The Royals got things started early in the offseason by making a quick deal and shipping off long time Royal David DeJesus to the A's and cutting ties with another staple over the past few years in Brian Bannister. While the decision to cut Banny didn't come as much of a surprise, it's still sad to see a familiar face go. However, the decision to trade DeJesus came awfully fast and without much rumoring, poof...just like that he was gone. Discussions about the merits of this trade can be found throughout the world wide Royals web, so rather than break down the trade ad nauseam, we'll quickly summarize our thoughts and give our best send off to a couple of players whom we'll be hoping enjoy greener pastures in the future, because their time with the Royals was painful to say the least.
Banny was, at one time, close to being a solid staple in the Royals rotation, but things just came apart in a hurry. Hell as early as this year he threw a shutout and became the first person to beat Stephen Strausburg, but that was a long time ago and right around that time is when he took a nose dive into Royals abyss. So now the futile two-some of Davies/Bannister is broken up and the Royals will go trodding along without Banny because no decent business man could have paid Banny $2 mil and change coming off the season he put up last year. There is about a 50/50 shot he'll get recycled by some pitching desperate NL team and manage to compile a decent year in 2011 and we here at the PBR sincerely hope that happens. Banny, along with many others, personifies the Royals losing years by being another member of the ALL iffs, almosts, coulda-woulda-shouldas TEAM. IF Banny coulda repeated his 2007 season, Mark Teahen coulda continued his 2006 year, John Buck woulda been a teensy bit better, Alex Gordon woulda been the next George Brett and if Angel Berroa coulda been exactly like his 2003 season forever THEN the Royals might not have sucked soo bad over the last several seasons. However, we all know what actually DID happen and we have to wave good bye to another Almost-Was.
As for DDJ, we actually still might get something for his years of above-averageness and that is definitely worth something. David was a Real Major League player on many, many, many teams containing LOTS of decidedly Non-Major League players. We like David, everyone does, but he was about like having a good looking friend-that-is-a-girl that you have hung out with for years now, but you knew deep down that nothing was ever going to come out of this situation; you were going to keep taking her out for moderately expensive dinners and you still would have just been friends. So I guess trading him for Vinny is about like making out with her slightly younger flirty co-worker - its just business - the friendship is obviously over, but at least you got the co-workers phone number. The consequences of not having DDJ on the 2011 squad are far from grave and the plus is that we now have a pitcher named Vinny to go along with Shaun O'Sullivan, the duo who will from now on be dubbed the Mick and the Whop (no offense), and it gives the Royals a proposed 5 man rotation that doesn't involve Bruce Chen (no offense). The real fun/scary/fantasy GM question now is, who's on Right?? David, we'll miss you, but hopefully you'll be in a better place now and be on a team which doesn't lose 90 games.
No need to shed too many tears over this, lets just keep our fingers crossed and hope that the Royals start bidding on Jayson Werth to replace DDJ, that Vinny isn't the next Banny and that Zach Greinke is still a Royal come next year. All in all, its an interesting enough start the Royals offseason limbo.
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