Buster Olney ‏@Buster_ESPN 14m

The asking price for pitcher Ervin Santana is said to have dropped significantly, perhaps to a three-year deal. Was over $100m in November.

Looks like DM jumped way too quickly, the pitching market is a lot cheaper than almost anyone expected. Vargas is starting to look a little bit overpaid.

From hearing him talk the other week, he likes to move quickly in FA when they can get a deal done early, are comfortable with the player and with the value. It's an attempt to avoid bidding wars. Same thing with offering extra years. It was pretty clear they'd rather add another year to keep the AAV in a reasonable realm than try to win a bidding war on the same years as another team.

Might end up biting them here. Don't think anyone saw the draft comp. attached to Santana and Jimenez and etc. devaluing them this much. Also don't think anyone saw Garza's medicals being bad enough to run his value down that far.

It shouldn't be a crippling deal, though. $8 million AAV for a guy who's going to throw 200 innings a year and give you league average pitching still doesn't seem crazy to me.

Also don't think it should keep them from making a Kyle Lohse-type deal for Santana. But that's on Moore and Glass.

That's where the failure of the system in developing pitchers bites you, though. You don't have to spend medium money in FA on an innings eater if you develop some of those guys internally...

Not even "some" - just one... ONE. Just develop ONE FREAKING PITCHER.

LMAO

Yeah, I'm not necessarily second-guessing the decision to move quickly, I'm just a bit frustrated that it worked out this way. Its easy to complain that we should have waited, but I think back in November most of us thought the value of pitching was going to be sky-high, and if you really think pitchers will get paid a ton then you should grab the first guy whose contract demands are anywhere close to reasonable because you don't want to be one of the last teams scrounging around in that musical chairs game. Next year acting quickly could be the correct move.

There's no financial reason why the Royals could not sign Santana. None.

Injury concern? Productivity? Valid reasons. Financial? Bunk.

Oh, and it should be noted that Royals threads are easily some of the best on CP since the great douche migrations of '09 and '13.

Agreed.

If you're looking at paying him 60-75 million over 4-5 years? OK, sure, the injury concern/inconsistency combined with the cost might not make sense.

But when you're talking 3 years at what you paid him THIS season? A Kyle Lohse deal? That's definitely within the realm of affordability for KC.

Worried about payroll? Flip some of the payroll waste spots (Luke Hochevar, Wade Davis, Bonifacio - though I wouldn't consider him waste) for whatever you can get out of them. Even if that's a bucket of balls.

I love the Royals threads. The mood level is fun to watch from game to game. The level of extremes are intense and funny. :thumb:

Projected 2014 rotation (with Santana on 3 year deal - moving Hochevar and Davis for Salary relief):

Shields
Santana
Vargas
Guthrie
Chen (to start year - 10-12 starts)/Ventura

Duffy works out of the pen or at Omaha.

2015:

Santana
Ventura
Vargas
Guthrie
Duffy/Zimmer

2016:
Santana
Ventura
Duffy
Vargas
Zimmer

If we can get another 1/2 season of production out of Chen as a Starter, I will be absolutely amazed. I would have guessed that we had squeezed about as much blood out of that turnip as humanly possible.

:LOL:

Fan graphs was good with th Vargas deal. And they hate Dayton Moore with a passion and they hate the Royals and almost everything we do. That says a lot.

Oh, and BTW, BIG shout out to Duncan and AL for their Royals and Baseball input/knowledge. You two are fkn amazing when it comes to working the stat lines and analyzing the data. Many thanks, especially for those of us that are more challenged in that arena.

Mellinger today talks about "Royals Slogans." This has been one of my favorite topics for a long time. First, his article, then, a list of all the Royals Official Slogans over the years:

Here’s why the Royals’ new slogan is bland
February 3
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star

NEW YORK — They say the roads are as bad back home as they are here, where the sidewalks are like a war zone of puddle-shrapnel and the airport is full of suckers like me with canceled flights.

Which means you and I are in perfect position to take part in one of Kansas City’s most time-honored traditions.

Making fun of the Royals’ new slogan.

The club is going with “Be Royal” this year, which is sort of … meh … which, actually and sadly, is the whole point. “Royal” rhymes with loyal, and (even if the team won’t say it out loud) ties into that “Royals” pop song the kids like. So, fine.

This slogan doesn’t make any promises about the team, and even if it opens up the club for jokes — doesn’t this team need to be better than what the Royals have been over the last generation? — it’s mostly just empty calories for highway billboards.

Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge how senseless it is that the Royals (or any other team) hire a bunch of suits in cubicles to come up with marketing slogans that follow the first rule of medicine: Do no harm.

And all teams do this, by the way. The gazillion-dollar Dodgers are going with “Live. Breathe. Blue.” Breathing means living, and not breathing sometimes means turning blue, but whatever. It’s better than “Your Mortgage Payment is Our Players’ Dry Cleaning Bill.”

The problem with a slogan is that in the best-case scenario, people will forget it. Quick, can you name the Royals’ slogan last year? I’ll wait.

“Come to Play.”

That was a relative success, a vast improvement over the year before, when “Our Time” became a boilerplate punch line for people to throw stones at a team that was supposed to be strong but instead lost 90 games.

The Royals backpedaled when that season turned to mush, forced to try some revisionist-history spin that the slogan referred to holding the All-Star Game, not the actual team. But you can bet that general manager Dayton Moore and others in baseball operations are now given a heads up before the marketing department goes public with a check the team may not be able to cash.

This is how it goes. Marketing departments are bigger (and often more detached from baseball) than ever before. And those billboards aren’t going to fill themselves. So men and women sit around and bounce ideas off each other until — and this really is the goal — they find one empty enough that it can’t be used to hang a losing team. In 2011, the White Sox bumped up payroll and went with “All In,” which turned into a disaster when they finished 16 games out of first place.

There is just no winning here. No profit in slogans. No traction to be made. If the team loses, the slogan is remembered only with irony. If the team wins, chances are something better and organic comes along to replace it. Had the Royals experienced more success last year, you can bet James Shields’ weird neon deer in the clubhouse would’ve become a thing. They didn’t, but 86 wins were the team’s most since 1989 and enough to keep “Come To Play” away from infamy.

But baseball teams feel like they need these things, even if a T-shirt giveaway and fireworks can put twice as many people in the seats as any slogan (and a winning team does much better).

Can we guess the runners-up to “Be Royal?” And remember, you can’t overpromise.

“We’re Due.”

“Ned’s Actually Very Funny Away From The Cameras.”

“Kids Under 12 Race Billy Butler For Free.”

“Our Last Playoff Appearance Is Old Enough To Be A Doctor.”

“C’mon, There’s No Good Movies Out.”

Actually, this is kind of fun. Come up with a marketing slogan that wins, but only if it doesn’t lose. Sort of like a teenager who throws a party when his parents are out of town and doesn’t get caught.

I tried that once. I was 16.

And I got caught.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/03...#storylink=cpy

1976: Star Spangled Summer
1977: Super Summer
1978: Catch Royal Mania
1979: Catch Royal Mania: What the Good Times Are
1980/1: We’re Where You Want to Be!
1982: Go for the Action
1983: Turn on the Action
1984: Something Special in the Air
1985: You’ve Got a Hit on Your Hands
1986: The Thrill of It All
1987: Get in the Swing of it!
1988: A Major League Attraction
1989: It’s a Hit
1990: Catch the Thrill
1991: Turn on the Good Times
1992: It’s Here
1993: 25 Years
1994: For the Fun of It All!
1995: Bring It On!
1996: Get in the Game
1997: Come on Home
1998: This…is Hardball
1999: Be a Part of it All
2000/1: You Gotta Love These Guys!
2002: Join the Fun!
2003: Your Hometown Team/Believe!
2004: Together We Can
2005: It’s All About Royals Baseball
2006: Your KC Royals
2007: True. Blue. Tradition.
2008: New. Blue. Tradition.
2009: You Belong at The K/40th Anniversary
2010: It All Happens Here
2011: Major League Moments
2012: Our Time
2013: Come to Play
2014: Be A Royal