The day after Zack Greinke proved, yet again, why he is arguably the best pitcher in all of baseball, Dayton Moore’s rumored contact extension took a more definitive shape.  The timing of Dayton’s extension is fitting, since his contract extension with Zack is one of the true bright spots thus far in his tenure as Royals GM.

I had planned to keep quiet about the Mahay for Yabuta move when it went down.  After the Twins signed Ron on Friday night, I could no longer keep quiet.  Now I am compelled to react to the latest puzzling move that Dayton has made.

Royals fans and bloggers everywhere are downright giddy at the possibility of capturing the 1st overall pick in the 2010 June draft and with it the obvious prize of 16 year old phenom Bryce Harper.  Along those lines I wanted to share this article from Perfect Game USA.org called simply The Scoop on Bryce Harper.

After 10+ hours of working out in the yard today, it is time to relax and take a look at the early returns of more 2009 Royals draft picks.  In this edition we will take a look at Rounds 21-30.

Included in this quick edition of Crown Gems:  Dayton Moore contract extension, Nicholas Francis suspension, and Alex Gordon.

There has been quite a bit written recently about whether or not the 2009 Kansas City Royals are the worst team in recent franchise history.  Before we get this team’s place in Royals history, I think it is important that we first frame it within the 2009 AL Central.  To get a quick and easy statistical measure of each team’s pitching and hitting, I decided to focus on ERA+ and OPS+.

Covered in this issue of Crown Gems:  Chris Dwyer, Wil Myers, Lee Roberts, Tony Pena Jr., Danny Duffy, Travis Metcalf, Zack Greinke, and the Royals AFL announcements.

Yesterday, I came across Restoring Sanity to Baseball’s Economics that was published on the New York Times website and it got me to thinking about how I would make MLB better. 

Here are a few links to enjoy on a Tuesday morning. 

Why is Kila Ka’aihue not in KC?  This is a question that Royals fans have been asking for most of the season.  As this post from the Center of the Sports Universe proves, it’s not just Royals’ blogs writing about it these days.
For those of you who enjoy graphs, check out Royals WAR Pie over on UmpBump.com.  For those of you not into statistics, WAR stands for Wins Above Replacement.
From Royals Authority, Still Searching for Rock Bottom.

It has been 6 days since I posted the Early Returns piece on Rounds 6-10.  Here is the second installment covering the picks from the 11th to the 20th round of the 2009 Royals draft class.

I wanted to bring a little Royals related positivity to everyone’s Monday morning/afternoon with a quick post to share the following:

In this edition of Crown Gems; Royals 20-game winners and 200 hits seasons, Billy Butler, personal records, more on Dayton Moore, and an overdue recap of Thursday night’s KC Hamfighters softball game.