As the elder statesmen of this new BP Kansas City crew, it seems appropriate that I will be offering a regular Sunday morning column – or fairly regular as I tend to be unreliable. At any rate, this will be something of a tidbit, hodge-podge, potpurri, random opinion collection of musing: most of which will have to do with baseball. At least a few times, I will actually write it on my deck, assuming that it is one of the three Nebraska Sundays per year that it is not too hot, too cold, too windy or too bug infested to tolerate being outside.
First off today, Sprint tweeted in support of the Kansas Jayhawks last night and did so showing a picture of Kansas City, Missouri (gasp!). I could give a a flying you know what about the Kansas-Missouri nitpicking, but it does rekindle memories of whose team the Royals are? There was some ugliness last year (or stupidity?) in regard to folks from Kansas or Nebraska or Iowa or wherever not being able to lay claim to the Royals. Having spent games in empty stadiums watching bad Kansas City teams play poorly, let’s not suddenly start placing criteria on who has the right to be passionate about the Royals.
On the field Saturday, Reymond Fuentes continued his hot spring. Less than two months ago, I wrote (as did every other blogger in the Royals’ sphere) about the options for a platoon partner for Jarrod Dyson. Fuentes was pretty much an afterthought in that article. Now, however, he might well start on Opening Night and see as much or more action than Orlando until Dyson returns. As Clint wrote on Friday, one could do worse than Fuentes in right most nights.
We also saw a nice outing by Chien-Ming Wang, who spun three scoreless innings. My ‘old man warning flag’ is up, however, in that he struck out no one…in spring training. Given that almost anyone the Royals put on the mound seems to be able to get strikeouts, we are likely spoiled – and Wang has notched strikeouts in earlier outings – but something to keep an eye on.
And hey! Danny Duffy got people out as well, going two scoreless innings with a couple of strikeouts. I have gone from a Duffy proponent to a Duffy skeptic. The stuff is there, but maybe not the ability to keep it functional for an extended period of time. I can see a lot of scenarios developing with the southpaw, the most hopeful being an extended stay in the bullpen turns him into a productive starter (i.e. the Greinke Manuever). I’m skeptical, but will happily admit my error in judgment down the road.
Moving into re-hash mode, they may yet surprise me, but the Royals have not said much to give me hope that they plan to utilize any of the roster manipulations I speculated could be in play in my two part series earlier this week. Yost did mention skipping Medlen’s start the first time through, but that’s the extent thus far. It seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to carry Gore’s legs and an extra bat for the first two or three games before settling into a more normal roster.
What is a random idea column without a fun fact? Well, Alex Gordon is tied for the team lead in walks this spring with seven. He is tied with Brett Eibner, who has not been with the big league team for weeks.
Finally, Mike Moustakas played in four games this past week and batted second in all of them. Alex Gordon played in three games and batted sixth in all three. I believe we know the batting order, at least one through seven, for April 3rd.