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Guillen and the (not so) almighty RBI

by AxDxMx on Nov 23, 2009 9:57 PM EST Comment 12 comments

The following is an analysis of why Guillen's 97 RBIs in 2008 were overrated. I myself used to side with the RBI crowd, but have come around to a different vision of thinking, as have most on this site. But for the few holdouts, I present you this.

This is slightly modified from a comment I made in another thread.

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12 comments | 2 recs

Royals Review Community Prospect List: #3

by nwroyal on Nov 23, 2009 9:30 AM EST in Royals Minor Leagues Comment 15 comments

So Mike Moustakas wins with same percentage of votes (36%) that Montgomery won with. We now move on to #3. I dropped David Lough from the poll since he got scant support last time. As before, the choices are listed alphabetically and you can make your case in the comment section.

via royals.mlblogs.com

#1--Mike Montgomery--LHP

#2--Mike Moustakas--3B

Poll

Who is the Royals #3 Prospect?

15 comments | 0 recs

Royals Radio Affiliate Profile: Fordyce, Arkansas [1590 KBJT-AM]

by royalsreview on Nov 22, 2009 2:47 PM EST in Radio Affiliate Profiles Comment 14 comments

The Royals Radio Network is comprised of over eighty affiliates and stretches across seven states. In this recurring series (previous features listed below at the bottom of the page) Royals Review attempts to give each affiliate its proper airing, celebrating the regional reach and heritage of Royals baseball.

Fordyce, Arkansas

Population: 4,799

Miles from Kansas City: 490

Fordyce, the county seat of Dallas County, is the southernmost affiliate in the Royals Radio Network. Don't believe the incredibly inaccurate map on the Royals' website, Fordyce is in southern Arkansas. About 80 miles south of Little Rock, Fordyce is closer to both Dallas (312 miles) and Houston (386 miles) than she is to Kansas City, the home of our Royals. Fordyce is over a thousand miles south of the latitude of Belle Fourche, South Dakota, the northernmost affiliate.

Fordyce was named in 1882 for, get this... a railroad executive. That is noteworthy. I've never heard of a small town west of the Mississippi being named in such a way. Fordyce's population peaked around 1980, when it was over 5,000, but like the rest of Dallas County, Fordyce has been declining in population for the last twenty years.

Arkansas is typically considered a Cardinals state, and St. Louis has fourteen affiliates there. Perhaps because of their connection to Wal-Mart, the Royals have been trying to expand their presence in Arkansas for a number of years now, with mixed success. In 2008, the Royals moved their AA club from Wichita, Kansas, to Springdale, Arkansas. In some ways this was just your typical follow-the-stadium-money cash grab. However, at least symbolically, it was another sign of the Royals' efforts at a southern strategy. Currently, there are six or seven (depending on how you parse it) radio affiliates in the state. By comparison, in the glory days of the Network, the early 1980s, the Royals had only one affiliate in the Gem State.

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The Lastest Guillen rumor...

Rumor has it that Gullen plus cash may be traded to the Mets for Angel Pagan. Looks like Angel is about a 1 WAR player to me. He looks to be slightly above average with his glove, slightly above average with his bat (in the NL). Was worth 2.8 WAR last year which was his best year.

2 days ago BabyBlues 89 comments 0 recs

Royals sign P Jorge Campillo

by RoyalsRetro on Nov 20, 2009 12:35 PM EST Comment 103 comments

The Royals continue to the be the most active bidders on the minor league free agent market. Not content with guys like Wilson Betimet, John Bannister, Edwin Bellorin or Brad Thompson, the Royals today announced the signing of P Jorge Campillo. Campillo, 30, has the benefit of being both an ex-Mariner AND an ex-Brave. He only pitched 4 1/3 innings in the big leagues in 2009 due to shoulder tendinitis, but he posted a 3.91 ERA in 158 2/3 innings in 2008 with Atlanta. He is another soft-tosser, but a strikethrower with a 2.39 BB/9 innings in 180 MLB innings.

Campillo was a teammate of Joakim Soria for Team Mexico in the World Baseball Classic in 2009.

Fangraphs: Jorge Campillo

Two reasons to like Jorge Campillo

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Late Night Royals Links: Greinke's Slider and Curve, Stats & Authority, Ireland Robbed, Castrati

by royalsreview on Nov 19, 2009 10:00 PM EST in News Comment 18 comments

You know its a good week when two of Greinke's pitches get specific breakdowns.

Royals:

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Royals Top 30 Prospects:#24-19

by nwroyal on Nov 19, 2009 10:27 AM EST in Royals Minor Leagues Comment 11 comments

We cover prospect #24-19 in this installment of the our Prospect List. I decided to drop adding pics because it was such a headache last time. We've got some high ceiling players on this section--if even one of them came close to reaching their potential, that would be a good ratio. As was mentioned in the Community Prospect List comments, it can very hard to know how to rank Carlos Rosa--25, signed for $25,000 and ready to contribute in the big leagues as a reliever vs. Chelsor Cuthbert--16, signed for $1.5 million and miles away from the big leagues but with a huge ceiling. Rosa might be a free agent by the time Cuthbert is contributing--but I've got Cuthbert a couple spots ahead--I wouldn't argue with anyone who wanted to flip them around. I tend to think of a minor league system in tiers--with players within the tier as pretty much interchangeable. Anyway on to the rankings:

24--Derrick Robinson--CF--Age:22

Year	Age	Tm	Lev	PA	AB	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
2008	20	Wilmington	A_adv	556	497	22	8	0	34	62	17	51	97	.245	.316	.322	.638
2009	21	Wilmington	A_adv	571	522	19	5	5	47	69	23	35	90	.239	.290	.324	.614
4 Seasons				1798	1615	59	19	8	131	186	61	143	342	.243	.307	.318	.624

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 11/14/2009.

Robinson is an important figure in the recent history of the Royals draft--even if he never develops into anything special. Robinson was ranked as a 1st Round talent, but he fell to the 4th Round of the 2006 draft because he had a football scholarship to the University of Florida to play cornerback. The Royals gave him $850,000 to sign and not play football. That began a trend of the Royals being willing to dish out big bucks to players who dropped in the draft due to signability (Melville, Esposito--even though he didn't sign, Myers, Dwyer, Simmons, etc.). It was and is a good strategy and got better as the Royals have (since Robinson) stayed away from giving big bucks to players who main tool is speed. As to Robinson as a player, the Royals have claimed from the day he signed that he was more than just a speed guy--that they believed he could and would hit. Speed is his calling card and with that comes what is supposed to be very good defense in CF. But the bat hasn't developed like the Royals had hoped. 2008 showed some positives as he hit 245/316/322 as a 20 year old in Wilmington. Those weren't good numbers but they showed some progress from previous numbers (especially with taking a walk). This year, however he regressed (as you see above). His power dropped slightly and he took fewer walks. It actually looked worse at the end of July, then in August he hit 311/362/513 and hit 5 home runs (more than doubling his career total). The past couple of years, he's posted BABIP that are rather low for someone with his speed. He'll go to AA next year where it would be good to see him restore those walks and flash his power more consistently.

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11 comments | 3 recs