All My Fears Were for Naught

So apparently I was just the tiniest bit too hasty in my progression into fear that the Royals were not going to make any major moves this offseason. Clearly, I was wrong. I believe it was just a day after my last post that the Royals went out and signed Alex Rios and followed that up by signing Edinson Volquez. This left me very pleased, but within the day they had also signed Kris Medlen, which may be the best buy-low signing of the offseason. Since I have nothing better to do this morning, I'm going to break down where I stand on these three players and how I anticipate them performing next year in Royals blue.

Let's start with Alex Rios. Rios is going into the 12th year of his major league career that began when he was 23. Since his birthday is in the summer, this means he will turn 34 this year. That is not horribly old for a player who has as much experience as Rios does. Though age does become a problem when you are in your thirties, Rios has not had a noticeable decline in his performance, aside from a down year last year. The two years prior to that he averaged .291/.329/.473, which was good for a .802 OPS and 115 OPS+. These are very good numbers. Only Billy Butler and Alex Gordon had any comparable track record last year. It must be noted, however, that he has been prone to fairly down years in the past. The key appears to be in his batting average. When it is low, he struggles mightily. This could be due to high BABIP in his good years or bad luck in his bad years. I don't have the time or sufficient resources to determine this. Rios also has a fair amount of speed, so stolen bases and relatively good defense should be expected. In a best case scenario, Rios will hit 25 home runs, steal 30 bases and bat around .300 with a .340 OBP. That is not a player that you will be ashamed of, so the one year deal that he signed doesn't scare me. Sure, it is for a high salary, but it is better to get a player you want who won't hold back any prospect development than to just grab from the bargain bin. While I wanted Colby Rasmus to fill this position, there seemed to be little interest in him for one reason or another. I don't know if it was his low batting average numbers or his slightly greater tendency to strike out, but he remains unsigned while Rios has a new home. I think Rasmus has higher overall potential and is more apt to achieve that potential still, given that he is six years younger than Rios. But Rios should be stable force that you will be able to pencil into the lineup somewhere in the middle to give protection to our useful hitters such as Hosmer, Gordon, Perez and Cain. He also provides a much greater power potential than Nori Aoki, who apparently resigned himself to playing slapball at Kauffman after hitting 10 home runs the previous year as a Brewer. I think he is going to have a better year than last year, but probably not as good as he was in 2012. Something along the lines of his stats over his White Sox tenure in 2013 seems about right, which was .277/.328/.421. That puts him at a slightly below his average OPS of .759. In the ever-challenging goal of baseball hitting, that would be very respectable. Something a touch lower may also be possible. Essentially, he should be around Lorenzo Cain's numbers.

Edinson Volquez is a bit more of a mystery to me. I haven't had the opportunity to watch him like I have with Rios. The career numbers for Volquez are very odd. He has some years of very low ERA and some years of just horribly exorbitant numbers. The Royals, I am betting, are counting on him to play like his good numbers indicate. The most interesting thing about Volquez is that his career ERA is higher than his career FIP. This is interesting because FIP is almost always higher than ERA. For the Royals starting five last year, every single one of them had a higher FIP than ERA. This was true for Volquez too, but had not been true in the past. This means that he was either getting unusually unlucky or that he was playing behind a bad defense. In the Royals, he will now pitch for a team with an above average to excellent defense at nearly every position. His FIP should be much higher than his ERA again, though perhaps not as much as it was last year. He seems to have gotten very lucky last year. I do not expect that to happen again. In 2013 he was atrocious, while 2012 was not bad. He can be all over the board, but Eiland has shown himself to be an outstanding pitching coach. I believe that Volquez will regress to somewhere in the 3.5 to 4.2 ERA range, which would be perfectly adequate for a number four or five starter. If this is the worst any of our pitchers do, we are in great shape. Our offense, once again, underperformed stupendously. We have a chance to get much better on offense with very minimal change in every other department. I think the Royals of 2015 could be just as good as those of 2014, though perhaps not as lucky. We shall see.

Now I get to talk about Kris Medlen, and man does that make me excited. This is just an interesting, awesome case. There are few players like Kris Medlen that truly make me excited, but this is exceptional. This is a reliever who was converted to a starter midseason of 2012 and proceeded to take 20th in the MVP vote. His numbers were just silly. He follows that up with his only full season as a starter in 2013 with 197 inning of 3.11 ERA ball. Then he gets Tommy John for the second time and misses all of last year. The Royals signed him to two years and $8.5 million with massive incentives. He could potentially have Cy Young stuff, but he needs to prove that his second Tommy John was completely successful. The success rate on the second surgery is not as good as the first, but if it works out, this could be a huge steal. The guy is a legitimate number one or two starter and when paired with Ventura and Duffy, could be a ridiculous starting rotation that could be made even more impressive if Cueto or one of the young guns (Zimmer, Manaea, Finnegan, Almonte or even Binford), is able to step into the void left by Guthrie's departure next year or an injury to Vargas/Volquez and just dominate. The Royals are set for pitching for the future even if none of those prospects develop, but if one of them does develop into what the Royals think they can be then the team is going to be Braves-esque.

I'm excited about these moves. I think Dayton Moore did a good job of acquiring proven talent at each of the needed positions. There are some buy-lows in the group, such as Medlen, Morales and Rios, but even these guys are not truly over the hill and have legitimate ability to improve, rather than just my idiotic hope that they will. Volquez is somebody you don't want to regress to their averages. I think that all of these players will come back closer to their averages, but I do believe that the Royals coaching staff is at least as good as many others and will be able to get good results out of these players. Maybe this will be the first time in three years that we won't fire our hitting coach halfway through. The season is long and spring training starts in less than two months. I'm ready for some baseball.

Requiem for a Dream (Royals Edition)

Well, it was a magnificent season. I started out with so much hope that I could write 162 game summaries. I was very wrong, obviously. It didn't even last a month before my spirits were broken. That pretty much summarizes the first half of last season. I came in with the expectation that the offense, after a dismal 2013 season that followed a pretty good 2012 campaign would return to their 2012 numbers, or at least close to it. That did not happen. The Royals were, in fact, so bad that they once again fired their hitting coach. This time they replaced him with Dale Sveum. I never looked at the final numbers, but it certainly seemed like the offense was able to perform better under Sveum than they ever did under Pedro Grifol. No matter what the cause was, the important thing to remember is that everything changed. I was almost ready to give up on the Royals when they went on their first big streak to catch the Tigers. When they finally took over the division lead, I was so incredibly giddy that I spent a good fifteen minutes giggling to myself  as I my girlfriend and I exited the movie theater where we had been while the game was going. Then they sucked again, which threatened to kill my spirit once more. But this is baseball. You can either win seven out of ten by winning two out of three in a series a few times and three out of four in another or you can just win seven in a row. The Royals, it seemed, were the type of team who did the latter. They would go on a big streak and then lose a single game and then win five or six more and then lose seven out of ten to fall back to the mean. But late in the season something changed. The team that had been so nervous in big situations stopped being afraid. They became what we, or at least I, had always imagined that they could be. They became a team that competed every single night. They had a pitching staff that could bring it every single night and a team that excelled at preventing runs and taking advantage of the other team's mistakes. I guess you could say that the team found their identity. They were not a team that was going to take a walk, get a single and then blast one to take control of the game. Not to say this didn't happen sometimes, but it was not the norm. The Royals became a team that swung at almost everything and then made you work to get them out. They may have gotten lucky more times than I can think of, but the idea of making the other team get you out is truly one of the greatest in baseball. Giving away free outs, like striking out, which the Royals did less than anybody, is a good way to lose. No, this team wanted to run. They wanted to put pressure on you to make that easy play a little less than routine and hope that you rushed your throw or misplayed the carom of the ball, allowing them to press their advantage. That was this team's mantra. Do all the little things right, like base running and defense, and wait for the other team to make the mistake's that you systematically avoid. The shocking thing is that this became a viable system. They started winning series 2-1 and 3-1 consistently instead of performing at the extremes. They were just a legitimately good baseball team. As the season wound down, it became clear that they were very likely to make the playoffs. When the A's faded down the stretch, we even got the opportunity to host the AL Wild Card Game. I had the privilege of attending the first playoff baseball game in Kansas City since 1985.

My girlfriend bought me quarter-season tickets for Christmas last year. At the time, I was hesitant about the idea because my work schedule necessitated that I work alternating evening and day shifts in two week increments. I figured that many of the games would be happening on days that I had work, but I discovered that I was wrong. Out of sheer luck, all the days but one fell on days that I either did not have work or was working the day shift. With this in mind, I decided to keep the tickets. Nine months later, another decision needed to be made. With the Royals still in playoff contention, the team sent out an email that season ticket holders needed to reserve their playoff tickets or else they would have to buy single game tickets like everyone else. The investment was substantial as our two seats cost nearly $2,500 for all the way through the World Series. We decided that we should do it anyway, since the Royals would probably lose in one of the earlier rounds and we would get a discount. It would be silly to miss what was clearly a generational event because we were too afraid to spend a little money. Besides, we thought, it's not like they are going to make the World Series and that is where the tickets get really expensive.

So we go to the game. It is September 30, 2014. I will never forget this because there were lots of people wearing Royals October gear and I kept thinking to myself that if we don't win this game then there won't be a single Royals game in October. I had reason to worry. The game pitted James Shields, the de facto ace of the Royals pitching staff, against Jon Lester, who had experienced more postseason success than any other active pitcher. We still figured we had a good chance, but things didn't go as planned. Shields just didn't seem to have it. He had poor control and wasn't getting many swings and misses, ballooning his pitch count and letting men on base. The first inning started with Coco Crisp, a former Royal, reaching base on a walk. It looked like the Royals may get out of the inning unscathed, but Brandon Moss quickly put that belief to rest, and silenced the raucous crowd, by sending a long, no-doubt home run into the September night. The crowd was shaken, but when the Royals scored one run in the bottom of the first, we knew that it wasn't over yet. There was still a lot of game to be played and we would only need one more run to tie it up. Shields was able to keep the A's down for the next two innings and when the Royals scored three in the third inning, the 42,000+ at Kauffman Stadium could all taste the promise of the ensuing series against the Angels. The dream was alive.

But, as I got up and walked to get a drink in the 6th inning, Shields began to struggle. Men reached base. Two of them. His night was done and Ned Yost opted to bring in the 23 year old rookie phenom, Yordano Ventura, to pitch his first ever relief appearance. He gave up a home run. The crowd was deflated as three A's crossed the plate and the despair grew as two more Athletics were able to score in the inning. With a 7-3 deficit, the game now seemed out of reach. But we were not done. The Royals had worked too hard to get to this point. Though they flailed through the sixth and seventh innings, they were not done. The eighth inning was a triumph as three Royals scored, bringing the deficit to a mere run. The ninth inning brought up Josh Willingham, who used his only post-season hit to reach first base, where he was replaced by Jarrod Dyson. Dyson was advanced to second by a bunt and then stole third base by a very narrow margin before Nori Aoki hit a deep fly to right that was able to score Dyson from third easily. By now, everyone in the crowd believed that the Royals were going to win this game. No Royals team we had ever seen had fought in this manner to win a game where they seemed so far out of it. It was truly amazing. I considered it a privilege, win or lose, to be at a game where the teams both played their hearts out.

The game kept going until the 12th when the A's regained the lead following a hit and a wild pitch from the Royals. The game looked like it may finally end in disaster for the Royals, but Eric Hosmer would not let it. Hosmer had looked like a batting god all game. He had been taking bad pitches and absolutely crushing the good ones. This was no exception. Hosmer made sharp contact with this violent swing and for more than a second, I was convinced that the ball was gone. It wasn't but it hit the top of the wall and bounced off awkwardly, allowing Hosmer to reach third base. He was quickly pushed home by a bouncing Christian Colon single. Alex Gordon followed, and I was certain that he would end the game, but he merely popped out. Next up was Salvador Perez, who had experienced a miserable night at the plate and had really struggled the entire second half of the season. With Perez batting, Colon stole second, putting the winning run in scoring position for what would be the most dramatic hit of the Royals season. Perez, always willing to swing at anything, swung at a pitch far off the outside of the plate and somehow managed to rip it down the third base line. Josh Donaldson, the A's third baseman, had a chance at fielding the ball, but as soon as it passed his glove I knew that the Royals were heading to the ALDS. Christian Colon trotted home and the celebration escalated into insanity. I headed home happy that I had seen the best baseball game in my life. As I was driving, I realized that the Royals had waiting until after midnight to win. They really were a team that excelled in October.

The rest of the postseason was like a whirlwind. There was essentially no moment that I felt like the Royals were going to lose a series until the World Series. Though they eventually lost to the Giants, thanks to the herculean efforts of one Madison Bumgarner who I will forever loathe, the Royals brought immense joy to this community for a magical month that I wished could go on forever.

I love the Royals and I loved last season, but baseball isn't about living in the past. Baseball is about moving into the future. Though I thought last season was magical, next season could be just as great. The young core of talent is still on the team and they could play even better next year. Though Butler, Shields and Aoki are gone, we will find replacements. Butler was signed by the A's and replaced on the Royals by Kendrys Morales, who is actually pretty comparable. At this point, my major worry is that the team is being too passive this offseason. There have been rumors of the Royals being connected to free agents that I would love them to sign, but nothing has come of them. I worry that the Royals are going to sit and do nothing, but I don't truly believe that is the case. I believe that a trade will be made at some point and that I will be sad to see someone go and hopeful that the new acquisition will be able to prove their worth. I hope everything works out. I want next season to be amazing too.

Hot Hot Heat

After winning six in a row, the Royals are now just 1.5 games out of first in the AL Central and currently sit just 0.5 games behind the Yankees for the second Wild Card spot. The season, as any rational person knew when the meltdown was happening, is far from over. The Royals are still very much alive and kicking and if they stay the team they are right now, rather than what they were the previous 2-3 weeks, then this summer and fall are going to be a lot of fun. Coincidentally, I'm writing about the team again. It turns out that it's a lot more fun to write about a winning team than a losing one. I suppose it isn't even that. Dumpster fires are also fun to write about, but the Royals were merely mediocre rather than terrible. It's just very exciting that they are playing good baseball again.

The only real question right now is whether we can sustain the success of late or not. We play the Tigers four games this week and if we win the series, we would be in first place in the division. That would be an exceptional turn around from where we were two weeks ago.

If you're really looking for things to analyze, the return of Danny Valencia should be coming soon and that will mean something for Mike Moustakas. Moose has actually been hitting well recently and I would be a little sad to see him lose his starting job again without doing anything wrong. However, a few 0-4 nights in a row and I'm sure I would be more than happy to see Valencia playing third. I suppose that Valencia hasn't actually been all that great for us this year anyway, so if Moose can even be an average or slightly below average third baseman rather than a complete train wreck then I would prefer that he continue to see the majority of the ABs at third.

The final thing that we need to start thinking about is potential trades for the home stretch. I think that if the Royals are within two games of the division and in the thick of the wild card then they need to consider selling off some pieces to upgrade at third or RF. I'm not sure who would be available or who they would have to get rid of, but this will certainly have to be addressed if the Royals hope to contend for the playoffs in what many think, but I largely disagree, will be there best chance at the postseason.

Moose Set Loose

So I feel obligated to write something about Mike Moustakas' demotion to Omaha. The only thing is, what else can be said? The guy hasn't hit the ball well for about two years now. Coincidentally, that is about 80% of his major league tenure. I honestly have a lot of respect for the Royals making this decision. It has to be hard to admit that one of your most heralded and anticipated prospects hasn't performed up to standards and send him back down to the minors. People give Dayton Moore a lot of flack for things, but I really believe that he has done the best he can with what he has. All of his signings in the last few years have paid dividends. Really the only thing that could be griped about is the Sanchez for Cabrera trade, but that ended up netting us Guthrie and Melky got his steroid use ban. So, that's that. Moose just needs time to become something new and that can't happen at the major league level. You don't have the time and nobody has the patience to spend games losing while you figure out what is going to work as a major leaguer. This is the same thing that happened to both Gordo and Billy. And while I agree that the narrative that sending them back to Omaha makes for a good story and a possible solution to all of Moose's problems, Billy and Alex are just different kinds of hitters than Moose. They have an appreciation for the strike zone and a more level swing. Moose's swing looks like it has tons of holes and the swings he takes at some pitches are just horrific. Sure, Alex and Billy miss loads of times, but when they do they do so on a good 3-2 slider or something like that. Something that is actually difficult to hit. I've seen Moose swing and miss on three straight inside fastballs. Maybe he just needs time to clear his head and get back to the basics. Maybe he will never be an average or better big leaguer. I guess this is really what we all love about baseball though. You never know what's going to happen until it happens.

First Astros Away Series. Games 12-14

Well, everything that could be said about the Twins series was opposite in the Astros series. That's not entirely true though, because the pitching was actually very good in this series too. The team was finally able to get some runs on the board and were even able to overcome an average pitching performance from Jeremy Guthrie and come back in extras in the second game of the series. I think that this series could be really big heading forward. I don't know where many people stand on the topic of confidence, but as a former athlete, though merely low level, I think that confidence can play a huge part in your actual ability to play.

When Mike Moustakas hit that go ahead home run in the 11th on Wednesday night, he created a large wealth of confidence, the likes of which can stick with an individual, or an entire team, for a good deal of time. In my opinion, a high confidence creating play like that could have a noticeably positive effect in the locker room for about a week. When you combine that with the stellar performance by James Shields last night and the recent trend for Billy and Moose to start getting hits, we could be very well on our way to a short hot streak. This should only be compounded by returning home and playing against a team that swept us just a weekend ago. The team should be very ready to come out with guns blazing. Though I personally always feel that you should play smarter, not harder when you have something to prove, anger can be just as strong of a motivator.

The only things to note that aren't really positive are Chen's back and Cain's groin. These injuries are minor and are to non-essential players. Although Cain is amazing on defense and has done decently well on offense so far, he is not someone that we cannot afford to lose. Every indication is that he will only be out for a couple of weeks and then be back to full-time duty, barring something crazy happening. It is unfortunate that Dyson has a family issue right now, because this is exactly when we need him. Hopefully we will be able to pick up the series win this weekend and everything will be good.

First Away Twins Series. Games 9-11

In the interest of time, and my sanity, I've decided that I will only write once per series unless I feel the urge to write on a specific topic.

As we know now, the Royals did not get many wins against a supposedly shoddy team in Minnesota. In fact, they got none. There have been pitching woes and defensive miscues, but the primary culprit has been the lack of offense. The Royals rank last in many offensive categories and need to step it up if they hope to make the playoffs this season. In the first five batters of our lineup, only one has an OPS of more than .710 and that is Alex Gordon. Overall, the only people who are batting close to or above expectations so far are Alex, Salvy and Cain. There is no way that they are all this bad. It is basically statistically impossible. The numbers aren't showing them as being unlucky necessarily either. They just aren't hitting the ball well. It's too hard to win games when you aren't scoring runs on offense. We need to step it up. Facing the Astros may be a good place to start, but regardless of team, the Royals need to start swinging it better or this will quickly be a lost season. Three games under .500 isn't great, but we could have been in the exact same position simply by losing the home opener. We could easily go 9-1 over our next 10 or something like that and be far into the positive column. Essentially, it is too early to tell anything. I saw a post yesterday that in each of the last several seasons, some team that started 4-7 went on to make the playoffs. Clearly, the season isn't over. The boys just need to put their hitting shoes on, buckle down and blast some balls. Only one home run by the whole team is an embarrassment. They are better than that and they know it. Improvement will surely come. It is statistically likely for it to come because this would rank as the worst season for several Royals hitters. We just need it to come sooner rather than later. Digging out of a hole last year was dramatic and all, but it was the reason why we didn't make the playoffs. Anything less than 2-1 against Houston is a disappointment and we can't be taking disappointments each series. We have to start winning games before it is too late.

Games 7 and 8

With Infante's head injury this week, I didn't expect a lot from our second base corps. Johnny Giavotella came up, but only played on Wednesday. It looks like Infante will be back in the 2nd base position as early as tonight (game 9), but that is still up in the air.

As far as game seven went, here's what I have to say. Loading the bases three times: good. Scoring zero runs when the bases are loaded: bad. That about sums it up. Getting on base is the most important thing that you can somewhat control. The Royals just didn't get any hits when they would have been opportune which could be a lineup problem or it could just be bad luck. This early in the season, I'm going with the former. This was also Yordano Ventura's first start and he performed admirably. He got his pitch count a touch too high, but he went 6IP with 6Ks and no ERs. That's pretty darned good for your first start of the year.

Game eight was Guthrie's second shot at starting and he did remarkably well. For whatever reason, it seems like we score tons of runs for him. No idea what that's about. It would be moderately interesting to see if there is some sort of correlation between pitching statistics and runs scored by the offense in starts by that pitcher. It could be luck, opposing pitcher or something else. It would be interesting to see, regardless. We scored a bunch of runs and won. This was Gio's first game starting at second and he played pretty well.

We have now won our last two series after dropping our first two game set against Detroit. I would hazard a guess that if we win 2/3 series for the rest of the year, we will make the postseason handily. Not that I'm making any impressive prediction or anything. Pitching is good and the offense can only improve on what they have shown so far. The first home run of the year by Gordon was nice, but there should be a lot more power in our lineup than we have seen thus far. Could simply be a case of it not being quite warm enough for the bats to succeed yet, but I'm hoping that everybody breaks out soon and we can roll over the Twins and Astros who we play exclusively over the next nine games. It would be wise of us to get as many games as we can into the win column over this stretch of fairly easy opponents.