if EVERYTHING went right for the yankees, phillies, or astros, id venture theyd be playoff teams as well.


apparently you missed the sarcasm in my original post.



anyway, ill let you and zeus go back to your dick measuring competition.

I didn't miss it, there's a reason I chose those three teams...

I'm not measuring dicks with anyone, I'm simply showing that Rios and morales being a huge upgrade over 2014 butler and aoki is laughable.

as much as i agree with you, it doesnt seem like youre gonna win this battle til we see mid season.

You act like it's difficult to do better offensively than what Butler and Aoki did last year. I could find dozens of players currently in AAA who can do better over 600 ABs. They did TERRIBLE. Right field and DH are two of the most productive positions in the American League and they were at or near the worse in most categories.

Morales and Rios realistic ceiling is WAY better than 2014 Butler/Aoki. It's that simple bud. They've proved it in their careers. 95% of DH's and RF's in the MLB can do way better than that, because it takes the ability to slug 400+ to be a legitimate DH, and because those numbers aren't MLB sustainable and both of them will be out of baseball real soon if they happen to repeat it. By definition, anybody coming into baseball is expected to perform much better, and the people leaving baseball are the ones performing at that level.

Whether they can reach somewhere near their peaks again remains to seen, but with a full, healthy year I see no reason why they both can't do above average.

TL;DR = On an A-F scale, Aoki/Butler failed miserably. Rios and Morales could do D-, which is very shitty indeed, and still be a measurable improvement over Butler/Aoki.

you act like its easy to assume everyone on the royals will do as good or better as they did last year.

rios is as inconsistent and injury prone as they come. he could bat .300 with 15 homers and 30 steals, he could bat .220 with 3 homers and 5 steals, or he could miss 120 games.

morales is hardly worth anything right now. he and billy butler are both below average DHs, so to act like they improved by signing another shitty DH is stupid.

not to mention, hosmer could regress, moustakas could regress, perez could get hurt, ventura could have a sophomore slump, duffy could regress, etc.


let the year play out.

theres one thing thats for certain. youre clearly wrong and dont watch enough baseball if you think anything needs a label of "definitely" or "surely" in front of it.

thats not how this sport works.

Yeah, I don't watch enough baseball, that must be it.

Please don't correct me on how I write if you're not going to use proper grammar and punctuation while doing so.

And no, I don't act like everyone will do better, if you read what I said, I clearly mentioned "holding everything else constant." I've only been arguing that a fucking Chimpanzee and a Liger could do better than 2014 Aoki/Butler. They had no reason to do as bad as they did, while Rios and Morales have perfectly legitimate reasons to their decline. Because of those reasons, there is much more hope to expect both of them to progress (doesn't make sense but the opposite of regress...) back to their career means.

As for Rios, how many times do I fucking have to tell people he was hitting 300 and on pace for 200 hits before he injured his thumb. He's fine and trying to use out of context statistics to make a point is worthless.

what about all the years before that with rios? hes constantly injury prone and inconsistent.

i never corrected your grammar, only that when you say things like "rios will DEFINITELY be better than aoki" and "morales is a GUARANTEED improvement over butler", it makes you look silly.

nothing is definite or guaranteed here, especially for a team with 1 playoff run in most of our lifetimes.

if only "holding everything else constant" was actually plausible, then i guess i could maybe see what youre saying.

I'm using definite to talk about two players. 90-99% of RFers and DH's will do better this year than Aoki and Butler last year. Regardless of who they are, that's irrelevant. Their past statistics? Irrelevant.
The fact is that such few players do that bad, so I felt confident enough to use definitely. Or I'll put it this way: the chances of them being worse are so small, it's insignificant to even mention it.

So I like those statistics and I'll take them. You keep attacking a word and not my argument. In essence, not a single thing is 'guaranteed', not just in baseball, but in life, so the word itself has no value in speech. But it isn't used as what you're making it to be. Google rhetorical device. Might help you.

Injuries is a whole different topic. Rios could surely get injured this year. So could any of the other 750 major league baseball players who will be on active rosters on opening day. I'm talking about production. There is no production if you're aren't healthy enough to play. Your argument is so pathetic I can say "I guarantee King Felix will be a good pitcher this year" and anybody could argue "Not if he gets injured."

I never used the word guarantee to say anything about the Royals. Trust me, I've been watching Royals baseball for a long time. They could surely suck. But it's also important to understand this was a process. They didn't randomly become good. They weren't a shitty team and became a good team when they got James Shields. They've been a better team the following years for six years now. The number one thing that dooms teams that are projected to do good is lack of depth, and the Royals don't have that problem at all.

I'm not saying Butler didn't do poorly compared to his normal, he was still just about a league average hitter though... Morales was WELL below league average last season and is at the stage of his career that a decline isn't already in question. Butler has the bigger odds of repeating his career norms than Morales. I think you just didn't realize how horrible Morales was last season.

This post was edited by suhduelerz on Jan 29 2015 03:43pm

but rios has been so up and down his entire career, i dont see how a few months last year pre injury make it seem hes gonna put up another .800+ ops season.

not to mention players who get injured more frequently than others need to worry about just that, another injury.

and morales sucks dude. as suh is also stating, theres a very good chance he puts up a .730 ops or even worse.