Fare thee Well...

The Royals are getting ready to roll into the lovely Phoenix retirement community of Surprise, AZ which they will call home for the next couple of months. However, this year they will be without a few notable fixtures over the past few years and we thought it would be a good time to give them a final PowderBlueRoom sendoff.

John Buck: Oh Big Buck Hunter...your swing reminded us of Tony Gwynn and your ability to gun down runners was vintage Pudge, but somehow it just didn´t work out for you here in KC. Maybe you were a victim of over inflated arbitration salaries, which is a shame because KC really seemed liked the place for you. The calm midwest atmosphere would have suited you well, we would have liked to have seen you behind the plate for the next 10 years with your jersey out in Left Field next to the likes of George Brett and Frank White. However, due to the fact that you would have made more than you were worth through arbitration we are now left with someone who in the last 6 years has hit as many HRs (8) as you did last year in 186 ABs!!! Now its off to Toronto, I wish I could say that things might be better for you there but, when hockey is a more popular sport and instead of squaring off against the likes of the Twins and ChiSox you now have to try and overtake the Yanks and BoSox the year after your team traded away the best pitcher in Baseball, I don´t have much confidence for improvement. None the less, we wish you the best across the border, hopefully its just the right environment for you. In KC you were the Guy we got for Beltran but up there you´re just some guy who was picked-up off the scrap pile to fill a hole at a reasonable price, so maybe you can just shock some folks and put up 25HRs and get yourself a nice multi-year deal in 2011.

Mark Teahen: Mr. Marcus you briefly looked like a star-in-the-making but unfortunately you never even came close to that 2006 promise again. We were patient as fans, but basically you never even did anything to make us realize that you were on the field. You couldn´t find a position and as a leadoff hitter David DeJesus had more RBIs than you did in each of the past two seasons. I am happy to hear that the White Sox want you back at your former position of 3B and they´ve signed you up for a few years, you need stability after your time in KC. You really coluld have saved the Royals a lot of headaches if you were just a little bit better (never having to sign Mr. Guillen) however, we´re not here for complaints you did your job year in and year out for an extremely depressing baseball team and by no means were you one of the leading culprits or scapegoats. So we bid you adieu and by the way please don´t go all Michael Corleone on us next season when we square off against one another.

Miguel Olivo: Miggy, at least you were interesting; watching you strike out on curve balls in the left-handed batters box only to later hit a 400ft homerun was fun. Unfortunately, patience wasn´t your strong suit and a few too many passed balls last year sealed your fate as a Royal. Hindsight being 20-20, if asked, I would bet that few Royals fans would choose Jason Kendall over you as their starter this year, its just not fun to see someone who can take a few extra walks and who "blocks the ball" slightly better. So what if you couldn´t ever hit that .300 OBP mark, you could probably bench press Jason Kendall at least 20 times and you caught Greinke last year - why break-up a good thing. Not to mention that Kendall hasn´t topped your OPS from last season since 2004 and his homerun total from 2002-2009 (20) is less than yours from last year (23). Of all the losses, I think I will shed more tears for you than anyone as I´m watching the Royals this coming year. Here´s me raising a Coors Silver Bullet hoping that the thin air in Denver carries you to 30hrs this year.

Good luck to all - we´ll throw in an honorable mention to bullben stalwarts Yasuhiko Yabuta, Ron Mahay and John Bale - you can be semi-assured that wherever you end-up it has a good chance of sucking less than if KC had retained your services. Here´s to new beginnings in 2010! Pitchers and Catchers report to duty.

Square peg, round hole

You could call it depth, but the Royals aren´t actually good enough for that compliment. If you thought last year was fun watching chess master Trey Hilman play around with the the line-up then this year is a dream come true. On the other hand, if you cringed everytime you saw Lil´Willie in RF hitting second then this year has the potential to give you a brain aneurysm by the end of the first month.

Being that winning teams have stability and Dayton Moore is a winning GM, he cleared up all of the confusion immediately with a somewhat ambiguous statement which led us to believe that this is our 2010 outfield: LF=S. Pods, CF=Slick Rick, RF=DDJ. Quote me all of the UZR-150 stats you like, however this would all be fine and dandy if indeed you thought that each would play anywhere near 130 games at said positions. However, what people in the know - and by in the know I mean anyone who watched 10 games last year - see coming is an outfield that will have more odd pairings than a Haiti benefit concert. The Royals right now have 6 players on the 40-man who could conciveably play all three positions (Ankiel, DDJ, Anderson, Maier, Posednik, Bloomquist) add-in Guillen, Fields and Callaspo at the corners and you have permutations that would make for a great Click and Clack puzzler.

The infield is only slightly better; at 3B you have 4 possibilities, 2 at SS, 3 at 2B and 3 at 1B, add one more at each position for Willie and top it off with something like 5 different DHs. All of this leads to Trey´s favorite place for expermienting; the batting order, which will probably start out the year with Billy, Rick and Jose hitting 3-4-5 and no team has ever had two more obvious candidates for brining up the 8-9 hole than Kendall and Betancourt - a past-his-prime catcher and a free swinging SS who might not combine for 10hrs all year. The rest of the guys are at best good 2-hole hitters and otherwise fitting for the 6&7th spots in the line-up.

With Trey´s penchant to handle his team as if he were day-trading with Jimmy Johnson (Willie's stock is UP Scott's stock is Down!! Defensive Sub!! Batting order flip!! BUY!! SELL!!) and a team rife with possible injuries, I contend that the Royals will set a new MLB record for different starting line-ups (Including batting order) this year. If anyone can find this statistic please pass it along and lets start tracking (it wouldn't surprise me if we already hold the record) the 2010 Royals line-up cards aka Tokyo Trey's Fun with Exel Spreadsheets.