Picks to click—4/1/07

What to click while you’re awaiting the season kick-off tonight. 100% April Fools Joke free.

==A very entertaining and well-written season preview (and podcast) by B-Pro’s Rany Jazayerli

==An MiLB profile on the Royals minor leagues. Also, BA looks at Spring Training results for some Royals young’uns. [Hat-tip on both: Royalsblog]

==Watch Royals Review interview itself!

==From H.G. Miller comes this interesting story about Mark Teahen and Reggie Sanders:

Mark Teahen was starting the game in centerfield, with Sanders manning right. When somebody for the Diamondbacks hit a towering fly ball to deep center, Sanders ran over and began shouting directions to Teahen.

“BACK BACK BACK… okay, come in a little bit. You got it. You got it!”

Sanders was helpful and encouraging to the very person who was taking his job away. It doesn’t say much about his ability to hit a chest-high fastball, but it says a lot about his character.

==According to a student-run publication over at Virginia Tech, the Royals’ signing of Gil Meche was “awful” because “In four full seasons he has never had an ERA under 4.58 and has only won more than 11 games once, four years ago.” Also, “Gordon is already drawing comparisons to a young George Brett before ever stepping to the plate.”

Interesting. If 23 games constitutes a “full season,” then I would imagine 15 does too. And if that is true, then I could say Meche has never had an ERA above 3.78 in one full season (2000).  (And, this is without mentioning that Meche has had an ERA of 4.58—it was 4.48 last year, but I imagine that’s only a typo.) 11 wins, by the way, is quite good while pitching for the 2006 Mariners. I don’t mind criticizing the Gil Meche signing, but I think there are far more effective ways to go about it.

Also, as I understand it, Gordon has stepped up to a plate or two. ;)

==If you haven’t been to In Dayton We Trust yet, you oughta. The newcomer for this season (look who’s talking) is setting itself up as a great Royals blog for the season. Plus he gets bonus points for linking Royal Ingenuity and one of the Roundtables in his sidebar. ;)

==This looks like an interesting contest. I’m doing it. [Hat-tip: Royals Review]

==Check out Rosenthal‘s “Biggest name traded at the deadline” answer for the AL.

==I don’t know if you need another reason to go to B-Ref, but if you do, do some of their puzzles. I only discovered them yesterday, but they’re a blast!

==I’m not really sure what my reaction is to this column.

==The KC Star used to sponsor a Royals blog called ”a royals fan in atlanta” (it still might, but at last check, it was only linking to Poz’s blog). I’ll be honest, after reading a few posts, I didn’t find much valuable information (perhaps because the blogger was only recently becoming a Royals fan). But I want you to read these three posts, in order: 1-2-3. They literally made me laugh out loud. I can understand not having time to research everything there is to know about the Royals—baseball is only a game, and the Royals are a bad team that play it. But I simply cannot believe that someone being sponsored by the KC Star didn’t know that Alex Gordon, the most exciting player in Kansas City since George Brett retired, was going to be playing at third base. Nor can I believe that he didn’t know Mark Teahen would be playing primarily in right field. After those three posts, I simply cannot treat “a royals fan in atlanta” seriously as a Royals blog anymore (yet), but I do think there can be another use for it. It’s very much like an interesting science experiment. We get to watch the birth of a Royals fan. We get to see which parts he becomes interested in first, what he picks up on right away and what takes him a little more time. It’s like he’s a Royals blogging “prospect”. I wish Joe Schulman (the blogger) the best of luck with his blog, and I hope he doesn’t give it up. I think he can “progress” a lot as a Royals blogger. (By the way, I don’t mean to sound arrogant—I’m certainly no master Royals blogger myself. I just think Schulman has a lot to offer, it’s just we can’t think of his blog as your everyday Royals blog.)

==Would you do Huber for Cantu?