MVN - Most Valuable Network

Off Day

I’ve been away for a few days. Did you miss me? On the advice of Sam Mellinger, I made my way to Flordia, or as he called it, Wichita with palm trees.

It’s the same ritual every spring at my homestead. We gather around for a discussion for spring break destinations and every year I mention that Arizona would be a fine place for a trip. And every year I’m shouted down by a group of females more interested in actual water around the sand.

Back in time for a dose of March Madness. Or whatever I’m legally supposed to call it these days. Did you guys fill out your brackets? I always enter this time of the year with a grand idea of filling out five or ten or twenty, each with different variations of picks to somehow scoop up some matchsticks (because playing for money is against the law.) Anyway, and this never fails, I fill out three brackets, compare my picks and find that they usually only deviate from one or two games. And my Sweet Sixteen is always the same in every bracket. Huh? I just use different logic, but pick the same teams every time.

This year, I decided to save some matchsticks and just submit one entry to one pool. I figure my bracket will be all screwed up by around 3 o’clock.

Can you tell it’s a slow baseball day? Off day in Surprise and not much in the way of news to report.

Here’s what I learned in the 12 hours since I’ve been back in KC:

– The Royals traded for pitcher Brad Salmon from the Cincinnati Reds for a player to be named later.

Salmon’s fastball averages around 93 mph and is a pitch he throws 83% of the time. He compliments that with a decent slider that comes in at about 83 mph and will mix in a change up and curve to keep hitters off balance. Last season, he threw 24 innings for the Reds with a 4.13 ERA and struck out 22 against 10 walks.

The trade doesn’t effect the 40 man roster, but it’s a decent deal from a standpoint of collecting bullpen depth. Salmon is 28, so he’s not considered a prospect but he has had some success at the minor league level.

– Jorge de la Rosa threw in a minor league intrasquad game and went five innings allowing four hits, three runs and no walks.

The no walks thing is nice and all, but that really doesn’t mean a thing in a minor league intrasquad game. We’re over 270 innings into his career, so we have a pretty good idea the type of pitcher de la Rosa is: He’s going to have around a 1.5 K/BB ratio.

And he’s still in the running for a spot in the rotation.

– Speaking of the rotation, I read Clark’s piece about his lack of sleep due to the thought of Brett Tomko in the rotation and was strangely happy. Happy because I realized I’m not alone with this fear.

We’re about 10 days away from the opener and I still can’t decide who I’d like for the last two spots. Basically, I feel that whoever becomes the 4th and 5th starter will work to counteract any success the first three starters will have. Blah.

– Commenter gbewing is putting together a Kansas City based Strat-O-Matic league and is looking for players. If you’re interested, leave a message in the comments. Or you can shoot me an email at cbrown@mvn.com and I’ll pass it along.

– As I was surfing the Royals official website, I came across this about Mike Sweeney’s first time to play against the Royals. I’m not posting the link because it’s about Sweeney. I think we all had enough of the Sweeney as ex-Royal coverage back in February. I’m posting this because of the use of the phrase “Manhood idol.”

– The Royals on television firmly planted a foot in the 21st century with the announcement that 88 games will be broadcast in high definition.

– My preview for the Royals at The Hardball Times is online.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 6:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.