The Royals could **** up microwave popcorn

Denney went right before the Royals picked.

Ah, okay, that makes more sense. I thought the Bosox had snagged him in the 4th and the Royals had passed on him in the 3rd (where he made a ton of sense).

Evidently Boston agreed with me.

I guess I can't hammer on Moore for that one; Denney's a fairly substantial risk there if he's really looking for top 10-15 money.

Wow, that sucks. Many said he was the best available after day 1.

I mentioned this down the thread...

The criticism there MIGHT be down the road... if Denney turns into a monster (good chance, IMO) and Cody Reed turns into a pumpkin, you'll wonder why they didn't flip those picks (even though Reed was a fringy 1st round type).

Dozier/Mannaea/Reed/Denney would have been pretty tough to complain about, IMO. Denney has more than a touch of Wil Myers to him.

Yeah, I realized after I read through the thread that you went over all this already; poor form on my part.

Honestly, I'd have preferred Denney to Manaea, if for no other reason than the fact that a pitcher with any injury scares me. All he has to do is come back favoring that hip just a little bit, even imperceptibly, and he ends up thrashing his shoulder on account of it. Additionally, I think he'd have fallen a little further due to the injury concerns combined with signability concerns.

That said, I can't really fault the approach, though I do question if Dozier was really the best they could do there, even if they're basing the pick on signability. He's damn sure not a SS, so I'm guessing they profile him as a 3b.

I've see a few things reported today that make the Mannaea pick more easily understood:

1) The Royals are confident the hip issue is genetic, not baseball-related (similar to Alex Gordon). Someone called that out in this thread or the Repository today. I think it was Passan that reported this.

2) The shoulder is clean, and apparently they're willing to shut him down and get the labrum/hip issue surgically repaired before letting him throw again.

Dozier, they seem to just love him. I think he gets a shot at 2B even though he's very non-typical for that position. His size makes it a longer shot, but Zobrist is a great example of a bigger guy succeeding defensively there (Zobrist is 6-3, Dozier listed at 6-4). His positional potential probably breaks down about like Michael Cuddyer (I haven't seen that comp, but I think Dozier fits pretty well - RH power bat, thick/strong guy who can play 3B, RF, potentially 2B)

If they can get Dozier to stick at 2B, his bat plays up as plus to plus-plus for that position. His bat probably is adequate at 3B or RF because he offers RH power at those spots.

I would have rather seen Denney than Reed with that second round pick, but Reed is at least a hard-throwing LHP with good size and some helium (and untapped potential due to low development/coaching so far).

There is a lot of risk in what the Royals did (though clearly they think Manaea is less of a risk than other teams did), but it has a lot of potential payoff.