My new amazing girlfriend is a Royals fan so now i got good opportunities to go to games this year :D

See I disagree with that statement. I believe it is not a priority to hit for contact so metrics and teaching moves away from it. Ichiro could still hit for contact today if he were coming up.

Sadly it is going to take a foreign player to show it is still possible or a patient GM and owner building the team up with prioritizing hitting for contact.

It would also be cheaper to obtain those players in today's market.

I also think someone needs to take the bullpen to the next level. Pitchers go 4 or 5 innings max unless they are dealing. After that, bullpen by committee. There is no reason relief pitchers cant throw 20 pitches. If they are that worried cut down on warm up pitches and before the game.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Brady Singer, a <a href="https://twitter.com/Royals?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Royals</a> first-round pick, gave his parents the sweetest Christmas gift. <br><br>(Get ready to cry) <br><br>(via <a href="https://twitter.com/Bsinger51?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Bsinger51</a>) <a href="https://t.co/iqXg7yoOW1">pic.twitter.com/iqXg7yoOW1</a></p>&mdash; Sports Illustrated (@SInow) <a href="https://twitter.com/SInow/status/1077738459757006848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 26, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Awesome, nice to see that their are still families with kids growing up with respect to their parents!

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Wonder what Ian Kennedy bought his folks with the $15M he stole last year

I hope the kid gets to the bigs quick and becomes our ace.

Now this is a kid I can cheer hard for.

Unfortunately, I believe that the Royals have the same problem as the Chiefs. Some really bad contracts. Alex Gordon has a contract that really hurts the team. Ian Kennedy is also a liability. The death of Ventura really set the team back and the 2014/2015 team had good starting pitching and a closing bullpen that shut teams down.

It's going to be very difficult for a middle of the road payroll team like the Royals to compete with the big east coast teams. I think they will be competitive again in a few years however it's going to be hard to compete with the Yankees, Red Sox and Astros.

Bad contracts are the least of the Royals problems at this point. They only really have two 'bad' contracts and Gordon's comes off the books after this year with the buyout and then only 2 years left of Kennedy and he's done in 2020.

The only other 2 contracts over $10 mil. a year are Duffy and Salvy and those contracts both run out after 2021. So the Royals basically have zero money committed to players 'long-term'. The hope is they can continue to stock the minor league system with depth and develop guys and come 2021 or 2022 they can spend as much money as they need to retain players and/or buy a couple key free agents if they're ready to compete since the majority of the players under contract will be playing for peanuts.

It will always be hard to compete with the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers of the world, as the Royals will never be able to spend that kind of money. But the Royals already proved they could do it during the last run (2013-2016) by exploiting market inefficiencies, which is what they will probably have to do again, or by sucking hard for a few years and 'hitting' on several high picks (a.k.a. Astros), as well as making some key Rule 5 pickups, coaching up some undervalued guys and having some C and D talents become A and B major leaguers. It's a lot to ask, but other small market teams have done it (albeit maybe not as successful as the Royals last run) so it is possible. Just gonna take a hell of an effort from the front office guys, scouts and coaches.

The biggest problem is they still have very little talent in the minors, relatively speaking. Outside of Mondesi they've found pretty much nothing in the international market in forever and they refuse to make big trades to restock the minors. They pretty much have to nail the draft every single year to have a chance at competing.

I think that is because of the mlb rule change for Latin America and the cap imposed.

So dumb too, MLB uncapped, Latin America capped so the royals quit leading in spending.

That’s definitely part of it. It seems like MLB has tried to do everything possible to ‘even the playing field’ and take away the few advantages a small market team may have had.

Of course, it’s in MLB’s best interests long term for the big market teams to succeed so why wouldn’t you set it up that way going forward? MLB has zero desire to see teams like the Royals and Brewers competing in the World Series.

It just makes what the Royals did in 2014 & 2015 even more amazing when you think about it and was a truly a big middle finger, even if unintended, to MLB and baseballs big money market teams.

Myth^. Market size doesn’t really even drive viewers

https://thumbor-forbes-com.cdn.amppr....jpg?width=960

Would the overall numbers from the entires series coincide with the Game 1 numbers?

That seems like a bit of an outlier to choose to make a point . . . . .

Generally the opener is the best gauge of interest. The Cubs has a massive 40M for game 7, but they’re an outlier. I think our SF game 7 got 26M. That said Boston-LA didn’t do anything special ratings wise