Fun Internet findings

Joe Posnanski's take on the Kyle Farnsworth as a starter expiriment. (Terrible idea, my guess is he gets 4 to 5 starts before he's sent back to the 'pen).

The Royals are, in fact, doing some things right when it comes to building the farm system. Granted, they are somewhat half-assing the process (by paying too much to replacement level players at the major league level.

And from Bill Simmons chat on Friday:

JK (Bronx)

In you're last column you ripped the NBA's lack of caring about the fans, but can't you extend these arguments to any sport?

Bill Simmons

(2:43 PM)

It could easily be extended to baseball, but here's the difference: it's fun to go to a baseball game. You're outdoors, you can take your family, bad seats don't matter... there's some upside. You could be a Royals season ticket holder and miserable, but at least you're outside. In fact, that should be their 2010 marketing slogan: "The 2010 Royals: At Least You're Outside."

New Season, Same Problems

After taking a hiatus for the off-season, the Royal Boycott is back on for 2010. As a refresher, I started boycotting the Kansas City Royals around the All-Star break last season due to not only their poor performance, but the front office's refusal to do anything about it. I'm not a sore loser, and I'm not switching my allegiance to another team. I'm simply refusing to give the Royals another dime until they improve the product they are providing me.

Think about it this way. If you went to a restaurant consistently, and every time you went, the food sucked, you'd eventually stop spending money there, right? Same concept here. The only real recourse I have against the Royals terrible front office moves is to stop helping them pay for it.

It made sense to come back and post today for 2 reasons. First of all, spring training is finally underway, with the entire team reporting for the first time yesterday. Secondly, I read an article by Bill Simmons today which encapsulated my feelings about the Royals in a couple paragraphs. The article was on the NBA, but the following could easily be applied to the Royals:

"Teams survive on TV money, season-ticket revenue and luxury suites. They don't care about the upper decks. They care about getting fat checks in March and April for the following season, then banking that money for a few months and collecting interest on it. They care about getting us to pay for a spring's worth of playoff tickets up front even though our team might survive only eight days in the postseason. And if they stink, they care about only one thing: creating an illusion of regret.

The illusion of regret is crucial. It's the single most important dynamic in the NBA right now. It drives every lottery drawing, every trade deadline and every free-agency period. It drives Knicks fans to make the decision in 2008, "I'm gonna ride this out for another two years JUST IN CASE we get someone good two years from now." It's driving more interest in this particular offseason than any in recent memory; as incredible as this sounds, people are anticipating July more than June.

The illusion of regret is also relatively evil, no different from America's lottery system that preys on the lower class: convincing people to pay for the unlikely chance that something good might happen, then making them feel like idiots when it doesn't."

This is exactly what the Royals do every spring. They sell you a bill of goods about how the team is improving, and how they made some great moves in the offseason. And year after year, we hold out hope that they're telling the truth. Well, I don't buy it this year. I bought in last year, but not this time. I plan on spending the next few posts going over the Royals off-season activity to see where they went right and wrong. SPOILER ALERT: They went mostly wrong. We didn't improve much on defense, and we may have actually gotten worse on offense.

On the whole, the Royals off-season was horrendous. The guys we let go make sense. If you read the blog last year, you should be able to guess that I applauded the moves to get rid of Jacobs and Olivo especially. However, picking up Rick Ankiel, Jason Kendall, Scott Podsednick and Chris Getz is not the answer. They are more expensive versions of players we already have. I'll go over each of these guys in detail in the next few posts.

I feel strongly that I won't regret this boycott in 2010. I expect another run at 4th or 5th place, and another near 100 loss season. I'm not going to get suckered in by any pre-season hype. I'm not even going to get suckered in if the Royals start out strong in April again. I'm not rooting for them to lose, but I just can't find a reason why I should believe the Royals will win.

The Minnesota Twins... the team the Royals COULD be

Watching the Twins beat the Tigers to win the Central on Tuesday was not only exciting, but also made me think of what the Royals could be. The Twins are not one of those high-dollar, big spending teams like the Yankees or Sox, yet they are consistent winners. Tuesday marked their 5th Central title in the past 8 years. On top of that, they played in a one game playoff last year to almost win the Central. They are certainly the best run team in the division over the last decade.



It's easy to forget that the Twins were in a similar boat as the Royals for much of the 90's. From 1993 to 2000, the Twins averaged 66 wins per season and finished last or 2nd to last in the division all but 1 year. However, they used that time to build up their farm system. They drafted well, and invested in young players, and it has paid of dividends. They have finished no worse than 3rd since 2001 and won the afore mentioned 5 division titles.

The Royals should look long and hard at what the Twins have done over the last 10 to 12 seasons. It's a blueprint for how smaller market teams CAN win. Seeing the Twins lets me know that it's not OK to use the small market excuse. It can be done.

Come on Royals.

Greinke goes for another win...

Zack takes the hill again this afternoon with a shot to get win number 16. This is significant, because no one has ever won the Cy Young with less than 16 wins. While I think wins is not a very good stat to judge how good a pitcher is, a lot of a voters put some weight on it. Also significant is that if Greinke throws 9 more scoreless innings, his ERA will drop to 1.99. It would be really tough to vote for anyone else if Greinke's ERA was that good.

Greinke now leads the Cy Young Predictor

The Bill James Cy Young predictor has correctly picked the Cy Young winner 8 of the last 12 years in the AL. In 3 of the other 4, the winner picked by the predictor finished 2nd. After six more innings of scoreless ball on Tuesday, Greinke took the AL league in the predictor. Let's be honest, if Zack doesn't win, the whole voting process is a joke. But more on that in a future post. For now, check out the predictor.

Aaron Crow signs!

Yesterday, Aaron Crow officially signed with the Royals ending a year and a half hold out from MLB. I'll keep my thoughts on this brief, but I think this was crucial for the Royals. Crow signed for 3 years, $4.5 million. While that might seem like a lot for a guy who has never pitched in the bigs, it could end up being a big value based on Crow's potential. The Royals desperately need him in the bigs, and they need him now.

The thing about front office strategy is 2009 is that Moneyball is more or less dead. It's not the concept of Moneyball, valuing things other don't, that is dead. That is still important. I mean the actualy things in Moneyball such as OBP that you used to be able to get on the cheap that are dead. When the A's were winning early in the decade, it's because they valued OBP and could get it cheap because no one else did. But the cat's out of the bag. Now everyone knows OBP is important. The next "Moneyball" idea is not yet out there.

So for now, smaller market teams have to take risks on unproven players, and hope they hit big. They can't compete for big name free agents. As Royals fans, we need to hope Crow is as good as advirtised and that he gets to the bigs soon. Sitting out a year is definitely concerning. Hopefully it's not a big deal.

On a side note, I was thrilled that the Royals went for the Mizzou guy. I've seen Crow pitch live more than once, and he was dominate in college. Let's hope that translates to the bigs.

Another win...

It's now 7 of the last 8. If anyone can tell me where Robinson Tejeda came from, I would appreciate it. And by that I mean I know he's been on the team all year, but why is he all of a sudden good?