The McGovern Manifesto- Restoration, Reformation and Retaliation- Part 2

[royals19]

THE BILLY BUTLER DEBACLE pt. 3

After Billy Butler decided that he didn't want to play for the Royals any more and after the Front Office decided that they weren't gonna put up with Billy's crap any more, it was safe to say that Billy's time in the Royal Blue was limited.

We didn't want it to go down like this. Dayton didn't want a repeat of the Greinke situation a few years back, Friedman didn't want to have to clean up McGovern mess and McGovern didn't want Butler to do something stupid and bring the national spotlight upon him.

******

The Royals were playing at Oakland on July 30th, the day before the deadline. The game was scheduled the start at 6:10 and everybody, except Billy Butler, were holding their breath waiting for the moment when he'd get the call and be on his way.

However, 6:10 came and went and Billy Butler found himself in the starting lineup... for hopefully the last time. All night, Joe Maddon stood close to the phone, visibly impatient. Butler sat at the far end of the dugout, by himself, ready to get the heck out of Dodge.

In the 8th inning, thoughts were swirling around Joe Maddon's head. "Maybe they won't find a deal tonight..." ".... I hope they find one before tomorrow..." Finally the phone began to ring and everybody stopped what they were doing and looked at Joe. Joe in turn looked at George Brett and it seemed as though time had stopped. Finally came back to reality and picked up the phone.

Quote: Originally Posted by Maddon

Hello?

Quote: Originally Posted by McGovern

Hey Billy said he wanted to be traded to a contender right? A sure fire contender?

Quote: Originally Posted by Maddon

Yes sir.

Quote: Originally Posted by McGovern

Good, pull him out of the game and tell him to get to the airport. His chauffeur will hand him his train ticket.

Quote: Originally Posted by Maddon

Well where's he going?

McGovern sat in his suit enjoying a nice basket of chicken tenders... watching Baseball Tonight and tried his best to hold back a smile.

Quote: Originally Posted by McGovern

Well, he'll just have to find out when he gets there.

******

[WaitTilNextYear]

Quote: Originally Posted by royals19

McGovern sat in his suit enjoying a nice basket of chicken tenders... watching Baseball Tonight and tried his best to hold back a smile.

Maybe washing that down with a nice adult beverage?

Man, Seattle can't get enough DH's on their team, haha.

[royals19]

Quote: Originally Posted by WaitTilNextYear

Maybe washing that down with a nice adult beverage? Man, Seattle can't get enough DH's on their team, haha.

Haha... Maybe! McGovern loves his ice tea though... can't get enough of that.

Well Seattle had sent Kendrys Morales to the White Sox to replace Paul Konerko who signed with Milwaukee in the offseason. But that still doesn't change the fact that they're loaded down with bat first guys.

******

So we sent Billy Butler to Seattle... haha... serves him right. If McGovern had his way he'd be off to Siberia but it's not a very sound business decision to dump 9.2 million into the steppes of Russia. Any way, Billy Butler shouldn't have bad mouthed his way outta here. Maybe he could've been sitting in Baltimore or Boston in the thick of a pennett race. Instead, he's now in Seattle where it rains all day, (no offense ) and not in a good way.

Regardless... we needed to get something. Something big preferably... Billy Butler is a legit player... arguably the best DH in the American League. We ain't giving him up for a bag of peanuts or a cookie. This isn't A-Rod... this is Billy freakin' Butler.

But don't worry, we didn't get cheated... no, no far from it. We got something. Somewhere on a beach in Jacksonville, Florida somebody's being informed that they've been traded to the Royals...


This isn't one of those "fake" guys we're gonna try to pass through as a legit ball player. This is a legit talent... this kid is gonna be good. He's like a young Doc Gooden without the baggage. He's got the potential to be one of the best pitchers to ever play the game of baseball. Equipped with a blazing fastball, hammer curve and a dominating mound presence, this dude is gonna be a huge cog here in KC for years to come...

I said many a time how we've wanted to create our own Maddux/Glavine/Smoltz trio. We've got our Maddux in Shields, our Glavine in Lester and now, we've got that missing piece...

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you:


I'm tellin' you... we got max value for Billy Butler here. We're not gonna just rush this kid to the big leagues. We'll ship him to Omaha so we can get a feel for what type of pitcher he is. It's not that often that you have the unique opportunity to acquire potentially baseball's best pitching prospect realistically. In Taijuan, we're getting an electric arm that will have front end potential but is going to be our #3 guy. Looking at what our rotation could be down the stretch, it's easily one of baseball's most electric staffs.

Quote: Originally Posted by Rotation

1. James Shields 2. Jon Lester 3. Yordano Ventura 4. Andrew Cashner 5. Taijuan Walker

Everyone has the potential to touch the mid to high 90s with a wicked secondary pitch.

Taijuan's career route has also been very reminiscent of Smoltz's. Smoltz's career stalled with Detroit and he was traded to the Braves. Taijuan was in AAA just prior to today and his career with Seattle was stalled. The skill sets are similar at this stage in the game maybe with Taijuan a little more confident in his ability.

Oh yeah, and with every Batman you get, there's gotta be a Robin... so we got Victor Sanchez, a 19 year old arm who's struggling in AAA with the walks... big time. 35 walks compared to 34 strikeouts. At 19, we don't have to rush him and it takes some of the pressure off of us to get an impact arm in our AAA rotation that we'll have there for the foreseeable future.

[royals19]

So after the Billy Butler trade, we get to wrap up our series with Oakland. To keep it short and sweet, love the ball club, hate the stadium... I'm sorry but it's just not a place I'd like to spend 81 days of my life in... no sir.

For whatever reason, Oakland decided they were gonna Johnny whole staff it today and started Jerry Blevins...



With Jon Lester on the bump today... it was virtual checkmate. Come to think of it, I can't think of any game where Lester hasn't gone out to the mound and we feel overmatched. Sure, a 6 year 30 million dollar contract wasn't our best idea... but hey, we've got no regrets this far. We're short on lefthanded pitching in our system. Most of it is stashed either in the bullpen or the lower minors with the exception of John Lamb and Chris Dwyer neither of which have Lester's potential.

Any way, Jon Lester came outta the gates firing and was racking up the strikeouts and getting quick outs. All of our pitchers work by the "On or out in 3" philosophy and it's paid dividends thus far. Last season, I figured we were trying to hard to set hitters up and this time around we're going right after them and everybody is dealing.



Don't get me wrong, just because Oakland's pitching sucks doesn't mean they're hitters aren't any good. They're a real good on base team and Lester was able to keep them off the base paths for the most part by just attacking hitters.

At this point, the James Shields-Jon Lester 1-2 punch might be the best in all of baseball... I know it's a stretch but not many teams can hit you with a tough righty and then come right back with a tough lefty.

But here's the real kicker from today's game:



The Royals WENT OFF tonight... it wasn't even close. I was secretly hoping we'd get a blow out tonight because we needed to show baseball that we could live without Billy Butler and this proved it. I think that with Domonic Brown coming back, the emergence of David Lough combined with what we're getting from guys off the bench. We might be able to make a serious run at the playoffs this season.

We're 8 or 9 games behind Detroit in the division and 5 out of the wild card. Our next 3 series are as follows:

Quote:

Detroit @ KC-4 Games KC @ Texas-3 Games KC @ Detroit-3 Games

It's hard to whittle a 162 game season down to a win or lose it all situation but if there ever was one, this is it...

[AC]

Great to see you make that Butler trade, and that's an epic Walker graphic. Great series of posts all around.

[royals19]

Quote: Originally Posted by ACMilan99

Great to see you make that Butler trade, and that's an epic Walker graphic. Great series of posts all around.

Thanks dude, I don't really remember how I made that first one. I think that it was more of an accident than anything. I was trying to throw a bunch of effects together to get some special together for the trade. Also appreciated the help dude, thanks.

It's been too long... too long my friends. I can't just leave you guys on the edge of your seat right before we head into the "Ride or Die" stage of the season... My most sincerest apologies. ..

I'll be honest, that graphic above looks like "Pirates of the Caribbean-End of the World" with that Green haze hanging over the K. It's menacing... and rightfully so, our entire season rides on these next 3 series.

We've got Detroit in town for 4 games and we need to annihilate them. They come in with a 9.5 game lead over us in the division but we play 7 games against them in the next two weeks so gaining ground in the division isn't too terribly unrealistic.



Detroit has arguably the best pitching staff in the American League... I'm not going to sit here and BS you about how James Shields, Jon Lester and a bunch of rag tag rookies and vets is better than a premium rotation of Verlander, Scherzer, Fister, Scott Baker and Rick Porcello.

We can hold our own, we're steady... heck you could call our rotation " 'Ol Reliable" because they usually get the job done.

So despite Detroit having the rock star rotation, luck would be on our side tonight as Wade Davis makes his return to the rotation after a bullpen stint.

Oh yeah, and he had help from another key cog making his big return...



Domonic F'n Brown The Total Package!!! He's back! Tonight, he emerged from the cornfields of Omaha, Nebraska to stick it to Detroit with 2 homeruns... One hit INTO the Rival's sport's bar in right field and another into the fountains there in right field. We've got Domonic Brown DHing for us for the forseeable future with David Lough manning down a solid right field.

Now that we have Bo Jackson... err Domonic Brown back in the lineup, things are looking up. We have all of our key guys back and this is the team that we'll win or lose with.



Boom, Wade Davis gives us 7 strong, Tim Collins throws a scoreless 8th and 9th and before you know it, we're celebrating with a tall glass of ice tea.

[royals19]

Haha... It doesn't get much better than this ladies and gents. Playing arguably your most bitter rival in the postseason stretch. Nothing beats it. The Twins have all the trouble makers and the only dude missing is A-Rod... hey, there's an idea.

But before I dive off the deep end and start with the wacky "send A-Rod to Minnesota to fuel the rivalry" type trades... we'd better get to the game.

Prior to the game we lost Bonifacio until the end of the year so we recalled Trevor Story to get some ABs and more big league experience. He's one of our most advanced top prospects so it'll do him good to get more ABs up here. We gave Esky the night off and started Story in his place... I mean, why not? He needs to get a little taste of the rivalry!



And that he did... See earlier in the game, Moose hit a shot off Pelfry that went into the upperdeck just below that Twin's sign out there. It might've been the bat flip... it might have been how he admired it. I don't know; but what I do know is that Pelfry didn't like it and tried to take it out on Story.

The poor kid was visbly stirred but he got back in there and drew a walk... he'll probably get nightmares... but that might not be a bad thing.



We OBLITERATED the Twins... it wasn't even close, Rookie Chris Dwyer threw one of his best games yet and Jed Lowrie hit 2 homeruns in route to our blow out win over Minnesota.

You'll notice the Lowrie bat flip but for the record Minnesota didn't retaliate because it's hard to have that leverage when you're getting the crap kicked out of you...

[royals19]

Sorry about that, There was a Minnesota series in there that I forgot to mention. I didn't play to every single game in the series against Detroit and Texas... that just wouldn't be fair . Instead, I left it up to the CPU. I held my breath as we simmed through the tough part of the schedule.


Detroit-Swept
Minnesota- 2/3
Texas-Swept
Detroit-Swept

You can't be serious... We swept Detroit with thoughts of first place on our minds. We didn't do bad against Minny but at Texas, we earned our stripes. We swept Texas and left with a tie for the final Wild Card spot. When we come around to play Detroit we're were ready to roll and swept them.

We entered a home series against Minnesota, tied with Detroit for first place...

Around the stadium, our boys worked with a sense of urgency. George Brett was throwing a little harder in the cage, James Shields was popping the glove more in his pre-game pen, Alex Gordon was swinging a little harder... there was a certain air about this team as they suited up for their finest hour.



James Shields, the leading AL Cy Young candidate toed the rubber for us and was locked in from the first pitch on. The changeup had a little more bite to it, the fast ball a little more zip. You could just feel that the Royals were playing for keeps this game. The Twins just couldn't touch Shields... he showed why he should be the Cy Young and that's huge for a team like us going against the Goliath Detroit Tigers.

We wanted Shields to go the whole 9 today because of our exhausted pen but it was all hands on deck for this game, no matter how sore the arm was.



I know Shieldsy is leading the league in Cy Young voting but... Alex Gordon... he might actually hit 25+ homeruns this season. He's just a run producing machine, a gold glove fielder and the new face of the Royals franchise. In all honesty, I'd love to make him a career Royal. He could be the greatest player that we've ever developed since George Brett and that's saying something. Sure there's guys like Salvy, Moose and Hos out there but their time will come.

Right now, it's Gordo's time.



... So while the Royals were led by Shields, Gordon and David Lough, Detroit was crumbling in Cleveland under the pressure. While our guys shook hands out on the field, they had no idea that on the scoreboard behind them, the Indians were putting the finishing touches on an upset for the ages against Detroit.

For the first time in 20+ years, the Kansas City Royals are in first place in August...