I’m excited, you’re excited.  Royals fans all over are excited.

Attendance should be pretty strong tomorrow night to see his major league debut.  Think of how many eight-year-olds can say in twenty years that they were there for Eric Hosmer’s major league debut.  If this group of prospects leads us to the promised land, that’s going to be a special memory.

I went digging to find some other prominent Royals (and some who are just scary) to find out how their major league debuts went.  I stuck with hitters, as I figure there are opportunities later this year to examine pitchers’ debuts.  Also I only looked at a few players who made debuts as a Royal, so that knocked out Amos Otis and Cookie Rojas among others.

Hopefully, Hosmer’s debut goes as well as Mark Quinn‘s where he went 3-4 against the Angels, hitting two homers and driving in four.  Hopefully, Hosmer’s career fares better.

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Ken Harvey celebrating a rare victory.

I’m not so sure.

Earlier this off-season when it looked like Kevin Millwood and Luke Hochevar would be the most accomplished pitchers on the staff and the outfield seemed like the Island of Misfit Prospects, I had my reservations. It looked like another 100 loss season and I was bracing myself for a long summer of watching former Braves duff around the diamond while waiting for the Futures Game.

But in the past few weeks I’ve been doing my best to look for bright spots on the 2011 roster. Since Zack Greinke left the team, the Royals have actually made a fair amount of smart transactions. Jeff Francis and Bruce Chen were added to shore up the rotation, Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain were brought in to tighten up the defense, and our stockpile of top-rated prospects continued to grow.

As Gage wrote earlier this week, the Royals have off-loaded a fair amount of money and are *GASP* finally making legitimate strides toward fruition of The Process.

But the question remains, how bad will this team be in comparison to the other terrible teams Royals fans endured in the past?

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Mike Aviles is ready to prove his rookie season was no fluke

Last year, as you’ve probably heard by now, the Royals were second over-all in the Majors in team batting average, but ranked twentieth in runs scored. At the same time, the team dominated the basement of all pitching statistics (28th in quality starts, 29th in ERA, WHIP, and BAA).

In short, the Royals could hit the ball, they just couldn’t score, protect a lead, or defend very well.

The addition of defenders who can actually make plays like Alcides Escobar, and (I know, I know) Jeff Francoeur should help out a team that has had to suffer through the woeful defense of Yuniesky Betancourt, Jose Guillen and Alberto Callaspo. But our rotation, which will probably be one of the worst since 2005 when Jose Lima, a young Zack Greinke and Runelvys Hernandez combined to win 18 decisions out of 94 starts, isn’t going to do us any favors.

So again the slim chance of the Royals playing respectable baseball falls upon our offense. I’ve taken a look at our best offensive players who finished 2010 strong and could keep the momentum going into 2011.

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Angel Berroa, 2003 AL Rookie of the Year and hero to Royals fans everywhere, has apparently signed a minor league contract with the San Fransisco Giants.  That’s according to Baseball America’s weekly Minor League Transactions blog, which was posted today covering the week of April 19th-April 26th.

Ah, Angel … what could have been.  If only your 2003 WAR of  2.7 was the norm and not the exception.  You had the power to save us from the horror that was Tony Pena Jr. but … you … failed …