Kansas City Royals Spring Training Preview 2014
Biggest Offseason Additions
Omar Infante: Infante is one of the more underrated men in all of baseball. He can play any position you ask him to and he bats anywhere from .270 to .320. Last season he batted an impressive .318 with 54 runs scored and 51 runs driven in. He has all the tools that you can ask out of a big league hitter minus the power. Infante will be taking over the second basemen position which fills a huge hole for them. Royals fans should be very excited to have this consistent hitter in their lineup.
Norichika Aoki: The Royals traded Fresh Prince Will Smith for Brewers outfielder Aoki. He will be the leadoff hitter for the Royals which is huge! They can allow guys like Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer to bat lower in the lineup with the potential to see Infante in the two hole. Things are shaping up very nicely for the Royals and this could be the year that they finally break through. Look for Aoki to bat in the high .280s along with 50 walks, 20 stolen bases and and 80 runs scored. This guy really can do it all as he has stellar defense and has played in over 150 games in each of his first two seasons in the Majors.
Biggest Offseason Losses
Ervin Santana: Santana had his greatest season in the Majors last year. In fact it was good enough to get almost every single team interested in signing him. Unfortunately for the Royals, it is looking like the chances of them signing him is getting slimmer by the day. This hurts the ballclub who had the best team ERA in the American League at a mark of 3.45. The Royals will need to find a guy who can fill the three spot in their rotation before April comes.
Name to Watch in Spring Training: Yordano Ventura
Ventura has been ranked 35th in the top 100 prospects list. He is a starting pitcher who could see him name sneak into the five spot in the Royals rotation if things go smoothly for him in spring training.
He has an amazing fastball that reaches speeds of 101 miles per hour. Like many rookies his age he still doesn’t have a great secondary pitch but that is likely to come over time.
Ventura is one of those guys that is going to be a big fan favorite due in large part to all the k’s he slangs. Last year in the minors he struck out 155 men in only 134.2 innings pitched. This is definitely a big name to keep out for.
Biggest Spring Training Battle: Yordano Ventura versus Kyle Zimmer for the fifth pitching spot.
Here we have two young and very talented pitching prospects. Ventura managed to pitch in three MLB games last season so he may have a slight advantage over Zimmer. It is going to come down to has a better spring training. If they both pitch well you could potentially see both of them in the rotation at some point in the season. Since I already covered Ventura I will fill you in a bit about Zimmer. Zimmer is 21 years-old and has pitched in the Minors for two years. Over those two years he has compiled an ERA of 3.71 to go with 182 strikeouts in 148 innings pitched. Since the Royals were so bad for so long the talent that they have drafted is slowly rising. The Royals are going to be no joke this year.
What Went Right in 2013
The Kansas City Royals had great success with their pitching staff last season. They have amazing arms like James Shields and Jeremy Guthrie who both pitched very well last year. They really turned things on at the end of the season by winning 17 of their final 27 games. It was not enough to get the playoffs though as they missed the playoffs by six games. This team is soooo close to becoming a playoff team that it’s scary.