Kings Of Kauffman
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Crown Gems: New Year’s Eve Edition

By Wally Fish

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As you can probably tell, I am putting off tackling 2004-2006 in my Royals Rotten Decade series.  Who can blame me?  It takes time to gather enough motivation to tackle 310 losses in a 3 year stretch.  Anyway it’s New Years Eve which means that tonight is not the night to be rehashing the failures of Royals seasons past.  I hope you will enjoy what I have come up with instead.

First off I wanted to point out two posts that just missed the deadline to be included in yesterday’s edition of Sluggerrr Snacks.

Friend of KoK, Lee Warren, just announced today that he will be doing a Greinke series over on Royal Reflections.  I’m really looking forward to see what Lee comes up with as he takes a look back at Zack’s amazing 2009 season.

Another friend of KoK, Jeff Parker, compared the HOF cases for Jack Morris and Kevin Appier on Royally Speaking.  I’ve never been among the multitudes that think Morris belongs in the HOF, but Jeff’s article would have converted me if I had been in the group.

While I’m on the topic of Hall of Fame voting, the results of Baseball Bloggers Alliance HOF voting was recently announced.  Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven were the only two candidates to meet the 75% requirement.  Roberto Alomar, Bert Blyleven, Andre Dawson, Barry Larkin, Edgar Martinez, and Tim Raines were the 6 players I voted for on my official BBA ballot submitted many weeks ago.  No vote for Jack Morris here!  I plan on publishing an article on the rationale behind my voting, but I’m not sure when that will actually happen.

Jack Morris pitched for the Tigers, and Joe Dexter is our lead on our Tigers’ blog Motor City Bengals.  Today in his New Year’s post he gave yours truly a shout out, so I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Joe and all the other MLB bloggers at FanSided for being such a great team to work with.  I also want to echo Joe’s sentiment about Adam and Zach Best.  They have been invaluable in my growth as a writer and blogger in the last 10 months.  They took a chance on me when they made me their Royals lead back in February, and an even bigger chance on me when they made me MLB Director for FanSided.  While I am at it, I should thank my family and friends who encouraged me to take the plunge and join FanSided in the first place.  It is a decision that I have not regretted for one second.  I look forward to big things in 2010 and beyond for the FanSided.com Sports Network, and of course, Kings of Kauffman.

I also want to say how thankful I am to be part of the Royals blogosphere.  As bad as the Royals have been, the team is very well represented with many quality blogs.  I take a great deal of pride in being a part of that, and have been blown away by how accepting everyone has been.

Okay enough of the warm fuzzies.  Let’s get back to the links.

4-year old Luke Holko is on the road to recovery after being hit in the head by a foul ball back in September.

About a week and a half ago Simon on Sports finished up the Blogging the Offseason series and posted a team-by-team list of all the interviews done.  He interviewed at least one blogger from each and every MLB team, and you may recall that he asked me (for some odd reason) to represent the Kansas City Royals.  Go check out what other bloggers had to say about their teams.

Here are some excellent thoughts by a scout, published on Baseball America, on how to fix some of the schedule and division related problems that plague MLB.  I saw the headline in Google Reader and I almost passed it up assuming it was going to be some nonsense about how the MLB schedule should be scaled back.  I was pleasantly surprised by the topic and suggestions put forth in the article.  In case you’re not already aware, Baseball America is wonderful.

The Washington Times is eliminating its sports coverage, and Mark Zuckerman writes a farewell of sorts.  It’s kind of a sad turn of events, but based on the quality of his article I’m guessing he will find a way to continue on in his career.

I like to reference WAR in a lot of my articles and yesterday Alex Remington published an article that is all about WAR (Wins Above Replacement).  It is an excellent read and very informative.  Not to mention he references Yuniesky Betancourt (though not in a good way)!

On Christmas Eve, Baseball America’s John Manuel posted his Personal Top 20 Prospects List.  The bad news?  No Royals prospects made the cut.  The good news?  Only two AL Central players were listed.  Indians C-Carlos Santana was #11 and Twins OF-Aaron Hicks was #18.

The Royals did make one list that came out recently.  Thanks to the Jason Kendall contract, Kansas City made the cut on Tim Dierkes’ post covering the best and worst signings of the offseason.  On a positive note, according to these projections over on Beyond the Box Score, Kendall is a “6 run improvement over Miguel Olivo” when it comes to blocking pitches.

Now is also a good time to drop some more links from Baseball Beginnings, including an excellent article where John Klima put down some of his thoughts on Bryce Harper.

In the spirit of the New Year, and what I hope are better times ahead for our Royals, enjoy a little Tesla, “Gettin’ Better.”  This song is almost 25 years old and it still one of my all-time favorites.

(Wally Fish is the lead blogger for Kings of Kauffman and FanSided’s MLB Director.  Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)

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