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Royals Rumblings - News for January 12, 2015

Still can't believe Lorenzo Cain wasn't nominated for "Best Defensive Centerfielder in a Musical or Comedy."

By Max Rieper
Handout/Getty Images

Royals Rumblings - News for January 12, 2015

Ed Conneally at Kings of Kauffman gave his thoughts on the Royals Hall of Fame selection this year.

Bo Jackson

Bo didn’t play that long or that consistently well for the Royals. I don’t care. Bo hit the longest homers ever at the K. Bo led off an all star game with a monster home run. Bo threw out Harold Reynolds flat-footed from a warning track. Bo is the most famous Royal, not named George Brett, ever. Bo’s star power and lasting legacy are as big a part of his contribution to the franchise as his numbers. His overall contribution to the franchise makes him an easy selection.

John Viril at KC Kingdom writes that Mike Moustakas needs to learn to beat the shift.

Even worse was Mike Moustakas’ .220 batting average balls in play (BABIP). Last year, the league average player had a BABIP of .300. BABIP is a stat that can suffer high variance. Sabermetric analysts will often attribute an unusually high, or low, BABIP in a single season to "luck".

In Mike Moustakas’ case, however, it’s clear that the low BABIP was no accident. The .220 BABIP was due to his inability to handle the shift. Through June 10 of last season, Moustakas was hitting a mere .033 against defenses using the shift. Though he rallied for a solid June and July, Moustakas struggled again in August and September. Overall, his 1st and 2nd half hitting splits had virtually identical OPS averages of .627 and .637

That's just not going to get it done.

David Hill at Kings of Kauffman argues that Royals pitching prospect Miguel Almonte was better than his numbers suggested.

Why would Almonte’s ERA be that much higher than the league average, when he was essentially a league average pitcher last year? While the likely culprit would be that he served up quite a few home runs, Almonte only served up nine long balls last year, a slight uptick from the six home runs he gave up in 2013.

It may have just been that Miguel Almonte was victimize by bad timing. While his batting rates against were not that far outside of the league average, perhaps he was giving up those hits with runners on base, instead of with the bases empty. That would certainly explain the discrepancy in his ERA compared to league average.

Peter Gammons reports former Royals outfielder Carlos Peguero is drawing a lot of interest for his power.

Whitey Herzog calls his 1985 team, the one that lost to the Kansas City Royals, the best Cardinals team he ever managed.

“In fairness,” said Herzog, “the Kansas City starting staff shut us down. We could have won getting only 13 runs in six games. As it was, we got 13 runs in seven games.

“We had to play baseball like everybody else, which we couldn’t do. Our basestealers never got on base and I think Tommy and Ozzie hit .150 and .160 or something like that (.154 and .087, actually)

Darin Watson at Pine Tar Press takes a look at the 1973 Royals.

Jeremy Guthrie is lobbying for James Shields to at least sign with a team that trains in Arizona.

The Native Sons and Daughters of Kansas have named Royals General Manager Dayton Moore its "Kansan of the Year."

The Oakland Athletics make their offseason even more head-scratching, acquiring infielder and impending free agent Ben Zobrist from the Rays.

Ravens coach John Harbaugh doesn't like that tricksy Bill Belichick.

Oregon faces the wonderful academic institution called The Ohio State University tonight for the national championship. Here's all the information you need to know about the big game.

A history of words expressing one is "drunk."

Speaking of which, hard cider is becoming very popular.

Cities banning sledding in parks are actually putting kids in more danger.

Your song of the day is Dinosaur Jr. with "Start Chopping."

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