Thanks to everyone who volunteered to do the legwork on our little annual Over-Under Challenge here at Ball Star.

Our “winner” is a man named Ed, who wowed me with a plan and enthusiasm and, of course, the willingness to do all this for a $25 dinner gift certificate.

Anyway, let’s get to it. The ground rules shouldn’t be much different than past years:

• Picks should be done in the order presented here, e-mailed to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Please number them, 1 through 15, and put “OVER-UNDER” in the subject line.

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Some of you may know that my bosses had a moment of weakness and decided to make me the Star’s new sports columnist.

My first attempt to fool them into thinking they made a good decision comes in Sunday’s paper, then hopefully four times or so a week after that.

But for the purposes of this post, I’m just letting you know that changes are coming to Ball Star.

Some details still need to be worked out, but we’re hoping to continue Ball Star with other writer(s) and I’ll have a new bloggy home on these here interwebs.

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The Royals will, most likely, lose a lot of games this year. Ninety seems like a good guess, which would be an improvement from last year’s disaster (97) but still a ways from being truly competitive.

There continues to be respect for the Royals’ efforts and direction around baseball, however -- even if some of the shine has dimmed.

The last few days, while reporting stories for spring training, I’ve heard from scouts or executives from four other clubs who say their perception is the Royals are doing most of the things necessary to become competitive.

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