Pre-Pre-Season Predictions

The Royals pitchers & catchers are scheduled to officially report in Surprise, AZ on Monday. So, today I’ll make my Pre-Pre-Season Predictions for the 2012 season. As Spring Training goes along, we can make more decisive choices of which players we predict to have the better years this season. This just starts the juices flowing a little while we (not so) patiently await the coming baseball season.

Of course, as I have for every season in the past decade (or more), I predict that the Royals will win 90 games, and win the AL Central Division. Since anything can happen once you get into the playoffs, I further predict a WS Title in 7 games. Hey! It could happen!!!

With that out of the way, these are my Individual Performance Awards. This isn’t rocket science… heck, I didn’t even kidnap some geek with a calculator from his mother’s basement.

Player Of The Year - This actually came down to the probable starting position players for opening day, as I put them in likely order of who may win POY:
Probable Picks:
Eric Hosmer
Alex Gordon
Mike Moustakas
Jeff Francoeur
Dark Horses:
Lorenzo Cain
Salvador Perez
Alcides Escobar

Pitcher Of The Year – This is a little more difficult as the probable list of pitchers for the Royals is much more fluid. As the year goes on, there will a lot of movement on & off the starting rotation, & indeed, the overall pitching staff.
Probably Picks:
Jonathan Sanchez
Felipe Paulino
Joakim Soria
Jonathan Broxton
Greg Holland
Bruce Chen
Dark Horses:
Noel Arguelles
Luis Mendoza
Mike Montgomery
Jake Odorizzi
OK, I wasn’t even going to put Chen on the list, but let’s be honest; he’s won it 2 years running so he deserves a little credit. However if Chen DOES with the Royals pitcher of the Year, then we’ll probably have a hard to reaching .500 (let alone my annual prediction of 90 wins).

Actually, the only reason I put this list together is to say that there are 3 pitchers that I think will be guys that I have a gut feeling they will have a big impact (in a positive way) on our pitching this year. These guys are Paulino, Arguelles & Mendoza.

Paulino had some very good stretches last year and really impressed me. Arguelles has top drawer stuff, when he’s healthy. Mendoza had such an awesome AAA season last year and brought that to KC for a couple games in September.

PLAY BALL!