Royals Rumblings - News for February 5, 2015

Royals Rumblings - News for February 5, 2015

Craig Brown at Royals Authority gives a thumbs up to the Royals new slogan.

This is going to get a huge "thumbs up" from me. That’s just a great, great slogan created by Walz Tetrick Advertising. Not only is it a natural follow-up to "Be Royal" from last summer (which I also liked) it carries more weight following the Royals October run. Simple, yet permanent. No one who was at The K or who watched the games on TV will ever forget. It’s stamped into your baseball consciousness. Forever, right? Declarative and powerful.

As I was writing this post, I went through the categories we’ve created at this website and found a couple of the old slogans. "It All Happens Here." Ugh. How generic. And I’m sure since it’s from the Jose Guillen years, it’s intentionally vague. Then there’s "Come To Play." Whoa. It’s like an invitation to a swingers party. Creepy and potentially deviant. And, of course, "Our Time." No comment necessary on that one.

"Forever Royals" is not only a great slogan. It’s the best Royals marketing tag for a long, long time.

Ray Flowers at Fantasy Alarm doesn't buy that Alex Rios is washed up and thinks 2014 was an aberration.

The fact is that Rios simply didn't suffer from the skills decline that many posit he did. So what does explain the down effort? I noted this above, but he dealt with some physical woes.

Second, his HR/F ratio, over 10 percent in 2012-13 and nine percent for his career, fell all the way down to 2.9 percent. He produced a mark that was a third of his career norm. That's crazy low and simply not a repeatable number in 2015. The mark simply has to rebound. Three, and I'm just going to say it. Rios was unlucky as all get out in 2014. You can't have a BABIP of .336, a line drive rate of 23.5 percent and struggle to produce like he did. Even his .280 batting average is more valuable today than a .290 mark seven years ago. You also don't mirror you career levels in OBP, K-rate, BB-rate, ground ball rate, fly ball rate and swinging rates and be that unproductive. It doesn't happen.

The totality of the data suggests that the skills dip that Rios suffered in 2014... well it didn't exist.

Ben Carsley at Baseball Prospectus has Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar ranked fairly low for fantasy shortstops due to his inconsistency.

This group is... not exciting. Escobar is only 28 but tremendously volatile, equally likely to be a borderline top-10 fantasy shortstop or essentially useless any given year

Dan Szymborski at ESPN ranks prospects by ZIPS, and has Royals shortstop Raul Mondesi ranked 22nd and pitcher Kyle Zimmer ranked 83rd.

In this video, MLB Pipeline's Bernie Pleskoff thinks outfielder Reymond Fuentes could break north with the Royals and be a factor on the bases.

James Shields should sign this week. Or not.

TiqIQ says that Royals Opening Day tickets are already 25% more expensive than they were last year.

Dave Cameron at Just a Bit Outside proposes abolishing the MLB Draft.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has come out for legal sports gambling and has contacted Major League Baseball about it.

The first woman to play junior college baseball has committted to Bossier Parish Community College. She is the daughter of former reliever John Hudek and throws 82 mph, which may not seem like much but is harder than Bruce Chen.

Derek Jeter considered buying the Buffalo Bills.

Under Obama's budget, it may be harder for governments to get tax-breaks on bonds for publicly-financed sports stadiums.

If you're a grown man who is really interested in young high school boys, National Signing Day is for you.

Syracuse basketball put itself on probation, although their mediocre record was probably banning them from post-season play anyway.

Twitter admits they suck at dealing with trolls.

Speaking of Twitter, it is hammering Will Carroll for this tweet.BC Anchor Brian Williams is the Tim Johnson of news anchors.

Why don't kids walk to school anymore? (video)

Time out. Jimmy Fallon held a "Saved by the Bell" reunion last night. But where was Screech?

Hannah Davis is your Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover model. That's still a thing I guess.

Your song of the day is Young MC with "Bust a Move."