Royals Rumblings - News for January 7, 2015

Royals Rumblings - News for January 7, 2015

Matt Collins at Baseball Prospects sizes up Salvador Perez vs. Russell Martin for fantasy baseball purposes.

When his career is complete, it is very likely we’ll look back and consider 2014 to be Martin’s peak. While he still remains a strong offensive asset behind the plate, it’s hard to see him topping last season. Perez, though, almost certainly has not seen his best season yet. Even with his less-than-ideal plate discipline, he’s a talented hitter who squares up the ball very well and is yet to play his age-25 season. Obviously, there is clearly no guarantee that he will hit it, but Perez definitely has the higher ceiling as of right now.

Craig Brown at Royals Authority looks at the minor front office shakeups for the Royals this week.

If you have a sabermetric bent, the names of interest are Mike Groopman, who was formerly the director of baseball analytics and is now the director of baseball operations for analytics. John Williams, who was the assistant director of baseball analytics has been elevated to director of baseball analytics for player personnel. Daniel Mack was an analyst and is now a director of baseball analytics for research science.

Those three have appeared at Baseball Prospectus day at The K for the last couple of seasons. I know it’s cool to knock the Royals for their seeming distaste for analytics, but they’ve beefed up that department the last couple of years. If I’m not mistaken, about four years ago it was Groopman, Williams and a couple of interns. The department now includes at least six guys, maybe more. And they’re all smarter than you.

Tony Blengino at Fangraphs takes a look at teams that turned over their entire starting lineup in an off-season and found a recent example with the 2011 Royals.

With some of their long-heralded prospects finally deemed major-league ready, the Royals replaced Jason Kendall, 1B Billy Butler, Mike Aviles, Yuniesky Betancourt, Alberto Callaspo, Scott Podsednik, Mitch Maier, David DeJesus and Jose Guillen with Brayan Pena, Eric Hosmer, Chris Getz, Alcides Escobar, Mike Moustakas, Alex Gordon, Melky Cabrera, Jeff Francoeur and DH Butler. It took a little while, but the Royals got some payback in the form of an AL pennant in 2014, following a three-year span over which they had the lowest position-player turnover of any MLB club.

ZIPS projections are out for our rivals the Detroit Tigers, although it doesn't include their recent acquisition of lefty-reliever Tom Gorzelanny.

The Rangers are meeting with former Royals pitcher James Shields, but the Blue Jays aren't.

Half of Fangraphs readers think the projection of the Royals to win 81 games is correct.

The Star's Vahe Gregorian takes in a Dominican baseball game and meets some dummies while visiting Yordano Ventura.

Sportswriters knew pitcher wins were a stupid stat the moment they created it.

A petition to remove the BBWAA from the election process for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Knicks are officially tanking.

Everything you could ever want to know about Puppy Bowl.

Does it matter if young people don't know who Paul McCartney is?

MS-DOS games like "Oregon Trail" are now available free online.

Gamma Squad is counting down their best games of 2014.

Your song of the day is Tina Turner with "Simply the Best."