Quote (GoodOleZeus @ Jan 29 2015 08:13am)
Fair reasoning, and the offense is ridiculous, I am just not yet sold on Garret Richards, Matt Shoemaker, or even CJ Wilson, not to mention Heaney. The middle infield is also the worst its been in a while. Bullpen on the other hand looks to be pretty good. They're a good team, and could very well pass the A's…but they also didn't do much. Traded Howie and traded for Rutledge? What else did they really do? Just by the A's getting Ben Zobrist they had a better off-season than the Angels. But it is close and I see your points.
Well it wasn't a fluke..they won 86 games the year before last year and you placing them fourth most likely has them going below 500, which just ain't gonna happen, especially in this division.
Rios is much better than Aoki, offensively. He had a 800+ OPS before he got injured last year at mid-season, so even amongst the worst year of his career he really wasn't as bad as you think.
As a whole, Butler is probably better, but a 100% healthy Butler did horrible last year. I guarantee Morales does much better this year than Butler last year (that doesn't exactly mean Morales is better, heck Butler may do better than Morales this season, which would be much better than 2014 Butler). And that alone was my reason for saying Morales > Butler. Comparing it to the 2014 Royals, the 2015 Royals will be much better offensively.
Shields is much more durable than Medlen, but if you put them both together healthy, Medlen's stuff is arguably better. He is also the 6th starter, a real crapshoot but could end up being the Shields replacement. Either way, the Royals have the best all-around team in the division. They've already been ranked as the #1 bullpen and #1 defense going into 2015, they have a just outside top-10 farm system with MLB ready prospects, their offense is going to be much better than the one that got them to the World Series, and there is depth all around.
Then again, I probably came on here at the same point last year and tried to argue similar things about the Royals, but just go back and see how many people besides myself thought KC won the Shields trade? How many people besides myself thought KC would make the postseason? Did I not say Duffy was great? Did I not say Ventura was great? Did I not say they had the #1 bullpen and #1 defense at that point? The reactions of y'all are the same every year, so if you want something to laugh at, Just take a look at the Mariners outfield...or the Mariners infield outside of Cano...Or the Mariners rotation outside of Felix and Iwakuma...or the Mariners bullpen...or the fact they haven't finished less than 10 games back in the division in nearly a fucking decade.
Aoki had a 98 wrc+ last year and 100 the year before, Rios had a 98 and 104... He's so much better!
Butler had a 95 wrc+ last year... Do you know what kendrys had? 75... LOL.
I wasn't laughing at the royals nor was I commenting on the projections of the teams. I was laughing at how horrible kemdrys did and you thinking he will be an upgrade over butler.
You're silly if you think the mariners infield is bad, it's not the best but it's certainly not worse than average.
Lol you realize our rotation and bullpen was one of the best in baseball right? It didn't get any worse this year...
This post was edited by suhduelerz on Jan 29 2015 12:07pm