Kansas City Baseball Vault

When pitchers and catchers report this Friday, the Royals roster will more or less be set. To prepare, Jeff and Mike discussed comments from Dayton Moore on Monday about the pitching staff and a couple of minor leaguers. But first, we did some transaction cleanup, including Emilio Bonifacio's impending release, the Carlos Peguero trade, and sneaking Everett Teaford back to Omaha.

We also talked about baseball finances and reading the pitching market. Dayton Moore has a pattern of jumping out ahead and signing players before the market fully develops and it might hurt in 2014. The Royals will have a record payroll, but they're past their "break-even" point and aren't due to add any more players.

That includes Ervin Santana, and we theorized about potential destinations for the former Royal and how the shifting pitching market dictates his decision.

Then we talked about making Danny Duffy, Yordano Ventura, and Kyle Zimmer work as starters and the importance of keeping the three out of the bullpen blackhole.

We finished up talking about Mike Sweeney's new job and Mike also interviewed Brett Parker, an originator of the grass roots Dressed to the Nines day last season, a concept which the Royals are adopting into an official gameday promotion in 2014. For more info, follow Brett at @TheBrettTParker.

Last week, we talked about the MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus top 100 (and 101) lists, which featured multiple Royals prospects.
This week we took it a step further and went right to the source. We talked to Jason Parks (@professorparks) of Baseball Prospectus about the seven Royals prospects listed in their top 101, then we followed that by talking with Jim Callis (@jimcallismlb) of MLB.com and MLBPipeline.com about a number of prospects.

Along with the expert insight of Parks and Callis, we brought some discussion of Bruce Chen, the starting rotation, the upcoming roster crunch, and shared some concerns about the 2014 Royals season.

Chris Kamler (@TheFakeNed) wandered around Royals FanFest on Friday and ran into a few notable names.

Listen and you can learn about David Glass's expectations, Billy Butler on trade rumors, Aaron Crow on clubhouse chemistry, plus more from Eric Hosmer, James Shields, Johnny Giavotella, and Hall of Famer Denny Matthews.

Audio from new Omaha Storm Chasers manager Brian Poldberg and Alex Gordon

It's the time of year when all the prospect lists start hitting the press, and we took a look at two of them: MLB.com's top 100 and the top 101 from Baseball Prospectus.

What followed was a look at the differences between the two. MLB had four Royals listed; BP had seven. Why? We talked about the differing perspectives we saw in the building of the lists and talked about some of the intriguing players like Sean Manaea, who both sides liked (but only one ranked), and Yordano Ventura, who both liked, but BP *really* liked.

We also did a brief look around the state of the AL Central and discussed ZiPS projections and the Clay Davenport 77-85 projection for the Royals 2014 record that everyone's been bringing up. Along with those, we talked about the relative importance of stats in analyzing the game, and how projections can answer some questions, and don't answer others.

Then, we looked at the starting pitching market in the wake of the Mashiro Tanaka signing with New York and Matt Garza's deal with the Brewers, including a comparison of Ervin Santana and Ubaldo Jimenez and what their value really is now and what it might be in the future. We also included a brief discussion of the value of contracts.

Finally, we wrapped up with a few little odds and ends - Jon Rauch signed a minor league deal, Justin Maxwell settled on an arbitration amount, FanFest is coming again (and listen to the episode to see how you can win some money to Kelly's Westport Inn) - before digging into Royalman's quest to reach the MLB Fan Cave and finishing with some words about Mike MacFarlane and Bob Kendrick making it into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.

This week, we discussed a few Royals news and notes as we wait for spring training to arrive.

First, we talked about Jeremy Guthrie's contract restructuring and what it means for the 2014 Royals. At the time, it seemed like a change that might have bigger impacts down the line (and still could), but after reflection, Mike saw it as more of a clerical move, but was hopeful that it might mean another acquisition could happen. Jeff interpreted it as a way to kick back some money to ownership this year. We also discussed other theories.

Then, we brought up the minor league signings of Brad Penny and Guillermo Mota and wondered if they have anything left in the tank. The Royals like to try out reclamation projects, and these two fit that description. Where does Penny fit in the rotation competition? What are the odds he makes the team? And how would Mota fit into an already stacked bullpen?

After pondering those questions, we talked briefly about salary arbitration and which cases were still unsettled.

We also talked about Baseball America's top ten Royals prospects, including a name you don't hear about very often, and we brought on Chris Kamler for a moment to add some nonsense to the show. Kamler has been helping Troy put together a video for the MLB Fan Cave that urges everyone to #VoteRoyalman. You can see that video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y9BHkL-qGw #MLBFC2014

Producers note: Sorry about the lateness. I think I have the problems resolved.

We played catch up on the latest Vault. After a break that included a few holidays, a Royalman wedding, and well, not a lot of Royals news, we were back at it.

Troy and Mike discussed a couple of minor league signings and sized up the backup catcher spot (which is probably Ramon Hernandez's to lose now that he's signed a minor league deal), and also talked about Jason Donald and some utility infield options.

The Royals announced their non-roster invitees, and we covered the group, focusing on the fun prospect names involved. Kyle Zimmer will get some looks, but does he have a shot to make the team? Jorge Bonifacio will be in camp with his brother, but how far away is he from the bigs? And then we talked about Jason Adam and talked about potential career arcs for him. Obviously, he's one of our favorites on the show, but we took a realistic look at what he might offer as a starter once he makes it to the big leagues.

And we also talked about the Hall of Fame, the sanctity of the vote, and some names that just missed that really shouldn't have.