Yea not a huge loss, and as mentioned, the closer position is hugely overrated.

I am more concerned about our 2B happenings.

I don't find myself too worried about 2B... more Catcher for the first half of the year at least. That's just me.

Well let's just lump them both together :)

I just don't know if we can have some ham hands out at 2B and have to watch Betancourt get 500 ABs.

I'm not as down on Yuni I guess as a lot of Royals fans. That said I want Gia to win the job and perform well.

On the Catcher front, the Royals sent a scout to the Astros game yesterday to look at Humberto Quintero. He's coming off injury and playing catch up for the second catcher slot for Houston and could be out of the mix for them. Said to catch a good game.

See this is the inside info I like! Thanks Beerme. Please keep me informed.

It's not hard to read www.kcroyals.com each day.

:)

Close the book on that discussion - I was wrong.

I still don't think Montero sticks at C and that the Royals are full up on DH type players, but Montero's trade value was evidently Pinieda.

Trading Soria for Pinieda would be pretty damn nice...

Sorry 'bout Jack, Royals fans. You guys are about as fond of him as we are of Wainwright. The WW loss was brutal from a pure fan standpoint as you couldn't find anyone that had anything but great things to say about him.

Not surprised to see him get injured I just lost complete hope in him maybe it was a injury last year and it just worsen during spring? hell I dunno ....I am moving on from Soria

This is the Royals fan lot in life.

The value you were associating with elite relievers certainly wasn't wrong, but the Royals were just too damn far away from contention to make it a pertinent point for this particular franchise.

In '09, when I was crying for the team to move Soria at the All-Star break, the idea of playoffs was so remote as to be indiscernible for the KC Walmarts.

Still, it's going to be a shame if Soria never pitches again for the Royals or never pitches to the level that we've been accustomed to seeing in the past.

Thanks for the good thoughts.

I think you guys are under-selling the impact of losing Soria, for several reasons:

#1 - Who the hell knows what we have with Broxton. We're optimistic, but there's absolutely no guarantee he'll be any better than decent (and maybe not even that).

#2 - Crow is a possibility in the pen, but he wasn't great in the second half last season. Again, no guarantees there.

#3 - The depth of our pen was supposed to help offset the weakness in our rotation. Take away a bullpen arm and our depth is diminished.

#4 - There's something to be said for having a proven closer, despite our sabermetric tendencies that say otherwise. Soria has been a rock for this team the last several years; losing him isn't good for team psyche.

I think this hurts, I think losing Perez hurts equally, and I don't like the way this season is starting from a karma perspective. Frustrating.

With all Dayton's talk about the 2013-15 plan, I really figured Soria would be in his peak years still at that time.

The idea that closers are overrated is to some degree dispelled every October. The Cardinals don't even make the playoffs without Jason Motte and they damn sure don't make the Series without him. Installing Motte as the closer really triggered the run that put the team into contention and eventually won them the title.

Closers aren't as difficult to find as an elite defensive SS or plus CFer, but they're every bit as necessary to have. That's where I often get into these arguments with folks. They want to say that having a hammer for the 9th just doesn't matter because by God, Bill James said so. But ultimately, all that simply ignores the substitution patterns of the 9th inning, the razors edge that a team walks for those last 3 outs and the ultimate psychological damage inflicted on a team slogging through a 162 game grind when they lose in the 9th inning of a game they had marked as but one of 90+ wins they'll need to make the playoffs.

You absolutely, positively, cannot be a top-tier team without a legitimate hammer in the 9th. That's the argument I kept trying to make with Soria - the kid was young enough to still be that hammer in 2012-2015 and if the Royals were really going to take that next step, they'd need him.

It appears I was wrong about his longevity/durability.

Well here's hoping Greg Holland kicks some ass for you fellas this year - I just drafted him in my fantasy league ;)

(Though don't get too attached; guys with that frame that put that much tilt on a slider aren't long for this earth, especially not when they rely on it like Holland does. If you get 3 healthy years out of him, consider yourselves blessed...)

I don't know about underselling it, I expected it more than anything.

No, not really. Many people rate closers so highly that a .500 team or a losing team is advised by their fans to keep him.

The marginal value of a great closer vs a pretty good or average closer is very, very low. However, if you are at 92 wins and you really need 93 or 94 wins to win your division, and you've pretty much maxed out your lineup and rotation, then and only then, might a closer, maybe, be your only spot remaining to eke out that last 1 or 2 extra wins, and if you really need those 1 or 2 wins, you might be advised to pay dearly for him.

Yeah, I don't get it. You would think that the fans of a franchise that has been so awful for so long would be a little more appreciative of the guy who has been their best player collectively over the last few years.