Montgomery just worked around a couple singles (including an inning-ending strikeout) for his second scoreless inning. He's probably done for the day.

Mike: 2IP 0R 0ER 1BB 1K

Salvador Perez went 2/3 with a double.

Yeah, I catually had that thought after I posted it. Aviles needs to keep the average around .300, and find a way to hit around 15 HR's with some doubles and steals thrown in.

The issue is far from dead. Since those three have left, Soria is the only player near the star level of the three mentioned. And yes he was resigned but IIRC he signed a deal that was really good for the Royals. What's gonna happen if Hosmer becomes what he should be and he wants a deal like the top players in the league get? Can you tell me beyond a shadow of a doubt that gla$$ will pony up the bucks to resign him? If you say yes you are a fool, and if your answer is anything but yes the issue is NOT dead.

Royals won 8-3, none of our hitting prospects got another AB after I left off.

Wood threw an inning with 1ER and 1K, and Crow threw 2 innings with 1ER and 2K

thanks for the updates.

But the point that everyone has made is that the last three guys that were up for some kind of contract that exceeds league minimum were all signed to lucrative deals (Greinke, Soria and Butler). That's the more recent "proof" that you're looking for, not what happened 10 years ago. Obviously we'll all be holding our breath as the young guys come due, but there's really no point in worrying about it right now. This is the first time in what, 20 years, that we've had a very legitimate reason to be optimistic. Can't we all just go with that while we can?

This is completely false. Since then, we extended Mike Sweeney, Soria, Grienke, and Butler.

And extending Sweeney was a horrible, horrible idea.

True, but that has nothing to do with the point of the discussion.

Actually, it does. KC fan wants Glass to sign "star" players long-term. Well, we sunk a huge amount of money into a "star" player and it really sucked. We could have sunk an even bigger amount into Beltran, and that would have sucked even worse.

Spending money just to "prove" something is a very dumb idea.

This response is kind of silly in the absense of 20/20 hindsight. At the time, Sweeney was a very good promising player who looked like he was going to be a star. They did extend Sweeney, the fact that he didn't work out as well as we'd hope should not be relevant.

I started to type something similar to this.

The problem wasn't that the team signed Sweeney; the problem is that he was the only person we signed.

Shit happens. People get hurt, and we're going to get burned by this again at some point. The key is that we can't allow that to be an excuse for mediocrity or not taking educated/smart risks in the future.

Yeah, my point was, that the last time we had a 'youth movement' and actually had a good young core to build with, we signed ONE of the guys and let the others go. The team, at that point (roughly 5 years ago) was unwilling to spend the money.

I don't think that is the current mindset, and I am very hopeful for the future.

Another important difference is that THAT youth movement kind of sucked, as did most youth movements before it. You cant win by pinning your hopes on 2 or 3 players, we have an active roster of 25 players. The Royals sales department had to work with what they had, but they didn't have much to work with.