Royals Roundup: Way Down in the Hole

Look, I know you’re probably going to be watching basketball all day, but if you get a chance to turn away from March Madness, you really ought to do yourself a favor and read a few links from way out in the Royals universe.

By the way, while I’ve watched the NCAA coverage all weekend, a few things jump out at me:

• Advertising executives are the most overpaid people on earth.  I am about to tear down every NAPA Auto Parts store I find brick by brick because of this stupid NAPA Know How campaign.  I guess it does its job by being memorable, but it’s the bad kind of memorable.  On that note, my hatred of Miller Lite commercials grows every day.
• The fouls in the Butler/Pittsburgh games were fouls.  Period.  Dumb fouls, but fouls nonetheless.
• If the scientific world ever does perfect cloning technology, they should create a Gus Johnson for every televised sports broadcast in the world.  I’d replace Bob Davis with Gus with ease.

Now, Royals baseball time:

– Joe Posnanski was busy, coming up with two Royals related posts.  His first column points how just how good George Brett was from 1976 to 1985 – so good that he could have won four MVP awards rather than the only one he did win in 1980.  That season, he won with a .390/.454/.664 line but wasn’t a unanimous selection.

The real meat of the article shows just how important Brett was to the 1985 World Champion Royals.

So important that he provided 84.6% of the Royals Runs Above Replacement.  That’s the highest percentage of a team’s RAR by one player in Posnanski’s sample of World Series winning teams since World War II.  Second place went to Luis Gonzalez in 2001 with 45.5%. Crazy.

– Like I said, JoPoz was busy, also coming up with an article about the depth and talent in the Royals minor league system.

– Josh Duggan has his next installment comparing Royals to characters on The Wire.  I’ll let it speak for itself, but it’s a fantastic comparison.

– Corey Ettinger has put up profiles of many of the top prospects in the AL Central and recently put up his top 15 list for Royals prospects.  His list is similar to our rankings, but there are differences in how the players are ordered, as one would expect.  No surprisingly, there are a lot of capable prospects that were left off – oh the perils of the deepest farm system in baseball.

– Finally, Bob Dutton is taking a look at how roster battles are shaping up as the Royals reach the spring training home stretch.  He hints that the Royals may try to sneak Gregor Blanco through waivers and assign him to Omaha which would lead to them retaining Jarrod Dyson.

Blanco has struggled in spring and Dyson’s carried the momentum from last September into a strong spring.  Dyson offers the same defensive strengths that Blanco does but has much more speed.  That he’s hitting well and Blanco isn’t seems like it might be giving him the edge right now.

That means Lorenzo Cain still starts in Triple A so he can play every day.  That’s just a reality I think Royals fans have come to accept – regardless of if it’s the right personnel move or not.

If they try the Blanco gambit, it’ll be at a time when every other team is trying to make final cuts as well so making claims to add a player just adds to the difficulty of their roster decisions.

Stay current on all the Kings of Kauffman content and news by following us on Twitter, Facebook, or by way of our RSS feed.