Herrold’s Hearings: Optimistic On The Royals And Mizzou?

By Seth Herrold (@HerroldTimes), R-T Sports Editor
For a split second last night I was pulled from my traditional slouch reserved for watching TV. It was the bottom of the ninth in a meaningless spring training game, but I’m starved for baseball so any game will do – especially a Kansas City Royals game.
For those of you who do not stay up late to watch rare spring training night games, here is the synopsis: bottom of the ninth, Royals trailing the San Diego Padres 5-4, Jorge Soler at the plate.
Unfortunately, this was a night game – an anomaly in the world of spring training where day games are the norm. Night and day in Arizona are like, well, night and day. Days are hot and the ball carries, nights are cold and Jorge Soler’s potential game-tying home run fell five feet short of the fence into the glove of a falling San Diego outfielder.
Basically, the lack of the sun really cut the Royals’ ‘Soler Power.’
The next two batters – one prospect Hunter Dozier – recorded outs and the Royals lost. Which leads me into this week’s Herrold’s Hearings.
There were not many questions this week and they all came from my brother – @benherrold. So I robbed one from Sam Mellinger’s Mellinger Minutes, which came from Grundy R-5 boys basketball Coach Steve Wells. With that said, here we go, as always, thanks for reading.


I’m going to tackle these two questions together while we are on the topic of the Royals. The answer to the first question is found in the second. You can be optimistic about the Royals because they are trying to win. The signings of Lucas Duda and more recently Jon Jay show that the Royals don’t want to be a losing team this year.
Now, they may very well still be a losing team – they probably will be. Signing guys like Jay and Duda tells me two things. One, the Royals don’t want to mail it in and take a good draft pick, which might honestly be the best way to go about getting back to the playoffs quicker. Two, the Royals don’t have a lot of confidence in the guys they do have. Hunter Dozier didn’t get a very long look at first base before Kansas City went out and got Duda. The addition of Jay says the Royals were less than keen on the idea of having Paulo Orlando or Bubba Starling patrolling center field.
Now the last time that the Royals were starting a rebuild they weren’t bringing guys in to replace young Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez. They were all in on those guys. There is a different feel about this crop of prospects, which obviously doesn’t have as much upside. But still, the rebuild is basically being put on hold for a year. Because…
The Royals are getting a new TV contract after this season. I’m not saying this is for sure the reason the Royals are trying to win 72 games instead of 55, but the longer they are in the hunt, the more TV viewers they draw and the more they can command when setting up a new deal. That TV contract is worth a lot and gives the team more revenue to chase free agents in the future.
I will leave you with one optimistic thing about this year’s Royals… the pitching is going to be worlds better. Starting pitching, bullpen, it’s all going to be better than it was last year. I think the rotation will be surprisingly solid. You know what you have with Danny Duffy and I think Ian Kennedy and Jason Hammel are due for a bounce-back year. Not great, but better than last year. The real exciting thing is the young guys like Jacob Junis and Eric Skogland. You will notice Kansas City isn’t signing cheap, proven veterans at the pitching positions. These arms the Royals have are going to be good. Will there be some bumpy stretches? Sure, there always are with young pitchers, but in the long run I really like these guys.

I think Missouri has a fine chance to make a little noise in the NCAA Tournament. I stop short of thinking the drought is coming to an end, though. That being said, most of the brackets I have seen have the Tigers on the eight or nine line. That means a match-up with a one seed in the second round – or third round technically with the whole “First Four’ thing they do these days. The latest bracket I saw would have Missouri taking on Villanova in the round of 32. If Missouri springs an upset of a one seed, then they have the one seed’s path to the Final Four, which in theory means easier opponents.
But there aren’t really any easy opponents in March. The tournament is a magnificent beast, That bodes both good and bad for the Tigers. I would love to see them get rolling at the SEC Tournament and keep it going once the Big Dance begins. Speaking of the SEC Tournament…

Not good Ben, not good.