Coming off maybe one of the worst offseasons possible (hindsight being 20/20 and excluding the Grienke signing), the Royals will now look to fill some holes throughout the winter. This is a two part series; first an evaluation of last year and then a prediction of what they might be looking for this offseason.
Farny: At 2 years 9 mil, this pick-up looks like putting your life savings into General Motors. Hopefully the odds are with the Royals and no one could have back-to-back years as counterproductive as this one was for Farny.
Willie: Some people (not me) might try to convince you that this was a good pick-up and are excited about having this little spark-plug around for another year. While others might say that anyone in AAA could have filled his spot at a discounted price. Unfortunately for the Royals some people got hurt and allowed him to nudge his way into the everyday line-up (not his job), the fact that he has to carry every glove except the catcher's mit in his bag means that he does not have a position therefore he should not start. Provided there are no big injuries next year this will help to reduce Willie sightings on the starting line-up card. However in the overall scheme of things compared to Farny and Jose Guillen this is a much less salient mistake.
CoCo Puffs: For a brief period of time, many moons ago, this looked like a pretty solid pick-up, a real center fielder and a real lead-off hitter, this rarity had not been seen in the royals line-up for too long to remember. However, things went sour in a hurry and CoCo turned into just another money-pit. The worst thing the Royals could do would be to pick-up his option (over $8 mil), just give him his $500,000 buy-out and accept the possibility of Mitchy being our everyday center fielder.
Mike Jacobs: Seemed like a good experiment, the Royals had not had a 30 homer guy since Jermaine Dye was just a pup. Many strike-outs (and not enough homers) later this $3mil would have been better off placed on the long shot winning an exacta-box at your local OTB. Oh, did we mention that he apparently is unable to play the field in the majors at the ripe age of 28 - basically there is no reason to believe that Mike Jacobs even deserves to play in the majors next year.
Juan Cruz: See Farny. At least Cruz had a brief period of productivity, but after the All-Star break he decided he would be playing for the other team in the 8th inning. Again the hope is that he can't be that bad two years in a row, hopefully he'll get some home cooking this off-season and put on enough weight to stick it out for a full season.
As if this dead horse hadn't been beaten and beaten and beaten I thought this recap was necessary before delving into a what to do this offseason, since the 2008/9 group yielded nothing, plugged no holes and actually sprung more leaks part II will be an experiment in fantasy GM-ing...
