Daily Clips
December 9, 2017
LOCAL
Morin claimed off waivers by Mariners
December 8, 2017By Jeffrey Flanagan/MLB.com
Unpopular '12 trade sets up KC for Series win
GM Moore dealt 3 prospects to acquire Shields, Davis just after 2012 Meetings
December 8, 2017By Jeffrey Flanagan/MLB.com
Royals lose former SM South pitcher Mike Morin to Mariners
December 8, 2017By Maria Torres/KC Star
Time to go, but not quite yet … a few thoughts about the Royals
December 8, 2017By Lee Judge/KC Star
MINORS
Christian Colón Joins Atlanta Braves
World Series Hero played in 292 games with Omaha from 2012-16
December 7, 2017By Andrew Green/Omaha Storm Chasers
NATIONAL
Report: Yanks reach deal to acquire Stanton
December 9, 2017By Bryan Hoch/MLB.com
Coveted 2-way phenom Ohtani picks Angels
December 8, 2017By Maria Guardado/MLB.com
MLB TRANSACTIONS
December 9, 2017 •.CBSSports.com
LOCAL
Morin claimed off waivers by Mariners
December 8, 2017By Jeffrey Flanagan/MLB.com
The Royals on Friday lost right-hander Mike Morin, who was claimed off outright waivers by the Mariners.
Kansas City had claimed Morin off waivers in September, and he was ineffective in six games with the club, posting a 7.94 ERA in six appearances.
Morin, 26, had signed a one-year deal with the Royals one week ago.
Kansas City's 40-man roster now sits at 38.
Unpopular '12 trade sets up KC for Series win
GM Moore dealt 3 prospects to acquire Shields, Davis just after 2012 Meetings
December 8, 2017By Jeffrey Flanagan/MLB.com
In the final hours of the 2012 Winter Meetings in Nashville, Royals general manager Dayton Moore huddled with his top scouts and front-office lieutenants in a suite at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.
There had been a trade offer on the table for more than a day, a deal that would require Moore to commit to the future and no doubt draw criticism from a frustrated fan base and a skeptical national media.
Moore had taken over the job to rebuild the Royals' organization in 2006, and by now he felt in is heart it was time to push forward. The trade that would do that sat in front of him.
"We had spent years building one of the top farm systems in baseball," Moore recalled. "But it was definitely time to start winning at the big league level. A great farm system is nice to have, but the whole point of it is to help your team win at the big league level. That's where we were."
The Royals hadn't had a winning season since 2003, and Moore was convinced his team was just one or two players away from becoming a winner and a contender. Prospects such as Eric Hosmer, Salvador Perez, Mike Moustakas, Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain had reached the Major Leagues but had yet to mature into winners.
So Moore examined the offer from the Tampa Bay Rays: pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis (and later infielder Elliot Johnson) to the Royals for top prospect Wil Myers, pitchers Jake Odorizzi and Mike Montgomery, as well as outfielder Patrick Leonard.
Moore knew if he could just get one frontline starting pitcher and another with frontline potential, he could transform his team into a winner. Plus, Shields had the reputation of being a strong clubhouse presence who could guide young players into winners.
Moore wanted the deal. But he listened to his advisors.
Moore was ready for the push-back. In building a top-notch farm system for years, Moore had given the Royals' fan base hope in the potential of such players as Myers and Montgomery. That precious farm system was the reason Royals fans and bloggers had reason to believe in the future, after years of losing seasons.
But Moore didn't buy into the romanticism of the farm system.
"You don't win anything with a great farm system," Moore said. "You have to use that farm system to make you better at the big league level, pure and simple."
Moore's inclination was to make the deal. But even his own people were highly skeptical that night in Nashville, Tenn. No one wanted to part with Myers, the team's top prospect, a can't-miss player.
That's when Moore walked to a chalkboard in his hotel suite, a chalkboard that had nearly a hundred names of Royals prospects written on it by order of position and ranking.
Moore erased the names of Myers, Montgomery, Leonard and Odorizzi. He then turned to his troops and said, "What are the odds we can replace these guys? I mean, it's not like they have abolished the Draft. We can reload next year and the year after that, right?"
The men in the room looked at each other, perplexed at first. Though not entirely convinced, mainly because they had spent more than six years rebuilding one of the worst farm systems in baseball into one of the best, they began to nod in agreement over Moore's reasoning.
Moore decided to sit on the idea of the trade until after they left Nashville, but 48 hours later, he decided to make the deal.
"At that point, where we were, we needed to take the next step," Moore said. "We needed to start winning at the big league level, and we needed to learn how to win. We brought guys in who knew how to win. And it was time for our young players to start believing they could win. Quite frankly, we had to make that next move."
And that is exactly what happened. The 2013 Royals won 86 games -- their first winning season in 10 years -- and stayed in the postseason hunt until the final two weeks of the season.
Shields was a big part of it. He went 13-9 and made 34 starts, tied for the MLB high. He threw 228 2/3 innings, and more importantly, he helped to change the culture in the clubhouse.
"We started to believe how fantastic it was to win games," Hosmer said. "We believed how important winning was. Big Game James brought in the disco lights and smoke machine to celebrate each win in the clubhouse, and we really bought in to that concept. It was like each night was winning the World Series. We needed to know that."
The skeptics remained, however. National columnists insisted the Royals got robbed in the trade, and a local blogger even suggested that the Royals gave up everything to be "mediocre."
Moore himself was lampooned by local newspaper columnists, bloggers and talk-show hosts for suggesting after 2013 that finally getting a winning season "felt like winning a World Series."
But the critics were silenced a year later when Shields and Davis, the latter of whom transitioned to the bullpen and posted a 1.00 ERA and later evolved into one of baseball's top closers, helped push the Royals to Game 7 of the World Series against the Giants. A year after that, the Royals won their first World Series championship in 30 years.
At least for a while, the critics were mum.
"When we did the Zack Greinke trade in 2010 for Cain and Escobar," Moore said, "that was the pathway to where we got. But the Shields trade pushed us over the edge. It was a deal we had to make.
"And history will prove it was the right deal to make."
Royals lose former SM South pitcher Mike Morin to Mariners
December 8, 2017By Maria Torres/KC Star
Shawnee Mission South graduate Mike Morin won’t return to Kansas City in a Royals uniform next season.
After signing a one-year contract with his hometown team last week, Morin was claimed off waivers by the Seattle Mariners on Friday. The Royals designated the right-handed reliever for assignment to clear a spot on the 40-man roster. Morin, 26, could have been assigned to the minor leagues if he cleared waivers.
The Royals now have 38 players on their extended roster ahead of next week’s winter meetings.
Morin appeared in six games after the Royals claimed him off waivers in September from the Los Angeles Angels, who signed Japanese star Shohei Otani on Friday. Morin posted a 7.20 ERA with 16 strikeouts in 20 innings split between the Angels and Royals in 2017.
Morin was selected by the Angels in the 13th round of the 2012 draft out of the University of North Carolina, where he was a closer.
Morin’s contract will remain, in part, on the Royals’ payroll. The Mariners will pay the league minimum salary and split the difference with the Royals.
Time to go, but not quite yet … a few thoughts about the Royals
December 8, 2017By Lee Judge/KC Star
As some of you may have already heard, The Kansas City Star and I will soon be parting ways; my last day will be Friday, December 15. On that day I’ll post my final baseball column for The Star, but “Judging the Royals” will continue. A new website is in the works and on December 15, I’ll post that link.
In the meantime, I’ll write a couple columns just to prove I’m alive and kicking and there’s no time like the present to get started.
Christian Colon
Star reporter Maria Torres recently reported that the Atlanta Braves have signed Christian Colon to a minor-league deal.
When Colon was here in Kansas City there were questions about his range and arm. Colon had enough arm to play the left side of the infield as long as he was moving forward when he fielded the ball, but the true test of an infielder’s arm is what he can do when he’s moving away from first base. Plays to an infielder’s backhand side reveal his arm strength.
Colon was considered a better fit at second base than short or third.
Some fans advocate tanking — losing to get higher draft picks — but it’s worth pointing out that the draft can be a bit of a crap shoot. Christian Colon and Bubba Starling were first-round picks, Hall of Famer Mike Piazza was a 62nd round pick. High draft picks are great, but if you don’t pick the right guys — and there’s some luck involved — they won’t do you much good.
On a personal note: I expect great things from Maria Torres. She’s smart, pays attention and speaks Spanish — a great skill for a baseball reporter to have — and I think you’ll enjoy her reporting on the Royals.
Wily Peralta
Star beat writer Rustin Dodd reported that the Royals have signed pitcher Wily Peralta, a guy with a 96 mph fastball.
According to Rustin’s story, Peralta will get a chance to start, but he might wind up as a reliever and the Royals like power relievers in their bullpen. Converted starters might add a few miles an hour to their fastballs when they know they’re only pitching one inning and can empty the tank. According to FanGraphs, Peralta throws five pitches and when a pitcher goes to the pen he can often dump his least effective pitches and concentrate on what he does best.
His numbers as a reliever aren’t great, but Peralta has 686 1/3 big-league innings as a starter and only 18 1/3 big-league innings as a reliever, so with more innings out of the pen, you’d like to think those numbers will improve.
Peralta has had control problems and that’s often the result of not being able to repeat a deliver consistently; so when you watch Peralta pitch, focus on the catcher’s mitt and see how much it moves. Even after just one or two pitches, that’s often a good indicator of how successful a pitcher is going to be that day.
Salvador Perez
Rustin also posted a guide to rebuilding the Royals and listed their most valuable trading chips; catcher Salvador Perez was number one.
But big catchers sometimes tend to have knee problems and Perez is big, so as his innings behind the dish pile up, that’s a consideration. Hang on to Perez too long and his value might go down.
If a team wants to keep him healthy they can DH Perez and give his body a rest, but when the Royals tried him at first base the experiment only lasted three games and Sal looked shaky at that position. That doesn’t mean Perez couldn’t eventually become a competent first baseman, but it does mean playing first base is harder than people who don’t play first base think it is.
OK, that’s it for today.
Have a nice weekend and we’ll talk again next week.
MINORS
Christian Colón Joins Atlanta Braves
World Series Hero played in 292 games with Omaha from 2012-16
December 7, 2017By Andrew Green/Omaha Storm Chasers
It appears 2012-16 Storm Chasers infielder Christian Colon has a new team, posting a picture of the Atlanta Braves logo on his social media accounts.
Colón totaled 292 games played with the Omaha Storm Chasers during parts of five seasons between 2012-16, combining for a .288 average (329-1142) with 159 runs, 45 doubles, three triples, 23 homers and 132 RBI. Omaha reached the postseason in each of his first three seasons he played, before coming up clutch with a go-ahead RBI single in the 12th inning of Game 5 of the 2015 World Series, which Kansas City would take to clinch the second World Series title in club history.
A versatile player, Colón made significant contributions at second base, shortstop and third base during his time in Omaha. He won a Triple-A National Championship with the Storm Chasers in 2013, batting .273 (140-512) with 72 runs, 12 doubles, three triples, 12 homers and 58 RBI. He would go on to make his Major League debut with the Royals on July 1, 2014 against the Minnesota Twins, and later that season provided another big postseason knock, a game-tying RBI single in the 12th inning of the 2014 Wild Card Game versus the Oakland Athletics.
Colón split the 2017 campaign between Kansas City and the Miami Marlins organizations. In 142 career Major League contests he has compiled a .252 average (88-349), adding 33 runs, 17 doubles, one triple, one homer and 25 RBI. He was selected by the Royals in the first round of the 2010 MLB Draft out of Cal State Fullerton.
NATIONAL
Report: Yanks reach deal to acquire Stanton
December 9, 2017By Bryan Hoch/MLB.com
The Yankees have reached an agreement to acquire National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton from the Marlins, according to MLB Network insider Jon Heyman. A source told MLB.com's Mark Feinsand on Saturday morning that the deal was not "done," but is currently headed in that direction.
The teams have not commented, and it is yet unclear what the Yankees would give up in a trade.
While the Marlins are expected to seek several higher-level prospects in any potential deal, second baseman Starlin Castro's name has surfaced in negotiations, according to MLB.com's Jon Paul Morosi. The 27-year-old Castro has two years and approximately $23.7 million remaining on his contract.
The Cardinals and Giants had separate trade agreements in place to acquire Stanton on Friday, but both clubs sent out statements declaring that they were no longer in the mix for the four-time NL All-Star when Stanton declined to waive his no-trade clause to go to St. Louis or San Francisco.
Stanton has told the Marlins that he would approve a trade to the Yankees, Astros, Cubs and Dodgers, and while Los Angeles was also pursuing the 28-year-old outfielder, the Yankees' discussions were believed to be more advanced at this stage.
A potential trade could create a monster outfield for the Yankees, teaming Stanton with Aaron Judge, the American League's unanimous selection for Rookie of the Year. Stanton is coming off a 2017 campaign in which he set Marlins franchise records for home runs (59) and RBIs (132), leading the Majors in both categories.
Adding Stanton would also create significant financial hurdles for the Yankees, impacting managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner's stated plan to reduce payroll below $197 million in 2018 and reset the team's luxury tax penalty rate.
Because Stanton's salary is increasing to $25 million in 2018 and $295 million remains on the final 10 years of his contract, the Yankees would likely attempt to off-load at least one higher-priced position player in a trade. The Yanks currently have approximately $107 million committed to seven players on their roster, with eight more players still eligible for arbitration.
With Derek Jeter serving as the Marlins' chief operating officer and part owner, Miami suddenly has a deep level of familiarity with the Yankees organization. Gary Denbo, the former Yankees vice president of player development, has taken on the same role with the Marlins after helping New York's ongoing youth movement of "Baby Bombers" succeed in the Majors.
The two clubs worked out a smaller trade last month that helped the Yankees add international bonus pool money for their abbreviated run at Japanese standout Shohei Ohtani, who agreed to sign with the Angels on Friday.