While the rest of the division was pulling off deals to make a run at the division or having a fire sale to improve in the near future, the Royals sat on their collection of, pardon the use of the term, talent.  Queue the crickets!

The MLB non-waiver trade deadline is just about 24 hours away and there is a lot of movement going on across MLB.  In this post I have included; an update on the 5 players I wrote about earlier in the week, my thoughts on the acquisition of Josh Anderson, some news items about Royals trade rumors, and some other players that have been released of DFA’d in the last couple of days.

Bryan Lee Roberts was born January 24, 1986 in Madrid, Spain. He was raised in Hermosa Beach, California and attended Mira Costa High School. Lee was signed by the Royals this summer as an undrafted free agent after completing his college career at Loyola Marymount University. In his senior season with the LMU Lions, Lee posted a 7-2 record and 3.58 ERA in 103 innings of work. He struck out 91 while walking only 27 and went at least 6.0 innings in 11 or his 13 starts. Now a member of the Arizona League Royals, Lee has made eight relief [...]

In the latest edition of Ask BA, posted yesterday, over on BaseballAmerica.com, Jim Callis responded in depth to a question about Mike Moustakas and Red Sox power-hitting 1B prospect Lars Anderson.  I am glad another well respected expert is on the “Moose will be just fine” side of the discussion.  It is important to me that we all keep his performance in perspective so I wanted to share Callis’ thoughts with everyone here.  Since Hosmer tends to go with Moustakas like peanut butter and chocolate, I thought this would be a good time to give an update on our future [...]

Five players have been designated for assignment in the last 3 days.  All five times my initial reaction was that the Royals would be a better team if they claimed each particular player.  It is a sad state of affairs at the major league level for the Royals these days.  Even Sidney Ponson throwing 6 shutout innings can’t stop the season from drowning in the sewer.  As of today, only the Nationals and Padres are keeping the Royals from being the worst team in all of baseball and I’m not so sure KC would win a series against the Padres if they played this week.  With [...]

Lee Warren over at Royal Reflections has become a champion for Kids’ Day at the K.  You can read his initial post and updates here, here, and here.  Royals Review has also taken up the effort, click here.  Please consider donating to the cause to help some youngsters take in a Royals game that otherwise might not have a chance to do so.  We all have fond memories of games we went to as kids and, in my humble opinion, all kids should have a chance at those memories.  If you decide to donate, make sure you mention that you are part of the [...]

Cleaning up some odds and ends from the last several days.  In this issue of Crown Gems you will find:  RSS feed reminder, Jose Guillen to the DL, a link to a Joe Posnanski post, more TPJ news, Omaha Royals stadium news (a bit late), and an update on Ka’aihue.  I have opted to go with “Crown Gems” as my working title for my posts that cover many news items, but I may change it to something else in the future.  I’m not sold on Crown Gems, but I liked it better than Crown Visions and Link-O-Rama has already been taken [...]

The way things stand now, Felix Hernandez and Roy Halladay are Zack Greinke’s only legitimate competition for the 2009 AL Cy Young Award.  Taking a look at the stats, Greinke is the clear cut favorite to win the award despite playing on an awful team.  Now is a perfect time to break each of their seasons down since all three have made 20 starts and are within 1.2 innings pitched of one another.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that our front office is apparently subject to massive delusions.  Many of you who read other Royals blogs are already aware of our GM’s quotes so I apologize for the redundancy contained herein.  To minimize said redundancy, I thought it would be best to provide links that address this issue. 

Strange things are happening in the Royals minor league system these days.  Quality pitching performances are popping up all over the place.  Yesterday I wrote about Michael Montgomery and John Lamb.  Today a lesser known Royals farm hand was promoted to NW Arkansas after pitching brilliant baseball for the Wilmington Blue Rocks.

I recognize that I am double dipping by going back to Mike Montgomery, who was reason #6 in Volume 2, but he deserves some additional attention in lieu of his promotion to the Wilmington Blue Rocks today.  After watching Bruce Chen and Sidney Ponson pitch yesterday, I needed to find a rotational “happy place” and Montgomery’s early returns fit the bill.

The Royals’ season got a little more bizarre with some of the quotes being thrown out there over the last several days.