Royals Rumblings - News for December 22, 2017

(Ed note: It’s a bit of an abbreviated Rumblings today as it’s getaway day. Next Friday there will be a substitute Kevin as I’m out of town)

ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle asks “Is there anybody left to sign Eric Hosmer”?

As Hosmer's situation lingers, along with that of teammates Mike Moustakasand Lorenzo Cain, it complicates the rebuilding plan in one sense. That is, if any of that trio ends up dangling long enough that a short-term deal becomes the only course of action, then the draft pick compensation that Kansas City is counting on could take a hit.

He also ends up on Matt Snyder of CBS’s All-Overrated MLB Team. Salvy and Moose are runners up at their positions. Former Royal Greg Holland is the overrated RP and Kelvin Herrera is "also considered". But he does make fun of Cardinals fans and drops this nugget (It has to be Ned Yost, right?):

The KCStar’s Pete Grathoff shared some media. First, there’s Whit Merrifield and that time he was on a Japanese game show. Then there’s the Omaha Storm Chasers goofy Christmas video.

It may be stating the obvious, but KC Kingdom's Leigh Oleszczak says the "Kansas City Royals must draft better in order for successful rebuild”.

If the Kansas City Royals want to get back to the World Series in the next decade, they HAVE to start drafting better in the first round. It’s a very good argument to make that the Royals haven’t had a successful first round pick since Eric Hosmer in 2008. That was nearly a decade ago!

This was probably already linked earlier, but I’ve been posting about it for the last couple of weeks so the Friday-only readers can see the entirety of Royals Farm Report’s Top 100 prospect list.

Old friend Clark Fosler at BPKC says it makes no sense to sign ONLY Eric Hosmer.

For this winter, if David Glass is going to allow Dayton Moore to spend some money, then he might as well let him spend a LOT of money. I am fully prepare to admit that in itself is a dicey prospect and I am certainly ready to agree that none of the above should really take place. I am, however, adamant that if you start down this road by bringing Eric Hosmer back, you cannot then put the car in neutral. All in or all out.

First a little housekeeping: Hat tip to CobraCy. After last week’s Best of RR, featuring his series about “gifts” from the official Royals shop, he posted his 2017 edition: 2017 Royals Merchandise Holiday Shopping Guide.

Think back to 2011 Kansas City baseball. The Royals had one winning season since the strike (2003). Zack Greinke had just been traded, the team’s best player from the year before was closer Joakim Soria, and top prospect Alex Gordon only hit .215 in his rookie season. But there was reason for optimism: The franchise had been declared to have BFSITHOW (Best Farm System in the History of Whenever) and there was cautious optimism for the future.

Scott McKinney, long time RR firebrand and “one who can find clouds in every silver lining”, created a Fanpost (whatpost?) to look at Success and Failure Rates of Top MLB Prospects.

Over the last decade, Major League Baseball organizations have treated top prospects as their most valuable commodity. They are inexpensive (at least for the first six or seven years) and they can produce genuine star players. But of course they can also give rise to failure, lots and lots of failure.

He took an extremely thorough look at BA’s Top 100 prospects list over about 15 years and put together a great article that I have seen cited as recently as this year in baseball writings. The first conclusion, “about 70% of Baseball America top 100 prospects fail”, is a sobering reminder that baseball prospecting is hard. Be careful what you wish for with rebuilds.

I’m just going to let Yahoo’s Chris Cwik take it from here:

Well, the first weird injury of the winter is here, and it’s one we’re not sure we’ve heard before. Texas Rangers starting pitcher Martin Perez injured himself after an “incident with a bull.”

A town hall with Derek Jeter, Marlins Man, Marlins Man using the “do you know who I am” card, Marlins Man’s Marlinsmobile, Derek Jeter refusing to ride in Marlins Man’s Marlinsmobile, Marlins Man’s Mondays, a 4 minute Marlins Man monologue, and the flaming pile of wreckage that was the Miami Marlins. Jetes, you and your ownership group deserve every bit of this and then some. And this interaction is also burning up a lot of the goodwill Marlins Man has built up over the last few years, too. As always, it’s a story where nobody wins but the Yankees evil.

Unfortunately, from here on down is where I had to make some cuts as our workplace decided to implement a giant project on Christmas getaway day. Hope you have some fun OT topics to talk about in the comments like Star Wars or the tax bill or holiday travel plans or whatnot.

One of my goals for Song of the Day is to not repeat a game. I think having a new game each week encourages conversation that a duplicate game wouldn’t. However, some soundtracks have a number of quality tracks worth featuring and we’ll get to those on abbreviated weeks like this one. Last November, I profiled The World Ends With You and the song “Calling”. This time off the soundtrack, it’s “Hybrid”.