Side Bets

February has arrived and will soon bring the words "Spring Training" into our vocabulary - though most fans east of the Royals Spring Training complex in Surprise, AZ aren't thinking about Spring right now - and our beloved KC Royals will start playing baseball again. After it appeared that we were heading for an uneventful few winter months, this has been one of the most interesting off-seasons imaginable; when your star pitcher gets traded along with your starting shortstop, not to mention your most tenured and recognizable face, then your former star pitcher-moved-to-the-bullpen decides to quit baseball and hand you $12 million dollars and finally your star young hitter gets signed long-term, yeah, you could say it has been a very interesting Royals' off-season. But all of this brings us back to the present, where we are still faced with the thought of bearing through another potentially brutal six months of baseball in KC - albeit one with some hope on the way - with very little to be excited about. Yes, hear ye hear ye, the Royals have THE BEST minor league system in all of baseball, but all of that promise still necessitated (or at least Dayton thought so) the (re)signings of Bruce Chen, Jeff Francis, Melky Cabrera and Jeff Francouer. So what do we do with 2011? The answer: side bets. If you were betting on baseball in Vegas this year, it would take something like 20,000:1 odds to get you to bet on the Royals to win the World Series, however we here at the PBR want to keep things interesting (and the suckers at the table), so instead of betting on the global success of the Royals team we want you to place your bets on individual performances and see if you leave the casino happy. I just hit a royal flush on Norwegian Black Jack, lets go to the clubs, I'm buying!!!! You get the idea, please feel free to place your bets before the season so that you have something to pay attention to during the coming 8 moths of futility.

Before placing any bets read the fine print: All bets assume significant playing time and all injuries void the bets.

#1 Better season; Billy Butler or Zach Greinke, pays 2:1 for Billy. For this to happen, Butler would need a big, big year. You know the worst Zach can do is last year and the best is 2009, so for this to come into fruition, Billy needs something just shy of an Albert Puljos year. I personally don't think he has it in him, but damn he is young. I suspect this will be the most popular bet placed with the PBR Sports Book.

#2 Alex Gordon has a better season than Billy Butler, pays 4:1. Billy has far surpassed Alex in the minor-league-star-turned-MLB-contributor path, but it has really only been in the past two years. Hopefully this year we'll get to see them both play 150+ games together, so do you like the dark horse or the front-runner?

#3 Better year; Brayan Pena or Jason Kendall, pays 5:1 for Pena. Let start to make things interesting. For this category we will only be using the Yost/Moore gauge of performance; games caught. We've heard already that Iron Man Kendall is ahead of schedule (who didn't see this one coming?) during his rehab, but Pena will still have at least a month's head start to hit like Mike Piazza in is his glory years and supplant Kendall as the everyday catcher, though I'm not even sure that would do it. Those odds are tough to pass up, even though we all know how it will play out in the end.

#4 Most starts; Hochevar or Davies, pays 1.5:1 for Hochevar. You might be surprised to see that the payoff is for betting on Hochevar, given that he will probably be the opening day starter, but Davies actually made it through a full season last year and this house won't bet on Luke until he proves something. However, if Davies doesn't get his ERA under 5.00 he might be out of a job come July, still the smart money is on Davies.

#5 Jeff Francis and Bruce Chen each make 30+ starts this year (for the Royals or any other team), pays 20:1. Now those are some odds, but seriously if this happens the Royals will have made out like bandits.

#6 More Home Runs, Francoeur or Gordon, pays 2:1 for Gordon. This might entice some people to lay down money on Frenchie. They are both fully capable of hitting 20+ HRs, but they are two very good examples of how things don't always work out the way they should, good luck to both of them.

#7 More starts in CF; Melky Cabrera or Lorenzo Cain, pays 1.5:1 for Cain. God we hope we're wrong on this one, but all signs point to Melky being your starting CF this year, don't ask why.

#8 More HRs; Wilson Betemit or Mike Moustakas, pays 1.5:1 for Moustakas. We hope we're wrong on this one too, but for some reason I just don't see Mike getting on the squad until later in the year and we at PBR like Wilson so we're (maybe somewhat unreasonably) expecting another big year from him.

#9 Lower slugging %; Getz or Kendall, pays 2:1 for Kendall. We're probably not going to see either of these two in the Home Run Derby during the All Star game, but Kendall was unbelievably lacking in power last year and I can't think shoulder surgery will help things much.

#10 More starts; Sean O'Sullivan or Mike Montgomery, pays 2:1 for Monty. Even after all of the free agent signings seemingly pushing O'Sullivan out of a job, it's still inevitable that someone will get hurt and the first person to step in will be the good Irish lad. Unfortunately, its probably too early to see more than a hand full of starts from Monty this year, but again we hope we're wrong on this one.

Feel free to chime in on any other random side bets you want to propose, we'll be taking money right up until opening day.  Spring Training is really only about a week away, wow!