In the older days, teams often let pitchers develop at the major league level in their first season from the bullpen prior to transferring them into a starting role. This practice has lessened more and more through the years with the worries of service time for small market teams and limited time with quality starting […]
Tag: Matt Strahm
Rotation Depth Bodes Well For Royals
While this has been a quiet offseason for the Royals, I feel good about the rotation headed into the 2017 season. This is no small feat, because as we chronicled plenty here last season, the rotation was a big reason the 2016 Royals missed the playoffs and limped home with a .500 record. That excitement […]
Shaking Up The Band (BP Kansas City Episode 41)
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/kansascitybaseballvault/2017/01/12/shaking-up-the-band-bp-kansas-city-episode-41.mp3 So after a pretty quiet offseason, the Royals started to make a few moves. In the last week, the big move was trading longtime Royal Jarrod Dyson to Seattle for right-handed pitcher Nathan Karns. As a fan, it’s a tough move because Dyson has been in the organization so long and has had so […]
Prospecting the Royals in 2017
Breaking down the Royals prospects is definitely an inexact science. The development path of each player is different player to player as we saw in the late blooming careers of Danny Duffy, Whit Merrifield and Cheslor Cuthbert last season in Kansas City or the ascension of Matt Strahm into his bullpen role. Still, every season […]
Bullpen By The Numbers
Hey, how about some good, old fashioned statistical baseball chatter? The Hot Stove is still simmering, but with the Wade Davis trade still fresh in our collective consciousness, why not look at some Royals bullpen numbers, courtesy of the Bill James Handbook and Baseball Reference? Davis is credited with 39 “clean” outings in 45 appearances. The […]
The 2018 Royals: Probably Better Than You Think
I told a few people the other day that the Royals are “logically eliminated, not mathematically eliminated” from postseason contention; sure, there is a path to the playoffs, but it involves so many what-ifs and need-this-and-thats that it is only a slightly better bet than a lottery ticket. There will be plenty of time to […]
RECAP: Royals 5, Marlins 2; Electric Defense Fries The Fish
If you’re being honest with your inner baseball fan, these Royals haven’t been playing the most exciting brand of baseball. Don’t get me wrong, the wins are nice and the month of August has been brilliant. It’s just that all too frequently, we see this team turn out the lights for extended periods. Dull, low […]
RECAP: Royals 4, Tigers1; Hosmer The Heroic
This was shaping up to being one of those games. Anibal Sanchez has been one of worst pitchers in the American League this year. He entered the game with a 6.31 ERA. He allows over 10 hits per 9 innings. So naturally he was perfect through four innings. Of course he no-hit the Royals through […]
The Royals’ Fifth Starter Problem
It’s never too early to look ahead to the offseason, at least not when your team is below .500 in mid-August. The Royals have lots of things to fix this winter: a popgun offense, a suddenly leaky bullpen, and a subpar rotation. I do think that some of the offensive problems will fix themselves; I […]
Friday Notes
Don’t look now, but the Royals have won two straight series and are 6-4 in their last 10 games. If they keep that pace the rest of the year, they’ll finish with about 84 wins. That shows you how far they have to climb out of if they want to get to the postseason. My […]