Year Two of the Matt Quatraro tenure. Time to take a step up this year. Active in free agency and trades this offseason. A new look pitching rotation and bullpen. Will the young players take the leap up offensively? Bobby Witt extension? New stadium? Will Vinny recover from injury? Salvy taking aim at the Royals record book? Will Cole Ragans turn into the best Royals starting pitcher since Greinke 1.0?
Free Agents/Trades Acquisitions
Seth Lugo, SP
Michael Wacha, SP
Kyle Wright, SP
Hunter Renfroe, OF/DH
Will Smith, RP
Chris Stratton, RP
Nick Anderson, RP
Adam Frazier, 2B
Garrett Hampson, INF/OF
Matt Sauer, RP [Reply]
Originally Posted by PHOG:
So Baltimore's going with Cade Povich (2-9, 5.59 ERA) vs Pablo Lopez (15-9, 4.11 ERA) for the Twins. :-)
Povich is a talented pitcher figuring it out in the majors. He has 30 K and a 3.27 ERA in 22 innings in September.
He's actually a former Twins prospect (acquired in the 2022 Jorge Lopez deal), so maybe he will be inspired to pitch against his former organization. [Reply]
I don’t know how anybody can have issues with this manager. He took a team of a young soon to be superstar, a star in the making, an aging veteran star and a bunch of LEGO pieces and has them on the brink of the playoffs.
Losing that up and coming star, Vinnie, as they were charging for the division was a tremendous blow. Yet, here we are boys.
Originally Posted by WilliamTheIrish:
I don’t know how anybody can have issues with this manager. He took a team of a young soon to be superstar, a star in the making, an aging veteran star and a bunch of LEGO pieces and has them on the brink of the playoffs.
Losing that up and coming star, Vinnie, as they were charging for the division was a tremendous blow. Yet, here we are boys.
Seriously, I admire what he’s done.
While I frequently disagree with his tactical decisions, in the bigger picture, vhe keeps a young ball clubs head in the right place. Never too high, never too low. That's the most important impact he can have. [Reply]
Originally Posted by WilliamTheIrish:
I don’t know how anybody can have issues with this manager. He took a team of a young soon to be superstar, a star in the making, an aging veteran star and a bunch of LEGO pieces and has them on the brink of the playoffs.
Losing that up and coming star, Vinnie, as they were charging for the division was a tremendous blow. Yet, here we are boys.
Originally Posted by myselff77:
Ned's biggest flaw in Milwaukee was managing the bullpen. I'm not sure he ever got better at it, but when you have HDH to roll with, it pretty much eliminated having to make any decision.
Assuming the weekend goes right, Q has managed to get the Royals into the playoffs with less than any other KC manager.
There's a famous moment somewhere very late in that 2014 season where he used Aaron Crow and blew a game and afterwards Ned was like "Aaron Crow's inning is the 6th inning" or whatever. Then he brought in Yordano in the wild card game when he probably should have just went to Herrera. He got better in the 2014 playoffs but by 2015 he had learned. He wasn't afraid to use Herrera for 2-3 innings, or Wade Davis on both sides of a rain delay, or be a little more careful about using Ryan Madson because he wasn't quite as dominant as Herrera and Davis. [Reply]
Originally Posted by tk13:
There's a famous moment somewhere very late in that 2014 season where he used Aaron Crow and blew a game and afterwards
I remember that vividly. Boston, Daniel Nava hit a grand slam off Crow.
I was livid.
EDIT: I just looked that game up. This was the first part of Andy McCullough's story in the Star:
Originally Posted by :
Aaron Crow gazed at the landing spot in the visitors’ bullpen for a few seconds before he looked away. He had just thrown the pitch that on Sunday sunk the Royals, a fastball that Red Sox outfielder Daniel Nava whacked for a grand slam. As the shock reverberated through Kauffman Stadium, the proximity of a once-assured victory, an outcome now dashed, galled manager Ned Yost.
He was close, so achingly close, to turning this game over to his vaunted three-pack of relief pitchers. Yet in the sixth inning of an 8-4 loss to the Red Sox, his team’s fifth defeat in seven games, Yost witnessed a collision between the reality of the situation and the rigidity of his bullpen deployment. During a moment when urgency should have trumped orthodoxy, Yost declined to break from routine. His decision cost his club.
“It’s frustrating that we were one out away from getting to Kelvin Herrera with a one-run lead,” he said. “That was frustrating.”
In the postgame postmortem, the obvious follow-up was asked. Why not just use Herrera in the sixth inning then?
“Because I had confidence in Aaron Crow,” Yost said. “That’s why. Aaron Crow’s inning is the sixth inning. Kelvin’s is the seventh.”
The rules of major-league baseball do not include a provision barring a seventh-inning reliever from pitching in the sixth. But the dogma of baseball managers does preclude such a maneuver. Yost falls in line with the game’s traditions. Relief pitchers receive roles, and managers are wary of deviating from them.
The practice aided the Royals during the season’s second half, as Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland formed a suffocating trio. Yet Yost’s adherence to his doctrine hamstrung his team on Sunday, exposing Crow and granting Nava a chance to further sink Kansas City’s hopes in the American League Central.
In essence, Yost handed Crow a jug of gasoline and asked him to walk a tightrope across a fire created by starter Jason Vargas. Three batters into his appearance, Crow lost his balance.
Originally Posted by tk13:
There's a famous moment somewhere very late in that 2014 season where he used Aaron Crow and blew a game and afterwards Ned was like "Aaron Crow's inning is the 6th inning" or whatever. Then he brought in Yordano in the wild card game when he probably should have just went to Herrera. He got better in the 2014 playoffs but by 2015 he had learned. He wasn't afraid to use Herrera for 2-3 innings, or Wade Davis on both sides of a rain delay, or be a little more careful about using Ryan Madson because he wasn't quite as dominant as Herrera and Davis.
Ned listened to Hootie on the Ventura call. Hootie was crowing about doing that all September. [Reply]
Originally Posted by WilliamTheIrish:
I don’t know how anybody can have issues with this manager. He took a team of a young soon to be superstar, a star in the making, an aging veteran star and a bunch of LEGO pieces and has them on the brink of the playoffs.
Losing that up and coming star, Vinnie, as they were charging for the division was a tremendous blow. Yet, here we are boys.
Seriously, I admire what he’s done.
You know the idiots, they are the same idiots who are dumb fucks in about everything. [Reply]
Originally Posted by PHOG:
So Baltimore's going with Cade Povich (2-9, 5.59 ERA) vs Pablo Lopez (15-9, 4.11 ERA) for the Twins. :-)
While Baltimore has clinched a WC spot, they technically have not secured the 4 seed because Detroit has the tie breaker as Detroit beat them 4 out of 6 games played. There are 3 games left. Baltimore has 88 wins and Detroit has 85.
If Detroit and KC win out, and Balitmore get swept, then I imagine there has to be tie breakers involved, and I assume it's based of head-to-head matchups. [Reply]
