After spending three weeks focused on the Idaho Falls Chukars, it’s finally time to move on. The next logical step is the Burlington Royals so that is where we’re heading. As you can surmise from the title, today I’m breaking down the pitchers and in the next column I’ll delve into the position players.

All 14 of the pitchers on the Burlington roster have been introduced to the Royals system in the last 4 years. 3 came in 2008, 5 in 2010 and 6 in 2011. 9 pitchers were added via the draft, 2 were international free agents, 2 were non-drafted free agents and one was acquired via trade. In Baseball America’s 2011 Prospect Handbook, RHP Robinson Yambati cracked Kansas City’s pre-season top-30 (#16) and RHP Eric Cantrell made the organizational depth chart but the rest of the pack haven’t received much pub as of yet. (more…)

At some point between the day of the trade and tonight (honestly it was quite a while ago) I came across the fact that Pizziconi was born in Anzio, Italy. That tidbit got me wondering if any other Italian-born players have spent time in the Royals organization.

Thanks to Baseball Almanac, I was able to find a list of six Italian-born players who reached the major leagues. I’m not sure how accurate that list is but that number seems to be consistent across several sources, so I’m going to accept it as fact for the purposes of this article. (more…)