KCRag Forum

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I think Duffy is almost as good as Waino, but Waino is just more historically important, Cuthbert is like a less dense Carpenter who fields better to the west while Carpenter is more of an EAST COAST 3RD BASEMAN, and Modesi v. Merrifeild is like...HEY LET"S TALK ABOUT KOLTEN WONG!

Duffy was fairly spectacular in 2014, but somehow not good enough to beat out Vargas or Guthrie for a starting spot in October or Chris Young this spring. That just sounds weird looking at how he's been pitching lately.

So can Cuthbert play anything other than 3rd base. They guy looks like a keeper and what to do when Moustakus comes back?

Highlander wrote:So can Cuthbert play anything other than 3rd base. They guy looks like a keeper and what to do when Moustakus comes back?

Id trade one of them for some pitching.

mean wrote:By that metric, you probably have to give it to the Cardinals. But the Springfield ones.

Well played.

Given the Royals trials this year I think we can appreciate the success the team has had these past two seasons, three if you want to count 2013. I know some of you don't believe in "luck" but I think the team has had a good string of luck in 2013, 2014, and 2015 that didn't happen in 2016. Most of the moves the GM made paid off, the players performed above expectations, most had injury free seasons or if injured not for long, and the magic was just there. This year the team has been more middle-of-the-pack, not great but not bad with short periods of both. As a road team they have had a bad season and as a home team a playoff worthy record.
Over the winter for next year many decisions about players will have to be made, quite a few positions up for grabs and possibly an overhauled pitching staff. And before the winter I wonder if there will be much trading at the end of August if the team stays around or under .500?

there's still a long way to climb, but we're back above .500 and look like we're playing with a bit of fire again. all hail the mantis.

Unknown JimmyD wrote:there's still a long way to climb, but we're back above .500 and look like we're playing with a bit of fire again. all hail the mantis.

It's kind of disheartening when you have won 8 in a row and still are 8 out. But there is a chance the Royals could supplant Boston as the wild card. I suspect there is just not enough time to surpass Cleveland. Amazing how the starting pitching has come along recently.

It isn't likely that they catch Cleveland, but if they can just get a bit closer over the next few weeks, there are six games against them the last two weeks of the season. If nothing else, that makes for an exciting way to end things.

Billy Ripkin said this morning on MLB network that he thinks it's likely that KC will make the playoffs. When asked about Houston Seattle and New York (similar records), he said "no way". Thinks KC is fundamentally a better team and knows how to turn it on when they need to. Referred to KC having a core four players like New York did during their last run. He also thinks that it is likely they will catch Cleveland.

Last eight games, 6.7 runs per game and 1.3 ERA.

This road trip will be key.

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I mean I don't know how Bill Ripken defines "likely" but per Baseball Reference our playoff odds are at 5.7%. On the other hand, a week ago they were 0.3%, so things are trending in the right direction. In the past two years we've seen them beat longer odds than 5.7% on more than one occasion. "Likely" that we make the playoffs still sounds a little bit like a stretch though, and "likely" that we catch Cleveland even moreso. Assuming they maintain their current pace (which I mean, is a totally arbitrary assumption, but), we'll have to go 31-7 over our last 38 games to catch them. So four more eight-game winning streaks should do it.

It'll be nothing if not exciting if we can stay hot though.

phuqueue wrote:I mean I don't know how Bill Ripken defines "likely" but per Baseball Reference our playoff odds are at 5.7%. On the other hand, a week ago they were 0.3%, so things are trending in the right direction. In the past two years we've seen them beat longer odds than 5.7% on more than one occasion. "Likely" that we make the playoffs still sounds a little bit like a stretch though, and "likely" that we catch Cleveland even moreso. Assuming they maintain their current pace (which I mean, is a totally arbitrary assumption, but), we'll have to go 31-7 over our last 38 games to catch them. So four more eight-game winning streaks should do it.

It'll be nothing if not exciting if we can stay hot though.

I hope he's right, but I haven't seen any evidence that Ripken puts any thought behind the words that come out of his mouth. If we lose two in a row, he is just as "likely" to say we were never in it.

Are Hosmer and Kacie McDonnell broken up? Noticed that she is moving to the East Coast.

WSPanic wrote:

phuqueue wrote:I mean I don't know how Bill Ripken defines "likely" but per Baseball Reference our playoff odds are at 5.7%. On the other hand, a week ago they were 0.3%, so things are trending in the right direction. In the past two years we've seen them beat longer odds than 5.7% on more than one occasion. "Likely" that we make the playoffs still sounds a little bit like a stretch though, and "likely" that we catch Cleveland even moreso. Assuming they maintain their current pace (which I mean, is a totally arbitrary assumption, but), we'll have to go 31-7 over our last 38 games to catch them. So four more eight-game winning streaks should do it.

It'll be nothing if not exciting if we can stay hot though.

I hope he's right, but I haven't seen any evidence that Ripken puts any thought behind the words that come out of his mouth. If we lose two in a row, he is just as "likely" to say we were never in it.

Yeah and Sam Mellinger had a good piece in the Star about how we're not going to make it, relying on the fact that the 90 wins we are likely to need for the wild card (again, holding everybody else's winning percentage constant, that's what it takes to beat Baltimore for the second spot) will require us to go 26-12, something we never did last year when we were the winningest AL team. He also pointed out that if you take out July we're on like a 94 win pace this year, which was way better than I thought since it seems like we've struggled a lot more than just in July (although an eight game winning streak does much to erase pre-July stuggles). But the 2013 Royals were on a similar pace if you take out a dreadful May, and in the end they fell short. The actual data just doesn't look as rosy as Bill Ripken's gut feelings.

Although Mellinger did make one additional, weaker point, that adding in what we've already done with what we need to do would amount to a 37-13 stretch, something only two other teams have done in however many years he was looking at. But he neglected to mention that the odds of going 37-13 are much lower for a team on game 1 of that stretch than for a team that is 11-1 twelve games in. That still doesn't make it likely but you can't pretend the odds are the same now as they were two weeks ago.

Just play it one game at a time and see what happens. Will know sometime in the next 5 weeks how the season ends out.

It seems like Billy Butlers Career has been nothing but a downward spiral after he wasn't chosen by Cano in the ASG HR Derby. He is being labeled as the asshole in this Valencia fight.

brewcrew1000 wrote:It seems like Billy Butlers Career has been nothing but a downward spiral after he wasn't chosen by Cano in the ASG HR Derby. He is being labeled as the asshole in this Valencia fight.

He had a pretty well-backed reputation for being a clubhouse asshole long before that ASG, among non/anti-bro ballplayers (which is admittedly, a pretty small subset).