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04-30-2021, 06:54 AM | #1816 |
MVP
Join Date: Mar 2013
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It’s the last day of April and I’m waking up to the Kansas City Royals who STILL own the BEST record in Major League Baseball!
Happy Friday! Enjoy the weekend and let’s kick some Twinkie ass!! |
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04-30-2021, 07:43 AM | #1817 |
I’m a Mahomo!
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Mid-Missouri
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3. Daniel Lynch, LHP, Kansas City Royals
Age: 24 Height: 6-6 Weight: 203 REPERTOIRE: FB: 65 CB: 50 SLI: 65 CH: 55 CTL: 55 CMND: 50 Daniel Lynch is developing rapidly, so don’t be surprised if he’s promoted as early as June. His fastball velocity is consistently in the 95 to 99 mph range with sink and deception thanks to his lanky all-legs-and-arms delivery. His slider is a true wipeout, nasty, filthy, see-you-later-type pitch. His change-up is above average, and he’s not afraid to throw it in any count. His curveball is serviceable. It’s been difficult for Lynch to command his pitches in the strike zone, but that has more to do with his height and wing span than mechanics. He has ace upside. |
Posts: 54,038
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04-30-2021, 07:44 AM | #1818 |
I’m a Mahomo!
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Mid-Missouri
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7. Asa Lacy, LHP, Kansas City Royals
Age: 21 Height: 6-4 Weight: 215 REPERTOIRE: FB: 60 CB: 55 SLI: 60 CH: 65 CTL: 50 CMND: 45 Asa Lacy, whom the Royals drafted at No. 4 last year, was projected to take one of the quickest paths to the big leagues among the 2020 picks. He gets a unique downward angle on his delivery that adds deception to his mid-90s fastball, which he fills up the strike zone with early in the count. Lacy has two above-average breaking balls: His slider, which comes in at 88 mph with late break and tilt, is probably his best off-speed pitch, but his 12-6 downward curveball is also a lethal weapon. He has an above-average change-up that he can spot on either side of the plate. It’s a four-pitch menu that appears unstoppable. Now, Lacy needs to master his control and command of his repertoire. Once he does, he’ll be in the big leagues for a long time. |
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04-30-2021, 08:54 AM | #1819 |
I’m a Mahomo!
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Mid-Missouri
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Posts: 54,038
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04-30-2021, 09:24 AM | #1820 |
M-I-Z-Z-O-U
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Kansas City
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Those scouts are... exciting.
Those are premium, premium arsenals. Lynch probably has the best stuff, and Lacy has a better combination of stuff and polish. |
Posts: 21,171
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04-30-2021, 10:45 AM | #1821 |
Herm is the worst...horrible
Join Date: Sep 2000
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I have a question on that. It was a Bowden article...which always makes me roll my eyes. Is he getting those numbers from other, qualified guys or are they coming from him?
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Posts: 2,014
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04-30-2021, 10:51 AM | #1822 | |
I’m a Mahomo!
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Mid-Missouri
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Quote:
I ranked the top position-player prospects I’m most eager to scout when the minor-league season begins on Tuesday. Now, it’s time to break down the prime pitching prospects I’m targeting. One requirement for my list: A pitcher cannot have made his major-league debut, so top prospects such as Nate Pearson, Sixto Sánchez and Brailyn Márquez were not included. Let’s get right to it. (Jim Bowden’s tools grades are based on the 20-80 scouting scale, in which 20-30 is well below average, 40 is below average, 50 is average, 60 is above average and 70-80 is well above average. FB denotes Fastball; CB: Curveball; CH: Change-up; SLI: Slider; CT: Cutter; CTL: Control; CMND: Command.) |
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04-30-2021, 10:58 AM | #1823 |
I’m a Mahomo!
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Mid-Missouri
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Joe Posnanski has a Dayton Moore bit today in his column:
Monday, April 26 Dayton As of this writing, the Kansas City Royals have the best record in all of baseball and, OK, sure, we’re only 21 games into the season and there is absolutely no reason when looking at this team to believe it’s going to last. But I still want to spend a moment talking a bit about the subtle genius of my friend Dayton Moore. He was a hot commodity when the Royals hired him in 2006 — the guy at the top of most of the “Next-Gen General Managers” lists — but I am not sure that would be true today. He had moved up step by step by step, first as a college coach, then hired by Atlanta as a scout, then moved up to assistant director of scouting, then to assistant director of player development, then to head of international scouting, then to director of player development, then to assistant general manager. He was not an Ivy Leaguer — no offense to the fine institution that is George Mason — and did not claim any particular savvy for the analytics that were sweeping the land post-Moneyball. He was an unabashed traditionalist who believed then, as he does now, that to build a great baseball team, you have to bet on talent and character, you have to treat people well, you have to excel at every part of the game from groundskeeping to scouting, from the concessions stands to the ticket takers to the bullpen. And in the early years, none of it seemed to be working. He talked about the Royals’ “process” so often that the very word became a punchline in Kansas City. The Royals finished a 100-loss season in his first year and then lost between 87 and 97 each of the next six years. He took a flier on an intense and similarly minded manager named Trey Hillman, who’d never been in a big-league clubhouse but had won as a skipper in Japan. That didn’t work out. He hired Ned Yost, who had taken Milwaukee to the brink of success before the organization determined in a panic that they had to fire him in order to get that success. That hire looked doomed, too. But all the while, Moore didn’t waver. He’s this sort of person: After he first took the general manager’s job, he was driving around The Plaza in Kansas City — a lovely outdoor area of shops and restaurants — and thought: “This would be a great place for a World Series parade.” As it turns out, the parade was held downtown. That happened in 2015. First came 2014, when the Royals were good enough to sneak into the postseason as a wild card and then went on an epic playoff run that lasted all the way to the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series. In 2015, the Royals were simply the best team in the American League from start to finish and they had another extraordinary playoff run, this one ending with that parade. And the team was pure Dayton Moore. They were certainly not the best hitting team in the league, and they were certainly not the best pitching team in the league. They did not have an MVP on the team, they did not have a Cy Young Award winner on the team. In 2015, nobody on the club hit 23 home runs, nobody won 14 games, nobody stole 30 bases, nobody struck out 160 batters; the team itself led the league in only two statistical categories: • They were the hardest team to strike out. • They won the most games. How did they do it? I can’t help but wonder if it’s the wrong question because, frankly, nobody seemed to care. While everybody was utterly fascinated by how the A’s won, by how the Astros won, by how the Cubs won, by how the Red Sox won, by how the Rays won — all of these inspired big, best-selling books — the success of Moore’s Royals was chalked up to, what, luck? Flukiness? The rest of baseball being temporarily numb? But, of course, it was more than that. That team perfectly embodied the philosophy of Moore and assistant GM J.J. Picollo and the rest of the Royals front office. They put together a team of players who liked each other, played for each other, fed off each other’s energy. They put together an outfield that had no gaps, literally — you couldn’t hit a ball into the gap against Jarrod Dyson-Lorenzo Cain-Alex Gordon because they covered everything. They put together a bullpen that took relief pitching to a new level with closers for every inning after the fifth. And, yes, they put together a lineup that scraped and clawed and put a lot of balls in play and found ways, somehow, to score more runs than they allowed. For the next two years, Moore made the fateful decision that the team’s greatest chance of success was to, as best they could, keep the team together and hope they could find the magic one more time. That didn’t work at all, the team hovered around .500, and then they fell apart and lost 100 games each of the next two seasons. And I kept wondering if Moore might step down, take on another challenge, decide he’d done all that he could do. But then the pandemic hit, and Dayton, in my view, became baseball’s conscience. He and new owner John Sherman again cut hard against the grain last year. They refused to cut salaries and, remarkably for a small-market team, paid their minor leaguers. Why? To explain, he offered my favorite baseball quote of 2020: “Understand this: The minor-league players, the players you’ll never know about, the players that never get out of rookie ball or High A, those players have as much impact on the growth of our game as 10-year or 15-year veteran players. They have as much opportunity to influence the growth of our game as those individuals who played a long time because those individuals go back into their communities and teach the game, work in academies, are JUCO coaches, college coaches, scouts, coaches in pro baseball. “They’re growing the game constantly because they’re so passionate about it. So we felt it was really, really important not to release one minor-league player during this time, a time we needed to stand behind them.” That, my friends, is Dayton Moore. So, yes, of course I’m thrilled to see the Royals having early season success. I don’t understand how they’re doing it. My baseball mind doesn’t have much confidence that Danny Duffy will maintain his 0.39 ERA or that the touching reunion of the 2015 World Series team — this club has Wade Davis, Greg Holland, Ervin Santana, Dyson and Salvy Pérez — will lead to the movie finish. But who knows, right? |
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04-30-2021, 11:10 AM | #1824 | |
I’m a Mahomo!
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Mid-Missouri
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MLB PLAYOFF TIERS
Rustin Dodd Welcome to the first edition of this season’s MLB Playoff Tiers. It’s still early, of course, so we’re looking at the teams most likely to win it all — from the Dodgers to the sleepers to the long shots — and we’re looking at the worst title droughts in baseball. To do the latter, we’ve devised a score — the Drought Index — an unscientific 10.0-point metric that considers history, expectations, the organization’s most recent title(s) and overall franchise success. For example: The Cubs before 2016 would have warranted close to a perfect 10.0; the Yankees after the 2000 season would have been close to a 0.0. Now that that’s explained, let’s get on with it. Quote:
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04-30-2021, 11:13 AM | #1825 | |
The Insider
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Lake of the Ozarks
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Quote:
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04-30-2021, 11:21 AM | #1826 | |
Veteran
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Kansas City
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Quote:
Still a good story and it's nice to have the media recognizing the Royals. |
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Posts: 3,920
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04-30-2021, 11:22 AM | #1827 |
"You like to drink?"
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: "I like to drink."
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Good article but JoPo went full Birdbox on Paterno & Sandusky
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Posts: 42,946
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04-30-2021, 11:39 AM | #1828 |
World's Best Boss
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Bronco Country
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JoPo was ascending to the national scene at that time and immediately tanked his credibility. I've seen him come up on a few reddit/non KC fan sites and usually one of the first replies ties him to Sandusky.
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04-30-2021, 11:41 AM | #1829 |
In Search of a Life
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: San Antonio Tx.
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Posts: 66,914
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04-30-2021, 11:48 AM | #1830 |
World's Best Boss
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Bronco Country
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