Barring unforeseen circumstances, this will be the last edition of "Rany on the Royals" for a while. It’s not that I no longer enjoy writing about the Royals, because I do. It’s not even that I’m fed up with the futility of covering a team that seems utterly hopeless, because as cynical as some of…
Overnight, the Royals have gone from a franchise that was one transaction away from official joke status to a team that is slowly, haltingly–but finally–headed in the right direction.
It happens every spring. Some unknown kid shows up for camp, just happy for the opportunity to hang out with the big club before he’s shipped out to the minor-league complex. Only when he takes the mound, he surprises everyone by throwing harder and better than he ever has before. And when he toes the…
The 11th hour has begun. That, in itself, is a good sign. The Royals never got to the 11th hour with Johnny Damon. Jermaine Dye was shipped out of town at the slightest hint of urgency. But Mike Sweeney, whose contract expires with the 2002 season, is still in a Royals uniform. Sweeney represents the…
If the Royals are in a good frame of mind, it must be spring. If they’re still in first place, it must be spring. If Tony Muser has a smile on his face, it definitely must be spring. Last season, spring training got off to an inauspicious debut when intriguing NRI Steve Rain put his…
In the last installment of DTN, we examined the topic of whether left-handed pitchers take longer to have a breakout season than right-handers do. In the process, we had to define exactly what a “breakout” season is. I used a series of qualifiers to define the term, and it worked pretty well. But there is a much simpler definition:
A breakout season is what Roy Halladay had in 2001.
In the last installment of DTN, we examined the topic of whether left-handed pitchers take longer to have a breakout season than right-handers do. In the process, we had to define exactly what a "breakout" season is. I used a series of qualifiers to define the term, and it worked pretty well. But there is…
Allard Baird has been an all-too-frequent target of my wrath since this column started several months ago, and he’s deserved it. While Baird has shown a greater willingness to gamble and to entertain new ideas than his predecessor, Herk Robinson, the bottom line is that in less than two years as general manager, Baird has…
Welcome to the first "Doctoring the Numbers" of the year. Traditionally, DTN is a an in-season column, but I’m setting that aside this week. I write these columns as a gut reaction to something I’ve recently encountered–an interesting statistic, an compelling quote, or a thought-provoking assertion. Two weeks ago, Rob Neyer made a statement that,…
Joe Posnanski is an optimistic guy. If you follow the Royals–or any part of the Kansas City sports scene–you already know this. Joe Posnanski sees the world through a different shade of glasses than most people do. Where you and I see the Carolina Panthers, 1-15 on the year, he might see the 1989 Dallas…
Let me start with a mea culpa. In my last column, I reported that the Royals’ acquisition of Michael Tucker was potentially disastrous because it would take away playing time from Mark Quinn and Dee Brown. In particular, I was concerned about Brown’s future with the club, as he is out of options and it…
The start of a new year is a time of reflection and renewal, a time for making resolutions and resolving to make this year a better one than last. In Kansas City, though, the new year looks depressingly like the old. There is no sense of renewal, only a sense of repetition. Last year began…
I’ve been mistaken. All along, I thought that the man most responsible for the Royals’ perpetual lease on the second division was Tony Muser, or Allard Baird, or maybe even Herk Robinson. How foolish of me. It’s clear now that it’s been Billy Beane all along. Billy Beane, who robbed the Royals of Jermaine Dye,…
All you ever hear about small-market teams is that they can’t afford to sign their good players when they become free agents. Well, look at the bright side, Royals fans: your team goes to great lengths to ensure they won’t have any free agents to lose. The Royals aren’t losing Johnny Damon to free agency;…
This is hard. I knew when I signed up to continue this column that it would be a chore to write a thousand words about the Royals every week, but I didn’t think it would be this difficult. Trying to comprehend Shaggy’s lyrics is easier. Even after taking a week off to recuperate from Thanksgiving,…
The laughter has finally died down. It was less than four months ago that Allard Baird stood before the baseball world and announced that he had traded one of the best right fielders in the game for Neifi Perez. In one of the great non sequiturs of all time, Baird claimed that because the Royals…