The baseball season’s nearing an end with under 20 games left to play…
And what a roller coaster ride it’s been for the Royals!
The team’s core group from its World Series years is mostly still here. Plus the Royals are still in the mix for a possible wild card berth.
Unfortunately, like last year the team, they’ve never really looked like much of a team. Nor have they ever even been in first place for a day. At least they’re playing .500 ball again.
So even with Eric Hosmer – KC’s only maybe superstar – we can’t for sure be in the playoffs, let alone win or compete for a division title.
Cleveland has won 20 in a row on its way to plus 100 wins and have destroyed our Royals all season.
And that’s what a top team looks like today.
The attendance of course is falling as fans face the awful truth of yet another average season likely to be followed by years of trying to stay average and out of last place.
What kind of team will KC have next year?
Pitching is so important and we now have none.
Yes we lost some great relievers over the past three seasons including Wade Davis. We all know about the tragic death of Ace Ventura and the continued problems with our new ace, Danny Duffy.
We have no real starting lineup of pitchers today, just a mish-mash of hopefuls, maybes and mistakes.
Now KC has to build from the minor league, drafts and trades.
Now we are no longer a contender,
And Kansas City isn’t exactly a garden spot for a young player to become a star, right?
Will young budding stars want to join the Royals today? Not very likely.
Plus, THE MONEY JIMMY.
We ain’t rich.
As for keeping those oh so important superstar core players for another year or more…
What superstars?
Kansas City has one halfway legit kinda baseball star, Eric Hosmer.
He’s now our entire offense for the most part…24 home runs, .328, 85 RBI’s, .395 OBP…177 hits – all team leading save the home run number.
Mike Moustakas is the home run king on the team following a huge first half of the season roll with nearly 30 home runs. He even made the All-Star team and home run derby.
Since that time he’s faded badly on the home run front with not even 10 more since.
Moose needs one more to cinch the KC all time home run record.
But who really cares at this point?
Why?
Nearly Eevery other team but ours (and our former KC A’s has at least one player with plus 40 home runs) and we don’t have ONE.
SOOOO….other than Eric, our other core players including Moose, Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar and maybe a couple pitchers…none will be in huge demand.
Don’t get me wrong, teams will want Moose, for a price, but nothing close to Hosmer’s plus $100 million for 5-7 years.
Moose is not a proven power hitter and he likely won’t break 40 this year while he is only hitting .275.
He’s a pretty good third baseman – a good player but not a star. Sorry.
So if KC wants to keep him they can if they pay him likely less than they did Alex Gordon!
But will they?
As for Cain, he will be 32 years old. He’s an excellent center fielder, a solid hitter 280-300 with light power…15-20 homers a year, so he will be available but not for huge dough…We pay him around $11 million a year now…I don’t see his value going up.
P.S. Hosmer is a goner.
So other than Hosmer the Royals could keep everyone else if they wanted to.
Or start the rebuild with Sal Perez and Whit leading the way.
However KC needs to find pitchers and it’s going to be uphill from here.
Do I think KC will slide into the post season this year? I don’t.
We have to jump 4 other teams. I mean we maybe could but man we just can’t win more than 2 in a row with no pitching.
Hey, we had 2014/2015 put those years in your memory abecause it could be a long, long wait for another team like those ever shows up around these parts.
“Do I think KC will slide into the post season this year? I don’t. We have to jump 4 other teams. I mean we maybe could but”
– where’s there’s White Sox (29 games south .500 and STILL wild card eligible time of this writing), a perverse hope lingers: American Psychiatric Association DSM Manual, would refer it ‘297.1 (F22) – Delusional Disorder’.
Four teams ahead the fraudroyals, another team just as crummy as KC tied with them and 6 more (as in ‘every remaining team in the AL’ MLB’s sack of hammers known as the wild card) also still mathematically alive.
The lack of any semblance pride and dignity required such a beneficiary the shameful second seed wild card already understood, a rhetorical: they shoot horses, don’t they?
AGREEED!
It’s all over but the shouting, sham MLB season its 148th ‘Year of our latest Prolapse’ 2017 (hanging down terms integrity that is… terms reward, back up the Brinks.)
As if watching the flotsam & jetsam fraudroyals (reality, all 30 MLB teams) not swindle enough, affirmed independent study ‘bogus baseballs’ having proven $o effective, no doubt encore will append 2018, amaranthine.
http://mlb.nbcsports.com/2017/06/29/a-second-study-confirms-that-home-runs-are-up-due-to-a-change-in-the-baseball/
Bu$ine$$ as usual the supposititious impingement sensibilities discriminating fandom & assassination same, statistics. Simple terms: MLB as sport et al be fourberie the parlance, aka ‘fraud’.
To wit, ‘home runs’ baseball. For reference, 1903 Chicago White Sox hit 3 home runs – the entire season. Come 1997, early stages the steroid era, the Seattle Mariners hit 264 home runs, an MLB record; by 2001, one player alone hit 73, another MLB record.
1997 saw 4640 home runs (hrs) hit MLB, 1 every 33.5 at bats. By 2001 the heights PED’S, were 5,458 hrs hit (increase of 818), for 1 home run being hit every 30.5 at bats.
2016 were 5809 hrs hit, 1 hr every 28.5 at bats.) 2017 (through Friday), 5594 hrs were hit, 1 every 26.9 at bats. At this present pace, another 549 hrs will be hit by season’s end (that’s 6143 or 334 more hrs hit in 2017 than 2016, another MLB record.)
Epilogue: gosh, players today are really good (hold guffaws.)
To wit, not only is a KC player on the precipice breaking the team’s single season hr mark, elsewhere, ‘3’ players – all MLB rookies to wit – are hitting hrs at a ratio greater than anyone history of the game. In fact, more than one case hitting more hrs in the majors than they ever did the minor leagues, where a different ball is used.
NY Yankees Aaron Judge is hitting a hr every 11.5 at bats, while right behind him the LA Dodgers Cody Bellinger hits a hr every 11.6 at bats. Giancarlo Stanton the MIA Marlins hits an hr every 9.9 at bats and leads MLB with 54 but he’s not a rookie, so, who cares, right? Also better than another member MLB’s cavalcade ‘sudden star’ the hr 2017, former Tiger but of late Diamondback JD Martinez, his paltry 1 hr every 9.8 at bats ‘meh’, comparison.
Think all of those guys bes impressive? Mere poseurs foot of the master, Rhys Hoskins.
R-h-y-s H-o-s-k-i-n-s (rhymes with who dat?)
The Marlin, Yankee as the Dodger are all pretenders to another rookie PHIL Phillie Hoskins who 2017 hits a hr every 6.7 at bat –
merely historic and, oh by the way, better than Ruth’ s 11.8, or PED era ‘stars’ McGwire’s 10.6, & Bonds 12.9; cue Mr. Spock’s raised eyebrow.
How does all this translate where it matters most? An ‘increase’ $1,000,000,000 (BILLION) MLB teams coffers since just 2015, according documented research. 2017’s haul will top out north of $10,000,000,000 (BILLION) in total since baseballs started doing strange things – leaving ballparks with suspect regularity.
“Purely unintentional” sayeth unnamed powers that be, MLB; record book and history groans under the weight faux wangle.
______________
Star Date 2017.9.16
‘Final Solution’ part I
Captain Kirk: “Your findings, Doctor McCoy?”
Dr. McCoy: ‘Da**it Jim! I’m a DOCTOR, not an anal-
Capt. Kirk: ” ‘yst ‘Bones, that’s yst. Mr. Spock, your analysis.”
Spock: ‘I suggest that we bypass the Vulcan neck pinch, and directly wash Dr. McCoy’s mouth out with neuroparalyzer soap.’
Capt. Kirk: “I meant ‘what about this mess MLB’ Spock, faux hrs making a mockery of the game’s integrity.”
Mr. Spock: ‘Indeed Captain, the legitimacy is quite dubious as MLB’s denial totally illogical. However, I was never allowed to play baseball on Vulcan a little Spock, so never tried hit hr.’
Capt. Kirk: “Clowns to the left of me, jokers the right- never mind. I’m running out of options – perhaps the southpaw, Mr. Sulu… help me out here, helmsman.”
Mr. Sulu: ‘Make love not war, Commander Trump?’
Capt. Kirk: “That’s Kirk, Mister – ‘Captain’ James Tiberius Kirk, you flaming-
Mr. Chekov: ‘Captain, sir: perhaps the Russki tack: a long-range photon torpedo strike.’
Capt. Kirk: “Aggression is always a good choice Mr. Chekov – lock on coordinates MLB’s offices New York City. Mr. Sulu, prepare to fire on my order.”
Man we were lucky to have those 2014/2015 World Series seasons. How many teams go to TWO WS in a row? Maybe the Yankees and that’s about it! I guess we had so many players in their prime years we somehow pulled it off. I do give credit to Moore and Glass attempt at one more ring before the curtain closed for awhile. So what we petered out in the end, we had a great 2-3 month run after a horrid April.
Glass now gets the unenviable job of starting from scratch and trying to build a championship team once again. He’s a Schuerholz prodigy so it is possible he will do it again. If he does, he’s in the Hall of Fame for sure.
Like your take E.H. but I think you mean rebuild with our G.M. not Glass? Yep even last nights loss was kinda what the Royals are now….a late lead, Gordon almost catches the final out in the 9th with two outs but instead just misses and it drives in tying run for Cleveland followed later by their extra innings win and number 21 in a row.
Hey it was nice to have those two seasons as you mentioned. Without finding new stars from the minors or in a trade, its impossible to keep it all going year after year. As mentioned KC is not a place young players hanker to land. So its uphill and a lack of big bucks to pay them. Yes it is likely years away, another run at a world series. But sure give the Royals credit for the two years we did have.
Oops, you’re right I meant Dayton Moore lol. At least it’s fun to root for the Royals again. Those 29 years without a playoff appearance were horrible, we had that perfect storm of Ewing Kaufman dying, George Brett retiring, and that 94/95 strike, which caused KC’s new owner to have little choice but gut the team and enter two decades of rebuilding, scrapping, rebuilding, scrapping.
Just think, KC has the same number of World Series titles as the L.A. Dodgers since 1980..and TWICE the amount of World Series appearances!
E.H. good comment on Dodgers/Royals. Still its going to be some years before we can brag again, I’m afraid. Hey they did stop the Cleveland streak last night, but after the way Cleveland has trounced us this season, not much to shout about, huh.
we are 7-10 against Cleveland this year, not good but not terrible either..who knows we might end up 9-10 after this weekend.
What if Cleveland doesn’t win the WS this year? Did you know they haven’t won a WS since the 50’s? They are Cleveland after all.
A couple of bright spots:
1. KC could end up the season at .500 or better. This would be 4 straight years with an even or winning record. I don’t think we had a winning record in the 28(yes, TWENTY EIGHT) years before this streak.
2. Dayton is going to rebuild this team, we’ve at least got a small foundation in Salvy and Merrifield and maybe Moose. Maybe we’ll have a couple of down years and compete again in 2020?
3. Just think how many teams hardly ever appear or win the World Series. Teams like the Brewers, Mariners, Padres, Rockies, Mets, Nats, Astros, Rangers, Orioles, Devil Rays, Braves, Tigers, Expos, Angels, Pirates, etc. We used to be one of those teams but not anymore.