KC as model? Whooddathunk it?
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The biggest benefit that the Royals have is the shortened draft. Having a shorter draft gives teams that scout well an advantage if they find diamonds in the rough. It really opens things up for teams that do their homework.
Obviously the big market teams can do that, but finding those key players that are not high picks can help a team. Jarrod Dyson was a 50th round pick. With the draft down to 20 rounds now, the teams that can find those types of players will be at an advantage.
And then of course, the ability to develop players will always be at a premium.
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The Royals can still wallow in the afterglow of their world series for a few years! Sox need to get another one and are going to be in the mix. Royals do look better early on this year for sure.
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Wallow?
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@Crimsonorblue22 lol.
I think he’s still wallowing…
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@Crimsonorblue22 said in KC as model? Whooddathunk it?:
Wallow?
Do you remember after the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973, Nixon said “Let others wallow in Watergate. We are going to do our job.” I can’t hear that word without thinking of that fun time!
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@Crimsonorblue22 Haven’t the Royals gone through a period of wallowing the last 3-4 years? Is that not the right word? What word should I have used?
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@Kcmatt7 NO! My days of wallowing as a Sox fan are over!
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Sox is a better team but Royals are looking good, finding different ways to win.
It is a very long season, if starting pitching can hold up, Royals will give Sox their run for the money.
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I think the Royals are going to have a May lull, and then pick it up in June/July.
The pitching has to hold up, it is true. But now you have Lynch up which I think will help. And I expect Kowar to follow shortly.
Then you still have Witt jr and Mondesi who I expect to be every day guys by the end of the season. It’ll be interesting to see how the batting order changes if Witt Jr does indeed make his appearance. Do they leave Dozier at 3rd? Do they leave Lopez or Whit at 2nd?
Ideally this would be my lineup:
- Whit - 2B
- Witt Jr - 3B
- Santanta - 1B
- Salvy - C
- Soler - DH
- Dozier - LF
- Mondesi SS
- Benetendi - RF
- Taylor - CF
That is a scary 1-9, and Mondesi and Witt Jr also bolster the defense a bit.
If the Royals can just stay competitive up to the All-Star break I think they can make some trades and become real contenders.
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MAT still batting. 262. Respectable. He helping?
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@approxinfinity If he plays like this all season long it was a decent signing. He started the season off super hot.
I think when he moves into that #9 spot after Mondesi comes back he could put up some better numbers because he will have Merrifield hitting behind him. Right now you can pitch around him to get to Nicky Lopez. So the hope would be that he sees more fastballs in the #9 spot.
Ultimately, I think if the Royals are in playoff contention around the deadline the idea would be that he moves to a bench role unless he turns into 2017 MAT between now and July.
Royals have some nice flexibility for a position player at the deadline. They can take either a 3B, 2B or OF and make it work. And any of the 3 would basically mean MAT goes to the bench.
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I’m making a bold prediction - Royals make the move for Kris Bryant if they are still in contention in July. Offense has been good enough, but not good. They need a middle of the order anchor.
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We just lost our gold glove center fielder Luis Robert maybe for the season, 12-18 weeks. Adam Engel, a gold glove caliber player is a month away at least, although his bat isn’t that great. The starting pitching has been fantastic however and tonight Dylan Cease threw 6 shutout innings with 11 K’s , 1 hit allowed and in his first MLB game batting went 3-3! Lots of games between Sox and Royals coming up.
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Wow you don’t see that often @wissox!
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@Kcmatt7 awesome. He could definitely be a playoff hero if he gets his reps through the season. https://thenatsreport.com/10/15/2020/allnews/michael-a-taylor-the-best-nationals-hitter-in-the-postseason/
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I heard the Royals had a visit from a fallen Angel last night.
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@wissox I went to the game… Just brutal. Guy sucks so bad at his job that it is almost unbelievable the MLB doesn’t launch him into space.
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The MLB is so stupid with their umpires. We have tools to track who is and isn’t a good umpire. So, let’s use those and only put good umpires behind the plate.
Or maybe a guy is really good at calling the bang-bang plays at first. He should maybe be in that spot as often as possible.
But nope. Umpire’s union doesn’t like it so the MLB caves… Which is so funny because the umpires are literally the least valuable guys in the entire sport. They’re about to be replaced by friggen robots and yet the umpires continue to just operate the same. Not a single thought as to how to adjust for the better of the sport.
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@Kcmatt7 It’s amazing how long Angel has been ticking off fans. I mean pretty sure I remember this guy in the 90’s messing up. I never saw video of the incident from the other night of the balk call, but obviously the Royals thought it was wrong. Brutal stuff.
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@wissox The balk was just like the icing on the cake honestly. The same inning he called a HBP that didn’t hit the guy, but couldn’t be overturned (for some god forsaken reason) through replay. And so there was a runner on who shouldn’t have been on base when he then called the balk.
Just a compounding event.
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@Kcmatt7 This isn’t quite related to that play, but I think baseball was a little more relaxing to watch when we didn’t have the strike zone superimposed on the screen. Sure we’d complain about some B/S calls still, but now every pitch we’re subjected to a picture of the ball touching the outer millimeter of the box or missing it by that much and we get frustrated. The ones that obviously miss the zone and are called strikes, well we didn’t need the box to see that. Instead we asked for consistency, a call it both ways attitude, if they get a wide strike zone we would like one too sort of thing.
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@wissox I would just like the data collectors to use the terabytes of information they have on how each umpire actually has his own peculiarities about the strike zone. But for each batter, they would have to explain, “So, up comes Slugger. Remember white is the strike zone established by Ump ABC for batters of Slugger’s height over the last 500 games, while the red dotted line represents the strike zone as mandated by the rules.”
We could have fun with the average deviations from the technical zone, etc.
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@mayjay Well the strike zone is supposed to vary by height of the batter. Remember Pete Rose’s crouch? No one would do that these days because you can’t generate much power. Sox announcer just mentioned that on a 3-0 count the ump actually widens the strike zone.
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@wissox Of course they are different, but there is still a general standard. I am talking about each umpire’s trackable adjustments for height, or even LH or RH, that might be bigger or smaller than the standard. One guy might have a different strike zone for different teams…wouldn’t that be a real ipisser for the union?
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@mayjay what’s an ipisser? That’s so far from any spell check error I’m guessing it must be a word only those in the legal business know!
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Oops, didn’t proof! Delete the beginning vowel!
