Outlook for 2019 Royals
 

My old pal Steve in Chicago is a big baseball fantasy geek, and is a lifelong Cubs fan. He's sort of adopted the Royals as his AL team, because he despises the White Sox, and he sees the Royals on Chicago TV every time we play them.

He follows a Baseball Fantasy Guru guy named Joe Sheehan. This was published today on his evaluation of the Royals going into 2019:

The Royals have moved into the ionization blackout period, during which they will attempt to build a good team from the ground up in near-total anonymity, probably losing at least 90 games in both 2019 and 2020. The first season after their championship window closed was ugly, as the team slipped to 58-104 on the field and saw all of its attendance gains from the 2015 title disappear.

That Was Fast

2013 1.75M
2014 1.96M
2015 2.71M
2016 2.56M
2017 2.22M
2018 1.67M

People in the area are still watching the games on television, which bodes well for the team’s ability to keep their coffers filled with a new local-TV deal, hopefully upgrading from what Sam Mellinger described as “widely believed to be one of the worst for a team in major professional sports.” Kansas City is ranked #32 in market size, making the Royals a legitimate small-market team. Their regional appeal was helped by the championship, but they remain behind the Cardinals and even the Cubs for popularity through the Midwest.

I’ve been hard on the Royals over the years, turned off by the way an oligarch who competed viciously to turn Wal-Mart into a global behemoth, bankrupting smaller competitors along the way, became the worst sort of welfare queen when it came to baseball. I remain insistent that David Glass and his ilk should have their significant personal fortunes, the prestige value of owning a baseball team, the subsidies paid by the cities and states in which they play, and the inevitable rise in franchise value all be part of any conversation about what they can “afford.”

With that said, there are real small-market teams in MLB, and the chart above shows that those fans are as fickle as any others. The additional ticket sales created by the Royals’ championship run took just three years to wash out, and they won’t return until the team is good again. For now, the Royals will live off their cut of the considerable baseball revenues generated by their partners until they can get the locals excited again.

In having these conversations over the years, I’ve come across the idea that rooting for a small-market team is somehow more pure than rooting for the Yankees or Dodgers or Cubs. The truth is, fans are pretty much the same everywhere. There’s a core who will be with a team thick and thin, and then a much larger group you can reach if you do well on the field. Both groups are larger in bigger cities, but the idea that fans of the Royals or Brewers or whomever are entitled to seeing their teams subsidized by the league because they’re somehow better fans is belied by the chart above.

Maybe, three years past Eric Hosmer’s dash to the plate, a lot of kids are being Raised Royal, but their moms and dads spent the summer Supporting Sporting.

The fans who do show up at Kauffman Stadium next year are unlikely to see a winning team, but the signing of Billy Hamilton will make it a touch easier to watch. Hamilton has been overmatched at the plate in MLB, with a .299 OBP over his five-year career that has been unchanged the past two seasons. Once he drops the bat, however, Hamilton is still as watchable a player as there is in baseball. He’s still one of the fastest men in the game, a plus defensive center fielder and exciting basestealer.

I want baseball to be a game where the likes of Hamilton can be stars, not because of any inherent value to the type, but because baseball is better when a variety of player and team archetypes can lead to success. For most of its history, and surely during the time I came to love it, baseball was a game where both strength and speed were rewarded.

One of the most visible ways in which power pitching has changed the game is that it has overpowered the Hamilton class. There’s a high minimum strength standard now, and if you don’t reach it, you can’t play. Billy Hamilton doesn’t have a career .245 batting average because he’s obstinate but, rather, because you can’t beat modern pitching by “just slapping the ball and running.” The game that Willie Wilson could play 40 years ago, that Otis Nixon could play 30 years ago, that Ichiro Suzuki and Juan Pierre could play even a decade ago, is gone. (The Larry Bowa/Freddy Galvis comparison within this piece also makes the point.)

Billy Hamilton’s career is just another thing we’ve lost to pitchers becoming witches. Everything comes back to velocity. Everything.

Anyway, Hamilton adds to the Royals’ collection of very good basestealers. The Royals will lead the AL in steals next year, and there’s some chance they’ll have the three highest individual totals in the league with Hamilton, Whit Merrifield, and Adalberto Mondesi. They won’t win, but they’ll be entertaining.

2B-R Merrifield
SS-B Mondesi
LF-L Gordon
DH-R Soler
1B-L O’Hearn
C-R Perez
RF-L Phillips
3B-R Dozier
CF-B Hamilton

The Central teams generally get short shrift in my baseball watching not out of bias, but game times. Bad teams get short shrift for what should be obvious reasons. So the 2019 Royals project to be down on the list of teams I see, and yet...I’m kind of interested? What if a team just decided to try to steal 300 bases? This group probably can’t get enough baserunners to pull that off, but it would at least be a hook, like Savannah State going Loyola Marymount-on-uppers in its final year in Division I.

If Brett Phillips plays, which isn’t a certainty, this is one of the best defensive outfields in baseball, too.

Bench-R Cuthbert (IF)
Bench-R Owings (UT)
Bench-B Herrera (OF)
Bench-R Gallagher (C)

There was a time when Chris Owings was one of the fastest players in baseball, too, so sure, let’s just collect them all.

SP-R Keller
SP-L Duffy
SP-R Kennedy
SP-R Junis
SP-R Lopez

As with the lineup, this isn’t an unattractive rotation, even if Brad Keller is due for some significant sophomore year regression. Danny Duffy’s window for stardom has closed; he’s 30 and has never reached 30 starts or 180 innings in a season, and the stuff that made him a constant target for trade rumors has taken a step backwards. The Royals need to treat him the way the Rays treated Nathan Eovaldi, trying to turn any stretch of health and effectiveness into a trade.

The Royals have very little behind this group, and no reason to invest in making their backup rotation much better.

RP-R W. Peralta
RP-R McCarthy
RP-L Hill
RP-L Flynn
RP-R McWilliams
RP-R Fillmyer
RP-L Skoglund

The Royals took Rays righty Sam McWilliams with the second pick in the Rule 5 draft. After the success they had with Keller, a Rule 5 pick in 2017, the Royals have every reason to go back to the well. I’ve listed him in the bullpen, where Keller started last season, but he’s been a starter throughout his five-year pro career. Add Chris Ellis, the seventh pick in the Rule 5 draft, to this mix as well -- the Royals traded for him from the Rangers after the draft.

Last year, the Reds were my pick for the game’s most watchable bad team. The Reds should be better this year, but even if they’re not, the Royals will take away their title. With the speed and defense on the field, with interesting pitchers like Jake Junis and Jorge Lopez, the Royals are a notch above the truly dreadful teams, even if their record may not reflect it.

Cliff notes?

Maybe, three years past Eric Hosmer’s dash to the plate, a lot of kids are being Raised Royal, but their moms and dads spent the summer Supporting Sporting.



No they didn’t.

May I ask why we should just shrug and walk away from contact hitting throughout baseball?

The easiest way to deal with high velocity is to stay back on the ball and look for a pitch to serve the other way. The Velo Explosion is real and undeniable but it's also relatively recent. Everyone didn't throw 98 in 2014 and Hamilton was effectively the same player that as he is now.

I know that the reduced contact rate means that you need more damage in terms of XBHs on balls that you do manage to put in play, but not everybody on the squad is gonna hit for power. And you need to have somebody out there that can play CF. So why wouldn't a guy like Hamilton, who can do some serious damage on the bases once he gets there, still have value - a single and a SB can be as effective as a double. And his defense in the launch angle era should be even more valuable as guys are trying to hit the ball in the air more than ever.

I mean ultimately there's a real possibility that Hamilton just isn't a very good player - but that's because he's just not a guy that hits well. He wasn't a good hitter in the minors either; his 2013 AAA season looks like everything he's ever done at the major league level and he wasn't facing a string of fireballers down there at the time. To use his speed he needs to get on base and his OBP vs. power pitchers is virtually identical to his OBP vs soft-tossers.

I don't see a lot to argue loudly about in this piece but ascribing Hamilton's decline to velocity is just kinda goofy. he does have a lousy career batting line because he's obstinate. If he would do more to work counts and try to dictate ABs rather than just falling into the opposing pitchers wheelhouse and letting the pitcher dictate the course of the AB, he might see more success.

Or he may just not be very good and in the end velocity only exacerbated an issue for him the same way it does for everyone. Velocity makes hitting harder, but not any more so for Hamilton than it does for, say, Khris Davis.

Well, according to Moore and Glass we're somehow going to be competing again by 2020. To the ship!

I like the idea of contact hitters who are blazing on the bases. But everyones' swing would have to be updated for contact hitting instead of power hitting and that isn't happening

But that's my point re: obstinance.

Hamilton's should have ALWAYS been tailored for that. It isn't because he's either A) Stubborn or B) Just not good enough.

Can someone explain this? I dont know enough about baseball. This is an interesting point though.

It's largely inaccurate; a declarative narrative lacking support at least as to the example he provided.

You don't understand it because he made a poor point.

78 wins!

Been thinking about our roster construction and bench strategy with our given assets. This seems as likely a scenario as I've seen - quite a bit of flexibility. While I'm sure they'll try to get him some meaningful at-bats against lefty pitching, O'Hearn is going to need a right handed option (Dozier or Cuthbert) as a semi-platoon. Unless Cuthbert plays himself out of a job in ST, he'll get plenty of at-bats in that scenario to see if he can resurrect his career (just turned 26). Herrera could be the one odd man out on that list. He's not a necessity with Whit and Owings flexibility. I'd probably rather keep Brian Goodwin over Herrera.

Ventura's death and Zimmer being made of glass REALLY ****ed the Royals hardcore.

It went a bit like this

Royals sign tv deal when they are mediocre
royals get better
royals get even better
royals are champs
royals are ok
royals are out of it again
time to renew tv deal

Evidence from other teams so far shows the current team shouldn't have much of a negative impact on negotiations.

I guarantee you during the summer the Royals are still the highest rated show.

I love speed when it's used to create elite defense in the outfield in big parks like Kaufman. But I don't really care about stealing bases too much unless you are in a game you get to face a true terrible throwing catcher (like Norris in the A's game).

Last year we had horrid RF defensive play most of the time, as well as the year before. Sometimes not too good CF play. Compare Gordon/Cain/Dyson defensive compared to typical American League garbage defensive outfielders and that is equal to probably 5-8 wins if the big field is your home field.

Bonifacio/Soler is not the answer in RF. One of them needs to become the DH and the other one needs to be traded. My guess it's going to be Bonifacio.

grim.

The assertion that Royals fans fled last summer to instead go watch “major” league soccer is perhaps the laziest part of that whole piece, which has several other lazy assertions.

I usually am a fan of Sheehan’s, but he’s also usually better than that.

Tying Hamilton’s lack of success as a hitter to the velocity jump around the league is also lazy. We’re not talking about a guy who had a gradual drop in performance or who fell off a cliff. This is who he has always been.

Any improvement he has as a hitter would have to come from becoming better at using his speed and adopting an approach that helps with that. If any team/setting could help with that, it’s KC. The sheer amount of space in his home OF should help a spray hitter, too.

Contact hitters are a little out of vogue at the moment, but they’ll cycle back as the market and pitching styles undervalue them. I think most also generally undervalue the effect of stolen base threats... haven’t seen a system yet that evaluates the effect a great stolen base threat has on the pitch selection and effectiveness of pitchers.

For example... Adalberto Mondesi is an excellent fastball hitter (all MLB hitters are, but he’s even more elite). With Hamilton and Merrifield hitting in front of him and posing SB threats, how many more fastballs will Mondesi see in attempts to control the running game? It’s an apps school thought and question, but I think new school analytics can quantify that effect.

Wait. What! Ionization?

Our season is saved! lol

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/Royals?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Royals</a> sign OF Terrance Gore to 1-year deal.</p>&mdash; MLBRosterMoves (@MLBRosterMoves) <a href="https://twitter.com/MLBRosterMoves/status/1075120206689771520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 18, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Is there some unknown trophy given to the team with the most steals???

They even brought back Bubba....

Curious move. Is it a minor league deal?

EDIT: I'm referring to Gore.

Major league deal, which makes it even more mystifying.

Rosell Herrera DFA'd to make room for Gore.

Gore spotted at a prayer group in Olathe last Sunday.

Pay attention, folks. This is how you do funny.

They apparently covet the "fastest team in history" title.

I guess that's an approach. Not going to lie...I could be entertained by an all-world base-steeling team when competing for the division isn't a factor. But I don't like the roster construction ramifications of all this. Boni has options. What about Goodwin?

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>
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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

Well, they did spend quite a bit a few years ago when they blew their load on Seuly Matias and went over the limit. They were restricted on their spending the past 2 years and finally had their full allotment to spend this year but stit came away with very little, relatively speaking. I also don't think Moore has been able to cope with the restrictions on draft spending, as signing high schoolers to big bonuses as an incentive to forgo college was our only advantage. Without that we've been pretty bad in the draft. I don't see us with a farm system anytime soon that is comparable to the amazing group we had in the late 2000s.

That group was considered maybe the greatest farm system of all time. Even if they rebuild it up it's probably not going to be comparable to that. Same thing we used to say when we had three closers in the bullpen with 95+ heat and 1 ERAs. Hope you enjoyed it because that's probably not happening again.

I would disagree with finding nothing... though it’s debatable whether they have found enough.

In addition to Seuly Matias, the Royals have added Carlos Hernandez, Yefri Del Rosario (who was part of this year’s class pool though signed last fall), and a few others. There was kid flashing at the Dominican complex whose name escapes me right now, but was impressive as an under-radar guy. Can’t remember right now.

What hurts is missing big on big expenditures like Elier Hernandez, Marten Gasparini, and Jeison Guzman. But those are the risks with playing in a market where you primarily are signing 16-year olds.

I think saying they refuse to make big trades is just inaccurate. They have to get the return they want to make a big trade, and they just haven’t been in that mode with highly valuable chips.

If you look at the returns for one-year rentals and/or at what the Tigers got mid season for JD Martinez, there’s not any “re-stocking” talent coming back in those types of moves.

None of the guys the Tigers got for Martinez is even top 10 in their middle-of-the-pack system. The Royals got better players in comp picks for Hosmer and Cain than they would have returned for half-year rentals and likely even for full-year rentals.

Merrifield is the first valuable movable piece they’ve had since the contention window closed. He’s so cheap and has so much control, they can and should sit until they get a return that’s worth Green-lighting, and that includes a top 25-50 prospect as the headline backed by a 50-100 guy and a few lotto tickets (Adam Eaton return).

It’s easy to say “trade a guy” but the match has to be there with a team willing to pay an appropriate price.

Well, I'm avoiding directly criticising them for not trading Merrifield, as I'm just beating a dead horse at this point. But I do see a huge difference between Dayton Moore and someone like Jerry Dipoto. The narrative right now from what I've seen is that the Mariners have added a huge influx of talent into their minors from their trades the past month. Perhaps we haven't had much of an opportunity to make trades, but it still seems to me like Moore is much more hesitant to pull the trigger than many other GMs. I think it's also worth contemplating why we don't have many tradable assets. If we are lacking in pieces that are valuable in a trade to other teams, is that not also a further indictment of the front office? The failures in scouting talent are just compounded when you consider that not only do we have very little talent in the big leagues and upper minors to help us win games, but that lack of talent also keeps us from making smart trades and restocking the cupboard.

I'm on board with holding on to the few tradable assets we have, but I'm also aware that we risk injury to them the longer we keep them. Danny Duffy was possibly tradable at one point, now he's an overpaid marginal starter worth very little. There's a fine line between waiting for the optimal return and waiting too long and getting nothing.

kcchiefsus was a miserable **** during 2015 season.

SP-R Lopez
RP-J Hahn
RP-L Flynn
RP-R McWilliams*
RP-C Ellis*

*=Rule5 so they must make the 25 man all year or else pass through waivers.
The other three have no options remaining so they either make the 25 or get DFA'd. Hahn might make it through waivers (coming off injury), so if he pitches in few ML spring games, he's being hidden for a DFA to the minors or a trip to the 60 day DL for rehab.

I could continue to tell you that I'm not this person you say I am, but what's the point? Don't you think the moderators would remove me if I were this person you continue to accuse me of being?

Either way, what's the point of constantly derailing the conversation? Do you have anything constructive to add, or are you going to continue being a prick?

This conversation would be 150% different if they'd signed Acuna.

This is true, bad luck that went against us in that case. What could have been. I'm curious how he would have developed in our system.

Acuna for 125k and Juan Soto for 4 million (instead of Jeison Guzman for 2.5) would make it quite a bit different as well.

They need to stop spending so much on glove and speed SS in Latin America. They have signed a lot if big deals for those types of players and have not had great returns.

Nothing wrong with spending on the Mondesis or Tatises, but Humberto Artaega types need to drop off the board.

Prospect1500 rated the top 50 Royals prospects;

https://prospects1500.com/top-50-lis...-50-prospects/

This paragraph about Rylan Kaufman caught my eye;

Rylan Kaufman, LHP
Age: 19 (6/23/99)
2018 Highest Level: Rookie
That isn’t how you spell Kauffman. I’m not sure Rylan is spelled correctly, either. Impressively, the Royals did not sign a single high school pitcher from the 2018 draft. Kaufman, from JuCo powerhouse San Jacinto is the closest you’ll find. Drafted in the 12th round, Kaufman signed for a $722K bonus – 2nd round money. In fact, he received the 5th highest bonus in the Royals draft class, ahead of second rounder Bowlan.

Duncan, Why would the Royals give a 12th round draft pick 2nd round bonus money?

The outlook is bleak.

Because he was a top 100, round 2-3 talent who fell because of signability concerns.
You want to take players you know will sign in rounds 1-10, because you lose the slot money if a player doesn’t sign.

If you take a few guys you know will sign for well under slot, you can then draft kids with signability questions in rounds 11+ and not be hurt if they don’t sign.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Royals signed Kyle Zimmer to a major-league contract. He was moved off the 40-man roster last season, returned on a minor-league deal and spent time at Driveline Baseball. The club DFA&#39;d Cheslor Cuthbert to make room on the 40-man.</p>&mdash; Rustin Dodd (@rustindodd) <a href="https://twitter.com/rustindodd/status/1081351621127299073?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 5, 2019</a></blockquote>
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I of course don't expect this, but we could really use some luck. Zimmer actually surprising us and finally providing some value would be huge.

Yeah, I wouldn't put any bets on that actually occurring. Zimmer is glass.

I was a fan of Cuthbert but he had trouble staying healthy obviously. I feel like with reps he had talent to grow. I guess this pretty much means Dozier is the guy at 3B, or they're looking to sign someone else.

They must have really liked what they saw from Zimmer. He spent time working with Driveline Baseball, a training center in Seattle. This is a lot of info but they have a different way of rehabbing guys. Trevor Bauer of the Indians is a big client of theirs. There's a video in here of Zimmer doing one of their drills.

https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/20...ball-pitchers/

I'm bullish on Zimmer's prospects if they liked what they saw via driveline. I recall Flanagan doing an update (can't recall if it was radio or TV) and when seeming to be candid, he said that he actually thinks Zimmer might have actually turned a corner. Too much talent to leave on the table if that's true. The Royals have made some of these reclamation projects work, it would be a shame if they didn't take a final flyer on one of their own. He could be a weapon at the back end of the bullpen if he can put it together.

RE: Cuthbert, they must really be down on him to release him over a host of other guys. It will be interesting to see if they make an attempt to re-sign him to a minor league contract. Perhaps they just like Gutierrez more and think he's close to being an option alongside Dozier. This also makes sense of the comments about Moore looking for another "bargain" infielder on the open market.

I think they pretty much have to sign someone. Not only because of Dozier, but because of 1B too. If either him or O'Hearn regress badly, or just get hurt, they're going to have a huge hole in the lineup. Gutierrez might be an option but I imagine they'd start him in the minors and continue to let him improve.

Yeah...and we really need a sometimes-platoon at 1B due to O'Hearn's typical splits. It will help him continue to succeed at the MLB level to have him sit against half of the lefties we face. Let him mash the right handed pitching and continue work off of last year' s successes. Another right handed corner infielder seems likely. Here comes Esky. I kid...sorta.

All in all, this tells me that they also plan on playing Owings quite a bit this year. Not sure whether he or Whit would play 3B more, but one of them might be getting a decent amount of reps there, depending on how Dozier fares.

I really don't think they want to move Dozier around. I think they like him at 3rd and would prefer just to leave him there. He really seems to have marginal defensive value in RF or 1B.

First base types for platoon? Schwindel at Omaha is a possibility, RH bat -- Major League minimum guy, probably not much left to prove at AAA. There should be any number of RH 1B candidates on waivers or unsigned FA's.

As far as Bonifacio is concerned, his PED suspension means he has to earn his way back to the majors, so he goes to Omaha along with Gore and Starling. Gordon-Hamilton-Philips/Goodwin with Soler as the DH until Hamilton is flipped. At Omaha Starling and Bonifacio must play to establish a baseline of performance and alleviate health concerns.

Possibilities for the Royals to trade at the deadline
Hamilton, Gore, Bonifacio, Owings, Soler, Duffy, Kennedy, Peralta

After deadline or September call ups
Nicky Lopez (2b of the future)

My outlook is that much like last year I probably won't even watch a single game's worth of innings in 2019, what with the going to bed at 8 every night mixed with losing so many games.

I think this team will be a lot of fun to watch-run, run, run Royals.

IF O'Hearn is for real, and Dozier can pick up where he left off, and IF the bullpen is improved, this might well be a .500ish team playing games that matter into September. I'll take that.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Royals pitcher Eric Skoglund has been suspended after testing positive for performing enhancing drugs. <a href="https://t.co/DToGICsABI">https://t.co/DToGICsABI</a></p>&mdash; FOX 4 Sports (@fox4sports) <a href="https://twitter.com/fox4sports/status/1085667127514796041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Oh man. What the ****?

So stupid.

Proof that PEDs don't make everyone MLB-worthy.

Or maybe it does as he made it to a major league roster.

Bullpen sucks but i think they'll be better than people think. I think.500 or a little under

All the baseball-related final jeopardy questions: https://www.sporcle.com/games/jfrank...final-jeopardy

I got 33, should have been 34 except for dumb spelling.

Thatd be ****ing amazing if Zimmer amounted to anything. Id start his ass out in the majors until he inevitably gets a phantom injury and is out for the season. Juat get whatever you can from him.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Per source, the Royals are closing in on a one-year deal with reliever Brad Boxberger. Story to come on <a href="https://t.co/XLEiJ6RLug">https://t.co/XLEiJ6RLug</a></p>&mdash; Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) <a href="https://twitter.com/FlannyMLB/status/1093215537662963712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Boxberger goes to royals. 2.2M plus incentives</p>&mdash; Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonHeyman/status/1093219405729808384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
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He's got command and HR issues, but so long as he doesn't go the full Maurer on us, he's OK.

No, he’s not ok. He’s basically a zero war pitcher for his career, which was negative war last year. And his velo has dropped from 94.1 to 91.8 since 2014. Studies show velo never returns and drops in velo absolutely correlate to poorer results

A zero war pitcher is pretty good for that price.