Royalscentricity

The Similarities Between Poker and Baseball

2012-01-10T22:52:00.001-06:00

In recent years, there has been a new game slowly croppingup as a regular pastime of not only Americans, but of people all over theworld. It is the game of poker. In many ways, poker very much resembles thegame of baseball. Today we will look atsome of those similarities.

First, anyone that follows baseball knows that there is animmense amount of strategy that is required in playing baseball. Many times, you have to think on the fly andtake into account not only the ability of your players, but also those of theother team. Poker is much the sameway. Every time a poker player sits downto the table, they have to not only play according to their strengths andweaknesses, but also to the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents.

Also, players must be able to think on the fly in a pokergame. Every hand can present a uniquesituations and they must be constantly evaluating their opponents. Think about Baseball for a moment. A good manager can spot when their player ora player on an opposing team is struggling or not playing their best game. Adversely, they can spot when a player isstreaking. Poker players have to be ableto make these same types of decisions on a daily basis, and sometimes multipletimes during a game depending on how many players trade out from the table.

Next, poker and baseball both have long periods ofinactivity followed by fierce action. For example, if you read sites like Pokerlistings.comand others during a final table, youwill see hand after hand where there is a simple raise and fold. This goes on for hours sometimes. Then, all of a sudden a big pot can brewbetween two players and the fans really get into it. The same happens when a player goes all-infor his tournament life and gets called. The fans erupt into cheers and get on their feet to find out what thehands are and where their favorite players stand.

The above are just a few ways that poker and baseball aresimilar. It should come as no surprisethat some former Major League players like Orel Hersheiser and Jose Cansecohave taken up the game on a serious level, from taking stage on the World Series to the World Series of Poker. Poker will likely never become the nationalpastime like baseball has, but it is a game that is enjoyed by Millions andwill continue to grow in popularity.

Yuniesky Betancourt: Futility Infielder

2011-12-20T20:25:00.001-06:00

Retro got the signing thread up at Royals Review, and Will will be writing something this evening, but I had to get this off my fucking chest.

Today Dayton Moore signed Yuniesky Betancourt to a one-year Major League deal worth $2.0MM with another $500K in additional playing time incentives possible. Betancourt is supposed to be the veteran utility infielder that the Royals have quite publicly stated they've needed. The one who "can play shortstop."

Great.

Color me ecstatic.

If there was anything in the Royals' history with Yuniesky Betancourt that suggested that they were in any way, shape, or form able to accurately evaluate who Betancourt is as a player, perhaps one could convince me that he won't see playing time more than once or *gasp* God forbid twice a week. In a vacuum, this wouldn't be the worst thing possible.

Unfortunately there has been nothing in their nauseating history with one another that contradicts this legitimate concern.

No one who is reading this needs me to explain who Betancourt is as a player. To call him a poor defensive shortstop would be kind. To qualify him as anything other than a poor offensive shortstop would only be short-selling his modest power which comes at the expense of his exceptionally poor judgment of the strike zone.

Over the past three seasons, Betancourt has compiled -0.7 fWAR. One could accuse me of cherry-picking those three years because the first of the three (2009) saw him put up -2.1 fWAR thus negating the worth of his two ensuing seasons of 0.9 and 0.5 fWAR. One would also be discounting the fact that he put up a season with -2.1 fWAR.

This is a player who hasn't had a season in which he has been at least One Win Above Replacement value since 2007 despite the fact that he played in 150+ games in all but his truly abysmal 2009 campaign. He will now be paid $2MM to back up three positions. That $2MM would be worth roughly half a win on the free agent market, a value that Yuniesky Betancourt would struggle to give the team if he were playing full time. He cannot ably play the key position that the team wants him to be able to play. His career UZR/150 is -8.1.

Furthermore, the bigger risk is that his playing time comes at the expense of Alcides Escobar, Johnny Giavotella, and Mike Moustakas. Naysayers will point to the fact that Ned Yost doesn't remember he has a bench--Mitch Maier can corroborate that statement--but the far-from-zero-percent chance remains Betancourt could see significant playing time at the expense of those players.

But really, the most damning aspect of this signing is that Dayton Moore and Company have deemed Yuniesky Betancourt a player that belongs on this team. They saw him play for nearly a season-and-a-half and, even after getting rid of him, decided that he would be a viable option to back up the left three positions on the infield. There is nothing in his last four seasons that suggests this. He has never played an inning at third base in the Majors. He hasn't played an inning at second base since 2005. His bat plays even worse at these other positions. His average arm plays worse at third. His poor work ethic soured Seattle on him, so much so that they were on the verge of non-tendering him when Dayton Moore decided that he had to have The Yunicorn. His mental lapses on the field are well-documented (just click on his name at the bottom of this post). His complete lack of a professional approach at the plate is mind-numbing. There is virtually nothing to like about the package that is Yuniesky Betancourt.

Well, except for plus hands. And plus hands.

Godfuckingdammit.

To put this all much more succinctly, as I tweeted earlier this evening:

The Yuni signing makes me wish that I'd been aborted.

Royalscentricity: A Paul Rudd Blog

2011-08-26T23:52:00.002-05:00

So a fella who goes by the handle MrNegative1 over at Royals Review (where I also do some Royals writing, as nearly every one of you should be aware) posted this clip from MLB.com. The man whose visage has adorned this site from its beginnings is seen talking about being a Royals fan.

As for other content, I do have a couple of things conceptualized. Some Equating Your Royals to a Character in The Wire pieces have been on the back-burner, and I've got another piece that I've been meaning to write but will require quite a bit of research that extends well past baseball. I will get to these when time allows for it. Until then, keep an eye out. Become a fan on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. You'll find out as soon as they're up.

Paul Rudd and Rob Riggle discuss what they should do with their money

2011-08-05T01:37:00.000-05:00

As Paul Rudd is and has been in the header photo here since Royalscentricity's inception*, it's only fitting that I (as were others, apparently) was approached about this video with Paul Rudd and Rob Riggle debating whether Rob should buy a jet pack or Royals season tickets.

*What a crap movie...

Now unless you are on a quest to re-enact each and every episode of Arrested Development in their entirety and have already procured the Godzilla costume, it seems reasonable that season tickets may not be the worst option. I mean we're not talking about a hoverboard now, are we?

Here's the video:

If I lived in KC (and were wealthy), I'd totally buy tickets just to see Jesus H. Christ manning first night-in and night-out.

Royals Ticket Giveaway

2011-07-27T00:51:00.000-05:00

Attention Royals dudes and dudettes: Just because I can't go to Royals games, doesn't mean you can't.

For free.

The following comes courtesy of Jay Buerck at StorageMart:

Planning on going to an upcoming Kansas City Royals Game? Why not go for free with tickets from StorageMart of Kansas City? StorageMart is giving away tickets throughout the remaing season to 4 games. The great thing about this giveaway is how simple it is to win tickets to games in August, and September.

Visit the StorageMart Kansas City Facebook page, Click Like, and pick the winner of the game between the Tigers, Red Sox, Indians, or White Sox. It couldn't be easier to win!
The dates and opponents remaining for the tickets StorageMart are as follows:

August 7, 2011 vs. Detroit TigersAugust 21, 2011 vs. Boston Red SoxSeptember 4, 2011 vs. Cleveland IndiansSeptember 18, 2011 vs. Chicago White Sox

As the dates approach be sure to check out StorageMart of Kansas City's Facebook Page for your chance to win. While the season may be lost, it is still a great time to check out the future of the Kansas City Royals. The future certainly looks bright with Moustakas and Hosmer manning the corners!

Clearly, free tickets to Royals games are awesome. Why are you still here? Go there. Now.

Equating Your Royals To A Character In The Wire: The Zack Greinke Edition

2011-07-13T11:00:00.003-05:00

For those unfamiliar with this series, this is the fourth installment. The previous four entries in the series can be found at the links or you can follow the series tag at the bottom of the entry: Joakim Soria, Dayton Moore, and Chris Hayes. I am also going to do something I have refrained from doing, and that is post this both here and at Royals Review, as the series did start there, and there is a very small segment of the populace that would not happen across that were it only posted here.

If ever there were a piece in this series that screamed out for the comparison to be drawn, it would be the one between Donald Zackary 'Zack' Greinke and Roland 'Prez' Pryzbylewski.

For the uninitiated, there are only five seasons. 60 hours. Call into work (you've got to have the death of a grandparent that you haven't used to get out of work at your current job, right?), tell them that you will be in next week, and get to work. Then, come back here.

Back? Good.

Our introduction to Roland Pryzbylewski is seeing him accidentally discharge his firearm into a wall in the basement digs that the Barksdale Detail is set up in. He has been dumped on Lieutenant Daniels by Lt. Cantrell from the casualty division, who is casting off the dead weight that is Detective Pryzbylewski as fast as he possibly can. In fact, he is so happy to be rid of Prez that he is willing to part with Det. Leander Sydnor to make it all right by Daniels. Shortly after being place in Daniels' charge, Prez pistol-whips a 14-year-old wiseacre, blinding him in an eye.

If looking for parallels in the form of Zack Greinke's career, one need look no further than his 2005 campaign and the ensuing withdrawal from all things baseball. After showing a little promise in his rookie campaign, Zack Greinke spends his 2005 struggling mightily. Granted, these struggles seem a lot more pronounced if one were to ignore the fact that much of his trouble is the product of a .067 swing in BABIP in the wrong direction and a drop in LOB% of 15.2 points from the prior season. The fact remains that Greinke finishes the 2005 season with an ERA of 5.80 and 17 losses, two things which, when combined with playing on a truly abysmal 106-loss team, disturb him so deeply that he walks away from the game. Perhaps his struggles stem from undesirable environs or perhaps a screw is less than tight, but there is little cause for hope and plenty of reason to suspect that he is beyond repair.

Thanks in large part to the fact that he's married to Commander Valchek's daughter, Prez is effectively protected from any substantive harm that should come to him. Without the aid of Valchek's political omnipresence, Prez is off the force. Instead, he gets relegated to administrative duty, sitting on the sidelines while the rest of the Barksdale Detail rolls in on their first ultimately pointless drug raid.

Typically, electing to walk away from the game would spell the end of a career, but much like Pryzbylewski, Greinke has someone watching over him, making sure he has a place with the team: Allard Baird. Baird assures that his young, troubled player has a home with the club. While Greinke joins the Double-A Wichita team for its 2006 playoff run, his former teammates are closing out yet another 100-loss season.

As Prez sits on the sidelines doing administrative work, his talents begin to shine through. A man who had been an incompetent detective suddenly finds himself in an environment in which he could thrive. Under the tutellage of Det. Lester Freamon, he sees how to do proper police work. Throughout the rest of the investigation, Prez comes into his own, shining given the new opportunity in a fresh setting with a set of duties much more suited to his skill set. It is actually Prez's work that gives the Detail their first break in the Barksdale case, as he cracks the pager codes and deciphers the street-level short-hand.

Greinke returns to Kansas City in 2007 and shortly finds himself thrust into the role of a reliever. It was as a reliever that he was able to become comfortable again at the Major League level. Under the tutellage of Bob McClure, his oft-credited mentor, Greinke learns how to actually pitch, not just throw. Thrust back into the rotation at the season's end, there is cause for hope. As 2008 unfurls his first full season as a starter since 2005), Greinke finally seems poised to live up to his vast potential.

When the second season picks up, Pryzbylewski is adrift without the work on the Barksdale detail. He lets his father-in-law Valchek know that it was the work on the Barksdale Detail that seemed to give his job meaning, and Valchek, having his own ax to grind, commissions his own detail to torpedo a rival for personal reasons. Prez's work with the unit proves invaluable as he takes on more responsibility, but he and Valchek come to blows as the investigation evolves into a much more complicated case in which Valchek's endgame ceases to be the primary thrust of the case. Prez decks Valchek after being berated and shoved in front of the unit and is only saved from insubordination and assault charges by Daniels.

Greinke's 2009 is a season of legend. One that does not need to be expounded upon here. Just as Greinke has become the pitcher everyone thought he could and all seems well through the middle of the 2010 season, he grows frustrated with the state of the franchise and spouts off about how the rebuild would not be in time to help him. His reaction to an untenable situation is understandable but is not necessarily in his best interests.

In the third season, all seems to be going well with Pryzbylewski until he mistakenly shoots a plain-clothes African-American officer, setting off a delayed race relations nightmare for the department. Unable to come to terms with the accidental shooting, Pryzbylewski quits the force despite the support of his African-American brethren.

Greinke remained quiet for a while but in December shot his mouth off for the last time, undermining the efforts of the team to maximize the return they got for him. He got traded shortly thereafter, jettisoned from Kansas City.

When season four picks up, Prez has begun teaching at an inner city school. Things are rocky at first, but Mr. Prezbo takes to the job after a rough patch. It is soon evident that this is his calling, as he tries to take Dukie Weems under his wing. He has a way with the kids that is surprisingly effective. Things can be rough, of course, but it seems like things might just work out for Roland Pryzbylewski.

In a new setting and a different league, Greinke gets off on the wrong foot, injuring himself playing basketball in the offseason. He slowly begins to settle in as a Brewer. His performance seems to have been as well as he can do, but the ~~system~~ defense behind him sets him up for an uphill struggle. His 6.19 K/BB is second best amongst starting pitchers in baseball. His 11.99 K/9, the best. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked against him, and his ERA sits at 5.45, 3.30 higher than his xFIP. He is better suited toward playing in the National League on a team with a chance to contend, but his support system seems like it might try to undercut him.

Clearly the comparisons between Roland Pryzbylewski and Zack Greinke are many, but they are not limited to the narrative arc that each person's life happens to take. Both men are socially awkward and what could aptly be described as weird dudes. Prez is the type of guy who sat listening to "Brown Sugar" over and over to decipher the opening lyric Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields / Sold in a market down in New Orleans. Zack would rather eat Chipotle than legendary KC barbecue and hated lunch time more than anything in school. Neither seem particularly comfortable in their own skin, at least as young men. This makes each man stick out as against type in their respective fields. Prez's struggles could be said to have stemmed from his overcompensation for not being cut from the same cloth as most police. With what we know (or at least think we know) of Zack Greinke, he does not have the personality of your typical professional athlete.

Much like Pryzbylewski, we can see Zack Greinke in what might be a better setting for him. But as he is out there, doing that for which he might be best suited, he does it for someone else. The longer he stays at it, the more distant the memories of what he has done become. He may pop up from time to time, but each time we see him there is less and less that is recognizable to us.

Johnny Giavotella's Glove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Grew to Accept that He Cannot Play Second Base

2011-06-21T00:00:00.004-05:00

Hello, friends. Obviously, my duties at Royals Review (along with life in general) have slowed the already turgid pace of content coming out here to a total standstill. My apologies for that.

Having had the chance to see the Omaha ~~Storm Chasers~~ Royals for a fourth time this season, there is one issue that lingers when projecting the 'prospects' to the Major League roster. How the hell is Johnny Giavotella's glove going to play anywhere? In the four games I've seen, he spent three nights brutalizing his pitchers with his atrocious defense at second, and a fourth night blowing two grounders in an atypical game at third.

While one could spend days wondering what Giavotella was doing playing third base in the first place, there has been nothing in his defensive performance in an admittedly small sample size of games seen that indicates that he has even a serviceable glove to this writer. He doesn't seem to have decent range. Routine grounders make their way to the outfield all too often. Grounders get booted with disturbing frequency.

It is clear that the Royals have a gaping hole at second in Kansas City. Mike Aviles seems deadset on giving Moore & Co. cause to send him down. Chris Getz is anything but the future of the franchise at second. The one aspect of Giavotella's game that gives one hope is his bat, which is expectantly light on power, but with his suspect defense, can he stick in the bigs?

Color me doubtful to say the least.

Eric Hosmer Called Up, Jaws Picked Up Off The Ground In Royals Nation

2011-05-06T00:21:00.000-05:00

While I'm a few hours behind on the news here, it appears as though the Royals have elected to call up wunderkind Eric Hosmer. The reaction amongst Royals fans (at least as I waded through the first 200 of what had been 1200 comments at Royals Review) has been mostly shock. Arguments are being made. Children are being flogged. Preparations are being made for the coming end of days as Hosmer is clearly the first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

I am definitely conflicted about this move.

The pragmatist in me wants the Scott Boras client named Eric Hosmer to sit in Omaha and tear up the Pacific Coast League for the rest of the year and the first half of next April.

The kid in me* wants to see Hosmer hitting in the heart of the Royals lineup everyday.

*Begrudgingly, I must admit there's one in there somewhere.

There's also a part of me that still wants to see Kila Ka'aihue get a real chance to produce. Apparently, he's going to get Hubered/Shealied/Pickeringed, which is sad and shortsighted. Even if he didn't have a future with the Royals, he could have proven his worth and netted something in a trade later in the season.

As for Hosmer, he destroyed Double-A last year. He destroyed Triple-A this year. For good measure, he tore up Spring Training. Granted his exposure to advanced pitching has been limited to his Spring Training plate appearances this year, half a season in Double-A, and a month Triple-A. If he struggles like Alex Gordon has for the greater part of his career, the fans the Royals amazingly have left will be beside themselves with grief as Eric Hosmer was The One.

That might not happen, though. He could crush Major League pitching from the get-go.

The real issue, of course, is that most even-keeled Royals fans do not expect their current above-.500 record to hold up. The rotation is a joke and, as it continues to wear the extremely young bullpen increasingly thinner throughout the season, will likely prove to be the 2011 Royals' undoing.

If 2011 is lost, why rush Eric Hosmer up to The Show?

If the answer is just that Kila has struggled mightily, then there is a real problem.

If the answer is that Mike Moustakas might not be ready as soon as Dayton Moore and Company expected, then perhaps this isn't as egregious a move as we assume it to be right now. Moustakas has certainly struggled thus far in 2011. An adjustment to his time table could conceivably have happened. While that would be personally surprising to me, this move was, too.

It is clear that the thoughts in Dayton Moore's head are enigmatic to me. Making sense of them or predicting what will come next is an exercise in futility.

For better or worse, tomorrow marks the beginning of the Eric Hosmer Era in Kansas City. I'll be watching nervously from afar.

Catching Up

2011-04-14T08:00:00.015-05:00

I'm still not entirely sure what the fate/future of this blog is going to be, but I had the chance to take in Monday - Wednesday's Omaha games in Round Rock. I wrote up recaps for each here:

Royals Review - High-A Spot Starter Dominates Omaha, AMBER Alert Out for O-Royals' Offense

Royals Review - Omaha Offense Bores Children, This Writer To Tears For 12 Long Innings

Royals Review - Omaha Sto--er, Royals Fall As Teaford Loses It In The 5th

I also had my first fantasy column of the new season go up over at Sports Grumblings here.

I really would love to have something else for you guys, but the past three days have consisted of get up, go to work, drive to Round Rock, watch game, drive home, write about game, go to bed, repeat. Tomorrow, I just get to work twice. Should be awesome.

Equating Your Royals To A Character In The Wire: The Chris Hayes Edition

2011-04-06T10:45:00.000-05:00

I could wax ecstatic about the Royals' fast start, but let's be honest you can get that anywhere right now. This series and nonsense of its ilk is what you come here for if you've made your way to these dark recesses of the interwebs.

To get some housekeeping out of the way, I'll be joining the ranks at Royals Review, with my duties consisting of moderating the game threads and taking care of the recaps on Mondays (barring some of the Monday day games). I'm honestly not sure what my role is past that (if there is any) over there, but I certainly intend to keep doing some analysis on the Royals past recaps once a week.

Whether that means I'll be doing that here or there, I won't be hard to find. I've been maintaining two personal blogs and writing a fantasy baseball column at Sports Grumblings for over two years now, so you can rest assured that I'll still be writing somewhere. You can be sure that this particular series will not be ending any time soon.

For once, there are no spoilers abounding. Read without concern. Your life will be enriched. Or more likely will not change at all.

The series opens with the teaser of "The Target" that follows here:

(or if you prefer your videos this way...)

For those who don't bother watching embedded video (or are accessing the site from an iPhone), the Crime Scene Unit has cordoned off a street where a body lies, shot dead. It is the body of Omar Isaiah Betts. While that name may not ring a bell to even the most ardent fan, he was also known as Snot Boogie.

Despite the non-flattering nickname, there is something intrinsically likeable about the kid even though he is gone before we even know him. Through Snot Boogie's nameless friend, we learn that Snot cannot help but repeat the behavior that repeatedly gets him whooped up on. When enough money is on the ground in the neighborhood back-alley craps game, Snot Boogie cannot help but be himself. Knowing full well what the consequences for letting his true self show--his friend states that "[Snot Boogie] couldn't help hisself"--he couldn't stop from grabbing the money and running.

Now one of the primary and most obvious comparisons between Omar Isaiah Betts and Chris Hayes is in their nicknames. As McNulty presupposes, Snot Boogie got his nickname in an anything but flattering way and presumably for reasons outside of his control. Chris Hayes's nickname, while funny, is derived from the fact that he pitched so slowly that he was said to "live in the 70s." Disco took it in stride, just as we assume Snot Boogie did.

Photo Courtesy of the Gracious Minda Haas

The next obvious similarity between the two lies in the fact that their throwing motions are similar. As Snot Boogie was rolling bones in the alley way, he most definitely threw from a lower arm slot, certainly at least as low as a side-arm, if not fully submarine. Chris 'Disco' Hayes, as we all know, was a submariner. While playing their game, they have the same throwing motion. Moreover, as you think about the entire universe portrayed within the run of The Wire, Snot Boogie is really the only bones thrower in the lot. He is as rare amongst the characters in The Wire as Disco and his ilk are in the ranks of professional pitchers.

Where the character of Snot Boogie and the man we all knew as Disco had their most important shared trait was in their inability to change who they were. Snot clearly had a compulsion to take the money and run that he could not control. Disco had an inability to throw hard enough to make the Royals' front office believe in him.

It was this central shortcoming that ultimately led to their respective demises. Snot Boogie wasn't just beaten mere moments before the series of The Wire commences--he is killed. Just as Disco reached the brink of being a Major Leaguer, the Royals cut him. In fact, leading up to Disco being cut, he was placed on the Disabled List multiple times with what many have suspected were phantom injuries. Each of these stints on the DL leading up to being cut essentially serve the same purpose as the beatings Snot Boogie received: A reprimand for the behavior interpreted as negative by those controlling the payday.

It is obvious that each character leaves an imprint with the fans, despite the fact that Snot and Disco were taken before we could see what they could do.

One may reasonably posit the question that if the Royals front office never intended to give Chris Hayes a chance in the Majors why did they string him along for so long?

McNulty's question at the end of the above clip has its place within the discussion of Chris Hayes.

If Snot Boogie always stole the money, why'd you let him play?

If they didn't believe in Disco given his shortcomings, why did they let him pitch?

Snot Boogie's friend sums it up pretty well:

Got to. This America, man.

Disco, I think I speak for all Royals fans when I say that I wish you hadn't been shot in the streets over some bullshit.

Gregor Blanco placed on waivers

2011-03-28T23:09:00.000-05:00

I'm going to be honest here: I never quite liked the cut of his jib.

But enough about him...

Lynx All Around

2011-03-22T07:00:00.005-05:00

I fully anticipate doing a proper post yet this week. My dad has been in town (no, not for SXSW...), and we went out to West Texas (not West, TX, home of Scott Podsednik and more importantly The Czech Stop) for the weekend. This left me more or less internetless. I had to let the computer auto-draft a team for me in the Royals Review Keeper League because I was so far south that AT&T thought I was out of the country and wanted me to sign up for an international data plan.

At any rate, here come some links from the Royals Universe (in bullet-points):

Will McDonald saw fit to write a little ditty about Bruce Chen set to the tune of "The Living Years" by Mike + the Mechanics. Clearly Will holds a belief similar to mine that Mike Rutherford was the best member of Genesis. Your efforts and similar mindset regarding the post-Genesis careers of Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins in relation to that of genius Mike Rutherford--who was so enlightened to have employed both Paul Carrack and the other Paul Young (not the one who struck it big with the Hall & Oates cover of "Everytime You Go Away" in his rag-tag outfit of rock 'n roll demigods--are recognized and appreciated here, young William.
The first Royalman Report podcast is up featuring KC Royalman and Michael Engel, the head writer at Kings of Kauffman. They were lucky enough to have gotten to interview Royals' middle infielder of the future Christian Colon, who seemed like a lot of fun. While I'm a fan of (and subscriber to) the Broken Bat Single podcast, adding another to the mix cannot be a bad thing, can it?
Mike (and thanks for the indirect titular shout-out in the Royals Roundup post) also weighs in on the Greinke trade now that we might have an inkling as to what the Royals have received in return. Ever the go-getter, he also takes a look at the pitching staff as it has begun to take the shape we're likely to see on Opening Day.
Joe Posnanski wrote one of his famous quasi-fan-fic pieces looking back on the Royals' success from the vantage point of someone looking back from the somewhat near-future.

Cheslor chesling.

Over at AL Central In Focus, Corey Ettinger does a scouting report on Nicaraguan teen third base prospect, Cheslor Cuthbert. He also unfurls his Top 15 Prospects in the Royals System. It's a slightly different list, but he gives his reasons.
Clark Fosler sets out to analyze the catching situation. While the short answer would be something to the effect of "Why does it matter, none of them are particularly good?" obviously Jason Kendall's accelerated recovery means there is something to explore--even though most of us wish there wasn't.
Jason Parks tweeted that Jason Adam is the best pitcher he has seen this Spring Training. As I told Professor Parks, that tweet aroused me. Hearing such lewd things is a benefit of following me on Twitter.
LA at Royal Revival is finally on Twitter. He just tweeted about how MLB Network was saying that Aaron Crow is now a reliever.

And that's all I got.

Well, except for a gift for Mr. Ettinger...

Equating Your Royals To A Character In The Wire: The Dayton Moore Edition

2011-03-16T08:00:00.010-05:00

After getting thousands of emails asking about the next installment I knew that I could not put it off any longer. I should warn you that this entry is sure to spoil some things for those of you who have not seen the show. If you plan to, well, what the hell have you been waiting for? Drop whatever you are doing and get to work. You are only doing yourself a disservice.

Now, insofar as Dayton Moore is concerned, there is one place to look when drawing parallels between his place with the Royals and Burns & Simon's vision of Baltimore: Russell "Stringer" Bell.

In Stringer Bell, we have the story of a man who is trying to rise above his station, above the life he was born into. String is attempting to not just change The Game but to reinvent it.

Despite the fact that he scratched his way to the top on the streets slinging drugs and taking territory by force, Stringer Bell has his sights set on a different life. A better life. A life in which the enterprise that he and Avon Barksdale started has been legitimized. Rather than continue on trafficking drugs, Stringer Bell wants to transition into being a legitimate, professional organization with a focus in real estate. In pursuit of this goal, he buys political favor, using the money gotten via the illegal drug trade.

Unfortunately for Stringer Bell, he is too tied into the old ways of doing business. Despite his desire to legitimize his organization, to parlay his success in a tried-and-true money-making enterprise into a real cash cow that he can be proud of out in the open, he gets caught up in business that is below him. He gets into a game he cannot win, trying to take out stick-up artist Omar Little. While attempting to run with the big boys, he gets sucked back into The Game. While he ultimately gives up on his quest to take out Omar and redirects his efforts to legitimizing his organization, he cannot outrun his past. The measures of success he has as Avon--his anchor to The Game--is in the joint are shortlived, as Avon isn't long for jail and has reach from inside.

When the Dominican connect dries up and the Barksdale crew struggles to find another pipeline, Avon rejects the most practical solution that Stringer proposes. The secret but pragmatic deal that Stringer Bell eventually cuts with Proposition Joe is then undermined by Avon, who meddles and tries to run things the old way from inside. Stringer finds himself unable to extricate the organization from the traditional ways of doing business.

Echoes of the Sistene Chapel courtesy of the generous Minda Haas

Stop me when this starts feeling unfamiliar. To say there are parallels between Stringer Bell's story arc and Dayton Moore's tenure as Royals' General Manager thus far would be a grotesque understatement.

Dayton Moore is attempting to redefine/reimagine how business is done in Kansas City. While trying to revitalize baseball in KC and legitimize the Royals, he has tried to change the way the organization is run. He has tried to build the Royals up by building up the farm system. He is trying to provide the Royals with a pipeline of talent conceivably produced entirely from within.

Just like String, while trying to reach a point of legitimacy, Moore is still tethered to an antiquated mode of thinking. He has proven to be a mediocre evaluator of experienced talent at the Major League level, beholden to the evaluation as a scout without looking at the results on the field. Stringer Bell's struggles with Omar are the equivalent of Dayton Moore's signings of Jose Guillen, Kyle Farnsworth, Jason Kendall, John Bale, Willie Bloomquist, Yasuhiko Yabuta, Sidney Ponson, and Horacio Ramirez (the second time) and his acquisition of Mike Jacobs or the injury-prone Coco Crisp and his jettisoning of David DeJesus (three years too late for not enough return), Jorge de la Rosa, Jeff Keppinger, Miguel Olivo, and John Buck. The signings of Jeff Francoeur and Melky Cabrera this offseason seem to further this notion, although the naysayers could conceivably be proven wrong (not likely in my opinion, but a possibility just the same).

Just as in The Wire, the ways in which Dayton Moore is trying to fundamentally alter the modus operandi of the organization seem to have gotten the organization heading in the right direction. This is where the fate of Stringer Bell should serve as a cautionary tale. While String's ideas work in theory, he ends up having everything blow up in his face. Senator Clay Davis takes him to the cleaners to the tune of $250,000, conning him into paying him to expedite permits on a condominium development. Stringer Bell proves to be an easy mark when operating out of his comfort zone. In trying to transition to legitimacy, he falls prey to the people he is striving to become. More importantly, his questionable decisions in the past, nearly all related to the way he played The Game come back to bite him in the ass. His decision to have Wallace offed which begat D'Angelo Barksdale's leaving the fold which eventually corroded his bond with Avon when coupled with his efforts in vain to take out Omar by pitting him against Brother Mouzone all come together to be his undoing.

If Dayton Moore ends up getting canned, it isn't hard to imagine this stemming from two primary factors: First, his plans for legitimizing the organization are ultimately held up as the The Process (read: turning the farm into a pipeline) fails to yield the fruit he anticipates, retarding progress; Second, his ties to his outmoded ways of going about doing his business come back to bite him in the ass.

Does this mean that Dayton Moore will end up sleeping with D'Angelo's old lady while D's in the joint? Will Joakim Soria and the Royals equivalent of Omar (who we'll just have wait and see about) be standing over Dayton Moore's corpse after finishing him off? Time will tell.

The Missing Link: Substandard Mid-Week Filler

2011-03-09T01:00:00.000-06:00

First off, holy shit was Corey Ettinger busy on Monday. Over the course of a few hours, he got Prospect Profiles for Wil Myers, Salvador Perez, and the belle of the ball, Eric Hosmer over at AL Central In Focus. These are always very good. Seriously, you should at least be reading his Royals content, even if you don't give a damn about those other dastardly teams in the Central.

Peter Gammons dropped the following tweet Monday evening:

"The Royals are so deep in talent," says a GM, "that a couple of their top guys can miss and they'll still be in it in 2013."

Nevermind that the source is likely Dayton Moore, this is one more morsel that we can chew on, get empty calories out of, and likely expel violently when the meal that is Royal fandom once again chooses to disagree with our digestive systems. If I am getting my hopes up for contention in two years, letting my excitement build for two whole years, only to have this rebuild fail I will become an even more horrible person than I already am.

Over at C70 At The Bat, Daniel Shoptaw asked some of the Royals bloggers (Brian McGannon of Royals Kingdom, Matt Kelsey at I70 Baseball, Michael Engel at Kings of Kauffman, me, Ray W at Royals on the Radio, Etc., and Jeff Parker at Royally Speaking (answers in that order)) a series of questions about the current incarnation of the Royals. Enthusiasm of the collective abounding here. My year-end prediction is arguably the least optimistic of the group. Also, I responded weeks ago, and my calling him The Mexicutioner actually happened before Soria's request that the use of the nickname cease.

At The Hardball Times, Chris Jaffe is inspired by the 10,000th day that Zack Greinke has walked the Earth to look at franchise leaders in victories since 1969. Moral of the story, it could be worse. We could have all been Brewers fans...

And to top it off, Greinke did the closest thing he could to emulate Monta Ellis or Vladimir Radmanovic, fracturing a rib and bruising another playing basketball. What is there to say about this?

Might Eric Hosmer's Bat Force the Royals to Accelerate His Timetable for Arrival?

2011-03-07T06:00:00.017-06:00

I really was intending to get to the next installment of the Equating Your Royals to a Character in The Wire series (first part here), but it would seem that Eric Hosmer's early performance in Spring Training is forcing me to do otherwise.

Since Royals fans have been eagerly waiting for the commencement of Spring Training games to get a glimpse of the future in the form of the cadre of highly rated prospects getting to face "Major League" talent in fake pseudo-ML action, Eric Hosmer's impressive week has a lot of us wondering if the future might be arriving sooner rather than later.

We all know that Mike Moustakas is set to make his Major League debut sometime in the beginning of June. That is supposed to be the beginning of a brighter future. The first glimpse of what may come. The first real glimmer of hope after 17 seasons of awe-inspiring futility.

FanFest Photo Courtesy of the Gracious Minda Haas

Conventional wisdom has had us all assuming that Moustakas would be arriving this June with Hosmer's arrival following almost exactly one year later, with the only caveat being that he might get a cup of coffee in the Bigs come September once the Omaha *gulp* Storm Chasers have completed their expected playoff run.

It is very possible that we have gotten ahead of ourselves--or perhaps, more precisely, behind ourselves, but I would argue that his otherworldly playoff performance just a few months ago may assert otherwise.

To say Eric Hosmer has been earning rave reviews might be an understatement. If you follow Jason Parks (co-host of the Baseball Prospectus podcast Up and In and writer at Baseball Prospectus and proprietor/author of the freshly launched Rangers prospect site Texas Farm Review) on Twitter, you know how Hosmer has looked. If you don't follow him (and why the hell aren't you?), let me do a quick rundown of what he's been saying:

Hosmer just sodomized the ball to RF. Long HR. Massive shot. - February 28th
Special hitters produce a sound off the bat that mere mortals can't match. Hosmer is one of those special hitters. It's a shotgun blast - March 5th
Hosmer is best young hitter I have ever seen in the cage; such an easy swing and remarkable bat speed. Best offensive prospect in baseball. - March 5th
Hosmer is extremely well-rounded, so yes; Harper has more power. RT @kylekaestner: @ProfessorParks better offensive prospect than Harper? - March 5th
Its close, but I'd take Hosmer. RT @mrenick: @ProfessorParks er hosmer > montero? - March 5th
In response to Rany's tweet: @ProfessorParks Stop it, Jason, just stop it. It's not healthy for me to have this much optimism. Jason said: @jazayerli Hosmer could start on the 25-man to start the season and more than hold his own. Remarkable young hitter. - March 5th
It sounds like pornography. RT @pmulls: @ProfessorParks Does Hosmer's swing sound more like a sawed off or barreled shotgun? - March 5th
[and finally...] I'm thinking of changing my twitter handle to @ProfessorHosmer or @JasonParks-Hosmer or @Hosmersexual. What do you think? - March 5th

If you want video of Hosmer taking batting practice, Jason Cole of Lone Star Dugout took some video of batting practice (more ST videos here), and it is pretty clear why Parks (Cole's ST-roommate) is so high on Hosmer, even just looking at BP.

Eric Hosmer takes batting practice from Jason Cole on Vimeo.

With the Royals having intimated months ago that there was a strong chance Hosmer would be starting the season in AAA and the effusive praise being heaped upon the young phenom based on his performance thus far, is it that unreasonable to expect that he may get the call when Moustakas does or shortly thereafter?

Obviously, the prudent thing for the organization is to have Hosmer coming a year behind Moustakas to stagger the arrival of their respective free agencies. Based on the early reports, Hosmer may force his way into the Majors a year sooner than we all assumed, bringing the future just a little bit closer. Maybe we are making too much out of an exceptionally small sample size, but it does seem like the possibility of this happening is getting less unimaginable as I continue typing.

Again, the advancement of Hosmer probably serves the club best if it is delayed until 2012, but he may simply be too good to keep down for that long.

*****************************

Now, for a bit of fostering of community, you should really check out Corey Ettinger's latest two Royals Prospect Profiles for John Lamb and Mike Montgomery over at AL Central In Focus. Mike Engel confesses his own love for Eric Hosmer at Kings of Kauffman before advocating for the trade of the thrice-blocked Clint Robinson. Rany uses the example of Salvador Perez to offer a silver lining to Scott McKinney oft-discussed prospect attrition features at Royals Review. The presumably better connected Rustin Dodd at the KC Star thinks Hosmer will still spend nearly all of the year in the minors. And Will McDonald wonders how the Royals farm system was able to ascend to the top of the organizational rankings of Baseball America's after ending up only 17th heading into the 2010 season.

And I'd like to thank any and everyone who has linked to my articles in the last couple of weeks. The support is appreciated.

The Farm System That The Moore Regime Has Constructed Lauded Again

2011-02-28T05:30:00.001-06:00

Hot on the heels of the Royals' dominance on the Baseball America Top 100 Prospects list, Kevin Goldstein's Top 101 list (subscription required, and you should subscribe) at Baseball Prospectus. Where the Royals placed nine prospects on Baseball America's Top 100 list, they have placed ten on the Baseball Prospectus list. A quick rundown shows the Royals charting as follows:

7. Mike Moustakas
11. John Lamb
12. Eric Hosmer
13. Wil Myers
21. Mike Montgomery
66. Chris Dwyer
67. Danny Duffy
76. Jeremy Jeffress
77. Jake Odorizzi
88. Christian Colon

If you were following closely and waited for this list's release with baited breath, then you already knew there were ten Royals on the list. Knowing where they fall is a different story. Not only are there five in the top 21, but there are four before 13 hits.

Sweet Jesus.

I know we need to temper our expectations, but goddamn it feels good to have a ray of hope.

For those not keeping track at home, Baseball America charted the Royals' top prospects like so:

8. Eric Hosmer
9. Mike Moustakas
10. Wil Myers
18. Mike Montgomery
19. John Lamb
51. Christian Colon
68. Danny Duffy
69. Jake Odorizzi
83. Chris Dwyer

Obviously, we would be foolish to assume that the future is entirely contained within this list of prospects. The likelihood of the starting lineup in 2014 being

C - Salvador Perez
1B - Eric Hosmer
2B - Christian Colon
SS - Alcides Escobar
3B - Mike Moustakas
LF - Brett Eibner
CF - Lorenzo Cain
RF - Wil Myers
DH - Billy Butler

SP - Mike Montgomery
SP - John Lamb
SP - Danny Duffy
SP - Jake Odorizzi
SP - Chris Dwyer
CL - Joakim Soria

is nice in theory, but realistically some grounding needs to take place. I could finish off the 2014 25-man roster that I think we're all penciling in in our imaginations with homegrown products like Johnny Giavotella, Jarrod Dyson, Jeff Bianchi, Tim Collins, etc., but optimism and realism are two different things, and the last 17 years should have beaten any optimism out of just about all of us.

That isn't to say dreaming of that line-up isn't fun. There is also cause to believe that from the non-list-makers, players like Eibner, Dyson, Collins, Cheslor Cuthbert, Yordano Ventura, Robinson Yambati, and Jason Adam could make future lists or contribute at a meaningful level without ever having made the list. There are also guys who have lost a bit of their sheen like Aaron Crow and Tim Melville--who seemed to be the only Royals youngsters who struggled last season-- that could turn things around now or in the near future.

Now, if Dayton Moore could only begin to competently evaluate veteran talent, we could call the engravers and place our bets in Vegas.

Oh, by the way, I'd like to thank Ray W at Royals on the Radio, Etc. for linking to my bullying post and also Michael Engel at Kings of Kauffman, Corey Ettinger at AL Central In Focus, and Will McDonald at Royals Review (and anyone else I may have missed) for linking up to my last entry (Equating Your Royals To A Character In The Wire: The Joakim Soria Edition). Engel and McDonald are well established entities in the realm of the Royals blogosphere, but Ettinger's work on the Central (Royals-specific info can be found here) should definitely be read. His scouting reports are outstanding, and the volume of work he gets done in the course of a day is often stunning. Any such treatment is much appreciated and coming from those sites serves as validation. As far as that series is concerned, I intend for the next entry to be the second installment in the series, but that can't be what this site becomes entirely.

Equating Your Royals To A Character In The Wire: The Joakim Soria Edition

2011-02-23T23:30:00.001-06:00

This is the first in what I expect to be an ongoing series that should break the monotony of writing about a largely abysmal team. Sure things are looking up for the future, but the future is not here quite yet. When you have devoted as much time to writing about the Royals as I have, diversions like this are necessary.

Of all of the characters in the seminal crime drama series The Wire, there is perhaps no comparison more apropos than the one drawn between a character and a member of the Royals than the one between Brother Mouzone and Joakim Soria.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Obviously, both Brother Mouzone and Soria read Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and The New Republic, but where do the similarities extend past that?

In Arabic, the word mouzone means "judicious" (at least according to Wikipedia). As any regular viewer of The Wire could tell you, the naming of the character is apt. If Joakim Soria has been one thing in his tenure with the Royals, it has been judicious. Each time out on the mound, he has been exceptionally prudent. He has parsed out pitches both carefully and expeditiously. He rarely does himself harm by giving away free passes, having never exceeded 19 walks in a season or a BB/9 higher than 2.72.

Furthermore, he wastes little while on the mound. Giving away little, he elects to go after his foes, mowing them down at an impressive 9.92 K/9. This works out to a career K/BB of 4.01. Since breaking into the Majors in 2007, only nine pitchers with at least 250 IP have posted a better K/BB than Joakim Soria. Of those ten pitchers, Soria has the lowest ERA and the second-lowest FIP and xFIP, behind only Mariano Rivera. The man means business.

He has done all of this while not looking the part of the closer. Soria is not a flame-thrower. While being 6'3", he is listed as being under 200 lbs. Unlike many closers, Soria is relatively unassuming. These are all traits that he shares with Brother Mouzone, who does not look the part of a drug enforcer and professional killer. Despite the fact than neither are the prototypes for the role they inhabit, they excel at their trade. In fact, Soria is so proficient that he has been bestowed the nickname The Mexicutioner*.

*I wrote this section before Soria tweeted that he no longer wants this nickname used because of all the violence in Mexico. The point remains, but I'll cease using the nickname per his request.

That is not all. Brother Mouzone is introduced to the show as the man who Avon Barksdale brings in from New York to regulate on Proposition Joe's crew who are slinging at the Towers. Just as Brother Mouzone is brought in from off the radar, Joakim Soria was acquired via the Rule V draft, having never pitched above high-A ball in the United States when the Royals brought him in from the Padres organization. Both are essentially brought in from foreign lands. Not unlike Brother Mouzone, whose reputation as a fearsome hired gun preceded him was balanced out with mystery as no one knew what he looked like, there was little known about Soria when he arrived in town, other than the fact that the day after Soria was selected by the Royals he performed the herculean feat of hurling a perfect game. Clearly the arrival of each was predated with tales that should have struck fear into their imminent foes.

And then there is usage. Of the The Wire's 60 episodes, Brother Mouzone appears in a scant seven episodes. Any Royals fan can tell you that the 60 innings that Joakim Soria is going to get in any given season is not enough to satisfy. There is also the related argument that perhaps, if each were used more, they would be overexposed or less effective.

There you have it: Brother Mouzone = Joakim Soria.

Comments? Concerns?

Bullying of Butler and Its Parallels to Full Metal Jacket

2011-02-18T04:30:00.001-06:00

Following a few seemingly second-hand accounts of teammates in years past calling meetings to ridicule Billy Butler, many of us have spent far too much time contemplating a redefinition of these former Royals. We have spent time hypothesizing that Zack Greinke was the ring leader. We have assumed Jose Guillen--and possibly Mike Jacobs, depending on how long we think this went on--was guilty of douchebaggery because that fits the narrative we want it to.We have let our imaginations run wild with irresponsible assumptions, possibly at the cost of innocent players' reputations, although the assumption that Jose Guillen could have been involved is at least supported by mostly factual evidence.

Now as these rumors of a less than kind clubhouse climate for a younger Billy Butler began to swirl in the small corner of the internets that we Royals fans dwell in, I couldn't help but be brought to the first half of Full Metal Jacket. The first time I saw Full Metal Jacket was while I was a freshman in college. I had a very good chubby friend who was going through boot camp at the time, and to be frank it kind of messed me up in a weirdly personal way.

Without meaning to err into any territory in which Billy Butler could take offense at the comparison, the tales of mistreatment inevitably draw me to the figure of Leonard 'Gomer Pyle' Lawrence. For those needing a frame of reference, this video should take care of it for you:

From the really hazy speculation based on hearsay and some statements that Dayton Moore made at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon (that have at been corroborated by Minda Haas without naming names), it seems like Billy Butler was a little awkward--being very young at every stop--not unlike Pvt. Lawrence. The Jose Guillen "babies" rant was mostly likely directed to him. Older players apparently seemed to have been rubbed the wrong way by the way the youngster interacted socially in the clubhouse. Some have connected Butler's statements about Greinke after the trade to the informal player meetings in which Butler was the butt of their jokes to Greinke perhaps leading these meetings*.

Photo courtesy of Minda Haas @ mindahaas.net

*This is easily the least verifiable of all the information presented. It was fairly well known within insider baseball circles that Butler was treated poorly by veterans. The leap to Greinke leading these meetings, or even taking part in them, seems to have come about from people using a combination of Greinke's past quotes (i.e. the following statement about Billy Butler in '09, I think: “For the first month of the season, (Billy Butler) has definitely been an above-average first baseman. That’s hard for me to say because I never thought anyone would say that but him and his family.”**) and Billy's statements regarding Zack's level of involvement, emotional and otherwise, with the Royals last season.

**Yes, this quote is funny. As fans, we can all appreciate that, and it is part of the reason we all loved Zack so much. But I can't imagine that this wouldn't piss you off as a teammate.

This all led to what was apparently some pretty cruel hazing. If it was anything like the blanket party in Full Metal Jacket, color me repulsed.

Of course, the parallels don't end at the hazing. After Pyle is hazed, he transforms a superb soldier. The same could be said for Billy, who after his initial struggles in the Majors came into his own as a hitter. I'll not venture so far as to say that the hazing turned him (because I don't think it did), but he definitely seemed to turn a corner and become a [doubles-hitting] force to be reckoned with.

Now, the awful end to Pvt. Lawrence's story clearly does not apply. He seems to have grown into the leadership role he has taken on ably. I don't think he'll be in the latrine pointing a rifle at Matthew Modine and R. Lee Ermey (Jose Guillen?) any time soon.

I guess the real issue here is that I don't like to think of Billy Butler in this context. There doesn't seem to be anything about him that is anything less than a nice guy. He settled down in Idaho Falls with his wife and daughter. He seems to live a simple life in the offseason, and I mean this in a sincerely envious way. Sure, we probably don't have a lot of common interests, but I like Billy Butler.

I don't like to think about his teammates being shitty to him.

Working on a Semi-Irregular Post

2011-02-16T19:40:00.000-06:00

but I swear I'm working on it. I got sidetracked writing this. The Royalscentricity entry should be finished tomorrow evening and up on Friday. Until then...

At AL Central In Focus, Corey Ettinger lays out the payroll situation in an easy-to-read format for the Royals going forward. As we all know the only money the Royals have guaranteed
The Royals are apparently interested in signing John Maine to a minor-league contract. I have to say there would be very little to complain about if they did, as it is low-risk, non-guaranteed contract that gives them a guy who has been a legitimate back-end-of-the-rotation starter at the Major League level if things go to hell in a hand-basket.
Keep an eye on Drunk Jays Fans tonight as their initial reaction to the 5-year, $65MM deal sums it up pretty well--"Holy shit, that's way too much." Add that to the prospect of having to look at Scott Podsednik, who was signed to a minor-league deal today, and it's a huge news day for Toronto. The Bautista post has been growing as I type this.
...And Jason Kendall has Craig Brown at Royals Authority (and everyone else, really) scared. Goddamn him (Kendall, not Brown).

Breaking promises

2011-02-14T03:00:00.001-06:00

I know I have tried to have something up for y'all to read on Mondays for this offseason. The reason Mondays are the target date is because I usually have Sundays off and write then. Well, after enjoying a Sunday afternoon lounging about and shooting up hoops, I found a text message asking if I could work a bar shift. I decided this was something I had to do, as it actually pays me money.

On Wednesday I fully intend to have something up. Until then, I promise you that I will fall asleep just like I do every night, weeping silently into my pillow wondering why God hath forsaken me so and made me into a Royals fan.

Damn them Royals...

Here's a gift anyway.

(I was at this show)

Royalscentricity Linkdown

2011-02-09T03:30:00.002-06:00

Readers of the blog know that I don't often do a link throwdown, but there are a couple of pieces out there that seem to be notable.

Searching for angels in the outfield

Chris Jaffe wrote the second part of his piece on the Worst World Series winners. While we may root for the worst team of the 2000s, the World Series winner of 1985 only ranks as the third-worst winner of the Series since the advent of the League Championship Series. The worst winner? The second worst? Well, many Royals fans can take solace in each of them.
I'd imagine almost everyone who has made their way here has already read it, but when I stated in the Pedro Feliz post on Monday that Will McDonald (at Royals Review) might just be the best pure writer of any of the Royals bloggers, he justified the statement with this dialogue between Gil Meche and Cliff Lee.
I got a nice shout-out from Corey Ettinger over at AL Central In Focus. Corey is covering the entire AL Central and seems to be getting as much content up as Rob Neyer has been since he moved over to SBNation. I don't know how Corey covers so much ground (22 posts in February already), but there is a lot of good prospect profiling being done over there. Given that he is also writing about the guys we'll be seeing on the field opposing the Royals, his blog covers a lot of what the future holds in the division.
John Sickels does a Prospect Smackdown on Craig Kimbrel and Jeremy Jeffress (pictured) over at Minor League Ball.
Project Prospect's Top 100 Prospects list came out on Monday. Royals finding their way onto the list: 5. Eric Hosmer; 6. Wil Myers; 16. Mike Moustakas; 20. John Lamb; 54. Mike Montgomery; 71. Jake Odorizzi; 78. Christian Colon; 90. Johnny Giavotella. The complete list can be found here. Eight prospects in all. Suspiciously present: Johnny Giavotella.
The Project Prospect list comes two weeks after another fairly controversial list, Keith Law's list at ESPN (subscription required). The Royals who made his list are as follows: 5. Eric Hosmer; 8. Wil Myers; 23. Mike Moustakas; 28. Mike Montgomery; 41. John Lamb; 98. Danny Duffy. Apparently, Chris Dwyer would have been 102. Despite being much less bowled over by the Royals farm system than most prospect experts, Law does rank the Royals farm system as the best in baseball, but not much ahead of Tampa. He has a reputation for hating the Royals amongst Royals fans, and he simply adds fuel to the fire here.
This article is a few weeks old now, but I assumed it was ESPN Insider only and therefore did not read it. Jerry Crasnick writes about how Dayton Moore has built up the farm system so well. The thing that struck me as particularly interesting is the graphic on the side where it shows that the Royals have only had 12 draft picks in the first three rounds of the draft since 2007. Only the Indians and Orioles have had fewer. If you knock that down to first-round draft picks, the Royals have had only five, with the Indians, Orioles, and Marlins being the only teams with fewer. When you think about it this way, it makes the turnaround even more impressive. This is also why I'm glad I'm not an Astros fan. They aren't likely to start getting help from supplemental draft picks as a result of Type A or B Free Agents leaving town.

I know I lost a good chunk of readership in the second half of last season. My output was inconsistent and extremely sporadic. Mostly, this is the result of a lack of time. I moved, was without cable for over a month, and was working about 65 hours a week. Time should hopefully be something I have a little more of in the near future, as I have excised my third job from my life. I still have a few shifts left at the Crown & Anchor (don't worry, Scott), but it should open up my life a bit more for the other endeavors I want to pursue. Royalscentricity is one of them, so I want you all to know that I am at least attempting to rededicate myself to this blog.

Also, Facebook users, don't forget to become a fan of Royalscentricity (the widget is on the right side of the page), where updates are posted.

The Pedro Feliz Signing: A Non-Story

2011-02-07T11:15:00.001-06:00

Earlier I found myself compelled to write a FanPost over at Royals Review after a conversation about Brian Cashman died off. If you feel so compelled and haven't already read it, it is here. Seeing as though I've already written one 1,300+ word baseball piece today (I've been writing all of these on Sunday night), I don't anticipate this entry being especially long.

On Thursday afternoon, the Royals signed Pedro Feliz to a minor-league deal with an invite to Spring Training with the big league club. Since it is a minor-league deal, the $800,000 that the deal was for is only good if he makes the Major League roster. He isn't on the 40-man roster.

Now some are down on this deal. Will McDonald seems to have taken the most extreme defeatist approach* to the signing, specifically in the comments section here. Some of the other commenters seemed to be of the same frame of mind. There were also the reactionary fans at the mostly laughable Facebook page and the Terez A. Paylor Kansas City Star article who started predictably started spouting off about losing Jermaine Dye and Zach [sic] Greinke.

*I want to be clear about this: Will McDonald is on the very short list of the best writers on the Royals. As far as pure writers are concerned, he might well be the best. It does, however, seem like he has been increasingly negative over the past few months. I totally understand how frustrating being a Royals fan is. Things really have been so bad at the Major League level for so long that it is hard not to feel utterly beaten down by the years and years of mismanagement. In terms of free agent acquisitions, Dayton Moore has been terrible, at least judging from the our outside perspective. The only active player with an OBP lower than Yuniesky Betancourt since 2007? You guessed it, Pedro Feliz. This is so funny it hurts. Taken at is face value, though, this signing is simply not one to get worked up over. There just does not seem to be any factual basis to make the assumption that Feliz will get meaningful playing time unless an emergency dictates this. For whatever reason, Will seems to be of a different belief--operating under a worst possible outcome scenario again. Maybe I'm being exceptionally naive with this signing, but Moore seems to be saying all the right things, as Clark Fosler noted at Royals Authority.

Tough. Bearded. Gritty.

These reactions seem to have gone far past what they reasonably should. Feliz is simply injury insurance. The Royals lost Alex Gordon in Spring Training two seasons ago. Neither Chris Getz nor Mike Aviles are invincible. Wilson Betemit has no business playing third base. I do not see the harm in signing a fairly recent Fielding Bible Award Winner at third base. Up until this past season, he was well above average defensively.

Yes, he is horrible at the plate. Since 2005, he has triple-slashed a mind-numbingly terrible .248/.288/.396. His career OPS+ is 80. Simply put, his offense is offensive.

This is not where his value lies.

Maybe at this point, he cannot play defensively. Last year, he posted a -3.1 UZR in 804.2 IP. It could be that his days of utility with the glove are fully behind him, but this was the first time that he had posted a UZR at third below 7.5 since 2002. His lowest UZR/150 at third before 2010? 8.9. Even with the negative UZR/150 in 2010, his career UZR/150 is still a very good 14.9. For the sake of comparison, Scott Rolen's career UZR/150 is 14.7.

Even if he is done defensively, he isn't guaranteed a roster spot. The $800K is only due to him if he makes the 25-man roster. The $200K he can make in incentives are simply that--incentives. I cannot imagine a scenario in which they aren't based on playing time. After all, in the aforelinked Star article, Dayton Moore is quoted as follows:

When Mike Moustakas is ready to play in the majors, he’s going to be our third baseman. We already feel like we’re covered there if he’s not ready, but this covers us if there’s an injury.

This signing blocks no one. He makes minor league money as long as he's not on the Major League roster. The only way that happens is if there are no other options at third because of injury fallout. If Feliz is playing past June, I'll be shocked. Hell, if he plays at Kauffman at all, I will be pretty surprised.

Inspired by the mention of Face Value...

At Least We're Not...

2011-01-31T05:40:00.001-06:00

Astros fans*.

*After trying to think of ideas for entries today, this is what I kept coming back to. Everyone is writing about the Royals Minor League system right now. Hell, it seemed like it was Kansas City Royals Week on ESPN (dot) com. I know I needed a change of pace, so I elected to look at this

For as shitty an experience as being a Royals fan has been post-strike, there is no way I would trade those years of pain and frustration for being a fan of the Houston Astros.

As someone who lives in Texas and has for almost seven years now, I see a good deal of Astros games. I have also seen an inordinate amount of Round Rock Express games, who for the past five years were the Astros' AAA affiliate. Even after the departures of Zack Greinke and David DeJesus during this offseason, I can say with confidence that I like where the Royals stand a lot more than the Astros.

As a team last season, the Houston Astros offense compiled 8.1 fWAR. Of all the teams in baseball, only the Mariners (6.1) and the Pirates (2.8) were worse. They had the lowest BB% in baseball*, tied with the Orioles at 6.9%. As a team, they triple-slashed .247/.303/.362 with their mark of .295 being good the second-worst wOBA in baseball, better than only the Mariners.

*Weirdly, the Royals had the lowest K% in baseball last season with 16.1%, comfortably lower than the second-place ChiSox at 16.8%. Apparently the Royals did something well last year--although there isn't necessarily anything that ties this thing they do well to winning ballgames.

Thanks in large part to a shockingly useful 4.0 fWAR season out of Brett Myers and the 2.6 fWAR that Roy Oswalt provided them while he was still in an Astros uniform last season, the Astros pitching staff was much more middle of the road last year with their 16.0 fWAR being good for 16th in baseball. Again, they got 4.0 fWAR out of Brett Myers, whose 3.82 xFIP would indicate that his 3.14 ERA was at least partially a product of luck. Myers hadn't posted an fWAR higher than 2.0 since 2006, so this may or may not have been an aberration.

I do distinctly remember a time in which Brett Myers was not good at throwing baseballs that ended up in getting batters out. Some might say that qualifies as sucking, but we all have our different standards for assigning suckage to people.

He was solid last year.

Their lineup looks to consist of the following players with '10 fWAR after their name:

Chris Johnson not worrying about his abysmal BB% in Next

C - Jason Castro | 0.4
1B - Brett Wallace | 0.0
2B - Bill Hall | 1.0
SS - Clint Barmes | 0.4
3B - Chris Johnson | 1.6
LF - Carlos Lee | -0.8
CF - Michael Bourn | 4.2
RF - Hunter Pence | 3.1

C - Humberto Quintero | 0.5
IF - Jeff Keppinger | 2.4
OF - Jason Michael | 1.1

SP - Wandy Rodriguez | 3.6
SP - Brett Myers | 4.0
SP - J.A. Happ | 0.8
SP - Bud Norris | 1.6
SP - Nelson Figueroa | 0.5
CL - Brandon Lyon | 1.0
RP - Jeff Fulchino | -0.2
RP - Alberto Arias | 0.5 ('09 fWAR - missed '10)
RP - Wilton Lopez | 1.3
RP - Mark Melancon | 0.3
RP - Wesley Wright | -0.1

That's 22 players based on the depth chart at the Astros MLB.com page. Of those contributors, it should be noted that Chris Johnson is unlikely to replicate the level of production he gave them in 2010, as his BABIP was .387 and he had his 4.1 BB% and 26.7 K% equated to a shockingly low 0.16 BB/K. Of hitters with over 300 PA, only John Buck had a lower BB/K than Chris Johnson in '10.

All of Michael Bourn's value is tied up in his defense. For their all-speed-and-defense 28-year-old center fielder, the Astros will pay $4.4MM with one more year of arbitration-elibigility to go.

Wandy Rodriguez just turned 32 and is owed at least $32.5MM over the next three seasons. He has a lame first name that evokes images pig-tails, Baconators, and Doogie Howser's girlfriend.

Hunter Pence was eligible for arbitration last year as a 27-year-old Super-Two and is set to make somewhere between $5.15MM and $6.9MM as a 28-year-old in '11 depending on what arbitrators decide, with two more years of arbitration-eligibility to go. Rooting for him also means having to root for someone named Hunter (what, is he eight years old?) and whose last name is the most worthless of British coinage. The only way he makes up for this fact is if he embraces it fully and selects this for his walk-up music:

The Rentals - Friends of P. from The Rentals History on Vimeo.

The aforementioned Myers is due a guaranteed $21MM over two years (with a buyout for the third) that turns into $28MM over three if an option vests.

Barring a violation of the 'nominal weight clause' in his contract, the negative-value Carlos Lee is still due $18.5MM in each of the next two seasons. Despite his nickname, he cannot actually be taken to the glue factory. Whether or not that is still the case if his clause comes into play is conceivably another story altogether.

Clint Barmes will inexplicably by making $3.925MM this season to presumably play over super-sub Jeff Keppinger. I use the qualifier 'inexplicably' because he is somehow 32 years old come Opening Day, yet the former prospect has compiled a mere 4.4 fWAR since playing sporadically beginning in 2003. He is coming off a 0.4 fWAR season yet is getting paid money that would indicate that (a) he is decent, and (b) he is better than Jeff Keppinger. Neither of those statements would seem to be accurate. I am sure he is a really nice guy, though.

The ~~awful~~ underwhelming Brandon Lyon is set to make $5.25MM in '11 and .$5.5MM in '12.

The club is also still paying roughly $7MM of Roy Oswalt's salary in 2011.

Before factoring in the salaries of any of their league-minimum players, the Astros are currently looking at $64.748MM guaranteed (not counting what Pence is awarded in arbitration)on the books in '11 and $47.25 still in '12. And for what? They have a solid RHSP and a solid LHSP, an all-glove CF, a solid RF, and a remaining roster of filler.

Moreover, their farm system is not going to be helping anytime soon. FanGraphs had their farm system ranked 29th overall. This was before Milwaukee traded away its then first- and third-ranked prospects for Greinke, but Milwaukee was five spots ahead of them. Having done their drafts on the cheap for years under the reign of tight-fisted Drayton MacLane, the system is well shallow.

Jordan Lyles, their top prospect was a 19-year-old in AAA-Round Rock last year but does not have overpowering stuff. It is also entirely possible that they are detrimentally rushing their only inarguably top flight talent through the minors. He profiles as a #3 starter. Delino DeSheilds Jr. is their only other four-star prospect according to Kevin Goldstein, and he was thought to be an over-draft at the eighth overall pick last year. John Sickels had Lyles as the only B+ grade he handed out to anyone in the system, being much less bullish on DeShields, who he had tentatively lumped in with other B- players, Mike Foltynewicz, Austin Wates, and J.D. Martinez.

If Jason Castro were still a prospect, Kevin Goldstein would have him in between Lyles and DeShields on his Top 10 Talents 25 and Under in the system, with Brett Wallace ranked fourth. Let's just say that after three trades (that means four organizations) in two years, a bit of the luster of Brett Wallace's prospect sheen has come off.

Obviously, there is a lot more that is still up in the air for the Royals, but Billy Butler's 3.4 fWAR was higher than every Astros offensive player other than Michael Bourn. The Royals bullpen looks to be solid. At his peak, Jeff Francis was a 4.1 fWAR player, and he was a 1.9 fWAR pitcher in 19 starts last season.

And then there's the farm. What is there left to say?

Optimistically, the Astros could be competitive in, what, five years? That's a best-case scenario and is also operating under the assumption that the Mayans were wrong. At least in 2012, when the world ends, Royals fans will have been looking hopefully to the future with the Holy Trinity (or perhaps the Unholy Triumvirate given the circumstances) of Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, and Wil "One-L" Myers having taken the field at The K together. Can Lastros fans say the same?

Obviously, this is just a cursory glance at another organization--one that I am somewhat familiar with as a result of living where Astros games are locally broadcast. Cheap ownership has hamstrung this franchise, which is now a shell of what it was in the middle of the last decade. They never equipped themselves to rebuild after the core of their roster got too old to play. Jeff Bagwell was just on his first Hall of Fame ballot, and it has been nearly that long since they've resembled a contending ballclub. Things would not appear to be much brighter on the horizon.

Billy Butler In Royals' Shackles (or Club Control If Your Glass Is Half-full) Through 2015

2011-01-24T06:00:00.001-06:00

Luckily I do not find myself having to write about the news coming out of FanFest this weekend regarding what most of us had assumed was going to happen anyway: Wil Myers will officially be moving from behind the dish to the outfield. Luck plays into this two ways. First, I don't have to write about a development that already seemed inevitable. Second, the other news is much more interesting.

Saturday, as FanFest* was going on, the news leaked that the Royals and Billy Butler's camp were getting a contract ~~ExtenZed~~ extension meted out. As terms of the deal rolled out, the deal went from being a four-year deal that bought out the first year of his free agency to a four-year deal with a club option for a fifth year. Kicking things off with a $2MM signing bonus, Butler will make $3MM in 2011, $8MM each season from 2012 - 2014, and a club option for the 2015 season for $12.5MM that can be bought out at $1MM.

*Weirdly, I did not make the trek from Texas to Overland Park for the festivities...

For a WAR breakdown of the deal, Scott McKinney (until the past 24 hours known as NYRoyal) has already taken care of this over at Royals Review. It is clear to almost everyone that this is a very club-favorable deal. As explained for the uninitiated* last week (and imaginably prior to that as well), FanGraphs assigns a dollar value (in millions) to the amount of money that a player's performance based on WAR would yield on the free agent market. In the past two seasons, Butler's performance was worth $11.7MM and $13.8MM. Given the facts that the value of a win above replacement inflates each year as salaries go up and that Billy Butler posted a 2011 season that already exceeded the most expensive season in the deal (and the one that is technically optional) and did so at the age of 24, it is hard not to see how this works in the Royals' favor.

*I do have the time to educate.

More importantly, Billy Butler is The Special Lady Friend's (known as TSLF for my Inconsiderate Prick readers) favorite Royal. If his continued presence on the Royals softens the repeated quasi*-abusive blows that TSLF feels, then it makes my life easier. Of Jesus is gone. So is Bert Calypso. No more Greinke. What would she have to take from a game without her chubby-cheeked pal Billy Butler working the count and motoring down the basepath, arms a-churnin'?

*If one wanted to be technical, forcing a non-Royals fan to watch the Royals qualifies as something that exceeds quasi-abuse and perhaps stretches to reach grounds that should be punishable by law. I know I hate myself at least ten times during the typical Royals game, and only five of those times are spawned by the image/mention of Jason Kendall, whose place will surely be held by Melky Cabrera.

This deal is about as club-friendly as the Joakim Soria contract. Even if the Royals should elect to trade him at some point, Butler's contract is so friendly that it would almost have to yield a lot in return. Maybe this signifies the beginning of the end for Kila Ka'aihue and to a lesser extent for Clint Robinson, as Eric Hosmer is expected to be beating the door down at first in 2012 (barring an extremely unlikely Kila-Monster-forced shift to the outfield). Clearly the future at 1B/DH would appear to consist of a combination of Hosmer and Butler. This extension just sets in stone the fact that we should not get too attached to Kila this season.

These other things are mostly irrelevant. Billy Butler is a Royal until he isn't at a club-favorable cost. Good move, Mr. Moore. This almost makes me not wretch when I think about the sunk cost that is anything being deposited into Melky Cabrera's bank account.

Gil Meche Unexpectedly Retires, Gifts Needy The Glass Family $12.4 Million

2011-01-19T06:00:00.009-06:00

In this space, I have ranted at length (most specifically here) about the abuse and misuse of Gil Meche by the broken-hooked Trey Hillman. I shall refrain from doing this again today.

For roughly two-and-a-half seasons, watching Gil Meche pitch brought me joy. Over the course of his first 82 starts as a Royal, Meche managed a 3.74 ERA with 406/166 K/BB over 510.2 IP. His BABIP of .303 over this span of time points toward much of his performance being on the level. As is one of the risks in signing pitchers to long-term contracts, Meche's surgically repaired shoulder began to fail him in 2009, for arguably preventable reasons. During that stretch, though, there was a reason to watch the Royals when he set foot on the mound. In 2008 and the first half of 2009, this meant that casual Royals fans having cause to watch 40% of the time. We have not been able to say that often since The Strike.

If we are to judge Gil Meche by his actions this week, he is a pretty stand-up dude. Rather than lay blame at the stoop of the team that paid his an assload of money*, he is saying thanks for the opportunity and walking away from the game that his body will no longer allow him to play. To leave that kind of money on the table presumably speaks to his character. If ever Dayton Moore's infatuation with signing gritty, character guys paid off, it was today. It may seem ludicrous to those of us sitting in our mothers' basements, but sometimes these high-character guys have value in that they'll walk away from a contract they don't feel they can fulfill.

*His having given back $12.4 of the $55 million he initially signed essentially makes it a four-year $42.6 million deal. While most of the value of the contract was tied into his first two seasons, the FanGraphs' Dollar Value (based on what that performance would yield on the Free Agent market) for this time in a Royals' uniform was $47 million. Say what you will about luck and Meche bailing the Royals out, in the end he was worth every dime he got, even if it wasn't spread out evenly over the four years.

Oh, who am I kidding? If this were the case, Jason Kendall would give each and every fan who attended a Royals game a check in the amount of a refund for having to watch him call awful games--

No, seriously, hang another curve, Zack. It'll totally work. Do you see how gritty I am? My fucking dad played ball. I'll eat your face. *juts chin out further and looks more dickish*

--and do nothing with his bat while hitting second in the order.

Regardless, Gil Meche = Stand-Up Dude.

His announcement comes on the heels of the two FA pitcher signings last week. Now the Royals simply need to designate one player on the 40-man for assignment. To me, this would figure to be Kevin Pucetas, who seems like the least likely success story amongst the unlikely success stories filling out the back-end of the 40-man. It also increases the likelihood that one of the young relievers (Tim Collins, Louis Coleman, Jeremy Jeffress, etc.) makes the 25-man roster coming out of Spring Training, giving us hope that we can glimpse a brighter future any day of the week from Opening Day.

While Meche wasn't here for when the winning started (unless you wanted to argue that 75 wins signaled a paradigm shift in Royals culture), he didn't stand in the way when he couldn't toe the rubber. There's a certain meth-cook's brother who could learn a thing or two from him.

Dayton Moore Comes Out as a Francophile and Re-signs a Sino-Panamanian

2011-01-17T15:00:00.000-06:00

After giving me nothing to write about last week (which coincided with having all of my sports-energy drained by that other Kansas City team), Dayton Moore went out and addressed the most gaping hole on the roster: the starting rotation.
*
*Little known fact: Townes Van Zandt wrote this song because he would have been such a Jeff Francis fan. The selection of this song for this post is in no way trying to attach a possibly racist collective nickname for Brucie Chen and Francis.

It was no secret that as the roster had been constructed that the Royals were thin on Major-League-ready pitching. Heading into the end of this past week, their opening day rotation was likely going to consist of Luke Hochevar, Kyle Davies, Vin Mazzaro, Sean O'Sullivan, and one of the likes of Danny Duffy, Everett Teaford, Kevin Pucetas, or Nathan Adcock.

With a new week comes a bolstered rotation featuring lefties Jeff Francis and Bruce Chen. If ever there was a southpaw fetishist in the MLB GM ranks, that man would be Dayton Moore. Since taking the reigns in the wake of Allard Baird's departure, each off-season has been marked by Moore trying in vain to acquire left-handed starting pitching. In the AL Central as it has been constructed for the duration of his time in Kansas City, this has made at least a little sense, as many of the best bats in the division are left-handed. Yes, this obsession has been mocked amongst the ranks of the more cynical Royals fanbase, as it has led to some pretty dubious signings--or, in the worst case, a inexplicable re-acquisition after successfully dumping the briefly useful Horacio Ramirez onto the roster of the intradivisional rival Chicago White Sox and getting the raw but toolsy Brazilian outfielder Paulo Orlando in return just months prior to signing Ramirez to a guaranteed contract.

Chen. Determination incarnate.

First the bad news: Bruce Chen will likely be considerably worse than he was last year. His BABIP of .286 will likely regress to the mean. The pedestrian nature of his 6.29 K/9, 3.66 BB/9, 1.72 K/BB, 33.9% GB rate, and 8.1% HR/FB all point toward the over-performance indicated in his 4.54 FIP and 5.01 xFIP from 2010.

The palatable side to this $2 million signing (with another $1.5 million in performance-based bonuses) is that there is value to the Royals at this stage in the game in simply having arms that can go six innings every five days. There is nothing sexy about the 5.00 ERA that last season's xFIP is pointing towards, but there is also nothing sexy about watching Sean O'Sullivan pitch. Period. Ultimately, O'Sullivan still has options left, Hochevar missed more than half of last season, and the four aforementioned starters in the mix in Spring Training are not likely to be ready. By the end of the 2010 season, the rotation held only two of its starters that had been in the rotation at the onset of the campaign, with Gil Meche, Brian Bannister, and Hochevar all having missed significant time. With the defections to Japan of Bannister, Anthony Lerew, and Bryan Bullington, the depth of arms that do not need protection and can be modestly trusted to get you into the sixth inning was shockingly non-existent. Simply said, the Royals need innings. Chen can give them this.

Is this a great signing? Not even remotely. The fact that we have to hope he doesn't zoom right past the mean on his way to the ERA-stratosphere is a little disheartening, but of the remaining candidates to be signed to fill out the rotation, Chen was probably going to cost less than Kevin Millwood, and the Royals really only need Chen to be serviceable until June or July, when not only do arms like Duffy, Mike Montgomery, Chris Dwyer, Aaron Crow, and Teaford start to garner serious consideration for getting called up but Zach Miner also is likely to be able to pitch again. At the least, Chen needs to serve as a bridge to the first wave. At most, he needs to pitch all year because injuries have ravaged the rotation. Given the price tag and what the Royals actually need him for, much more damage could have been done.

Canuck

The other wrong-handed pitcher is a Canuck by the name of Jeff Francis. Setting aside the fact that the Royals now have the makings of an excellent baseball reality show called Jeff Franc Squared, Francis came to Kansas City for Chen money and actually has some upside--enough that Dave Cameron deemed this the Best Free Agent Signing of the Winter. Dave Cameron is much better at this than I am.

While this seems like a bit of an overstatement, it does seem like there is very little money committed to Francis in the deal with another one-year $2 million deal with incentives that can add up to another $2 million. While it is true that both Bruce Chen and Jeff Francis were once highly regarded prospects, Francis's track record in the Majors is much more encouraging. Where Chen's career GB% is a scant 35.1%, Francis possesses a more impressive career rate of 43.2%--an average that is actually lower than all of his campaigns but one thanks to an extreme outlier of 37.7% in 2005. Every other season has seen Francis sitting in the 43.6 - 47.0% range. Furthermore, his career ERA of 4.77 is more than a quarter of a run higher than both his FIP and xFIP (both of which are weirdly 4.46), which has been inflated by .314 BABIP. His 2010 ERA was inflated by both a .322 BABIP and a 64.5% LOB%, so worries about that 5.00 ERA are probably unwarranted (even with the Royals defense behind him), as both his FIP and xFIP were over a full run lower--3.88 and 3.94, respectively.

If you skipped that last paragraph (or read the aforelinked Dave Cameron article that had much of the information regarding his 2010 campaign in it), Jeff Francis is a good candidate to have an ERA in the low-4.00s this year, even with some admitted holes defensively.

Sure, each pitcher is only committed to one season, and Francis is likely just playing for a contract with someone else in 2012, but $4 million total for two pitchers is a sound investment for a team that is in dire need of ML-ready starting pitchers with the ability to eat innings for one year while the prospects are sufficiently seasoned.

Another Chiefs Playoff Loss Equals No Real Monday Column

2011-01-10T06:30:00.001-06:00

I do not think many of us thought the Chiefs were going to win on Sunday, but that does not make the brutal loss any less soul-crushing. After playing a solid if uninspiring first half, the Chiefs were awful in the second half. The refs didn't help, but the Chiefs were awful and would/should not have won anyway.

I was in the seventh grade when the Kansas City Chiefs last won a playoff game. There will be high school seniors graduating in the Kansas City metro area who will have never been alive to have seen a Chiefs playoff win. Realistically, if you aren't at least 25 years old, you don't remember what it was like to have seen a Chiefs win in the postseason.
As fans of Kansas City teams, we have been subjected to what is now the longest playoff losing streak in NFL postseason history (four of those seven losses have been at home!) and 25 years without a postseason berth for the Royals. It will be at least one more for the Royals, as we can all agree that 2011 is lost.

I do not have the energy to write about sports today.

Nothing really happened with the Royals anyway, unless the "blogger access at FanFest contest" counts as news. As someone who lives 12 hours from Kansas City by car, I don't think I'll be putting my name in that hat. Oh, and there is that whole penchant for cursing* that I have.

*In fairness to myself, I do try to keep the cursing to instances in which frustration boils over. I also try not to make it too personal (certain hateful trollers excepted). Yes, it's cursing, and I do drop the occasional F-bomb in here, but what rational fan can look at 25 years of ineptitude and not get upset from time to time?

Royals Go Low-Risk With Zach Miner

2011-01-03T01:00:00.000-06:00

Dayton Moore signed former Detroit Tigers' righty Zach Miner to a minor league deal last week. He went under the knife toward the end of May of 2010 to have Tommy John surgery, which kind of makes me wonder what the point of this signing was. After all, the Royals are reportedly looking at him as a possible starter--he has been both a starter and a middle reliever over the course of his career--and it seems more than likely that he wouldn't be ready by the time he would do the Royals the most good.

The weirdest Miner pic I could find. What's in the box, Zach?

It is certainly possible that he will be back in time for the start of the season, which is when a possible starter would be most necessary for the Royals. Even if Moore signs someone like Kevin Millwood to actually eat innings, the opening day rotation does not have anything resembling depth. One injury in Spring Training and the Royals find themselves right back where they are right now--with four question marks in the rotation and not a lot of immediately promote-able fodder in the wings at AAA-Omaha. Yes, once June rolls around, someone like Mike Montgomery or Danny Duffy may be ready and the ticking of their arbitration should have been adequately delayed, but past that the Royals are likely to have their AAA rotation filled out with the likes of Everett Teaford, Luis Mendoza, and Manauris Baez/Gaby Hernandez*. The issue with those players** is that they simply will not be able to go deep enough into games to not stress the bullpen.

*To my knowledge, Hernandez is currently a free agent.

**I just really do not see Everett Teaford as being a semi-competent Major League starter.

While that is the case, I just don't know how Miner fits in. The bullpen should actually be one of the few sources of strength at the Major League level, enough that guys like Louis Coleman, Jeremy Jeffress, and Tim Collins may not break camp with the Royals despite their apparent readiness.

And it isn't like this is a costly signing. Signing a semi-useful former occasional starter to a minor league deal can't ever really be deemed a bad signing for a team like this. It is just that given the timing of his surgery I am skeptical that he will be ready to pitch in time for the signing to even mean anything to the Royals, who really need the rotational depth for the first two months of the season.

Now, who do we all think drafted Miner in the fourth round of 2000? Shockingly, the Atlanta Braves.

The "Rotation"

2010-12-27T08:00:00.002-06:00

As David Gobielewski pointed out earlier this week over at FanGraphs, the Royals' rotation heading into the 2011 season is looking pretty dicey. ZiPS is not particularly kind to any of the projected rotation with the best ERA+ projection being Luke Hochevar's 91*. Luke's 6.4 K/9 is also the best rate amongst projections for the potential 2011 rotation.

*Gil Meche is also listed at 91, but I have yet to see anyone talking about Gil Meche realistically being anything but an arm out of the pen in 2011.

It is obvious that even with tempered optimism for Hochevar in 2011 that the rotation is going to be brutally awful. The rotation of Hochevar, Kyle Davies, Sean O'Sullivan, and Vin Mazzaro is not a Major-League-caliber rotation, and that is only four pitchers. As mention, Meche's shoulder negates his ability to log innings as a starter. As of Sunday, Anthony Lerew has gone the way of Bryan Bullington is pitching in Japan in 2011. Bruce Chen is still a free agent but wants a multi-year contract. Brian Bannister's days in Kansas City are--for all intents and purposes--over.

While the issue of what will happen with the fifth slot is certainly one of concern, there is another issue that is likely to present itself. What follows is a list of the current Royals "starters" and the number of starts they have logged over the past three seasons with additional minor league starts in parentheses:

Luke Hochevar: 2008 - 22 (+3), '09 - 25 (+8), '10 - 17 (+2)
Kyle Davies: '08 - 21 (+11), '09 - 22 (+8), '10 - 32
Vin Mazzaro: '08 - 0 (+27), '09 - 17 (+9), '10 - 18 (+6)
Sean O'Sullivan: '08 - 0 (+25), '09 - 10 (+16), '10 - 14 (+15)

Granted, O'Sullivan is only 23 years old and Mazzaro is 24, so their respective start totals can be expected to have been curbed a bit as a result of their age, but the pitchers listed above have averaged 25.67, 31.33, 25.67, and 26.67 starts over the past three years. Hochevar managed to pitch only 103.0 innings in the Bigs last season. The top four candidates from the current 40-man roster for spots in the rotation combined for 81 starts in the Majors last year. That's half a season's worth of starts (read: oh, shit, that's not enough).

In 2010, the Royals were able to plug in guys like Bullington, Lerew, and Chen who were able to eat starts for a team beset by injuries. Unlike last season, Zack Greinke won't be making 30+ starts.

Everett Teaford as he escapes grasp of the Matrix

The Royals are also getting to the point where the pitchers at the upper levels of the farm system are pitchers whose development is actually integral to the future of the franchise and whose arbitration clocks need to be delayed. Yes, Dayton Moore & Co. have said Everett Teaford and Danny Duffy will likely be competing for that final spot in the rotation come Spring Training. Teaford has made one start above Double-A. Duffy has made seven starts above High-A. Given Moore's general pattern of hesitancy in regards to the deliberately slow advancement of their top prospects through the system, it doesn't really make much sense to me that Duffy would be in the mix. It would absolutely shock me if Duffy broke camp in the starting rotation in Kansas City. Hell, I'd be a little surprised if he was in Omaha. Past Teaford (who at the very least isn't a prospect-type that needs to be treated with kid gloves), there is organizational filler like Manauris Baez, Kevin Pucetas, Luis Mendoza, or Nathan Adcock (the Royals Rule V pick who has never pitched above High-A) who could conceivably spot start, but there is a serious lack of starting pitching depth at the upper levels of the organization that is expendable enough to be able to throw to the wolves, a la Eduardo Villacis.

So unless we are talking about transitioning Robinson Tejeda or Joakim Soria to the rotation, the Royals are realistically going to have to add multiple arms. As much as Jeff Parker* is going to hate this, I think one of those arms needs to be Kevin Millwood.

*Apparently, we are going through the same Week-After realization because I just went over to Royally Speaking to find that link, and saw this column...

It isn't a sexy signing, but in the wake of the Zack trade, the Royals simply need to be able to have a starter give them innings, especially in light of the fact that their presumed top four starters cannot be relied upon to make 30 starts a piece. What follows is the list of starting pitchers available on the free agent market who can reliably be expected to give you 30 starts: Kevin Millwood. That's it. One guy. From the rest of the crop, Carl Pavano, Andy Pettitte, and well, just those two could reasonably give you 30 starts next year.

Of the Royals highly touted prospects, Aaron Crow has had 22 rough starts at Double-A, Mike Montgomery has 13 starts at Double-A, John Lamb and Danny Duffy have seven starts at Double-A, Chris Dwyer has logged four starts at Double-A, Tim Melville has made 22 starts in High-A, and Will Smith made nine starts in Triple-A for the reckless Angels before he was traded to the Royals and reassigned to High-A. The first of those guys who is likely to make it to Kauffman is Mike Montgomery, barring some breakthrough for Crow. For all the talk of Duffy getting a shot at the rotation in Spring Training, I just don't see how his lack of innings pitched equates to him breaking into rotation before Montgomery.

Regardless of how the prospects break into the Major League rotation, I just do not see how they can make it through this season without getting a ton of innings pitched out of someone who is not currently with the organization. Unfortunately, Kevin Millwood fits this need better than anyone else. Even more than that, I don't know that signing him for two years would be the worst thing in the world. The Royals are not going to be playoff-bound in 2012 anyway, and if they were, it would mean that Millwood was likely their Number Five starter. Given that they have no money on the books for 2012, the modest salary Millwood would be due would be palatable.

Now that I've said that, I'm going to curl up into the fetal position and suck my thumb until I fall asleep because 2011 is going to be brutal in Kansas City.

Zack Greinke Gone

2010-12-19T20:00:00.000-06:00

My weekly post (and in all fairness, it's been slightly more than that lately) comes a day early this week, and this is all thanks to the fact that news of Zack Greinke being traded to the Brewers leaked a day earlier than they had planned to make the official announcement. So, despite the fact that most of the internet dies on the weekend, here we Royals fans are, searching for anything to make Greinke's departure make sense.

The six-player deal sees the Brewers getting Zack Greinke, Yuniesky Betancourt, and $2 million in cash to cover the 2012 buyout for Batter Nine You Sucky's option after the 2011 season. In return, the Royals are receiving Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, Jeremy Jeffress, and Jake Odorizzi.

My initial thought is, "Jesus, Zack can't catch a break. Yuni is gonna be killing him at short again?"

Unlike some, I can't say I blame Greinke for wanting to be traded to a team that is competitive. With the previous addition of Shaun Marcum, the Brewers have bolstered what had frankly been a shitty rotation. Greinke, Yovani Gallardo, Marcum, Randy Wolf, and possibly Chris Narveson in the five slot. If Narveson is your third starter you can probably write off 2011, even in the relatively weak NL Central. This definitely changes things for Milwaukee, putting them right in the hunt (on paper). Clearly, this is what Zack wanted. One would imagine that this is also largely why he elected not to go to Washington, who have Jordan Zimmermann and then no one in their rotation.

As things look right now, this appears to have been the best package the Royals had been offered for Greinke thus far. Whether or not that is actually enough is certainly debatable, but it would appear as though the Rangers were unwilling to part with Martin Perez and the Jays were not going to give them Kyle Drabek and Travis Snider. From all the unsubstantiated rumblings, it appears as though this was the best package on the table for the Royals as well as Greinke.

What did Dayton Moore get back exactly? Well, there are now three new players on the 40-man roster. Alcides Escobar was the 12th-ranked prospect on Baseball America's Top 100 list heading into 2010, which was coincidentally where MLB.com had him ranked. Keith Law was decidedly less bullish on Escobar, who he had ranked 54th overall last off-season. Heading into last year, I was pretty bullish about Escobar, whose glove was said to be very good and had begun to show signs of life at the plate.

He promptly disappointed at the plate and had a statistically middling season with the glove. He was a 0.6 WAR (FanGraphs' calculations) player, owing largely to his defense. Given his speed and 21.5 LD %, one can probably assume he was unreasonably unlucky in 2010 as he had a meager .264 BABIP. His career ML BB% is too low at 5.8%, but he is still a marked improvement from Betancourt at short, is only 24, and can't really be worse than he was last season. Dayton Moore has apparently confirmed that this will move Christian Colon off short now, which is probably for the best, and turns second base into an organizational position of strength with Colon, Johnny Giavotella, and injury prone Jeff Bianchi filling out the depth chart at the upper levels of the minors. One of those three almost has to hit at the big league level.

As far as Lorenzo Cain is concerned, John Sickels had this to say about him in October:

I don't expect Cain to hit .300+ every year, but I can see him as a consistent .270-.290 hitter with some seasons that get beyond that. If he boosts is isolated patience a bit, maintains his polish on the bases, his offensive and defensive skills will make him quite valuable.

As much as it blows to be relieved that Cain should unseat the newly-acquired previously-apparent starter in center field, Melky Cabrera, we can hopefully rest at ease next year with Moore having a reasonable out in telling The Melk Man to go screw, and that he's no longer the starter in left. He also has been mentioned (I honestly cannot remember where I saw this) as a potential candidate to lead off, which probably isn't a good thing, but who else on this godawful team should be? Chris Getz? While we may not have gotten to see Dyson manning center on Opening Day, Cain's plus glove and more developed bat logically force him into the starting lineup.

The pitcher with the most upside in the deal is 20-year-old righty Jake Odorizzi, who posted 10.1 K/9 in low-A ball, and has a career 9.4 mark with a 3.40 K/BB. Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus slots Odorizzi in at the ninth slot in the Royals' stacked farm system, and fifth amongst starting pitchers. According to Goldstein, he was the top starting pitcher in the Brewers' farm and would be a top three prospect in almost any other organization. Granted, he is not that advanced, but if his ceiling is that of a borderline Number Two pitcher, he has me the most excited of all of the players in the deal.

This leaves Jeremy Jeffress, who is more likely to grace the cover of High Times than Sports Illustrated. Goldstein had Odorizzi as a top 101 prospect. Jeffress slots in right ahead of Odorizzi at the #8 spot in his revised Royals prospect rankings. Heading into 2009, he was #100 on Baseball America's list. He has a career minor-league K/9 of 10.6 and was not converted to the bullpen until 2010. His fastball has been clocked at 102 MPH. He also was reported to have been added to Milwaukee's 40-man roster to avoid his expulsion from the game, as he has been suspended twice in the minors (first time for 50 games, second for 100) for pot use. MLBPA members are no longer tested for marijuana, hence the addition to the 40-man.

Honestly, I don't really give a damn about the marijuana usage. I am surprised that the same GM who jettisoned Danny Gutierrez* and Daniel Cortes for their character issues didn't care in this instance. I'd imagine the inclusion of Jeffress comes with one of two motives: (1) Moore is planning on turning around and packaging Jeffress, possibly with one of their glut of outfielders (read: Alex Gordon) for something else he perceives as a need, or (2) Jeffress promised to find Jesus and go to church with GMDM every Sunday.

*Gutierrez was for pot use, if I remember correctly.

Jeffress did advance all the way to Milwaukee this past season, and he does project to be a very strong reliever, and could join Tiny Tim Collins as highly touted prospects breaking camp with the big league club*.

*This is, of course, unless his second suspension has not been served to completion yet.

Now, what this means for the Royals in 2011 isn't that much different. With Zack Greinke, they were going to be terrible. Without him, they will be fucking terrible. Can anyone see the Royals not being a 105-loss team? That should net them the top pick of the 2012 draft. I guess if 2011 was already lost, why not get the first pick of the draft out of it?

The Royals are going to be really hard to watch next year. They should be defensively improved, and maybe that will begin to negate the loss of Greinke. As Moore had intimated a few weeks ago, he expects Everett Teaford and Danny Duffy to compete for the fifth-starter job. If no outside players are brought in to supplement the pitching staff, one would assume that Teaford, whose arbitration clock need not be delayed for cost-saving purposes, would be that fifth starter.

This move is not about 2011, though. In the long run, this does probably make them better in 2013. Maybe Moore could have gotten more for Greinke. I know I wish he did, but unfortunately this seems to have been the best deal of the bunch. At the very least, this deal looks better right now than the Johan-Santana-to-the-Mets and C.C.-Sabathia-to-the-Brewers deals look in retrospect. It is hard to be overly excited about this deal, but I really don't know what else to say other than that it happened.

To make room on the 40-man roster, Joaquin Arias was designated for assignment, potentially joining Lance Zawadzki on the list of players I have needlessly written about in the offseason because they have been DFAd before ever donning a Royals uniform. Phil Humber is the other Royal who has been DFAd to make room for the Royals rash of recent moves. All three were expendable.

The Phillies???

2010-12-14T10:00:00.005-06:00

Pardon the excessive question marking in the title. I rather dislike the usage of multiple question marks and exclamation points, but seriously.

It seems like many people dismissed the rumors of there being a mystery team involved in the Cliff Lee bidding war as being baseless and/or a negotiating ploy from the Cliff Lee camp. It would appear that these skeptics (myself included) were dead wrong. Cliff Lee signed a five-year, $120 million deal with a vesting option for a sixth year with the Philadelphia Phillies, who had not been linked to Lee at all prior to Monday.

This can only mean good things for the Royals insofar as the potential return for Zack Greinke is concerned. Where it was popularly thought that the loser of the Lee sweepstakes would have to press and get a trade worked out for the 2009 AL Cy Young winner, both teams have been left with their pants down. Well, the Rangers and Yankees are still without the ace they coveted, and the next best option after Zack would appear to either be Carl Pavano (via free agency) or Matt Garza (via trade). It has long been thought that these two teams have been the two most likely destinations for Greinke, but the surprise signing of Lee in Philadelphia adds a new wrinkle.

Of late, the Nationals have appeared to have been getting involved in the Greinke talks. With the Phillies seeming to have set themselves apart in the NL East as it currently sits, the Nationals are not the only team that may feel the need to get involved in the trade talks. The Braves' strong 2010 has to look a little less encouraging given the fact that the Phillies now have what looks to be the best rotation in recent memory. The Braves have previously been said to have had interest in Zack; now they may feel the need to do something to keep pace in the changing landscape of the NL East. If the Nationals become aggressors, can the Braves stand idly by, especially when they have the deeper system and just got back into the playoffs?

The other team that this could mean something for is the Blue Jays. While they have appeared reticent to include Drabek and Snider in trade talks, the Yankees' failure to land Lee leaves them vulnerable given the sorry state of their starting rotation. The addition of Greinke to what is already a promising young rotation would make Toronto much more threatening.

And then there are the Rangers and the Yankees, both of whom have been jilted by Lee. With all of these suitors, it can only mean good things for Kansas City, as long as Moore doesn't hold fast to the notion that the talent in return isn't at a specific position.

Melky Cabrera Is Now a Royal: Simon Says Championship

2010-12-13T19:30:00.002-06:00

The Melkman cometh, and I feel really dirty.

Having gotten that obligatory pun out of the way, last week Dayton Moore clearly decided that he was going to acquire only the shittiest outfielders on the free agent market. First, there was Francoeur, and all twelve Royals fans were up in arms. We knew it was coming--we'd known for years--but that didn't make the reality of the signing any easier to deal with.

Dammit.

Not to be outdone by himself, Dayton Moore went out and signed the awful Melky Cabrera. It took Braves fans less than a month last year to hate Melky Cabrera, with the labels of fat and lazy being applied to Cabrera rather liberally throughout the season. With his weight listed as 200 lbs for last season, he was 30 lbs heavier than he is listed at on his B-R Minor League page.

More importantly, if he is the starting center fielder heading into spring training as Bob Dutton reported, then the spectacular defense of Jarrod Dyson would definitely seem to be gracing the new stadium in Omaha or wasting away on the bench in Kansas City. Instead, the owner of a cumulative -22.3 UZR/150 in the outfield (-20.8 in LF, -30.4 in CF, and -7.6 in RF) in 2010 will be patrolling center. Sure, we're talking about a small sample size. If he came into camp motivated and in shape, 2010 could prove to be the outlier rather than a harbinger of things to come.

This would all be rendered irrelevant if Melky Cabrera could hit. His first five seasons would indicate that he cannot. With a triple slash of .267/.329/.380, an 86 OPS+, an average of 60 R, 23 2B, 3 3B, 8 HR, 10 SB, 54 RBI, 43 BB, 62 SO per season, and only six players found with a wOBA worse than Cabrera's .313 and at least 2,500 plate appearances since 2006 (three of whom will also be Royals in 2011--you know who they are), he has done next to nothing to indicate that he will be able to hit going forward.

If he has one saving grace, it is that he sort of draws walks and doesn't strike out much. His 8.1 BB% is very comparable to David DeJesus's 8.3 BB%. There are only 21 players from 2006-2010 with the same plate appearance stipulation as above with a lower K-rate than Melky's 13.0%. His O-Swing % is a rather high 27.9%, but his overall Contact % is a respectable 87.9%

Yes, he is just entering his prime, as Dayton Moore has reminded us all, but a shitty player's prime is still likely to be shitty. Using FanGraphs' WAR, only Yuniesky Betancourt has a lower WAR than Melky (the next two worst are Teahen and Francoeur). Given that he has nothing that he does well, it simply puzzles me that Jarrod Dyson would not be given a shot. At least Dyson does something well. It just seems that in a season that is already lost that it might make sense to not sign HORRIBLE FUCKING PLAYERS to block players who we could at least learn something about. Instead, we will get to watch the shittiest defense in baseball get shittier, and also have those shitty defensive players not be able to hit. Even if Dyson plays so poorly as to warrant being replaced, Gregor Blanco and Mitch Maier can both play as poorly as Cabrera, and neither are arbitration eligible until next year. Combined, they cost less than Melky, they can both play as poorly as Melky with a hand tied behind their back, and they are both already Royals.

Goddammit.

Jeff Francoeur Signed By Royals, World Keeps Spinning On Its Axis

2010-12-08T19:30:00.003-06:00

I guess I should have been careful what I said late last night (I 'wrote' that last post at 4:00 A.M.).

Goddammit.

If ever an SI cover got it right, it's this one...

Since Dayton Moore took the job with the Royals, it has seemed inevitable that Jeff Francoeur had a stop in Kansas City in his future. It is finally happening, as the Frenchman and the Royals have agreed to a one-year, $2.5 million deal with $500,000 in incentive bonuses and a $3 million mutual option for 2012.

In other words, the Dayton Moore Royals are paying the man who has the 2nd lowest WAR (-2.1*) amongst the top 200 players in plate appearances over the last three seasons at least $2.5 million this next year. At that price tag, it is hard to imagine a scenario in which Francoeur isn't limited to facing lefties, the only possible way in which he would not be a black hole in the line up as his platoon splits are .299/.343/.481 against LHP versus .256/.296/.403 when facing RHP. If his signing somehow meant that the Royals were resigned to a righty/left platoon split in right field with Francoeur and Alex Gordon, maybe this could work. After all, Gordon has hit a staggeringly bad .215/.290/.370 versus LHP**.

*Using Baseball-Reference's WAR, not FanGraphs'.

**I know he's been bad, but holy shit, when your platoon split makes Jeff Francoeur look decent your failures have to be magnified, right? We keep making excuses and holding out hope, but he's been moved off position and has done so little capably in the Majors over the past two years that I'm done with him.

Unfortunately, there is nothing about the day-to-day management of the team that would really point towards this logical platoon being stuck to, and while that is irksome, it is nothing compared to the fact that Dayton Moore has once again given us pause, forcing us to wonder what it is that he looks for on the free agent market. Yes, the farm system appears to have been miraculously overhauled, but what fucking trick does he think he has to tap into some mysterious potential that Jeff Francoeur has.

If there is one thing we can take solace in as Royals fans, it is that once this season which admittedly is already lost well before it ever began, we shall hopefully be free from the specter of a future with Jeff Francoeur. Maybe all it will take is Frenchy blowing ass like we all know he will to flush this notion of competency that Dayton Moore seems to have about Jeff Francoeur.

Until then, we'll get to watch what is sure to be the worst outfield in baseball struggle in the field* and at the plate.

*Yes, Jarrod Dyson is supposed to be great in the field, but I am skeptical that he will get the lion's share of the playing time in center. The platoon split of Gordon and Francoeur could at least be strong-armed in right, but Francoeur's defense is three full seasons removed from being top-notch. Mitch Maier, who may or may not get much playing time is honestly the only outfielder I have any faith in, and realistically he is a fourth outfielder. I hope that Gregor Blanco is not in a Royals' uniform come opening day.

Winter Meetings Overload

2010-12-08T08:00:00.003-06:00

So much seems to be happening all day long, yet it feels like for all the jibber-jabber and the whispering, nothing... is... happening... Stasis.

Just do something.

Anything.

We all know that Frenchman is going to be a Royal. Just give him the $18 million per contract that you've been wanting to, Dayton. Get it over with.

Argh. I give up.

It was fun, Zack.

Rant Addendum with Unfortunate NSFW Segment

2010-12-07T08:00:00.003-06:00

All right, it occurs to me that I let one idiot get my dander up, and maybe I didn't handle it with the most grace in the world. Since there are plenty of you who may not be aware, there was an Anonymous poster over at Rany on the Royals about a month and a half ago whose conduct was so bad as to force Rany Jazayerli to no longer allow Anonymous posting. This commenter was spewing ignorant, anti-Muslim vitriol (amongst other things) toward Rany, who is Muslim. If you need an example, his idiocy is sprinkled throughout the comments section of this post. I'll refrain from re-posting it here, as it only serves to amplify the hatred that burns at this little man.

Fast-forward six weeks and this same commenter pops up over here. Anyone who has been over at Rany on the Royals and active in the comments section knows of this troll. His modus operandi and poor control over the English language give him away.

I think when I wrote the passage responding to him that it was with the hope that it would shut him up here. To the extent that he hasn't posted here since the commenting setting was changed only verifies what I thought to be true: He snipes from behind the curtain of anonymity but won't publicly own up to what he says.

As for myself, well, this is what I said:

By the way, RT, I welcome your poorly punctuated, often barely intelligible comments, but anonymous commenting is no longer kosher here. Crawl out from under the rock in your mother's basement and hurl your inane insults from the open like the rest of us.

Oh, and learn how to read and write, you ignorant choadfucking toolbag. Your unoriginal, run-of-the-mill trolling could at least make sense, fucktard. For starters, it is 'bestiality' without the 'a,' you pederast. Your comment

Duggan you fuck, you. Prick.
was five words. Five. Two of which were the same word. Yet, amazingly you were unable to string those five words together to make any sense. Did you drop out of school when you were six, you three-toothed, jug-playing, horse-fellating hayseed? When you are done taking on that Pasadena mudslide that your father/brother is about to lay on you, log in with a username, and feel free to respond.

I am accountable for what I say here. Maybe it was a little rash, and it was inarguably pretty lewd, but I said it, and I'm owning it. I did allow this little parasite to bring me down to his level, and I also conceivably offended some people, so allow me to apologize.

To all the people who live in their mothers' basements, inane insult hurlers, ignorant choadfucking toolbags, fucktards, pederasts, six-year-old drop-outs, tri-toothed persons, jug players, horse fellaters, hayseeds, Pasadena mudslide enthusiasts, victims of incest, perpetrators of incest, inbreds, and people who are both brother and father to another person I apologize for lumping you in with this despicable piece of sub-human racist trash. You people did not deserve for me to denigrate your existences like that. Please accept my apology.

Now, dear readers, I apologize to any of the faint of heart at having to read some of what I wrote from a place of anger. If it is of any consolation, the rough draft was far less civil. Insofar as the cursing is concerned, well, it does find its way into this blog from time to time, as this is meant to be a reflection of this fan's experience. Try as I might, there is still a little too much anger that finds its way out of this sports fan.

Back with non-troll-baited content Monday, unless something that happens at the Winter Meetings forces me into action before then.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your patience.

Why am I still rooting for these Royals?

2010-12-06T08:00:00.002-06:00

During the 1985 World Series, I was just barely six years old; a kindergartener living in central Iowa. My dad was the one from Kansas City. He watched the Series, cheering downstairs while I slept. I didn't see a second of that World Series.

As 98% of the people who would stumble across this site know, the Royals have not made the playoffs since that World Series win. For a time, they were competitive but cursed to be in the same division as the performance-enhanced Oakland Athletics or a Twins team emboldened by Frank Viola's mustache.

That isn't to say that there weren't reasons to like the Royals after 1985. While he may not have been the best all-around player in the game, one could easily have argued that the most popular player in the sport was a Royal through 1990. Bo Jackson was an easy player for a young child to be impressed by. He was on a Saturday morning cartoon, for Christ's sake. Unless they start doing cartoons about overcoming Social Anxiety Disorder, there isn't about to be another Kansas City Royals star with a profile as large as Bo Jackson. When I was in third and fourth grade and living in Rochester, Minnesota, we would go up to the Metrodome when the Royals came to town despite the fact that the family was in a brief period of semi-voluntary (my father's choice, not mine) poverty.

In the summer of 1990, we moved to Mulvane, Kansas, for the end of that baseball season and the duration of the next one, moving to Southeast Minnesota shortly thereafter. Over the course of those two years, any doubt that I would continue on as a Royals fan was eradicated, as my freak baseball fan younger self devoured every Royals game I could.

I was 12 years old when we moved for the last time of my adolescence. We moved to a town that only got stations from Wisconsin. The internet was this thing that a friend or two had. Without cable, box scores and shitty AP game capsules of any games that had concluded by press time were the only way to follow the out-of-market Royals.

Then came the strike.

And years of losing followed.

Well, that doesn't actually summarize it very aptly.

One winning season since the strike.

Despite having that winning season in this past decade, the Royals still had the worst record in all of baseball.

Sure, I was a petulant and pretentious teen who deemed sports fandom as being below him. I was lucky enough to have given myself a few years off from the misery of being a Royals fan.

But while one could argue that I'm still petulant and pretentious, I was too dumb to stay away from the Royals, and if that wasn't enough, something within me compelled me to take on the thankless task of writing an entire fucking blog about this awful fucking team. I suppose I've been a glutton for many things, and punishment is apparently one of them.

Now that I can watch the Royals nearly every day, it causes more aggravation than anything else. A brighter future is a carrot at the end of a three-year fucking stick. Writing about this team makes you want to re-prioritize your life, and this past season left me sapped. A move and the corresponding lack of MLB Extra Innings foisted a month-long Royalslessness upon me. I needed it.

The Royals seem like they'll likely do very little of note this offseason. That is, of course, unless they trade everyone's favorite Royal. Then the entire 2011 season will be even more of a tiresome affair from the fans' standpoint, largely spent hoping that the handful of prospects who get called up don't suck.

Despite my existence as a Royals blogger being validated by the Rany Troll*, it becomes increasingly more difficult to justify both my Royals fandom and actually bothering to write about them at all.

*By the way, RT, I welcome your poorly punctuated, often barely intelligible comments, but anonymous commenting is no longer kosher here. Crawl out from under the rock in your mother's basement and hurl your inane insults from the open like the rest of us.

Oh, and learn how to read and write, you ignorant choadfucking toolbag. Your unoriginal, run-of-the-mill trolling could at least make sense, fucktard. For starters, it is 'bestiality' without the 'a,' you pederast. Your comment

Duggan you fuck, you. Prick.

was five words. Five. Two of which were the same word. Yet, amazingly you were unable to string those five words together to make any sense. Did you drop out of school when you were six, you three-toothed, jug-playing, horse-fellating hayseed? When you are done taking on that Pasadena mudslide that your father/brother is about to lay on you, log in with a username, and feel free to respond.

I'm going to try to stick it out. Hopefully the future is as bright as the prospect experts say it is, but 2011 may try every last ounce of my patience.

Is anyone else feeling the same way?

The Zack Greinke Conundrum

2010-11-29T08:00:00.025-06:00

Royalscentricity Note: It is my intent this until Spring Training kicks off to have an entry per week, and that it will be up on Monday. Last week's was delayed by a day because I fell asleep while writing it Sunday night. But until Spring Training kicks off and there is more to write about, I will be writing here once a week on Monday. That is, of course, unless the subject of this entry is traded, at which point there will be something both time-sensitive and serious to write about.

As always, I'll be posting the updates on the Royalscentricity Facebook Group which also feeds to the Old Man Duggan Twitter account, so if you need a reminder feel free to follow either or both of these feeds.

Is that a smile forming, Zack? (photo originally found here)

It should go without saying that there is one movement and one movement only that we Royals fans find ourselves preoccupied with this off-season. Until Zack Greinke is dealt or signed to another extension, we are left to agonize over what may or may not happen.

There is an obvious duality to this whole situation: Having Zack makes the Royals better, and trading Zack could make the Royals better.

Now one of those statements is incontrovertible. Zack Greinke is a season removed from being the closest thing to Pedro Martinez in his prime since Pedro was in his prime. He didn't just win a Cy Young. A season like his 2009 comes around once, maybe twice a decade, and he did it in a Royals uniform. With Greinke, though, it wasn't just 2009. Since rejoining the rotation on August 24th of 2007, Greinke has been pretty damn good, maintaining a 3.18 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 8.36 K/9, 2.26 BB/9, and 3.70 K/BB. This is clearly the stat line of a front-of-the-rotation starter, and his value is very real.

Moreover, he puts butts in the seats every fifth day. In 2009, every Greinke start was an event, and you could tell this was the case by looking at the stands. He appeals to a dwindling fan base because, quite frankly, he is the only superstar the Royals have had since they traded away Carlos Beltran, and even Beltran wasn't as universally appreciated as Zack Greinke has been since his otherworldly campaign two years ago.

Unfortunately, Zack Greinke plays for an incredibly shitty team. The Royals had the worst record in baseball in the Aughts, despite the fact that they actually had a winning record in one of those seasons, unlike the Pittsburgh Pirates, who haven't seen a record above .500 since 1992. In his past 105 starts, the Royals have held a 50 - 55 record, and Zack has a 41 - 34 record to show for his efforts. The false hope that had grown within him when he signed his contract extension coming out of the 2008 season came crashing down during the 2009 season, and his frustration surfaced very publicly when he began to vent about how he didn't want to wait around to experience his third rebuilding phase in Kansas City. If we Royals fans are frustrated with the state of affairs at One Kauffman Way, imagine how it must feel to be dragged down by a dismal team around us.

Now here's where it gets tricky. Even with Zack Greinke's past mental obstacles, we have a pretty good idea as to what his value is in the present and going forward. At worst, he is a 5.0 WAR starting pitcher with no injury history who turned 27 in October. According to FanGraphs' valuation system, his performances over the past three seasons have been worth $22.3 in 2008, $42.5 in 2009, and $21.0 million in 2010. That 2009 season had him more valuable than everyone else in baseball. Everyone. You have to go back to Randy Johnson in 2001 to find any player whose season was worth more than Zack Greinke's 2009 would have been on the free agent market.

What the Royals are faced with now is a player who has publicly voiced his discouragement at the state of the Royals Major League roster. A player whose contract is up after the 2012 season when 2013 is realistically the first year that a good chunk of what is now nearly universally thought of to be the best minor league system in all of baseball should be contributing at the Major League level. Two seasons is a long time to be on a team day in and day out waiting for a sunnier day.

The only issue with that last sentence is that it may not actually be that long. In 2011, the Royals will finally start to see their farm system graduate some of its multitudinous talent to the Majors. Dayton Moore will wait just long enough to delay Mike Moustakas's arbitration clock a year. Tim Collins may break camp on the Opening Day roster. At least one of the Royals young lefties should find themselves getting the call as the season progresses. Hell, if things broke right for the Royals, they may find themselves with Danny Duffy, Chris Dwyer, and Mike Montgomery toeing the rubber at the K. And if there was one key bat in the minors who could conceivably make the jump to the Majors come August, it would probably be that of Eric Hosmer.

Moose respects his wood (originally here)

Now all of that is pretty optimistic. Moustakas almost surely will get called up in June, and Eric Hosmer seems to be exactly one year behind Mike Moustakas as far as when he has been advanced to the next level. To expect the Royals not to try to push back the start of his arbitration clock would be foolish unless Hosmer were to unexpectedly start the season in Omaha and then show that he had nothing left to prove. Now nothing has been done to give us cause to expect the Royals to deviate from what seems to be a pattern of somewhat conservative advancement of their prospects through the minors, but if his run in the Texas League playoffs showed us anything, it is that Hosmer doesn't really have anything left to prove in Double-A. While it is likely that he will begin 2011 in Springdale, starting the season in Omaha isn't entirely out of the question. If Zack Greinke were still in Kansas City, perhaps seeing not only Moose but also Hosmer joining the team and contributing to the club in a substantive way in 2011 could persuade him to look at the future in a much more positive light. The rotation is likely to be bolstered as well with the addition of Duffy, Dwyer, and/or Montgomery at some point in the season.

No, the Royals will not be competing in 2011, but 2012, while not likely, is still a possibility. As Ken Rosenthal has posited, maybe Zack will be singing a different tune come spring training when he actually gets to take a look at what the Royals have waiting in the wings. After all, how many of us at this time last year thought that the minor league system would be looking like it does now? So, yes, 2011 is already lost. 2012 might not be.

Obviously, the timing of the expiration of Zack Greinke's current contract is not likely to be concurrent with when we all hope the Royals to be contending. Barring a major miracle, Zack Greinke will be a free agent the offseason before the Royals could conceivably contending for the AL Central Divisional Title. If there were a single player who would be likely to re-sign with the Royals, it would be Zack Greinke, though, even taking his comments in August into account. After all, his no-trade clause only serves to solidify the notion that he would not want to bolt for the bright lights of New York or Boston. He simply wants to play for a winner. While the Royals are not there yet, they are not far off.

Unfortunately, to re-sign him if he were still with the team would likely cost upwards of $20 million a season, which is more than likely quite a bit more money than a team like the Royals should be committing to a single player. The fan in me really doesn't want to see him go. The pragmatist in me sees that he could yield quite the return on the trade market, and that return is likely to be at its peak value the instant Cliff Lee signs his name to a dotted line.

The Devil Incarnate

As Royals fans, I think we are all a little gun-shy when the necessity of trading off our hot commodities for prospects presents itself. Carlos Beltran? Johnny Damon? Jermaine Dye? After dealing their trio of outstanding outfielders, the Royals had Mark Teahen, John Buck, Mike Wood, Angel Berroa, A.J. Hinch, Roberto Hernandez, and Neifi Perez to show for their stars. Even Bill James said recently that

[I]f it's me, I don't trade Zack Greinke unless I can get two Zack Greinke's in return.

Having to stomach another ultimately disastrous trade, would be more than most of us could take. Yes, it is a different regime, but I think most of us are still leery of Dayton Moore's eye for Major League talent. He is the man responsible for trading two prospects for Yuniesky Betancourt mere weeks before he was likely to be designated for assignment. He did hand out a three-year, $36 million contract to Jose Guillen. He chose to trade a quality middle reliever for Mike Jacobs. He saw fit to sign Jason Fucking Kendall to a two-year, $6 million contract.

Yes, the minor league system seems to have been overhauled entirely. If the Royals can somehow manage to not fuck this all up, the credit likely has to go to Moore, but the fact remains that he has been below average when it comes to constructing a Major League roster. He has also had only one of his draftees advance to the Majors, and that was Greg Holland, so we are operating from a hypothesis based on theoretical projections when we look to the future with optimism. The overhaul of the minors seems to point towards Moore having a good idea as to what he is doing on the farm, and that is where Royals fans have to be looking when we begin to think about the probable departure of Zack Greinke in the coming months.

The most likely destination seems to be Texas, who are not in the AL Central, and are thought to be playing with the shorter stack of chips in the Cliff Lee poker game with the Yankees and possibly the Nationals. Even if the Rangers were to sign Cliff Lee, they would certainly have the prospects to trade for Greinke if they really wanted to make another run in 2011. With the key to a deal with the Rangers likely hinging on Jurickson Profar being included in the deal (who Greg Schaum covered in detail with info from the Newberg Report here), the Royals could also get an additional combination of players from the pool of Derek Holland, Tanner Scheppers, Martin Perez, Engel Beltre, Craig Gentry, Leury Garcia, and Julio Borbon, all of whom have been kicked around in rumors everywhere from The Newberg Report to USA Today. Given Schaum's knowledge of how the Royals operate, I'll defer to his notion that the Royals would more or less demand Jurickson Profar, which essentially rules out Engel Beltre, as it seems like a deal would be either/or for the bats of the non-throw-ins (read: Julio Borbon, Craig Gentry, and Leury Garcia, of whom the Royals would likely get one, possibly because they threw in Gregor Blanco). So I think from the Royals standpoint, it would probably take Holland, Perez, Profar, and either Gentry or Borbon to wrest Greinke (and Blanco) from their grip. That is probably the best deal they can get this off-season for Greinke, and most smoke is coming from camps believing that Texas is the best fit right now.

The next one that makes sense from the Royals' standpoint would be a three-team deal involving Arizona and a team like the Braves or Rangers in which the Royals got back Justin Upton. I'll not spend a lot of time on this as this seems less likely considering that the Royals are on Justin Upton's no-trade list. Maybe he would waive the clause, but it is an extra hurdle. With Upton signed through 2015, he would step in and be the cornerstone of the Royals offense at the ripe age of 23 and they'd have him until his walk year at 28 years old. The Royals would likely have to give up another prospect in a three-way deal, with the Braves/Rangers having to throw in three top-tier prospects, but the Royals would get All-Star level help immediately in this deal.

The next team that makes some sense, unless you are holding onto the notion that teams should not trade top talent within the division, an arcane notion that Moore & Co. could certainly be operating under, is the Twins. It would seem like the Twins likely have a pair of top prospects to build a deal around. Kyle Gibson and either Aaron Hicks or Ben Revere (Moore would hopefully demand Hicks over Revere, who has yet to develop anything resembling power) would likely be central to a trade getting done. There would also need to be a Major League-ready arm in the deal. Kevin Slowey's name has been included in some of the rumblings that I've but a fair amount of them have been utterly off-base and not at all in line with what Dayton Moore is generally accepted as having be his standard for pulling off a trade--two ML-ready players and two top prospects. It would likely take a Slowey type (I doubt they'd want to take on Nick Blackburn given his contract status) plus Gibson, Hicks or Revere, and a fringe Major Leaguer who addresses a positional weakness from the standpoint of organization depth.

Lastly, teams like the Braves and the Blue Jays make at least a bit of sense.

The Braves obviously have the talent in their farm system to pull off a deal, and Dayton Moore clearly feels comfortable trading with his old organization. A deal in which they got a pitching prospect like Julio Teheran, Mike Minor, Randall Delgado, or Arodys Vizcaino. While Mike Minor is a lefty, something the Royals don't exactly need right now, he also made his ML-debut this past season, so he is ready. Teheran seems like he would be off-limits in trade talks, so personally, Delgado seems like the closest righty to the Majors of the bunch. Unfortunately, the Braves are a little weak in the positional prospect arena. Freddie Freeman is a great prospect but plays first base, which isn't exactly a point of weakness with Eric Hosmer waiting in the wings. It would also seem like the Royals would try to get stronger up the middle. Maybe Matt Lipka or Andrelton Simmons would help get a deal done, but it would be less enticing than adding Freeman's bat. Sure, Hosmer or Freeman could be moved to a corner outfield slot, but the prospects don't seem to line up quite as well as they do in either the Twins or Rangers scenarios, and they're not getting a five-tool 23-year-old All-Star back like they would in an Upton deal.

Shaun "Guns" Marcum representing

As for the Blue Jays, not only would Zack Greinke be a good fit for a prospect-heavy team, but positionally their strengths fit well with what Dayton Moore is looking for. They have also expressed interest in Alex Gordon. It would seem like a package that consisted of one of their trade-able righties (Kyle Drabek or Zach Stewart), one of their bevy of catchers (J.P. Arencibia, Carlos Perez, or Travis D'Arnaud), a starter like Shaun Marcum, Ricky Romero, or Brett Cecil, and Travis Snider for Alex Gordon and Zack Greinke.

Now, obviously, all of these deals share one thing in common: the Royals would be getting a shitload of talent back. Clearly, Dayton Moore does not need to trade Zack Greinke. There is even still a slim chance that the Royals could sign him to an extension if that is both Moore and Zack's prerogative when the time comes. As Moore has stated, the Royals will only trade Greinke if the right offer comes around. For this one time, they seem to be in the driver's seat and can command what they get in return for their ace.

Given the asking price, which seems pretty in line with what has been laid out here, it is improbable that the Royals deal Greinke. With the time frame Moore is working with, I actually, for once, have confidence that Moore will get a substantial haul for Greinke. I have been leery of most of his trades thus far, but Greinke's value seems pretty easy to me to ascertain.

As a subjective fan, I want to see Zack Greinke on the mound sporting a Royals uniform every fifth day. Objectively, I know that a deal that nets what that Rangers deal or that Blue Jays deal would bring back makes the Royals better in the long run.

Royals Hot Stove in Review: Second Movement

2010-11-22T08:00:00.002-06:00

Getting a little more caught up here, Dayton Moore shipped off the mainstay in the Royals lineup for most of the last decade, David DeJesus. Immensely likable and fairly reliable, it isn't without a healthy amount of sorrow that we fans have to say goodbye to him. Sure, he was the face of the franchise* during an especially dark time--our Don Mattingly, if you will--but like Donnie Baseball none of the Royals' struggles could be blamed on him.

*It could certainly be well argued that Zack Greinke has been the face of the franchise for most of this time, but Zack did walk away from the game, was a middle reliever for the greater part of a season, and had that rough 2005. DeJesus was at the fore from 2004 on. Yes, Zack won a Cy Young, but if anything that makes him un-Royal-like.

He'll be taking his wistful glances to Oakland

DDJ was solid to be sure, but it would seem that Dayton Moore missed his optimal trade window on DeJesus by about three or four years. DeJesus's name had been talked of in Royals trade rumors for years, especially when the perception that he was able to man center was still alive and well. His 2006 campaign was a solid one defensively. While he took a step back in 2007 (if we're to pay total heed to his UZR/150 regression from 17.4 to -0.6 from '06 to '07), many still thought that he could still hold down center field heading into the 2008 season. Rumors swirled around primarily involving (predictably) the Braves, whose need for a center fielder after the departure of Andruw Jones was great enough that the Royals probably could have maxed out their return for DDJ then, but there were rumblings regarding a handful of other teams as well, especially after spring training had begun.

At every trade deadline since that point, David DeJesus's name seemed to be the primary name involved in most of the trade ruminations. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, given GMDM's general inability to evaluate talent at the Major League level), Moore never pulled the trigger on a deal, and this year Moore found himself with an injured DDJ at the deadline.

So DeJesus got dealt two Wednesdays ago after the Royals picked up his $6 million option.

What they got in return is roughly the equivalent to what they got for Alberto Callaspo in July.

It's called a 'razor,' Mr. Mazzaro...

Vin Mazzaro is about a year older than Sean O'Sullivan. Mazzaro's stuff is probably a little bit better than O'Sullivan's and he has fourth pitch, but at this moment in time they are both borderline fifth-starters. Of course, on today's Royals that puts each of them in the running for Number Three Starter status. To be fair to each pitcher, they are both fairly young. Either one could certainly become decent pitchers, but they both have a long way to go. On a real Major League team (read: not these Royals), it would be reasonable to suggest that Mazzaro might edge out O'Sullivan in the contest for which pitcher of Euro-Catholic descent would win the role of fifth starter, so he probably has just a little more value than O'Sullivan, at least today.

As far as the minor league lefty arms Moore netted in each trade, it would seem to me (and I'd be the first to admit that I'm no scout) that Will Smith is the better bet between him and Justin Marks, who was the second part of the DeJesus deal. Nevermind that the Angels foolishly decided to move Will Smith all the way up to AAA - Salt Lake City this past season, Will Smith (6'5", 235 lbs) at 20 in High-A ball was solid especially at Wilmington, where he kept his K/9 at 8.4 while maintaining a 12.75 K/BB over 54.2 IP. If you only look at what Smith did in the levels that he should have been in* (not AA or AAA as 20-year-old), he has been an 8.13 K/9, 5.38 K/BB, 1.118 WHIP pitcher over 280 IP.

*Yes, this is certainly cherry-picking, but in this case it is probably warranted, unlike his two-level promotion.

As far as Marks is concerned, the A's drafted him out of college at Louisville in the third round of the 2009 draft. Upon signing, he logged one abysmal start in the Arizona Rookie League, and well that was his 2009 professional season. Heading into the 2010 season, John Sickels had Will Smith ranked 21st in the A's organization with a C+ grade and the following to say about him:

I liked him a lot coming out of college at Louisville, advanced feel for pitching with decent stuff, but we need to see some innings.

At least he looks like he's throwing it hard

Baseball America had the 6'3", 170 lb. southpaw ranked 27th in the A's farm heading into this past season. A year-and-a-half older than Smith, Marks compiled 9.5 K/9, 2.78 K/BB, and a 1.353 WHIP in 129.1 IP between Low-A and High-A this year. Apparently, he struggled a bit with a groin injury in 2010, but it still seems to me that optimistically he ends up being Vin Mazzaro. If comparing him to Smith, which I apparently feel compelled to continue to do, his much poorer K/BB at an older age at the same levels would certainly lead me to believe Smith may have the brighter future.

So Mazzaro and Marks are what the Royals got back from Oakland in exchange for a 32-year-old David DeJesus's services in left at a $6 million price tag for one year. Using FanGraphs' WAR-based player-valuation, DeJesus's performance has exceeded that price tag in worth on the free agent market in every year since 2005. His on-field performance has been worth $11.5, $14.8, and $10.3 million in the past three years. Even given his age, it can be expected that he will give the A's more than what he is getting paid.

This haul is roughly equivalent to what the Royals got back for three-and-a-half years of Alberto Callaspo. With his price tag about to go up due to arbitration, the value of Bert's performance has been $5.4, $10.5, and $5.5 million over that same stretch of time. In DeJesus's career, he hasn't played a full season in which
his value was as low as Callaspo's in 2008 and 2010 since he was a rookie in 2004. DDJ's average worth since 2005 has been $11.65 million. Over the course of his career he has been a 18.3 WAR player. With his two negative WAR partial seasons, Callaspo has been a 4.0 WAR player since first breaking in as a part-time player in 2006.

At the very least, betting on DeJesus to produce for one year is a much better bet than Callaspo. Sure, Callaspo is owed less money and could be declined an arbitration offer in any of the next few offseasons, but it does seem like Dayton Moore could conceivably have gotten more for David DeJesus than virtually an identical package that he got for Alberto Callaspo. Moreover, I'd imagine that if he had chosen a trade partner not named Billy Beane, he could have gotten more in return. Maybe the Royals player development can turn these lemons into lemonade.

Obviously Moore has been taking offers for DeJesus for a while now. Perhaps, this is the most he could have gotten for DeJesus. What I can't imagine is that if he had traded DeJesus when his value was much higher--say three years ago--that Moore could have gotten a lot more in return for DeJesus, and some of that talent could be producing in Kansas City at a higher level than we all expect Vin Mazzaro to yield at the back end of the Royals rotation this year, and let's not even begin to assume that Marks will produce at all in a substantive way at the Major League level.

Oh, well...

(And, no, despite my affinity for both the Royals and Journey, I did not make that video)

Royals Hot Stove in Review: The First Movement(s)

2010-11-17T08:00:00.007-06:00

As has been his modus operandi in his tenure at One Royal Way, Dayton Moore has wasted little time in heating up the stove. As we Royals fans have become accustomed to, the moves that Dayton Moore* has made thus far have been met with a tepid response from the fan base, and by 'fan base' I mean bloggers.

*When typing 'Moore,' I inadvertently plunked out 'Moron.' While not intentional, I felt it was funny enough to make note of here.

Moore & Co. kicked off this 2010-'11 off-season with the claiming of Joaquin Arias* off of waivers. Whether or not this was an effort to breathe life into what should have been a dead Contest, the claiming of this Mets castoff addressed what clearly had to be Dayton Moore's top off-season priority...

*Leading to other announcers surely butchering his name, as they have Joakim Soria despite his All-Star status. This also will only confuse the legions of casual hipster Royals fans who already thought that this was the Royals closer:

Praying to the Gods of Utilitarian Cutlery

Replacing the dearly departed* Willie Bloomquist.

*Pennant race or not, being shipped to Cincinnati may as well be wishing death upon someone.

In Joaquin Arias, the Royals have basically acquired a 26-year-old version of Willie Bloomquist. Having garnered very little playing time at the Major League level, making too much out of a utility infielder's 275 plate appearances spread out over four seasons probably isn't very useful. His triple-slash in the Majors has been .276/.314/.362, which is actually pretty comparable to his minor league line of .285/.317/.378. If a sub-.700 OPS leaves you wanting, you're not alone. That minor league triple-slash is not dissimilar the one Bloomquist posted (mostly before the age of 25) of .281/.336/.375.

Over the course of nearly 3,400 plate appearances in just under 800 minor league games played, Arias has stolen 138 bases and been caught 51 times, good for a rather pedestrian 69.3% success rate. Like Bloomquist, Arias has spent most of his young career manning either second or short. His strike-out rate in the minors is just below 10% (9.9%), which is solid enough, but his walk-rate in the minors has been a paltry 4.3%. To put this into perspective, Miguel Olivo's career walk rate in the Majors is 4.1%.


As long as he continues to hate the Tigers, I'll cope

The difference with Olivo, of course, is that he has extra-base power. A 4.0% walk-rate, although never exactly palatable, is damn near worthless when in the form of an only moderately speedy slap-hitter whose likelihood of hitting a home run in an at-bat was a Bloomquistian 0.88% (for comparison, Willie's was 0.81% in the minors, and we all know how he turned out).

Now if you thought that the acquisition of Willie Bloomquist 2.0 would have sated Moore's hunger for cast-off utility infielders, you couldn't have been more wrong.

Enter Lance Zawadzki.

To be fair, Zawadzki had been a borderline top ten prospect in the Padres organization heading into the 2010 season, but he lost a bit of his luster after a 2010 campaign that saw him hit a meager .225/.291/.316 between Double-A and Triple-A. It is hard to look at those numbers, especially his stint with the same Double-A affiliate that he ended 2009--managing to see his triple-slash drop from .289/.372/.416 in 92 games to .216/.280/.345 in 35 games with San Antonio this year--without wondering whether or not he was playing hurt this year.

Unofficially courtesy of AP... (Thanks?)

While he does turn 26 this coming May, it is still conceivable that the once somewhat highly regarded prospect could improve on his .268/.344/.401 career minor league triple-slash. Clearly, there is more upside to his bat than there is to Arias's. Zawadzki is also reported to have a solid glove and a very good arm and, like Arias, can play second (and third, for that matter), although he has primarily played shortstop in the minors.

With a far more respectable 10.0 BB%, his 20.2% K-rate and .495 BB/K ratio are such that he may be able to play semi-regularly without being a black hole in the batting order. He has also enjoyed an 84% success rate in stealing bases. As his slugging percentage would indicate, Zawadzki looks to be a better waiver claim than Arias, but given his woeful 2009, it is hard to get excited about him in anything more than a pipe-dream kind of way. Unfortunately, for either one of these guys to be anything more than slightly cheaper Sporks, too much would have to break the Royals' way.

This just goes to show that you can take the Bloomquist out of KC, but two more just pop up in his place.

In the next installment: DeJesus is dealt, but for what?

A Bright Side to the Royals Not Being in the Playoffs

2010-10-21T08:00:00.001-05:00

It has been a while and this is not likely to appease the four of you who have been wondering where I've been, but we're in the midst of a Royals lull.

Really the lull set in on June 1st or so, but I'll not quibble.

Until the day after the World Series, when Dayton Moore will likely make some move that will leave us searching for insights to make on his offseason plans, we won't have much to talk about in regards to the Royals.

I have found myself returning to watching baseball right now, with my attention having been drawn by the Rangers, a team whose farm system was widely regarded as the top minor league system in the game a few short years ago. As I've watched these Rangers hand it to the Yankees, something has struck me as borderline offensive. It really began to bother me in the late innings of Game Four, with the Rangers up big in a series in which they had thoroughly dominated the Yankees for all but one inning of the series.

While watching the TBS broadcast of Game Five of the ALCS, if one were to only listen to the commentary, one would have believed that the Yankees had been dominating the Rangers. When the Robinson Cano unsuccessfully made the turn at second to try to convert the double play, the praise for Cano was effusive. Ron Darling spoke about how Robinson Cano was the best defensive second baseman in the American League and how he turned the double play better than any other second baseman in the game. Again, this was IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING AN UNSUCCESSFUL TURN OF THE DOUBLE PLAY.

On a Francisco Cervelli throw to second in an attempt to throw out the speedy Elvis Andrus, Darling exclaimed how great Cervelli's throw was. Andrus was safe.

These are but a few examples of how ridiculous the commentary, especially the color work of Ron Darling, who must not be aware that baseball is played outside of New York, has been.

As Game Five wound down, Derek Jeter was showered with praise after starting off 0-for-3 then drawing a walk and connecting on what equated to a swinging bunt that traveled a full 40 feet from home plate earning a single. This stellar day at the plate was used to illustrate exactly how great Jeter is when Ron Darling stated, "This is just the kind of player Derek Jeter is!"

Someone please stab my fucking ears out before I have to hear this Yale-educated toolbag brutally rape another playoff broadcast.

If we Royals fans can take solace in anything, it's that we don't have to watch our team in the playoffs facing the Yankees and not actually know how our team is doing because the announcing crew (Smoltz excepted) is too busy fellating the opponent.

Naturals Lose But Hope Springs Eternal

2010-09-10T01:30:00.001-05:00

With Game 1 of the Texas League semis in the books, the league's best team in the regular season finds themselves in a 1 - 0 hole, having lost in 12th as the semi-stable Patrick Keating gave up two earned on Peter Kozma's second home run of the night.

This all came well after Danny Duffy ran his pitch count up to 100 with two outs in the sixth. While one could opine that Duffy was not economical with his pitches, it should be noted that the man who had to take time off to rediscover his love for the game struck out 10 while walking three and allowing four hits. After running into a bit of trouble in the second, he dominated, striking out the side in two of the five innings he saw all the way through.

When Duffy walked away from baseball in the end of March, I was at my wit's end. While the future was anything but certain, the alarmist in me began to panic. Was this the beginning of the end? After a harrowing 2009 in the minors for the Royals, this was just more fuel to the fire.

Wow, what a difference a season makes.

After a worrisome 2009 season split between low-A Burlington, where he struggled, and the notoriously unfriendly confines of the Royals' high-A affiliate, Wilmington, DE, where he bombed, the 24th ranked prospect in the game according to Baseball America heading into 2019 found himself un-ranked to start this season.

Mike Moustakas found himself plummeting down the ranks after two straight seasons ranked in the top 20, landing at the 80th spot to start the 2010 season. Today, he finds himself having been voted the Minor League Hitter of the Year by the Sporting News.

Danny Duffy came back and hasn't looked to have missed a beat. Sure, his K-rate dipped a little upon reaching Northwest Arkansas, but it was still over a strikeout per inning, and the sample size is probably to small to get too concerned over.

John Lamb and Mike Montgomery have both pitched so well at times to have elicited praise so effusive that even I blushed, and the praise wasn't for me. The unofficial title of best left-handed pitching prospect in the game has been used in reference to both, and that application seems to be warranted. Yes, Lamb certainly struggled after getting promoted to Double-A, but if memory serves me correctly, Lamb became the third-youngest player* in the Texas League this year when he was called up to join the Naturals. It also bears mentioning that his BABIP was .333 which certainly helped nudge his WHIP up to the unhealthy 1.515 it reached over his 33.0 innings of work.

* I believe the two younger players were Jordan Lyles and Martin Perez. Of course, the (Dis)Astros then saw fit to promote Jordan Lyles to AAA - Round Rock....

Then there's Wil Myers, one of the few bright spots from last season. In very limited time after signing his much-above-slot contract shortly after being drafted only to have his contract put in the do not approve until the signing deadline bin by Bud Selig & Co., Myers exploded onto the scene, but having logged only 22 games between two rookie level teams, Royals fans had to be cautiously optimistic regarding the possible-catcher/probable-outfielder heading into 2010. Myers has proven that his 2009 was indicative of what was to come, as he tore up Burlington and Wilmington(!). The 19-year-old triple-slashed .315/.429/.506 between the two A levels of ball. Perhaps most impressive was the fact that he actually played better in Wilmington than he did in Burlington, posting a .346/.453/.512 slash line while playing half his home games in hitter's hell. Sure, his home run totals dwindled a bit once reaching Delaware, but his 54 extra base hits in 128 games at each level as a 19-year-old is tantalizing, and the potential value of his bat is extraordinary regardless of where he ends up biding his time on the field.

With these big question marks have been re-punctuated as exclamation points, the fact that the struggles of Aaron Crow and the season-long absence of high-profile Cuban defector Noel Arguelles effectively knocked two of the Royals four Top 100 Prospects (as usual, according to Baseball America) out of the rankings, and the Royals still find themselves with five likely top 50 (conservative estimate here) prospects heading into 2011 has to been reassuring to even the most pessimistic of Royals fans.

Furthermore, no mention has been made of Chris Dwyer, the potential of Cheslor Cuthbert, the new fan favorite Tim Collins, and 2010 draftees Christian Colon and Brett Eibner. With the two highest levels of the Royals farm having been in the playoff hunt until the final days of the regular season and one of those teams looking to be the class of their league (by having said that, I'm sure the Naturals will be three-and-out), the talent has advanced to the higher levels of the farm system and should begin infusing the Major League roster with some legitimate prospects as early as this spring.

As Danny Duffy did his part to put to bed any residual worries I had and Eric Hosmer cranked yet another home run, it seems like the bright future is much closer than the standard carrot dangled at the end of a three-year-long stick that we have been perpetually teased by.

Catching Up (Jason Kendall-Related Pun Sadly Intended)

2010-09-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long silence. I've been in the throes of a move and those forces of pseudo-relocation have conspired with a veritable fuckload of work to effectively sideline my output across these internets. While I've begun to attempt to catch up over at Inconsiderate Prick, nothing has been completed there either.

As far as the Royals are concerned, well, I hadn't seen a Royals game in almost a month until a few nights ago. The first Royals action I saw was the end of that blow-out at the hands of the Indians a few nights back. If it needed any solidification, this game drove home the point that a month away from the Royals wasn't a bad thing for me.

Over the course of the past month, Kila Ka'aihue and Alex Gordon have yet to live to the hopes we had upon their recall. From all accounts and the limited action I've seen, it would appear as though Kila is probably pressing. If there were an at-bat that would serve as a perfect microcosm for that conclusion, it would be his at-bat against Darren Oliver in the ninth inning of Tuesday night's game. With Wilson Betemit having led off the ninth with a double, Kila ended up reaching on three pitches out of the zone to strike out swinging. On replay the FoxTrax (or whatever the hell it's called on FoxSports Southwest), Oliver missed outside on every pitch of the at-bat, yet Ka'aihue turned an walk into a strike out by not exercising his discerning ocular muscles.

But the Kila Monster's struggles are not what brought me back, and I think you probably know this...

It was announced today that Jason Kendall is getting shut down for the rest of the season to have his torn rotator cuff in his throwing shoulder surgically repaired. I think I share the sentiment of most of the readers here when I say, thank fucking Christ.

Say what you will about Yuniesky Betancourt (and I've said plenty), but I don't think there's a Royal I hate more than Jason Kendall. While I'd like to think that I'm not one who publicly relishes the suffering of others, the fucking punishment that Jason Kendall inflicted on Royals fans day in and day out was so grotesque Amnesty International was going to have to be called in if the status quo were held for much longer. I know I'm not the only one who's happy about this development, so I refuse to feel bad about my unbridled joy.

What the injury means is that Lucas May is one of what looks to be three September call-ups. May, you will remember, was one of the prospects the Royals got in return for Scott Podsednik. While I am a bit suspect of his Major League-readiness, I also doubt that his development is vital to the future of the franchise. He has been in Triple-A all year, splitting time between Albuquerque and Omaha, so I guess there's no time like the present to see what he's got.

This also, of course, means that Brayan Peña should get to see some more consistent time behind the dish without the No-Bat Iron Man in his way. There is no way this cannot be better. Peña's skills (or at least his output) at the plate have been stunted this year by the erratic playing time he has gotten.

Give me a day in which I can tune in and see either Peña or May instead of Jason Kendall, and I'm a happy camper.

Podsednik to Dodgers, On Lookout for Trolleys

2010-07-29T02:49:00.008-05:00

Much to my (and I'd imagine just about every other Royals blogger's) delight, Scott Podsednik has been shipped to the Dodgers in exchange for catcher Lucas May and right handed pitcher Elisaul Pimentel. With a hopeful trade of Jose Guillen right behind it, this could mean that it might finally be Kila Ka'aihue's time to shine (or at least play) in the Majors.

The prospects the Royals got are by most reports fringe prospects, with Lucas May putting up what appear to be solid numbers for the Albuquerque Isotopes and Elisaul Pimentel pitching quite well as a now-22-year-old in low-A ball.

Now I say that May has put up numbers that appear to be solid because his .296/.352/.496 triple-slash is actually slightly below average, as the entire team is hitting .303/.356/.485. Yes, it's nice that he is a catcher that can hit, but the extremely hitter-friendly confines that he has called home for much of this season certainly contribute to his ratios.

May is also a catcher after having been converted from short. As he has not always been a catcher, some of the reviews are mixed on his defensive game.

As for Pimentel, he is exactly the same age as Keaton Hayenga, but unlike the disappointing Hayenga, he has compiled a 9.7 K/9, 3.5 BB/9, 2.77 K/BB, and 1.173 WHIP in the Midwest League. On his career between two-and-a-half rookie ball seasons and this season in low-A, Pimentel has thrown together an 8.1 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 2.85 K/BB, and 1.228 WHIP. While he may seem slightly old for the level, he has certainly been solid thus far.

Now, what Scott Podsednik's departure means at the Major League level is that Alex Gordon will slide over to left, where the Royals apparently prefer him to play. This should mean he will get to settle into the daily lineup. Bob Dutton tweeted that it appears as though RHP Greg Holland will get the call to fill the open roster spot on the 25-man roster. Why they would go back to a 13-man pitching staff is beyond me, but even with the recent return of Rick Ankiel, one would have to think this move could crack the door open just a little more for Kila Ka'aihue.

If Guillen is shipped to San Francisco as the smoke is hopefully indicating, then The Kila Monster shouldn't just get the call, he should get to start nearly every day. Even if Guillen isn't shipped out, the Royals willingness to throw Guillen out in right regularly should slam that door open for Ka'aihue, although logic does not seem to factor in to what the Royals have done with him thus far in his career.

As for Podsednik, he caught hot at the right time, and this time Dayton Moore pulled the trigger, having possibly learned his lesson from the Ron Mahay Hesitation of 2008. Podsednik wasn't nearly as awful as I thought he'd be, but his place on this roster blocked younger players that should have been getting their shot.

The thing that will be most missed about Scott Podsednik will of course be his Playmate wife. They've surely ordered up their PODS and have a crew packing their shit as a I type this. We'll miss you, Lisa.

(no copyright infringement intended if applicable, everyone go to www.lisadergan.com and become members)

Royals at the Deadline with Rumors A-flyin'

2010-07-27T09:45:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? Since my last post, I've gone out of town twice, bought a new car, worked nearly every day in between (pulling doubles three days a week), and have begun to prepare for a move to a new apartment.

This has left little time for blogging and little time for the Royals. Under new manager Ned Yost, the Royals are playing roughly .500 ball. This has been more a curse than a blessing, as the perception of success led to hesitation on getting involved as sellers in the trade market. Closing the gap to less than nine games out* gave the Royals what many perceived as a false sense of competitiveness. After that sweep and the subsequent middling play on the field, the Royals have been hovering around a dozen games out with the Indians jockeying for fourth place in the Central.

*I've been distracted, obviously, but it was either 7.5 or 8.5 games before the White Sox series heading into the break.

With reality having set in, the Royals have waded into the trade market as sellers, trading Alberto Callaspo to the Angels for the most Irish player since Troy O'Leary, Sean O'Sullivan, and Will Smith.

O'Sullivan is probably about as good as any of the mediocre starters currently in the Royals' rotation not named Donald Zackary Greinke, which doesn't exactly say much. Both he and Smith have uninspiring minor league track records that would seem to be a better fit for the Twins than the Royals. Neither have impressive K-rates, but both have had BB/9 under 2.5 on their minor league career.

Drawing too much from their minor league numbers is not especially useful, as both had the misfortune to have pitched for the Salt Lake Bees. The then-highly-touted Nick Adenhart put up an ugly 5.76 ERA and a 1.70 WHIP in Salt Lake the season before he made the opening day rotation, and Smith skipped Double-A when promoted to AAA-Salt Lake this year, so these things should be taken into account when evaluating what the Royals have gotten. He found himself back in AA-Arkansas before the trade, but he definitely hasn't been impressive since the initial promotion this season.

So for Alberto Callaspo, Dayton Moore netted two prototypical Twins pitchers. I can't say that is particularly exciting. Then again, neither is Bert Calypso.

Now, since the Royals were initially so reticent to get into the trading game, their most enticing piece to trade is now out for the year. Timing is everything, and David DeJesus suffered a complete ligament tear in his right thumb running into the wall at Yankee Stadium. Now one could certainly argue that the time to trade DeJesus and maximize the return was when there was still the perception that DeJesus could play center, but he is having a career year and is still signed to a club-friendly contract. The return could have been nice.

Oh well.

At least this means the Royals had to call up Alex Gordon. Maybe he'll even get to play...

As sellers, the Royals do still appear to be looking to ship off their high-dollar guys. According to Ken Rosenthal, they are in talks with the Mets. Obviously (and unfortunately), Jeff Francoeur's name has been bandied about. Apparently, so have Gil Meche, Jose Guillen, Kyle Farnsworth, Oliver Perez, and Luis Castillo.

If you had a hard time getting excited about Sean O'Sullivan and Will Smith, how about that mountain of crap the Royals could be picking from?

When Kyle Farnsworth is the player you'd most want of a list of six players (I've always had an irrational disdain for Luis Castillo), you are dealing with some undesirable pieces.

Oddly, since Oliver Perez and Gil Meche are both due $12 million next year, it might be useful to look at who could have the most upside in 2011. Sadly, that is probably Oliver Perez, as his left-handedness could at the very least mean that Dayton Moore won't waste his energy turning over every rock on earth to find such southpawed garbage as Horacio Ramirez and Sidney Ponson. Oh, right, and there's also the fact that Gil Meche's arm might actually fall off of his body the next time he steps on the mound. Given the ticking time bomb that Meche and his contract are since Hillman got his hands on him, Oliver Perez almost has to have a better shot at success than Meche going forward.

If acquiring Castillo meant that Aviles would be manning short with Betancourt being exiled to Cuba, the addition of Castillo to the Royals would be palatable. Sadly, common sense is not something the Royals are blessed with, and Aviles would likely be riding the pine while the Yunicorn continued to infuriate the fanbase.

Frenchy for Farnsworth (their contracts match up)--and I can't believe I'm saying this--actually hurts the Royals. Farnsworth has been decent this year. He isn't far from projecting as a Type B Free Agent according to the Elias Rankings at MLB Trade Rumors. Francoeur is abysmal. Furthermore, his presence would likely hinder other Royals who should be playing, namely Alex Gordon and Mitch Maier.

Apparently, it would take Guillen getting traded for the Royals to want to take on Francoeur, but this would just seem create the same problem that currently exists as a result of having Guillen on the roster: The Royals can't find out what they've got in Kila Ka'aihuie with Guillen taking all of the playing time.

There are conflicting reports that indicate that the Royals are not interested in Perez or Francoeur at all, but if last year's acquisition of Yuniesky Betancourt has proven anything, it is that Dayton Moore always gets his man, no matter how shitty that man may be.

Now in addition to Jose Guillen being on the block, it also appears as though Scott Podsednik's recent hot streak has raised eyebrows, especially in the NL West. Both Guillen and Podsednik seem like perfect fits for San Francisco, what with Brian Sabean's penchant for taking on over-the-hill veterans with little-to-no upside. If either of these guys can go anywhere, I'm for it. Hell, the Royals should pay someone else to take them.

If neither gets traded, then this is reminiscent of two years ago, when Ron Mahay's value was at its peak on July 31st, and he promptly injured himself in his first August game. It was all downhill from there, but it seemed like everyone and their sister needed a left-handed reliever that year yet Mahay was a Royal come 2009.

Players like Mahay, Guillen, and Podsednik have little value on a team like the Royals. Amongst the two current Royals in that trio, each has been blocking younger players for the greater part of the season. It took a season-ending injury to David DeJesus for Alex Gordon to finally get another shot again. This is unacceptable.

With Kila waiting in the wings, Jose Guillen needs to be dealt.

Now while we would all love to see Jason Kendall, Yuniesky Betancourt, and Rick Ankiel go, too, those three have zero value to other teams. That is sad because they also have no value as Royals.

Given that teams actually appear to be interested in Guillen and Podsednik, and that Dayton Moore reportedly turned down a trade proposal from the Yankees that included Jesus Montero, I might actually be excited to see what happens come the weekend. If Guillen and Podsednik are suiting up elsewhere, I'll be pretty happy.

I would like to thank the fellas over at MLB Trade Rumors. Their hard work makes following all this possible.

The Meaning of 2012

2010-06-24T22:45:00.000-05:00

As seasons and almost more importantly aimless offseasons pass by, we Royals fans have had to adjust our expectations for contention, with the carrot on the proverbial stick predictably staying two years away. Not so long ago, we were looking to 2010 as the year that .500 would be attainable--the year that respectability would be ours.

Of course, Dayton Moore had that ultimately disastrous 2008-to-2009 offseason in which distrust of Allard Baird's untested young holdovers combined with a disastrous binge of trading his diamonds in the rough for veterans low on talent and signing a slew of costly free agents who did not pan out.

When combined with Hillman's decision to ride Gil Meche like a rented pack-mule in such a way that one could only infer that Hillman was secretly filled with an entirely consuming hatred of mules and the stunting of the development of what we thought would be the offensive future of the franchise in the form of Alex Gordon, things did not pan out as we fans had hoped.

Now, we sit here, actively monitoring the progress of the Royals' top prospects, cautiously reveling in the success of the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, involuntarily salivating at the absurd seasons that Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Mike Montgomery, and John Lamb are having while letting our imaginations run wild with visions of pennants in the middle of the decade.

And this is where 2012 comes in.

2012 is when this slew of talent in the minors is expected to arrive in Kansas City and hopefully begin to contribute.

2012 is when we no longer have to watch the Scott Podsedniks and Jason Kendalls of the world batting first and second day after day.

2012 is when the the All-Star Game is in Kansas City and for a week Kauffman is the center of the baseball world.

And this is where the cruel joke is because the world is ending in 2012.

The Mayans knew it.

Movies have been made.

Just as the Royals are supposed to give their success-starved fanbase something to feast on, the world will end. The point at which this franchise is set to begin to be good once again coincides with the end of the world.

Goddammit.

"You Should Be In The Bigs, Alex"

2010-06-20T17:20:00.000-05:00

Rather than watch the Royals offense not give Zack Greinke a win last night, I elected to head up to Round Rock (roughly 20 minutes outside of Austin, for you non-Texans) to see the Omaha Royals take on the Round Rock Express (the Astros' Triple-A affiliate, for you Royals-only fans).

This was the fourth time I've been to the Dell Diamond this year (and I may be going back tonight) and the second time I've been up there to see Omaha play (the first time was with dart enthusiast and Ranger Rundown and Newberg Report scribe Scott Lucas).

While Bruce Chen wasn't toeing the rubber and imposing his will upon Express hitters this time around, the opportunity to see Royals who should be playing every day on the Major League level presented itself again, as Kila Ka'aihue was once again in the lineup* for the Royals and Alex Gordon was playing the part that Mike Aviles was playing in April.

*Weirdly, this is the third time I've seen Kila this year, as I saw him drive in his RBI in Arlington. As a geographically isolated Royals fan, this is rare indeed.

The O-Royals played fairly well, overcoming some defensive hiccups and a rocky start from Manauris Baez, who got promoted from High-A Wilmington for the start. Given his lackluster minor league career and his unimpressive 45.2 inning body of work at Wilmington thus far (4.73 ERA, 1.73 WHIP, 5.3 K/9, 1.59 K/BB, .335 BAA), it would seem that this was more than likely a temporary promotion of convenience and was part of the Hochevar injury butterfly effect that also killed Manute Bol.

Alex Gordon seemed to read the ball fairly well off the bat in left, and he had a near gem of a play in the corner as he attempted to throw out a runner at home. His arm made what shouldn't have been a close play at the plate a near out. Kind of makes one wonder why they're not trying that arm out in right. I guess with the Royals it's not uncommon to end up scratching one's head when looking at the decisions they make...

Kila crushed a double to deep right-center, plating Gordon and Falu*. Both looked solid, as usual. Gordon extended his on-base streak to 39 straight games.

*I think it was Falu**. It may have been David Lough--I was drinking...

**I checked, and it was Falu. My mind still works with alcohol clouding it.

And, during the home-half of the fourth, I hollered out to Alex Gordon, "You should be in the Bigs, Alex," which he ignored for a second before turning slightly away and laughing to himself.

It's true. There are two legitimate Major Leaguers wasting away in Triple-A with nothing left to glean from their experience down there.

Zack Got Greinked Again

2010-06-03T19:50:00.003-05:00

As I watch the entirety of the Royals team fail to support their ace for just the latest in what has been a career of having been let down for Zack Greinke, one thought keeps returning to me. I actively loathe half of this team. From The Yunicorn to Guillen to nearly all of the bullpen, this Royals team plays baseball in a manner that is not befitting a Major League baseball team.

Chronicling the ways in which the team undermined last year's American League Cy Young Award Winner this afternoon could take a while. I am electing to do this in spite of the fact that team may very well have won this afternoon. Having worked until what I would imagine to have been at least the sixth inning, I recorded the game and returned home to queue it up. I got part way through the third before going back to the beginning--my frustration mounting with each passing moment of ineptitude.

After being given a free out after Erick Aybar foolishly tried to stretch a lead-off double into a triple, Chris Getz committed a two-out error on a grounder that took a tough bounce off the lip of the grass. Zack then followed with six-pitch walk to Torii Hunter, a four-pitch walk to Hideki Matsui in which three of the balls were strikes according to FoxTrax, and finally a five-pitch fielder's choice (Callaspo to Getz) to Mike Napoli. These fifteen pitches (borderline strikes be damned) basically ate an inning of work.

I have no idea how this game will turn out (well, I'm assuming that the rest of the Royals will find a way to totally fuck Zack Greinke in the ass, but that is just based on the fact that I know these Royals), but I'd imagine that the Royals could have another inning's worth of pitches out of Zack Greinke.

In the bottom of the first, Scott Podsednik leads off a four-pitch (all strikes) strikeout with the fouled off third pitch leading to an altercation between Mike Scioscia and home plate ump, Mike Estabrook. Kendall works a full count before feebly flying out to right. After DeJesus gets a base hit that could just as easily have been ruled an error on outfielder-turned-first-baseman-by-necessity Michael Ryan, Billy Butler waves over a slider low in the zone (at best) in a full count. It was seemed like it was close enough that Butler probably had to take a hack at it to avoid being a strikeout victim looking, but I think we would all love to see the Royals best hitter do something with a runner on base here.

With Zack back on the mound to start off the second, Michael Ryan rips the first pitch he sees off the wall in deep right-center. Mitch Maier plays the ball off the wall, turns to hurl it in to second (or possibly third, but the ball comes within a few feet of second), skipping Getz who should be* the cut-off man, only Yuniesky Betancourt is somehow not covering second at all, so Ryan is standing up at second as the ball skips toward third base. Ryan was going to be safe regardless, but if memory serves me correctly from little league baseball the second baseman is the cut-off for a fly-ball to right, and short should be covering second.

*Well, really, Aviles should be the cut-off man because Aviles should be playing, not Getz, but whatever.

As Getz was the cut-off for the gunning down of Aybar at third in the first with Batter Nine, You Sucky ducking out of the way of the throw to third standing right next to second base, I think memory does serve me correctly. Betancourt seems to be backing up the cut-off rather than covering second. Is that not playing out of position? To add to the fundamentals failure, Billy Butler isn't backing up the throw to second, which Frank White called him out on. At the very least, Butler is slow to back up the throw to second. Very possibly (I would even say likely as the example from the first inning backs this up) we have two Royals not where they are supposed to be on one play. It didn't lead to a run that wasn't going to score anyway, but there is a lack of sound fundamentals on display here.

After Frandsen drives in Ryan and Willits hits into a dubious bunt fielder's choice in which Estabrook allows Kendall to throw out the lead runner at second on a bunt that never actually ends up in fair territory (it rolled horizontally from the dirt across the plate never touching any part of the dirt in front of the plate), Zack strikes Aybar out looking on a back-door slider and Kendall guns Willits down attempting to take second on the full count with a good jump.

To the top of the second... Jose Guillen, who is slumping so horribly that he should not be in the lineup regardless of his career numbers against Jered Weaver, strikes out on a ball high enough that it goes to the backstop. Of course, the play isn't even close at first, as Guillen hadn't even mounted his Rascal idling half way up the first base line. The struggling Alberto Callaspo grounds out to first, and Mitch Maier looks at one, takes a big cut at another, watches a ball high, watches another outside, and finally strikes on a pitch thrown in what appears to be the same place as the ball he watched for ball two.

The third sees Mitch Maier make a nice sliding snare of a Howie Kendrick liner to center only to have Big Head Bobby Abreu beat out a Betancourt throw from the grass right up the middle. In Hunter's at-bat, Yost gets tossed after Estabrook called time to show up Jason Kendall after Kendall calmly asked where a pitch was. Clearly this is not Estabrook's finest hour, as he looks like a crazy Napoleon. Yost seems completely correct in ripping Estabrook a new asshole. Kendall didn't even turn his head from the crouch to ask, and Estabrook walked around in front of Kendall to dress him down. Amateur hour, Estabrook. Amateur hour.

Hunter ends up striking out. Matsui destroys Tokyo, defeats Mothra, and guides a grounder past the diving glove of The Range-Deficient Yunicorn. Then Callaspo has a liner ripped directly into his glove, and Greinke escapes the top of the third inning unscathed, down 1 - 0.

To start the bottom of the third, Yuni swings at the first pitch, pops it foul into the sun, and has Aybar gift him with a blown catch because he wasn't wearing his shades. Then, apparently intent upon driving Mike Scioscia to have a coronary incident in this inning, Aybar airmails a throw to first on a routine grounder, pulling Ryan off the bag, and Betancourt finds himself standing on first. Since everyone knows that nobody Getz out alive, Yuni gets picked off at first with no outs and the inimitable Chris Getz chomping at the bit, just waiting to drive in what could have been his first RBI on what could have been his first extra-base hit of the season.

All right, I know... Getz has to have an RBI this season right? (The total is seven, by the way.) But does he have and extra-base hit? Survey says: Yes. One double. In 80 plate appearances.

Jesus Christ.

Oh, Getz strikes out.

Podsednik singles. If Betancourt wasn't drunk, he'd be standing on second.

Two outs. Runner on first. Kendall up. 11 RBI on the season. Will he make it 12? Well, obviously Kendall is not getting an extra-base hit here. If it were possible for a player's SLG to be lower than his AVG, Kendall would be the man that would challenge it. Kendall has played in so many games this year that he's starting to log games played for the Royals in 2009 because he has run out of games this season to play. If he were even remotely good, this would be awesome. Instead, John Buck and Miguel Olivo are killing the ball in their respective new homes, and Jason Kendall blows ass every day in Kansas City. At least he'll lead the Majors in games played this season with 240.

Oh, what did Kendall do? Well, after Podsednik takes second on Napoli's awful arm, Kendall works a full-count walk. David Of The Son of God steps to the dish with two gritty veterans on first and second, and grounds out to first.

Whew. Run scoring averted.

Goddammit.

In the fourth, Zack makes Michael Ryan his bitch in a four-pitch strikeout with the payoff pitch being his slider. It registers at 88 MPH, and it was said that Zack hit 99 MPH in the first, so you can rest assured that the gun is hottt today. Two fastballs from Zack, and Frandsen has popped out to DeJesus in right. Quickly ahead 0 - 2 on Willits, Zack can't induce #77 to chase three straight balls out of the zone before a pitch is fouled off and the home broadcast misses the strikeout pitch to Willits.

Determination seems to have set in for Greinke here in the top of the fourth. Great inning. Unfortunately, the oddsmakers in Vegas would set the odds of the Royals scoring at least two runs today at about 350:1.

Bottom of the fourth sees Butler leading off with a ground out to third. I'm just going to go ahead and assume Guillen strikes out here. Glad he's in the lineup today. Eye-high, and he laid off. Shocking. Chased a slider in the dirt. Thrown out after the K. Embarrassing. You make me ashamed to be a Royals fan, JoGui. Bert Calypso comes up, passes it to the man, and boom goes the dynamite. In this case, the dynamite is a fly ball reeled in by Aybar in center field.

Sad showing. Two hits thus far. The end of this commercial is the result of your shite showing, Royals position players.

As Zack takes the mound to start the fifth, I can't help but wonder if the Royals should forgo the DH if their choice is Jose Guillen. Just let Zack hit. There's no fucking way he's going to be happy with the team that's constructed behind him. Let him hit and he might stay when his contract is up.

Tangent aside, I'm waiting for Betancourt to boot a double play ball and assume that it will happen this inning. The Aybar single through the first base side of the infield sets up the prediction. Kendrick lines to Of Jesus. Double play would get them out of the inning. Abreu, whose massive head rivals that of Kevin Mench, steps in, takes three balls, marvels at the fact that the size of his head hasn't crippled him with its ridiculous weight, finds himself in a full count, and fouls off what seems like 17 pitches before striking out as Aybar takes second.

Torii Hunter crushes cutter for a two-run shot into the fountain in left-center.

Three runs is obviously insurmountable for these awful Royals. To continue is an exercise in futility, but I am a glutton for punishment.

Hideki Matsui singles and eats a fishing vessel while humming some BOC on the way to first.

With the citizens running around frantically hoping to be saved from such an awful fate, Zack picks up his sixth K, owning Napoli.

In the bottom of the fifth, Maier strikes out on a 1 - 2 change-up before Betancourt finally gets the third hit for the Royals--a double into the left field corner. With a runner in scoring position and one out, Getz singles through the hole between first and second, but the RBI was not meant to be. If The Windmill were still employed, Getz would be at first with two outs. Some things have gotten better, I guess. Scott Podsednik's hot wife surely looks on wondering who that man is that is milling about in the box because he's not the same guy that hit those two postseason home runs in 2005 as he goes down swinging at a ball level with his chin. Kendall grounds to third, and they get the force at second. Base runners (plural!) wasted. Greinke's hopes for something other than a quality start ending in a loss are dashed.

Inning six. Will to live waning. Two pitches, Michael Ryan flies out to DDJ. Callaspo runs by a grounder up the third base line that is clearly not breaking foul, and Zack's got a runner on first and a ball that rolled about 80 feet from the plate is good for a hit. Frandsen stands at third after Willits dropped a double up the right field line. Free-swinging* Aybar steps in with hopes of driving in two more Angels' runs, works the count full, and draws a walk to load the bases.

*Weirdly, I looked at Aybar's FanGraphs page, and his O-Swing% is down to a much more respectable 30.4%. Yes, his career O-Swing% is still 35.0%, but he's showing a slightly more discerning eye now that he's leading off in Anaheim. It's probably just a product of small sample size, but maybe a tiger can change its stripes.

With a grounder to third, Callaspo steps on third, eliminating the force at home, throws home with time to spare, and the wizened veteran Jason Kendall elects to simply act as if the force is in effect stepping on the plate but not applying the tag. Run scores. Jason Kendall adds another bullet point to my reasons he's on my shit list. Zack Greinke gets another "earned" run.

A double steal is successful but ultimately in vain as Abreu lines out to right.

For those keeping track at home, Abreu's entirely extraneous at-bat here in the top of the sixth goes for five pitches. That is 20 pitches that Zack Greinke should have been able to use later in the game were his defense remotely fucking competent. If I knew the tag needed to be applied in that situation as it was happening, shouldn't the consummate veteran know that as well?

If three runs was insurmountable, it would take the Royals eight weeks of Zack Greinke starts to score four.

Fuck.

Back-to-back-to-back-to-back homers would tie the game. Weaver has an 8:1 K:BB. DeJesus won't be in on the four straight, as he flies out to the warning track in center. Butler flies out to Hunter just a step in from the warning track. Substantive contact for Guillen is a pipe dream. Predictable strikeout. Farnsworth is warming up as Greinke is set to sit down for good with 116 pitches, 20 of which should have been avoided. Four runs scored. The fourth shouldn't have at all. Kendall somehow doesn't get tagged with an error for the complete fuck-up at home. If ever there were an instance in which an error in its purest form is committed, it is this. Yet Zack gave up four "earned" runs.

Have I mentioned that I hate this fucking team. At second, Chris Getz. At short, Yuniesky Betancourt. Behind the plate, Jason Kendall. Your designated "hitter," Jose Guillen. In left, Scott Podsednik. All of them awful. Three of them with gaffes today. Guillen with three Ks while Zack was in.

Apparently, May 18th is the last time that the Royals scored a fucking run in support of Greinke. It is June 3rd today.

Ryan "Catch the" Lefebvre jumping in on the Godzilla stuff I was on about earlier (well, technically later, as I'm watching this on tape delay).

Fuck it. I'm not watching this anymore. Everyone's favorite reliever is on the mound. His fate is to ride his lawnmower to his dying brother's house in Wisconsin and then be nominated for an Oscar.

Furthermore, the Royals made a decent pitcher, Jered Weaver, look like a fucking world-beater. Put him on the same list as guys like Jeff Niemann (yes, I'm going back to last year for that one, but does it matter?), Ervin Santana, Jeff Francis, a struggling Jake Peavy, Fausto Carmona, Jake Westbrook, Matt Garza, and Carl Pavano. Ridiculous. This team is so inept that it makes me want to go insane, just so that I can have some plausible justification for actually being a fan of this godawful team.

And yes, things are looking up in the minors. The question marks that were present heading into the season have been nearly entirely erased, but that doesn't make watching this team thwart any shot Greinke had at a respectable season any easier. I know Win/Loss records are horseshit, but last year's Cy Young Award Winner is staring at a 1 - 7 record now. He is the best and brightest thing the franchise has going for it, and their ineptitude could send him to a Mike Maroth-like season (W/L-wise) and very well drive him away.

He's Ba-ack... Danny Duffy, That Is

2010-06-03T03:25:00.000-05:00

While I don't have much time (I am being extremely irresponsible in writing this as it's 3:15 AM and I work at 8:00 AM, I just thought it would be nice to post something positive for a change. According to Bob Dutton and Terez A. Paylor at the Star, Danny Duffy is set to return to camp. In electing to resume what had been a very promising career, the pitcher who was widely regarded as being the most advanced top-tier pitching prospect in the system heading in the season is reportedly about three weeks away from pitching competitively.

For purely selfish reasons, I hope they put him with the Naturals, as I fully anticipate being able to get to some of their games against Frisco, San Antonio, and Christ's Corpse.

I know I speak for nearly all of us when I say that we are extremely glad that he has come back and hope that he has been able to successfully deal with whatever was bothering him.

As for my absence, I do apologize. I've been insanely busy. Hell, one might even say I've been unsanely busy. Some of that busy-ness comes with the nature of being in the pleasure/leisure (pronounced in the rhyming fashion) boat industry in the last months of bearable Texas weather. It is also somewhat related to the fact that I had to fly out to DC for the second time this spring. This time it was not for a parental visit (although it was nice to see you, Mom and Dad...), but rather for "Jeopardy!" auditions. I am in the contestant pool for this upcoming season, but as I learned a few years ago that is no guarantee for getting the call. My fingers are crossed, and I will keep you posted if anything comes of this.

Since the audition and the various weird things that came about because of it are out of the way, I hope to be able to dedicate a little more time to this blog, among other things. Thanks for your readership, friends, Romans, countrymen.

And more importantly, thank you, Mr. Duffy. Patrick would be proud.

Hillman Shit-canned By Royals, Yost To Man The Helm Of A Sinking Ship

2010-05-14T01:15:00.002-05:00

After the seemingly universal outcry calling for Trey Hillman's head a la Alfredo Garcia, it would appear that David Glass could no longer withstand the cacophony of nay-sayers and forced Dayton Moore to kick his hand-picked manager to the curb.

As the three remaining Royals fans piss themselves in glee, the spurned mass of fans who deemed the team no longer worth the hassle look around, see that Ned Yost has been fingered to right the ship, roll their eyes, and return to pouring over their short list of teams that they are going to become fans of.

The reason the switch is so underwhelming at first glance is that Ned Yost was fired in the heat of a pennant race with two weeks to go in the regular season. That Brewers club he managed ultimately made the playoffs, but his management of the team was deemed so detrimental to the team that Doug Melvin & Co. had no other recourse but to fire him. All of this happened less than two full years ago.

I guess only the Royals could have the only two viable in-house candidates for an interim manager be Ned Yost or the man who challenged Shea Hillenbrand to a fight in the clubhouse. In all fairness, Gibbons's freak out seemed somewhat justified. After all, Sheas are the segment of the populace third-most likely to be douchebags after men named Chase* and Camaro owners.

*Apologies to Mac (the pertinent segment starts at the 2:09 mark)

"There's no right context."

Now the firing of Hillman came hot on the heels of the dreaded but especially effusive vote of confidence from Dayton Moore. I was just joking with Scott Lucas of The Ranger Rundown and The Newberg Report on Wednesday night that I would be surprised if Dayton Moore knew what generally came after the vote of confidence. It would seem as though Glass laid down the law. For those of us worrying about Glass being too hesitant to can Moore when the situation becomes untenable (which many of us would argue has already happened), this should be slightly encouraging.

As far as the Hillman versus his replacement argument is concerned, Yost did manage his team to a winning record on more than one occasion. Yost also still has the interim tag in front of his title, so there isn't as much of a permanency of the nightmarish managerial practices he has proven capable of in the past. Really, we have to take solace in the fact that Hillman will no longer be the one making egregious mistakes on a daily basis.

Whether Yost fails or not, at least it won't be the ineffectual Hillman meandering out to the mound to chit-chat with Meche as his pitch count approaches 130 with no sign of relief. Beggars cannot be choosers, so we just have to be grateful that SABRTrey is gone.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis

2010-05-10T08:00:00.001-05:00

This is the first of a few catch-up posts for the Reading Rainbow segments of the blog here. I know the Reading Rainbow stuff is probably the area of the blog that y'all are the most indifferent* to, but whatever.

*And, yes, I'm using the degree of indifference as a qualifier, as we all know that this entire blog is met with an indifference that can only be categorized as resounding.

Let's begin.

Moneyball is one of the most compelling non-fiction books I've read in ages. One part business, one part baseball, ten parts awesome.

Why I hadn't read it yet is baffling to me, but I hadn't and am upset with myself for taking so long to get around to it.

For those not familiar with the book at all, its primary goal is to show how the Oakland Athletics under General Manager Billy Beane managed to exploit the market inefficiencies in baseball to field a playoff-caliber team while having the second-lowest payroll in all of baseball. While that may not seem all that interesting on the surface, there is a reason why Michael Lewis finds himself atop the non-fiction bestsellers lists routinely. He is a great writer and manages to intertwine 30 pages of loosely related tangents engagingly and with ease.

Even if you are not a baseball fan, this book is enthralling.

Billy Beane is a fiery former prospect who flamed out when he got to the Majors. Rather than continue on as a player at a certain point in his career, he went and asked his General Manager if he could take a job as an advance scout (if I remember correctly). As he worked his way up through the ranks of the front office, his quest to discover what sort of players actually succeeded at the ML-level in relation to the tools they possessed began to be supported by the writings of Bill James (as he discovered them - they were written before Beane retired as a player), or the theorizing of Voros McCracken.

As Beane becomes united with Paul DePodesta, it becomes clear that this Athletics front office was head and shoulders above the rest in baseball.

While it could have been an insular story just about baseball, Lewis's Moneyball is a compelling, character-driven story about how an organization does more with less.

Trey Hillman: Killing the Royals Softly

2010-05-09T13:55:00.000-05:00

For those not familiar with the in-game management genius of Trey Hillman, let me lay it out for you in bullet points:

Gil Meche threw 128 pitches last night. Fortunately for Meche, he got the last batter he faced (David Murphy) on one pitch. Yes, with two down and runners at second and third, Hillman let Meche pitch to David Murphy having already thrown 127 pitches. Moreover, Meche had begun to struggle with control again in the eighth, walking the first two batters he faced. The offense is so egregious that it bears re-stating; having walked seven and two in that inning, Hillman let Meche face another batter with a pitch count that had already hit 127.
SABRTrey pinch-hit for first baseman Kila Ka'aihue with Jose Guillen in the top of the seventh inning in a game tied at two runs apiece. Nevermind that the differences in Ka'aihue's career platoon splits in the minors were nominal (.275/.398/.423 vs. LHP, .266/.395/.486 vs. RHP). Nevermind that there are multiple candidates for being pinch-hit for sitting lower in the line-up than the rookie who in his first start since being recalled from Omaha was batting clean-up.
In the bottom of the seventh, Hillman left Guillen in the game, inserting him into left field and shifting Mitch Maier to first base. For those not in the know and who weren't watching the first six innings of the game, Maier is clearly their best defensive outfielder. He had two stellar plays in center in this game alone. SABRTrey, who is historically averse to shifting players from one position to another within the bounds of a single game, put a range-less designated hitter in right field, shifted the man that the organization decided didn't have enough range to play center in 2009 to that very position, and moved their very good center fielder to first base. WTFuck?
"What could go wrong now?" you might be asking yourself. Well in the eighth inning of a tie-game with two outs and runners on the corner, the ball is hit to right. Were a right fielder with any range whatsoever (read: David DeJesus) sitting in right, disaster is averted. Instead the ball falls because a player who should never be on the field is standing in right. Now, yes, Jose got hosed on the call at third, and his throw was ridiculous, but the run still scores if Josh Hamilton is correctly called out at third and Meche's pitch count is only spared one pitch. The go-ahead run can be directly attributed to Trey Hillman's attempt to "manage" the team.
Defensive wizard Chris Getz booted a grounder at second in the eighth. I'm not asserting that one play is a large enough sample size to evaluate a player defensively, but Getz has not looked like a world beater in the least.
The day after Yuniesky Betancourt dropped a two-out pop fly in shallow center leading to an unearned run, the fined shortstop was still starting at short.
What those last two bullet-points also meant was that Mike Aviles was not in the starting line-up on Saturday. Remember when Trey Hillman said that Mike Aviles was their "most fundamentally sound infielder?" That sounds like a guy who should be in the game in a tight spot. Or always.

One thing I would like to touch on is the abuse of Gil Meche. It was great to see him pull things together after a rough first two innings. The problem is we all know what 132 means when someone throws out that number in a conversation about Gil Meche. Since that historic start, Meche has had an 8.37 ERA. Opposing batters have hit .328/.423/.593 off Meche since June 21st of last year. In short, since Hillman effectively ruined Gil Meche on June 21, 2009, Meche has allowed all opposing hitters to put up Pujolsian numbers.

In the first start since June 6, 2009, Meche had a start with a game score over 50. Having not learned his lesson at all, Hillman rode Meche's arm to 128 pitches, and it could have easily been more. Yes, Meche clearly muttered, "Fuck me," as Hillman walked up to the mound in the eighth, but it is not Hillman's job to just listen to his starter and let him throw nearly 130 pitches in what has been the only encouraging start for the $11 Million Man thus far this season. Listening to his former star pitcher is what got them here in the first place.

While the bullpen has not been Trey Hillman's fault, days like this seem to reinforce the fact that Trey Hillman is best suited for something other than managing the Royals.

Gordon Demoted, Rosa Traded, Aviles Recalled, Heads Scratched

2010-05-03T16:45:00.003-05:00

It's been a fairly eventful two-plus weeks since I last posted here. Having not grown up in the Kansas City area (unlike my father, whose fandom I unfortunately inherited), my in-person Royals experiences have been mostly limited to seeing them play the Twins at the Metrodome or seeing Omaha play the Round Rock Express. While visiting my sister in Lawrence, I got to see the Royals where one is meant to see them. At Kauffman.

When the lead Brian Bannister held was handed over to the bullpen (along with inherited runners) on that cold Sunday afternoon, I decided to excuse myself from my seat and take in the Royals Hall of Fame. The Hall was great. A Mecca for a Royals fan both geographically and temporally displaced from an ideal notion of sports fandom.

For a few brief moments, I was able to escape to a time in which the Royals competed against, get this, the Yankees to go to the World Series. Yeah, that's right. The Yankees. World Series. Apparently, they even won one. I know, I know. "Shut the fuck up, you crazy liar. The Royals never won a World Series. They're like, the worst team in baseball. They had the worst record in baseball in the '00s!"

But no. A long 25 years ago, the Royals actually won a World Series.

You are no doubt thinking about the illogical manner in which the franchise has been re-run into the ground by yet another regime in the Wal-Mart Royals Era and wondering to yourself how it is possible that a team that was once a perennial contender couldn't possibly find itself in this place. A laughingstock. A team whose fans have to resort to arguing whether or not their team is worse off than the likes of the Astros or *shudder* the Pirates.

Yet, here we sit, watching helplessly as Alex Gordon is optioned to AAA-Omaha while inept aged veterans constipate the daily lineup--while Carlos Rosa (an arguably Major League-ready relief pitcher) is shipped off to Arizona for an extremely raw shortstop who appears to be nowhere near the Majors meaning the Royals would be required to successfully develop him--while Mike Aviles is shuttled back and forth between Kansas City and Omaha, called up this time so that Trey Hillman can have him pinch-run twice a week as Yuniesky Betancourt ranges two-steps to his right or left for grounders at short and swings wildly at balls outside of the zone.

Should I continue?

Regarding the Gordon optioning, I can understand that he has been a disappointment against the unrealistic expectations that he was going to be the next George Brett. We were all guilty of setting those hopes too high, but the Royals are in no place to be abandoning hope on a 26-year-old third baseman with an above-average ability to get on base even if his defensive skills seem to be on the decline. Yes, his strike-outs are often ugly. His dry-spells can last for weeks. Still, when healthy, he is one of the Royals best three or four offensive players with the upside for more. Given this demotion, their aggressive promotion of Gordon in 2007 could conceivably stand as only the second-most egregious move that the organization has made in terms of the detriment done to the development of the player once regarded as the top prospect in all of baseball.

As for Rosa, Marc Hulet of FanGraphs indicates that Arizona pulled the trigger on this deal because they were desperate for relief pitching. Hold up a second, the Diamondbacks need relievers? What a coincidence, the Royals relief corps have been giving up leads like they were getting paid to lose games. Doesn't it seem like the Royals could use a relief pitcher? Now maybe Reynaldo Navarro pans out, but given the track record of this front office, I doubt any Royals fans are holding their breaths.

Now Mike Aviles gets recalled from Omaha, presumably to sit on the bench while the Royals' $3.3 million gloveless/batless shortstop gets all of the playing time. Even more aggravating is the fact that this organization seems to believe that Betancourt is actually the best option for them at short. Nevermind that they cannot align their outfield properly (Ankiel in right*, Maier in center, DeJesus in left, Podsednik on a different team for those catching up at home), in what world do the Royals exist in which Yuniesky Betancourt is a ML-caliber anything, let alone shortstop?

*Yes, The LOBster has been awful, and really, if they seem dead-set on playing Getz at second, then maybe the Royals should be thinking about working Gordon out at right, thus getting Getz, Callaspo, and Gordon into the lineup and a right-fielder's arm in right. If Ankiel is playing, though, it needs to be in right.

If Aviles weren't healthy, Betancourt still shouldn't be playing. Aviles is healthy, though. Betancourt has managed one walk in 98 plate appearances. His O-Swing% is 45.7%. His BB/K is an Olivo-ian 0.09. His UZR/150 is a predictably awful -22.7. All the talk of small sample sizes could apply here, if these numbers weren't in line with his past three seasons. Long story short: Yuniesky Betancourt sucks. Does anyone think that logic will set in and Betancourt will be riding the pine this week?

The likes of Jose Guillen, Scott Podsednik, Rick Ankiel, and Yuniesky Betancourt should not be taking playing time away from players who need playing time at the Major League level to develop.

Oh, and I could ramble on about the inexplicable Juan Cruz release, but what's the fucking point?

Ewing Kauffman's Royals these are not.

Editor's Note (5/4/10 9:30 am) - Apparently the Royals plan on getting Gordon some time at first and left. Do they know that typically right fielders would have strong arms?

Colon Blown

2010-04-14T00:00:00.001-05:00

Thankfully I was at work and unable to watch the Royals' pen squander yet another lead.

The only thing we fans once gave the braintrust at Treyton Millman Incorporated credit for is now the biggest problem with the team, and it's debilitating. Another day, another blown save. The Royals managed to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory, undercutting what Brian Bannister did over the course of his 6.1 innings of work before managing two outs. As if that weren't enough, Roman Colon decided to anal-ize him a second time for good measure by allowing the inherited runner to score.

There is nothing left that you need to see fellas. Change needs to happen now.

DFA Colon.

DFA Mendoza.

Call up Rosa.

Call up Lerew.

Anyone can see that this needs to happen. The fact that you cannot is damning. The last thing that we deemed an ability of Moore's has now also been proven to be an inability. With nothing left to cling to, what is it exactly that is keeping Dayton Moore and Trey Hillman off the unemployment line? Their incompetence is over-abundantly clear.

Put us out of our misery.

Royals Option Mike Aviles to Omaha, Fans Incensed

2010-04-11T23:15:00.003-05:00

In yet another head-scratching move, Dayton Moore & Co. have decided that Mike Aviles was the 25-man roster casualty to make room for Gil Meche, who was activated from the Disabled List for his start on Sunday.

WTFuck.

Nevermind that the optioning of a position player to activate a pitcher means the Royals are now carrying 13 pitchers on the Major League roster.

Nevermind that Kyle Farnsworth could easily be put on the DL as he is actually injured.

Nevermind that Luis Fucking Mendoza shouldn't be pitching for the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, let alone the Kansas City Royals.

And nevermind that Mike Aviles is going to Omaha to play shortstop when the player that the Royals are currently slotting at short is the worst everyday player in the American League, being neither proficient with the wood or the leather.

On a day when the Red Sox threw Bill Hall in to sub for Marco Scutaro and Bill Hall (who had been moved off of short years ago) flashed better lateral range than Yuniesky Betancourt dreams of having, the thought of Betancourt allowing routine grounder after routine grounder through the infield for hits while working pitch-counts for one- and two-pitch at-bats is simply unbearable.

Dayton, Trey, whoever needs to hear this: Yuniesky Betancourt is not a shortstop. He is not a Major League hitter. No one gives a fuck who you traded to get him. You were wrong to acquire him. You are wrong to keep playing him. You have a more competent shortstop on your roster who you just sent down to get reps. God fucking dammit.

Seriously, Royals fans are checking out and the first week is just coming to an end.

This is but one story of organizational incompetence this season. I have barely even touched on the utter worthlessness of the bullpen as a whole or the fact that there are actual relievers in Omaha who actually could do the job. Hillman's pre-game statement that, “We need to keep as much pitching as we can right now until we get this bullpen situation ironed out," is also entirely irrelevant as there is no way in hell that Luis Mendoza is any part of the solution to the issue at hand. The complete inability to properly assess what the Royals have on their own roster is crippling the organization.

Perhaps the awful start that seems imminent will be enough for David Glass to shit-can Dayton Moore because this ship cannot be righted by the hands at the helm.

(photo from Seattle Times website)

Luis Mendoza: Royal Killer

2010-04-11T07:00:00.001-05:00

I could write about the somewhat depressing Zack Greinke start (two straight hanging breaking balls crushed really did him in--especially since he has the Royals trying to provide him with run support instead of a real baseball team), but that really isn't that pressing of an issue.

No, we Royals fans get to sit here wondering what the fuck Luis Mendoza is doing on this 25-man roster. Seriously, what fucking super-genius decided that this shitty fuck of a pitcher should be pitching in the Royals organization at all, let alone at the Major League level?

Luis Mendoza has never been a serviceable pitcher IN THE MINORS. Why the fuck should he be pitching in Kauffman Stadium?

Then, we've got Trey Hillman deciding to actually use him. In a game. Nevermind that SABR-Trey insists upon Jimmy Gobbling Dusty Hughes; Luis Mendoza is a batting practice pitcher who should be thrown out there only to pump up the confidence of Royals hitters before games. Only here he is pitching in a real game.

I'm losing my fucking mind watching this awful product on the field, and we're now five fucking games into the season.

Fire everyone, David Glass.

Fire them now.

The Royals Hate Mike Aviles and Mitch Maier

2010-04-10T08:00:00.001-05:00

We're four games in, and it would seem that Trey Hillman feels that both Mike Aviles and Mitch Maier haven't sat enough to fully cool off from their torrid spring. With their spots on the 25-man roster entering spring training, both men saw fit to force their way onto the roster.

In 21 games and 57 plate appearances, Aviles hit .471/.517/.725 with one-third of his hits going for extra bases (three doubles and five triples). Not to be outdone, Maier triple-slashed .475/.530/.814 in 66 plate appearances with five doubles, three triples, and three homers. Collectively, they drew thirteen walks while only striking out eight times.

Given that Mitch Maier is the Royals' best defensive center fielder and that Mike Aviles is their "most fundamentally sound infielder," it would only stand to reason that they would not get to play after the team made moves in the offseason in the spirit of building a stronger defensive team--reason, of course, as it applies to how the show is run in Kansas City. Considering that they were the team's hottest hitters coming into the regular season, the rational thought being incorporated here is encouraging...

Combined, they have one pinch-running appearance.

Great.

Could someone please steal the compromising photos that Yuniesky Betancourt has of Hillman or Moore (Treyton Millman?) and give them to Aviles? I think we all trust his surgically repaired throwing elbow more than Betancourt.

Royals Screw Themselves, Zack Greinke, and Fans On Opening Day

2010-04-07T08:00:00.003-05:00

The first thing that comes to mind when reflecting back upon yesterday's Opening Day debacle in Kansas City is that there may not be a time more apropos than now to cite one of my favorite movie quotes. In David Mamet's State and Main, dim lothario actor Bob Barrenger (played by Alec Baldwin) flips a station wagon at the titular intersection. Having occurred while getting road-head from an local teen while on location in a small New England town, the likelihood of public relations disaster on an already troubled shoot are high. Despite the fact that a nightmare is likely to follow, the breathless but unfazed Barrenger wriggles out from the upended car and exclaims, "So that happened." (For those unable to give two minutes of their life over to the embedded trailer (sorry about the picture quality), the pertinent section starts at the 1:55 mark.)

I find myself being able to bring little else to the table here.

The game turned out as I feared and succinctly serves as a microcosm for what I expect this whole season to be.

Zack Greinke pitched well enough to warrant the win, out-pitching Cy Young second-runner-up Justin Verlander.

In the first inning with runners on first and second and two down, Willie Bloomquist dropped an infield fly while stumbling up the pitcher's mound, allowing the ancient Magglio Ordonez to score from second on a ball that ended up a whopping 60 feet from the plate. This extended Greinke six more pitches than it should have in the inning, as he ended up unnecessarily having to strike out Brandon Inge looking on a 3 - 2 count.

As the sixth inning ended Greinke's pitch count sat at 96. If that pitch count was sitting at 90, I don't think anyone would have been surprised to see Zack come back out to face Scott Sizemore, Adam Everett, and Austin Jackson in the seventh. Instead, the Royals bullpen imploded. Sporting a two-run lead, the unholy triumvirate of Roman Colon, Robinson Tejeda, and Juan Cruz promptly decided it was their job to give up six runs in the seventh.

As if that weren't enough, the sure-to-be fan favorite* Jason Kendall was thrown out at home trying to score from second on a weak Scott Podsednik fly-ball after Dave Owen decided that the 170 feet that the ball traveled from home should afford the 35-year-old catcher more than enough time to reach the plate safely. Yes, the play at the plate was close, but the fact remains that there was one out with Billy Butler about to step up to bat. With Kendall standing on third (Podsednik's single came with runners on first and second), the tying run would have been at the plate in the form of the team's best hitter with only one down. Instead, Kendall is out at home, and Butler's pop-out ended the inning.

*Note: I can't find the sarcasm font right now, but let me assure you that the little bit of presaging there was rife with it.

Now, I'll grant you that this was only game one, but there wasn't a lot to take encouragement from. Hillman opted for a line-up consisting of Bloomquist at third, Guillen at DH, Kendall at C, and Betancourt at short. While I fully expected three-quarters of those men to be in the line-up, that doesn't make it any more palatable.

Mike Aviles played well enough in Spring Training to warrant a place on the 25-man roster when they could just as easily have placed him on the disabled list. He had been getting some work at both second and third. Why is the 2008 Royals Player of the Year who appears to have come back from injury and has given every indication that his bat has returned to form sitting on the bench on Opening Day?

Alberto Callaspo is your second-best offensive player, yet he, too, finds himself on the bench on Opening Day?

I know it's only one game, but if there were ever a statement game for a team that generally finds itself looking up at every other team in the divisional standings, it's Opening Day. No one gives a fuck that no-glove/no-bat Jose Guillen is making $12 million this year, and I can sure as shit tell you that no one would walk out of the gates at the K on Opening Day complaining about not having gotten to see Willie Bloomquist man the hot corner. Get Aviles and Callaspo in the goddamn lineup.

And I'm not going to even get started on the absurdity of the alignment of the outfield...

Yes, it's too early to be making major sweeping statements about the team based on the Royals one game played, but it certainly is disheartening to see the things we all foresaw in the offseason coming true in the first game of the season.

We root for the one team in baseball that can be most aptly compared to the Keystone Kops. I guess it is our fault for not being disloyal/smart enough to jump ship a long time ago, but at least do us the favor of getting the best possible team on the field four or five days a week, SABR-Trey.

Maybe this is all excessively negative and reactionary, but when the culmination of a widely criticized off-season is a bumbling season opener, it is the most honest reaction.

Danny Duffy: Not a Natural, O-Royal, or Royal

2010-03-26T00:45:00.000-05:00

As we embark on another season in which the Royals look to be competing for fourth place in the American League Central, there were only a few things that we Royals fans had to look forward to. That list got a little shorter yesterday when Danny Duffy decided to walk away from the game.

For those keeping track at home, Duffy's likely retirement makes three pitching prospects widely regarded as Top 10 prospects within the organization that are no longer with the Royals--the other two being Danny Gutierrez and Dan Cortes, who were traded for next to nothing and much worse than nothing, respectively. Now that the organization has systematically dispatched of all top prospects with the Christian name of Daniel, let's hope Dayton Moore & Co. don't decide that the Mikes are next.

With this development and the John Manuel podcast report earlier in the offseason in which the organization was bristling with top pitching prospect Mike Montgomery over his desire to incorporate long-toss into his workout regimen, the pessimist within has to worry about whether or not any of these top-notch pitching prospects will ever pan out. After all, Danny Duffy was arguably the most advanced of any of the Royals' young hurlers up until Wednesday, with only the relatively untested Aaron Crow being as close* to the Majors as Duffy had been.

*Realistically, Crow's age and the fact that he came along through the college ranks likely would have resulted in Crow making it to Kansas City even before Duffy's injury, but now that's all speculation.

It should be noted that Duffy's strained left elbow could surely have been a factor in his decision "to leave baseball at this time to reassess his life priorities,"* despite assertions to the contrary.

*J.J. Picollo quote from a club statement cited in the afore-linked Bob Dutton article in the Star.

Regardless of the current organizational depth, especially when speaking of left-handed pitching prospects, this is a blow that isn't easy to stomach. When thinking about what Gutierrez and especially Cortes yielded on the trade market as the "currency of baseball," it becomes nearly impossible to choke down the vomit as the spectre of future horrible trades acquired looms over the 2011/2012 optimist's start-date for competitiveness.

Yes, the likes of southpaws Montgomery, John Lamb, Noel Arguelles, and Chris Dwyer still populate the top 15 (conservatively) of nearly every Royals prospects list, but after the injury-related setbacks to Jeff Bianchi--the injury-plagued shortstop closest to the Majors in the organization--and Mike Moustakas were already painting the beginning of the farm's 2010 in an undesirable light.

The decision of such a highly-touted prospect to walk away from the game after getting so close to the Bigs takes it to a whole new level.

As for Duffy, I cannot speak to what he is going through or what the rationale behind the decision to walk away was, but I think we all wish him the best. Moreover, I think we Royals fans all hope that "the best" includes him returning to the club in the near future.

One thing that sticks out from the Picollo-issued statement is the following sentence:

Should Danny decide in the future to return to the game, we will be happy at that time to discuss the possibility.

To me, this sentence does not read as an entirely empathetic stance taken by the front office. If he is in some sort of crisis (the report in the Star in which his former strength and conditioning coach chalks up some of his issues to his being very introverted and not Type-A implies this is possible), it would seem that the treatment that Allard Baird gave Zack Greinke might best serve both the organization and most importantly the young injured pitcher.

If there is a bright side to this whole situation, it is that there is at least a shred of chance that he returns to the Royals. At least it is more likely to happen than a Grant Desme return to the A's.

Regardless, the Royals are down one top prospect, and they are hardly an organization operating with a large margin of error.

(The photo above was taken without official permission from the Lompoc Locker Room, who I thank for the photo and will gladly take down if asked.)

Logjammin': Middle-Infield Style

2010-03-19T09:00:00.002-05:00

First things first, I need to apologize for my month long absence here. I've spent much of the last two months writing preseason fantasy baseball articles for Sports Grumblings. Sure, I've only written three articles, but they were 6,326, 4,775, and 6,829 words long, and when you couple that with the increased hours working as a result of being a quasi-seasonal worker and officiating over a now-three-week-long Year: One Keeper League fantasy draft on a message board, you could say I've been spread pretty thin lately.

So again apologies all around, but if you thought about the prospect of writing 18,000 words for draft kits while balancing a 60+ hour work week, you would probably understand the lack of output here (and at my other three blogs--yes, there is a third one).

Anyway, we're in the throes of Spring Training, and we've already got everyone and their sister writing about who should be cut or jettisoned from this roster that most closely resembles Frankenstein's monster.

There's Jackie Treehorn-style Log Jam in the middle infield, especially at second, where not only Chris Getz and Alberto Callaspo are duking it out, but so is Mike Aviles, whose surgically repaired (Tommy John) throwing elbow is thought to need more time to recover and therefore will not be able to throw across the diamond from short quite yet. Obviously, everyone who doesn't work in the Royals front office would love to see anyone other than Yuniesky Betancourt at short. Assuming that Aviles' elbow isn't ready yet, why is there virtually no talk of trying the fleet-footed Getz at short and Callaspo at second. The Royals have given Getz a total of five at-bats at short over the course of two games, both of which occurred almost two weeks ago.
*warning: video not appropriate for all ages

For a team that was willing to explore the possibility of slotting Mark Teahen at second base last season to get his bat into the lineup, it would seem that a slightly more logical move like trying to move Getz to short for the time being would make a whole helluva lot more sense given their roster make up and their need to get Callaspo's bat into the lineup everyday.

Despite Dayton Moore's assertions to the contrary, Betancourt is a vortex through which the entire team will get sucked if allowed onto the field too much--and "too much" could just as easily read, "at all." With his already abysmal glove and brutal batsmanship, nearly any middle infielder on the roster would be an upgrade.

Unfortunately, if we are meant to judge positional playing time as an indicator as to where players may end up, the only other player in camp who is getting any in-game reps at short is the limited Wilson Betemit. Why they have decided that Wilson Betemit is the best in-house option as the non-Yuni shortstop is utterly baffling. Sure, Betemit has garnered playing time at all of the infield positions, but the only position he has logged enough time at to draw any reasonable conclusions from is third, and there is nothing about his play there and his career -11.1 UZR/150 in 1623.2 innings that would suggest a move to short would be wise.

Yet, this is where we find ourselves. In-house options make more logistical sense than what seems to be playing itself out on the field. One of the only legit bats on the roster is being squeezed out because Jose Guillen presumably needs to get $12 million worth of at-bats, and there is no room for that bat at second because the moves that beg to be made will not happen.

Meanwhile, lesser options are getting more audition time to play back up to a man they're stuck with because The Management saw fit to trade two minor league pitchers (one being a top 10 organizational prospect, of course) to hamstring the team with the worst defensive shortstop in baseball and the worst offensive shortstop in baseball complete in one sleek package.

What do you do if your starting shortstop is the worst at his position in all of baseball? Well, if you are the Royals, you try to slide a below-average third baseman (both offensively and defensively) into that slot. It's likely that Betemit couldn't possibly be worse than Betancourt. Unfortunately, even if that were true, it does nothing to get both Getz and Callaspo's bats into the lineup, which is really what needs to happen.

So while Betancourt needs to be cut loose now (as does Guillen, of course), there is nothing to indicate that common sense has crept into Dayton Moore's train of thought because they continue to pursue non-solutions to their problems.

Juan Cruz, What Happened?

2010-02-15T09:00:00.002-06:00

When he was signed in the 2008-2009 offseason, Juan Cruz was of the few Dayton Moore acquisitions met with widespread approval. Having waited to sign Cruz until the market shook itself out, Moore found himself nabbing Juan Cruz for a mere $6 million over two years with a club option that would bring that total to $9.5 million if exercised. Granted, he was a Type-A free agent, so the Royals ended up forfeiting their second round pick, but no one seemed put off by this at the time.

The reasons for excitement over the signing were entirely justified. In three seasons in Arizona, he held down an ERA of 3.47 (good for an ERA+ of 136) while maintaining ratios of 10.7 K/9, 4.8 BB/9, 2.24 K/BB, 0.8 HR/9, and a 1.297 WHIP. Sure, he was in the NL and 73 of his innings pitched in 2006 were as a starter, but given the desert air/elevation he'd been playing in for those three years, it seemed reasonable to expect those numbers to translate over to a solid run in 2009.

It was also probably pertinent that for whatever reason the Diamondbacks only saw fit to hand the ball over the Cruz in mop-up duty. Of his 126 relief appearances, only 46 occurred when the D-backs were ahead or tied. Given that his signing was presumably to act in the capacity of a set-up man, a bit more experience in the role probably would have been preferable, but everyone pointed to the strikeouts to alleviate the minor concern such a fact caused.

Well, we all know what ended up happening to Juan Cruz in 2009.

In short, he struggled mightily.

The long story? Juan Cruz appeared to have forgotten how to strike people out. Where in 2007 and 2008 Cruz held opposing hitters to a .199/.318/.353 triple-slash line with a .290 BABIP, 2009 saw those figures jump to .246/.349/.412 while actually lowering his BABIP to .278.

Some of these struggles would seem to be tied to his fastball. His reliance upon his fastball dropped significantly regardless of whether you look at the pitch type figures provided by Baseball Info Solutions or MLB's PitchFX. While looking at the data provided by BIS (at the very least, it covers the span of Cruz's career), Cruz ranged from 64.7-68.1% fastball usage in every season from 2003-2008 but his abysmal 32.2 IP season in Oakland. In 2009, his fastball usage was down to 54.3% (or 54.1% if you prefer PitchFX).

It is perfectly reasonable to ask, why would Cruz begin shying away from his fastball? For starters, it was worth -4.8 wFB*. In the two seasons prior in which he was used entirely in relief, it was good for a 2.9 and 1.5 wFB. When looking the velocity on his fastball, it was down slightly to an average of 94.0 MPH from 94.5 in 2007 and 94.3 in 2008. It wouldn't seem that such a minor drop in velocity should flip the value of his fastball on its head and then some.

*Fastball runs above average.

When looking at horizontal and vertical movement on his fastball (thank you, FanGraphs),
it does not appear as though there is a great deal of difference in movement from his two prior seasons as a reliever and 2009. Furthermore, his fastball still moved at least an inch more than the MLB average on both horizontal and vertical planes. Perhaps the explanation can be seen in the fact that his lost an inch of vertical movement on average from 2008 to 2009. It did supplant that inch of lost vertical movement with a 1.1 inch gain in horizontal movement from 2008's -6.6 average, although my admitted lack of expertise on PitchFX surely leaves me lacking an explanation as to whether these shifts explain the insane drop in value he experienced in his fastball. This sabermetrically semi-literate can just as easily chalk this drop in value to a simple change in leagues or the recession that set in toward the end of the 2008 season.

Perhaps even stranger was the fact that in 2009, Juan Cruz also cut down on the frequency with which he threw his slider. In 2007 and 2008, he opted for the slider 27.9 and 28.3% of the time, respectively. 2009 saw that frequency drop to 24.1% of the time (or 21.7% if you prefer PitchFX to BIS). This strikes me as somewhat puzzling, as of all Cruz's pitches, his slider had the most value in 2009 with a 3.0 wSL.

In 2007 and 2008, Cruz's repertoire was limited to almost entirely fastballs and sliders as he pitched in relief--92.6% of his pitches thrown in '07 and 95.4% in '08 were one of the two. His reliance upon his slider throughout his career makes sense as, in all of his seasons but one*, it was his most valuable pitch.

*It was oddly worth -1.0 wSL in 2006, while he had a 9.0 wFB.

Obviously, if he was almost exclusively a fastball/slider pitcher in his last two seasons of relief in Arizona, and his percentages thrown of each dropped in 2009, then other pitches were reintroduced to his arsenal. Last season, batters saw him changeups at a much higher rate*, and he brought back the cutter (7.7%), which he hadn't thrown since last he was a starter. The increased prevalence of these pitches could certainly be questioned were it not for their positive values of 2.9 wCH and 0.4 wCT.

*Up to 13.3% from 7.1 and 4.1% in '07 and '08.

When looking at his variety of pitches thrown, it was clearly his fastball that hitters had the easiest time with, as all of his other pitches were of positive worth.

Looking past pitch types, there is one more startling difference between his relief campaigns in Arizona and his 2009 season as a Royal. As a reliever in the desert, he induced an O-Swing% of 24.7 and 30.1%. These were both above his current career mark of 20.8, so perhaps expecting hitters to keep reaching outside the zone for pitches at that rate was unrealistic for 2009. As it happened, hitters only reached on 19.2% of balls Cruz offered outside the zone last season.

While that was more or less in line with his career numbers, if not his two prior relief seasons, his O-Contact% was not. His career O-Contact% sits at 50.3%, while in 2007 and 2008 it was 45.3 and 50.3%, respectively. As a Royal, that rate took an absurd jump to 63.6%, which also helped bring about a rise in hitters' Contact% to 77.9%. Since his Contact% in his two previous seasons was 69.9 and 66.0%, there is clearly something wrong here.

It is entirely possible that I am making far too much out of what can be solely chalked up to a small sample size and a run of bad luck. After all, relief pitchers are one of the least predictable sets of players from year to year. Perhaps it can all be attributed to his move from the weaker Senior Circuit. Maybe the 1.0 inch loss in vertical movement on his fastball and the coincidental 1.1 inch gain in horizontal movement on his fastball can be explained by (I assure you I am only hypothesizing here and have no proof to back this up) a change in arm slot that is then tipping his fastball. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a Royals pitcher was thought to be tipping his pitches.

All of these possible reasons are simply trying to make sense of the fact that a previously effective relief pitcher found himself proud owner of a 77 ERA+ at the end of the 2009 season. What exactly rendered him ineffective?

Why did his K/9 drop to a shockingly low 6.8 when he had been sitting comfortably in the 12.4-12.8 range in the two years prior?

Why did his WHIP jump from 1.26 in the two seasons prior to 1.49?

Was it all because he can't handle the pressure? It was the first season since 2002 that his Average Leverage Index peaked over the 1.000 mark.

Was it all related to an ineffective fastball?

There are a lot of questions. We can take a little solace, albeit premature, at the fact that nearly every projection system sees a rebound for Cruz in 2010. It would be disappointing to see a Type-A free agent signed only to have him implode for two seasons, thus flushing a second-round draft pick for some awful relief pitching.

Hopefully, 2010 sees a return of a positively valued fastball and the rest of the pieces fall into place for Cruz. If that can happen, one has to think with an effective arsenal of three other pitches, Cruz could actually be a dangerous reliever and the key to bridging to Joakim Soria.

Sure, it'll optimistically help lead to 45 Soria saves, but we Royals fans love The Mexicutioner...

Meet Professor Farnsworth, Your Kansas City Royals' Fifth Starter

2010-02-11T19:15:00.003-06:00

I think I might be mentally ill if I read this and think, "Well, things could be worse..."

The "this" that is linked to above is a story in which Dick Kaegel reports that Bob McClure has stated that Kyle Farnsworth will be given the chance to fight for the final spot in the rotation in Spring Training.

My initial response to this statement would have been frothing-at-the-mouth anger if not for the past two offseasons of being anally brutalized by the team that I love.

Now I have nothing to do but shrug and console myself that at least they haven't signed another decrepit free agent to an unnecessary two-year deal that simply sets the timetable for hopeful contention back another year.

Really, what is the worst that could happen with this experiment? Last year, the Royals trotted out Sidney Ponson, Brucie Chen, and Horacio Ramirez for a combined 19 starts*. I know Kyle Farnsworth is bad, but his BB/9 of 3.4 was lower than any of the aforementioned fifth starters (Chen came closest with a 3.6 BB/9). The unholy triumvirate of scrap heap soft-tossers above all had K/9 between 4.9 and 6.5. The Prof struck out 10.1 per nine.

*Yes, I know Horacio Ramirez only registered one start, but HORACIO RAMIREZ registered one start for these lowly Royals, and he was signed to be a starter. It was such a bad signing that they only gave him one start. One. One start. I have a patch of hair missing from that start. Right in the middle of the side of my head. Gone.

I am fully aware that his strike out and walk ratios will drop when stretching out, but we sat through a lot of garbage starts last season. Would Farnsworth starts be any worse?

Now rather than wade into the waters of masturbatory hypothesizing as I am wont to do, I will let the calm pragmatist come out of its hole for just a bit.

Part of the reason I am hesitant to commit too much time to this story is that this strikes me as a sequel to Mark Teahen: Second Baseman. I could spend hundreds of words extolling the virtues of this outside the box thinking, but in all likelihood The Professor will be blowing Zack Greinke leads or pitching in garbage time. Teams say all kinds of things as Spring Training draws nearer. Paying lip service to every statement a team makes in the week before pitchers and catchers report seems a bit pointless.

As far as what to expect should Farnsworth break camp as the #5 starter, well, Dave Cameron wrote up one side of the story here, citing the example of Ryan Dempster. Rob Neyer takes a predictably less optimistic approach and hits on the one point that stuck out to me as having been neglected in the Cameron article: Dempster had once been a quasi-successful starter when the Cubs looked at unconverting him to a starter.

We can hope that his fastball magically takes on movement as he drops a few MPH off. We can also hope that he develops a secondary pitch to throw to lefties, as he almost exclusively threw his fastball to them. Sure, all of that hoping is probably for naught. After all, this is Kyle Farnworth we are talking about here, and he'll likely be back in the pen and relegated to low-leverage situations by the middle of March.

What this development does show is a glimmer of hope for those of us who have been clamoring for some outside the box thinking on the part of the Royals. While I would place the chance of this experiment working out at about 12%, it does give me a little hope. Between this and the Mark Teahen experiment that was derailed by the World Baseball Classic and the Alex Gordon hip injury, there have now been some attempts at addressing some roster issues from within the roster without breaking the bank on the free agent market.

Sure, the outside-the-box thinking hasn't been exercised while chasing down free agents--hell, inside-the-box thinking or really thinking at all seems to have been elusive when looking at 90% of the acquisitions made since the end of the 2008 Major League Baseball seasons. Still, as long as we Royals fans are stuck with the regime at the helm, we have to search long and hard for any reason to hold out hope.

If trying to stretch a shite reliever into a starter is the thing that brings me back from the ledge this time, I guess Dayton Moore & Co. have worked their magic once again...

An Explanation for My Brief Absence

2010-02-03T19:13:00.003-06:00

My apologies for my brief absence. I'll not be able to rectify things as of yet, unfortunately. Between the computer going down for three days and a sizable task that fell on my shoulders over at Sports Grumblings, I've not had the chance to write anything else anywhere else.

Luckily, the Royals have done next to nothing, aside from apparently going after Will Ohman. I'll give you one guess as to what club he has played for...

Anyway, here is a link to the piece that I wrote over at Sports Grumblings breaking down the Top 50 outfielders and beyond. It's really long, so I feel that my silence is justified in these here parts.

Royals Sign Rick Ankiel To Man Right-Center Field

2010-01-22T07:00:00.000-06:00

Having confused softball and baseball rules, Dayton Moore signed Rick Ankiel to man right-center field. Under this new alignment, Jose Guillen will stand five feet from the right field foul line while Ankiel is expected to shift roughly five feet toward center field from where a right fielder would typically be stationed.

This outside-the-box thinking will still leave the Royals wanting in terms of the ground they'll be covering in the outfield, but Moore guesstimates that the Royals "outfielders will get to somewhere between five to eight more fly balls in 2010 than they would have in 2009. That should equate to ten more wins." He then spoke of URZ/150 and assist-to-turnover ratio before espousing the value of trusting processes.

All kidding aside...

As far as Dayton Moore signings are concerned, there have been worse than the reported one-year, $3.25 million deal with a mutual option for a second year at $6 million that the club reached with Rick Ankiel yesterday. What that says about the tenure of Dayton Moore as the designer of the Major League roster for the Kansas City Royals is up to you to decide.

In all, it's not an insane amount of money to commit to Ankiel, who at the very least has a plus arm with decent range for a corner outfielder. And while he certainly has some holes in his swing, he does have prodigious power.

Of course, all of that last sentence could be ascribed to the nightmare that was Mike Jacobs, who we are all unfortunately very familiar with.

Now, since Rick Ankiel's return to the Majors as a retooled position player, he has been hampered by injuries. This does make it nearly impossible to predict what we Royals fans can come to expect from him in 2010. Since I have been playing the part of the pessimist for quite some time, I am going to switch gears for just a moment.

For a good chunk of the 2008 season, Rick Ankiel was healthy. Then following the Cardinals game at Shea on July 26th of 2008, Ankiel was pulled from regular duty with what was at first deemed an abdominal strain. As time passed and his numbers dropped, it became known that it was in fact a sports hernia that had been afflicting Ankiel. The injury was thought to have occurred in the Cards' series with the Brewers just before their trip to Shea, but for our purposes, I'll look at Ankiel's stats up until the point at which his injury began limiting him to pinch-hitting duty for the two weeks that followed.

On July 26, 2008, Rick Ankiel was hitting .282/.347/.543/.890 through 92 games (84 of those were starts). He had collected 22 homers, 21 doubles, two triples, 57 runs, and 59 RBI, with a 33:80 BB:K ratio in roughly half a season. His BABIP was a reasonably sustainable .309, and his ISO was a robust .261.

Obviously, he had been putting together a very nice season in 2008 before everything ran off the tracks. An abdominal strain became a sports hernia, and Ankiel ended up getting shut down for the remainder of the season after the Cardinals played on September 9th. There is the shortcoming here in that the sample size is likely too small to make any substantive extrapolation that could be applied to this season. We are also talking about numbers from the 2008 season in the National League.

Ankiel's 2009 season was largely affected by injuries. He had already made his way to the DL with a shoulder injury on May 7th. Whether it was neck, shoulder, or groin injuries that landed him on the team injury report, it seemed as though Ankiel was dealing with injuries all season.

This propensity toward injury is certainly cause for concern. That being said, a healthy Rick Ankiel is a player I could get behind having on the roster.

Do I think the Royals will end up getting that Rick Ankiel--the one who produced an enticing line while healthy in 2008? Honestly, no.

Do I mind that the Royals spent $3.25 million in 2010 on Ankiel in the hopes of his being able to stay healthy and produce? No.

Now, what this means for the other 87 outfielders the Royals currently have on the 40-man roster is nearly impossible to determine. I have spent the last year trying to make sense of how newly acquired players fit into Dayton Moore's plan for the roster, and each time the logical path that my train of thought took me down was nowhere near where I thought the Royals would end up.

I thought going into Spring Training with three catchers last season meant that Moore would ship either Olivo or Buck off as they broke from Arizona and the 25-man rosters were set, but no such thing happened.

I assumed Ron Mahay would be traded when his value was at an all-time high at the 2008 non-waiver trade deadline, but Moore failed to ship off the then effective left-handed set-up man to a contender, and Mahay tanked from there on out.

I rationalized the Mike Jacobs signing by making the assumption that the Royals would be trading either Billy Butler, Kila Ka'ahuie, or Ryan Shealy to fill one of the other roster holes, but no moves were made regarding any of them.

I figured the signing of the Other Brian Anderson would rule out the acquisition of Scott Podsednik. No such luck.

It is long past the point at which I can reasonably expect to decipher what Moore's plan is regarding the construction of this roster. With the exceptions of Mitch Maier or Brian Anderson, both of whom are unlikely to garner much playing time with the way the roster seems to be shaking out, there is not a center fielder on this team. David DeJesus and Scott Podsednik would both seem to profile as similarly equipped left fielders, leading a rational person to assume that perhaps Moore is planning on shipping off David DeJesus. Unfortunately (and most of all, unfortunately for DeJesus himself), similar thinking struck us all heading into the 2008 and 2009 seasons when DeJesus's club-favorable contract would seem to have yielded the most in terms of returns, but no move was made.

At this point, I would have to say that shift in philosophy leading to the aforementioned four-outfielder alignment with the "rangy" Yuniesky Betancourt manning a simple middle infield spot (shading to the right or left depending on the hitters' tendencies, of course) is just as likely as the sensible DeJesus move being made.

Moreover, any trade of DeJesus then opens up the Royals fanbase to having to welcome in dead weight from either Atlanta, Bavasi's Mariners, or the South Side of Chicago. I, for one, do not want that frosted-tip bastard A.J. Pierzynski anywhere near this club, but with the Kendall signing, adding Pierzynski makes the least sense for the Royals, so that is surely what would happen.

So while I have learned that speculation as to what roster fallout will follow the Rick Ankiel signing is futile, I can for once say that I don't hate a Dayton Moore signing.

Maybe trotting four outfielders out on defense won't be all bad...

Dayton Moore Building From Within: A Follow-Up

2010-01-19T21:11:00.003-06:00

The anonymous commenter from yesterday's post brings up a valid point:

My point wasn't that the Baseball America claims should be dismissed outright, just that it would be an extremely tough claim to substantiate and that from what I have seen, they made no attempt to do so. Now, if they have reams of data in their super secret basement complex that prove this, then I'd be more than happy to see the results of their analysis and change my mind. Until then, I believe that the saying goes "In God we trust, all others must bring data.". A simple example would be a statistic measuring how many of the pitching prospects drafted by the Braves during that timeframe were traded to bolster the major league team. During most of the period in question, the major league rotation was pretty set at the top 3 which could have affected everything from the level of risk taken during the draft (taking more high risk guys who were less likely to pan out) to when pitching was drafted (i.e. they may have drafted pitching later in the draft because of this which could have led to the low success rate). Basically, all that I am saying is that to make a claim like that, there should be extensive analysis behind it and I would like for them to "show their work" so to speak.

Now, I had begun to respond within the comments section when I realized that the response was getting pretty lengthy. Hence, post.

I agree to an extent about the showing their work. We are talking about almost 15 years in which Dayton Moore was heavily involved in player development. Since we know what has happened since Moore got to Kansas City, it is best to look at what went on while he was in Atlanta.

Going into the players that were signed out of Latin America is simply going to be too difficult for little old me to cull together. I can say that Neftali Feliz looks to be the real deal, and I'd imagine Moore was somewhat involved in his initial signing out of Latin America, but he was traded to the Rangers at the age of 19. He's still not a starter, although one would imagine he will be in the near future. Moore was hired by the Royals in the summer of 2006. Feliz was still in Rookie ball when the Braves traded him the next year. I think his development can safely be attributed to the Rangers.

Of draftees while Moore was still in Atlanta, 2005 is the last draft of theirs we can look at that Dayton Moore was involved with. Then-spelled Tommie Hanson was taken in the 22nd round of that draft. When Moore left for Kansas City, Hanson was sitting in Rookie Ball.

Their first round pick that year was Joey Devine, taken out of NC State, and was in the Majors for a drink of water by the end of that season. He spent the two seasons that followed pitching mostly in Triple-A, with short stints with the club in Atlanta before being shipped off to Oakland. At all stops, he has been a reliever. His stop in Oakland in 2008 was the first time in which Devine was given a chance to play a majority of the season in the Majors, and he pitched quite well, for what it's worth.

Understandably, these are the only two from the 2005 draft who have substantial experience at the Major League level.

From the 2004 draft, there have been no players who have made an impact at the Major League level. It should be noted that they did draft a first baseman named Joey Lieberman.

Matt Harrison--drafted in 2003--was sent off to Texas in the Teixeira deal as well, but does he qualify as a quality ML starter? At the time of the trade, Harrison sat in Double-A. The other pitchers to have made it to the show from that draft were Jo-Jo Reyes and Sean White, neither of whom left their mark at the highest level.

Chuck James and Dan Meyer were both drafted in 2002, but neither qualify could reasonably qualify as quality Major League starters.

Macay McBride, Anthony Lerew, Kyle Davies, and Kevin Barry are the only products of their 2001 draft with any ML experience. We're not still basking in the glow of Kyle Davies's sterling September of 2008, are we?

From their 2000 draft, Adam Wainwright advanced through their system to AA before being traded to the Cardinals. Here we've got our first argument for the Braves system potentially putting out a prospect, but he did end up going to St. Louis, where Dave Duncan is a god. At most, the Braves can be partially credited for his development. After all, he was the 29th pick of the draft that year, so he already had some skills when he entered the organization.

Other drafted pitchers from the 2000 draft who have made it to the Majors? Blaine Boyer, Zach Miner, Trey Hodges, and Kelly Johnson. Well, Johnson made it to the show but as an outfielder/second baseman.

In 1999, the Braves had Andrew Brown, Ben Kozlowski, and John Foster who made it to the Majors and were drafted as pitchers. I'd imagine that the rest of you are as surprised as I am that these three players were Major Leaguers.

1998's draft produced the following Major League pitchers: Matt Belisle, Scott Sobkowiak, John Ennis, Tim Spooneybarger, Mike Perez, and Brad Voyles. Not impressive.

In 1997, the list of draftees logging Major League time who were drafted as pitchers are Joey Nation and Horacio Ramirez. I think I speak for all of us when I say that I'd like to never see the name Horacio Ramirez in print again.

From 1996's draft saw Atlanta draft Jason Marquis, Joe Nelson, and Aaron Taylor as its only draftees that reached the Majors as pitchers.

(All of the above info was culled thanks to the links to the Baseball Cube Braves draft results listed on the Braves Draft History sidebar listed over at the old blogspot location for the Baby Braves blog that at one point moved to MVN but now appears to be defunct.)

Insofar as how many pitchers were drafted in those drafts and the importance the organization put on pitching versus other positions, it is probably easiest to look at how many of their top 10 picks were pitchers in each of those years. It's not a complete picture, but it certainly informs one as to what sort of importance they placed on pitching each year.

1996 - 11 picks in the first 10 rounds - pitchers were taken in the sandwich portion of the first round, fourth, sixth, ninth, and tenth rounds
1997 - 10 picks - second, fifth, ninth, and tenth rounds (the ninth and tenth round picks did not sign)
1998 - 9 picks, no first round pick - second, fourth, seventh, eighth, ninth (eighth rounder not signed)
1999 - 9 picks, no first rounder - second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and tenth round (eighth rounder not signed)
2000 - 15 picks, four picks in the first, two in the second, two in the fourth - this year, it's easier to say when pitchers weren't taken, two of their first rounders were position players, and their eighth and ninth rounders weren't pitchers, Kelly Johnson was one of the first rounders drafted as a pitcher and converted later on, again Wainwright was their first pick
2001 - 13 picks, three first rounders and two second rounders - their first pick in the first round was a pitcher, J.P. Howell was drafted with their first pick in the second round but was not signed, Davies was taken in the fourth, and then they took inconsequential pitchers in the seventh, ninth and tenth rounds
2002 - 12 picks, extra supplemental picks in each of the first two rounds - their supplemental first round pick was Dan Meyer, followed by pitchers in the third, fourth, seventh, and ninth rounds
2003 - 13 picks, one extra supplemental pick in each of the first three rounds - again, this year, it is easier to look at when they didn't take pitchers: Saltalamacchia was their supplemental first round pick and first baseman Jamie Romak was taken in the fourth round
2004 - 9 picks, no first rounder - fourth, seventh, ninth, tenth
2005 - 12 picks, one extra supplemental pick in the first two rounds - both first rounders, the last second round pick, and the fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and tenth rounders were pitchers

Judging by this data, it seems as though pitching at the very least wasn't wholly ignored. If I am reading the drafting correctly, the italicized names on those lists were non-signed players. It should then be noted that there seemed to be an organizational shift in drafting philosophy.

Up until 2001, the Braves had a large chunk of unsigned draftees. After that point, nearly all of their drafted players were signed, indicating to me at least that the Braves shifted their focus to signable players, taking the cheaper, lower-risk route--one that we can all agree is less likely to be getting later top-notch talent than say signing players with signability concerns to contracts grossly out of line with recommended slotting, which is largely why Moore has been able to accumulate the bevy of arms currently populating the lower levels of the Royals minor league system.

Of the players drafted and successfully signed from 1996 until 2005--Moore's last official draft with the Braves--the only legitimate impact arms produced by the Braves were Adam Wainwright and Tommy Hanson. Jason Marquis has been intermittently effective as a starter at the Major League level. Hanson's development took place mostly outside of the purview of Dayton Moore. Wainwright was successful in the Braves minor league system but wasn't a successful pro starter until pitching under the eye and tutelage of Dave Duncan, perhaps the best pitching coach in the Majors.

Again, this research is bound to be incomplete without access to international signings who were then traded, but Neftali Feliz is the only traded international player that springs to mind as a standout pitcher who was traded out of the system, but he's not quite an established starter.

Where does this leave us?

Well, speaking for myself, I'm worried.