Major League Baseball

MLB

Major League Baseball took away the only advantage the Royals had. Last offseason baseball decided to put a limit on what each team could spend during the draft.  Since the Dayton Moore became the Royals General Manager he has wisely spent more money in the draft than any other team.  Where he has succeeded most, is spending money in the later rounds by giving high schoolers big bonuses to sign with the Royals organization, instead of going to college.  By doing this he accumulated lots of the top prospects, and has consistently had one of the best farm systems in the league. The rule to me does not make any sense.

The NFL and NBA have these rules because they have a salary cap.  The MLB does not, I hate everything the rule stands for, it makes Major League Baseball a huge hypocrite. They have a problem with the Royals giving one million dollars to a fifth round draft pick.  However, they do not have a problem with the Yankees having a payroll over 200 million dollars, five times the amount of some teams.  Now the small market teams are forced to sign players like Jeremy Guthrie to a 3 year 25 million dollar deal, instead of signing a prospect to a deal worth less a million a year.  If the top draft picks were getting 8-10 million dollars a year I would understand, but even the top picks were only making 2-3 million a year.  This rule will definitely hamper the Royals which means they will have to get better in other areas, like pitching.

When the Royals think about the way they have developed starting pitchers recently there is only one thought, "shit!" The Royals have ruined every good starting pitching prospect since Zach Grienkie, he was drafted 10 years ago.  They have to realize that what they are doing is not working, at the minor and major league level. Instead of singing another pitcher this offseason go to Oakland and say "we'll give you 30 million for every coach associated with pitching in your organization."  If that investment turns a few minor and major league pitchers around then it would be worth more than signing Shaun Marcum for 4 years 40 million dollars.

KU Basketball

I got free tickets to the KU basketball game on Monday and I didn't really care.  I feel somewhat bad for the person I took because I was more interested in talking to him than actually paying attention to the game. To be honest I really don't care about KU basketball anymore, they used to be up there with the Chiefs and Royals but for many reasons they have just slipped out of my interest. I'm sorry, but don't expect any KU basketball posts this season.

Hope you guys enjoyed this post, and sorry all of my post have been negative lately.  Hopefully the Royals can turn it around next year, I still have some faith.  

Also, If you want to learn more about the consequences of the draft rule, listen to Baseball America's draft podcasts a few months back, they do a good job of explaining everything.

AL MVP/First Soccer Post

AL MVP

Mike Trout deserved to be the MVP in my opinion.  He completely changed that team when he was called up after the first month of the season.  He played his ass off every night injecting life into a team that started the season 6-14 without him.  If you were to develop a player in a lab, Trout would be it, he has no weaknesses.  Cabrera can hit, and that's it.  Four times a game he stepped up to the plate and helped his team, but the rest of the game he was a liability.  He was a poor defensive player, didn't run the bases well, he is what Billy Butler is for the Royals.  Trout stole 49 bases and was only caught 5 times, a stat I feel got overlooked when people evaluated him.  I also hate the argument that Cabrera led his team to the playoffs while Trout didn't, THE ANGELS WON MORE GAMES.  I'm not going to complain too much because Cabrera did have a great season, and the fact that he won the Triple Crown is pretty cool.

Here's a shout-out to Buster Posey for deservedly winning the NL MVP (I don't want my San Francisco fan to complain).

Soccer

I can't decide what to do about soccer with this blog and keep asking myself these questions.

Does anybody care about soccer?

Would anybody like to learn about soccer?

Should I focus on...

Sporting KC?  

The entire MLS?  

The U.S. Men's national team?  

European Soccer?  

It's pretty complicated so feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Talking to my former basketball coach a few months ago I realized this is the first generation in America to grow up with soccer as a relevant sport.  Soccer 20-30 years ago would be like cricket today.  And now it's one of the most popular sports for kids growing up.  The U.S. National Team is slowly getting better along with the MLS developing into a strong league.  I love the way the game is developing right now, naturally, without the "help" of ESPN.

I think two reasons soccer isn't growing even faster is because of ESPN and the media.  The first blunder was how they handled Freddy Adu.  Adu was a promising young player that had the potential to develop into a star.  ESPN created a prodigy, putting an enormous hype around him, making him out to be way better than he actually was.  He signed with an MLS team at the age of 14 and was playing against the big boys right away.  Youth soccer stars are brought up through youth academies, playing with kids their age, and their competition till about 18 years old until they slowly worked into the team, like most athletes are.  What the MLS did ruined Adu and he has never developed into anything more than an average player, creating disappoint in those who bought into the hype.

The next mistake ESPN made was the way David Beckham was glorified.  First of all ESPN stated that Beckham signed a 5 year 250 million dollar contract.  That was ESPN being completely wrong, with all of the endorsements it totaled about 50 million dollars a year, but in reality he signed a 5 year 32 million dollar contract with the L.A. Galaxy (the Yankees of the MLS).  They also made it sound like he was going to take the MLS to a different level, I believed he was going to be scoring goals every game.  But Beckham is not somebody who scores a lot of goals, he sits back in the midfield making great passes, and scores once every five games, on average.  Once again fans were let down when Beckham turned out to be a pretty boring player.  ESPN has done a poor job handling soccer and has pushed a lot of people away from the game by creating hype and disappointments in Adu and Beckham.

Hope you enjoyed this post, please let me know if you are interested in reading soccer posts in the future.

I've got 99 Problems and the Thunder are One

Thunder

I am so sick of the NBA billionaire owners complaining that small market teams can't compete financially.  I understand that big market teams have an advantage, but you can't change that, so quit bitching and win. And if that means spending a few million over the salary cap to keep James Harden you better do it.  The Thunder have sold out every game the past four seasons, have one of the most marketable players in Kevin Durant.  If you can't make money under those circumstances you don't deserve to own a team. Here's a theory, you risk short term gains and sign Harden to an extension. The Thunder are valued around 500 million, with the addition of Harden say you win 3 out of the next 8 titles. In the process you build a small dynasty and become one of the best teams in the NBA. With this success the team's increase in worth would far outweigh the small luxury tax penalty. Another thing to consider is that the Thunder have been the bandwagon team of the past year, growing fast in popularity. They could of chose to build on this and become the cool team of NBA but it seems they will fade away like Crocs.  I understand that the Thunder can still compete, but I feel Harden would of made them the favorites over the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.

Lakers

Oh do I love seeing the Lakers struggle, here are some potential problems I see.

• The offense has always been run through Kobe.
• The offense has always been run through Nash.
• The offense has always been run through Howard.
• Kobe is one of the most competitive athletes around.
• Howard is one of the least competitive athletes around, and was very unpopular because of that during the 2008 olympics.
• Kobe is 34, and has to go to Germany to receive treatments on his knee.
• Nash is 38, and has already missed games this year.
• Gasol runs an illegal magic ring, where he disappears for games at a time.
• Howard had back surgery this offseason.
• Nash and Kobe don't play defense.
• They have the worst bench in the league, they could have open tryouts tomorrow and four WNBA teams would be contacted about the availability of their players.
• Mike Brown is not a good coach.
• To wrap it all up, they have a fairly old team, that is injury prone, not well coached, and have personalities and play styles that don't gel together.

I realize they will probably figure it out with all the talent they have, but I would love to see this team self implode. The NBA is great right now.  There has never been more story lines, and when we look back in 20 years, these will be the glory days of the NBA.