By the time you read this, the entire post will be out of date. Such is the hazard of writing about the Winter Meetings. The annual event kicks off Monday in Orlando. That’s the only thing we can say with any certainty as this year’s edition promises to be a wild affair. Shohani Ohtani and […]
Author: Craig Brown
Roster Rumblings
Finally! It’s a cornucopia of Royals roster moves! Eh. Not really. It’s more about subtle shifts in the teutonic plates before the big shakeup that’s looming on the horizion. Still, in the early darkness of winter, it’s something to talk (and write) about. Onward. The Royals Sign Mike Morin To A One Year Deal As […]
Time To Tender
Hot stove? Forget about it. Tepid stove is more like it these days. Since teams are sitting around twiddling their collective free agent signing thumbs, we’re left to mark time by the mandated deadlines as they pertain to roster construction. Last week, it was adding players to the 40-man roster to protect them from the […]
Roster Math At The Deadline
Monday was all about spring training caps, spring training schedules and some Rule 5 draft news. God help us all. As Major League Baseball is trying to get their house in order with regards to the Shohei Ohtani posting/free agency situation, it’s created something of a mid-November malaise. Nothing is happening, other than the self-imposed negotiating […]
Moore Stays, Yost Is Alive And Other Notes From The GM Meetings
The dominoes finally tumbled. With Atlanta announcing Alex Anthopoulos as their new general manager, both the Braves and the Royals can now move forward with their offseason plans. In Anthopoulos, the Braves get a young general manager who engineered a successful rebuild in Toronto and worked the last couple of years in the Dodgers front […]
Balancing Act
Once the game starts, it seems managers have very little impact. They can call on bits and pieces of strategy – a stolen base, a sacrifice bunt, etc. – or they can move personnel incrementally with a pinch hitter or a pinch runner. The area where all managers make their mark is with the bullpen. […]
An Uncertain Future
The Royals are stuck. They are stuck with a general manager who most likely has interest in a similar job with another organization. They are stuck with ownership who currently doesn’t have a clear plan of their own level of involvement over the next several years. And in the most important offseason in the history […]
What Went Wrong – The Padres Trade
This is the second in a series of postmortem articles on the 2017 Royals. The first – a look at Melky Cabrera’s return to the Royals – can be found here. On Sunday, July 23, the Royals rallied against the White Sox. Down 4-3 in the eighth, Whit Merrifield homered to leadoff the inning and […]
Three More Years: Kennedy Bypasses Opt Out
As expected, and as reported over the weekend, Ian Kennedy committed his future to Kansas City for the next three years by foregoing the opt-out clause in his current contract. It’s only a surprise if you haven’t been paying attention. In an interview close to the season’s end with the Kansas City Star, Kennedy said, […]
Wanted: Dayton Moore
It turns out they do want to talk to Dayton Moore in Atlanta. News broke at the end of last week the Royals were approached by the Braves, asking for permission to interview Moore for the GM position in Atlanta. We’re not even a full month into the offseason and things just got exponentially more […]