Royals - September Call up time.

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

and Billy Butler just knocked the core out of a ball to left.

[Awesome Sauce Malone]

75-87

:shock:

Royal Takes the cake though

75-87

Based on the following:


Pitching
Meche - Not quite as good as last year, but close. More wins with 12.
Greinke - Another step in the positive direction. 17 wins.
Bannister - See Meche. 12 wins.
Tomko, Maroth, other 4/5 guys - Much better than last year. 18 wins from these two positions.


Bullpen - Solid, but not quite as good as last season. Soria will save 30+ games.

Team ERA stays roughly the same at 4.48.

Pitching was good. Tomko was a bust. Havent seen Maroth the bullpen had some VERY bad moments but was pretty good for the most part.
Meche ended with 14 wins
ProZack had 13
Bannister had a horrible season
And the mexuctioner pitied the fools.

Ram Ram and Mahay were stellar for us this year. Yabuta sucked Bale punched things And Hooch was decent. His upside looks promisng though

Team ERA going into the last game is 4.5

Hitting
Guillen > Brown
DeJesus, Teahen slightly better than '07
Butler, Gordon take the next step
Shealy returns to close to '06 form.
Grudz solid, but slight decrease from '07.
TPJ has similar season as '07
Buck, Olivo '08 > Buck, LaRue '07

Team BA improves from .261 to .269.
Team OBP improves from .322 to .332.
Team HRs improve from 102 to 135.
Team RBIs improve from 660 to 725.

Guillen >>> Brown Except he didnt shoot anybody. I dont care what people say about his attitude it was definently needed around that locker room. Losing is a way of life in Kansas City and thats need to change.

DDJ was stud like even with his injury problems. Mark Teahan was just well... Lets just say if you type in his name on wikipedia it should redirect to underachiever.

Gordon improved alot. It may not seem like it but I bet he could go back to last years Gordon and bitchslap him. Still not the godalexgod as everyone predicted but its all coming around.

Butler was too damn streaky. Played a pretty solid 1st base IMO but the power wasnt there like advertised.

Ryan Shealy should have been up here all year long. Instead we were treated to the Ross Gload show.

Grudz was grudz. But its been fun while it lasted.

Tony Pena Jr is a disgrace to his father. And in turn tony pena sr is a disgrace to himself.

I think Bucks time here has come and gone. Olivo>Buck on the offensive but Buck>Olivo on the defensive. Note to mgmt end this experiment now. his bat will never come around.

Team BA - .269
Team OBP - .321
Team HRs - 120.
Team RBIs - 646

At some point we'll probably lose two starters for portions of the season. Hopefully, there will never be less than three original starters in the rotation.

A couple of position players will miss extended periods (60-day DL). Several more will see the 15-day DL. Basically, the same things all teams deal with.

Lost Tomko,Bale & Hochevar.
Grudz was lost to the 60 day and DeJesus battled with injuries all year long.
Gordon was on the 15 day and Guillen hobbled along through the year. Overall I would say the Royals were fairly lucky on the injury side of things. It could have been worse.

Hopefully, with the exception of Detroit, the other teams in the AL Central will take steps backward.

If things go particularly well, I could see 80 wins. If more players, particularly starting pitchers don't perform as well, or we have major injuries, 68 wins wouldn't surprise me.

Detroit and Cleveland took steps backward. HUGE steps backwards.
IMO the 2 teams on top were surprises. Everyone knew of Chicagos offense we knew that would be better this year. having swisher helped alot. Their staff was better than last year and it helps when you have a team like that mashing the way they were.
Minnesota on the other hand traded away their {and MLB's"] best pitcher also traded away some young talent for more young talent and have coasted. My hats off to them.

Also if we were to go .500 during that nasty 12 game losing streak we finish with 80 wins.
At least we can finish no less than 4th!!

[SubGod22]

Has Butler ever been advertised to have a lot of power? Between he and Gordon, Alex is expected to have more HR potential. I will admit that I did expect a little more pop this year from Billy but more importantly I just want him more consistent. If he could rack up the doubles I'd be happy.

His first base was pretty good this year. He doesn't have the range of a Gload, but his glove was good. He's also announced that he's going to work hard this winter to slim down some to give himself more opportunity on the corner.