Quotes from MLB Winter Meetings, Day 1

David Manning-USA TODAY Sports

Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost was asked on the dynamics of the Royals batting order after the acquisition of Norichika Aoki:

"Again, you know, we’ll go through it in Spring Training, we always felt all along that Alex was our best option at lead‑off because he was an on‑base guy. But we also felt that Alex was a middle of the bat ‑‑ middle of the order type of batter, a run producer. We’ll look at Hosmer after coming off a great year. Billy Butler being Billy. Salvador Perez. We’ve got to look and see how the lineup stacks up in terms of speed at the top with Aoki. Maybe Bonifacio hitting second and Gordy is going to be in the 4, 5, 6 spot, somewhere in there. Because Hos is pretty much going to nail down the 3 spot, as we sit today."

Yost also noted that he feels the Royals have enough depth in which to construct a starting rotation.

On the offensive front, if the Royals had landed Carlos Beltran, they would have constructed themselves a really good lineup. It’s not bad now and I can see this team putting up a few runs during the 2014 season.

But what might have been…