Royals Rumblings - News for August 2, 2016

Royals Rumblings - News for August 2, 2016

Dayton Moore discusses the inaction at the trade deadline.

"We didn't see anything out there that we believed could make us significantly better," Moore said, "that fit into our financial situation or with regards to what players we would have had to give up."...

Despite some reports that indicated the Royals had shopped Davis and Hochevar, Moore said that simply wasn't true.

"In 10 years of being here, we have never shopped a player," Moore said. "We don't shop players. We have never pushed a player. When we pursue deals, we look at other players and see if there is some way we can match up."

He did not want to cost this team wins for the sake of the future.

In that context, Moore said the Royals did not find offers that made sense. Whatever was offered for Morales and Volquez, Moore said it was not worth unloading a starting pitcher or a designated hitter with two months remaining in the season.

"Wins are very important, and that’s how we’ve always tried to conduct our business," Moore said. "We’ve never tried to build for the future in way that would lessen our major-league team and put us in a position where we're losing or have no chance to win games.

"So we just felt that we trust our players; they've done an outstanding job getting to us to a point [where] we've won, and we want to give them a chance to dig back out of this mess that we're in."

You can listen to his entire conference call with the media here.

Sam Mellinger thinks the Royals will make a Qualifying Offer to Edinson Volquez.

"We’ll see," Moore said Monday when asked if holding onto Volquez was a sign the Royals planned on making a qualifying offer. "Obviously we have to evaluate that, but that’s certainly a part of our thinking."

It would make sense for the Royals. If Volquez turns them down, they receive a compensation pick between the first and second rounds of next year’s draft. If he accepts, they fill a spot in their rotation with a man who has pitched more than all but 20 others over the last three years and — according to adjusted ERA — has been 10 percent better than league average.

Among those he’s outperformed according to both versions of Wins Above Replacement: Trevor Bauer, Drew Smyly and Wade Miley.

There is an old saying among baseball executives that there is no such thing as a bad one-year contract, and even in a down year he is projected to be worth $17.4 million according to Fangraphs.

Some cool stats on Danny Duffy’s historic night against the Rays:

Danny Duffy the 7th pitcher since 1913 to have:

16 K’s or more
1 BB or fewer
1 H or fewer
0 R

— Kurtis Seaboldt (@KSeaboldt) August 2, 2016

Duffy is the 4th pitcher in MLB history with a Game Score of 95+ in less than 9 innings. All 4 (Kluber, Johan, Darvish) since 2007.

— Rany Jazayerli (@jazayerli) August 2, 2016

Danny Duffy forced 35 swings and misses today, tied with Clayton Kershaw for most in single game in last 15 seasons. pic.twitter.com/tQ2Z7rTtHi

— Baseball Tonight (@BBTN) August 2, 2016

Here is every single trade that went down at the deadline.

The winners and losers from the trade deadline.

Five lessons from this year’s trade deadline.

The Dodgers demote Yasiel Puig.

The Marlins return Colin Rea to the Padres after he gets hurt.

The worst trade deadline deals of all time.

Fixing batted ball data with Stat-cast.

Big 12 partners are pushing back on expansion talk.

Skip Bayless promises even hotter takes on his new Fox Sports 1 show.

When is a cyberattack an act of war?

Astronaut Scott Kelly talks about the challenges of going to Mars.

A new study says men think they’re experts at everything.

Your song of the day is Duffy with "Well Well Well."