Jimmy Gobbles no more.. (at least not for the Royals)

Well the news came out yesterday that Jimmy Gobble was released.  I'm not quite sure how to take this news to tell you the truth.  It's worth mentioning that Jimmy was the most tenured Royals player.  It's also worth mentioning that he really only had one good season in the majors, which was 2007 when he had a 3.02 ERA in 74 games.  

Jimmy came up as a good prospect, and many thought he and Jeremy Affeldt would be the two left handed starters to anchor our rotation for years.  It didn't work out that way as Affeldt bounced around the bullpen after having a fingernail removed and Gobble has a 5.36 ERA and a 115-77 K to BB ratio as a starter.  As Gobble was converted from more important roles to less important roles he found a small niche of success as a LOOGY, but due to misuse and ineffectiveness he posted 8.81 ERA last season in 31.2 innings.

Does Jimmy still have the chance to be effective in the majors?  Probably.  But I for one was surprised looking back at his numbers just how bad he was.  I guess in 05 and 06 I remember him as being good just because of the other pitchers around him, which were absolutely awful.  Once the pitching around him improved and Jimmy reached arbitration years it became obvious that this was the best move for the Royals.  I'm sure that Jimmy will stick on another roster, probably in a minor league contract at least for this year. 

The most important thing now is to find out who will claim Jimmy's spot on the 40 man roster.  As of tonight, to my knowledge, the Royals haven't added anyone to their 40 man to take over his spot.  We'll see where the Royals go from here though, in order to truly judge the situation.

Thanks for reading.