Cool little article. Hosmer's arm is so impressive, that the Royals have decided that he'll be the cutoff man on balls hit to right instead of the 2nd baseman.

http://espn.go.com/blog/spring-train...ur-royals-camp

Who the **** is this True Fan?

Good to see you, man.

Starters are done today.

Hochevar 3IP 0R 0ER 0BB 4K
Mijares 1IP 0R 0ER 0BB 1K
Soria 0.1IP 3R 3ER 1BB 0K
Collins 0.2IP 0R 0ER 1BB 0K
Holland 1IP 1R 1ER 0BB 2K
SOS 1IP 0R 0ER 1BB 0K

Gordon 2/2 (1 double)
Giavotella 0/3, 1K
Hosmer 3/3, 1HR (1 double)
Francoeur 1/4, 2K (1 double)
Moustakas 0/3, 1K
Maier 0/3
Cain 2/2
Clark 1/2
Escobar 2/2 (1 triple)

Well, I'm glad we got Broxton. Not only was Soria horrible again, but he apparently left the game due to elbow soreness.

Soria's done.

Projecting spring training stats to tell you something like that is not accurate.

For example, Roy Halladay is currently sporting an ERA around 11. I think Greinke had an ERA in the 20s the year he won the Cy Young.

Veteran pitchers are working more on getting in shape, getting their arms loose, and experimenting with new stuff in Spring Training.

He left the game with a sore elbow. My guess is the comment had as much to do with that in combination with his performance than anything. Can't say the thought didn't cross my mind.

Oh, and re: Soria after May last year ... he wasn't perfect once he demoted himself and came back, but he still only blew two saves after that. He gave up 10 runs in 38 1/3 innings. Four of them were in one appearance. Two of them were in non-save situations.

I don't think monthly splits tell you much about closers. One outing can severely skew the statistics. Take Soria in July. He had one bad outing over 2/3 of an inning, and his ERA jumps up to 3.86. In his other 11 innings, his ERA was 0.81.

I'm not saying the guy is 100 percent the same and won't rule out the possibility he's seen his best days. But I think it's more likely he had the worst month of his career after adopting a new pitch that wasn't effective over the long term.

Well, that probably changes things. Very rarely is elbow soreness simply that. Crap.

I really don't mind to see us to atleast trade him away for a prospect or 2

Its a catch-22. We aren't getting a prospect for him unless he comes back and shows this year that he's back and rocking and rolling, and if that happens, we wont trade him.

Not wild about leaning on Broxton as the answer there, though.
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Holland

They have plenty of great options if Soria is out for an extended period:

Crow
Holland
Broxton

Heck, even Kelvin Herrerra would be effective in that role, IMO. He's got the best stuff out of the entire group (And Crow has the filthiest stuff I've seen live since John Smoltz was in his prime)

Who knows but even if he is healthy I don't trust him in the closer role anymore