Nick Yahl, Fri, 12 Jun 2015 14:41:00 GMT
joe strauss of the st. louis post-dispatch joined the ryan kelley morning after friday to discuss the royals and their fans’ all-star game voting, lance lynn’s injury, and potential roster moves. 
We wrote out some of the most notable excerpts from the interview. You can find the full interview by following click link below.
Joe Strauss Talks All-Star Game on The Morning After
When I read your column this morning, I got kind of sense that you were defending the best fans in baseball (Cardinals) vs. the new fans in baseball (Royals).
“In it I compare the Royals to new money and the Cardinals to old money. One nose has been there before and the other is still tasting the new step up in lifestyle and kind of learning how to handle it. My take is trying to jam your whole roster into the starting lineup of the All-Star game is kind of a mockery of the process in my opinion. As much as we like to poke fun at the St. Louis fans for their admiration of the club you don’t see fans of teams with long-term success torqueing the process. Even if you haven’t, act like you’ve been there before.”
Do you think that the MLB messes with the votes towards the end because usually you always get the guys in there starting that probably should?
“I in a perverse way want this to hold up to almost dare the MLB to do something about it. I have no problem with three or four Royals starting a game. They have the best record in the league, they’re defending league champions, and they’re an exciting team to watch. But it kind of makes a caricature of the process and I’m interested to see how the rest of the nation feels about if the Royals fans get what they want. If these are the most popular players, is the rest of the industry going to be upset about watching a mid market team from the Midwest basically hijack the All-Star game for a couple of innings.”
I think it’s kind of ridiculous that fans are allowed to vote 35 times online, where did they come up with that number?
“Suppose you have a couple of e-mail accounts and your other family members have multiple accounts, you can go online and vote six times 35 for this kind of stuff. It’s click bait for websites and they love it because it makes them money. You can’t say it’s harmless fun for the fans and that it doesn’t count and then use the game to decide where game seven of the World Series is played. It’s a contradiction and MLB has no explanation that will make that contradiction go away.”
What type of roster move, if any, do you think could happen before the game today?
“I do expect them to add a hitter, but I wonder who it will be. Matheny has played down Piscotty being added to the 40-man and Pham has been hitting well lately so he would make some sense. Though from a realistic standpoint you wonder if the club is a little bit leery of reinstituting him on the active roster since the last time he left from Spring training and lingered on the DL for a long time. That DL cost the club about $150,000 or more on a minor league player.”
“We’ll see what they do because they have to supplement this bench. Pham is an athlete and appears ready to go after hitting two home runs the other day. I’m not advocating an external move, but something has to be done. It’s a tough call, but they have to do something to augment their offense.”
I was told the injury to Lance Lynn’s arm was nothing structural and it doesn’t appear to be a big deal other than him getting pushed back a few days for his start possibility. Are you hearing anything different than that?
“No, I haven’t. Just the way this thing is being handled it seems like it’s more of a nuisance thing than a shut down thing. Lynn is a huge element here on a team that has a high ceiling, but not a whole lot of deep experience. Lynn is a stabilizer every fifth day with 105 or 110-pitch performance. If you take him out that’s a huge void. I haven’t heard anything like a DL move being imminent.”