Archive for August, 2011

From October 4 to November 19, seven Royals will join the Surprise Rafters of the Arizona Fall League. Wil Myers, Nate Adcock, Christian Colon and Clint Robinson are the headliners, with an quirky age range of 20 years old (Myers) to Robinson (26). They’ll be joined by pitchers Jeremy Jeffress, Bryan Paukovits and Brendan Lafferty.

With Jason Kendall still recovering from shoulder surgery at the end of spring training this year, the Royals snagged catcher Matt Treanor from the Rangers for cash. Wednesday afternoon, they gave him back to Texas. No doubt, the Royals are encouraged by the play of Salvador Perez, who has had a fine start to his big league career at the age of 21.  They must be comfortable enough with Brayan Pena‘s play to keep him as a veteran backup.  In 65 games and 219 plate appearances, Pena has a .653 OPS and has thrown out 36% of would-be basestealers in [...]

It was another loaded week on the Royalman Report. We were glad to get Lee Warren of Omaha Baseball 360 back on the show to talk about Omaha’s journey towards clinching the division.  We also talked about the potential of any September call ups coming up from Omaha. Along with that, we looked at Johnny Giavotella‘s development and compared Mike Moustakas to a video game character. Click the embedded player below to listen to this week’s show or you can download the mp3 here. If you want your business featured during breaks on the Royalman Report, contact us at 816-394-9578 [...]

I’m not fluent in Spanish. Far from it, in fact. However, I couldn’t help but look up what “salvador” means in Spanish. What is it? Savior. Right now, that’s fitting. A bit strong, perhaps, but Salvador Perez is giving the Royals something we have been wanting for a long while: strong, young talent at catcher. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s hitting right now. He’s supposed to be great at handling pitchers, but is that the case? And where does he stand among rookie catchers all-time?

Every year the Royals name a player and pitcher of the year for every minor league affiliate.  In a year where Kansas City started by being annointed as the top farm system in the game, then saw many of those top prospects reach the big leagues, the system has to be replenished by new names who step up and perform. Pay attention to some of these names as they may be tomorrow’s top Royals prospects:

On Monday, while Omaha was getting one game closer to clinching the American North Division in the Pacific Coast League, three Storm Chasers were named to the All-PCL All Star team. Starter Luis Mendoza, designated hitter Clint Robinson and Johnny Giavotella (who had a three run double for Kansas City tonight at Detroit) were named to the 12-man roster.  Omaha was the only team with three players named. Mendoza’s season is most surprising, with a 2.15 ERA over 138.1 innings pitched.  He threw a one-hitter earlier this season and may be a call up in September since the Royals are [...]

Tonight, Kings of Kauffman presents another episode of the Royalman Report at 7 p.m. CST. With the minor league playoffs approaching, we’ll talk with Lee Warren again (@OmahaBaseball on Twitter) as The Omaha Storm Chasers chase down a division title in the PCL. You can listen to our first discussion with Lee from June 26 here. Also, we’ll have the usual Royals discussion including topics including (but never limited to) Mike Moustakas turning it on, next year’s team, offseason moves and more. (There is a poll at the bottom of this post. We would appreciate your participation.) The Royalman Report [...]

As September rolls around, Major League Baseball is chock full of races. Of course there’s the race for division championships, the races for Cy young awards*, and the race for M.V.P. *Team Justin or Team Jered?….oh good grief I cant even use that without feeling guilty…I hate those stupid vampire books.

Can I start the slow clap for Mike Moustakas, or is it too soon? Have I lowered my expectations to the point where I was just happy for the kid to get his batting average up over .200? Either way, the rookie is hot right now. He’s hitting the way that we all hoped that he would, and I don’t care – I’m going to celebrate it. Now, I know that everyone knows the over-publicized history of the hype and anticipation of the young third baseman. First round draft pick, fast-track to the bigs, top ranked prospect, etc. There has [...]

By going 2-5 Friday night, Clint Robinson put Omaha one game closer to the playoffs in the Storm Chasers 14-1 rout of New Orleans. Here’s the crazy thing.  His August batting average actually went down despite two hits. He’s making a fine case for a September call-up.  The question is if he’ll get his opportunity.

The recent major league debuts of Manuel Pina and Salvador Perez have inspired me to switch gears, at least temporarily, in my minor league coverage. Instead of examining players on a team by team level, this week we’re going to look at the position of catcher across all levels of the Royals system. This involves 26 players, and by now you know that I’m a bit verbose so I will be breaking this up into multiple parts. This is Part 3 (for Part 1 click here) (for Part 2 click here) which will cover the catchers playing in Wilmington. I had intended to include [...]

About six weeks ago, I was curious about the possibility of four Royals reaching 20 homers or more in 2011, which has happened just two other times in franchise history.  At the time, Jeff Francoeur led the team with 12 homers, Alex Gordon and Melky Cabrera were right behind him with 11 each and Eric Hosmer had 9. Today, in the seventh inning in the Royals game against the Blue Jays, the tide has shifted, as Gordon now leads the team with 17, Cabrera has just hit number 17, Francoeur has just 15 and out of nowhere, Billy Butler has [...]