The Royals reached one-year contract agreements Monday with reliever Victor Marte and minor-league infielder Jeff Bianchi.
Terms were not disclosed, but both deals are believed to split contracts with the major-league portion at or near the $400,000 minimum.
about 9 hours ago
Boots 58
8 comments
1 recs
Looking Back at the Top Royals Prospects for 2005
by royalsreview on Feb 7, 2010 10:00 AM EST
in Honoring & Remembering
50 comments
In 2004 Baseball America rated Billy Butler as the top prospect in the Royal system. Nice call. Butler has developed into a nice young hitter for the Royals, and still appears to have room to grow. (It's weird that no one ever talks about how Dayton Moore and his men told the Royals to take Butler, even though they weren't yet in place in KC.)
Baseball America (nor likely anyone else) thought the Royals had a strong system heading into 2005. BA had the Royals as the 28th best system in the game. And this low standing is reflected in the list below. Back in the winter of 2004, the Royal system had been recently restocked by Allaird Baird, and new faces dominated the top of the system. In a way, this shows how Baird had done some recent good work, but it also speaks to the failure (and a few graduations, like Greinke and DeJesus) of earlier years.
Here's how the rest of the BA Top 10 list rounded out:
- #2 - Denny Bautista (P): Bautista came to the Royal system in a June 2004, trade from Baltimore for Jason Grimsley. This was considered a nice trade for the Royals at the time, and in fact I can still remember the day this trade went down. This was, I believe, the period when Baird was starting to appear somewhat decent as a GM to guys like Neyer. Heck, Baseball Blanking America had him as the second best prospect in the system. According to BA Bautista had the best fastball, the best curve, and the best slider in the system. The Orioles were 28-37 when the trade went down, so I'm not sure why they wanted Jason Grimsley. Bauista had already bounced around a few systems, and wouldn't last long as a Royal. Over three seasons (2004-6) Bautista made 19 starts as a Royal and posted a 5.95 ERA. New GM Dayton Moore sent him to Colorado in the Affeldt/Shealy trade, which means Bautista was twice part of a deal that Royals fans were pretty happy about. And wrong both times. Dude is still around, or will be, I believe. He spent last season pitching for the Pirates' AAA team, but is has been a reliever for years now.
50 comments | 3 recs |
Easy Goals for 2010 That the Royals May Not Achieve Anyway: Part 1
by royalsreview on Feb 4, 2010 1:23 PM EST
in News
100 comments
Easy Goal for 2010 That the Royals May Not Achieve Anyway: #1 Not Being Horrible at DH
Last year Royal DHs hit an astounding .209/.281/.374. Yep, that's right. The easiest "position" to fill gave the Royals the equivalent production of a 1960s shortstop.
The biggest rascal in the Punchless DH caper was Mike Jacobs, who DHed 102 times in 2009. The second most common DH was Pena (14 starts), followed by Buck (12), Butler (11) and then a bunch of guys getting a quasi-day-off a handful of times.
So can the Royals be better in 2010?
100 comments | 0 recs
Are the Royals Better Than the Diamondbacks?
by royalsreview on Feb 3, 2010 3:15 PM EST
73 comments
I tried to go with a team that seems totally unrelated to the Royals in any way with this one. I'm as negative about the Royals as they come, but I don't have any immediate thoughts on this one.
73 comments | 0 recs
Did Injuries Last Season Change Aviles' and Gordon's Plate Approach?
by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on Feb 2, 2010 5:00 AM EST
in News
59 comments
For this up coming season, Will has agreed to take me on to do Pitch F/X analysis for the Royals. Pitch FX is the data used to create the nice Gameday visualizations at mlb.com and has all pitch aspects such as release point, start and ending speeds, curve and result of pitch. I have done some previous Pitch F/X, but I am wanting to dive into a team and see what deep information can be found. I will be putting general Pitch F/X analysis at BeyondTheBoxscore.com such as called umpire strike zones. Feel free to ask many any questions or requests. If I can't find the answer, I will try to find someone that can. Thanks to Will for putting up with me this season. -Jeff
Last season the Royals had their fair share of injuries. Two batters that the Royals were expecting to produce, Alex Gordon and Mike Aviles, spent significant time on the DL. Mike went on the DL on May 23 with a forearm injury that led to him having Tommy John surgery and missing the entire season. Alex went on the DL on April 16 and came off on July 16. Alex got demoted to Omaha on August 18 and returned September 8 to finish off the season in Kansas City.
Using Pitch FX data, I have found a method to determine how well a batter acknowledges the strike zone compared to the rest of the players in the majors. The following is a look at Mike and Alex before, during and after their injuries.
Mike Aviles
Mike had a great 2008 campaign for the Royals earning him Royal's Player of the Year honors. Coming into the 2009 season, he was to finally help fill the black hole that is the Royal's shortstop position.
Mike struggled through the beginning of the season. It was found out that he had injured himself in the World Baseball Classic and went on the DL. Mike is generally known as a free swinger, but did his injury actually change his plate discipline. First let's look at the numbers and begin to dissect them (A value of 100 is league average, while a value of 90 is 10% below the league average):
| Pitches in the Strike Zone | 2008 | 2009 |
| Take + | 86.1 | 94.8 |
| Contact + | 103.7 | 96.5 |
| Good Contact + | 122.1 | 83.5 |
| Pitches out of the Strike Zone | 2008 | 2009 |
| Take + | 89.9 | 94.8 |
| Contact + | 109.6 | 114.3 |
| Good Contact + | 134.8 | 58.0 |
Analysis after the jump.
59 comments | 6 recs |
Royal Position Players With Upside for 2010
by royalsreview on Jan 31, 2010 5:12 PM EST
in News
147 comments
The Royals have never quite been a young team under Dayton Moore, and may never be. That's a discussion for another day, however. Despite a rebuild still stuck in second gear, the Royals do have a handful of position players with upside or breakout potential for 2010.
1B/DH - Billy Butler: Butler raised his game offensively last season, posting a career best .301/.362/.492 line. Butler will be just 24 next season and has been viewed as one of the best young hitters in the game for years. Although Butler's defense was seen as being better than expected in '09, in reality he was still pretty bad. With some extended playing time at first under his belt for the first time, he might be headed towards his defensive prime where he's still bad but not killing you. The standards are high for no-defense/no-baserunning 1Bs in the AL, which is in part why Butler posted just a 2.4 WAR in '09. Still, if ever there was a guy who appeared to be on his way to an elite prime as a pure hitter, it's Butler.
3B - Alex Gordon: Gordon's early seasons actually look better than Butler's first two did, and like Butler,he may have already broken out, but for a variety of reasons he's a partisan figure amongst Royals fans these days. Here's how I look at Gordon's career 2007: disappointing, 2008: promising, 2009: hurt. Heading into his age 26 season, Gordon has hit .250/.331/.415 in 1360 PAs. For what it's worth, 600 of those PAs are from his rookie year, when the Royals seemingly played him out of spite. It's a bit of an old-school 3B's line overall, and that may be the type of hitter than Gordon becomes. He may not be the next Brett, but he might be the next Robin Ventura, Howard Johnson or Tim Wallach.
147 comments | 1 recs |
Was Hosmer really that bad in 2009?
by CentralChamps2009 on Jan 30, 2010 3:52 AM EST
84 comments
A comment in one of the other threads challenged me to give some thought as to whether Hosmer was really as disappointing as he seemed to be last year. Certainly, he did nothing close to "rake," which, based on the hype, we expected him to do. However, maybe due to unfounded optimism, but I wanted to think that Hosmer's season was not the bust it seemed to be. Admittedly, he was horrible in Wilmington, but I don't think that was entirely his fault. First, the decision to bring him up to Wilmington was incredibly misguided (I'd like to think it was all part of Dayton's Lost Summer, but probably not)--he simply was not ready. Couple that the fact that he only played less than 30 games with both the untreated astigmatism and, later, an apparent hand injury of some kind, and I think Wilmington was an aberration. Thus, I think we should only look at his time in Burlington to get a real sense of what he did last year
84 comments | 3 recs
2010 Early Draft Preview
by nwroyal on Jan 28, 2010 11:15 AM EST
in Royals Minor Leagues
101 comments
We are 4 1/2 months away from the draft and about a month away form the college baseball season. I thought I would take a look at who some of the likely contenders are for the Royals top pick.
The Royals have the 4th overall pick in the 2010. They are back in familiar territory after waiting until #12 last year. They also have their 2nd round pick this year which they lost year to sign Juan Cruz. As we talked about in the Prospect series, the Royals have some pitching depth but need bats badly--ideally an advanced college bat. But the 2010 draft looks to be pitching heavy (as it was in 2009). At this point there might be one college bat who would be worthy of a Top 5 pick--and we'll get to him in a minute. So here is the top of my 2010 draft board:
101 comments | 4 recs
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by royalsreview 3 days ago
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by royalsreview 6 days ago
148 comments | 2 recs
Easy Goals for 2010 That the Royals May Not Achieve Anyway: Part 1
by royalsreview 4 days ago
100 comments | 0 recs
Are the Royals Better Than the Diamondbacks?
by royalsreview 5 days ago
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Did Injuries Last Season Change Aviles' and Gordon's Plate Approach?
by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) 6 days ago
59 comments | 6 recs