds and has since reneged on his "Changed ways" as an owner. He makes David Glass look like Steinbrenner by comparison.

If the Marlins trade Stanton, it will assuredly be for a package centered almost entirely around prospects. There might be 1-2 players with MLB experience in there, but they will be cheap young guys, not established stars with salaries north of $10 million/year.

KC would need to surrender:

RA Mondesi
Miguel Almonte/Christian Binford (pick one)
Ventura/Duffy (Pick one)

and that's just where it STARTS for Stanton. Likely would require a few more valuable pieces.

Nice call out.

I mean, it's not like I quoted a post in which you said you believe in stats, and shared stats that suggested Detroit was NOT going to run away and hide.

:spock:

Hindsight is nice. At the time of that post - coming off a terrible month that had the team on the verge of fracturing and a clubhouse that was starting to see rumors about its rookie manager being overmatched - there wasn't anything STATISTICAL to suggest Detroit was about to go on a stretch in which it went from a -3 run differential to a +50 run differential in 23 games.

There was nothing that suggested an offense that had, to that point, been pretty mediocre would suddenly explode. As of 06/18, the Tigers had scored 305 runs in 68 games. That's 4.5 runs a game, and was 7th in the AL (Just nudging out the Royals at 303 runs, 8th in the AL). There was nothing to suggest JD Martinez, a scrap heap acquisition at that point posting an .843 OPS with 4 HR, would go on a tear in the next 23 games that would see him hit 9 HR and post a 1.222 OPS.

But congrats, I guess?

RE:Byrd - I hope that when the Royals played the Mets in Aug last year and Byrd went full reerun in the outfield in the 2nd or 3rd game of the series, that was Marlon at his very worst...cause that was god awful.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Jonny Gomes is a <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Royals?src=hash">#Royals</a> trade target, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/jcrasnick">@jcrasnick</a>. He&#39;s an interesting name to consider. Down year, but big power.</p>&mdash; David Lesky (@DBLesky) <a href="https://twitter.com/DBLesky/statuses/488709367923871746">July 14, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I sure as **** hope not.....
 

His max HR's in a yr was 21 - which he did once. He hasn't hit 20 HR's since 2009. Since when is that considered BIG POWER? Only for the R's I guess.....JFC

:banghead: