Sean O'Sullivan. Mandatory Credit: Jake Roth - US PRESSWIRE

The Royals had their 25 man roster set early but still had some maneuvering to clear the 26th player. Sean O’Sullivan was that 26th player.

He stays in the organization after being placed on waivers as he was not claimed by any other organization. Due to that, he was sent outright to Omaha where he’ll likely be apart of the Storm Chasers rotation.

O’Sullivan did well enough in spring, covering 15 innings and giving up six  runs. He struck out six and walked just two. In 2011, he made 12 appearances and 10 starts for Kansas City and over 58.1 innings put up a 7.25 ERA. For Omaha last year, he pitched 74.2 innings and had a 4.22 ERA. He has a career ERA of 6.18 in the majors over 198 innings.

The Royals played with the timing of his assignment to maintain some depth. Earlier in spring another team may have at least looked at him, but later on, as other teams have their rosters more or less pieced together, they won’t usually make another move. O’Sullivan hasn’t had a great track record, but he’s just 24 years old and has shown decent control in the minors. It’s not going to hurt much at this stage to have him around for depth, although he’s pretty likely to stick around Omaha unless injuries dictate he get called up.

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37 – Sean O’Sullivan- Yes it’s his number but how will Sully be used this year? He spent time in Omaha last year plus came out of the bullpen at times in Kansas City. Many fans are still waiting on him to do something productive for the organization since he was acquired.

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The point is that September is full of hope. At the start of the month, there are another 25-30 games to play. Teams can manage to climb ten games in the standings with a hot streak and their opponents’ corresponding cold streaks. With the introduction of new call-ups from the minors, the balance changes slightly. The fresh blood mixes up the standard game plan for teams and the new variety (and hope) create a fresh experience for fans.

Kansas City is, of course, right in the middle of this influx of new blood.

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The win gives the Royals their first series win in New York since 1999.

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O’Sullivan ran into some trouble in the first as he walked Coco Crisp and gave up a walk to David DeJesus. After Sean managed to get Conor Jackson to fly out, Hosmer was faced with his first defensive test. Hideki Matsui hit a sharp grounder right to Hosmer who calmly fielded the ball on a knee and threw to second before recieving a return throw for a bang-bang 3-6-3 double play. I wanted Hos to get involved early, but I was thinking more along the lines of a nice soft grounder to second or the pitcher maybe, where he could recieve an easy throw and kind of get into the flow. He didn’t look fazed by Matsui’s grounder though and made a slick-looking MLB play on it and got the fans at Kauffman excited early. (more…)

For the first seven innings tonight, the Royals seemed resigned to let this one settled into the “50 losses” column.  Then, as has been the case over and over in 2011, they came back to win, scoring the tying and winning runs on a Melky Cabrera hit in the bottom of the ninth.

The win demonstrates the importance of the so-called “little things.”

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Backed up by some great defense and working out of a couple of jams, O’Sullivan went five innings, shutting out a feeble Mariners offense.  The bullpen combo of Tim Collins, Jeremy Jeffress and Aaron Crow came in for the final four innings, striking out six and maintaining the shutout.

The Royals have now won four in a row and are 10-4.

Today, there were a lot of heroes:

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Unfortunately, this past week and a half I’ve also had the joy of dealing with a bunch of so-called “expert” fans of other teams who find it necessary to condescendedly inform me that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. That my team really isn’t as good as their record shows. That they aren’t going to win the world series. I smiled, thanked them, and dreamed of condescendingly kicking them in the face. (more…)

Chen led the Royals in wins last season with 12 wins and compiled a 4.17 ERA in 140.1 innings.  He pitched ten games out of the bullpen and started another 23 after injuries knocked Gil Meche and Luke Hochevar out of the rotation.  In 2009, he’d made 17 appearances for the Royals, starting nine games.

His 2010 earned him a major league contract.  The past two seasons he’s signed with  the Royals on a minor league deal and was promoted in midseason.

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Luke Hochevar, doin' his thing

By now its fairly well known that our starting rotation next year isn’t going to be very good.

We’re staring down a rotation where Luke Hochevar, Kyle Davies, Sean O’Sullivan and Vin Mazzaro are locks and the fifth starter is still up in the air.

As for our set in stone guys, Hochevar’s likely the best out of all of them and our Opening Day starter. “The Hoch” like many Royals, is big on potential. He was, of course, a star at Tennesee and the number one pick in the 2006 draft and he’s been bred for a high rotation spot since then. However, his career is pockmarked with injuries and underachievement. Hochevar only mustered 17 starts last year while dealing with an injury in his throwing shoulder. Otherwise, his performance and numbers have been shaky at best. In four years, he’s averaged a beyond mediocre 5.60 ERA and a far below average 78 ERA+, but not all of his stats are terrible.

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With a bevy of prospects working their way up, the organization took an approach to move older players to make room for younger to fill in the gaps, both to evaluate them for future roles, and both to get solid returns in the form of even more young players.

At the deadline, the Royals traded Alberto Callaspo, Scott Podsednik, Kyle Farnsworth and Rick Ankiel and received Tim Collins, Luke May, Sean O’Sullivan, Will Smith, Eisaul Pimentel, Gregor Blanco and Jesse Chavez in return.

It remains to be seen what the long-term impact of the moves will have for the Royals, but the main benefit of the trades is this – there’s the chance for a long-term impact.  Let’s face it, Podsednik, Farnsworth and Ankiel weren’t going to be in Kansas City in 2012, and Callaspo regressed a bit from a strong 2009 that saw him collect 60 extra base hits.

Over the next couple days, I’ll look at these moves more in-depth to determine who “won” each trade, both in the short and long term.
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With a strong background in scouting, Moore’s rebuilding of the minor league system via the draft has been touched upon, and while he hasn’t been very good at constructing a major league roster, he’s shown an eye for finding talent in other minor league systems as well. That looks like the theme behind this season’s trades – Dayton Moore found a mostly overlooked player and was able to get him included in a deal.
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The first reaction gave a worst case scenario of six weeks of recovery time for the injury, so unfortunately, the extent of the problem was underestimated.  It’s a terrible situation for the Royals as they lose out on the potential bounty they could have received in a trade for him, plus his performance was borderline for a Type A free agent before the injury and missing two months of production won’t help that cause.

The Royals still hold an affordable $6 million dollar option on him for 2011 and that may be the best way for them to go, unless they’re sure he’ll a) refuse arbitration at season’s end and b) recovery goes well enough for other teams to sign him (and give the Royals some supplemental draft).
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