Triple Play Podcast: Royals in Arbitration, Evan Gattis, Clippard

There were some interesting stories making waves around baseball last week, so this week’s Triple Play Podcast broke down just about all of them. Reese, Matt, and I started things off by talking about Fred Wilpon being named the chair of the MLB Finance Committee. Yes, the same Fred Wilpon who found himself smack dab in the middle of a Ponzi scheme that cost him millions and millions of dollars. Major League Baseball is kind of crazy.

We also spent quite a bit of time discussing the trade that sent Yunel Escobar to the Nationals and Tyler Clippard back to the A’s. Both teams plan on competing in 2015, and they added pieces that should help them to that end.

Another fascinating trade took place between the Astros and Braves, with Evan Gattis heading to Houston in exchange for three prospects, headlined by Mike Foltynewicz and Rio Ruiz. The Astros have been bad for a few years now, but it looks like they want to make a push to mediocrity in the pursuit of that second Wild Card. The Braves are clearly building for the future, and they acquired a lot of young talent in this deal.

More from KC Royals News

• KC Royals Free Agent Hunt: 3 Tampa Bay pitchers
• Grading the 2022 KC Royals: The $25 million man
• KC Royals Winter Meetings Tracker: Expectations met
• KC Royals Winter Meetings Tracker: Day 3 update
• KC Royals Winter Meetings Tracker: Day 2 update

Several former Royals also made news last week, with Nori Aoki signing with the Giants, and Francisley Bueno and Everett Teaford inking minor league deals with the Cubs and Rays, respectively.

In current Royals news, we discussed the Ned Yost extension, as well as the team’s arbitration cases. Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas really reached for the stars with the numbers they filed, although Greg Holland‘s number is lower than most expected, so the team could still save some money. We all expect the Royals to reach settlements with the players before arbitration hearings begin, but they do have several cases with big gaps between the two sides’ offers, so it might come down to the wire.

Feel free to listen to the podcast with the player above, or at this link. To get in contact with the show, send us an email at KCTriplePlay@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter here:

Aaron Reese
Matt Vernon
Hunter Samuels

Thanks for listening!