The Melky Cabrera trade was a good deal for the Royals. They had Lorenzo Cain ready and no place to put him and a desperate need for starting pitching. They got their pitcher but I am going to focus on how it will effect the Royals lineup. It is interesting how well this worked out for the Royals. I think Melky Cabrera had a career year last year. I’m not going to say it won’t happen again but I feel it is unlikely. Lorenzo Cain will replace Melky Cabrera but it will effect the lineup.
Melky Cabrera batted second basically all of 2011. Cain will not bat second in 2012. He will likely end up near the bottom of the lineup at number 7. This will be a good low pressure spot for him to get established in the major leagues. The move of Cain down will shift Johnny Giavotella up the second hole. This is where the Royals second baseman had batted in the minor leagues and he could be an excellent number two hitter. Cain could shift to the top of the lineup but it is unlikely will all of his strikeouts. If he cuts down on them he could be a candidate to be a leadoff hitter. This would allow Alex Gordon to move to the number two hole where I feel he would be most valuable for the Royals but it is unlikely.
So Melky Cabrera is gone. The Royals sent him to the coast for left handed pitchers Jonathan Sanchez (right) and Ryan Verdugo. It looks like a good trade from my perspective. Sure Melky had a monster year last year batting .305 with 18 HR and 87 RBI including 201 base hits, but lets face it, that looks like a career year. He was only under contract for one more season so its not like he was part of the long-term future of the team. He was a candidate to re-sign but with Lorenzo Cain and Wil Myers coming up fast in the Royals organization he was far from expendable.
Now Jonathan Sanchez is similar in the fact that he will soon be a free agent. Sanchez is a high strikeout/high walk guy that is sure to eat up a lot of innings. Who knows if he will be a candidate to re-sign or not but the fact is that with the addition of him it shows the Royals are going to try to win in 2012. Will They? Maybe not but at least they aren’t afraid to go for it at this point. They are closer than any season since about 1993 in my opinion to being a contender. Plus they got another left handed arm to add to a deep arsenal in Ryan Verdugo. Sanchez will help the rotation in 2012 under any circumstance unless he gets injured.
The most important thing about the trade may be what the Royals gave up. Did they give up a prospect? No. Did they give up a potential building block of the organization? No. They gave up a guy that we basically got for free on the free agent market last off-season. It was one of the best signings of that off-season but the team had little invested in him. This was a great trade for the Kansas City Royals.
I’ll just throw it out there right away; I think I nailed this one. It’s odd that the look of certain years of cards are hard to pin down but I got 1964 Topps here. As always it is pretty much always about the picture. I wanted a good high quality head shot of Soria and to crop it tight. I found a nice picture with a bit of a scowl on his face. I know this is a very basic design but I still think it is one of the better re-creations that I have done. I might have to throw in a few Custom Card of the Day’s in the 1964 format since I like it so much and see if it translates well with other teams.
The design of 1964 is very simple and plain. The one distinct thing about it is that the players head breaks the border of the top of the picture. This helps give the card just enough life to keep it from being boring. In 1964 there were obviously no Royals cards so what I usually do is take a Dodgers card to get my color pallet. The Dodgers have been around forever and they have a similar color pallet as the Royals would have had.
Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals. They defied all odds and won the World Series despite not having probably even a top 5 team in the major leagues in my opinion. They got hot and caught all the breaks for a while and did something amazing. David Freese was amazing and took the MVP award. I just hope all the praise for Albert Pujols and his performance takes into consideration that he had hits in just 2 of 7 World Series games. He doesn’t even deserve a mention as World Series MVP. You know who does? The Game 6 rain out. Without it the Cardinals DO NOT win the World Series.
So its game 7 and as much as I want the Texas Rangers to win it just doesn’t look likely. The Cardinals have all the momentum they could want. The Cardinals will send Chris Carpenter to the mound against the Rangers Matt Harrison, advantage Cardinals. The Cardinals won a big extra inning affair last night on a historic walk off home run and oh yeah, they are at home. Things don’t look good for the Texas Rangers right now. The Rangers could win with their lineup on any given day but the odds are really stacked against them.
I found this card when I was digging through my stuff today. I forgot I made a lot of these 1984 Donruss cards that were really nice. I wish this picture was cropped out just a little bit more so Crow’s hand didn’t hit the swoosh in the design though. This design would make almost any picture look nice though. One of the greatest sets of all time.
Kansas City Royals placemats; left to right; Hal McRae, Paul Splittorff, Ed Rodriguez, Steve Braun, Darrell Porter, Pete LaCock, George Thorp
Kansas City Royals placemats; left to right; Steve Busby, George Brett, Jerry Terrell, Tom Poquette, Willie Wilson, Larry Gura, Marty Pattin
Kansas City Royals placemat; left to right; John Wathan, Dennis Leonard, Fred Patek, Amos Otis, UL Washington, Joe Zdeb, Al Hrabosky
So here is the first two placemats of the second and final series released. You can see that these are a little different visually. The big Royals crown is featured instead of simply the script “Royals” being the centerpiece. Once again these are by the same artist John Boyd Martin. This set’s pictures are also noticeably different. 3 of the 7 pictures on each placemat are headshots. This makes them clearly distinguishable from the first series of mats. Once again it was a set of four and the first two are here, I will post the final two tomorrow.
Kansas City Royals placemat; left to right; Rich Gale, Jamie Quirk, Clint Hurdle, Whitey Herzog, Frank White, Al Cowens, Steve Mingori
I believe that the wheels have got to fall off for the St. Louis Cardinals. An amazing amount of momentum has carried them to the World Series but they will face a better team that is now experienced. The Cardinals pitching has been fantastic, I don’t believe it will hold up against the bats of the Texas Rangers.
The Texas Rangers lost the World Series in 2010 to the San Francisco Giants because their goal was to make it to the World Series, not to win it. They already achieved their goal in 2010. 2011 is different, the goal is to win the World Series and I believe they will.This is why I’m taking the Rangers in 6.
I am taking Ian Kinsler as my World Series MVP pick as well. Kinsler is a gritty player with power and the ability to drive in runs and score runs. He will bat in the leadoff spot but I think this will only lead to Kinsler and number 2 hitter Elvis Andrus to get great pitches to hit. With Josh Hamilton, Michael Young, Adrian Beltre, Nelson Cruz and Mike Napoli up after them; they will get pitches to hit. Andrus will get pitches as well but has far less power and has a good chance of being asked to bunt and move runners over. This will make Kinsler vital to the Rangers World Series win.
The Melky Cabrera trade was a good deal for the Royals. They had Lorenzo Cain ready and no place to put him and a desperate need for starting pitching. They got their pitcher but I am going to focus on how it will effect the Royals lineup. It is interesting how well this worked out for the Royals. I think Melky Cabrera had a career year last year. I’m not going to say it won’t happen again but I feel it is unlikely. Lorenzo Cain will replace Melky Cabrera but it will effect the lineup.
A Hair Off Square 