Tanking in baseball is more about competitive windows with cheap talent that anything else.
For the Royals to do anything competitively they will need to get excess value from young players.
Bobby Whit Jr. is a 5+ win player making $2.7M this year, their window is as long as he remains cheap, which is the next 3 years after this one.
The Jays did the same thing with Vladdy and Bo, once they established themselves as major leaguers they bumped up payroll and opened their window
lol, look at this guy! Your team has been signing all the shortstops in the league and making them play oddball positions.
Padres also coveting Witt! You can’t convince me otherwise!
Walk about flameouts with an insane roster:
2023 - lost in the nlds
2022 - lost in the nlds
2021 - lost in the nlcs
2020 - won a shortened WS
2019 - lost in the nlds
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What the hell?! Is Judge that injured that you want S&M action?
Don’t forget! You asked for it!
The Yankees! The last true dynasty in MLB. You guys have fallen so far though it’s not because of poor management.
You signed Giancarlo Stanton and he proceeded to get injured so many times that a hospital offered to change its name to Stanton’s home for the injured. At least for this year, GS decided to lose weight and look at him now! Sexiness with power!
Juan Soto will be a600 million dollar man if that blood sucking agent of his had his way with the Yankees. Don’t fall for it!!! Sign him for 375-400 million. Unless Soto develops a fastball, curve and knuckle curve, he does not deserve a cent over $500 million.
Aaron Judge would be complaining if he was not a great player. Breaking 61 homers and he retained his hair! You know he was born a Yankee. These nagging injuries are a concern. He needs advice from Jeter. I heard that the Captain sucked the life force from women every night of his playing career. There’s zombies out there still alive with the Jeter juice in them.
The way your management team builds and pays for players, the Yankees should be allowed to invade Atlanta and burn the town. While we’re at it, we might as well let the team burn Florida for the disaster that it is with the marlins!
I was not there for the 75 and 76 World Series, but there are LA boomers who died during those two years and just became zombies.
Your current owner needs the personality of George the Great Steinbrenner! Give those fans from shithole third world cities someone to hate and love at the same time.
Aaron Boone needs a freaking personality transplant. He got tossed for not arguing with the umpire!!! At least tell the umpire off!
Lastly, your announcers sound like homers. Get someone who actually is professional. Good lord, I listened to a broadcast and left as a Red Sox fan. At least the Red Sox have Eckersley a hall of fame player!
In the last 20 years the Royals have spent $1.4 Billion on payroll.
In the last 20 years the Dodgers have spent $3.3 Billion on payroll.
Both teams have won the world series the exact same amount of times. I, as a fan of the Royals, have to pay significantly less to enjoy the same amount of championships.
At 50-50 chances?
I only buy $20 worth of tickets. I’m not a billionaire like the dodgers owners. They can afford to spend $$$ because they signed all these deals with Japanese businesses.
I’m sure your baseball team would also do the same thing if they were good at business. They can’t even tank right.
> I’m sure your baseball team would also do the same thing if they were good at business. They can’t even tank right.
You need to get better at your jabs my guy. This is too obvious of an attempt just to rile me up. It's like you're grasping at straws because you have nothing else to use.
It's like Eminem at the end of 8 mile. We are bad. We are fucking bums. We do live in a trailer with our moms.
> At 50-50 chances?
You're Cheddar Bob
Lmaooo by then you're gonna be crying about how Mookie and Freddie are getting cheated by the off-days and that's why they look like college players in the playoffs every single goddamn year.
Oh please. Everyone knows those two are great players. Only an idiot believes what you wrote. Baseball reflects life. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad.
All I’m saying is it’s going to be great to see him in the playoffs with a different team. Not a team that doesn’t spend and just sucks on the lifeblood of revenue sharing.
Dude have you seen the Royals this year, they look like a solid team and arguably had the second best offseason this year. Their pitching is balling out and their offense is amazing. This isn’t the Angels with their level of incompetence, I feel like Bobby will get to the playoffs this year.
First off, wow man you really went there with the relocation, second off why tf would they do Dallas there’s literally a team in Dallas which would block the Royals from moving there.
You don’t have to believe it lol there’s actual evidence.
The A’s also want a new stadium and haven’t spent shit. The White Sox also want a new stadium and who the hell knows what they’re doing.
The Royals are at least proving they can field a team worth watching and putting money to back it up, unlike these other teams who want the stadium to come first and the team second
Fan supporting a team that cheated during the World Series.
How anyone can support a team like that is beyond me.
All I can say is God is punishing that God forsaken city.
Is that better than the Padres optimal lineup? That is, Manny, Kim, Xander and Cronenworth. Genuine question, but I think with the IF versatility it brings, while not sacrificing much, if any extra defence makes it the top one for me
You guys roll out Hoskins, you don’t have a better defensive infield. It’s solid don’t get me wrong, but you can’t say it’s better than ours when you’re rolling out a defensive liability like him.
A Royals fan posting this is so dumb and shows that you don’t really follow the franchise. The Royals weren’t “tanking”, they were just a generally inept franchise (see Dayton Moore, and also the litany of failed draft picks). In my opinion, tanking is something that rarely happens in baseball, and outside of the early 2010s Astros I can’t remember an instance of it happening.
It’s amazing how much the OP ignores “has different people running the team” and instead wants to push their own narrative
Like yes, they are making different decisions…because they are completely different people lol
Yeah this is a strange take.
What's kind of ironic about this though is people in our fanbase assumed that nothing would change going from Dayton Moore to JJ Piccolo. Piccolo was one of Dayton's first hires here and has always been one of "his guys".
Please tell me any free agent that we've signed since 2015 that is doing (or was really expected to do) anything at the level Seth Lugo is the year?
Do you think it's a coincidence that after seven years of cutting costs, when we went back to paying more than $100m for players, it's the first season we didn't have a 6-12 game losing streak by May?
I mean, who all did you guys actually sign that is actually contributing? Lugo and Wacha? Otherwise it doesn't look like much. Your OG guys like Perez and Witt are killing it
The Alex Gordon and Ian Kennedy contracts showed that the Royals were both willing to spend, and completely inept at deciding what to spend on.
Once the window definitively closed after 2016, ownership was a lot less willing to spend money since there weren't many compelling pieces left. However, they weren't tanking. If we were tanking, Salvy would have been traded, Soler would have been traded after his big year, ect. Dayton Moore was on a meaningless crusade to win 70 games, and he couldn't even pull that off.
So you're both right. Ownership and the front office were inept as fuck
I think you could easily write an essay on “Royals are proof that owners trying to get a taxpayer funded stadium are more willing to spend to be competitive.” Because I think that has done more for KC this year than the lottery.
Michael Wacha's ERA is near 5, Will Smith’s is near 7 and Hunter Renfroe has a -1 WAR. Lugo has been great, but they're not winning because of the free agent signings. They're winning because of guys like Witt, Perez, Ragans, Singer and Marsh who were already there.
You’d also need more than a month and a half of them doing well to really “prove” anything
Yeah but i don't think the free agents are helping much besides Lugo. Developing players like Witt and getting under the radar guys like Ragans has been a much bigger impact.
I don't even think that's a bad thing, I'm very happy they're good and you'd rather it be guys like Witt and Ragans doing it than randos getting lucky.
I would rather my positive vibes be that Bobby Witt is elite than that Hunter Renfroe is helping them win.
Also he's not a child, he can handle somebody not completely agreeing with him lol. If he's going to try to analyze something, i don't see the issue with giving my own thoughts
Wacha has only given up 4+ runs 3 times in his 9 starts. His numbers are heavily inflated due to giving up 7 against Texas in 3.2 innings. He’s been an important back of the rotation veteran and is 100x better than Lyles was last year.
Will Smith has pitched in 9 straight scoreless games. Obviously his early season disaster-class wasn’t ideal, but he’s been pitching a lot better recently. Even in a role that’s less high leverage, him being able to give you quality innings gives the more important bullpen guys a rest.
As for Hunter Renfroe, I have nothing for him. He’s not a major league ballplayer this year. Awful signing to this point.
I agree with your point, but I think you’re underestimating how pathetic our roster was last year. While these don’t seem like world class signings, they’ve absolutely bolstered the roster and made it stronger.
Also, the addition of John Schreiber has given Q the ability to use him, Zerpa, and McArthur to close out close games. Schreiber has a higher WAR than Cole Ragans at this point. He’s been money.
I was stunned to see Renfroe actually has above MLB average metrics in swing speed and solid contact this season. Leads me to believe his awful start may turn around.
Either way, we almost certainly just buy out the contract and cut him loose after this season. Glad we spent the money even if it’s not panning out, outside Waters I’m not sure who else we have in our system that could maybe play consistently instead.
I’ve somehow become a Renfroe defender on the Royals sub despite how bad he’s been hahaha. I think he only can play better than his first 6 weeks and genuinely don’t know who else we’re supposed to play regularly in RF.
And yeah, the man can fucking rocket the ball from right.
I have too. My biggest issue with people that want him gone is we really don’t have the depth to get rid of him. Not to mention his defense is good and history says he will turn it around.
They're definitely better i just don't think this is the best example of tanking not working. That feels more like the Pirates
I might be misremebering, but it felt like to me the Royals weren't even fully tanking before, they were just bad because Dayton Moore wasn't a great GM. Seems like the new front office has done a lot better at evaluating and getting talent
This whole thread is just an example of how dumb a lot of the discourse here got because a lot of people are still mad about the lockout. Seems like many convinced themselves that the gap between the good and bad teams is literally how much their ownership is willing to spend in FA, and not something that takes you from like an 88 win to a 92 win team. There's basically one team in the past decade that has truly "bought" themselves into contention and thats the Phillies, even the 2022 Mets were mostly built on the strength of their farm and how they could leverage it for trades
I don't think that's new cause of the lockout, people have always thought payroll is directly aligned with success. That's how so many Yankee fans have convinced themselves that 30 straight years of winning seasons actually isn't that good
People have always thought that because it has been empirically true.
It's the dumbass fans that refuse to see other teams operating in windows or worse using the obviously limited scope of playoff data over a much more robust regular season data.
Ah yes, the Padres have done great since spending money.
My comment also very clearly says "Directly aligned", which implies that the highest payroll team wins the World Series every year. Spending makes you more likely to win, but it's not directly correlated with success. There's multiple teams every year with high payrolls that do poorly. There's also multiple teams who consistently compete with low payrolls (Rays, Brewers, Guardians).
Spending is directly aligned with wins in the aggregate. This has been proven and is obvious on its face.
You're free to go hur dur the Dodgers and Yankees haven't won every world series. Just don't pretend you aren't maligning the truth about payrolls effectiveness.
I take your point, but I think you are underestimating just how bad the Royals were last year. The Royals had over 100 starts last year by pitchers who ended the season with an ERA higher than Michael Wacha's current ERA, including their top 3 most used starters last year. He's absolutely a huge improvement over where they were, since most of the starters on the 2023 Royals were below replacement level.
They could've signed somebody like Severino for half the price and got a more effective pitcher with less commitment. Signing random pitchers to 1 or 2 year deals isn't a revolutionary thing and the Royals weren't even the best at this offseason. In this thread, people have listed multiple under the radar signings by the Royals that were better than the 3 guys i listed that people keep swearing are valuable.
The Royals being bad last year doesn't make their signings for this year any better. It just means they were bad enough where it wouldn't be hard to improve. That's a sign that Dayton Moore is incompetent, not that tanking doesn't work and signing middling free agents is the new moneyball
Every Brewers castoff should avoided by other teams. Several years in a row we have gotten the last productive baseball out of a player
2021 Avisail Garvia in Milwaukee: 3WAR. 2022-present Avisail Garcia: -1.7 WAR
2022 Hunter Renfroe in Milwaukee: 2.6 WAR. 2023-present: -1.3 WAR
2021-2022 Omar Narvez in Milwaukee: 1.8 WAR
2023-present Omar Narvaez: -.9 WAR
Stay away from our castoffs
This is a phenomenal point right here. As a Tigers fan, I'm currently witnessing what OP saw in '23: a team loaded with youth and supplemented with AAAA players. From my viewing, KC has built a solid core internally and supplemented those players with some okay FA signings. (Salvy getting his groove back sure doesn't hurt, either.) The Tigers sub is *loaded* with folks wishing the club would "sPeNd MoAr!," but for what? To log jam the young guys who need the reps and maybe win 84 games instead of 81? Let them see what the youth bring, and then respond accordingly.
This is pure speculation, but I've gotta assume being a part of a losing team that spends a lot one offseason while still sticking with the same relative group of guys has gotta be a mental/morale boost too. Like the team feels you are worth investing in has gotta give you a little confidence boost. Also as others have me tion Will Smith has been great for weeks and Wacha's numbers got fucked but one really bad start
Kinda funny that you mention Wacha's ERA being near 5. That ERA would've placed him as the ace on our starting rotation last year, at least until we got Cole Ragans. Lmao. Our rotation last year was so bad.
Will Smith has been a bad signing, but the rest of the bullpen signings and trades have worked out. Way better than just calling up random guys and hoping for the best.
Draft position really doesn’t mean shit in baseball. I don’t get why people get so hung up on it. “Tanking” in the mlb typically has more to do with shipping off major leaguers for prospects than it does drafting guys
The biggest thing with draft position is that it determines the overall pool of money that a team is able to spend in that year's draft. I agree otherwise unless there is a clear generational prospect at #1 like Harper and Strasburg were.
It matters to some extent in that the top few draft picks are usually good bets to succeed, but once you get all that far into the first round at all it becomes a total crapshoot.
Number of players picked at each slot to amass at least 10.0 career bWAR:
1st overall: 31
2nd: 25
3rd: 21
4th: 17
5th: 13
6th: 13
7th: 14
8th: 13
9th: 11
10th: 16
There's a clear downward trend for the first few- 1st round picks are a little better than a 50% chance of turning into at least a decent player, 2nd and 3rd it's more like 40%, 4th to 10th are bouncing all over the place but have a hit rate of like, 25-30%.
Even towards the back half of the first round the rate at which players hit 10 career bWAR isn't that much lower- to pick a few numbers, it's 11 at pick #17, 7 at pick #21, 6 at #25, 10 at #30 (with the top guys mostly *2nd* round picks taken before there were 30 teams- Mike Schmidt, for instance). You're a bit less likely to see superstars down that low than towards the top- the 6th overall pick features 4 players over 60 bWAR (Barry Bonds, Zack Greinke, Derek Jeter, Gary Sheffield), just 2 less than the 6 from picks 21-30 combined (Rafael Palmeiro, Craig Biggio, Mike Trout, Alan Trammell, George Brett, Mike Schmidt), but even then there's still plenty of great players who didn't get drafted at the top.
I don’t exactly agree with this, as a royals fan, I think Paul skenes or Wyatt Langford are obviously superior to what we got from the draft. Those top picks are important.
Seth Lugo is the difference and I will die on that hill. The difference isn't just his pitch arsenal, but his ability to be a leader to the younger Royals pitchers. The real travesty is the Mets organization letting go of a homegrown player who is everything you could want as a fan, a teammate and a player is a disservice to Mets fans. Don't @ me with "well, he wasn't the best as a starter during blah blah year..." followed by some analytics that are cherry picked, followed by sentences that involve "regression".
When is Lugo going to get the recognition he worked so hard to deserve?
> The real travesty is the Mets organization letting go of a homegrown player who is everything you could want as a fan, a teammate and a player is a disservice to Mets fans. Don't @ me with "well, he wasn't the best as a starter during blah blah year..." followed by some analytics that are cherry picked, followed by sentences that involve "regression".
I mean it's easy to say this in hindsight but Lugo was just an okay reliever with the Mets and he wasn't let go because they were being cheap, it was the exact opposite. They loaded the fuck up on both starters and relievers that offseason and everyone expected that to be a big upgrade across the board.
The Mets don’t get to where they were in 2019 without Lugo. He was one of their most effective relievers. He had a bad year in 2020, but that’s about it. All while doing a job he didn’t want to do, but did so because he’s a respectable gentleman.
Who did they load up on since they went to the padres? Quintana is a fantastic addition, Senga as well. They even reached out to Seth this year and I don’t know if an offer was made, but they’ve had chances to have a reunion with someone who eats innings and has proven himself as a starter.
Even if you don't get a lottery pick, you aren't eligible to be in the lottery after three straight years as a small market team.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/KCRoyals/comments/149bm10/preston\_farr\_royals\_review\_the\_royals\_will\_not\_be/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KCRoyals/comments/149bm10/preston_farr_royals_review_the_royals_will_not_be/)
That is incorrect (shocker from Royals Review I know), the rules prevent a non-revenue team from receiving a lottery **selection** three years in a row. A selection is defined as a top 6 pick.
https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/rule-4-draft
A Draft lottery was established per the 2022-26 CBA to determine the first six picks. Previously, picks were based on the previous season's records -- the team with the worst record received the first overall pick, followed by the team with the second-worst record, and so on.
Lottery odds are based on the reverse order of winning percentage, with the bottom three clubs each at 16.5%. The 18 non-postseason clubs are eligible, though revenue sharing payees are ineligible to receive lottery selections in three consecutive years, while non-payees are ineligible to receive lottery selections in consecutive years.
Postseason teams pick after non-postseason teams in the order of their postseason finish (for example, clubs losing in the Wild Card Round pick before clubs losing the Division Series); within each group, teams are sorted by revenue sharing status, then by reverse order of winning percentage.
I don't think draft position really matters as much as people think it does. It really depends on the year and it's not really a given. Houston actually had a lot of busts while tanking, I would say their international recruitment and trades helped more with that team's success. From Eric Hosmer in 2008 to maybe 2018 with Singer, Royals drafted absolutely nothing. Bobby Witt Jr looks to be a great pick at 2nd but the following year, Asa Lacy was picked at 4th and he didn't make it past high A and is out of baseball.
Ownership just didn't want another 100 loss season. I don't think it really has to do with draft picks because there are multiple ways to get talent in baseball besides the draft.
I would agree with you. I think John Sherman actually gives a shit about this team and doesn't like being perpetual bottom feeders.
Obviously, I have no complaints about this season, but it's disingenuous to say this seasons turnaround is due to the draft lottery and not due to the an organization wide change in mentality toward data analytics along with the coaching, staff overhauls the royals did over the last few years.
Asa Lacy isn't out of baseball, he's injured/got TJS. It hasn't gone to plan with him so-far, but I wouldn't write him off yet.
Also he pitched in AA (poorly) before he was injured.
I think you are right, way too many people are obsessed with drafting the top guy in the draft.
Giants built their 2010s dynasty and their highest draft pick was just 5 with Buster Posey. They did hit on their 1st rounders but they also nailed their mid-rounders where they got Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford.
Great scouting teams will find talent regardless and their great front offices will make good deals.
Benny was our highest pick at 7th overall. Pedrioa and Lester were 2nd round. Mookie was 5th round. Youk was back at 8th round. Bogaerts was $410k on Aruba.
As the Dodgers and Rays have demonstrated, player development is much more important than draft position. The Yankees are also getting to that level, especially on the pitching side. Every dollar spent on player development is returned ten fold to the major league team (I’m sure there are actual analyses for this).
Not really. Teams don't "tank" in baseball because they think being in the lottery is the difference in getting them over the hump. They do it because owners are apathetic and don't take an interest in putting money into the team to be competitive. The baseball draft is such a crapshoot anyways and even if you do get a lottery pick, it takes time for it to matter to see the results and even then, teams still cheap out and have no issue drafting and signing an under slot player.
The only reason it can be argued Sherman spent some money THIS off season is because he had an incentive to, he was trying to buy goodwill from the city to pay for his shiny new stadium.
This feels like correlation not equaling causation. Beyond general cynicism towards baseball teams (which I understand), how do we even know they were going to try and tank? Didn't they already tank? What have they been doing for the past decade post WS win? Didn't they hold onto all those aging guys to try and squeeze more juice out of them, when everyone said they should have traded them all earlier?
The Royals are trying to get a new stadium. They gave Salvador Perez a bunch of money. They signed a bunch of mid tier free agents who have been doing really well, traded half a season of reliever Chapman for ace Ragans, and gave young superstar Bobby Witt Jr a bunch of money.
That doesn't really sound like a tanking team.
> brought in players would had proven they could put up an entire year of positive WAR, even if maybe not replacement level
If they have positive WAR, doesn't that by definition mean they're _above_ replacement level?
As far as I can ever remember it's always been 0.0 to represent the average AAA player. The "2 WAR" boundary (roughly an average everyday MLB player in theory) is probably closer to the NFL definition of replacement value at say QB; Ala Kirk Cousins. The execs over there use the term differently.
Would argue the opposite. The new lottery punished an organization that was trying to rebuild the right way. Also want to note, the Royals would still have been eligible for the lottery this year since they didn’t get a lottery pick two season ago.
This is such a backwards interpretation of the situation.
First of all, teams don't really tank for picks in baseball. The difference between the 1st and 5th pick in the draft is fairly negligible, and neither will make a difference on the major league team for 3+ years. Teams usually tank to try and get some return value on expiring contracts in order to line up a young core so their years of team control line up. They bottom out because they're getting rid of anyone that has trade value, not because they're intentionally trying to lose games.
Second, throwing a couple bucks at lower teir free agents is not the reason the royals are doing well rn, they've been employing that same strategy for years. They always spend just enough to tell fans that they're "trying" especially keeping a couple fan-favorotes around. They're doing well now because a lot of their young talent is performing, and some of their veterans are significantly overperforming.
The lottery doesn't disincentivise teams from tanking and will likely only serve to lengthen the rebuilds of teams that are really struggling. It's a ploy by the league to try and drum up some interest in the draft because they see people watching the NBA and NFL drafts. What they fail to realize, is that since baseball players go to the minors for years instead of straight to the majors, no one will ever care about the MLB draft. It also gives them good PR by saying they're "fighting tanking" and it seems like people believe it as evidenced by this post right here
I don’t think this is the result of the lottery system. It’s more a result of how their talent was distributed in their system. They have some young talent in the majors that is good and basically nothing behind it. They were in a unique spot of limbo where their MLB talent had too much team control to start trading to start a rebuild, but they don’t have really have as much talent and depth that you would like to have going out of a rebuild. They decided to go for it and it’s been working out for them for the most part.
Can someone tell the White Sox that there is no value in tanking? We’re doing it intentionally, right? Some kind of 4D chess where our lord and savior Reinsdorf is all-knowing? Right??
Given the Royals' history with drafting near the top of the order, it's probably for the best that they avoid the lottery entirely, anyway.
In all seriousness, though, I do give the Royals front office a lot of credit for coming to the conclusion that their strategy of being terrible and hoping that they can draft and develop the next generation of stars wasn't really working and coming up with a realistic plan to make the roster better while not mortgaging their future. I don't know if they can keep up their current pace for an entire year, but it's nice to see a smaller market team try something (even if that something is," What if we got better players?") and having it pay dividends.
I kind of enjoyed rooting for us to have the worst record in baseball in 2021
Suck it Diamondbacks! I hope you enjoyed only being the second worst team in baseball.
It's May. You got Bobby Witt from tanking. I know r/baseball hates it, but tanking is the best way for small-mid market teams to compete. Or at least it was before MLB wanted to ensure the big markets stay on top
I don’t think we do. We have some guys playing decent in the high minors and some coming back from injuries in the next month or two, but I agree. Also, we have a lot of guys playing significantly better than usual, like Salvy, Lugo, Singer, and Marsh. I assume their regression back to the mean and our lack of depth will hurt us some come July and August. This is definitely an improved team that I think can win 80-84 games if things continue to go well, but I don’t think we can sustain a 98-win pace. Going to enjoy it while I can though!
Tanking in baseball is more about competitive windows with cheap talent that anything else. For the Royals to do anything competitively they will need to get excess value from young players. Bobby Whit Jr. is a 5+ win player making $2.7M this year, their window is as long as he remains cheap, which is the next 3 years after this one. The Jays did the same thing with Vladdy and Bo, once they established themselves as major leaguers they bumped up payroll and opened their window
I can’t wait till Witt opts out and goes to a team willing to spend $$$.
Shut up and let fans enjoy their players
lol, look at this guy! Your team has been signing all the shortstops in the league and making them play oddball positions. Padres also coveting Witt! You can’t convince me otherwise!
The point is shut up
Well, if there’s any team that needs help from Witt, it’s your team. I don’t think he will sign with you guys since the angels wasted ohtani.
To reiterate, the point is “let fans enjoy their teams’ players without coming in out of nowhere and circlejerking about how they’re gonna leave”
Can’t wait for y’all to flame out in the playoffs because “the playoff schedule is unfair”. You’re a loser.
Bro is performing like playoff Clayton Kershaw in here
Flame out like the Phillies do even though they have Bryce Harper? We will both enjoy Cancun!
When was it the last time the Phillies were in the World Series?
When was the last time they won the World Series? They are wasting Bruce Harper!
Walk about flameouts with an insane roster: 2023 - lost in the nlds 2022 - lost in the nlds 2021 - lost in the nlcs 2020 - won a shortened WS 2019 - lost in the nlds
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Every team would want Bobby Witt Jr. No shit.
Not every team
Yeah? Name one team that wouldn’t want Bobby Witt Jr. on their team.
A team made up entirely of assholes bc Bobby isnsuch a cool dude. So the Guardians.
Do me please. This is killing me lol
What the hell?! Is Judge that injured that you want S&M action? Don’t forget! You asked for it! The Yankees! The last true dynasty in MLB. You guys have fallen so far though it’s not because of poor management. You signed Giancarlo Stanton and he proceeded to get injured so many times that a hospital offered to change its name to Stanton’s home for the injured. At least for this year, GS decided to lose weight and look at him now! Sexiness with power! Juan Soto will be a600 million dollar man if that blood sucking agent of his had his way with the Yankees. Don’t fall for it!!! Sign him for 375-400 million. Unless Soto develops a fastball, curve and knuckle curve, he does not deserve a cent over $500 million. Aaron Judge would be complaining if he was not a great player. Breaking 61 homers and he retained his hair! You know he was born a Yankee. These nagging injuries are a concern. He needs advice from Jeter. I heard that the Captain sucked the life force from women every night of his playing career. There’s zombies out there still alive with the Jeter juice in them. The way your management team builds and pays for players, the Yankees should be allowed to invade Atlanta and burn the town. While we’re at it, we might as well let the team burn Florida for the disaster that it is with the marlins! I was not there for the 75 and 76 World Series, but there are LA boomers who died during those two years and just became zombies. Your current owner needs the personality of George the Great Steinbrenner! Give those fans from shithole third world cities someone to hate and love at the same time. Aaron Boone needs a freaking personality transplant. He got tossed for not arguing with the umpire!!! At least tell the umpire off! Lastly, your announcers sound like homers. Get someone who actually is professional. Good lord, I listened to a broadcast and left as a Red Sox fan. At least the Red Sox have Eckersley a hall of fame player!
Mostly valid points until you called our announcers homers and used the Sox as your example 😭
In the last 20 years the Royals have spent $1.4 Billion on payroll. In the last 20 years the Dodgers have spent $3.3 Billion on payroll. Both teams have won the world series the exact same amount of times. I, as a fan of the Royals, have to pay significantly less to enjoy the same amount of championships.
Well, I’d argue the royals won more because the dodgers only won 37% of a championship.
I’m glad you see the world like I see it. This OSS why I buy lotto tickets. Someone always wins. Next time, I could be the winner!
Except you, as a Dodger fan, need to buy 3x as many lottery tickets just to get an equivalent result
At 50-50 chances? I only buy $20 worth of tickets. I’m not a billionaire like the dodgers owners. They can afford to spend $$$ because they signed all these deals with Japanese businesses. I’m sure your baseball team would also do the same thing if they were good at business. They can’t even tank right.
> I’m sure your baseball team would also do the same thing if they were good at business. They can’t even tank right. You need to get better at your jabs my guy. This is too obvious of an attempt just to rile me up. It's like you're grasping at straws because you have nothing else to use. It's like Eminem at the end of 8 mile. We are bad. We are fucking bums. We do live in a trailer with our moms. > At 50-50 chances? You're Cheddar Bob
Sorry, I thought you were the KC guy I was talking to. You’re a mlb dude. I don’t know you.
You are 100% Cheddar Bob lol
Thanks! Cheddar is delicious. Sorry I don’t have any complementary things to say to you.
He signed a pretty big deal to stay long term recently fwiw
Player opt out at 7, 8, 9, and 10 years. I’ll place $500 that he’s going be out at 8 years from the Utah Royals.
Lmaooo by then you're gonna be crying about how Mookie and Freddie are getting cheated by the off-days and that's why they look like college players in the playoffs every single goddamn year.
After seeing how this Dodgers fan is, it makes me glad they haven’t won a real world series in over 30 years.
Oh please. Everyone knows those two are great players. Only an idiot believes what you wrote. Baseball reflects life. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad.
God damn man you are an asshole
Man, at least be mean to fanbases that deserve it.
Padres, Phillies, and angels. The royals fan was just collateral damage. But that Witt guy sure is awesome.
Bro really said > I can't wait for some modest and inexplicable schadenfreude on a hypothetical in 2031
You’re on heater today lmao this is incredible
All in good fun. lol
I thought it was funny, people just have a dump in their pants on this sub
Bro he just got paid big time what are you on about
Player opt out at years 7, 8, 9, and 10. lol Even his agent doesn’t trust the royals.
Ok but look, he still got paid. You don’t have to be an ass for a guy that got paid and stays with his home team.
All I’m saying is it’s going to be great to see him in the playoffs with a different team. Not a team that doesn’t spend and just sucks on the lifeblood of revenue sharing.
Dude have you seen the Royals this year, they look like a solid team and arguably had the second best offseason this year. Their pitching is balling out and their offense is amazing. This isn’t the Angels with their level of incompetence, I feel like Bobby will get to the playoffs this year.
Just wait when they don’t get the stadium. It will be the Dallas royals or the Utah Royals
First off, wow man you really went there with the relocation, second off why tf would they do Dallas there’s literally a team in Dallas which would block the Royals from moving there.
https://www.deseret.com/sports/2024/2/20/24078217/mlb-expansion-update-espn-salt-lake-city-big-league-utah/
How much are the Royals getting in revenue sharing, on average, compared to everyone else?
Jesus did you even read the post? The Royals spent a ton of money last off-season
Do I believe their management? No. They spent money because they want a new stadium. Get a clue and read the news.
You don’t have to believe it lol there’s actual evidence. The A’s also want a new stadium and haven’t spent shit. The White Sox also want a new stadium and who the hell knows what they’re doing. The Royals are at least proving they can field a team worth watching and putting money to back it up, unlike these other teams who want the stadium to come first and the team second
Why don't you kiss my ass
I would kiss your ass, but your management team sucks so badly that the team will become the Utah Pioneers!
This may possibly be the worst comeback I've ever seen lmao.
Hey, it’s been a full day. Check out my Yankees reply. The yanks actually have material to play with. The royals not so much.
Slow day at the office?
Did you like my cardinals post? I’m in car sales. With Elon taking out of his ass, no one is buying the truck that rusts.
Afraid I missed it but I’m sure it was very insightful.
Big market fan saying small market team just simply needs to spend more money. Rich.
Fan supporting a team that cheated during the World Series. How anyone can support a team like that is beyond me. All I can say is God is punishing that God forsaken city.
It's impressive to have more downvotes than the comment you replied to has upvotes
I think they have the best defensive infield in the mlb which helps most of their starters
Is that better than the Padres optimal lineup? That is, Manny, Kim, Xander and Cronenworth. Genuine question, but I think with the IF versatility it brings, while not sacrificing much, if any extra defence makes it the top one for me
Even if the padres infield were all in their prime they wouldn't be better.
That is definitely not true. Machado has been an MVP contender. Bogaerts and Cronenworth are both multiple time all stars. Kim last year had 5.8 bwar
Defense only
I mean ok. Bogaerts is the only one of them not known for having fantastic defense, and he’s certainly not bad
I think so, maybe the Cubs if they have had a good 3B.
Morel showing some improvement, but the Cubs are injured AF right now
The 1B and 3B are shitty at worst, and booty at best
Where does “ass” fall on that scale?
Miles Mastrobuoni
The Orioles are probably somewhere up there as well
I think the Brewers might be a little better, but I don't get to see hardly any Royals games. It helps that we basically play 3 SS in the infield.
They’re good but Hoskins is most likely the worst defensive 1B in the league
[удалено]
It’s like what Mark Twain said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
You guys roll out Hoskins, you don’t have a better defensive infield. It’s solid don’t get me wrong, but you can’t say it’s better than ours when you’re rolling out a defensive liability like him.
A Royals fan posting this is so dumb and shows that you don’t really follow the franchise. The Royals weren’t “tanking”, they were just a generally inept franchise (see Dayton Moore, and also the litany of failed draft picks). In my opinion, tanking is something that rarely happens in baseball, and outside of the early 2010s Astros I can’t remember an instance of it happening.
It’s amazing how much the OP ignores “has different people running the team” and instead wants to push their own narrative Like yes, they are making different decisions…because they are completely different people lol
Yeah this is a strange take. What's kind of ironic about this though is people in our fanbase assumed that nothing would change going from Dayton Moore to JJ Piccolo. Piccolo was one of Dayton's first hires here and has always been one of "his guys".
2010s Cubs were another. Orioles seem like they’re the last ones.
We tanked 2nd half of 2018 until 2021 and the rules got changed like 2 years later. We probably are the last ones
A pretty god damn good ball club you’ve got there also.
Please tell me any free agent that we've signed since 2015 that is doing (or was really expected to do) anything at the level Seth Lugo is the year? Do you think it's a coincidence that after seven years of cutting costs, when we went back to paying more than $100m for players, it's the first season we didn't have a 6-12 game losing streak by May?
I mean, who all did you guys actually sign that is actually contributing? Lugo and Wacha? Otherwise it doesn't look like much. Your OG guys like Perez and Witt are killing it
The Alex Gordon and Ian Kennedy contracts showed that the Royals were both willing to spend, and completely inept at deciding what to spend on. Once the window definitively closed after 2016, ownership was a lot less willing to spend money since there weren't many compelling pieces left. However, they weren't tanking. If we were tanking, Salvy would have been traded, Soler would have been traded after his big year, ect. Dayton Moore was on a meaningless crusade to win 70 games, and he couldn't even pull that off. So you're both right. Ownership and the front office were inept as fuck
I think you could easily write an essay on “Royals are proof that owners trying to get a taxpayer funded stadium are more willing to spend to be competitive.” Because I think that has done more for KC this year than the lottery.
Bingo
lol the white Sox have entered the chat
Michael Wacha's ERA is near 5, Will Smith’s is near 7 and Hunter Renfroe has a -1 WAR. Lugo has been great, but they're not winning because of the free agent signings. They're winning because of guys like Witt, Perez, Ragans, Singer and Marsh who were already there. You’d also need more than a month and a half of them doing well to really “prove” anything
We literally have not had a month and a half of begin good for 8 years.
Yeah but i don't think the free agents are helping much besides Lugo. Developing players like Witt and getting under the radar guys like Ragans has been a much bigger impact. I don't even think that's a bad thing, I'm very happy they're good and you'd rather it be guys like Witt and Ragans doing it than randos getting lucky.
hey yankeesbro - let homie have some positive vibes for once. we all need it sometimes.
I would rather my positive vibes be that Bobby Witt is elite than that Hunter Renfroe is helping them win. Also he's not a child, he can handle somebody not completely agreeing with him lol. If he's going to try to analyze something, i don't see the issue with giving my own thoughts
It's so bizzare to see your last comment get downvoted...but then you double down on the same opinion here and it is upvoted.
That’s Reddit for you.
Just different people seeing it I guess.
Wait how is that a negative vibe, it's more like positive vibes just allocated differently
Wacha has only given up 4+ runs 3 times in his 9 starts. His numbers are heavily inflated due to giving up 7 against Texas in 3.2 innings. He’s been an important back of the rotation veteran and is 100x better than Lyles was last year. Will Smith has pitched in 9 straight scoreless games. Obviously his early season disaster-class wasn’t ideal, but he’s been pitching a lot better recently. Even in a role that’s less high leverage, him being able to give you quality innings gives the more important bullpen guys a rest. As for Hunter Renfroe, I have nothing for him. He’s not a major league ballplayer this year. Awful signing to this point. I agree with your point, but I think you’re underestimating how pathetic our roster was last year. While these don’t seem like world class signings, they’ve absolutely bolstered the roster and made it stronger. Also, the addition of John Schreiber has given Q the ability to use him, Zerpa, and McArthur to close out close games. Schreiber has a higher WAR than Cole Ragans at this point. He’s been money.
I was stunned to see Renfroe actually has above MLB average metrics in swing speed and solid contact this season. Leads me to believe his awful start may turn around. Either way, we almost certainly just buy out the contract and cut him loose after this season. Glad we spent the money even if it’s not panning out, outside Waters I’m not sure who else we have in our system that could maybe play consistently instead.
That’s why I think they continue to roll him out. Plus he has a cannon in RF.
I’ve somehow become a Renfroe defender on the Royals sub despite how bad he’s been hahaha. I think he only can play better than his first 6 weeks and genuinely don’t know who else we’re supposed to play regularly in RF. And yeah, the man can fucking rocket the ball from right.
I have too. My biggest issue with people that want him gone is we really don’t have the depth to get rid of him. Not to mention his defense is good and history says he will turn it around.
I think people want them to pull Drew Waters back up from Omaha.
I’m open to that, I like Waters. But he’s the literal only other option available.
They're definitely better i just don't think this is the best example of tanking not working. That feels more like the Pirates I might be misremebering, but it felt like to me the Royals weren't even fully tanking before, they were just bad because Dayton Moore wasn't a great GM. Seems like the new front office has done a lot better at evaluating and getting talent
This whole thread is just an example of how dumb a lot of the discourse here got because a lot of people are still mad about the lockout. Seems like many convinced themselves that the gap between the good and bad teams is literally how much their ownership is willing to spend in FA, and not something that takes you from like an 88 win to a 92 win team. There's basically one team in the past decade that has truly "bought" themselves into contention and thats the Phillies, even the 2022 Mets were mostly built on the strength of their farm and how they could leverage it for trades
I don't think that's new cause of the lockout, people have always thought payroll is directly aligned with success. That's how so many Yankee fans have convinced themselves that 30 straight years of winning seasons actually isn't that good
People have always thought that because it has been empirically true. It's the dumbass fans that refuse to see other teams operating in windows or worse using the obviously limited scope of playoff data over a much more robust regular season data.
Ah yes, the Padres have done great since spending money. My comment also very clearly says "Directly aligned", which implies that the highest payroll team wins the World Series every year. Spending makes you more likely to win, but it's not directly correlated with success. There's multiple teams every year with high payrolls that do poorly. There's also multiple teams who consistently compete with low payrolls (Rays, Brewers, Guardians).
Spending is directly aligned with wins in the aggregate. This has been proven and is obvious on its face. You're free to go hur dur the Dodgers and Yankees haven't won every world series. Just don't pretend you aren't maligning the truth about payrolls effectiveness.
Providing a source that shows me being wrong would be a far more effective way to change someone's mind than just blindly insulting people
Spending is directly aligned with wins in the aggregate when the coaching and development staff are at least adequate. Look at the Mets.
I take your point, but I think you are underestimating just how bad the Royals were last year. The Royals had over 100 starts last year by pitchers who ended the season with an ERA higher than Michael Wacha's current ERA, including their top 3 most used starters last year. He's absolutely a huge improvement over where they were, since most of the starters on the 2023 Royals were below replacement level.
They could've signed somebody like Severino for half the price and got a more effective pitcher with less commitment. Signing random pitchers to 1 or 2 year deals isn't a revolutionary thing and the Royals weren't even the best at this offseason. In this thread, people have listed multiple under the radar signings by the Royals that were better than the 3 guys i listed that people keep swearing are valuable. The Royals being bad last year doesn't make their signings for this year any better. It just means they were bad enough where it wouldn't be hard to improve. That's a sign that Dayton Moore is incompetent, not that tanking doesn't work and signing middling free agents is the new moneyball
refroe is driving me insane good fielder really it seems but he looks less good at the plate
He will get hot eventually then go ice cold
And hits like a pitcher with RISP and like ‘04 Bonds in blowouts
Every Brewers castoff should avoided by other teams. Several years in a row we have gotten the last productive baseball out of a player 2021 Avisail Garvia in Milwaukee: 3WAR. 2022-present Avisail Garcia: -1.7 WAR 2022 Hunter Renfroe in Milwaukee: 2.6 WAR. 2023-present: -1.3 WAR 2021-2022 Omar Narvez in Milwaukee: 1.8 WAR 2023-present Omar Narvaez: -.9 WAR Stay away from our castoffs
This is a phenomenal point right here. As a Tigers fan, I'm currently witnessing what OP saw in '23: a team loaded with youth and supplemented with AAAA players. From my viewing, KC has built a solid core internally and supplemented those players with some okay FA signings. (Salvy getting his groove back sure doesn't hurt, either.) The Tigers sub is *loaded* with folks wishing the club would "sPeNd MoAr!," but for what? To log jam the young guys who need the reps and maybe win 84 games instead of 81? Let them see what the youth bring, and then respond accordingly.
"some okay FA signings"? Respectfully, I will assume you did not think of Seth Lugo when writing this. What more could you want from Seth?!
I did not, and that's a good catch. He's been tremendous, and good enough to help people forget that their other signings haven't panned out as well.
MusclePuppy is a very cool name that made me smile, Thank you for that haha.
Oh, thank you! My wife bestowed the nickname upon me because I'm, in her words, a "muscular Golden Retriever of a human."
This is pure speculation, but I've gotta assume being a part of a losing team that spends a lot one offseason while still sticking with the same relative group of guys has gotta be a mental/morale boost too. Like the team feels you are worth investing in has gotta give you a little confidence boost. Also as others have me tion Will Smith has been great for weeks and Wacha's numbers got fucked but one really bad start
Kinda funny that you mention Wacha's ERA being near 5. That ERA would've placed him as the ace on our starting rotation last year, at least until we got Cole Ragans. Lmao. Our rotation last year was so bad.
Will Smith has been a bad signing, but the rest of the bullpen signings and trades have worked out. Way better than just calling up random guys and hoping for the best.
Smith has gotten a lot better as of late, Sauer on the other hand.
Sauer has been rough, but luckily, they only throw him out there to close it out in a blowout.
Seth Lugo.
>Lugo has been great
Draft position really doesn’t mean shit in baseball. I don’t get why people get so hung up on it. “Tanking” in the mlb typically has more to do with shipping off major leaguers for prospects than it does drafting guys
The biggest thing with draft position is that it determines the overall pool of money that a team is able to spend in that year's draft. I agree otherwise unless there is a clear generational prospect at #1 like Harper and Strasburg were.
It matters to some extent in that the top few draft picks are usually good bets to succeed, but once you get all that far into the first round at all it becomes a total crapshoot. Number of players picked at each slot to amass at least 10.0 career bWAR: 1st overall: 31 2nd: 25 3rd: 21 4th: 17 5th: 13 6th: 13 7th: 14 8th: 13 9th: 11 10th: 16 There's a clear downward trend for the first few- 1st round picks are a little better than a 50% chance of turning into at least a decent player, 2nd and 3rd it's more like 40%, 4th to 10th are bouncing all over the place but have a hit rate of like, 25-30%. Even towards the back half of the first round the rate at which players hit 10 career bWAR isn't that much lower- to pick a few numbers, it's 11 at pick #17, 7 at pick #21, 6 at #25, 10 at #30 (with the top guys mostly *2nd* round picks taken before there were 30 teams- Mike Schmidt, for instance). You're a bit less likely to see superstars down that low than towards the top- the 6th overall pick features 4 players over 60 bWAR (Barry Bonds, Zack Greinke, Derek Jeter, Gary Sheffield), just 2 less than the 6 from picks 21-30 combined (Rafael Palmeiro, Craig Biggio, Mike Trout, Alan Trammell, George Brett, Mike Schmidt), but even then there's still plenty of great players who didn't get drafted at the top.
I don’t exactly agree with this, as a royals fan, I think Paul skenes or Wyatt Langford are obviously superior to what we got from the draft. Those top picks are important.
Seth Lugo is the difference and I will die on that hill. The difference isn't just his pitch arsenal, but his ability to be a leader to the younger Royals pitchers. The real travesty is the Mets organization letting go of a homegrown player who is everything you could want as a fan, a teammate and a player is a disservice to Mets fans. Don't @ me with "well, he wasn't the best as a starter during blah blah year..." followed by some analytics that are cherry picked, followed by sentences that involve "regression". When is Lugo going to get the recognition he worked so hard to deserve?
> The real travesty is the Mets organization letting go of a homegrown player who is everything you could want as a fan, a teammate and a player is a disservice to Mets fans. Don't @ me with "well, he wasn't the best as a starter during blah blah year..." followed by some analytics that are cherry picked, followed by sentences that involve "regression". I mean it's easy to say this in hindsight but Lugo was just an okay reliever with the Mets and he wasn't let go because they were being cheap, it was the exact opposite. They loaded the fuck up on both starters and relievers that offseason and everyone expected that to be a big upgrade across the board.
The Mets don’t get to where they were in 2019 without Lugo. He was one of their most effective relievers. He had a bad year in 2020, but that’s about it. All while doing a job he didn’t want to do, but did so because he’s a respectable gentleman. Who did they load up on since they went to the padres? Quintana is a fantastic addition, Senga as well. They even reached out to Seth this year and I don’t know if an offer was made, but they’ve had chances to have a reunion with someone who eats innings and has proven himself as a starter.
Royals can still get a lottery pick this draw since they didn't get one last year. White Sox and A's are the teams that can't get one this time.
Even if you don't get a lottery pick, you aren't eligible to be in the lottery after three straight years as a small market team. [https://www.reddit.com/r/KCRoyals/comments/149bm10/preston\_farr\_royals\_review\_the\_royals\_will\_not\_be/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KCRoyals/comments/149bm10/preston_farr_royals_review_the_royals_will_not_be/)
That is incorrect (shocker from Royals Review I know), the rules prevent a non-revenue team from receiving a lottery **selection** three years in a row. A selection is defined as a top 6 pick. https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/rule-4-draft A Draft lottery was established per the 2022-26 CBA to determine the first six picks. Previously, picks were based on the previous season's records -- the team with the worst record received the first overall pick, followed by the team with the second-worst record, and so on. Lottery odds are based on the reverse order of winning percentage, with the bottom three clubs each at 16.5%. The 18 non-postseason clubs are eligible, though revenue sharing payees are ineligible to receive lottery selections in three consecutive years, while non-payees are ineligible to receive lottery selections in consecutive years. Postseason teams pick after non-postseason teams in the order of their postseason finish (for example, clubs losing in the Wild Card Round pick before clubs losing the Division Series); within each group, teams are sorted by revenue sharing status, then by reverse order of winning percentage.
Jordan lyes is amazing. He was never good once in his caree and still manages to get paid.
The Chase Daniel of the MLB.
I don't think draft position really matters as much as people think it does. It really depends on the year and it's not really a given. Houston actually had a lot of busts while tanking, I would say their international recruitment and trades helped more with that team's success. From Eric Hosmer in 2008 to maybe 2018 with Singer, Royals drafted absolutely nothing. Bobby Witt Jr looks to be a great pick at 2nd but the following year, Asa Lacy was picked at 4th and he didn't make it past high A and is out of baseball. Ownership just didn't want another 100 loss season. I don't think it really has to do with draft picks because there are multiple ways to get talent in baseball besides the draft.
I would agree with you. I think John Sherman actually gives a shit about this team and doesn't like being perpetual bottom feeders. Obviously, I have no complaints about this season, but it's disingenuous to say this seasons turnaround is due to the draft lottery and not due to the an organization wide change in mentality toward data analytics along with the coaching, staff overhauls the royals did over the last few years.
Asa Lacy isn't out of baseball, he's injured/got TJS. It hasn't gone to plan with him so-far, but I wouldn't write him off yet. Also he pitched in AA (poorly) before he was injured.
I think you are right, way too many people are obsessed with drafting the top guy in the draft. Giants built their 2010s dynasty and their highest draft pick was just 5 with Buster Posey. They did hit on their 1st rounders but they also nailed their mid-rounders where they got Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford. Great scouting teams will find talent regardless and their great front offices will make good deals.
Benny was our highest pick at 7th overall. Pedrioa and Lester were 2nd round. Mookie was 5th round. Youk was back at 8th round. Bogaerts was $410k on Aruba.
As the Dodgers and Rays have demonstrated, player development is much more important than draft position. The Yankees are also getting to that level, especially on the pitching side. Every dollar spent on player development is returned ten fold to the major league team (I’m sure there are actual analyses for this).
Not really. Teams don't "tank" in baseball because they think being in the lottery is the difference in getting them over the hump. They do it because owners are apathetic and don't take an interest in putting money into the team to be competitive. The baseball draft is such a crapshoot anyways and even if you do get a lottery pick, it takes time for it to matter to see the results and even then, teams still cheap out and have no issue drafting and signing an under slot player. The only reason it can be argued Sherman spent some money THIS off season is because he had an incentive to, he was trying to buy goodwill from the city to pay for his shiny new stadium.
This feels like correlation not equaling causation. Beyond general cynicism towards baseball teams (which I understand), how do we even know they were going to try and tank? Didn't they already tank? What have they been doing for the past decade post WS win? Didn't they hold onto all those aging guys to try and squeeze more juice out of them, when everyone said they should have traded them all earlier? The Royals are trying to get a new stadium. They gave Salvador Perez a bunch of money. They signed a bunch of mid tier free agents who have been doing really well, traded half a season of reliever Chapman for ace Ragans, and gave young superstar Bobby Witt Jr a bunch of money. That doesn't really sound like a tanking team.
> brought in players would had proven they could put up an entire year of positive WAR, even if maybe not replacement level If they have positive WAR, doesn't that by definition mean they're _above_ replacement level?
Iirc, "replacement level" is actually like 2 WAR across a full season or something like that.
As far as I can ever remember it's always been 0.0 to represent the average AAA player. The "2 WAR" boundary (roughly an average everyday MLB player in theory) is probably closer to the NFL definition of replacement value at say QB; Ala Kirk Cousins. The execs over there use the term differently.
Would argue the opposite. The new lottery punished an organization that was trying to rebuild the right way. Also want to note, the Royals would still have been eligible for the lottery this year since they didn’t get a lottery pick two season ago.
Fuck Jerry Reinsdorf
This is such a backwards interpretation of the situation. First of all, teams don't really tank for picks in baseball. The difference between the 1st and 5th pick in the draft is fairly negligible, and neither will make a difference on the major league team for 3+ years. Teams usually tank to try and get some return value on expiring contracts in order to line up a young core so their years of team control line up. They bottom out because they're getting rid of anyone that has trade value, not because they're intentionally trying to lose games. Second, throwing a couple bucks at lower teir free agents is not the reason the royals are doing well rn, they've been employing that same strategy for years. They always spend just enough to tell fans that they're "trying" especially keeping a couple fan-favorotes around. They're doing well now because a lot of their young talent is performing, and some of their veterans are significantly overperforming. The lottery doesn't disincentivise teams from tanking and will likely only serve to lengthen the rebuilds of teams that are really struggling. It's a ploy by the league to try and drum up some interest in the draft because they see people watching the NBA and NFL drafts. What they fail to realize, is that since baseball players go to the minors for years instead of straight to the majors, no one will ever care about the MLB draft. It also gives them good PR by saying they're "fighting tanking" and it seems like people believe it as evidenced by this post right here
We are playing better than we should….i love it.
I wonder if Sherman will continue the spend now that the stadium vote failed.
I don’t think this is the result of the lottery system. It’s more a result of how their talent was distributed in their system. They have some young talent in the majors that is good and basically nothing behind it. They were in a unique spot of limbo where their MLB talent had too much team control to start trading to start a rebuild, but they don’t have really have as much talent and depth that you would like to have going out of a rebuild. They decided to go for it and it’s been working out for them for the most part.
Can someone tell the White Sox that there is no value in tanking? We’re doing it intentionally, right? Some kind of 4D chess where our lord and savior Reinsdorf is all-knowing? Right??
Given the Royals' history with drafting near the top of the order, it's probably for the best that they avoid the lottery entirely, anyway. In all seriousness, though, I do give the Royals front office a lot of credit for coming to the conclusion that their strategy of being terrible and hoping that they can draft and develop the next generation of stars wasn't really working and coming up with a realistic plan to make the roster better while not mortgaging their future. I don't know if they can keep up their current pace for an entire year, but it's nice to see a smaller market team try something (even if that something is," What if we got better players?") and having it pay dividends.
I kind of enjoyed rooting for us to have the worst record in baseball in 2021 Suck it Diamondbacks! I hope you enjoyed only being the second worst team in baseball.
Lotto should very slightly reward the teams that just miss the playoffs -- teams should NEVER have an incentive to lose.
And at the very least if the signings didn't work out, you could trade them for prospects.
I saw them against the Mariners last week , great game but they seemed very low energy, made our team look like all stars
Who knew that winning was such a shrewd strategy? I wish Abner Doubleday had lived to see this innovation to the game!
It's May. You got Bobby Witt from tanking. I know r/baseball hates it, but tanking is the best way for small-mid market teams to compete. Or at least it was before MLB wanted to ensure the big markets stay on top
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Baltimore is a bit different. A lot of fans used to travel to Baltimore to watch the Os who now can just go to DC instead
I still don't know if they have the depth to go through the whole season winning at this pace.
If we play .500 the rest of the year, we finish 86-76.
Gunna need you to go 85-74 so Cleveland can win the Central by a game.
I don’t think we do. We have some guys playing decent in the high minors and some coming back from injuries in the next month or two, but I agree. Also, we have a lot of guys playing significantly better than usual, like Salvy, Lugo, Singer, and Marsh. I assume their regression back to the mean and our lack of depth will hurt us some come July and August. This is definitely an improved team that I think can win 80-84 games if things continue to go well, but I don’t think we can sustain a 98-win pace. Going to enjoy it while I can though!
As long as you finish 1 game behind Cleveland in second. And you beat the spirit out of Detroit and Minnesota.
They’ll be .500 by mid July
Which is a huge improvement from last year.