Royals Links: Roster Cuts, Sean Manaea, Billy Butler, & More

Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

We continue to inch closer and closer to the start of the regular season, which means players are really starting to get into game shape. Pitchers will start to throw more innings, and position players will stay in games longer. This leaves less playing time for minor league players, which of course leads to them being shipped down to minor league camp as you’ll see below. Here is that story, along with a few others from around the web in the last few days.

– Earlier today, the Royals reassigned 14 players from major league camp to minor league camp at spring training, as Dick Kaegel outlines here. Chris Dwyer was optioned to Omaha, while John Lamb, Cheslor Cuthbert, and Lane Adams were optioned to Northwest Arkansas. 

– The Kansas City Star’s Andy McCullough profiled Sean Manaea in a recent article, from his climb to top draft prospect, to his hip injury, and now to his work in preparing for his professional debut this season. The Royals are certainly very excited about Manaea, and are hoping he can join their big league rotation sometime in 2015.

– David Lesky of Pine Tar Press argued that the Royals can’t be blamed for “mishandling” the situation with Ervin Santana, because no one could have predicted his market would shake out the way it has. However, he also mentions the Royals should be involved with Santana again, if it’s only going to take a one-year deal to sign him.

– Over at Royals Review, RoyalsRetro wonders if Billy Butler has a chance to reach the 3,000 hit plateau. It is probably an unlikely scenario, but with Butler’s hitting ability, he may be able to accumulate enough hits if he can hang around the game long enough.

– Fangraphs’ Dave Cameron created a model to basically compare what this 2014 class of free agents should have expected to what they actually received. He uses WAR projections for this season, and then a rough multiplier to figure out the dollar values and years of an expected contract. Obviously it’s an imperfect tool, but the results of the model are actually pretty close to the contracts handed out.