I'm on board. With him, we would have to be solid favorites to win the division again.

Duncan has been splooging to that guy for years. I've never seen him pitch, but his numbers are really stout. Gopher balls less of a problem here anyway.

Truth be told, I didn't expect it out of the lineup you had yet you guys pretty much led wire to wire.

Do you expect regression from some of those guys? I mean ultimately you won 95 games while getting 3 WAR out of Alex. If you do, why? Most of them are in/entering their primes. And shit, Infante almost can't be as bad as he was last year.

I guess 4 wins worth of regression isn't really that unheard of, but if a 95 win team that's only losing 1 impact player from the roster would be suddenly considered a 'fringe' playoff team, that pretty much makes every team in baseball fringe level.

At that point don't you just subscribe to the tossup model and say it's all just one wild ass guess anyway?

Replacing Gordon, Rios, and Zobrist with Dyson, Orlando, and Infante is a huge hit to a third of our lineup.

Infante for Zobrist is the only hit, albeit a big one. We'd have won the division without Zobrist, but we wouldn't have won the WS. Same goes for Cueto frankly.

Orlando for Gordon would be a huge hit as well.

I'm more concerned with the pitching staff, namely Herrera and Davis. Lot of miles on those guys the last two seasons going deep into the playoffs. They paid Soria to help shoulder some of that load, so that should help. But he's basically just taking Madson's place. And while Holland wasn't terribly effective, he took on some of those late game innings in 2015 as well.

That is some solid grammar. :)

I like Kennedy a lot as well and yeah, that sparkly K/9 jumps out.

One caveat, though. Some guys will have slightly inflated K/9 figures because they have a tendency to give up a few more baserunners (more PAs against means more chances at a K). It's why K% has become more popular of late - it doesn't 'penalize' guys for getting outs.

Lincecum was the first example of this that I really noticed. In 2012 his K/9 was almost exactly the same as his stellar 2011 season (in fact, it was a little better). His K% dropped by 1.5 points (about 5%); the reason was that he was facing more batters.

Kennedy is a bit like that; his K/9 is elite but his K% is merely good. The explanation for that is pretty straightforward when you see the 1.3 WHIP he had last season. Worse still, when you look at his K% and combine it with his xFIP, you see a very very interesting similar profile in 2015: James Shields.

If you consider the possible effect of a move to the AL and the fact that he won't get to strike out the pitcher anymore (thus inflating that figure a little as well), you suddenly wonder if maybe he wouldn't experience a bit of a reverse Shields in coming to KC. When Shields went KC to SD his K% skyrocketed (an amazing 6 points, damn near a full 1/3 better). I don't think Kennedy's would fall nearly that hard, but if it fell 1/2 that far, 3 points to say 21%, he's around guys like Hector Santiago and Jose Quintana. Probably not coincidentally, his WHIP is right around those guys same figures.

He's still a nice pitcher at that point, but I think there's a little fools gold in his numbers. I was really hoping the Pads wouldn't slap that QO on him. If you're stuck needing to go to $17 million/season on him and giving up a pick, I think it's a pretty tough call.

Would rather have Gallardo than Kennedy, but won't complain too much about either.

Rios was pretty terrible, no? I don't see how hard it would be to replace 450 largely ineffective PAs and sub-standard defense. And you didn't have Zobrist while you were pulling away from the rest of the central.

In the end, this was a no-brainer signing for the Royals, don't get me wrong (if nothing else, a healthy Gordon absorbs the 200 very similar ABs you got from Zobrist last year). But I think that only because I think he'll get the 12 WAR needed to 'beat' my calculus.

If he went out there and gave you 9 WAR over the life of this deal, I just don't see how that would be considered a good signing at that point.

losing Zobrist really,really hurt

He brought a professionalism to the plate that we really didn't have prior

He was decent enough at 2nd


While Zobrist is older, you can make a case that he was more important than Gordon to the team.

If i had to choose either/or ... i think i might have chosen keeping Zobrist over Gordon. Sacrilege, i know.

didn't keep Zobrist so Gordon is a big get for the heart of the team as much as on the field

They're trying to sign someone so they don't have to put Duffy in the rotation. Ideal goal would be to have Duffy + Zimmer pitch out of the pen and then replace Medlin/Volq next year.

soria as a starter

Hocheaver is back and healthy now. He will eat up innings for the pen.

I wouldn't want to go $17 for him, but the Kazmir deal may have upped the price of poker.

I worry about Salvy's health beyond 2019, he is constantly getting beat up.

Love him to death but when does all that damage reach a tipping point?

Look at this gem in the quotes. Another Prison Douche type, only looking at the stats.

Depends. Is Yost still manager? If so, Sal might need a wheelchair when he ends this contract.

The foul balls right back into his face are worrisome. It happens so often.

Yeah, but Leake may have anchored it a little bit as well.

Leake and Kennedy are projected for identical WAR's next season based on Steamer (which is usually pretty decent). Kennedy has those pretty K numbers that will give him value over Leake but Leake's athleticism and some additional durability could serve to even that out. Moreover, Leake's coming into his age 28 season whereas Kennedy is coming into 31.

I'd imagine they end up at similar AAVs, really. If there's enough interest, Kennedy can probably get the 4th year on there. 4/$60 doable for ya?

If the Royals have to give up their 1st round draft pick, I'd rather have Wei-Yin Chen. In my opinion he is the best of the three.

Leake was the worst FA contract this year. I can't believe STL fell for it.

Concussions could end his career out of nowhere :(

Salvy refuses to wear the full head gear

His feet are constantly getting beaten up too


I cringe every time he get hit with a foul ball

This.

Chen is a no-shit #2 and really a fringe #1 if you get him away from Camden (to get his HR rate under control).

If you're giving up the pick anyway, Chen's easily the guy to pursue.

This sends a message that no longer is every good player a la Damon, Dye, Beltran are just biding their time.

That's why all the so-called National guys reported as if they had inside information and kept "reporting" KC had no chance to re-sign Alex = bullshit!
Even dumb enough to claim the Royals offer was 4 years $50 million. That was an outright lie. Dayton isn't dumb, and the organization knows a range he's going to get salarywise.

You don't enter into negotiations by putting out an insulting number and create acrimony. I'm sure there offer was originally probably a 3 year deal to see if they could get it done. They knew full well that like Zobrist, some club could have overpaid and there's little to do if that was the case.

After the flurry at the start of FA died down, I have little doubt that discussions got more serious because teams, including the Royals, had a better feel for what and who they were competing with and ballpark numbers. So, Gordo probably got a 4th year conditional on a little less per year, and deferring a good amount until after the new TV deal as well as allowing the club to free up some available money to pursue FA now while the team is a contender.

Alex got his 4 years, overall more money, and his 1st choice of remaining a Royal, and coming back to play for a contender that just won a WS and have been there in back-to-back years.

The Royals fill their major hole in 1 of the corner outfield spots, get a structured friendly contract that doesn’t completely tie their hands until the new TV deal, and send a significant message to both the fans and the players in the clubhouse as well as potential free agents that the club is serious about winning and investing in talent.

Dayton really put the cherry on top, because having a more than likely lifer like Alex is a great ambassador for this community and the Royals place in it for the future. Is he Brett ? On the field, no, but as a face and recognizable icon on the 2015 WS team, definitely, and the younger fan base needs that so they have something to identify with and a desire to take their own kids to the park and cultivate the future Royals fans.

Ultimately, the money and years, and even if he doesn't earn every penny in the last year or two of his contract, doesn't mean a thing. What the Royals just acquired by him re-signing was a reprieve from the 90's and early 2000's. A ghost ship at sea with no captain, after Kauffman died, and everyone jumping overboard at first chance because it had become a glorified AAAA organization.

Probably. 4 years is a long time, but somewhere in the $54-60 range would be worth it IMO. At this point, you ride the wave and worry about a possible tear down later. Those flags in the outfield are worth it.

Said it before, losing a 1st sucks, but if he helps you defend a pennant is it worth it?

Anyone missing the guys we traded to get Zobrist and Cueto?

Didn't think so.

Ageed.

I'm toying with getting a 'Yosted' jersey. Maybe, 15 for the jersey number.

Seen it, but still hilarious.

I'm still really surprised no one offered Alex 5. I really wonder if it was because they expected him to sign with the Royals anyway.

Don't love it. That said, at least there's not a ton of risk in it.

There are few guys who are more 'sure bets' than Leake. That's not to say he's good - it's to say that you know pretty much exactly what you'll be getting out of him; a 4th starter that's going to give you about 2 WAR and 200 innings. Blah.

To me, they paid $15 million/season for a $12 million/season pitcher. It's an overpay, but one where I suspect they'll at least get solid production from him for the length of the deal and he's young enough that by the last 2 years of that deal, it's probably going to be below market given where salaries are trending.

Samardzija's is worse in that there's a better than average chance that he's a bullpen quality pitcher. His ceiling his higher than Leake's but man that floor is truly a crash point. I think Kazmir's is worse as well as I just don't see him holding up; the guy is a ticking timebomb, IMO.

I also look at the Cubs deal to Heyward that amounts to a 3 yr/78 million deal if/when he exercises his opt out as being absolutely insane. He's essentially the exact same player as Gordon and they just gave him $8 million more/season. Admittedly, its hard for me to be objective there, but that deal is just !@#$ing crazy to me.

There are some other nutty ones in there, but not as long term. Seriously, how the hell did Mike Pelfrey convince a team to give him 2/$16 million?

Taking a successful pitcher away from a home run park has Moore written all over it.


http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2015/1...-contract.html
Wei-Yin Chen Seeking Five-Year, $100MM Deal
By Zach Links | December 17, 2015 at 12:10pm CST

Free agent pitcher Wei-Yin Chen is searching for a five-year, $100MM contract, according to Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com (on Twitter). At that price, Kubatko adds, it’s clear that the Orioles have moved on to other offseason targets. At the outset of the offseason, MLBTR’s Tim Dierkes projected that Chen would land a five-year deal worth $80MM. Apparently, the Scott Boras client is aiming higher.

Bottom line, Infante, and Rios in the regular season gave you zero. Literally, anything from those 2 spots ultimately means the club is better than last year in the regular season.
Not better than when you had Zobrist, admittedly, but I'm almost at the point where I feel Ben has taken only this mythical unicorn status.

I fully admit that my mancrush for Zobrist was big, and no doubt he was a fantastic pickup. Now reality is he's 32, and there absolutely no chance he earns his contract. The Cubs are serious contenders, and if he's part of them winning a WS, not a single **** will be given by the Cubs organization or fans. KC wasn't in that position moneywise, and unless they had a top 5 payroll in baseball, it's not a wise signing.

In light of our own pending free agents, who almost are still young and entering their prime typically, sinking that money instead of aggressively trying to ink Hos, Moose, Cain (maybe), Esky (maybe), and extending Sal, is doublely foolish.

Does no one think that come the trade deadline that if needed that a few guys who may potentially make this team more potent in the postseason won't be available?

Let's remember, Fallball and regular season baseball are 2 different animals. One's a marathon and you have to balance not fall behind the pack without leaving nothing in the tank. The other's a short track event. Get out of the break fast, warmed up and loose, and lean. There's no days off, you trim your rotation, and if you go on short rest it doesn't matter because the finish line is in sight right around the last turn.

[emoji122] [emoji133] [emoji135]

Great day for Kansas City!

Congrats guys!

That's an interesting topic, and I was about to pose the question.

How many more years do people think Ned is skipper?

More importantly, who do they get to replace him, or what are some people's wishlists of names they'd like to see as the next manager?

Dale Sveum. He's done wonders for the Royals bats. And, he has manager experience.

There's a chance this could be his last season, and it'll obviously be his choice. At the beginning of 2015, he signed an extension through 2016 and said he'd manage through the end of the contract but then he's not sure if he'd want to continue or retire.

I like Kennedy, but not at $17 million/year. If he gets that much, I'm not sure it makes sense for KC.

I do think he has the best upside of any starter left on the market and could have a Vloquez-like season for KC.

He's got good stuff and is fearless. I think pitching in a pitcher's home park (in a division with lots of those) with an elite defense behind him will allow him to be a little more aggressive in challenging hitters early.

San Diego obviously is a pitcher's park, but the D there was atrocious last season.

Good point on k% vs k/9, but I think he still will be league average or better in those stats, even moving back to the AL.

I wonder if 4 for 80 gets it done.

Zobrist is 35.

I get that we couldn't keep Zobrist. But sometimes I just daydream about if we were a big market team and could keep him and either Cueto or another ace. We could win 110 games next year with Zobrist, an ace and someone like Chen at #2. No other additions needed. Throw in Cespedes in right and we could set the all time wins record while still at half the Dodgers 2015 payroll.

The guy needs to wise up and either wear the upgraded gear or work with a manufacturer to design something with better protection that he feels comfortable wearing.

He's a gold glove, All star catcher in MLB, it's not going to be a problem with finding some designers to fashion some custom gear and have it fabricated.

How man times has he taken a bat to the head because the follow through swing by the batter?

Is it that hard to add a layer of impact absorbant cushion and a top layer of metal or high impact plastic that sits on top of the straps of his mask in the back?

As for his feet- steel toe and tongue.

Sorry typo

This might be a pretty lame reason, but I don't feel warm and fuzzy about Kennedy because he'll have pitch to a DH instead of a pitcher if he comes to the Royals.

I would buy them for him!!!

please Salvy, upgrade your gear and protect yourself

This is what I did this year, got the 2014 ws patch on it, now I got to get another for this year with the 2015 ws patch

lol, the Gordon contract has a mutual option, because its Dayton Moore so of course it does

AL Central Champs again!

:clap: Nice post!

woops.

https://twitter.com/williamnyy23/sta...32975725395970

Technology is hard. Seems like the folks who run the HOF web site spoiled the results due to incompetence. Looks like its only Griffey and Piazza this year.

edit: there's now a Tim Raines page. So, maybe they hadn't finished his yet. Still nothing for Bagwell.

If comp picks are valued at 10M and we paid Gordon 72M, our actual cost is 82M. Because we gave up the comp pick someone else was going to pay us.

are you the Go Chiefs version of the royals?

He's right.

The market consensus right now is that a 1st round pick has a value of about $8-10 million. When you look at the outlay on a contract, that cost or opportunity cost has to be factored in.

If I'm the Royals, I give that up without blinking because ultimately the familiarity makes it worth surrendering the pick. That being said, the pick they would have had (probably in the 33/34 range) has a value and by re-signing Gordon, they lost that value. It's fair to include it in the conversation.

You can bet your ass that Moore did.

What are your thoughts on comp picks? I don't follow the draft one bit, but it sure seems like that avg value is so driven by the few big hits, watering down any real "mean value". Sure seems like KC has gotten a bunch of Mike Montgomery/Sam Selman types and nothing good. I'm not sure I believe 8-10M.

Comp picks are like any other pick... They carry extreme risk of failure.

Manaea, and Montgomery are comp picks who added value through their trade worth. They haven't really nailed one, but a lot of talent gets taken at those spots.

Mike Stanton was drafted right around where the Royals pick would have been had Gordon walked, to give you one example.

You're absolutely right.

But realize, if you nail one, the value of that one hit could easily exceed $100 million.

Stephen Piscotty was a Cardinals comp pick for losing Albert Pujols and the Cardinals seem content with letting him play RF for the foreseeable future. If he's a solid regular over the next 6 years, he'll probably be worth about 15-18 WAR up and through his prime seasons. That kind of player on the market will cost you in excess of $100 million over that period of time as a FA. With cost control he's unlikely to clear $25 million over that span. Hell, if nothing else, he was already instrumental in the Cardinals even making the playoffs last year. Without him they probably end up in the wild card game and would've gone one and done (maybe not even at Busch; he was that good for us). At that point you're talking about 2 games of lost gate if nothing else - that alone has a marginal value of a couple million given that it's 'free' gate.

The point being that the benefits are so enormous that you don't have to hit on many of them to make a huge impact. The Cardinals have had 10 comp picks over the last 10 years and while most of those have washed out, 3 of them have been Lance Lynn, Michael Wacha and now Stephen Piscotty; guys that will yield massive surplus value to the Cardinals.

Rob Kaminsky was another and he was traded for Moss (a bad trade, but an asset nonetheless). Clay Mortenson was one and he was the #2 piece in the trade for Matt Holliday. Chris Perez was another and he was sent in the deal for DeRosa. DeRosa was a bust but at the time the Indians also liked Jason Motte. So while DeRosa wasn't worthwhile, the ability to include Perez instead of Motte was important in keeping an asset in-house that was eventually ENORMOUS in the 2011 WS run.

If nothing else it makes your draft pool larger so you can be a lot more aggressive with a few other draft picks. Sure, maybe you don't use your comp pick on a player that makes a direct impact, but it maybe you used it on an easy to sign college senior, saved yourself $800K in bonus money and then used that to lure a HS kid out of a college commitment who you took with your 4th rounder and THAT guy turns out to be a big time hit for you.

The draft picks matter. I think it depends largely on where you are in the competitive cycle, but I also don't feel like $10 million is a bad guesstimate. In the end, I would never give up my pick for a player that I don't feel will be a legitimate asset for 3 years or more. So I wouldn't give it up for a short term signing (nor would I re-sign my own guy w/ a QO for a short term deal) nor would I have given it up for someone like Zobrist that I think only has 2 good years left in him.

$10,000,000 seems way too high between the bust rate and the amount of time it takes to realize the benefit of the pick. Even if you hit, there's a 3 year wait until you start to see a return. 3 years in baseball is an eternity.

So maybe we should use the median here. Let's suppose it's 2-3M. Seems like a much better application to this.

To clarify, if you don't follow the draft you probably don't get that last point I made.

MLB draft rules give you a 'slot' amount for each pick you have. So getting an additional pick gives you that much more in total 'slot' money to put towards draft picks. College seniors have no eligibility left so they're often taken earlier and signed to pittance deals well below the 'slot' for that draft pick, so that money then becomes surplus that can be put towards tougher signs; draft eligible juniors and high school players being the most common.

No dice because we have at least one real world example of how teams value draft picks.

Touiki Toussaint was the 16th overall pick for Arizona in the 2014 draft. In 2015 the Braves gave up nothing to acquire him and Bronson Arroyo. Arroyo was rehabbing from TJ surgery at the time and the Braves had no expectation of pitching him.

Instead they took on the remaining $10 million contractual obligation owed to Arroyo by the D-Backs in order to get Toussaint. And the industry savaged the D-Backs for it, BTW. It was largely seen as a steal, even though some were openly questioning if Toussaint had shown the ability to develop a 3rd pitch.

The Braves essentially traded $10 million for a first rounder when they assumed Arroyo's deal to get Toussaint.

I think $8-10 million is spot on.

That's why I said it depends on where you are in the competitive cycle.

Honestly, 3 years in baseball is a relative blink of an eye. Hell, you get the guys essentially free of charge for 3+ seasons when you call them up. And a mediocre reliever can have an 8-10 yr career pretty easily.

Even an average turnaround job takes 5 years.

3 years is an eternity in football; it's nothing in baseball. But again, if you're in the middle of an up cycle, then you give up the pick and worry about the repercussions later. Just don't pass those picks off as not having substantial value.

The context of my "eternity" comment was more about salaries.

|20|10|5|4| ?

Yeah, but as salaries go up, so does the value of team control.

If FA salaries go up 30% over the next 3 seasons, the value of those first 3 years at the league minimum goes up even more.

I follow that. But the Kazmir signing seems to unwind much of that. There's no way Kazmir is worth.......(scratch all that, I just remembered Kaz has no comp pick)

That's also how Leake got what he got (no pick attached) and why Chen's market has been so slow to develop.

The union needs to get rid of this asap. It's a clear transfer of value away from them. Whatever dipshit agreed to that needs to be fired.

It was a concession.

What did the players get in exchange?

They weren't really given an option.

What I don't understand is why people are more upset by this system than they were the previous system. There have been compensation picks for decades and teams have always lost draft picks for signing upper tier FAs.

The only difference is that right now the team that used to have the player can control draft pick compensation whereas under the old system there was a ranking setup. Under the old CBA, there were Type A and Type B FAs. If you signed a Type A, you lost your pick to the team you signed them away from. Generally speaking there were more Type A free agents then than there are guys that get a QO now. The list for the last year of the old system included guys like Scott Downs, Mark Ellis, Carl Pavano, Dan Wheeler and Takashi Saito - you'd lose your first round pick if you signed those guys and they had been offered arbitration (which was actually cheaper than the QO was). The risk for offering those lower level guys was less, in fact, because arbitration was tied directly to performance so you weren't guaranteed that top end salary like you are now. You could offer Mark Ellis Arb and he'd get awarded what a mediocre 2b would, not the $15 million they're guaranteed under the new QO system.

The Cardinals got Lance Lynn for a pick they got after the Rays signed Troy Percival away from them. They'd picked up Percival off the scrap heap in June after he'd been away from baseball for a season. The Elias rankings system simply had screwiness all throughout it.

More teams used to lose picks than they do now. More players used to get offered arb than they get QOs now. It's not the new CBA that's doing this, it's the fact that league minimum salaries haven't gone up nearly as fast as FA salaries have and as a result, team control is now 10 times more important than it used to be.

It gets back to the same old saw - revenue disparity.

The MLBPA has nobody to blame here unless they're willing to just tell small market teams to **** off and die.

2

Gordo press conference live now:
http://m.royals.mlb.com/kc/video/v537668483

Watching!