The double plays have to be drastically reduced. They just have to be. It would be nice if he could actually becoming a guy you knew for a certainty that was going to flirt with 30 HRs and 40+ doubles every season (no shit, right?).

Get in the ****ing gym and drop a 20 spot, Billy. Maybe then you'd be able to leg out a couple of those DP's you seem to be so fond of hitting into.

Who gives a shit about his 1.6 WAR? It was terrible. Pointing to crappy years by Prince and Martinez don't justify your argument. I already addressed Billy's "production" being replaced by a platoon of Justin Maxwell & Jarrod Dyson. It sounds laughably absurd, but put the numbers together. You'll see it is actually true. And all for the low low price of $1M.


Further, you can rotate Alex and Sal in there, which you'll need to do to keep your best bats in there for the aforementioned "half days off".

For me, I think Billy needs to do better than 2012. Keeping him means we give up on the chance to bat Salvy when he's not catching. Teams who don't have a catcher who can hit wouldn't care as much, but our catcher happens to be one of our best hitters, so freeing up the DH spot is worth a lot to us.

I think Billy would need to explode this year and become a 4-WAR player and an obvious all-star before I begin to think bringing him back for 12.5 in 2015 is a good idea.

Tub of goo making 12.5 M in 2015 makes me nauseous.

Using WAR to calculate the projected output from a player who played a partial season is a dishonest mechanism for evaluation.

Case in point: In 2004, Mark Teahan had an AWESOME 3.8 OWar with only about 400 PA's, his performance over a full season in 2006? 0.8.

Butler needs to hit for more power, even his doubles were down. That's pretty much it. I'm pretty sure he posted his highest OBP ever... he took a lot of walks last year.

If he hits between 20-30 HRs he is probably worth the 12 million a year. Especially in our ballpark. I do not believe platooning the likes of Maxwell, Lough and Dyson in that position will yield similar results. That kind of stuff hardly ever plays out like you think it will because bench players end up getting overexposed... i.e. Ross Gload syndrome.

A Ross Gload mention. Awesome. Who's next? Jacobs?

Aaron Guiel

Belly needs to lay off those low and away sliders and be able to get around on the high outer strike zone pitches and whack them to right field again. If not, don't see much use in keeping him after this year

LMAO

It won't, but for 11.5MM (we have to pay 1MM to buy out), its probably going to be good enough. If we're the Yankees or Dodgers and Butler posts his usual old .800-something OPS season we could just pay him and forget about it, but we're the Royals and that kind of money means something to us. If we were a hopeless losing team maybe you keep Butler around to sell tickets and give the fans someone to cheer for, but we're presumably still going to be in the playoff hunt in 2015 even without Shields, unless all of our young pitchers go straight to hell.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>The plan for Kyle Zimmer: He’ll start slow, and be capped around 150 IP. Hope is he’ll arrive midseason as a force. <a href="http://t.co/wBxErX6awU">http://t.co/wBxErX6awU</a></p>&mdash; Andy McCullough (@McCulloughStar) <a href="https://twitter.com/McCulloughStar/statuses/432232066256601089">February 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

yep, was just about to post that, looks like his first article as the new beat writer.

The Royals are going to cap him at 150IP this year, starting slow, and hoping he triumphantly swoops in around July or so to power the Royals into the playoffs.

Not surprising this thread transitioned from Sweeney hate to Butler hate. Hand-in-hand.

Some facts from 2013 (which by all means was a down year for Butler):

Stat/Butler's number/AL rank

AVG: .289/3rd
OBP: .374/2nd
SLG: .412/8th
OPS: .786/2nd

The guy still gave the Royals the 2nd-best DH numbers in the American League last year, in his worst year as a pro.

He's not overpaid. He's not worthless. And the number of double plays into which he hits does not matter (lots of great hitters hit into a ton of double plays, regardless of speed, including: Dustin Pedroia, Matt Holliday, Victor Martinez, Paul Goldschmidt. Even speed guys like Jose Altuve and Darwin Barney were in the top 10 in 2013).

Butler needs to be better this year. The Royals need him to have 60+ combined 2B and HR again, something he's done in every full season except for last year. They will have a tough decision on his 2015 option. But thinking he's easily replaced and being glad he's gone... just silly things. Teams that have tried the new, in vogue platoon approach at DH have received mixed results from it.

Suggesting Jarrod Dyson gives you ANY value when used solely as a hitter/offensive player is ludicrous. The guy is not a full time player. He needs to have limited at-bats to prevent overexposure. You don't slot .258/.326/.366 hitters into the DH spot.