Royals Rumblings

Weekend Rumblings - News for February 2, 2019

What would be your Royals starting lineup?

By Max Rieper@maxrieper Feb 2, 2019, 10:00am EST

Weekend Rumblings - News for February 2, 2019

In his mailbox segment, Jeffrey Flanagan gives his thoughts on a potential starting lineup.

The right-field job comes down to Brian Goodwin, Soler, Phillips or Jorge Bonifacio. Phillips and Bonifacio still have options, so one of them will likely end up at Triple-A Omaha. But if the Royals stick to their 2019 motto of speed and defense, having Gordon, Hamilton and Phillips in the outfield will save a ton of runs defensively. Of course, Phillips really needs to improve offensively, and he knows that. But with Gordon, Hamilton and Phillips in the outfield, Statcast™ will be busy recording those Outs Above Average. (Yes, just like in 2014 and ‘15, defense matters.)

David Lesky sees positive signs for Hunter Dozier.

His ISO of .166 ranked a gentleman’s 141st out of 241 players with at least 350 plate appearances. The Statcast numbers, though, are really solid for Dozier. If anything, his 2018 season is concrete proof there’s more to it than these numbers, but there is some predictive value. His hard hit rate of 40.2 percent was well above league average. His barrel rate of 10.6 percent was well above league average. He seemed to be improving in both his chase rate and whiff rate from the start of the season. I don’t think I’d go so far as to say I’m expecting a breakout from him, but I believed before the 2018 season that a Dozier and Logan Morrison combination would outperform Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas. Well, I was wrong, but there’s a reason I was so bullish on Dozier heading into the season.

610 Sports in Kansas City announces their spring training radio schedule.

Here is every Spring Training game you can catch on @610SportsKC pic.twitter.com/oNs6g84FZF
— Cody Tapp (@codybtapp) January 31, 2019

The Royals make some promotions in the front office.

Royals GM Dayton Moore announced some promotions in the club's baseball operations department. Among them: Scouting director Lonnie Goldberg is now an assistant GM for amateur scouting; Daniel Mack, who leads the analytics dept., is now assistant GM/research and development.
— Rustin Dodd (@rustindodd) February 1, 2019