I think the Dodgers are done. Last night's game probably sealed the deal for them.

ROFL

3 years and $36M later, and the best we get is a PTBNL. And we're excited about it.

Continue trusting "The Process."

Just shows what the rest of baseball thinks about Guillen...And Dayton gave this fool 12M per :shake:

I dont see Guillen playing over burrell

he is a worthless POS and will be lucky if hes on a roster next year

Maybe we'll get Crash Davis as the player to be named later!

ROFL ROFL ROFL

<img src="http://darknomad.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/vomit.jpg">

Royals signed their 2nd and 4th rounders today.

Brett Eibner was the second rounder, a pitcher/OF from University of Akansas. The Royals are going to develop him as a power hitting outfielder, with a chance that he plays CF. R's gave him above slot $1.25M.

Jason Adam is from the KC area, a high school right hander with a live arm and decent secondary pitches. R's gave him $800K, roughly $650K above slot.

Once again, the Royals have spent the money to bring in young talent through the draft.

Just a few minor league stats from tonight:

Colon went 3-6 tonight.
Hosmer 1-5 with a 3B.
Giavotella 3-5 with a HR and 3 RBI.
Moose 1-2 so far (in Sacramento) with a SB and he's been picked off. WTH?

"That is a south american bathroom. One stop shopping."

LMAO

Eibner has serious power. Supposedly he's more advanced as a pitcher, but his bat is definitely intriguing, to say the least.

From what I've read, he was thought to be the best 2 way player in this draft. He wants to be a hitter, and the Royals need a power bat without a doubt, so it's a good fit. Worst case scenario is he can't hit a curve ball and they put his low 90s fastball on the mound.

Yep. That was a high-quality selection.

2010 was a provocative draft, primarily due to the vastly different opinions about Colon, so it will be interesting to see this one develop.

Did Bryce Harper actually sign?

Apparently they just got it done.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/nat...hour_left.html

A very sobering piece:

http://www.royalsreview.com/2010/8/1...e-advantage-of

The Competitive Advantage of Valuing the Draft and Prospects Is Dwindling

by Will McDonald on Aug 17, 2010 3:13 AM EDT in News Comment 68 comments

I've made this point and voiced this concern before, but I think it's worth repeating here on Draft Signing Night: the competitive advantage to going all-in with the draft and player development and valuing young talent is much much smaller than it once was.

Premises:

1. Other than teams at the very peak of the success cycle, and usually only about half of them, nobody is willing to trade prospects, real prospects, very often. We see this at the deadline and at the winter meetings. Unless we're talking about elite talent, elite talent with money coming back, impact prospects just aren't traded for veteran players anymore. The kinds of deals that were fairly common in the 1980s and 1990s just don't happen much anymore. You can get prospects in bulk or you can get money or you can keep your guy. That's the new paradigm.
2. 90% of the industry really values the draft now and the media/fan/old ownership backlash to "bonus baby" contracts & payouts is just about dead. This is entirely an internet driven phenomenon, not unlike the new obsession, 365 days a year, with major college recruiting. We know about these guys so much more than we did in 1995 and so do the most influential media members in each market. There will always be teams that end up going cheap at random times for random reasons, but the new industry trend is to go big in the draft. It's been like this since at least the middle of the 2000s, and with the Moneyball approach to drafting out of favor and even the Astros spending big now, it looks destined to continue.
3. Baseball's unique salary structure has reinforced premises #1 & #2, and continues to do so. Those six years of service-time controlled salaries generate huge value for teams, as they usually coincide with a player's most productive seasons.



Thus, we have the situation developing today, where the newest school and oldest school teams are doing the same thing. The two biggest cultural divides of the 1990s and early 2000s are basically non-existent now. (Save for extreme teams.) The biggest impact that statistical analysis has had on the on the game hasn't come in game strategy or roster construction, which are still pretty plainly messed up. Rather, over the last decade, player contracts have gotten smarter and smarter (from the team perspective). The middle-class FA market has collapsed, as the concept of freely available talent and replacement level has become mainstream. The smartest place, when you break down the economics, whether you be Boston (big market, new school) or Minnesota (pseudo-small market, old school) is to generate cheap players and assets in the minor leagues. Those teams may end up viewing different 22 year olds as assets, but it's more or less the same model. It sounds crazy now, but in the early post-FA period, not everyone was buying into this. There were always a number of clubs who pretty clearly (no matter what they said) didn't make the minor leagues a priority.

I believe that the consequences of what I have laid out above, for the Royals, are pretty dire. This may sound like a criticism, but in part, it is simply a tragic circumstance. When I hear the Royals talk about their "process" I get the sense that they believe (or are trying to make us believe) that what they're doing is something novel and unique in the industry. Increasingly, it is not. Increasingly, it is what everyone is doing. The Yankees, the Red Sox, the freakin' Astros (who spent heavily this draft) everyone. When the Twins went all-in with minor league player development in the late 1990s, it really was relatively unique. Franchises like the Orioles and the Cubs and Texas and on and on were still trying to win with FA spending. I can't think of a team that has done something like that in years and years. Who was the last team that signed four or five big FAs over a few years to try to build something? Teams just don't do that anymore.

Now, the Royals are doing the only thing they can do, only now, so are teams that can also win in other ways.

Star-divide

The Royals pretty clearly want to be the Twins, but the Twins aren't the Twins much anymore. Minnesota has nearly a $100 million dollar payroll this season, and with Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau making over $35 million between the two of them per season in upcoming years, they're going to have to keep spending money. Minnesota plays in a larger, wealthier market than the Royals, and they increasingly look like your classic mid-market team. Much like, in the end, the industry caught up to what the A's were doing and killed their initial model, to an extent the Twins are a victim of their own success. The new reality, for truly low-salary clubs, may be a short window of contention, like those enjoyed by Cleveland and Milwaukee this decade. (Cleveland, it should be noted, was built on the Bartolo Colon trade, which brought back a package that would be unheard of today. Truly one of the last old-school idiotic trades of the era.) Milwaukee, was, in reality, never really good. They were more mediocre+NL. Not hatin' but that's the reality. Cleveland however, was good enough to win the World Series in 2007. That roster had a number of guys who needed to get paid, and they ended up paying Hafner and Sizemore, while Sabathia and Lee, essentially, walked.

Of course, we have the more ambitious dream of being "the next Rays." However, we don't really know what that even means just yet. Right now, the Rays haven't really accomplished more than the mid-00s Indians did. They did more, but not much more. Admittedly, if you drop the Rays in the AL Central, you'd have a five year dynasty, but there's a flip side to that. Being in the AL East forced the Rays to build their model in precisely that manner. Getting to 85 wins and hoping to catch some breaks (i.e. what 2/3rds of the NL habitually does along with the AL Central) wasn't going to be good enough. Finally, even if we grant that OMG the Rays are awesome, we still don't know that they'll make the playoffs this year or what will happen in 2011 and beyond.

When I think about the future of the Royals, for the Royals to have a successful decade in the teens (multiple playoff appearances, multiple years in contention) here's what they need to do:

* Build the best farm system in baseball over multiple years. A farm system so good that it keeps graduating players, yet stays in the Top 5. This is by it's very nature difficult, but will get more difficult for the reasons outlined above.
* Eventually, ownership will have to commit to being a mid-revenue team in terms of payroll. This will require the fans to endure ticket price increases and a healthier attendance. It might happen, it might not.
* The front office will have to choose the correct players to pay, which will require both intelligence and luck.
* When the Royals get to the mid-revenue stage, the FO will have to sign the right pieces rather than the wrong ones. A truism, yes, but it needs to be said.
* And, if the goal is really a long period of success, then the Royals will have to aggressively address their position, both with regards to moving up and moving down. They can't "go for it" as a core 83 win club and fail. Similarly, when one wave of prospects begins to fade and leave the organization as FAs, they may have to aggressively tear down that club a year early rather than a year late. The tight trade market makes that decision harder, but it also, weirdly, creates a new market opportunity. Right now, the Royals probably want to hold on to Zack Greinke for a 2012 run, which is probably a mistake. The aggressive move would be to punt on 2012 and try to be a 95 win team in 2014.

Can the Royals do all these things? I don't think so. That's not an anti-Moore statement. To date, in the post-FA, post-idiocy era, NO small-market front office has been able to build a consistent winner. The A's and Rays have had the best low-salary teams, while the Twins have been good for the most seasons. Still, if the Royals can simply get to being consistently a .500 team, Dayton might deserve that parade.

Wish we could have seen a few more high-upside picks in the mid rounds though. Outside of Colon, Eibner, and Adam, there's not a lot to get excited about in terms of upside that were worth over-slot deals.

It appears like we the purse strings were tightened slightly by Glass this season. Hopefully it doesn't continue into next year, as it is expected to be an extremely deep and talented draft.

I don't think there's any justification for a team like the Royals not to spend whatever it takes to get the best talent in the draft. If that means not signing Kendall, we'll all deal with it, I'm sure.

After looking at the first-round money in the 2010 draft, did we go cheap by not taking Zach Lee? Allegedly, there wasn't legit talent outside of the top 3, and then this kid gets over $5M at the bottom of the round? The Dodgers gave this kid more than they gave to Kershaw...

I don't know much about Lee, other than the basics. Just seems very, very strange. And, yeah, lots of teams passed, but I still think it's inexcusable to pass on the BPA for any team. The relative cost is just too damn low.

Lee is a special case because most didn't believe he would forgo his LSU football and baseball commitment. He openly stated he was planning on going to LSU, but apparently summer ball was not kind to him, and he found himself locked in as the 3rd QB. Supposedly that lack of early success made him open up a bit more to signing with LA.

Also, since he is a two-sport athlete, LA gets to spread out his bonus over 5 years instead of paying that in one lump sum.

Minors today, some guys hit, no one really threw worth a damn

AAA

Moustakas, (3B) 1/4, 1HR
Blaine Hardy, (SP) 5IP 4R 4ER 1BB 2K 1HR

(huh, thats several in a row now. Some guys hurt or are we turning this guy into a starter now? Up to this point he's been a RP prospect.)

AA

Giavotella, (2B) 1/4, 1BB, 1K
Hosmer, (1B) 1/4, 1BB
John Lamb, (SP) 5IP 4R 4ER 3BB 4K 1HR

Advanced A

Colon, (SS) 2/4 (1 double)
Myers (DH) 3/3, 1BB, 1HR
Will Smith, (SP) 6IP 4R 4ER 0BB 6K 1HR

I think I'd shut down Lamb for the rest of the season.

No need for him to be sacrificed for the good of the team

Down on the farm...
Blue Rocks
Colon 1-4 2B

Naturals:
Montgomery....7 IP, 0 ER, 5 K's, 3 BB's
Hosmer...1-3, HR
Giavotella...2-3

Omaha just starting.

This is unbelievably pathetic. :banghead:

Jesus that's sad, nobody on this team is gonna crack 20 this year

The even sadder thing is that a guy with 4 HR in mid-august was listed as a candidate to lead the team. And sadder yet, there's a decent chance he might do that.

Kila with his 2nd HR in as many days today.

Kinda sorta takes the sting out of seeing Bloomquist hitting 3rd. :banghead:

Yep, another impatient Royals fan. 2015 will get here soon enough. Chill. Trust.

Can't believe the performance by the Royals during their series against Detroit. 12-3 loss on Monday. 9-1 loss yesterday. Em-****ing-barrasing.
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I'm having high hopes that he was just pressing to much. Now that he's gotten a couple out the way maybe he can relax and we can see the true Kila.

Kila with another RBI - a 2 out double, followed by another 2 out double by Bryan Pena. 3-3 tie in the 8th

I hope Pena can carry that momentum into his next start on ... (checking the office calendar) ... Sept. 2.

Nah, that's only a week

More like Sept 22...Gotta get Kendall that record for games caught

Kila has played a solid defensive game, too, and this highlights the obvious: Butler needs to be moved off the position.

I don't give a shit if an 11-HR player demands to be in the field; his glove doesn't play.

How's my ass taste? /WB

BOOMquist!

Beat me to it.

I came to take my lumps. **** you, Willie. And **** you, Ned.

:D

Willie will now get 90% of Gordon's at-bats down the stretch.

Oh, and ... It tastes like Process.

Ned was going to yank Kila today because he thought he was pressing. But when he hit a homer last night he decided to let him play today to get some momentum. Looks like it turned out well.

LMAO.

That was an efficient Mexicution.

ROFL

Good to see Kila homer again

Good Lord Jesus, is this a misprint???

Omaha beat Round Rock 23-5 tonight.

Mike Moustakas was 4-6 with 3 HR's, a 2B, and 11 RBI tonight. He homered 2 times in the 3rd inning. The recap says that all 3 home runs were either to center or right center.

His batting average is now up to .297

Wow, what a bad ass. I doubt they bring Moustakas up this September though due to how well Betemit's been playing.

Giavotella was 3-4 with another homer tonight.

11 RBI in one game? Nice work, Moose. See you soon.

I heard that he is a bust.

ROFL This made me laugh.......god the Royals suck.

In 66 games at NW Arkansas, he hit .347 with 21 HR and 76 RBI.
In 37 games at Omaha, he is hitting .297 with 12 HR and 37 RBI.

That's fricking crazy.

Moose had 2 HR in the third inning alone. What a monster of a game for him and the rest of the O-Royals.

That's 6 HR in 6 games. And yeah it's AAA, but they are in a tight race and there is some "pressure". I'm thoroughly impressed.

Moose clearly is a bust and simply a product of Arvest field.

If you had told me all three of the hitters would surpass the pitching as prospects before the season started, I would have said you were nuts.

So what do we do with Betemit next year? I like having the switch hitting power in the line up. DH?

http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/2010/...y-8302010.html

- I’m just going to throw this list out there:

Highest Single-Season OPS by a Royal (min: 200 PA)

1) George Brett, 1980, 1.118

2) George Brett, 1985, 1.022

3) Wilson Betemit, 2010, 1.001

4) Danny Tartabull, 1991, .990

5) Bob Hamelin, 1994, .987

Yes, I’m cheating a little bit. I set the minimum at 200 plate appearances, and Betemit just had his 200th plate appearance of the season yesterday.

But still.

If you look at the list of the top 30 OPS’s in Royals history, you’ll find that the list is basically the same whether the minimum is 200 plate appearances or 400 plate appearances. Aside from Betemit, the only players on the list who had fewer than 400 plate appearances were Hamelin (374 PA, but in a strike-shortened season) and Carlos Beltran in 2004, when he was traded in mid-season. There’s a good reason for this – it’s hard to sustain an OPS north of 900 for even 200 plate appearances, unless you’re actually a pretty damn good hitter.

If we look at the best seasons by a Royal hitter with between, say, 150 and 400 plate appearances, here’s what we get:

1) Wilson Betemit, 2010, 1.001

2) Bob Hamelin, 1994, .987

3) Carlos Beltran, 2004, .901

4) Tony Solaita, 1975, .884

5) Esteban German, 2006, .880

When you factor in the special circumstances that put Hamelin and Beltran on this list, then barring a collapse over the last month of the season, Betemit is going to finish with the greatest partial season in the history of the Royals.

(Tony Solaita had an awfully interesting tenure with the Royals. As a rookie in 1974, he hit .268/.361/.406, then hit .260/.369/.515 in 1975. In 1976 he started slow, batting .235/.286/.294 in just 68 plate appearances…and was promptly waived. Solaita, who was from American Samoa, serves as a reminder that the Royals’ reluctance to put faith in take-and-rake hitters from the Pacific islands is not new.)

Betemit, who was signed to a minor-league contract over the winter, is pretty clearly the greatest free talent acquisition by Dayton Moore since Joakim Soria. Moore has actually quietly had a terrific season in terms of picking up contributors out of the pool of unwanted free agents. Along with Betemit, he re-signed Bruce Chen to another minor-league deal. Chen leads the team in wins with nine; more meaningfully, with a 4.76 ERA in 102 innings, he’s been the second-best starter on the team this year.

Kanekoa Texeira, who was claimed off waivers from Seattle, had a 4.64 ERA out of the bullpen before he went on the DL; despite his lack of a strikeout pitch, his extreme groundball tendencies make him a nice guy to bring in with men on base in the middle innings. And hey, Bryan Bullington did pitch the game of his life against the Yankees.

While the pickups of Betemit and Chen have made a big impact this year, it’s not like they are rookies who are under contract for the next six years. Chen is a free agent after the season; while he’s re-established himself as a major leaguer, I don’t expect teams to be beating down the door to sign him. I could see the Royals offering him a one-year, $1-1.5 million contract to return as a stopgap next season, and I could see Chen accepting the offer.

Betemit, if I understand his service time correctly, would be a free agent after next season. This makes for a very difficult decision for the Royals. If you think Betemit’s season is a fluke, then you’ll either him trade him this winter or bring him back next year to babysit third base until Mike Moustakas is ready, but with the plan to trade Betemit to a contender if he’s still hitting well.

But what if it’s not a fluke? What’s so striking about Betemit’s numbers is that they don’t look like a fluke. Yes, his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is .405, which is unsustainably high. Betemit is hitting .331 overall, and there’s no way that can last. If his BABIP drops into the .330 range, which is realistic, then his “true” batting average is closer to .280.

But even if he hits .280, he can be a heck of a hitter. While batting average is subject to a lot of fluctuation, power and plate discipline are not. Betemit has 27 walks in just 172 at-bats – that’s not a fluke. He has 13 doubles and 10 homers – that’s not a fluke.

(By the way, with 10 homers, Betemit is just three behind Yuniesky Betancourt for the active team lead. Last week I was on with Soren Petro, and he asked me who I thought would finish with the team lead in homers. Billy Butler was the obvious choice, but I thought Betemit was a heck of a sleeper pick. Well, I’m changing my tune – Betemit isn’t a sleeper anymore. I honestly think he’s the favorite to hold the team’s homer title at season’s end.)

So even if you knock 50 points off his batting average, his numbers this season would be .281/.370/.531. Now, I doubt he’s even that good. He spent a month in Omaha and hit just .265/.358/.407 earlier this year; last year, he hit .241/.294/.441 in Triple-A Charlotte. But at the same time, Betemit was once one of the best prospects in all of baseball, and from 2005 to 2007, when he was 23-25 years old, he hit .265/.337/.455 in nearly a thousand plate appearances in the major leagues. He’s only 28; maybe he’s just figuring things out. It bears mentioning that, according to Fangraphs, Betemit is hitting fly balls at the highest rate of his career.

If he is, then he has to factor into the team’s future. Even if Moustakas takes over at third base sometime next year, Betemit has the bat to play somewhere else. We’re talking about a guy who played shortstop in the majors as recently as two years ago, so he should have the athletic ability to play any corner position. First base and DH are filled, but the Royals are still weak in outfield prospects. Betemit could play third base the first half of next season, then move to right field if and when David DeJesus gets traded.

So the Royals have a decision to make. If they think his numbers are for real, then they may have a chance to sign him to a long-term deal this winter at a huge discount relative to what he would get the following year on the free market if he continues to hit. Is it crazy to suggest that the Royals should offer Wilson Betemit a 3-year, $12 million contract this winter? Maybe. But it’s not any more crazy than suggesting in April that Wilson Betemit would be the best hitter on the Royals this season.

What a monster game for Moose.

It's going to be awesome talking about the #1 farm system in MLB all offseason. We'll have no less than 7 top 100 overall prospects - my guess is 8 (Moose, Hosmer, Myers, Montgomery, Lamb, Dwyer, Duffy, Colon).

Tampa had the #1 system in 3 of the last 4 years - Texas had the #1 system the other year.

The future is very bright for the Royals.

I like Betemit. I'm not sure Kila's sewn much up, so 1B and DH might not both be filled.

Is there any chance that Sean O'Sullivan won't suck? He just ****ing looks so gawdamn mediocre, I feel like I've seen this kid in Kyle Davies body before.............

Oh, and Jesse Chavez, please die in a fire. Thanks.

Davies is a frustrating piece, that's for sure, but he really shouldn't be put in the same category as Bannister and O'Sullivan. The latter two don't have nearly the "stuff" that Davies possesses.

People often claim that Hochevar would thrive under Duncan, but I think Davies is the one who could really turn the corner, since his stuff is even better than that worthless poor man's Kevin Brown.

Anybody with any knowledge on the subject...is Clint Robinson a decent prospect, or is he just a good minor leaguer?

Chavez with an impressive line.

2/3 of an inning. 4hits (3 doubles and a HR) 3 ER's

Fire - find it and have a seat inside the flame.

He's earned a chance at AA/AAA next season, but I'd still think of him as a low C-grade prospect. If you draw up a top-25 non-pitching prospect list, he'll be somewhere in the middle of the list.

After 3 full seasons he climbed into AA-ball, but thats still good for a 25th-round pick. He's had a good 450+ AB so maybe there's something there. Unfortunately he's a little old now, he's a 1B, and we are probably stocked with 1B/DH types but if he keeps hitting he can always be traded for something.

Neither Davies nor Hochevar are worth a ****. Neither has much value to the Royals past 2012 - which is when we should see the new crop of stud pitchers hit KC. JMHO

A 9-9 tie this is crazy.

Thanks. It just seems like he puts up monster numbers consistently so I was curious.

Just a little more effort and the Royals can choke this one away.

Overall, I agree. I'm just saying that there are pretty regular flashes from Davies, but this isn't even close to being good enough.

Bannister, on the other hand, doesn't have the physical gifts to flash with a mirror and a Maglite.

my nephew hates Farnsworth with a passion

Keep that Braves garbage out of our thread. :)

Yeah, and guys like Davies are tricky. You can't hang onto them forever. But they're also the type of guy with good enough stuff... it wouldn't all that crazy for him figure it out at 28-30 years old and become a decent pitcher. That's exactly what happened with De La Rosa. Guy with tremendous stuff, we ran out of room for him... he figures it out at 28 years old. He's not an ace but you can put him back in the rotation and he'll go above .500 and give you a K/IP.

But that's part of what happens when we're controlling pitchers from ages 21-27.

Yep. Somewhere along the line, I think Davies is going to have a high-quality season or three.

Kyle Tantalus Davies.

totally missed that he was gone

AAA

Short game today, they called it in the middle of the 5th.

Moustakas, (3B) 1/3, 1K

AA

Giavotella, (2B) 1/5, 1BB, 2K, 1HR
Hosmer, (DH) 1/5, 1K (1 double)
John Lamb, (SP) 5IP 3R 3ER 1BB 5K

Advanced A

Colon, (SS) 1/3, 1BB
Myers, (DH) 2/4, 1BB, 1HR

Really disappointed in Moose. Anything under 10 RBI after last night's performance is just unacceptable.

Man Betemit is still slugging away

The Domincan Bernie Mac. RIP.

well, that was gutsy

There we go bloomy, now just hit it in the air Alex

Alex for the suicide.