The Lexington Legends are the Kansas City Royals’ Class A affiliate. But the Royals affiliation is only a little over a month old, so the team wanted to make a big splash in celebration.
via Buzz Feed
Pirates 6, Cardinals 3: For the second straight year the Pirates play a nineteen inning game. This time, unlike the game against the Braves in which they were royally screwed, the Pirates won. Thank you Pedro Alvarez and Andrew McCutchen who drove in runs in the 19th, Alvarez with a homer. They had to burn…
The Royals beat the White Sox 5-2 Sunday afternoon, sweeping first place Chicago in a weekend series. The Royals are in a stretch of playing playoff contenders that started on August third. They started by losing two of three to Texas, then took two of three from the White Sox, split four with Baltimore, took two of three from Oakland, then swept the White Sox. That’s a 10-6 record. The starters posted 11 quality starts in that time, mostly due to a very low walk rate. Getting rid of Jonathan Sanchez had to help in that regard.
White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko was credited with an infield hit with two outs in the seventh inning Sunday, costing Kansas City’s Jeremy Guthrie his chance for a no-hitter. The slow-footed Konerko hit a grounder into the hole at short. Alcides Escobar grabbed it, but made a poor throw that bounced high off the…
I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the box score this morning, but there it was. Jeff Francoeur drew three walks in last night’s 4-2 win over the White Sox. The three walks were actually a career-high for Francoeur. The free-swinging outfielder came into last night’s action with just 20 walks all season.…
The Kansas City’s Star’s Bob Dutton tweeted the following this afternoon: Royals manager Ned Yost: Moving Alex Gordon from first to third in order is likely to be long-term move. Says that’s where Gordon fits. Yost clarifies remarks on future lineups: “Gordon will probably move down to four or five.” Says [Eric] Hosmer still projects…
We took a look at both Western divisions earlier today, now we’ll zero in on just the National League side..
Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports (via Twitter) wonders if Jeff Francoeur could be a fit for the Giants. Rosenthal notes that the outfielder, owed $6.75MM next season, would likely would clear waivers. However, the Royals couldn’t be expected to just give him away.
It has been widely speculated that the Giants acquired Hunter Pence as a response to rumors surrounding Melky Cabrera‘s possible suspension, but GM Brian Sabean denied that being a factor, writes Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle. ”We tried to acquire [Pence] at the deadline last year and he was going to be a Giant if we could find a way to do it this year,” Sabean said. The GM also said that there was nothing “too compelling or interesting” available on the waiver wire.
The new Padres ownership could take the club in a number of directions, writes Chris Jenkins of U-T San Diego. The sale of the team is now complete as it was approved at the owners meetings this week.
Paul Konerko is on the seven-day concussion disabled list after taking a Jarrod Dyson elbow to the head on August 7, but the White Sox slugger is expected to be back in the lineup tomorrow night. Konerko reported no problems while taking batting practice and playing catch Wednesday, and manager Robin Ventura indicated that he’ll…
It was shutout Tuesday, apparently. Let’s tally the goose eggs: Yankees 3, Rangers 0: Hiroki Kuroda with the two-hit shutout. He was masterful, but man, there were a lot of ill-advised Texas swings in the parts of this one I watched. Either Kuroda had them more fooled than someone on the foolingest day of his life [...]
It was shutout Tuesday, apparently. Let’s tally the goose eggs: Yankees 3, Rangers 0: Hiroki Kuroda with the two-hit shutout. He was masterful, but man, there were a lot of ill-advised Texas swings in the parts of this one I watched. Either Kuroda had them more fooled than someone on the foolingest day of his life [...]
So far among AL starters anyway. Jeremy Guthrie couldn’t solve Coors Field, but he appears to have found his comfort zone in Kansas City. The veteran right-hander backed up his eight shutout-inning performance against the White Sox last week with seven more scoreless innings Tuesday in a victory over the A’s. Guthrie allowed just three…
Predictably no team wanted anything to do with Yuniesky Betancourt and his contract on waivers, so after designating him for assignment last week the Royals have outright released the veteran infielder. Kansas City signed Betancourt to a one-year, $2 million deal this offseason despite seeing his amazing out-making ability first-hand in 2010. Between stints with…
Following up on this post about the Royals poor season, not all hope should be abandoned. Sometimes it takes a while for a young team to gel. I remember two teams in particular that I thought would do well, but I was a year early in expecting an improvement. The first was the 1990 Braves. They had Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Steve Avery in the rotation. David Justice, Ron Gant, Jeff Blauser, and Mark Lemke were working their way into the lineup. Atlanta looked like they were poised for an improvement, but went from 63-97 to 65-97. It wasn’t until 1991 that the team came together with the addition of veteran Terry Pendelton. You could see the potential, but the execution was in the future.
The same thing happened with the 1993 Indians. They had acquired Kenny Lofton, Carlos Baerga, Jim Thome, Omar Vizquel, Albert Belle, and Sandy Alomar Jr. over the previous couple of seasons. This was a talented core, and I again thought they were poised for a big improvement. They repeated their 1992 record of 76-86. At the end of the 1993 season, however, they brought up Manny Ramirez, acquired veteran hitter Eddie Murray, and in 1994 posted a .584 winning percentage in a short season. Again, the potential was there, but it took time to bring the team together.
So the potential was their with the Royals, but the winning didn’t happen. The trick for the team is not to panic, but let these players mature one more year. It would be nice if they found a veteran who could actually hit to take Jeff Francoeur‘s spot. It’s too early to give up on this organization and the effort they put into rebuilding.
Rany on the Royals notes the 2012 Royals represent a failed experiment in team chemistry.
I’m not saying that the Royals made moronic decisions by re-signing them. (Well, except for Yuni. That’s a given.) I had reservations about both Francoeur and Chen, but I didn’t protest too much, in part because I was genuinely curious as to whether having a pair of hard-working, gregarious veteran leaders in the clubhouse would make it more likely that an extremely talented but extremely inexperienced roster would go off.
It didn’t. All it did was saddle the Royals with a pair of expensive paperweights. If the 2012 Royals were an experiment in Chemistry, consider the experiment a failure. That won’t stop former major leaguers sitting behind a desk on television from crediting the C-word for every good team in baseball. There’s no cure for that, unfortunately. But next time, at least you’ll know better than to believe them. I know I will.
It’s a long post but well worth the read.
It was reported on Friday that Stephen Strasburg‘s new innings limit for the season is 180. Bill Ladson of MLB.com has a source telling him that that is not accurate, and that there is not necessarily a magic number of innings. Rather: The Nationals are expected to have right-hander Stephen Strasburg miss two or three…
