swing and a miss
Jun 07, 2009 May 28, 2012 30 998
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Zack Greinke wants to be traded, and the Kansas City Royals intend to grant his wish.
Greinke fired his agent on Friday, the clearest indication yet of the ace right-hander’s desire to be sent to another club.
After Greinke switched representation from SFX Baseball to CAA, a high-ranking executive from another team told FOXSports.com, "He really wants out of K.C." Separate major-league sources confirmed that Greinke has unequivocally asked the Royals to be traded.
Critical spirits have extremely negative opinion of Royals defense
Fans rated the Royals defense as -79 runs in Tango's Fans' scouting report, the next closest were the Indians and Pirates at -36 runs apiece. The Royals defense was obviously awful but to be rated more than twice as bad as the next closest team is a bit odd.
Details on Greinke's NTC
He can block trades to 15 teams through the July 31st deadline in 2011, after which his no trade protection expires.
The Mets will begin interviewing candidates to be their next general manager early next week.
The team announced Thursday that it had received permission to interview Rick Hahn, the White Sox’ assistant general manager, and Allard Baird, the Red Sox’ director of professional scouting. They have also scheduled an interview with the former Diamondbacks general manager Josh Byrnes.
Mets move forward with GM search
Imagine Allard as GM of the Mets!
Aviles also thrived hitting in the No. 2 hole later in the season, especially behind speedy leadoff man Jarrod Dyson - that combination at the top of the order certainly will give manager Ned Yost and general manager Dayton Moore something to consider all off-season.
"Having Dyson in the leadoff spot is incredible," Aviles said. "He makes pitchers so worried.
They're constantly looking over at him if he's on first.
You're going to get good pitches because of that. It's dynamic. They're more worried about getting him off the bases rather than pitching to me."I love hitting No. 2, too. It's my favorite spot in the order, hands down. I hit there the first time in Triple-A in 2007. I loved it. I feel the most comfortable there."
Fox Sports KC -- A good sign: Aviles looks like his former self
Jason Kendall, you're on notice, Mike Aviles wants the #2 hole!
After the game Zack Greinke told me he’s gone back to trying to strike people out. That plan worked nine times in this game. That’s three innings with no pressure on the defense and this defense could use no pressure.
Zack said most of the season he’d been trying to get ground balls. Pitching to contact (letting the other guy hit it) put less stress on him physically and allowed him to go deeper into games. On the other hand, someone’s got to catch those groundballs and the Royals defense has made the most errors in the league. (I said that, he wouldn’t … the guy’s trying to be a good teammate.) As I’ve said before: this is a dilemma.
Does Greinke strike people out and turn the ball over to the bullpen sooner? Or pitch to contact and turn the ball over to his defense?
He’s finished in 2010 and couldn’t say what approach he’d use in 2011. It might depend on who his teammates are. I’ll say this: The guy isn’t just up there chucking it. He’s smart, articulate (which he doesn’t always show on camera) and he’s given this some thought.
Judging the Royals Sept. 30 Recap
Lines up pretty well with the numbers, I thought it had to be intentional how much his GB% jumped up after the first two months of the season were "normal" 40% GB Zack.
Brayan Pena to start on Wednesday!
"barring any unexpected circumstances"
Such a rare event that it deserves its own fanshot.
Brayan Pena: "I hope I retire as a Kansas City Royal"
Pena, in fact, has an amazing – and somewhat unheard of for a backup catcher -- underground swelling of support from fans who fill up chat rooms with pleas to Royals management to play the 27-year-old catcher more often.
Pena admits he is flattered by all the attention.
"I appreciate that so much," he said, almost bursting to get the words out. "I love the Kansas City fans. I understand Jason (Kendall) is our catcher and our No. 1 catcher. I want to support my teammates and the team. I don’t want to let anyone down once I get out there.
"But the fan support, it’s just great. When you have that fan reception, having people in the street stop you and say good stuff to you, that’s why I am in love with the Kansas City fans.
One day three years ago at the Royals' spring training facility in Surprise, Ariz., Mike Sweeney was hanging around the weight room when Kansas City G.M. Dayton Moore quietly approached with a question. "There was a deal on the table for a high-profile shortstop that another team wanted to trade, straight up, for Zack Greinke," Sweeney says. The shortstop may not have been a future Hall of Famer, but he had, in Sweeney's words, a "huge upside." So Moore asked his veteran first baseman, "Would you do it?"
I wonder who this mystery shortstop could be?
Bannister's interview on 810
So much sabermetric love.
But what makes the whole thing so baffling is that I have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to accomplish. It is just so disconcerting that three and a half years after Dayton Moore was hired in Kansas City, their minor league system is so bereft of Major League ready talent, they are going around the league and signing 30-somethings that nobody else wants. It is troubling that the Royals apparently plan in 2010 is to make fans hope that a bunch of older players will recapture their past glory — or at least their past moderate success.
Pictures from Mark Teahen's charity fashion show
The guys certainly have a wide range of opinions on what constitutes "fashion."
"David DeJesus had our best zone rating," Bannister said, referring to the Royals’ left fielder. "So a lot of times, Zack would pitch for a fly ball at our park instead of a ground ball, just because the zone rating was better in our outfield and it was a big park."
To that end, Bannister introduced Greinke to FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, the statistic Greinke named Tuesday as his favorite. It is a formula that measures how well a pitcher performed, regardless of his fielders. According to fangraphs.com, Greinke had the best FIP in the majors.
"That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible," Greinke said.
Crow, who went back into the draft, and ended up with the Royals, was the only one of the three pitchers to appear in this afternoon's extra inning affair, but his day ended early after just 3.1 IP in which the soon-to-be 23-year-old right-hander allowed 6 hits, 4 ER and 1 walk while recording 2 K's and throwing 56 pitches, 42 for strikes. Back-to-back singles followed by back-to-back sacs (a sac bunt and a sac fly) resulted in the D-Dogs' first run off Crow in the second, and a misplayed fly ball in center that wasn't ruled an error let Nationals' SS prospect Danny Espinosa on in the third and resulted in Phoenix's second run of the game when a groundout and an RBI single brought Espinosa around. In the fourth, Crow issued a leadoff walk and then gave up a run scoring triple and a sac fly before being removed with the Rafters down 4-2..
Sporting News names Zack Greinke, Tim Lincecum AL, NL pitchers of the year
TSN AL Pitchers of the year have also won the AL Cy every year in the last twenty years, except in 1994, when they picked Jimmy Key and the Cy voters chose David Cone. They also picked Key in 1987 when Roger Clemens won the Cy, otherwise the two lists match exactly every year since 1983.
If only the Royals spent as much time analyzing players as they did carpet-bombing the press with ridiculous quotes about Betancourt's ability and having their feelings hurt by mean ol' Rany Jazayerli, perhaps the franchise wouldn't look like an expansion team in a league with a horribly unfair expansion draft.
Baseball Think Factory's 2010 ZIPS Projections: Kansas City Royals
The Royals have two players projected to OPS+ over 100, Butler and DDJ.
During the Littlefield era, people would find out that I was a Pirate fan and response, "Really? I wasn't sure the Pirates still existed." Now, the response is, "How can you still cheer for a team that always trades away all of its best players?" That's Huntington couldn't care less about projecting a facade of "professionalism," and he's instead focused on rebuilding the Pirates the best way he sees fit. There are still a lot of questions to be answered and until the Pirates start competing Huntington hasn't actually accomplished anything, but all told I certainly prefer his approach to the prior one.
The Importance of Being Different: Perspective from a Pirates fan evaluating former front office moves that looked "professional" but were actually horrible vs. current front office moves that are highly unpopular but geared towards rebuilding the minors.
Sam Mellinger discusses the Royals season on 610
Good listen. He's very candid in his analysis.
Survey says ... Zack is people's choice to win the AL Cy
Zack 53%, Felix 17%, CC 13%, JV 12%, Doc 5%.
Compared to the same poll from a month ago:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/fp/flashPollResultsState?sportIndex=pollindex&pollId=77674
Zack 51%, CC 20%, JV 10%, Doc 10%, Felix 8%
Regionally, Zack wins over New York in the end-of-season poll, and actually has a slightly higher overall base of support even though in the old poll, ~1600 people from KS and MO out of 22,000 voted and in the new one only ~900 from KS and MO out of 26,000 voted. The main difference is how people view the other candidates, as Felix has obviously taken second over CC, and Halladay has slipped into obscurity in the public opinion despite finishing the season with 2 CG SHOs. But there's basically an unshakable belief from over half the populace surveyed that Zack is the best AL pitcher of 2009.
My Bad: Royals Won’t Win the A.L. Central
New York Times Yankee beat writer Tyler Kepner revisits his pre-season prediction of the Royals winning the Central and where it all went wrong. He did, however, also prognosticate a 2009 Zack Greinke Cy Young.
Davies scratched from next start with strained oblique
My gosh, what is wrong with this team and injuries to starting pitchers? /rhetorical question
Bannister and Meche out for the year with fatigued shoulders, Greinke bruised elbow, Tejada blister, Chen oblique, and now Davies oblique. Luke Hochevar, they're coming for you next!
Dumb Arguments against Zack Greinke’s Cy Young Case and Why They’re All Wrong
by swing and a miss on Sep 18, 2009 10:57 AM EDT
on Royals Review
1. He doesn't have enough wins.
Obviously, the Royals have the worst record in the American League, and Greinke personally possesses the worst individual run support in the AL as calculated by total runs scored in all starts. The bullpen has blown four games in which he's left the game in line for the win. The Yankees bullpen has not blown ANY of CC Sabathia's wins. Absolutely no one in the AL, pitcher or hitter, gives his team a better objective chance to win as monitored by WPA.
WPA (win percentage added):
Greinke 5.30, Verlander 4.25, Hernandez 3.53, Sabathia 2.52, Halladay 1.73
WPA's a little nebulous to me, so here's a breakdown by start of how well each starter kept his team in the game by starts (5+ runs = bad, 0-2 runs = good).
Starts allowing 5+ runs:
Greinke 3, Halladay 6, Verlander 7. Hernandez 7, Sabathia 8
Starts allowing 0-2 runs:
Greinke 21, Hernandez 19, Verlander 15, Sabathia 15, Halladay 14
Wins lost due to blown saves:
Greinke 4, Hernandez 3, Verlander 2, Halladay 1, Sabathia 0
Run support/9 IP:
Greinke 4.71, Hernandez 5.73, Halladay 6.14, Verlander 6.21, Sabathia: 7.80
Being more than a full run behind the next guy in run support with more wins lost to blown saves than anyone is like having to run two extra miles in the marathon more than everyone else in the competition.
2. His W/L % isn't very good.
In addition to receiving the worst run support in the AL, Greinke is also extremely unlucky. He has left eight games trailing, and the Royals were not able to take him off the hook in any of them. In contrast, Felix Hernandez, despite pitching for the team that has scored the least runs in the league, has left twelve games trailing and been taken off the hook on seven occasions, including two in which he got the win. Zack's also the only pitcher in the majors who has more than one outing where he gave up one run in seven or more innings and lost. On top of all that in his 30th start, he received a lead in the first inning for the first time all year.
Leads in the first inning:
Greinke 1, Hernandez 4, Sabathia 5, Verlander 5, Halladay 6
Baseball Prospectus's LUCK index measures the difference between expected W-L (calculated from pitcher performance) to actual W-L record:
Zack Greinke LUCK: -4.08, Team W-L: 59-87
Roy Halladay LUCK: 0.43, Team W-L: 66-80
Felix Hernandez LUCK: 2.99, Team W-L: 76-71
Justin Verlander LUCK: 3.25, Team W-L: 78-68
CC Sabathia LUCK: 6.07, Team W-L: 94-53
Hey, isn't it funny that luck correlates directly to team performance?
No decision breakdowns by games left ahead (A), tied (T), or behind (B):
Greinke: 3 A, 5 T, 0 B, ERA: 1.95
Hernandez: 2 A, 3 T, 5 B, ERA: 2.15
Verlander: 2 A, 2 T, 3 B, ERA: 4.63
Halladay: 1 A, 3T, 1 B, ERA: 2.73
Sabathia: 0 A, 4 T, 3 B, ERA: 3.71
All those other guys have been bailed out by their teams when they've left the game behind, and they all have fewer games blown by the bullpen. Greinke has no such luxuries.
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Moore confirms Hillman to return as manager, says players accountable for poor season
I especially like the part where he calls out, of all things, Billy Butler's inability to turn a 3-6-3 double play.
Royals say 1B prospect Eric Hosmer will have LASIK surgery on Friday.
Bob Dutton's Twitter
I guess they gave up hope that the prescription glasses would ever arrive.
"No, I am absolutely not wearing that," Mets right fielder Jeff Francoeur said with a laugh after seeing a prototype, as if he were being asked to put a pumpkin on his head. "I could care less what they say, I’m not wearing it. There’s got to be a way to have a more protective helmet without all that padding. It’s brutal. We’re going to look like a bunch of clowns out there."
The Kansas City Royals are trying to predict an even more distant and hazy future. Their plan is to spend their money and resources on the front end -- they spent more money on the draft last year than any other team and will be one of the biggest spenders again this year. They have become big players in Latin America. They are putting their future in 16- and 17-year-olds. Sure, it's frustrating for fans who have been watching mostly terrible baseball for 15 years to be patient -- especially when the Royals have Zack Greinke, one of the franchise players in the game, right now. But the on-the-cheap big-league moves the Royals have made have ranged from shaky to frightening, and the Royals are on pace to lose 100 games again. The future is later, much later.
The Dugout: Rise of the Machines
New Dugout with the beloved pr0FF3ss0r_F4rnsw0rth and other Royals
Mellinger claims "Royals players happy Hillman will return"
...despite not a single player saying any such thing. Teahen is the only player quoted, and he doesn't exactly exude enthusiasm for the Mustache.
Brother of Royals Ace Battling Injuries after Being Cut by Yanks
Luke Greinke discusses rehabbing from a torn labrum.
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