Kansas City Baseball Vault: How to Win the Division, with ESPN’s Mark Simon

Ever since the James Shields trade, the question has turned from “what can the Royals do to get better?” to “how do the Royals win the division?”

To help answer that question, we talked with Mark Simon of ESPN’s Baseball Today podcast about his article that addresses that second question. A lot has to go right, Mark admitted, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. He took us step by step through what it’ll take to get Kansas City back into the playoffs. There will have to be a couple of leaps, though, and nobody’s allowed to get hurt.

Following the discussion with Mark, we talked a bit more about other happenings in the league, including a comparison of the Royals trade and the trade that sent R.A. Dickey to Toronto. While not exactly comparable, they’re similar enough that it seemed to be two team going for the same goal in their quest for pitching. We also discussed optimism, pitching staffs and the gap between the Royals and the Detroit Tigers.

Download the full mp3 here or listen in the embedded player above.

The Kansas City Baseball Vault is a weekly podcast that covers the Royals, their minor league affiliates and other aspects of baseball in Kansas City.

You can catch up on old episodes of the Kansas City Baseball Vault here on Kings of Kauffman. Episodes of the Royalman Report are available on the site as well.

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