Kevin's Royals Blog

It’d be fair to say that I didn’t do much of anything this weekend besides watch movies with some good friends. In no particular order, I took in:

Exorcist: The Beginning
Shall We Dance?
Little Black Book
Be Cool
Wicker Park
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
The Score

There’s some comedy, some romantic comedy, and a dose of dramatic comedy in Exorcist (meaning it's really stupid). At least it’s a well-rounded list, right? Opening Day’s only a week away, I have more thoughts on the world of baseball, so here goes:

On Saturday, seven more poor souls were cut from the Royals’ major league camp. Pitchers Justin Huisman, Santiago Ramirez, and Ryan Jensen, infielder Luis Ugueto, catcher Matt Tupman, and outfielder Matt Diaz were reassigned to minor league camp, while pitcher Ambiorix Burgos was optioned to Double-A Wichita. While none of the cuts themselves were surprising, I was nothing short of disappointed when I read this on kcroyals.com:

Burgos, a starter previously in the minors, will pitch in relief for Wichita.

I’ve discussed the possibility of Burgos becoming a reliever before in this space, but now that it’s actually happened, I’m horrified. There’s little to no question that he’s is the most talented young pitcher in the team’s pipeline. In 174 2/3 innings of career work, he’s struck out 219 batters while allowing only 7.68 hits per nine innings pitched. His control can be very shaky, as he’s also dished out 97 walks. However, he won’t turn 21 until April 19, and he isn’t the first young guy with an electric arm to have control problems in the early part of his career.

Without knowing what exactly the Royals are thinking by having him pitch out of relief, it seems incredibly bizarre that they appear content grooming him as a pitcher who could dominate out of the ‘pen as opposed to dominating in the starting rotation. The way I see it, guys like Burgos who throw 97 mph with filthy sliders and have had success starting baseball games at 20 should be given every opportunity to make it as a starting pitcher. And if he proves that he can’t hack it in the rotation for whatever reason (endurance, control, concentration, lack of a third pitch), THEN the Royals should try to salvage his career by making him a closer.

Closers are made, not born, and the formula for developing a big-league door-slammer isn’t “Give a guy a lot of save chances in the minor leagues.” The Royals are making a big mistake if they’ve already become tunnel-visioned with Ambiorix, and are somehow already convinced that he can’t start baseball games.

Royals GM Allard Baird expects to have his roster set by Wednesday, meaning the next three days of spring training are do-or-die blowout days for guys like Abraham Nunez and Dennis Tankersley. To the best of my knowledge, both of those players are out of options, meaning they’d have to clear waivers in order to be sent to the bus leagues.

I don’t suspect the Royals would be too heartbroken over losing a non-factor like Nunez to another club, but I think they need to give Tankersley every opportunity to succeed before giving up on him as the Padres did this past November. Dishing out four walks in a third of an inning on Sunday definitely didn’t help his chances of making the team, but he still has great stuff and the upside of a quality third starter. Besides, he was the prize of the Darrell May/Terrence Long swap, and people shouldn’t give up on prizes before they’ve been given every opportunity to lose their jobs.

Want to hear something encouraging? At the end of this radio interview, Baird mentioned that he liked seeing some of his pitchers turn into strikeout pitchers, because (paraphrasing) “When every ball is being put into play, you’re in trouble.” Coming from a guy who was telling his pitchers to induce contact last spring, that’s a very nice 180-degree turn.

Oakland A’s ace/goofball Barry Zito and SI.com have hooked up on an awesome project. Zito, an aspiring photographer, has snapped a bunch of interesting pictures of his experiences in spring training.

Does anyone else have a bad feeling that Juan Gonzalez is going to have a huge season for the Indians? I don’t have any kind of solid data to support my hypothesis, but we know that anything that CAN go wrong for the Royals DOES go wrong for the Royals. Leave it to me to complain about something when we’re seven days away from Opening Day, eh?

Be sure to check out Sprayahen’s St. Louis Cardinals and Other Notes on the State of Baseball. It’s a very long-winded title, but there’s quality writing over there by Spencer Hendricks and Brian Vaughan, two good friends of mine from high school. What they’ve done is combine humor, sarcasm, and baseball – three of my favorite things in the world. It’s possible that some writing of mine will appear there in the very near future, so if you have a few minutes, give their page a look. It’ll be worth your time.

As far as articles I have written go, head on over to Orange & Black Baseball for my thoughts on steroids and how they relate to the Hall of Fame.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 28, 2005 at 3/28/2005 12:00:00 AM. |