Kansas City Royals 2009 Season Preview

Leading up to the start of the 2009 Regular Season, Diamond Hoggers will preview each of MLB’s 30 teams. Today’s team is the Kansas City Royals. Stay tuned as Diamond Hoggers will preview every team division by division until the start of the regular season.

It’s like this. This is a baseball blog and as long as we’re writing about baseball we’re happy. But there are those teams that just aren’t worthy of us talking about. At all. That team or two who you just put off writing the season preview about or really giving any mention to whatsoever.

I mean, their headliner is supposed to be Alex Gordon, the top pick from a few years ago. He’s contracted Austin Kearns syndrome. He’s just not that good, yet. This is probably the last year where we can say there’s high expectations from the kid’s talents. If he doesn’t deliver he is going to be known as one of those guys who just isn’t cut out to be a big league star. He also could out of nowhere hit 30 bombs.

Mike Aviles is the three hole hitter. Other noteworthy names include Coco Crisp and David Dejesus. Noteworthy in Kansas Shitty City that is. Mike Jacobs came over from the Marlins. He can hit a little bit. They’ve got Billy Butler and Miguel Olivo. Eh, big deal right? Their lineup is just full of turds.

The pitching staff has a few bright spots. People are calling Zach Greinke and Kyle Davies major sleepers heading into this year. The Royals can perform above expectations if these guys break out. Greinke was good last season but if he continues to develop, they’ll have a valuable commodity. Gil Meche and Brian Bannister are pretty solid starters who know how to pitch without having lights out stuff. Luke Hochevar is a question mark but he was a number one overall draft pick. Royals fans are starting to get nervous if the Royals missed on what should have been a sure fire star, but he’s still young.

The best player on the team might be their closer, Joakim Soria. Kyle Farnsworth, Ron Mahay, Robinson Tejada and Doug Waechter will all see solid innings, probably more then a lot of teams penners do.

We won’t sugarcoat it. The Royals have earned the reputation of being awful for a reason. They’re going to be predicted to be awful until they do something about it on the field like the Rays did last year. Thats just the way it goes. They’ve had some sprinkles of bad luck or no luck at all, that is what seperates them from the Rays (in terms of missing on high draft picks year after year). Thing is, they’re in a division that gives them more of a chance to compete than the AL East at least.