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Royals Rumblings - News for November 27, 2015

Hope you got great deals this morning on Royals gear.

By Max Rieper

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Royals Rumblings - News for November 27, 2015

Craig Edwards at Fangraphs thinks Alex Gordon could be a value buy if you look at relevant comps.

The group as a whole loses on average about a win on offense and a win on defense per season over the course of the five years, but given the group’s starting place (about five wins per season, in each case) remained roughly three-win players over their age-32 to age-36 season. Pretty impressive. Taking the average of that group at 15.4 WAR and using the cost of a win at $8 million along with 5% inflation reveals a value of roughly $136.5 million over the next five years....

Much of the talk around Gordon has dealt with a four- or five-year contract. Both tables above indicate he might be worth a bit more than that.

Jon Heyman writes the Orioles have interest in Gordon.

Alex Gordon is someone who also interests the Orioles, who could look at left field, right field, first base and DH coincidentally, those are four of the five positions Davis can play). Gordon is a star but would be expected to get a shorter term than outfielders such as Justin Upton, Yoenis Cespedes and especially Jason Heyward.

He also writes the Cardinals have contacted Ben Zobrist, the Dodgers have contacted Ryan Madson, and the Royals are willing to re-work Salvador Perez's deal.

The Angels and Dodgers are not interested in Ben Zobrist, nor are the Astros.

Fox Sports lists five free agents the Royals could target this winter.

Lefty Scott Kazmir, traded by the Oakland Athletics to the Houston Astros halfway through the final year of the two-year deal he signed with Oakland prior to 2014, would be an alluring option for the Royals. Still just 31, Kazmir pitched to a 3.10 ERA in 2015 in 31 starts with the A’s and Astros, and has now thrown three consecutive seasons of full-time rotation duty since he made his comeback in 2013. Over the past two seasons, Kazmir has had some issues with triceps injuries and shoulder soreness, though nothing significant has come of it – yet. Given his injury history, any club that signs Kazmir would likely be taking a moderate risk…but his potential upside would be enough to still make him a valuable addition to a club without forcing the signing team to break the bank.

Russell Carleton looks at whether the Royals' contact-based approach is the new market inefficiency.

The genius of the contact-based approach is that, if a pitcher is reliant on making hitters miss as part of his game plan, a contact-based team will have an antidote to his poison. Now it'€™s a negotiation between the pitcher and batter in terms of how good the pitcher is at inducing weak contact and how skilled the batter is at making good contact. If teams are selecting for swing-and-miss stuff and ignoring whether the pitcher is also skilled at inducing weak contact, then teams that emphasize a swing-and-hit approach and can find players who make decent contact will have plenty of guys to pick apart.

Ned Yost is a bigger deal in Branson than even Jeff Foxworthy.

"We were sitting on a balcony and we looked out and Larry goes, ‘Look at all the people that are here,’ " Yost said. "So Jeff walked over and they looked up and they go, ‘Hey, Jeff. Hey Larry.’ And I walked over, and and the place went nuts: ‘Hey Ned!!’ Larry The Cable Guy said, ‘You get the (heck) out of here right now. This is our show, what are you doing?’ But it was neat. A lot of people were excited."

Craig Brown at Royals Authority writes about the "Tao of Ned Yost."

Yost had the fewest lineups in the AL and it wasn’t even close. We clogged copious amounts of bandwidth complaining about Alcides Escobar hitting leadoff and Alex Gordon hitting sixth (or eighth!) but it was never going to make a difference.

However, this is an area where I give Yost a ton of credit for his willingness to go outside of the box. When he installed Mike Moustakas as his number two hitter, that seemed to make as much sense as insisting the sun rises in the west. Then, paired with Escobar at the top seemed a special kind of lunacy. Yet it worked. Why? In retrospect it was clear that moving Moustakas to the top of the order actually took the pressure off, where he could focus just on making contact and going to the opposite field, rather than trying to drive the ball all the time, which in year’s past had led to a bag of mixed up swing mechanics and a plummeting of confidence. Fixing that is what a good manager is supposed to do. Yost fixed it.

Dusty Coleman, who re-signed with the Royals, reflects on his short stint with the team last year.

He also had a little trouble on the basepaths. Coleman implies that the pressure got to him a bit, and despite being sent back down to the minor leagues, he's optimistic about his baseball future.

"I think it was just the atmosphere, you know, I think I got a little caught up in you know, just how many fans were there, and you know, I think you just really got to trust yourself when you get up there and know that you can get it done and not worry about it, and...so when I got sent back down, it was, it was a confidence boost to go back down and be like, alright, I've been in the big leagues, I can do this, and you know, I feel like I played pretty well when I came back down and just looking forward to another opportunity next year," Coleman said.

Some Royals players had a Happy Thanksgiving.

Jen Nevius at Drinking the Royal Blue Aid gives the Winter League update on Raul Mondesi and others.

Here's video from the Star on the Royals premiere of the World Series movie, now available on DVD and Blu-Ray here.

Dayton Moore will help Mayor Sly James turn on the Mayor's Christmas tree tonight at Crown Center.

The World Series trophy will be on hand at the Rally House in Independence tomorrow afternoon.

The Royals released four minor leaguers including pitcher Wandy Rodriguez.

Former Royals draft pick Tim Melville is headed to the Reds.

Former Royals hitter Billy Butler welcomes a third daughter to the family.

Oakland's Brett Lawrie could be on the move again, following the acquisition of Jed Lowrie.

The Marlins and Mariners are discussing a deal around Marcell Ozuna.

Alex Avila signs with the White Sox, making Thanksgiving with his father, the GM of the Tigers, a bit awkward.

Japanese pitcher Kenta Maeda wants to be posted to play in the United States.

Rob Neyer and Bill James think three-man rotations could be the wave of the future.

Which college program will Chip Kelly be coaching next year?

Is Steph Curry the most impressive shooter ever?

Why don't we eat turkey eggs?

England doesn't have our Thanksgiving holiday, but they're doing Black Friday anyway.

Adele will save our economy.

The new Star Wars movie will be rated PG-13. Dangit!

Your song of the day is Flogging Molly with "Black Friday Rule."

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