So, in the quest to win the elusive 2004 AL Central, Royals General Manager Dayton Moore has engineered the signing of Jason Kendall to a 2 year, 6 million dollar deal. This daring bit of economic stimulus will likely not jumpstart the Kansas City economy unless Kendall is a compulsive spender. But let's look at the overall package.

Jason Kendall doesn't hit home runs, he doesn't strike out, he doesn't make extra base hits, and he gets hit by pitches.

Kendall gets hit by 20 pitches per 162 games, which shouldn't be a concern due to the revolutionary medical care he will receive from the Royals organization and the fact that 36 year old catchers are typically pretty durable. Kendall had 23 extra base hits and was hit by 17 pitches in 2009, an interesting trajectory which suggests more Kendall HBP than XBH in 2010.

Continue reading this post »

Because it's amusing to figure out who is similar to who.

Encouraging: Butler's comps (even if his current #1 means that he'll be hosting a fishing show after retiring at 34).

Discouraging: $12M for a Kevin McReynolds comp.

How about pitchers?

Continue reading this post »

Plain and simple. The defense has deep flaws, The relief pitching became far worse when DM thought "Inexpensive relievers were good, therefore expensive ones will be better", and the starting pitching fell apart due to the stretching out of most of the rotation.

But the offense put up the following stats in 2009: .318 OBP, .259 BA, .405 SLG, .452 Expected bases.

The Royals were 13th in runs (ahead of the Mariners), 13th in home runs (ahead of the Athletics), 13th in walks (ahead of the Mariners), 13th in OBP (ahead of the Mariners), 13th in OPS (ahead of the Mariners), 12th in OPS+ (ahead of the Mariners and White Sox). But the Royals are 1st in triples and they're 7th in sac bunts (Ryan must be shocked that being 7th in sac bunts isn't enough to make our offense more dynamic).

So why is Offense so important?

4 of the top 5 OBP teams are in the AL playoffs, or in contention. The worst OBP team in playoff contention is Detroit (.330). The top three OPS teams are the Yankees, Red Sox, and Angels. The top three AL teams are the Yankees, Red Sox, and Angels. The top 4 OPS+ teams are 4 teams in playoff contention (New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Minnesota).

To have even a remote shot at the playoffs, your offense needs to be average. You cannot continue to rely exclusively on patching up the pitching and defense while ignoring the deficiency that places too much pressure on pitching and defense.

So why did our offense fail so often this year? We did not get any production out of the DH spot or the cleanup spot.

Continue reading this post »

An account of History from the Sports Argument Stadium on SomethingAwful

settes: Yessssssssssssss

Captain Charisma: ROWDY KYLE

humpthewind: Have the yankees ever seen this lerew guy before? ROWDY IN TO CLOSE IT!

Nodoze: did kyle farnsworth just throw a changeup

leokitty: no his fastball speed is just crappy now

Nodoze: No it was definitely a changeup, it was slower and actually moved

Continue reading this post »

One of the things we learn repeatedly watching this team is that Trey Hillman is awful at handling pitchers. It's likely to be a problem that didn't just occur this year. Future installments of this series will go over the Torquemada-esque usage of starting pitchers on this team and we can look back at 2008.

Another thing we learn repeatedly watching this team is that the bullpen is awful. The bullpen ERA is 5.05, and that's counting Soria. But what about a more haunting possibility, that the bullpen, while craptacular, has been misused by Trey Hillman?

First, a primer on the chart that is under the fold. Only Royals with 10 appearances in relief were included.  RA is relief appearances. MI-RA is multiple inning relief appearances (keeping in mind that some of the MIRAs were 3 outs over 2 innings or attempting to pitch over 2 innings), BODwn is the number of games entered with the Royals down 4 or more. CGDwn is when the Royals were down by 1, 2 or 3. CGUp is when the Royals were up by 1, 2, or 3. BOUp is when the Royals were up by 4 or more. And there is a Misc column for the 3 saves Soria registered despite entering with a 4+ run lead. DTU are the percentages. The rest should be clear.

Continue reading this post »