Sunday Morning Grab Bag

It’s been a busy week for the Royals.  They came to agreements with Alex Gordon and Luke Hochevar to avoid arbitration and bolstered their rotation depth by signing Jeff Francis and bringing Bruce Chen back for another go.  I think it’s a good day to sit back, unwind and take a look at some fun Royals related links:

• In regards to the Francis signing, Dave Cameron at FanGraphs calls it the “best free agent signing of the winter” and congratulates Dayton Moore.
• On Friday, an odd anniversary occurred.  Sometime around 8:50 p.m. Central time, the billion second anniversary of a beanball breaking Frank White‘s hand in 1979.  Later in that game, the same pitcher, Ed Farmer, beaned Al Cowens, breaking his jaw.  Chris Jaffe and The Hardball Times did all the counting on that one.
• It’s Steve Balboni‘s birthday today (happy 54th!) and Baseball-Reference looks at his career as the ultimate for a three true outcomes player.  Balboni, of course, still holds the Royals single season home run mark of 36, which has stood since 1985.  C’mon Moustakas, wipe that off the board…
• This is an older article I stumbled upon at Mental Floss: Ten Overhyped Baseball Players Who Fizzled.  Sadly, the Royals don’t have just one player on the list, but two.  They also acquired one more and a fourth was involved in a significant trade in the Royals past.  Scary.
• In 1980, George Brett never went more than two games without a hit.  Baseball-Reference has a list of nine other crazy statistics about the Hall of Famer.

Happy Sunday!

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