Baseball Prospectus Top 50 Prospects

[KCGHOST]

The Royals landed three players on baseball Prospectus's Top 50 Prospect list. And as all things Royal this silver lining has a cloud.

#10 - 3B Alex Gordon - Remember the Bag of Hammers traded Carlos Beltran for a 3B (Mark Teahen) who hits like a 170 pound 2B.

#20 - H Billy Butler - The guy can hit, but is physically incapable of fielding a batted ball. And you know how desperately the Royals need another 1B/DH type.

#34 - 1B/DH Justin Huber - And of course the Bag of Hammers strikes again by picking up useless free agent Doug Minetkiewicz to further crowd the 1B/DH position and ensure limited at bats for Huber.

[TonyStarks]

Teahan?
Didn't Billey Beane draft him?

Who's the GM over in KC now?

[Cironnu]

Allard Baird is still our GM. Beane drafted Teahen, then was smart enough to ship him to KC as part of the Beltran 3-way deal.

Although I'm in total and complete agreement that Baird is completely clueless, and should have been fired a long time ago, I'm not panicking over the situations with third base and 1B/DH yet. Butler, Gordon, and to a lesser extent Huber, are all ticketed to spend this season in the minors. Gordon hasn't really even begun his professional career yet, Butler needs to be assigned a permanent position (left field is my choice) and allowed to stick with it, and Huber needs to finish learning how to play first base. That allows us a year to get Stairs and Mientkiewicz out of the way for Huber. That allows us a year to see whether we have an extra third baseman (if Teahen hits) or not (if he doesn't.) With any luck at all, Butler will turn into a decent enough defender to not be embarassing somewhere, and we'll have an "extra" third baseman next spring that we can trade somewhere for...a pitcher, second baseman, whatever.

If all those youngsters were ready, offensively and defensively, to play in the Majors right now, I'd be unhappy. But for now, we still have time to let this sort out. Hopefully, with a new GM.