2012 ZiPS Projections - Kansas City Royals

If you watch the Food Network, you might have come across a competitive cooking show called "Chopped" in which chefs are given baskets of mystery ingredients. Some ingredients are pretty cool, some ingredients have tremendous use in specific areas, and some ingredients are downright awful. Each one of the chefs that survive each round have to use all the ingredients together in a non-horrible way. < That's a lot how the Royals are right now. There are a lot of the ingredients of a winning team in the future. Some of them are finished, quality products, like Alex Gordon and Billy Butler. Some of the ingredients, like Eric Hosmer and Johnny Giavotella, are exciting to work with. But a lot of the team's prospects, at this point, fall into the category of "interesting" like most of the pitchers having at least one serious flaw or concern to worry about. All these ingredients are scattered and all over the place and the Royals at this point, are still going to likely struggle to hit 75 wins.

There's still a lot more offseason left, but as of now, the good news is that there really ...Read More...

Royals - Acquired Sanchez

Kansas City Royals - Acquired P Jonathan Sanchez and P Ryan Verdugo from the San Francisco Giants for OF Melky Cabrera.

I count many Giant fans as friends. I can't imagine that any of them are happy at the moment. If the name Aaron Rowand doesn't come up in discussing this trade I'd be shocked.

Strictly on the basis of play in 2011 the Giants get the better of this deal, but that's a silly basis to make the deal. Cabrera is young enough that his excellent play last year could be a new talent ...

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