It’s a lot of control, sure, but Santana is atrocious defensively and has struggled enough this year to be relegated to the minors despite a breakout last year. He’s also in a great hitters park already.

But maybe getting solid major leaguers back makes it easier to sell the deal to Angelos, who is crazy.

Have a friend who bought a 20 game flex package for the Royals this year. His wife talked him into it.

They've seen 1 win in 11 games they've attended.

ROFL

Whit contributing to the losing..

Well we got a bunch of games coming up with rest of the AL Central. I'm sure some wins will be coming.

So, one or two.

Whit 5 for 5 in the loss today.

Yeah, exactly what I was thinking.......ROFL

Moustakas struck out on the high fastball twice in a row tonight. And by high, I mean a foot high. Looks bad, we need to trade him before he tanks his value, like we did with Herrera

How? Or is this sarcasm? Because 5/5 isn't contributing to losing.

Did anyone post yet that Bubba Starling is finally playing again? He hit two homeruns yesterday. I'm sure it won't last, or he'll get injured again, but it's at least a glimmer of hope. I'd like to see him get a call up in September at the latest if he's actually still healthy by then.

Salvy is in!

No Whit.

It was at rookie ball. But hey, at least he’s on the field.

Deserved it more than Salvy.

Don’t agree that Harper should be in. He’s been playing replacement level.

baby steps. 4 years later. need to build on that.

Maybe. There aren't many great hitting catchers. Even then Salvy has at least hit for some pop, and he's having a very good season defensively. He's basically 3rd in defensive WAR among catchers even though he's played less games than a lot of his competitors. He's also throwing out 43% of runners which is excellent and among the best in baseball.

The rule that every team must have a player is kind of embarrassing.

When the game "mattered" it was probably an issue, now that it's just a big exhibition again I don't think it's a big deal. Every team's fans should have a reason to watch since it's an exhibition. Probably helps keep it from being just Yankees and Red Sox players.

Being that Whit may not be on the team come the All-Star Game, I don’t mind the face of our franchise getting the nod.

Salvy, huh?

Should have been Moose or Whit (probably Whit). But the players voted for Salvy for the bench. He’s a popular guy. Popularity usually wins out over deserving in an All-Star game.


At least we know we’ll see a Royal in the AS game this way . . . . .

I'm sure his name recognition helps a ton, but honestly I was looking over the list of catchers in the AL and I'm not sure who deserves it over him. Gary Sanchez is hurt. Martin Maldonado maybe? Yan Gomes? Robinson Chirinos? None of these guys are really lighting the world on fire. Zunino is on a good team in the Mariners, and he's hitting homers but he's also hitting .189.

I think it's simply that you need a backup catcher, there aren't any real great candidates and Salvy is at least having a good defensive season. Plus there's no way Whit was going to be the backup 2B over Gleyber Torres.

Whit has had a better overall season than Torres (who is injured and may not even play in it). That being said, the real snub at 2B was Jed Lowrie. He should have been in right behind Altuve.

Its kind of weird the AL went with so many pitchers and so few bench players (only 2 catchers, 2 1B, 2 2B, 2 3B). I guess that will mean a lot of playing time in the ASG for those thin positions. Since they only went with 2 3B, I get why Moose wasn’t picked. Ramirez was always going to be the starter and Bregman is having a better year than Moose.

So for those reasons, I see why they went with Salvy, even if he didn’t deserve it as much as the aforementioned other two . . . . .

Eric Hosmer has 2 hits so far in the entire month of July.

He got his 2nd in a 1-8 outing today.

I understand why Salvy got it but Whit deserved it more.

I went back a few pages and didn't see this anywhere so I don't think its Q.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/royals-si...8801--spt.html

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kaito Yuki is headed to the Kansas City Royals organization instead of attending high school in Japan.

The team signed Yuki, a 16-year-old pitcher, out of junior high to a minor league contract Sunday. He is thought to be the first Japanese junior high school player to sign with a major league club.

"I wanted to play in the United States as soon as possible, rather than playing high school ball at Koshien Stadium (in Japan's iconic national championship)," Yuki said in statement issued by the Royals.

Yuki is listed at 6-foot-2, 170 pounds and his fastball has been clocked at 87-88 mph. He was born on May 12, 2002.

"My goal is to do well in the majors. Not everybody is given that chance, so I want to do my best," he said at a news conference in his hometown of Osaka.

Yuki has been studying English before his move to the United States. The Royals are optimistic that after paperwork is completed, he will arrive in August at the team's spring training complex in Surprise, Arizona, to begin familiarizing himself with the local culture and language.

He would participate in the Royals' fall instructional league in September and October, with the objective of making his professional debut in the minors next year.

"The first thing is for him to be patient and build up his body, and then if he stays on course, in five years get an invite to major league spring training," said Hiroyuki Oya, a Royals international scout.

Yuki has been compared to Chicago Cubs pitcher Yu Darvish, who grew up in the same city.

"I'm anxious, but I am more excited now," Yuki said at his news conference in Japan.

He garnered the attention of scouts last year while representing Japan in a youth tournament in the United States.

"We are excited to add Kaito Yuki to our organization," said Rene Francisco, Royals vice president and assistant general manager of major league and international operations. "We are very much looking forward to seeing him get started in professional baseball next year. I'd like to thank and congratulate our Pacific Rim coordinator Phil Dale and our scout in Japan, Hiro Oya, for the tremendous work in identifying and signing this young man."

Yuki is also believed to be the youngest player from Japan to sign with a big league team.

"He's not even in high school," Francisco said. "He and his family chose to sign with Kansas City instead of going the normal route Japanese players take. It's pretty amazing what this kid is doing. Credit to Phil and Hiro."

The Royals have had four Japanese players: pitchers Hideo Nomo, Mac Suzuki and Yasubiko Yubuta, and outfielder Nori Aoki.

Aoki, acquired in a trade with the Milwaukee Brewers, was the most recent. He was a starter on the 2014 team that won the American League pennant and lost to the San Francisco Giants in the World Series.

Better not sign Heimlich now....

@ClintScoles: Payroll is going to be low enough when Whit gets expensive that you don't trade him without getting an excellent haul back. A return similar to the Herrera deal will not do.

The only hesitation for keeping Whit is that he could be a roadblock for Nick Lopez. Unless, you play Whit in CF? But then, where would Bubba Starling play?
The good thing about Whit being under control for so long, and he's inexpensive for several years, is they do not have to trade him now. They could wait for the off season.

The article wasn't on the previous pages, but there was a discussion from yesterday. Basically, this was a sneaky signing and it's being reported quite a bit in non-KC markets due to the kid's age and the Darvish comparisons. I just saw that the signing made the drudge report as well. We signed Gasperini when he was like 9 (I kid), so it's not like the age-thing is earth shattering.

I'm willing to move Whit because he'll be 30 in January.

He makes this team a better team now, but I'm not convinced playing him 150 games a year will make us better when he's 32.

Anyone who is thinking about giving Whit Merrifield an expensive contract when he's like 33 is a moron and shouldn't be commenting.

Shake Shake Shake
Shake Shake Shake
Shake Yubuta
Shake Yubuta

The baseball gods have literally blessed us with Whit Merrifield as an asset to move at just the right time.

With all the transactions / moves the Royals have made, who is the fifth starter?

Duffy
Keller
Fillmyer ( pitched for Junis )
Burch Smith ( taking hammel's spot )

Hammel to the bullpen
Kennedy and Junis are on the disabled list.

They're all 5th starters.

Then he'll get white hot in September for some reason.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Peak Royals Facebook: <a href="https://t.co/a4ROEv7vzq">https://t.co/a4ROEv7vzq</a></p>&mdash; The Media Burner Account Ned (@TheFakeNed) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheFakeNed/status/1016155572016701440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

#TrueFan!

Just got done watching the '14/'15 Post season supercuts....

Esky was a freaking beast during that run. So many clutch moments.

It’s the Hosmer way.

Why are so many fans so stupid?

Hoz 0.1 fWAR. 101 wRC+ (1% above league avg, and that's by a 1B)


It's ugly.

That is just another Fescoe burner account.

So none of our highly regarded hitters ever developed into a truly great player. Is that a sign of a developmental problem with this franchise?

Probably...Houston basically had all their guys develop into stars...they had a few misses but the ones that developed became major stars.

HR
HR allowed

Royals hitters 70
Junis, Duffy, Kennedy 60

Facebook fans are the dumbest on the internet.

That's nice and all but of all of those highly touted prospects who developed into what they were supposed to?

ROFL

World ****ing Champions > Fantasy Baseball Champions

It's still a disingenuous way to answer the question. It's side stepping a legit question about how the guys were developed and saying "we did win something"

OK yes they win something but that doesn't absolve all the issues that still happened. Truthfully the Royals have not developed 1 pitching prospect into a top of the line starter in Moore's entire time here. That is with having double digit guys rated in the top 100 during that time.

Then you move onto to hitters and honestly most of them display a lot of the same warts so it does make you wonder what kind of development was being done here. NONE of those guys developed into what they were supposed to be, some of them became good players but others just failed.

That system was supposed to produce Superstars and frankly..it didn't. Which that alone should make you question if Moore can rebuild something that he hasn't been good at in years and he has to do with a different set of rules.

They won the ****ing World Series. Who gives a flying **** if they weren't all Hall of Famers. Would have been have nice, but really big ****ing deal. They won the championship and were the most dominated team in baseball when they did it.

THE ****ING BOTTOM LINE IS TO WIN CHAMPIONSHIPS. They did that.

It does matter because if they have a track record of never developing pitching prospects into anything other than marginal starters or great relievers...and with the hitters they can't develop them at all unless they are top 20 in all of prospect lists type of talents..

That doesn't speak great for the future.

If we are being honest yes they won a world series in spite of never really fully developing any of their players.

Many of them (like said idiot above) became a fan around 2013-2014.

They hopped on the bandwagon and don't know shit about baseball.


I'm glad all of them are leaving now so the rest of us that are left behind won't be stuck conversing with ****ing idiots till the next Royals contender comes along . . . .

Guys they cut from tryout camp became MVPs.

The Astros are a perfect confluence of skill and luck. They've done very few things wrong (Appel instead of Bryant) and a lot of things right (Correa and Bregman) but even those wouldn't have been enough.

They needed Justin Verlander to change his mind 3 minutes before a deadline. They needed Charlie Morton to do...well whatever the hell Charlie Morton has managed to do. Bregman and Correa had to hit their apex ability. Altuve had to go from an interesting story to a nice little player to arguably the most valuable player in baseball (given his position scarcity).

They simply haven't taken any bad breaks along the way.

You didn't even factor in things like hey doing what they should do and drafting George Springer and simply not ****ing him up or poning up to get Lance McCullers signed.

Building a winner will always take luck but when they've had so many guys develop so well there is something they are doing properly.

The only real high profile prospect they had that I can think of truly busting was Singleton.

They simply haven't taken any bad breaks along the way.


Uh.....game 4 2015 ALDS????

I totally agree they've done a terrible job developing pitchers but it's not like the hitters have been horrible. Cain and Moose turned into about what we thought. There were worries Salvy would never hit but he did. Gordon was a 25-30 WAR player in the five years leading up to the championship. Hosmer didn't become quite the superstar we thought but he wasn't a bust by any stretch.

I don't get where that criticism comes from. They haven't had an Altuve but they've developed major league hitters. They set out to build a team that plays great defense and puts the ball in play, and they went out and did exactly that. They were the best defense in the league and they were by far the best team at not striking out by a large margin.

Some fans are starting to get ****ed - even going as far as saying they should have signed Matt Adams...

They'll even out once they see this is just a regular trend for Hos. If he has a chance for any postseason brilliance, he'll win them over easily.

I guess Moustakas is close to what was expected, I think my biggest issue is Hosmer was suppose to basically be Votto and while he was a good player he was never that. It's like they never got the true full potential from any of those top of the line prospects.

I'm ecstatic we won the world series, and I'll take that over any individual accomplishment. However, I'm also of the opinion that we won it at the perfect time when some of the typical AL giants were down. I'm not sure the 2014-15 Royals would get through the postseason going up against the 2018 Astros, Yankees, or Red Sox. Those teams all have too many superstars. Yes they are all bigger markets, but each of those teams developed at least one player better than anyone on our championship roster. We've never developed a hitter the equivalent of Mookie Betts, Aaron Judge, Jose Altuve, or even Lindor/Ramirez from the Indians. Also, almost every one of our highly touted prospects took way too long to develop. If Hosmer and Moustakas were good earlier on instead of taking several years to develop we might have started our postseason run in 2013 and had 3 years of contention. Merrifield is the best pure hitter we've had and he was a college player that spent forever in the minors.

I know it's hard to develop players, but I can't exactly say I'm confident in our system. Escobar and Perez both used to be .300 hitters, I struggle to understand why they've fallen off so much so quickly. It seems like we are hardly able to develop any solid all around hitters who have good plate discipline and can work the count. It's why I'm so critical and skeptical of Matias, Pratto, and Melendez. They're still young, but I won't believe any of them can improve much on their 30%+ strikeout rates and low averages when very few hitters in our system have shown a lot of progression. I don't know nearly enough about baseball to know what the problem is, but I'd be willing to guess our player development system is archaic and we probably don't rely on advanced metrics as much as we should. But, I could be wrong.

I noticed how bad he's been lately. At least we're not saddled with that contract, too.

I kind of get what Mecca is saying.

It seems that the royals organization has difficulty developing players. I think it's a legitimate statement.

Yes, we won a WS.....but if we had more "hits" in the draft and/or developed better, would it be more than 2 playoff appearances in past 32 years?

I'm still riding the high of the '14 and '15 seasons - but I'm also a realist. There are other small market teams that seem to make better moves, better draft picks, better development - on a more consistent basis than the royals.

Yep and we hit the tail end of the Tigers too. I still firmly believe we lose to them n 2014 unless Baltimore knocks them off first.

https://i.imgur.com/6phdNVT.png

No idea what you're talking about.

This may be the most Kansas City sports discussion ever. Making excuses for why they won a championship.

I agree they didn't have an Altuve or Judge type player but there's no one formula to win in baseball. That's the beauty of it. They beat an Angels team that had the best record in the league and the best baseball player in the universe. None of these teams have a player better than Trout. They didn't just win, they swept them. They beat a Blue Jays team that was loaded with offensive stars. I'm pretty confident they could have held their own against any of these recent champs. They had a lineup of All-Star or nearly All-Star caliber players hitting 1-9 and probably the best bullpen in recent history. If we had a lead after 5 it was over. They could have held their own. There's a reason why Joe Buck said the 15 Royals might be the best team he's ever covered.

It's great they won and it was different but I will ask one question...is that series played today or in 15? With the juiced ball that'd hurt the 15 team.
Posted via Mobile Device

Who cares?

That’s a MLB issue no one could have anticipated. Without the juiced ball we very well could be talking about our playoff runs in either 16 or 17.

Who cares? This is a complete BS question because they aren't playing in today's game, and you are just trying to be difficult. They built a team for the style of baseball that was successful at the time.

But if you want a statistically accurate answer, do remember that most people believe the ball was juiced after the 2015 All Star break. The study that set all this off compared baseballs before and after the 2015 break and found the latter had a less dense core, which correlated exactly with when home runs shot up, so technically they did win the World Series with the juiced ball.

I say Cain and Moose injuries in 16 and Venutra's death in 17 where the reason why we didn't make the playoffs.

Agreed with this too.

But, with 2014’s baseball, there’s a good shot we make the playoffs in either 16 or 17 (if not both) regardless.

Mecca is the same old guy.

Bitcher

I mean thank God they didn't wait until 2018 to play the 2015 world series... right guys?

The real funny thing about it is whether it was intentional or not, that 15 team was so good it really changed how other teams approached the game. Now everyone tries to build elite bullpens. A team like the Astros went from striking out a ton to encouraging their guys to make contact, and they actually did and won a World Series. You'll see people credit the Astros for it but the Royals did it first.

Royals got lucky in 1985, too.

Just once I wish we would win the right way.

I love this especially because how the Royals were called the “Kansas City Base Hits” in the 15 series leading up the Astros.

Astros fans didn’t seem to be laughing after Game 4, though.

Since I moved out of KC I don’t even remember how the 15 season ended, to be honest.