Royals Rumblings for June 4, 2014
As assembled by Royals Review staff:
USA Today reports that last place is not what the Royals had in mind for this season.
"You wonder how we can underachieve offensively the second year in a row," Yost says, "with the talent we have. The pitchers are giving us chances to win, but we have to score runs."
Maybe they're not underachieving Ned?
Former Royals manager Whitey Herzog blames American League baseball!
If anyone deserves the most blame, Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog said, it's owner David Glass. He was the one who was offered by Commissioner Bud Selig to move the franchise to the National League in 1998. Glass declined. The Milwaukee Brewers accepted. The rest is history.
"That's one of the most major mistakes in the history of ownership," said Herzog, who managed the St.Louis Cardinals and the Royals. "It was natural to go to the National League. They would have had a natural rivalry with the Cardinals. The Cubs would be sellouts. People would come from Denver. And they wouldn't have to worry about their offense.
"When I talked to David about it, he said, 'Everybody wanted to see the Yankees.' I said, 'Was there anyone complaining if you went to the NL?' He said, 'We got about a hundred letters.' "I said, 'Jesus, you're running Wal-Mart and you let 100 letters change your mind? What a screw-up.'
Yep, that's it, if we were in the National League, we'd totally be bunting our way to a championship right now.
The terrific Danny Duffy start Monday has reporters writing some puff pieces about him at Fox Sports Kansas Cityand the Kansas City Star. Just don't look at his BABIP behind the curtain!
There is no such thing as BABIP...there is no such thing as BABIP. Great game Duffy, you too Cueto, oh hi Voros.
— Brian Bannister (@RealBanny) June 3, 2014
Joe Posnanski has been writing about the new Moneyball Athletics, and today compares them with the Royals.
When the Royals drafted Starling, my good friend Sam Mellinger wrote in the Kansas City Star that he had a chance to change baseball in Kansas City forever and that the Royals may have just drafted their most important player since George Brett.
I thought at the time that what Sam wrote was pretty ludicrous — you just don’t talk that way about baseball players drafted out of high school no matter how talented they might look. But in retrospect, it was more than ludicrous. The Royals made a terrible mistake taking Bubba Starling with that pick. And it is a mistake the Oakland A’s never would have made in a million years.
Speaking of Sam Mellinger, he writes the Royals are nearing their "Pioli-point" where things are unsalvageable.
For this year’s Royals, it’s the point where the season becomes unsalvageable. What you don’t want is 84-78, which is in that gray area where ownership may not want to let people go a year after extending Moore and Yost.
This becomes a bit like the NBA, where the worst thing you can be is a late lottery team. It’s easy to look at 27-30 and think that with a team where the Nos. 3 and 4 hitters have a combined five home runs and an on-base percentage below .300 the whole thing is unsalvageable, but like I said before, that’s the way it looked last year and they made that late run. There’s more time left in the season now than when I wrote the Enough column last July, and crazier things have happened.
But I think everyone involved knows there are no more excuses.
Pine Tar Press has a nice interview with Royals pitching prospect Sean Manaea.
Keith Law has his mock draft and the Royals are projected to take TCU left-handed pitcher Brandon Finnegan.
Ben Lindbergh of Baseball Prospectus argues the Royals are one of the best teams at producing big leaguers through the draft in recent years, but the value of those big leaguers has been underwhelming.
HEY! Harry Caray drank a lot! His diary confirms it - 288 consecutive days with a drink. Its pretty much a requirement when you have to watch that many Cubs games.
The "Breaking Bad" spin-off "Better Call Saul" is off to a bad start in production, but there's no reason why they can't film 15 of the next 20 episodes.
Grammar Nazis. Literally.
I thought the song of the day should commemorate 1985, the year the Royals slayed the Cardinals in the World Series. I went to look up the top single from that year and - its "Careless Whisper" by George Michael, the song recently revived by Oakland's Josh Reddick. Let's party like its 1985.