SB Nation User Blog: Bart41

Royals Position Players

Bart41 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:55:33 -0000

Since this year is a lost cause, we need to start building next year's team. Really, I believe the question is, Are the "Core Players" good enough?

Just to get the obvious out of the way, the pitching is clearly good enough. A rotation of Meche, Greinke, Banny, Hochevar, and Davies (or other #5) is championship caliber. Soria's a clear top-line closer. The bullpen guys suck this year and really, everyone's expendable and likely to change significantly year over year, so any analysis is just as big a waste as this bullpen is. I believe if you add a couple quality pen arms and if a couple guys turn it around, the pitching doesn't need much more work.

Our offense sucks. This has haunted the Royals since the Dye-Beltran-Damon OF was broken up and we've had a below average offense ever since. Using players currently in our organization here's what a lineup could be next season:

C Pena

1B Butler

2B Callaspo

SS Betancourt

3B Gordon

LF DDJ

RF Teahen

DH Guillen

CF Anderson/Maier

Can the Royals be a winning team with Butler, Gordon, DDJ, and Teahen in the lineup everyday? I don't believe so. Not in the American League. Not when we have to score 4-6 runs a game. Unless this team gets serious about putting premier players at the corner positions, we're in trouble offensively.

The only answer I see is signing a power hitting LF and moving DDJ to CF along with getting serious production from the DH. The last non-laughable everyday DH the Royals have had since Hal McRae was Mike Sweeney in 2005 and Chili Davis in 1997 which in and of itself is laughable. Our history of DH's is pathetic at best. An American League championship level offense cannot have replacement level production out of LF and DH.

DDJ, Gordon, Butler, and Teahen are nice, above-average players, but they can't carry our offense to where we need to go. Even if Gordon and Butler take a step forward into the 20-30 HR level, we're still looking at a below average offense because of the lack of production from LF and DH. If we depend on what we have currently as the cornerstones for next year's lineup, we're in serious trouble again.

The Current 25 Man Roster

Bart41 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:52:52 -0000

Just a little depressing exercise I usually do with my fantasy baseball teams - Identify the dead wood.

Ok, just for fun today I decided to go through the Royals' roster and get rid of all the guys we could really do without and not particularly miss if they were replaced with some guy from AAA. Here's what I came up with:

John Bale

~~Bruce Chen~~

~~Jamey Wright~~

~~John Buck~~

~~Miguel Olivo~~

~~Brayan Pena~~

~~Willie Bloomquist~~

Billy Butler

Alberto Callaspo

~~Ryan Freel~~

~~Tony Pena~~

Mark Teahen

David DeJesus

~~Jose Guillen~~

~~Mitch Maier~~

~~Mike Jacobs~~

Just a quick note or two: I got rid of all 3 catchers because, really, would I miss any of them? Brayan Pena would be fun to have around, but I wouldn't get up in arms if I found out tomorrow he was out for the season. Half the guys that I marked off, I'd actually be glad if they couldn't be in the lineup anymore this season. Frankly, our hitters are such a joke that we might as well be playing AAA guys. If you told me that starting tomorrow Butler/Kila would be our everyday 1B/DH, I doubt I'd even ask what will happen to the Jacobs/JoGui/Olivo DH trio from Hell. If you said that once Gordon came back, Teahen would start everyday in RF, I'd be happy. If you told me Freel and Pena were cut, I'd be estatic. If Chen, Wright, and Maier are all in AAA tomorrow, I wouldn't miss them.

So that's my "analysis." 11 guys off the 25 man roster are basically meaningless. Blackholes of suck bringing almost nothing to the table and, on the rare occasion they do bring something, they end up spilling it all over themselves.

Going to a AAA game tonight...

Bart41 — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:06:24 -0000

Gwinnett Braves vs Norfolk Tides. The Tides are the O's AAA affiliate, so I was pretty excited about seeing Wieters, but he's D2D because he tweaked his hamstring last night, so we're a little short on star power. Pitching matchup is Chris Tillman vs. Todd Redmond. The Random Royal Sighting is Donnie Murphy who somehow ended up with the O's in AAA. Anything I should be watching for between these two?