Baseball America had a nice blurb about Yordano Ventura of the Arizona Royals hitting 98-99 mph with his fastball. Pretty impressive for a 5'11 150 lbs 19 year old to show that type of stuff already. Along with him Crawford Simmons was named Appalachian Pitcher of the Week for August 9th by milb.com. Simmons a 14th round pick last season is considered to be a good overall athlete as he could've had a scholarship in golf or baseball to Georgia Tech but passed on both to sign with the Royals for $450,000. Simmons according to BA sports the usual Royal minor league repertoire fastball,curve and change up averaging 86-90 while touching 91 with his fastball prior to signing. Simmons combined with a teammates Leonel Santiago and Willian Avinazar are leading the Burlington Royals to above normal season for the usual Burlington(NC) bottom feeders. Those four plus 19 year old Robinson Yambati in Arizona combine to give the Royals a possible second wave to the solid prospects they already have at the top levels of the system.
KC should be thinking of shutting John Lamb down for the season not because of his recent struggles but because he has pitched 58 more innings already over what he pitched last season. Even if you don't support the Verducci Effect or other systems Lamb is only 20 and recent struggles could be hints of injury or lead to possible injury down the road with too great a increase in workload.
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I love hearing national praise for young Royals pitching... Honestly, I would much rather hear praise for pitching than hitting... But then again, how many times have we heard this in KC?
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Quite a few times but not much with foreign signees so maybe the scouts are doing a better job in that market.
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