Royalman Report 2/26/12: Assistant GM J.J. Picollo and Joel Goldberg

A random meeting in the Kauffman Stadium Team Store led Troy “Royalman” Olsen to meet Royals Assistant General Manager J.J. Picollo. After a brief conversation, J.J. agreed to join us on the Royalman Report and this is the result.

Picollo discussed the things the Royals are looking at in Surprise during spring training, who he expects to bounce back, and who the Royals hope to see big breakouts from. He also discussed the impact of the new CBA on the Royals draft strategies going into 2012. The team’s thoughts behind the Yuniesky Betancourt signing and reflections on negotiations with Roy Oswalt and Edwin Jackson were also addressed.

We also checked in with Joel Goldberg about what the players are doing down in Arizona. He gave us his insight into the internal competitions between players and keeping spring training from getting boring (especially when it’s all drills early on). He also talked about how some of the pitchers looked and who might sneak into the rotation.

This week’s Fake Ned Minute is a little blue, so we’ll call it not safe for work, but he redeemed himself by producing a fantastic bit with Mike McCartney that takes off of a famous scene from a famous baseball movie. Definitely look for that after the Goldberg segment. Fake Ned also paid off a lost bet.

You can listen below or download the mp3 directly.

The Royalman Report is hosted by Troy “Royalman” Olsen with co-host Michael Engel and features Chris “Fake Ned Yost” Kamler, 610 Sports blogger Jeff Herr and Sam Sapenaro of the K Crew and airs  live Sundays at 7 p.m. central time at RoyalmanReport.com as well as on Livestream.com/RoyalmanReport.

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