With the Royals just a few days away from kicking off this 2013 campaign, I thought it would be good to throw out some predictions. But I did have this. Then I went really in-depth with this here. So it appeared I needed to travel down a different road. So here are your 2013 Royals fake predictions. We did this last year (which you can check out here) and they were wildly popular. These are all jokes, so please don’t take any of this too seriously. They are just meant as amusement as we get ready to kick off the new season. So without further ado, here are your ‘Fake Royals Predictions’!
Royals fans will flock to the K for the Billy Butler bobblehead night. Some unnamed fan will ruin it for everyone though, by claiming it should be called the ‘Country Breakfast’ bobblehead. Let it go, Scott!
Chris Getz will come close to actually hitting a ball out of the park, but alas it will be caught on the warning track. We will tell our kids about this for years to come, but they won’t believe Getzie was ever able to hit the ball that far.
Alcides Escobar will continue to play excellent defense and not get the respect he truly deserves. Maybe he should hit more homers.
James Shields and Wade Davis will call their former manager Joe Maddon just to hear his voice.
Mike Moustakas will receive a new nickname: Pigpen. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy to chant as ‘MOOOOOOOOSE’!
Rex Hudler, to gain more attention, will spend the year attacking other condiment bottles, like ketchup and barbecue sauce. Ryan Lefebvre will feel like he is at a Gallagher concert and start carrying around a parka, goggles and galoshes.
Johnny Giavotella will quit baseball halfway through the season and be a star for the Keebler Elves.
Jeff Francoeur will never find his swing(is it in Albuquerque?) and will be on the bench by June. Dayton Moore will created a new title for Frenchy: Dayton’s BFF.
Wil Myers will be called up to the majors by Tampa Bay on May 1st. He will play in his first major league game that night at Kauffman Stadium, and proceed to hit his first major league home run, off the Royals Hall of Fame. Royals fans everywhere will cry.
Also, Dayton Moore will think the Royals are rightthere right before the trade deadline, feeling they just need a backup infielder with some pop. He will make a trade with Milwaukee…and re-acquire Yuniesky Betancourt for a third time!
Luke Hochevar will do a good job for the Royals out of the bullpen. But in June, Kansas City will need a starter to fill in, and decide Hoch has proven he can be a starter again. It will be disastrous, yet they will let him make four more starts before sending him back to the bullpen. Manager Ned Yost will say “but he almost turned the corner.”
Speaking of Yost, with the team within striking distance come September, he will go back to his old ways and over-manage while the team is making a play for the wild card. When asked why he was making the decisions that he did, he’ll say “but I thought bunting was always the answer!”
Tim Collins will all of a sudden have a growth spurt this season, and by the end of the year he will have grown to 6 feet tall. He will also think he is back in High School and start wearing his letter jacket everywhere.
Kelvin Herrera will throw a ball so hard this year that it will break Salvador Perez’s hand and put him out of action.
Royals fans and announcers will spend most of the season trying to figure out how to pronounce the name of backup catcher George Kottaras(go ahead, I know you are trying to right now!).
Ned Yost will want Jarrod Dyson to hit the ball more on the ground and less in the air to utilize his speed. So everytime Dyson pops the ball up during the game, he’ll drop down at the plate and do pushups, ala Willie Mays Hayes. Yosty will think that is good strategy, since it worked in the movies.
Salvador Perez will remind us more and more of Vladimir Guerrero at the plate, including covering his helmet and bat in pine tar and swinging at anything and everything. He will still hit for a good average. Jeff Francoeur will be jealous. George Brett will be proud.
Eric Hosmer will come around and start hitting like the Hos of old. That is until he goes M.I.A. for a few weeks. Eventually we will find out that a slew of women had kidnapped him and made him their love slave. Hosmer will be sad to leave them and return to the Royals.
and in Dayton Moore’s greatest move ever, he will be able to trade both Jeff Francoeur and Chris Getz in the same deal. Who would be the GM wanting to pick these two up? None other than Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers. His team will be making a playoff run and manager Kirk Gibson will tell him he needs “more GRIT”.
That is your 2013 Royals fake predictions. Enjoy the season everyone, and let’s hope there are playoff games in our near future!
Once Dayton Moore took over as General Manager of the Royals, the team moved to sign better players and would pay them extra to come to Kansas City. The problem was that Dayton was signing level B and sometimes C or D free agents and practically giving them the keys to the city. Gil Meche was the first of these signings and if it wasn’t for former Manager Trey Hillman misusing him, the team would have gotten their money’s worth of that deal. Since then we have been abused with the ultimate clubhouse cancer Jose Guillen and Jason “Rewind Yourself” Kendall. It is almost like Moore felt like players of that level was the best they could do. I guess that is part of the problem here. When you believe that, everyone else will believe that as well.
Now, to be fair, some of Dayton’s signings have worked. Bruce Chen was picked up off the trash heap and up until 2012, seemed to be playing above himself. Chen was signed at a low cost, but high value with both his play on the field and his jokes in the clubhouse. Unfortunately, he was then given a two year contract that has seemed to be one of many albatrosses around the Royals financial neck. Melky Cabrera and Jeff Francoeur were two former Atlanta Braves that seemed to be on the downside of their once promising careers. A move to Kansas City in 2011 seemed to be a godsend as both players played above their past performances and helped solidified both the lineup and the outfield. Francoeur would sign an extension that seemed questionable at the time and horrific in the present, while Melky would be traded to San Francisco, have the best first half of his career, win the All Star Game MVP, then get busted for PED use. These two signings worked wonders for 2011, but looked awful by May of this past year. The Royals are a team that should constantly be looking to rebuild players who just need a new environment, but need to be selective about these signings as well.
So this leads us to this offseason, where everyone and their mother is aware that the Royals want(and desperately need) pitching. We’ve heard over and over that the Royals will have to overpay or give a player extra years to get them to come pitch in Kansas City, but is that true? I know some scoff at this, but I believe it is. The Royals have a really good nucleus of young talent, with Perez, Escobar, Moustakas and Hosmer added to lineup mainstays like Gordon and Butler. The thinking is that if the Royals could just get some pitching, this team could make a run at the playoffs. There have been a number of pitching talents on the free agent market this winter, and some have signed for very cheap money. Brandon McCarthy just signed a two year deal with Arizona for $15.5 million. The Royals easily could have afforded just under $8 million a year, especially considering that they will be paying Ervin Santana $12 million for in 2013. Edwin Jackson is still on the market as is Shawn Marcum. Both could garner a one or two year deal for right around that same amount of money. Instead, the Royals seem content shopping top prospect Wil Myers in a deal for a top starter. That is all fine and good if they are able to pull in a David Price or any other top of the rotation starter. But the names being floated around aren’t of that ilk. All we hear are the Shields’, Dickey’s and Lester’s of the world. All are fine pitchers and better than anything the Royals have now, but are they worth losing the next six years of Myers? Um, no.
So why aren’t these pitchers coming to Kansas City? Well, I do believe part of it is Dayton Moore hasn’t really pushed for them. Ryan Dempster’s name has been tossed around, and the team offered him more than the Red Sox have. But he also wanted a third year on the deal, while Kansas City has only been willing to go two. I agree with them only wanting to give him two, as he is in his mid 30’s and had a hard time adjusting to the American League this year. But I have to believe part of why he won’t come to Kansas City is because this team just doesn’t win. Seventeen of the last eighteen seasons have been losing seasons in KC, and with the management in charge now, it would appear we are gearing up for season eighteen of nineteen. Most players want to win, but can be swayed away from winning if it means more money. If you aren’t getting the top dollar, you don’t want to sign with a perennial loser unless you think they have turned a corner. The Royals took a side road in 2012 and their road map didn’t seem to ever steer them onto the right highway. Players notice that and the losing atmosphere does not endear players to want to sign with the Royals.
So yes, the Royals do have to overpay to get major name free agents to play in Kansas City. Or at least they will until they put together another winning season. Having management value the wrong players will hurt as well, but until those members are gone( [cough] Dayton) we are stuck with a team that can’t even compete with the Baltimore’s and Brewer’s of the world. One day this awful cycle will be undone and the Royals will be a winning franchise again. Let’s hope this happens sooner than later.
Bleeding Royal Blue 