Royals Rumblings - News for July 16, 2014

Royals Rumblings - News for July 16, 2014

Our old friend Craig Brown writes the Royals should probably be sellers, not buyers at the deadline.

The odds are already stacked against the Royals. Baseball Prospectus puts their playoff odds at 14 percent. Fangraphs is a little more optimistic at 21%, but those odds place them behind Cleveland....

The smart teams will be the teams that figure their position relative to the league. They will make moves not based on games back for the final Wild Card spot. They will make moves based on their talent in relation to the talent found on other teams in their competitive group.

And remember: No one has ever referred to the Royals as one of those "smart" teams. Should the Royals be sellers at the deadline? I’m willing to give the Royals the two weeks post-Break. With a favorable schedule, it’s time for them to make a move. Still, I can’t help but think this is truly a .500 team. With a target of 81 wins, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Royals finished anywhere between 78 and 84 wins. Even in a year defined by mediocrity of the second Wild Card, that’s not going to be good enough. If they reach the last couple days of July with no improvement in the situation, then it’s time to sell.

Paul Torlina at Pine Tar Press asks whether Dayton Moore is a good General Manager and concludes that Dayton is pretty darn good.

Taken as a whole, though, Moore is a good GM who has done a good job of rebuilding the Royals and at least putting them in the postseason discussion. If your only criteria is that he either hasn’t been to the World Series or even the postseason in his 9 seasons with the Royals then you will never agree and you will never give him credit because he didn’t go far enough (perhaps that is fair). If you are willing to step back a bit and compare the Royals "before and after" Moore took the helm, you can see that things are much better than they were. Moore may never get the Royals to the postseason. It may take a successor to come in and tweak the roster to get the team back to the playoffs. If it happens that way, though, the new GM will be starting off with a franchise that is in pretty good shape due to Moore’s tenure in KC.

Andy McCullough writes the Royals got a pretty amazing deal when they signed Salvador Perez to a long contract-extension.

Perez will make a $1.5 million base salary in 2014. Among the 81 players honored in this All-Star Game, only 19 will receive a smaller base. Yet the beauty of the contract lies within its length. Of those 19 All-Stars, six are in the early stages of long-term deals that will exceed the $7 million guaranteed to Perez....

When he thinks back to the day he signed, he insisted he has no regrets. He may have left money on the table. But his mind was eased. "To me, it wasn’t that hard," Perez said. "Because I just had two months in the big leagues when they tried to give me that money. I didn’t have to wait. I just said ‘Yes.’"

McCullough also looks back at the highs and lows over the first half of the season for the Royals.

Greg Hall at "Off the Couch" rounds up some of the optimism and skepticism towards the Royals as they enter the second half.

"I hear people saying, ‘It’s over! They’re out of it!’ They’ve got to get hot but it really is possible for them to catch the Tigers. It really is." -Brad Fanning, 610 AM "...

You have to beat the best. Detroit’s the best. And (the Royals) aren’t doing that." -Les Norman, 810 AM

"The Royals are probably a lot more like Cleveland, Chicago and Minnesota than they are Detroit." -Kevin Kietzman, 810 AM

The Royals want you to vote on the All-Time Royals team. Technically you can't vote for Willie Bloomquist for every position. David Hill of Kings off Kauffman has his thoughts in Part One and Part Two.

Who would win a race between Billy Butler and Fat Joe?

Fivethirtyeight says Derek Jeter is one of the worst All-Star starters in the last 40 years, and takes a look at a few other worst candidates.

The Astros may be screwing over the #1 overall pick.

What else is new? The American League is the superior league. Take your bunts and your pitcher jackets on the basepaths and get out of here.

Celebrate twenty years of "This is Sportscenter" commercials by watching some of the best versions.

If you haven't read the skin-crawling story on SB Nation about 80's slugger Mel Hall and his numerous sex crimes, you really should read this, then take a long, hot shower.

Hey, Weird Al Yankovic is back! Here's a nice piece about how his days of doing full albums are probably over. Your song of the day is his new hit, "Word Crimes" (special appearance by Cardinals "Moran" guy!):