He wasn’t good in his chances as a pro and they were running out of roster space. He had no options left.

Matias (41) and Lee (49) both check in on Baseball Prospectus’s mid-season Top 50.

Write ups are behind the pay wall, but basically they say Matias’ power and defense are legit and that you can believe in hit tool improvement due to his athleticism. Lee’s approach and OBp skills and raw power are cited. Question marks about translating power to games, if he can stick in CF.

I tend to favor Baseball Prospectus more than Baseball America. Think BP is more of a scout-driven thing and a better recognition of true upside. BA is a little more conservative and more focused on performance and how far the player has advanced through the minors.

It's nice a few guys have moved into the rankings...those are what the corner outfielders in 3-4 years?

I just hope the Royals embrace that they are going to be bad for a few years and take their high picks, that seems to be the way to win now.

Royals cut him. Blue Jays cutted him after a year there after the Royals dumped him.

Jeffress is no different than a lot of relievers, he bounced around quite a bit before really finding it.

Plus he had alcohol and drug problems. He's been suspended a few times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Jeffress

This is the answer. Our bullpen was stacked at the time.

Poor Hosmer just keeps spiraling deeper into the black hole. He's at .250/.321/.396 on the season. Hitting .147/.190/.179 over the last month.

We've all seen that before. His slumps can be epic.

Lee May be able to handle CF. If he can, his profile jumps a ton. High OBP with 20 HR pop is ok/nice for a corner... it’s plus for a CF.

Matias is a RF the whole way. 70 grade arm (regularly clocked in 90s on throws from OF). He actually is a decent runner, average or maybe a little better.

MJ Melendez also made their “just missed” list - around a dozen players. So, that would be 3 top 100 guys on BP’s list, for sure, if they were doing that many. Not great but not awful either.

It should be concerning Dayton offered that bum a contract. Could you imagine having his salary on the books along with Gordon and Kennedys? Oh boy.

Well that's good have to hope a few more guys can spring in there in the next year.

He wouldn't quit smoking ganja iirc

Just saw Kowar started for Lexington last night and got through 1/3 of an inning. 3 hits 2 walks and 3 ER and 1 K. Hope it was first start jitters.

The Padres subreddit is starting to freak out - Beyond the Box Score and Fangraphs released scathing articles about Hos in the last week. Yesterday the subreddit discovered an old article that talked about Hos' batting coach, his brother.

The subreddit talked about how Matt Stairs will likely be able to get him to shorten his swing after this slump. I hope they're right - maybe getting his heat in a bigger market will inspire Hos to change, but we'll see.

The thing that fascinated me about Hos is that he really never changed as a player from his rookie season to his last. He was who he was - and he will forever be a hero for that in KC, we accepted him for who he was - but it might be a different story in SD now that he's landed that contract.

I hope he figures it out - because I wish him nothing but the best and would build the statue for him myself if I could

He was on a 30-pitch limit. Just a matter of getting him work. I wouldn’t read anything into what he does this year, especially coming off a mini-shutdown.


The only person who is going to get Hosmer to change his swing is his brother. We learned that in KC. I’ll be floored if he does anything differently, no matter how much trash talk he garners.

He’s stubborn enough about his approach that it got Kevin Seitzer fired and replaced with a pair of incompetent yes men (Jack Maloof and Andre David) who would let Hosmer do what he wanted and stop hounding him to make major changes.

Stuff like this is what I was referring to when I said I didn't think they did a great job of developing guys. Hosmer would be a much better player today had they worked that stubbornness out of him while he was in the minors. There was obviously some of the "hey these guys are top prospects we don't want to piss them off" to some of those calls I think...but at the same time Hosmers approach and refusal to make changes has hurt his career.

I think a lot of that is why it took Moustakas so long to be a good major leaguer.

Hosmer is cool. He's old school like Ned. People tell him he has the worst launch angle in the league, but he's like nah, I trust my brother who works construction in Florida, as my swing coach. I like hitting 190 mph ground balls to infielders. That is the true meddle of a champion.

I get that, but on the flip side, the Royals also showed what happens when you do try to work players natural style out of them - they just did it on the pitching front.

Forcing pitchers out of the long-toss and away from the Slider was an organization philosophy for far too long - and surprise! Avoiding drafting pitchers from their pitch selection or moving them away from their strengths has backfired in more ways than one. In fact, forcing Duffy and Collins to change their delivery/pitches didn't prevent a torn UCL, and only had the effect of impacting their development.

A lot of people say the Royals missed out on an ace when they didn't draft Chris Sale, but idk, if they "cleaned up" his delivery and commandeered his pitch selection, it's quite possible his first six years in the majors would have been somewhat similar to Duffy's (after we took away Danny's out pitch).

Not that the Royals shouldn't have been more forceful with their hitters, but there is a fine line, and it seems the Royals took a while before finding it with their pitchers.

There was a lot of chatter about some things Myers had to fix as a hitter when he got to Tampa, so I think there’s something to that.

That turd Jack Maloof was the minor league hitting instructor for a long time before his disastrous stint as hitting coach in 2013, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

They were old school for too long, and the outcomes of that were overcoaching pitchers and forcing them into a specific box, and not coaching hitters enough as long as they were succeeding.

I think it has improved.

Re: Hosmer and his swing, maybe another org could have broken his bad habits... but not sure how many could have.

Hosmer's a guy that has been seen as difficult to coach for awhile; very headstrong. And I just don't know if there's an easy fix (or one that can be made over a reasonable timeline) for a guy with that much noise in his swing.

You really are talking about the kind of 2 year, tear apart and re-build kind of process that Heyward's going through right now that may or may not be actually bearing fruit.

"Why didn't they fix Hosmer?" is so much easier asked than answered. There wasn't just one little hitch in there - his swing and his approach sure look to be bad habits built on bad habits.

when you think about it, the back to back WS were really an aberration. NONE of our blue chip guys from the "BEST FARM SYSTEM IN BASEBALL" really became stars. Hosmer has never become what he was projected to be. Moose finally did, sort of, last year. I mean, Salvy is a fantastic defensive catcher with some power, but has never hit for average. Duffy has not been the frontline ace he was expected to be. Ventura was, well, Ventura, and maybe he would've put it together, maybe not. None of the other pitchers developed. None. We've not really truly developed anyone in a very, very long time. They were good enough AS A TEAM, along with Cain, Gordon, and the bullpen, which was freakishly good, but comprised largely of failed starters that converted well to relief.

Hoz was 3rd in AL in OBP last year.

Ops of 1.000 after April.

He doesn't have "noise".


He has a downward plane swing that drives ball into ground. Nuff said

If you look at Hosmer's career, his batting average has jumped around quite a bit. He's a streak hitter. When he's hot he's hot. When he's not, he's not. Too streaky for $23 million a year, that's for sure.

They juiced the ball. Which neutered our fly ball pitching, speedy OF defense, and ball contact MO. That is literally what happened and why our strategy became much more ineffective.

Cain is the guy who did develop into what he was supposed to be..and he was largely developed by another organization.

Perez in a lot of ways should be considered a bonus, I don't ever remember him being on a top 100 list, he was never thought of the same way the other guys were around baseball. Hosmer, Moose and Myers were suppose to be stars. Duffy was supposed to be an ace...hell Mike Montgomery and John Lamb were suppose to be somebodies.

I won't go any further into pitching there really isn't an argument, they flat out sucked balls at developing pitchers. I do think their hitting approach like duncan said of "if they are producing leave them alone" led to a lot of big league struggles for those guys.

If a lot of bad habits had been broken early on in the organization it may have taken a bit longer for them to get here but we may have seen better players or some guys make it that didn't.

To add on the guy they drafted in the 2nd round last year, a lefty pitcher Evan Steele hasn't even thrown a pitch this year as he has shoulder problems..I don't think he's thrown a pitch for the Royals organization yet.

Glad to see he was on a limit. They threw those Florida guys a lot of innings so was hoping for the best. Would have loved to see him get a couple more guys out though.

perez and yordano ventura were both bonuses--hell, every team has random guys come up and shock after being afterthoughts on draft day. the cardinals have yadi molina (lolz overused catchers, let's not ruin salvy before we're good again) and albert pujols.

the problem is partially that you're comparing apples to oranges. mecca, man, you were all about the nfl draft back in the day. and while nfl prospects may be 'hit or miss,' you're ignoring the major issue--mlb prospects don't have that extra 3-4 years of development that nfl prospects do, there isn't as much tape, and scouting is so freaking subjective unfortunately.

we got really lucky to do what we did in 2014-15, though you can't say we didn't stockpile talent... what we did with that talent, the bad luck/bad scouting in drafting hasn't helped, but you can look at every team in the league and wonder why so-and-so didn't develop... where the hell is travis lee right now? where the hell is erubial durazo (lol old, busted top prospects that never were). I can keep going. shall I keep going with busted prospects from every team? I can go with any team you want. and their bust list will be way more expansive than the bust list of the chiefs.

I mean, fuck... the bust rate of top ten mlb prospects is way higher than top ten nfl prospects. I'll try to see if I can back that up with research later, but I know % success rate for mlb prospects is available, as I'm sure it is for nfl prospects (% that made it to mlb, all star game, regular starter, star, and the nfl equivilent)

Steele had light duty last year after being drafted and was impressive. Good stuff.

His mechanics left something to be desired - very funky and rough, leading to those shoulder problems. Believe he’s reworking his mechanics to smooth things out.

He was their third or fourth pick in the draft, forget which. It was purely an upside play. He was headed to auburn after pitching at the leading juco and committing to vandy out of HS. Big upside, which is why they took the chance.

He’s a guy who could take a similar jump as we saw from Cody Reed in his third year in the org.

I wouldn't call it an aberration - the best farm system in baseball was the backbone behind the best team in the AL in 2014 and the best team in baseball in 2015.

Moore's scouting worked, but there are components of his development that are concerning, especially since he will be prevented from loading up on Latin American talent like he did in the first go around.

I'm amazed that the hitting coach of an MLB team had coached and convinced an entire team of his players to swing on pitches low in and out of the zone.

How long did we go without homering in 2013 before our savior Miguel Tejada came along? It was truly baffling.

*** Official 2018 Royals Repository ***
 

Some of it can be chalked up to developmental approach.

But some of it is also misunderstanding Baseball prospects and how different a beast it is.

The “elite” prospects the Royals had in the farm system in 2011 were Hosmer, Moustakas, Myers, and Lamb. That system had a crazy amount of depth, but guys like Duffy and Ventura and Chris Dwyer and etc who were on the back half of the top 100 were never expected to be superstars.

John Lamb’s injury killed him as a major leaguer. Never got his fastball back, lost the special command he had. Injuries happen.

Duffy was seen as a likely 3 with a 2 ceiling, never an ace. Montgomery was the same.

There is no such thing as a pitching prospect is a thing for a reason, the biggest reason being that if you have 4 pitching prospects, an AVERAGE return would be for one to be at least 80 percent of what he expected, two to bust, and one to be useful but as a bullpen guy or back-end starter.

An above average return would cut one of those busts out.

If you’re elite at developing pitching, like the Cardinals and Rays have been, you hit on 1/2 or close to it of your pitching prospects.

Compare what the Royals got out of Hosmer and Moustakas to what the Twins are getting out of their version of those two - Buxton and Sano (with Buxton being a more elite prospect by a wide margin than anyone else).

It also should be noted that guys like Perez and Cain and Dyson and Holland and Herrera, all key contributors to the run, were developed into far more than it was thought they would be. Have to apply credit in those situations, too.

Duncan is Peter Gammons. Peter Gammons is Duncan.

I'm convinced.

Has he gone on record as saying that there should be sixteen teams in NYC and fourteen in Boston yet?

I've yet to see Duncan unzip for a Curt Schilling effigy, so that's gonna be a no from me.

Nah, I know Peter. I’m not Peter Gammons.

I’m a smarter, better looking version of Dave Cameron, without the raging ego and with the realization that analytics can’t tell me everything about Baseball and need to be combined with scouting sense.

Oh, and with a less annoying voice and less caustic, asshole-ish writing style.

Are you worried that Dayton Moore offered alot of money to Hosmer.

Cameron is pretty damn smart. Annoying, biased, and socially awkward. But highly intel

Worried? No. It’s a move in character with Moore.

I’m damn relieved they didn’t go that high for him, though.

For sure, he is.

He’s not smart enough to be objective about his blind spots or accept that he might not know everything... or that a formula might not be able to tell him everything.

Brad Keller actually does suck. Just took a while. He was just pulling a Junis by making us think he might be good.

Regression is a bitch

Dozier looked really bad in that at bat. He was frozen

Oh noes! He had a bad inning!

Moron.

If you think he's going to be a career 2.5 ERA guy, you have another thing coming. He's just another middling back end starter. No more no less.

Fillmyer was supposed to start Sunday, so who knows what they're going to do now.

Dude throws a 96 mph cutter. I don't know if he's going to be an All-Star but I wouldn't close the book on the guy just yet. That's a nasty weapon.

They did. They just had the contract flipped compared to the Padres.

How many days rest has Butera had? He should be ready to go.....

This has to be humiliating to some of these players.

this is the worst team I've ever seen

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">2018 Royals match 2015 Royals’ loss total... before the All Star break <a href="https://t.co/J4R2OdMl7L">https://t.co/J4R2OdMl7L</a> <a href="https://t.co/cVMGwdAPdL">pic.twitter.com/cVMGwdAPdL</a></p>&mdash; Royals Review (@royalsreview) <a href="https://twitter.com/royalsreview/status/1017978609712222208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2018</a></blockquote>
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The amazing thing is they still aren't even the worst team in the league. It's truly amazing.

I find that hard to believe. Manny Machado alone is better than our entire 25 man roster.

Yes but Chris Davis may be worse than anyone on our roster so it's a push.

I can handle them giving time to guys like Orlano or Escobar, who are not part of the future of this team... when it doesn't take away from guys who are, like Mondesi.

He should be playing and hitting every day, especially against a hard-throwing young pitcher like Lopez.

I'm so tired of hearing about character. That mother ****er needs to hang up and become a minister.

Rays catcher Wilson Ramos is out with an injury. Salvy is going to start the All-Star game.

<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/WIg8P0VNpgH8Q" width="480" height="363" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/monty-python-and-there-was-much-rejoicing-WIg8P0VNpgH8Q">via GIPHY</a></p>

#Yosted

While I also am I’m tired of his bible beating... in this case, all character meant was “normal mode of operation/decision-making.”

Meanwhile in 7 out of Duffys last 10 starts he has given up 1 run or less. Any interest maybe brewing from other clubs?

What part of “bury me a Royal” don’t you people understand?

What part of trading players from a shitty team to get future assets don't you understand?

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/2...tar-artist-bat

Article about Jose Ramirez being a boss. Chances of ever having such an article written about a Royals hitter? I'd say slim to none. We haven't had a truly great hitter since the days of Dye, Damon, Sweeney, and Beltran. It's also amazing how we had all that talent then and still couldn't win. But, at least the front office then could find some real talent at the plate on occasion.

Baseball Pro’s minor league editor and head scout drooling over Matias’ showing of raw power.

https://twitter.com/jeffpaternostro/...766889985?s=20

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Seuly Matias BP is uh, worthwhile</p>— Craig Goldstein (@cdgoldstein) <a href="https://twitter.com/cdgoldstein/status/1018546715694129152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

"But the Royals system is worse than it was when Moore took over!!1!"

I just noticed our 3rd base coach should be fired. what an idiot!

So a single player means it isn't worse? Moore already had Greinke, Butler, and Gordon when he took over.

It's actually the opposite.

The Royals had those three players and then a barren wasteland after.

The Royals system now is significantly deeper than it was in 2006.

Well I hope you're right, but I have my doubts. I still think we're lacking in a lot of depth.

I will concede that compared to other current teams, yes.

But I don't think it's a stretch to say the 2006 Royals were one of the worst systems in history. That system was on the heels of the "$1000 draft", where Glass would only sign players after Round (3?) to $1000 deals if they wanted to be on the Royals. That doesn't even touch how the Royals had zero presence in Latin America and that their international scouting was a mess at best and non-existant at worst. That system was a special kind of trainwreck.

The fact that it is even a discussion that Allard Baird's farm system and Dayton Moore's are even close to each other speaks to the poor job Moore's has dine over the last what 7 years? Even if you believe bin the last 2 classes there is really no excuse that after over 10 years the system has fallen to this level again.

Let's also remember how much more money Moore has been allowed to spend that Baird ever was on any and everything. This year's Mlb team is worse than anything Baird assembled at about 5 times the cost.

It's an apples and oranges comparison.
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Winning a world series should not be an excuse for having a crappy farm system or returning to bottom feeder status, it shouldn't be an excuse or a blanket answer that makes it ok. I don't see Houston being ranked last in prospects or saying they're going to suck now cause they won.
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Eight years to get a winning record? Nine to make the playoffs. Ten to win a championship. Two years of hovering around five hundred, and now a team that could be one of the worst ever. How long does he get to turn it back around? This is where KC decides if they're going to try to stay up on the level with the big boys, or not.

I know that they're not other teams that won't tolerate losing. They're not the Marlins either. Are they just going to be in the middle of that spectrum? Is it due to being in a small market? Is it Glass?

Not gonna blame Glass they've spent money just over the last 2 years Moore hasn't made good big league decisions which followed about 5 years of bad draft calls so getting we are...depleted farm stsyem, high payroll for scrub players.
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So about this Enny Romero cat who throws hard ...

Man, this team has been super hard to watch this first half. Almonte in Center...Maurer...Esky and Moose playing God knows what position. Alex grounding to second over and over and over and over.... Hammel and Kennedy sucking it... just a tough year all around. Can't wait for football to start. Oh, and today we're getting beat 10-zip. Yip-ee.