Prospect Rundown, Part 3

First off, I’d like to thank the fine people at mediaite.com for naming me to their list of the “Top 25 Sports Bloggers, Writers, and Tweeters.” Unfortunately, I’d much rather that the Royals make the Official Standings list of the “Top 25 Major League Baseball Teams.” (Last year they finished tied for 26^th. So close!)

Still, it is an honor, and I’m especially pleased to be part of Kansas City’s domination of the list. Joe Posnanski and Jason Whitlock need no introduction, but both Jason King and Sports by Brooks’ Brooks Melchior worked at the Star before branching out into the wild world of the internet. The sportswriting scene in Kansas City continues to be the bizarro version of the Royals, the scrappy small-market outfit that dominates its larger, better-funded competitors.

Back to the prospects. After discussing Mike Moustakas, the third baseman with a catcher’s body, it’s only appropriate that we move onto Wil Myers, the catcher with an outfielder’s body. But unlike the case with Moustakas, where Moose’s prospect status is threatened by his lack of a stable position, the fact that Myers’ ultimate position is undefined only adds to the intrigue. In Myers’ case, at least at this point his bat projects at any position. If he can master the tools of ignorance, well, you go from talking about a potential star to a potential superstar.

Myers was considered a dark-horse first-round candidate before last year’s draft, ranking #31 on Baseball America’s draft chart; he only ranked that low because, playing at a private high school in North Carolina, he rarely faced strong competition outside of showcase events. The Royals reportedly considered taking him with their first pick, and might well have done so if Aaron Crow had not been available. Myers then fell to the third round, in large part because teams were worried about his bonus demands, and the Royals – continuing a recent trend for which Dayton Moore & Co. deserve massive credit for – snagged him in the 3^rd round, with the 91^st overall pick. They signed him for $2 million, roughly mid-1^st round money, and double what any other third-round pick (save one) received.

It appears to be money well spent. Myers quickly laid to rest the concerns about his bat against pro competition. In 22 pro games after signing, he hit .369/.427/.679, with 14 extra-base hits in just 84 at-bats. Numbers like that are nice, but may not be that meaningful in such a small sample size. True, Billy Butler hit .373/.488/.596 in his first pro season straight out of high school; on the other hand, Jeff Bianchi hit .408/.484/.745 in his first year.

There are a couple reasons to think that Myers is closer to Butler than Bianchi on the prep hitter spectrum. For one, most of his performance came at Idaho Falls, one rung above rookie ball, and away from the thin Arizona air that always inflates hitters numbers. Butler spent his entire first season in Idaho Falls; Bianchi benefited from the Arizona League.

But the main reason to think Myers’ numbers are meaningful is simply because his scouting reports are equally impressive. He has everything you’d want from a teenage hitter; tremendous raw power, quick wrists that allow him rip line drives to both fields, and the ability to wait on pitches and avoid swinging at ones out of the zone. It’s early, but Myers looks like the most special bat the Royals have drafted out of high school since Butler. There’s a reason why Myers landed at #83 on Kevin Goldstein’s list, and was strongly considered for the Top 100 by both Baseball America and Keith Law. That may not sound like much, but it’s very rare for a player to make a Top 100 Prospect list the winter after he was drafted unless he was a first-round, or even top ten, pick.

Now, it’s way too early to compare Myers to Butler offensively. Myers would have to reach Double-A this summer and hit .313 with power during his time there to match Butler’s performance when he was 19 years old. But whereas Butler’s entire value resided within his bat, Myers has the tools and athleticism to help his team in multiple ways. Butler has spent five years working on his defense, and it was still considered a major breakthrough for him last season when he played a passable first base in the majors. Just based on his physical build, Myers figures to have far more defensive value than Bam Bam. Myers is taller (6’3” vs. 6’1”), leaner (190 pounds vs. 240), faster, and far more athletic than Butler. He throws in the upper-80s, and moves well behind the plate.

It’s still a long shot that he’ll reach the major leagues as a catcher. While Myers’ arm helped him to throw out 5 of 12 potential basestealers last season, his inexperience showed when it came to blocking errant pitches – he allowed six passed balls in just 10 games. Myers played all over the field in high school, so while scouts feel he has the necessary tools to become at least an average catcher, he is a very much a work in progress.

I absolutely agree with the Royals’ decision to try Myers behind the plate for at least all of this season. But the Royals may find themselves in a strange paradox: the quicker his bat develops, the more they may be pressed into moving him to a less demanding position rather than hinder his progress up the chain. He doesn’t have the classic body type for a catcher – he’s a little too long and lean – and it’s no surprise that two players he’s been compared to are Dale Murphy and Jayson Werth, both guys who developed as catchers but only blossomed in the majors after a move to the outfield.

Myers, at 6’3”, is pretty much at the upper bound of how tall you can be and still play catcher – the taller you are, the more of a pounding your knees take from all the squatting and standing. Joe Mauer is 6’5”, but Mauer defies historic comparison in so many ways. (And Mauer has already dealt with significant knee and back problems.) In the live-ball era, only one other player that stood 6’5” has caught even 600 games: Sandy Alomar, who seemingly had knee problems from the moment he entered the league. Nine guys measured at 6’4” have caught 600 games, including our main Jamie Quirk; the most successful were 60s-era Johnny Edwards and Tom Haller. Werth is 6’5”, Murphy is 6’4”. Drop the bar down to 6’3”, and you find a wealth of successful and long-lasting catchers, including Mike Piazza, Lance Parrish, and Iron Man Carlton Fisk.

Can Myers make it as a catcher in the majors? It’s certainly worth giving him that shot. But I think his bat is special enough that I won’t be too heartbroken if he has to move to the outfield, because as much as the Royals’ need a long-term solution at catcher, their long-term outlook in the outfield isn’t much better. The team hasn’t come remotely close to developing an outfielder since David DeJesus was a rookie in 2004, and as it stands, all four of their potential starting outfielders (DeJesus, Podsednik, Ankiel, and Guillen) are all potential free agents after this season. (DeJesus, fortunately, is tied to a club option in 2011.) While the Royals have some decent short-term replacement options in Jordan Parraz and David Lough, and a couple of long-term lottery tickets in Derrick Robinson and Hilton Richardson, they don’t have a single outfielder in the system who’s a Grade A, or even Grade B, prospect.

So if Myers’ future is in the outfield, as say a prototypical power-hitting right fielder with a strong arm and range afield, I’ll be perfectly happy with that. But if the light bulb goes on this season and we start getting glowing reports about his catching skills, then feel free to get really excited. I know that I’ll be watching closely to see how he hits this season – Myers, more than anyone else in the system, has the potential to rocket himself into phenom territory this season, the guy who winds up in Baseball America’s Prospect Pulse and Kevin Goldstein’s Monday Ten-Pack every week. I’ll be watching, but I’ll be listening even more intently to the scouting buzz about his defense. A lot can go wrong on the road from Idaho Falls to Kansas City. But Myers has a chance to be that Special Talent that we all thought Moustakas and Hosmer would be.

Prospect Rundown, Part 2

Continuing where we left off last time…

While I admire Keith Law’s willingness to put himself out there with Eric Hosmer, I agree with the consensus opinion that the Royals’ best prospect is Mike Montgomery. Montgomery ranks #35 overall on Baseball Prospectus’ list, and #39 on Baseball America’s list (Law has him just #75 overall). Montgomery is a good piece of scouting, a projectable left-handed arm out of southern California that the Royals took with a supplemental first-round pick in 2008. His elite ranking stems from the fact that he makes scouts and stats types go equally gaga over him.

His stats are terrific; last season, split between Burlington and Wilmington, Montgomery threw 110 innings, allowed just 80 hits and 36 walks, and struck out 98 batters. He allowed one homer all year. His career ERA as a pro is 2.06. But what separates Monty from, say, Danny Duffy, who has nearly as impressive stats but not nearly the prospect cache, are two things: 1) his stuff and 2) his projection.

His stuff is already major-league caliber – he throws in the low 90s, which is plenty for a lefty, and he has the makings of both a [high-]quality curveball and changeup. His curveball overmatches minor leaguers, but he throws a weird palm curveball that people are skeptical will work at higher levels, and the Royals are working with him to master a more traditional one.

Right now, he has the repertoire of a #2 or #3 starter. But what vaults Montgomery into elite status is that, at 6’5” and just 180 pounds, he was expected to add velocity when he was drafted, and while it’s up a tick, many think that his fastball hasn’t peaked yet. He gets high marks for his mechanics, and he repeats them well, also leading credence to the theory that the best is yet to come. He doesn’t turn 21 until July 1^st. He’s famously competitive – thrown off his high school basketball team for committing too many technicals – and his work ethic is such that the Royals had to work with him to dial down his between-starts throwing regimen last spring. He should start the year in Double-A, and while everyone thinks Aaron Crow will be the first of the Royals’ wave of young pitchers to reach the majors, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if Montgomery is pitching in the majors come September.

Crow is the consensus #2 prospect in the organization; BP ranks him #53, and BA ranks him #40 (right behind Montgomery) overall. Law has him #87. Crow is in many ways the opposite of Montgomery – he’s almost a finished product, a right-hander drafted out of college (and then, when he didn’t sign, drafted out of the independent leagues by the Royals a la Luke Hochevar).

His fastball is maybe a tick faster than Montgomery’s, though without the projection for more, and from the right side his velocity is not quite as special as Montgomery’s. What makes Crow’s fastball special is his command of the pitch, as well as the fact that it has natural sinking motion. And whereas Montgomery – like most Royals’ prospects – throws a curveball, Crow’s out pitch is a tight slider that is unhittable when it’s on. His changeup, though is still a work in progress, and some people worry about his mechanics.

I’ve seen Crow compared to a lot of pitchers, but the comparison I’d like to make – because I like being reckless – is that if everything works out, he could sort of resemble Kevin Appier. Appier worked primarily off a good sinking fastball and a hard-breaking slider, rarely threw a changeup, and people worried about his unorthodox motion for years even though he never suffered a serious arm injury until an off-field injury tore up his shoulder. I don’t think Crow will be quite that good, but it’s something to shoot for.

With Crow, we simply won’t know for a while what we have, because his only pro experience to date is a short stint in the Arizona Fall League. He gave up 17 hits in 15 innings pitched – no surprise, given the hitter-friendly nature of the league – but more tellingly, he walked just 2 batters and struck out 12. It’s a very small sample size, but fits with the notion that Crow is an advanced arm, who will probably start in Double-A, and could be ready for a major-league audition as soon as mid-season.

While Montgomery and Crow are a pretty easy consensus for the Royals’ two best prospects, the competition for the third spot is a heated one. In one corner you have Mike Moustakas, the #2 pick in the land in 2007, but who suffered through a disappointing 2009. In the other you have Wil Myers, the Royals’ third-round pick just this past summer, but who after signing for a $2 million bonus opened eyes and dropped jaws with his performance in rookie ball.

Both BA and BP rank Moustakas ahead on their Top 100 Prospects list; BP has Moustakas #79 and Myers #83, while BA has Moustakas #80 and doesn’t rank Myers. But strangely, the Baseball America Prospect Handbook, which ranks the top 30 prospects for every organization, ranks Myers as the Royals #3 prospect and Moustakas #4.

Moustakas seems destined to me to a disappointment, as much as for what others (like Matt Wieters and Rick Porcello) have done as for what he hasn’t done. What Moustakas hasn’t done is convert his still formidable skills into performance. He has ridiculous bat speed, but he swings at too many bad pitches to take full advantage of it. In 2008, he hit a promising .272/.337/.468, walked a reasonable amount (43 times in 496 AB), and hit 22 homers (the most by a teenager in the Midwest League in years). Last season, his offensive game took a step backward in every way: he hit just .250, he walked just 32 times in 492 AB, and he hist just 16 homers (although he did hit 32 doubles). Overall, his line of .250/.297/.421 was unacceptable.

The elephant in the room is Daniel S. Frawley Stadium, where the Wilmington Blue Rocks play. The Blue Rocks have played in one of the minors’ best pitchers’ parks since they joined the Carolina League nearly two decades ago, and Moustakas would hardly be the first Royals prospect to struggle there. At the same age Moustakas was last year, Carlos Beltran hit just .229/.311/.363 for the Blue Rocks; two years later he was the AL Rookie of the Year.

There’s a well-researched article here which points out that while Wilmington is a tough place to hit overall, it’s actually not a bad park for left-handed power hitters, because the right-field fence is considerably closer than the left-field one. That may be true, but the fact remains that last season, Moustakas hit just .205/.266/.373 at home, and .292/.331/.473 on the road (numbers approximate). Maybe Frawley Stadium affected him mentally more than physically – its reputation precedes itself – but regardless, on the road Moustakas’ numbers were a doppelganger of his 2008 performance. With a promotion to relatively hitter-friendly Northwest Arkansas this year, we’ll see if there’s a breakout performance coming.

I’m still confident that he will develop into a strong power threat, but I’m increasingly worried that he’ll never develop the plate discipline that he needs to be an above-average player. Case in point: after his disappointing season for Wilmington, Moustakas headed to the Arizona Fall League, and took advantage of the thin air to slug .560 and hit 5 homers and 11 extra-base hits overall in just 75 at-bats. But he drew just 2 walks the entire time he was down there, and finished with a .288 OBP. We have enough sub-.300 OBPs on the roster already. Moustakas is young enough to improve in that regard, but he’s also in arguably the worst organization in baseball when it comes to teaching him the strike zone.

The other major concern I have with Moustakas is a lack of a defined position, which stems in part from the fact that he has a weird set of defensive tools. He has a cannon for an arm, strong enough that he hit the low-90s from the mound while in high school. The problem is that he just doesn’t have the body type to play the infield. I finally got a good look at Moustakas during the AFL all-star game, and was struck by just how unathletic he looked. He has what the scouts call a “thick lower half”: he has big thighs, and – there’s no nice way to put this – a big ass. Honestly, the first thought I had when I saw him was, “he looks just like Billy Butler.” That doesn’t mean he can’t hit, but as Butler has proven, that does mean that you can’t play the left side of the infield without eliciting an unending stream of guffaws. (And in three plate appearances, Moose saw a total of four pitches, twice putting the first pitch in play.)

With that arm, he could certainly move to right field, but in addition to losing a lot of positional value out there, I’m not sure he has the speed to be even an average defender out there, and he’s not going to pick up speed as he ages. In addition to being an average runner at best, Moustakas is also short and squat. He’s listed as 6’0” and 195 pounds in BA’s Handbook, and it would be wonderful if that were the case. According to his minorleaguebaseball.com player page, he’s 5’11” and 230 pounds.

Over the last few years there have been two grassroots movements afoot to move two Royals into different roles. The first has been the campaign to move Joakim Soria into the starting rotation. I would love to see how Soria would do as a starter, to satisfy my curiosity if nothing else, but I have made my peace with the Royals’ decision to keep him in the bullpen. There are legitimate concerns about him losing velocity in the rotation, his slight frame, his history of arm problems – I can understand the Royals’ reluctance to meddle with one of their greatest assets, particularly with a wave of young starting pitching about to crest.

But I’m riding shotgun for the other bandwagon movement, the one that says that the Royals should move Moustakas behind the plate. This isn’t a new idea; I’ve heard baseball analysts like Law suggest it for two years now. And as much as the Royals want to dismiss the idea as just so much fan-induced craziness, it’s neither crazy nor fan-induced. On the contrary, the most vehement supporters of this idea are generally scouts for other teams.

If you poll scouts from other organizations who have followed Moustakas, you will find a sizeable minority, if not a majority, of them think that it’s a great idea. That’s both because Moustakas has the perfect raw tools to be a catcher (not too tall, agile but not fast, laser arm), and because he doesn’t really fit anywhere else on the diamond. Just two months ago I spoke with a scout about some of the Royals’ prospects, and the first thing out of his mouth when I inquired about Moustakas was “man, I’d really love to see what he could do behind the plate.”

That the Royals have shown absolutely no inclination to even entertain the idea is not an indictment of the idea, but of the Royals. Once again, we see one of the central failings of the organization: a team that plays in one of the game’s smallest markets, a franchise that was once the class of baseball in large part because of its willingness to think outside the box (the Royals Baseball Academy, anyone?), simply refuses to think of creative solutions to their problems. Moustakas has a great arm and good first-step quickness, but he’s not built to be a third baseman. I suppose he could be a third baseman the way Ron Cey was a third baseman – Cey was known as “The Penguin” because of the way he waddled when he ran. Cey was 5’10” and 185 pounds – Moose has nearly 50 pounds on him.

So Moustakas may not make for a good third baseman, and anyway the Royals still have Alex Gordon over there. While Gordon may remain a bust, it doesn’t make sense to plan for failure. The Royals don’t need Moustakas at first base. He’s unlikely to be anything more than an average right fielder, and a move there would make the deficiencies in his bat that much more glaring. And yet there’s a position on the field where 1) Moustakas has the raw skills to develop into an above-average defender; 2) the offensive requirements are much less demanding – if Moustakas hits .270 with 25 homers, even with poor plate discipline he'd be one of the best-hitting catchers in baseball; 3) the Royals have an enormous need.

Naturally, the Royals have shown absolutely no interest in the idea. Never mind that other teams have had great success with converted catchers. Russell Martin was drafted as a third baseman, and is now one of the best defensive backstops in baseball. Jorge Posada was a second baseman in his first pro season. Michael Barrett – a first-round pick – was a shortstop in his first season in the minors, before he was pointed in the direction of home plate. Geovany Soto dabbled in the outfield and on the infield corners his first two years in the minors. Hell, Mike Piazza had never caught in his life when the Dodgers signed him and handed him a mask.

So yeah, count me among those who think that the only way for Moustakas to reach his true potential is become a catcher. Sure, it might slow down his progression to the majors. But let’s face it: he’s no longer on the fast track to Kansas City in the first place. It’s going to take at least another year or two before he’s ready no matter where he plays. Given that, the Royals might as well move him to a position where he’ll be worth the wait.

Speaking of catchers, more on Wil Myers – and some other top prospects – still to come.

Addendum: After I posted this article, a source with connections to the Royals contacted me to let me know that, late last year, the Royals did in fact quietly broach the subject of moving behind the plate with Moustakas. He made it clear that he had no interest in such a move, and the idea was shelved.

While in a perfect world a team could tell one of their top prospects to jump and he'd respond with "how high?", back in the real world it's probably not a good idea to force a position change on a player without getting some buy-in from him. If Moustakas were a complete bust at this point, the Royals might push the subject a little harder on the premise that they had nothing to lose. But he's not; there's still a good chance that his bat will come around to the point where he's an asset at third base, or any other position. So I stand corrected: the Royals tried, and I can't fault them for not succeeding.

Also, I've been told that immediately after the AFL, Moustakas - at the behest of both the Royals and his agent, the Scott Boras Corporation - enrolled in an intense workout regimen designed to make his soft body a little less so. This fits with the word out of spring training that he looks to be in much better shape than last season. I know, I know - this is National Best Shape of His Life Month. But at least Moustakas recognized there was a problem, and - no one questions his work ethic - applied himself towards fixing it. Of all the Royals' top prospects, he's the only one whose shape I worry about, so if anyone gets a good sighting of him this spring, I'd love to hear about it.

Reboot.

There’s still snow on the ground over much of the Midwest, but it’s sunny and warm in Surprise, the entire roster has reported for duty, everyone’s in the best shape of their lives, and Kyle Farnsworth’s changeup is unbelievable. (And his pitching coach is comparing him to Zack Greinke!) Forget the calendar – spring has arrived. Optimism abounds. Hope springs eternal. Again.

So it’s time to reboot. Last year was a nightmare in so many ways, and even after a winter off, I can’t say that the bitter taste in my mouth has completely washed out. But I’m going to try my best to start afresh. I don’t think I can maintain this blog if I have to ride the highs and lows that I did last season. But I’ll try my best to be here, perhaps not as often as before, and perhaps not as emotional – for good or for bad – as before. I’ll try not to let the fact that the Royals and I see baseball through completely different prisms get in the way. I’ll try not to let the fact that in an admittedly bizarre Fox Sports clip with Jim Bowden – I’d link to it, but it’s apparently been pulled from the web – Dayton Moore let it be known that two of his favorite sabermetric stats are “runs scored” and “runs batted in”. That’s like saying that your favorite president was Benjamin Franklin.

So I’ll try to stay positive, but not at the expense of being honest.

But in all honesty, there is reason to be positive about the Royals today, even after an off-season that was spent mostly spinning our wheels. You might think that I’m incredibly bearish on the Royals’ off-season moves based on my posts, but in the big picture, it wasn’t a disaster. Yes, the Royals signed Jason Kendall, and the pundits are still laughing. But aside from Kendall, Moore and friends didn’t make any egregious errors. Brian Anderson looks superfluous. Scott Podsednik is a band-aid. Rick Ankiel is a project. But none of these guys are signed beyond this year, and they’re not – as yet – blocking any better options in the system. (Indirectly, they’re blocking Kila Ka’aihue, but if playing Ka’aihue at DH means that Jose Guillen has to take the field…it’s back to Omaha for you, Kila.)

The Mark Teahen trade brought in Josh Fields and Chris Getz, both of whom are far from sure things, but if either one of them turns into a quality everyday player, the Royals win the deal – they’re both under club control for the next five years. And best of all, the Royals found the time and money to squeeze in the Noel Arguelles signing, adding another Top-100 prospect to the system.

In terms of talent moving into and out of the organization, there’s no comparison: this was a much better winter than last year. (Notice the qualification: the Zack Greinke extension trumps everything, even if it was a no-brainer.)

So I can still see the reasons to be optimistic about the future of the Kansas City Royals. It’s just that, for the umpteenth year in a row, “future” means “after this season”. I mean, yes, it’s possible that the Royals could be a surprise contender this season. If the magic that descended upon Kansas City in 2003 returns this summer, like some sort of seven-year cicada, anything is possible. The Royals still have one trump card up their sleeve that the Rays, the A’s, and the Mariners don’t: they play in the AL Central. If the Central is as weak as it was last year, or as weak as some project it to be this year (the last update of Baseball Prospectus’ projections has the Twins winning the division – with 81 wins, just seven more than the Royals) – hey, anything’s possible.

On the other hand, the Royals also have a lineup in which Yuniesky Betancourt might bat seventh – or, in one of Trey Hillman’s permutations, a lineup in which Jason Kendall bats second. So pardon me for not taking their playoff chances all that seriously.

But that doesn’t mean that 2010 can’t be a successful year for the franchise. It just means that we have to direct our expectations elsewhere – namely, to the farm system, where the Royals have been stockpiling teenage talent through the last three drafts, talent which is only now starting to reach the higher levels of the minor leagues. But it’s there. What’s unusual about the Royals’ farm system is that while they probably have three or four future All-Stars quietly developing, it’s not clear who those three or four guys are. If you look at the most well-respected Top 100 Prospects lists out there – Baseball America, Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law at ESPN.com – the Royals have three or four guys on each list. But it’s a different mix of players on each one.

The highest-rated Royal on any of these lists, as hard as it may be to believe, is Eric Hosmer, who comes in at #34 on Law’s list even though he didn’t make the Top 100 at all on the other two lists. I love getting Law’s input, because he’s at once well-informed yet iconoclastic, which frequently leads to situations like these where his opinion of a prospect differs wildly from the consensus.

I had the chance to speak with Law at some length about Hosmer at the winter meetings, and was impressed with his enthusiasm for Hosmer – so this ranking doesn’t surprise me. We all know the story about Hos – considered the best pure hitter out of the high school ranks in years, but fell flat on his face in his first full season, hitting just .254/.352/.382 in Burlington, and then even worse (.206/.280/.299) after a bizarre late-season promotion to Wilmington. Hosmer’s season then ended prematurely because 1) he couldn’t see properly and 2) the Royals had problems finding him a good pair of glasses, which led to a lot well-earned snickering.

But Hosmer did have LASIK surgery at the end of the year to correct his vision problem, which evidently had only surfaced after he was drafted. It’s important not to let the frustration with how the Royals evidently couldn’t find a LensCrafters anywhere in Delaware (I recommend the one at the Concord Mall) obscure the fact that Hosmer’s astigmatism was, in the big picture, very good news indeed. If there wasn’t a good reason for Hosmer’s struggles last season, that would be very worrisome. But there was a good reason, and evidently that reason has been taken care of – Law’s sources told him that Hosmer was seeing the ball much better in BP after surgery.

And Law also pointed out the other extenuating circumstance for Hos, one that seems to have been lost in the shuffle – he played much of the season with a hairline fracture in one of his fingers. If you take these two health issues together, they actually explain the two biggest deficiencies in Hosmer’s performance last season. You would expect a hand injury to sap him of his power, which it did. You would expect vision problems to manifest themselves primarily against same-side pitching, and Hosmer was terrible against southpaws – he hit a ridiculous .171/.220/.220 against them. (Against RHP, he hit a much more reasonable .273/.376/.435.)

That’s not to say that Hosmer gets a pass for 2009 – he doesn’t, not when he’s a first baseman, not when he got the largest signing bonus ($6 million) in franchise history, not when the Royals could have taken Justin Smoak, who looks to take his Mark Teixeira impression to Arlington this summer, or Gordon Beckham, who’s already established himself in the White Sox infield. But Law’s ranking serves to remind us that all is not yet lost with Hosmer, who after all is still just 20. This is a huge season for him, of course. And of all the minor leaguers on the list, he’s the one guy whose spring training reports are worth looking for. If he’s belting the ball with authority in March, I’ll feel much more comfortable about his ability to do the same from April through August.

More to come…

Now Starting For The Royals, Number 40...

As most of you know, Dick Kaegel had another scoop last week, and this time it was intentional:

Didn’t like Kyle Farnsworth as a relief pitcher? Hang on, he might be a starting pitcher for the Royals this year.

“Kyle Farnsworth is competing for a job in the rotation,” pitching coach Bob McClure revealed Wednesday.

That’s right, the big right-hander will at least get a chance to show what he can do as a starter in Spring Training.

“We’re going to lengthen him out and see how it goes,” McClure said. “Because what he showed me last year was the ability to back off a little bit and not pitch with his hair on fire. And, to be a starter, you have to be able to just kind of go pitch-by-pitch.”

I don’t want to oversell the impact of this proclamation – saying that Farnsworth is competing for a job in the rotation could mean anything from “he’s all but won a job” to “there’s no way in hell that he’s going to start for us, but we have to at least pretend that there’s a chance he’ll earn the money we’re paying him.” This could all be forgotten by mid-March, so it’s not worth getting too worked up about this either way.

Still, it’s worth talking about, because it certainly is…different. I will admit to thinking many different things – only some of them printable – when Kyle Farnsworth took the mound last year. At no point did one of those thoughts consist of, “you know, I think Farnsworth’s problem is that he’s miscast as a reliever.”

Having said that, I don’t want to dismiss this idea out of hand. Dave Cameron, who generally knows his baseball, has endorsed the move, going so far as to say “The Royals take a lot of crap from us, but I’ll applaud them for recognizing an opportunity here.” And an AL front office type I talked about this with actually thought it was a worthwhile gamble for the Royals. (He was too polite to indicate whether that was because Farnsworth had upside as a starter, or simply because the Royals have nothing to lose.)

So at the very least, it’s not fair to reflexively label this idea as another episode in that recurring reality show “Royals Gone Wild”. The fact that the Farnsworth-to-the-rotation idea seems to have come from left field does not automatically mean that it’s a ridiculous one.

Let me see if I can sum up all the reasons to make this move:

1) Farnsworth is a power pitcher, and clearly has enough velocity that even if he loses the usual 2-3 mph on his fastball when he has to pace himself, he should still have plenty of raw stuff to succeed in the rotation.

2) Bob McClure has a pretty good track record as a pitching coach.

3) Even if Farnsworth isn’t as effective in the rotation as he is in the bullpen, he might still be more valuable because he’ll throw a lot more innings.

4) After last year’s debacle, no one has any confidence that Farnsworth can pitch effectively out of the bullpen anyway, particularly not in key situations.

5) Farnsworth is a free agent at the end of the year, so while there is a risk that he’ll hurt his arm trying to make this move, the Royals aren’t on the hook for his contract past 2010.

The first thing you’ll notice about this list of reasons is that #3 and #4 directly contradict each other. The reason why starters generally don’t pitch as well as relievers is that relieving is a lot easier than starting – it’s much easier to throw all-out with your two best pitches for one or two innings, than to pace yourself and work in three or four pitches over a seven-inning stint. Studies have shown that the typical starting pitcher, when moved to the bullpen, will see his ERA drop by as much as 25%.

Which means the converse is true – the typical reliever, moving to the rotation, will see his ERA rise by close to 30%. The number of pitchers moved to the bullpen because they couldn’t cut it in the rotation is legion. The number of pitchers moved to the rotation because they sucked in the bullpen? That’s a much rarer entity, and for good reason. Making a reliever a starter because he sucks in relief is like moving a third baseman to shortstop because he couldn’t handle playing the hot corner.

That’s not to say this can’t work. Farnsworth does throw plenty hard: according to Fangraphs, the average velocity on his fastball last season was 96.0 mph, and over the last eight years his fastball has averaged 94.6. A reliever who throws 96 translates into a starter who throws 92-93, and that’s just fine. It’s absolutely true, as the Kaegel article suggests, that Farnsworth started throwing a cut fastball last season – he threw it 28% of the time, in fact. A pitcher who throws two kinds of fastballs and a slider has enough pitches to succeed in the rotation. And while Farnsworth doesn’t throw a curveball, my AL front office source mentioned that a few years back he saw Farnsworth throw a “surprisingly quality*” changeup on the sidelines, although Farnsworth rarely broke it out in a ballgame.

*: Total aside here, but am I the only one who’s amused by the KC Star’s writing guidelines, which require that the word [high-] be added onto a quote whenever someone says the word “quality”? Like this: “Bob McClure raved about Greinke’s repertoire. ‘Zack throws a [high-]quality fastball, a [high-]quality slider, a [high-]quality curveball, and a [high-]quality changeup. What more could you ask for?’” If I ever give an interview to the Star, I’m going to have to work in the word “quality” about a dozen times just to see what happens.

So the stuff is probably there for Farnsworth to succeed in the rotation. The problem is that the stuff is definitely there for him to succeed in the bullpen, yet his stuff rarely translates to results. In 11 major league seasons, Farnsworth has had an ERA under 4.00 just three times.

The biggest reason for Farnsworth’s lack of consistent success has been the fact that his fastball, while very fast, is also very straight, which leads to a ton of flyballs, some of which inevitably travel 400+ feet. For his career, Farnsworth has given up more than one home run every seven innings. This is not a trait you want in any pitcher, but particularly not a pitcher that you’re asking to face Jim Thome with the go-ahead runs on base in the eighth inning on Opening Day. Just hypothetically.

Now, if Farnsworth were really throwing a new cut fastball last season, one that has less velocity but more sink, you’d expect him to coax more groundballs. That, in fact, is exactly what happened. In the three seasons prior to joining the Royals, Farnsworth’s groundball rates were 34%, 30%, and 35%. Last year, his groundball rate jumped to 46%. Granted, it was a small sample size of just 37 innings, but it fits with the narrative that he quietly became a different pitcher last season. (Amazingly, he only gave up three homers all year – of course, two of them directly cost the Royals the game, and both during the first two weeks of the season.)

So there is, at least, some reason for optimism that Farnsworth can handle the change, at least in terms of his physical stuff. I confess to being worried about how Farnsworth can handle the change mentally, but that’s not fair to him. I mean, how well do we really know these guys? Farnsworth wears glasses, throws incredibly hard, and often has no idea where the ball is going – he certainly seems like a Rick Vaughn clone, a guy who’s not calm enough or not smart enough to pace himself over six or seven innings. He would seem oddly out of place on the mound in the first inning, like Keith Law in a churrascaria. But as fans we really don’t know whether he’s a completely different person behind the clichés. In the video attached to Kaegel’s article, Farnsworth describes how he loves to hunt and fish…but also admits that he loves to cook. So who knows?

I do think that Cameron goes overboard when he writes, “in a lot of ways, Farnsworth is reminiscent of Ryan Dempster, another power reliever with command problems who flourished with a move to the rotation.” Sure, Dempster has pitched beautifully for the Cubs since returning to the rotation – but Dempster had only been a full-time reliever for about three seasons before he made the move. He had 162 major-league starts to his credit before he became a full-time reliever, and while the results weren’t always pretty, sometimes they were – notably in 2000, when as a 23-year-old Dempster had a 3.66 ERA and struck out 209 batters in 226 innings.

Farnsworth, on the other hand, has just 26 major league starts on his resume, in his first two seasons in the majors a decade ago. He had a 5.81 ERA in those starts, and in 144 innings allowed 32 homers and struck out just 86 batters. Dempster might be a similar type of pitcher, but he’s simply not of the same quality. You might as well compare Farnsworth to John Smoltz – hey, Smoltz moved from the bullpen to the rotation successfully as well!

No, if you’re going to compare Farnsworth to a successful reliever-turned-starter, you need to compare him to his teammate, the guy who probably convinced the Royals that this crazy idea might be worth trying: Robinson Tejeda. Unfortunately, it’s precisely because of Tejeda that this idea makes no sense.

Let’s review Tejeda’s story, both for our benefit and for the benefit of the Royals, who have evidently forgotten it. Tejeda broke in with the Phillies in 2005, and after a brief stint in the bullpen, entered the starting rotation, where he stayed through two seasons with the Rangers. Between 2005 and 2007 Tejeda made 46 starts and just 13 relief appearances, and pitched lousy. He had a 4.91 career ERA, and a terrible strikeout-to-walk ratio of just 181 to 143. After four relief appearances with the Rangers in 2008, he was released and picked up by the Royals, for whom he has pitched brilliantly: in 113 innings, he has allowed just 65(!) hits and 7 homers, and while he’s walked 69 batters, he’s also struck out 128.

On September 4^th last year the Royals moved him back into the rotation, and he continued to be unhittable, allowing just 15 hits in 32 innings. He was still wild (20 walks) but was still overpowering (32 Ks), and most importantly, was still effective (2.84 ERA).

And it appears the Royals have completely forgotten about him. Much like Alberto Callaspo has mysteriously become an afterthought in the Royals lineup, to the point where Kaegel’s projected Opening Day lineup excludes him, Tejeda has become the forgotten man in the Royals rotation.

In the same article that we learn of Farnsworth’s move to the rotation, we learn that “Farnsworth isn't the only pitcher who might emerge from the Royals' bullpen. Robinson Tejeda, another imposing right-hander, will also get a shot at the rotation after making six starts last season.” Really? He’ll get a shot? The guy who’s been lights out since joining the Royals, who was the team’s second-best starter down the stretch last year, will get the same shot to join the rotation as the guy who sucked last year and hasn’t started in the majors in a decade?

In this AP article, we learn from Trey Hillman that “I’m not counting Robby out.” Well, that’s awfully generous of you, to not count out the guy who saved you from 100 losses last September.

I’m not saying that Tejeda’s success in the rotation last September was for real. We’re all too familiar with great September performances from a young starter that didn’t carry over to the next season (see also Davies, Kyle). But don’t you think he at least deserves the chance to prove it was a mirage? Or at least a better chance than the guy who’s being moved to the rotation in part to keep him as far away from eighth-inning tie games as possible?

And really, there can only be room for one of them at most, because the rotation remains the team’s greatest strength – the CHONE projection system has ranked the Royals’ rotation as the sixth-best in baseball – and arguably doesn’t have room for either of them. The same five guys the Royals relied on most of last season – Greinke, Gil Meche, Brian Bannister, Luke Hochevar, and Davies – all return this season, and you can make a case that they’re still the five best options for the rotation.

Greinke and Meche are of course locks. Bannister, I think, has to be as well – he doesn’t have the repertoire you associate with a reliever, and his 4.73 ERA was far better than Davies and Hochevar. For the second time in three years he wore out down the stretch – he gave up 34 runs in 31 innings in his last six starts before getting shut down on September 2^nd. You might argue that he’s incapable of lasting a full season in the rotation, but the flipside to that is that in his first 20 starts he had a 3.59 ERA and excellent peripherals, and if the Royals can figure out a way to maintain his stamina all year long, he’s an excellent #3 starter.

That leaves Hochevar and Davies. Hochevar is an enigma wrapped in a riddle shoved inside a mystery which is locked inside a puzzle, then the whole thing is deep-fried in a conundrum. I don’t think you can give up on a guy who in separate starts threw an 80-pitch complete game, struck out 13 batters and walked nobody, and threw a three-hit shutout – even if he did have a 6.55 ERA. Davies, on the other hand, has exasperated pretty much everyone with his inconsistency for going on five years now. He’s walked nearly a batter every other inning throughout his career, and I don’t think his problem is control so much as the fact that he feels he has to nibble to compensate for the fact that he doesn’t quite have elite-caliber stuff.

So I could see moving Davies to the bullpen in the hopes that his velocity picks up a notch, he feels emboldened to challenge hitters more, and voila! You have an excellent middle reliever who can throw 90-100 innings without a problem.

That opens up a job for one starter. And between the guy who did it last year and the guy who’s never done it, I know which guy I’d rather see in that role.

Like the Ankiel signing, in isolation I like the idea of trying Farnsworth in the rotation. The Royals have nothing to lose, and potentially something to gain. But also like the Ankiel signing, I keep thinking that the Royals are just waiting for major league baseball to announce a rule change mandating 30-man rosters and 7-man rotations any day now, and they’re going to be in for a rude shock come the end of March. Just as the Royals’ machinations with their offense will make a lot of sense if there’s a big trade brewing, so too does the idea to move Farnsworth to the rotation make a lot of sense if, say, Bannister is about to pack his bags. But we’ve received no indication that that’s going to happen.

Pitchers and catchers report this week, and all of these permutations will be sorted out soon enough. I’m just worried that the Royals are as in the dark as to the final outcome as we are.

The Greatest Quote In The History Of Whatever.

Dick Kaegel has covered the Royals as a beat writer for something like a quarter of a century, writing for the Royals’ website for the better part of a decade and for the Kansas City Star long before that. You know what you’re going to get from a Kaegel article, generally – a solid account of each game, a number of clubhouse quotes, and a perpetually rosy (and occasionally fanboyish) perspective on the Royals.

What you don’t expect from a Kaegel article is anything controversial. Which is why, I suspect, a mind-blowing quote embedded within one of his articles for MLB.com last week passed by unrecognized by Royals fans everywhere.

Here’s the article – in which Kaegel is surprisingly explicit about the Royals’ issues – if you want to play along at home. See if you can find the quote I’m referring to.

If not, here’s an excerpt from the article:

And, over in the Royals' front office they’re saying, in the words of one exec, “We’re much more athletic than we were last year.”

Maybe so. And, if they also turn out to be better, the Royals have done it at much less cost than last year when their re-signing of Olivo ($2.8 million, including buyout) and adding Coco Crisp ($6.25 million, including buyout), Jacobs ($3.275 million), Kyle Farnsworth ($4.25 million) and Juan Cruz ($2.25 million) was close to a total of $20 million invested. OK, $18.825 million if you're adding it up.

In return for Crisp and Jacobs, two guys who were counted on to amp up the offense, they traded away relievers Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez. Seemed pretty reasonable at the time.

“Everybody thought we had the greatest offseason in the history of whatever and people in the game were saying we did as good as anybody in improving the team,” a Royals official said.

It didn't work out that way, did it? The club won 65 games and tied for last place.

This year’s new crop has added a mere $8.7 million to the 2010 payroll.

Read that again.

“Everybody thought we had the greatest offseason in the history of whatever and people in the game were saying we did as good as anybody in improving the team,” a Royals official said.

One more time.

“Everybody thought we had the greatest offseason in the history of whatever and people in the game were saying we did as good as anybody in improving the team.”

Everybody thought. Greatest offseason. History.

Let’s ignore the part about how “people in the game” said the Royals “did as good as anybody in improving the team.” This very well may be true. I mean, let’s say there was a guy in your fantasy league who has sucked year after year, whose draft strategy ossified in 1985 and who thinks that Joe Saunders is a first-round pick because he’s won 16 games each of the last two years. If that guy was tired of getting beaten up year after year, and was thinking of leaving the league – or worse, he was thinking about learning what all this hullabaloo about “sabermetrics” and “Moneyball” was about, and asked you for advice, what would you tell him? If you wouldn’t be tempted to pat him on the back and give him a few “attaboys” and tell him that he’s doing great and eventually his luck has to turn, well, you’re a better man than I.

So if Billy Beane or Kenny Williams told Dayton Moore that hey, we love what you did with your roster, and that Mike Jacobs is going to be a huge addition to your lineup and Kyle Farnsworth could be a force in your bullpen, well…let he who wouldn’t have done the same thing in their shoes throw the first stone. I’m fresh out.

But the first part…”everybody thought we had the greatest offseason in the history of whatever”…might be the single most delusional quote in the history of the franchise.

Back in 1993, Troy Aikman was named to People magazine’s annual “50 Most Beautiful People” list. If memory serves, when told of the honor, Aikman’s immediate response was, “they must not know that many people.” If someone in the Royals’ front office believes that “everybody” thought they had a good off-season last winter, they need to talk to more people. Preferably ones who aren’t imaginary.

I can’t possibly list everyone’s opinions about the Royals’ moves last winter, but here’s a sample. Here’s Posnanski on Mike Jacobs. Here he is (towards the end of a long post) on Kyle Farnsworth. Here’s Rob Neyer on Willie Bloomquist. And you don’t need me to link to what I wrote at the time to know that I hated all three of these acquisitions. And let's not forget - though it's so tempting to - about Horacio Ramirez.

Granted, that’s just three writers, although the three writers most commonly associated with the Royals. Okay, so here’s ESPN's season preview for the Royals last season. Down at the bottom you have a prediction from five different writers as to how the Royals would finish in 2009. Three predicted that the Royals would finish last in the division – the other two predicted fourth. (And all five were right!) Not the kind of consensus you would expect after the greatest offseason in the history of whatever.

In the interest of fairness, I should point out that reviews of the Coco Crisp trade were mixed. Many people – myself included – thought the Juan Cruz was signing was a nice buy-low acquisition. And the long-term contract extension for Zack Greinke, even if it was a no-brainer, may have single-handedly redeemed the off-season. But – at-best – the off-season was a wash. It wasn’t the greatest offseason in the history of whatever. It was barely the greatest offseason in the history of the 2008-09 Royals.

I could criticize this quote from now till kingdom come, but really, this quote transcends criticism. It is a masterpiece of hallucinatory thinking. I’m convinced the secret to cold fusion is locked somewhere inside that quote. So the only proper response is not criticism – it is mockery. Let’s imagine what this anonymous Royals’ official would have said about some famous historical events:

France, 1940: “Everybody thought we had the greatest series of concrete fortifications and trenches in the history of whatever and generals were saying we did as good as anybody in defending our border.”

The set of Heaven’s Gate, 1980: “Everybody thought we had made the greatest movie in the history of whatever and critics were saying we did as good as anybody in crafting a 3-hour, 39-minute film.”

Massachusetts, 2010: “Everybody thought we had run the greatest campaign in the history of whatever and politicians were saying we did as good as anybody in running for Senate.”

Feel free to play along in the comments section. Create your own quote – it’s fun! At least, it’s a lot more fun than contemplating the implications of the real one.

Rick Ankiel and the Radioactive Roster.

My children have won. For quite possibly the first time in my adult life (excepting special circumstances like jetlag or a surgery rotation that required me to be at work by 5:30 AM), I was in bed by 11 o’clock three nights in a row from Monday through Wednesday. Thursday night, I pulled back the covers right at 11 o’clock, but couldn’t resist checking Tweetdeck* on my iPhone one last time before getting some shuteye.

*: I fully agree with the person who wrote that “if blogging is cocaine, then Twitter is crack.” Naturally, I read that in a tweet.

It was at that point that I learned via friend-of-the-blog Greg Schaum that the Royals had just signed Rick Ankiel. You will not be surprised to learn that my bedtime was pushed back a little.

I like this move in the abstract, all the more because it was so unexpected. The Jason Kendall signing dribbled out over several days, like a runaway freight train that became impossible to stop no matter how dumb it was. Scott Podsednik was rumored to be coming to KC a month before he signed, and was predicted to be joining the powder blue by astute fans well before that. This Ankiel thing, by contrast, came completely out of the blue, even more so precisely because the addition of Podsednik seemed to close out the Royals’ outfield. More on that later.

Let’s square away the contract details first. This appears to be a simple one-year, $3.25 million contract. The “mutual option” for a second year is a smokescreen; a mutual option is a polite way of saying “no option”. Either side can break the option, and since a year from now, the 2011 contract will look unfavorable to one side or the other, it’s almost certain not to be exercised.

Its purpose is to guarantee the player a little extra financial cushion in the event he sucks in 2010 and can’t land a big contract in 2011. If Ankiel lives up to his contract, the Royals will exercise their portion of the option, but Ankiel will decline and walk away with the money he’s earned. On the other hand, if Ankiel disappoints, then the Royals will decline the option (as they did with Miguel Olivo), and Ankiel will get a small severance package to go away. It’s not clear how big that severance package will be - Olivo only got $100,000 - though I've heard it could be as high as half a million. It's not franchise-altering money.

For their money, the Royals are getting a player who has one of the game’s highest ratios of hype-to-production of the last decade. That’s not meant as a diss on Ankiel; on the contrary, Ankiel has garnered so much hype precisely because what he has done is so historic. Without rehashing the entire story here – it’s a long, largely sad story with a happy ending – Ankiel became the first player to reach the majors as a starting pitcher, then return to the majors as a position player, in decades. (I’m not sure who the last player to fit that criteria was, actually – but Wonderful Willie Smith was frequently used as a pitcher in 1963 and 1964 before transitioning to the outfield full-time.)

Ankiel was in a major league rotation in 2000, just weeks after he turned 20, and the following year he struck out 194 batters in 175 innings and finished 2^nd in Rookie of the Year balloting. His pitching career then melted down in one sordid, can’t-look-away-from-the-car-crash playoff start against the Braves that October. Tabbed to start the playoff opener, Ankiel was staked to a 6-0 lead after one inning, but in the third inning, he walked four batters (including the leadoff hitter, Greg Maddux) and threw five wild pitches before he was mercifully relieved of his duties. His pitching career was essentially over at that point, although it took a disastrous spring training and April the following year, a demotion to rookie ball, Tommy John surgery, a seemingly triumphant return to the majors in September 2004 (he walked just one batter in 10 innings) – and then, the following season, a twinge in his elbow before Ankiel finally decided he’d had enough.

Thus began his quixotic dream to return to the majors as an outfielder, a dream which was realized in spectacular fashion in 2007, when – after hitting 32 homers in just 102 games for Triple-A Memphis – Ankiel returned to St. Louis on August 9^th as the starting right fielder, hit a home run in his first game, then hit two homers in his third game. For the season Ankiel hit .285/.328/.535 with 11 homers in just 47 games. The following year, Ankiel started everyday and was hitting .282/.349/.543 through the end of July, before a hernia issue limited him to an 11-for-65 showing the rest of the way; his season was cut short by surgery in early September.

Even so, between 2007 and 2008 – in which he played 167 games, basically a full season – Ankiel hit .270/.334/.515, with 36 homers and 29 doubles. He walked 55 times, an acceptable walk rate. Defensively, he showed merely adequate range in center field, but the numbers suggest he was above-average in both corners – and, of course, he had the arm of a former phenom pitcher. If you haven’t seen this clip, please watch it: even two years later, it’s still a joy to behold.

So what’s he doing, signing a one-year deal for Jason Kendall money? Because last year, he hit just .231/.285/.387 for the Cardinals. There were mitigating circumstances, though: on May 4^th, he suffered a frightening head-first collision with the left-center field wall at nearly full speed, hurting his head, shoulder, back – pretty much his whole body was in pain. He returned surprisingly quickly, going back into the lineup on May 24^th, but his shoulder bothered him most of the season, and it showed. He was hitting .247/.326/.395 when he got hurt – not great, but in a sample size of just 92 plate appearances, nothing so bad that it would make you wonder what happened to the Rick Ankiel of the previous two seasons. But after returning from injury, he hit just .227/.272/.385 and struck out five times as often as he walked.

Granted, it’s too easy to just dismiss his performance last season as the result of an injury – it is quite possible that his career as a hitter has gone south nearly as quickly as his pitching career did. Nonetheless, easy explanations are frequently easy precisely because they’re the right explanation. What we know about Ankiel as a hitter is this: in the minors, he showed only a modest ability to hit for average but tremendous power; in 2007 and 2008, he showed this exact same skill set to good effect in the majors; in 2009, he struggled mightly, but almost all of his struggles came after he tried to put his body through a (padded) brick wall.

Ankiel is still just 30; it’s doubtful that he suddenly got old, particularly when you consider he didn’t become a full-time hitter until he was 25. Occam’s Razor suggests that, if Ankiel is healthy in 2010, there’s no reason why he can’t go back to slugging .500. Granted, given his history - the collision last year, the hernia in 2008, Tommy John surgery, and he missed the entire 2006 season in the minors after he tore a tendon in his knee - it would be unwise to assume good health for Ankiel for any length of time. But a one-year deal (and a new training staff!) mitigates that risk.

Like pretty much every other player Dayton Moore has ever acquired, Ankiel isn’t much for getting on base. But if he slugs .500, he’ll be one of the best hitters on the team even with an OBP skirting the low 300s. But it’s probably too optimistic to assume that Ankiel will hit as well as he did in 2007-2008. So let’s add in 2009 as well, making Ankiel’s averages over the last three years .255/.315/.465. I think that’s a fair expectation for Ankiel, and if he hits those numbers and plays full-time, he’ll be worth the money spent.

You might be surprised that I’m so favorable about acquiring Ankiel, given that I was so negative about the acquisition of Mike Jacobs last year. Jacobs and Ankiel are very similar hitters – both are low-average, low-to-medium walk guys who can pound 30 homers in a full season. Over the three years before Jacobs was acquired last winter, he hit .258/.314/.483 – similar, and actually superior, numbers to Ankiel’s. So why am I much more positive about this acquisition than the last one?

For four big reasons:

1) Jacobs cost the Royals about $3 million and the services of a solid, cheap reliever in Leo Nunez. Ankiel only costs the money.

2) Jacobs blocked the path of Kila Ka’aihue, a minor league player coming off a monster season and who played the same position. It’s not yet clear whose job Ankiel is taking – more on that later – but he’s almost certainly a better hitter than whoever he ultimately replaces in the lineup.

3) Jacobs was quite possibly the worst defensive player in the major leagues – he lost the first base job to Billy Butler in barely one week. Ankiel’s defense is about average, depending on which outfield position he plays. If he does nothing more than keep Jose Guillen from ever playing the field, he’ll be worth the money.

4) Jacobs was coming off the best season of his career – when he was 27, the most common age for a player to have his career year (sorry, J.C., but I’m not buying it.) Ankiel is coming off the worst season of his career, one interrupted by injury.

And I’ll admit it: the little fanboy inside of me is excited to root for Rick Ankiel in a Royals uniform. Between Ankiel and Zack Greinke, the Royals might have the two guys in baseball with the greatest combination of hitting and pitching skills. All we need is to lobby MLB to reduce roster sizes to two players and we’ll kick ass.

So yes, I like this move, at least in a vacuum. My only problem with it is that it doesn’t make any sense.

A lot of Royals fans are equally confused. Joe Posnanski is completely baffled. Even Matt Taibbi has come down from on high to weigh in on Ankiel, calling him “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” No, wait, that’s what he called Goldman Sachs. But he did write of the Ankiel signing, “what the hell is going on in Kansas City?” and “this stuff just makes me scratch my head.”

Taibbi’s protestations aside, everyone else has the same concern about the Ankiel signing. I’ve long accused the Royals of lacking an understanding of simple mathematics, but the Ankiel move suggests they lack even the skill of counting. So let’s count for them, shall we?

Catchers: Jason Kendall, Brayan Pena. That’s two.

Infielders: Billy Butler, Alberto Callaspo, Yuniesky Betancourt, Mike Aviles, Chris Getz, Willie Bloomquist, Alex Gordon, Josh Fields. We’re up to ten now.

Outfielders: David DeJesus, Scott Podsednik, Rick Ankiel, Brian Anderson, Mitch Maier, Jose Guillen. That’s 16.

Now, there’s no way the Royals are going into the season with fewer than 11 pitchers, and if history is any guide they’re going to go the risk-averse route and go with 12 pitchers. So they’ll open the season with either 13 or 14 hitters on the roster. The Ankiel signing allegedly puts the Royals at their payroll limit, but more problematically, it puts them well over their roster limit.

Over two months ago, when writing about the Mark Teahen trade, I wrote that “[t]aken in isolation, trading Teahen for Getz and Fields makes sense. But this trade can’t be fully evaluated until we see the other moves it triggers, because as it stands Getz and Fields are both without positions to play.” I figured that, by now, Moore would have made some roster moves designed to clear the logjam of players.

Instead, he’s done the opposite – adding Brian Anderson, adding Scott Podsednik, and now adding Rick Ankiel. The Royals have shed one catcher from last year’s roster, but they turned Teahen into two players, and they’ve added three outfielders without getting rid of anyone else. It’s as if the Royals signed Podsednik thinking that he was better than Anderson, then signed Ankiel thinking he would be an improvement on Podsednik, not realizing that they actually have to keep all three of them.

The math doesn’t work here. I suppose it can work, if Aviles starts the year on the DL, and if the Royals exercise options on Brian Anderson and Chris Getz. (It would be galling to send Anderson down to Triple-A after signing him to a major-league contract for $700,000, but these are the Royals, who last year optioned two of their players – Brian Bannister and Luke Hochevar – to Triple-A to start the season, even though both were making seven figures.)

In that case, you would have a roster that looks like this:

C: Kendall

1B: Butler

2B: Callaspo

3B: Gordon

SS: Betancourt

LF: Podsednik

CF: DeJesus

RF: Ankiel

DH: Guillen

Bench

C: Pena

IF: Fields, Bloomquist

OF: Maier

This roster presents multiple problems. For one, the Royals are already making hints that they won’t go with the outfield alignment I’ve listed, preferring instead to play Ankiel in center field and DeJesus in right. Hmm…we’ve got an outfielder whose arm is a little short, but has played centerfield well in the past, and another outfielder who doesn’t have great speed but has a cannon for an arm. I know! Let’s play the guy who doesn’t run well in center, and the guy who can’t throw in right!

Second, you have an all-left-handed-hitting outfield, and your primary backup outfielder also bats left-handed. Fields would make a fine platoon partner in one of the corners, and Bloomquist can play the outfield as inadequately as he can play the infield, but you’re setting yourself up for some matchup problems against left-handed starters.

But primarily, you’ve locked yourself into a roster of players who, aside from Butler and Gordon, can’t be sent down to the minors. What do you do when Mike Aviles comes back healthy? Why trade for Getz and sign Anderson if they're going to spend all year in Triple-A? What do you do if Jeff Bianchi or David Lough or Jordan Parraz crush the ball in Triple-A and deserve a look? What do you do – again – with Kila Ka’aihue?

Moore’s moves this winter are great news for fans of the Royals. Unfortunately, they’re great news for fans of the Omaha Royals, because without any space on the major league roster, it looks like a lot of major league-ready hitters are going to be stuck in Nebraska most of the season.

Meanwhile, the (Kansas City) Royals are not – or should not be – playing for 2010. They might be playing for 2011. The #1 priority this year should be sorting through their young talent to find a combination that might win a year from now. How can you sort through your young talent if, once again, you’re blocking all that talent from playing in the first place?

The main thrust of Posnanski’s disillusionment with this signing is that, in signing yet another veteran player, the Royals are either blocking the path of a young prospect, or they’re admitting they don’t have the prospects in the first place. I’m not nearly as down on this signing, because it’s not Rick Ankiel’s fault that the Royals don’t have anyone as good as him ready in the minor leagues. But between Lough and Parraz, the Royals might have a major-league ready outfielder by mid-season, and at this point there’s no place to play him. To say nothing of their continuing efforts to lock Ka’aihue away in a dungeon.

You have to think Dayton Moore knows this. You have to think that he’s working on ways to open the spigot and drain some of his excess roster space. Maybe the Royals will eat a sunk cost and release Jose Guillen. That would be good. Or maybe they’ll DFA Mitch Maier, who is basically Scott Podsednik without the hype and at a quarter the salary. That would be bad.

Maybe they’ll trade David DeJesus, the type of slightly above-average player that has always fit better as a supporting cog on a good team than as a key player on a bad team. That could be a good move for the right package of talent – I advocated trading DeJesus nearly two years ago. Maybe they’ll trade Alberto Callaspo, although given how bad the market appears to be for all-hit, no-glove guys, I’d much rather the Royals keep him if the alternative is to give him away for cents on the dollar.

But the bottom line is that the Royals have to do something. A roster stuffed with too many players is like an atom stuffed with too many neutrons: it becomes radioactive, and destined to break down sooner or later. I’d like to think that Moore signed Ankiel with that in mind, and that very soon now he’s going to put the final domino in place and his off-season plans will come into focus. But then, I thought that when he traded for Fields and Getz back in November, and things just keep getting blurrier and blurrier.

Problems and (Potential) Solutions in Center Field.

I fully expected to hate the Scott Podsednik deal.

For one thing, any time your fan base can predict, months ahead of time, which player you will pursue in free agency – not based on the fact that said player fits the team’s needs, but simply because he’s exactly the type of player that you vastly overvalue – that may be a sign that you’ve become a parody of a GM. Here are a couple of links from early October, where perceptive, if cynical (is that a redundancy?) Royals fans predicted that Dayton Moore would sign Podsednik.

The moment word filtered in early December that the Royals were talking with him, there wasn’t a doubt in the collective mind of the Royals blogosphere that this deal would get done. And it did. The current front office, which has long been terrible at working the free-agent market, is now predictably terrible. That’s some feat.

It’s not that Scott Podsednik is a bad player. Let me rephrase that: it’s not that Scott Podsednik was a bad player last year. He hit .304/.353/.412, a perfectly respectable performance, and also stole 30 bases. He was very durable, playing in 132 games even though he wasn’t called up to the majors until May 1^st. If Podsednik has the same performance in 2010 that he had in 2009, he will prove to have been an excellent signing.

You know where I’m going with this. In 2009, Podsednik was a quality everyday outfielder, because he hit .304, and if you can hit .300 and take the occasional walk you have value even if you don’t hit for any power. The problem is that Podsednik’s lack of power is a chronic condition, but hitting for average has proven to be an intermittent ability. In 2008, Podsednik hit .253, playing in the game’s best hitters’ park in Colorado. (This is why he started last season in the minors in the first place.) In 2007, he hit .243/.299/.369 for the White Sox, and lost his everyday job. In 2006, he hit .261/.330/.353 for the Sox.

Yes, in 2005 he hit .290/.351/.349, he stole 59 bases, and after not hitting a single home run during the regular season, he popped two of them in the playoffs while hitting .286/.397/.551, helping the Sox to a world championship. (While several players have hit homers in the playoffs after not hitting one during the regular season, I believe Podsednik is the only player in history to hit two.)

In 2004, Podsednik hit .244/.313/.364 for the Brewers, though to be fair he did lead the league with 70 steals. In 2003, he hit .314/.379/.443 and finished second in Rookie of the Year voting.

Podsednik’s value is almost entirely driven by his batting average: he doesn’t hit for any power, and he doesn’t walk a lot. Three times in his career – 2003, 2005, and 2009 – Podsednik has hit .290 or better. He was a reasonably valuable player in each season. Four times in his career – 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008 – he hit .261 or less, and he was essentially worthless in each of those seasons. Such are the vagaries of batting average, which is highly dependent on good luck. Cue Crash Davis’ drunken soliloquy about groundballs with eyes and dying quails.

The Royals are betting that 2010 will be a good year, even though Podsednik turns 34 before Opening Day, even though three of his last four seasons were terrible, and even though a year ago his stock had fallen so low that he signed with the White Sox on a minor-league contract.

That optimism is not shared by any projection system on the market. Bill James projects Podsednik at .275/.340/.367; his ZIPS projection comes in at .279/.336/.384. Those aren’t terrible numbers, mind you – it’s just that they don’t represent any kind of improvement over what we could have expected from the guy he replaces in centerfield, Mitch Maier. Bill James projects Maier at .266/.328/.389; ZIPS has him at .268/.323/.378.

“Wait”, the Royals say, “you’re neglecting Podsednik’s best skill, his speed.” True, Pods has speed to burn, something Maier – and, for that matter, the rest of the roster – lacks. And I would be more than happy to give him credit for his speed, if there was any evidence that Podsednik’s speed actually translated into more runs on the scoreboard.

Podsednik stole 30 bases last year. This would have led the Royals last year – and every year going back to 2003, when Carlos Beltran swiped 41 bags. The flip side is that Podsednik was caught stealing 13 times last year – no Royal has 13 CS in one season since Tom Goodwin was nailed 22 times way back in 1996.

This is nothing new for Podsednik, who throughout his career has been known more for the quantity than for the efficiency of his stolen bases. Yes, he led his league in steals once. He’s also led his league in caught stealings. Twice.

The sabermetric conventional wisdom states that the break-even point for stolen bases is around 70% - if you’re not successful more than 70% of the time, you’re better off not stealing at all, because you’re costing your team more runs by getting thrown out than you’re adding with your steals. Podsednik’s success rate last year was…69.8%. For his career, his success rate is a more impressive 75.3%, but over the last five seasons he’s been just over the break-even point at 70.5%. His ability to steal bases isn’t a detriment to his team, but neither is it a significant help.

But actually, it’s worse than that. One of the great unrecognized flaws in conventional statistics is that while baserunners are penalized when they are out trying to steal a base, no record is made of the instances when a baserunner is picked off. The end result is the same – a baserunner is lost, and an out is recorded – but one event is a permanent red mark on their stat profile, while the other is whited out.

Thankfully, in today’s world no baseball event goes truly unrecorded. On Podsednik’s baseball-reference page, the number of times he’s picked off is listed in his baserunning profile. And the numbers are disturbing.

Last season, Podsednik was caught stealing 13 times. He was also picked off 11 more times. That seems like an incredibly high total for me – although we have no point of reference, as I don’t know of any way to bring up the league leaders in this category – but it’s just the third-highest season total of his career. Podsednik was picked off 12 times in 2006, and 14 times in 2005. For his career, he’s been picked off 53 times.

Now, if a player is picked off while trying to get back to the bag, no caught stealing is recorded. But if a player, knowing he’s dead meat, lights out for second base instead and gets thrown out – this is recorded as a caught stealing. Yes, it’s a dumb distinction. In theory, a player who is working on a long consecutive stolen-base streak would have that streak preserved if he dives back into first, but if he heads the other way and gets thrown out, that streak is over. It offers the perverse incentive for a player to not head for second and hope the opposition screws up the rundown, even though it may be his only shot at staying alive.

Anyway, of Podsednik’s 53 pickoffs, 17 were “pickoff caught stealings”, leaving 36 additional pickoffs – nine of those came last year. Add those 36 pickoffs to his 87 official caught stealings, and he’s actually made an out 123 times on the basepaths before the ball has even been put in play. If you count his pickoffs, his career 75.3% success rate on the bases drops to 68.4%; his 69.8% mark last season drops to 57.7%. That’s almost Buddy Bell territory.

By comparison, Carlos Beltran, in a career twice as long as Podsednik’s, has been picked off (not counting the pickoff caught stealings) just 17 times in his career. Pods got picked off more times last year (9) than Beltran has in the last seven seasons (8). (And just for fun, I looked up Chase Utley. Utley has been picked off twice in his entire career.)

My former colleague Dan Fox – now Director of Baseball Systems Development for the Pittsburgh Pirates – created a series of statistics to measure a player’s overall baserunning value. His statistic for basestealing, called (helpfully enough) Equivalent Stolen Base Runs, estimates that Podsednik cost the White Sox 2.1 runs relative to what would have happened if he had just kept his foot on the base on each pitch.

Granted, his speed helps in other ways, by allowing him to advance an extra base on singles and doubles, or to tag up and move up a base on medium-depth fly outs. Fox’s statistic to measure a player’s overall baserunning value – what we call Equivalent Baserunning Runs – credits Podsednik with 3.6 runs above the average baserunner in non-stolen base situations. So overall, he was worth 1.5 runs above average on the basepaths, ranking Podsednik 90^th in the majors, right behind speedsters like Matt Tolbert and Omar Infante.

As a baserunner, Podsednik has more speed than wisdom, which limits the value of his legs. This is equally true on defense, where despite his speed, Podsednik ranks as an average outfielder at best. Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) pegs Podsednik as being a slightly below-average outfielder last season, a well-below average outfielder in 2008, and an above-average outfielder in 2007; over the last three years he’s a total of 2.6 runs below average. For his career, not surprisingly, he’s more effective in left field (career UZR of +2.1) than in center field (UZR of -12.7).

Does Podsednik bring intangibles to the ballpark? I have no doubt that he does; it’s just that you have to sit near the players’ wives section to appreciate them. At least this time, unlike when the Royals signed Willie Bloomquist, Moore wasn’t kidding when he called Podsednik a proven winner.

Essentially, what the Royals have done is replace their incumbent centerfielder, who is comfortably below-average with the bat and slightly below-average with the glove, with a guy who is…comfortably below-average with the bat and slightly below-average with the glove. This isn’t progress; this is a hamster wheel.

So, to sum up: the Royals signed a free agent whose impact on the team’s win total is roughly the equivalent of a rounding error. Dayton Moore once again satisfies his fetish for players who are more one-dimensional than a character in a Dan Brown novel. Having already obtained the all-or-nothing slugger (Mike Jacobs), the firethrowing reliever (Kyle Farnsworth), and the gritty play-anywhere utility guy (Willie Bloomquist), he finally quenches his need for the speedy centerfielder. Cut the man some slack – it’s been over three years since he traded for Joey Gathright.

So yeah, I thought I’d really hate this deal. But in the end, I find it hard to get too worked up about this move, for the simple reason of cost. Maybe Moore is more devious than we give him credit for, but by giving out contracts like the ones he has for Jose Guillen, or Farnsworth, or Jason Kendall, he has raised the bar of expectations for Royals fans so high that when he guarantees Scott Podsednik 1.75 million dollars, my immediate reaction was, “That’s it? That’s less than I thought. Party!”

Counting his 2011 buyout, Podsednik will make $1.75 million in 2010, plus $250,000 in incentives. His 2011 club option calls for a base salary of $1.9 million with $300,000 in incentives. The option becomes a mutual one if Podsednik gets 525 plate appearances this year. This “mutual option” thing seems to be an idiosyncrasy of the Moore administration; I don’t mind them, but it does make the contracts a little confusing to the outsider. Based on what we know about Miguel Olivo’s contract, a mutual option means that either side can walk away from it, and given that by definition, any contract is likely to be unfavorable to one side or another, a mutual option is basically the same as no contract at all.

The key point, though, is that under no circumstances are the Royals obligated to bring Podsednik back in 2011 if they don’t want to. If he plays as I expect him to play in 2010, they won’t want to – but in that case, they’re out $2 million, tops. That’s one-third the guaranteed money given to Jason Kendall. Podsednik is guaranteed less money than Moore gave to HORACIO RAMIREZ last winter.

I agree with the consensus that the Royals should not have signed Podsednik, that they would be better off with Maier in center field and the money spent elsewhere. But the degree of vitriol over this move is surprising to me. There wasn’t a fraction of this much anger over the Ramirez signing. And while Podsednik is not significantly better than what the Royals already have, he does have value to a major league roster; if the Royals didn’t sign him, some other team would have given him a seven-figure contract. Ramirez was staring at a minor-league contract before the Royals rode to his rescue.

I understand that, particularly after the Kendall contract, we’ve all had enough of Moore’s free agent forays. I just think that we need to keep some perspective here. This wasn’t a good signing, but it’s not worth getting worked up over either.

The best case against the signing, I think, was made by Will McDonald, who makes the persuasive case that the signing of Podsednik represents a failure of imagination by the Royals’ front office, and ultimately is an indictment of the whole notion that the team excels at scouting.

When Moore was first hired, his first big free agent signing was Gil Meche, who the moment he donned a Royals’ uniform transformed from underachieving #3/#4 starter to solid #2 starter. A few days later the Royals plucked Joakim Soria out of the Rule 5 draft. The standard was set then: that the Royals were going to build a winning roster by finding players whose talent had yet to be unearthed.

But since that first winter, Moore and the Royals have completely abandoned this philosophy of grabbing players before their talent emerges, and instead paying for players after they’ve proven themselves, and hoping that their performance doesn’t decline. They threw $36 million at Jose Guillen at the very moment his bat started to slow down – Guillen’s the bizarro version of Meche. They’ve signed or traded for players on the wrong side of 27, like Jacobs and Coco Crisp and Farnsworth and Bloomquist, rather than trying to find younger, cheaper versions of those same players. They just gave $6 million to a player who was washed up three years ago. And now they’ve signed Podsednik.

I completely agree with Will that the Royals have become increasingly unimaginative and risk-averse during the Moore administration. But I don’t think the specific detail of signing Scott Podsednik to play center field fits this narrative. That’s because I think the Royals already have tried to use their scouting acumen to find an out-of-the-box solution to their center field issue. His name is Brian Anderson.

I’m probably even more surprised at the negativity surrounding the Anderson signing than the Podsednik one. Anderson signed a major-league contract for $700,000, or about 10 days’ worth of Jose Guillen, but a lot of Royals fans are furious about this. True, Anderson hasn’t hit a lick in the majors – his career line is .227/.290/.370. His defensive numbers suggest he’s an average centerfielder at best. And he turns 28 in March. Nevertheless, there’s a case to be made that there’s still a decent player trapped inside Anderson’s body, if only because so many teams seem interested in giving him another shot.

He has tools – he was first-round pick out of college by the White Sox – and he has a history of performance in the minors. In 2005, at age 23, Anderson hit .295/.360/.469 in Triple-A, numbers that projected him to become at least an average major league centerfielder in the years to come. For whatever reason, that hasn’t happened, and maybe it never will. But a player with present tools and past performance is a player worth taking a flyer on.

It’s a cliché to say that if the Red Sox trade for a player, then he must be worth acquiring – but, well, the Red Sox did trade for Anderson last summer. He played well for them in a very small sample size (21 plate appearances). They let him go this winter, but that’s because they’re the Red Sox – they can afford to pay for real solutions in the free agent market, and sure enough they signed Mike Cameron to play center field and moved Jacoby Ellsbury to left.

In a fair world, Anderson would have gotten an NRI instead of a major-league contract. But Royals fans, more than anyone else, should know this ain’t a fair world. If the Royals had to give him a guaranteed roster spot to avoid losing him to a more appealing team, so be it. He’s making $300,000 above the league minimum. We’ll get through it somehow.

This offseason started with the Royals trading Mark Teahen for Josh Fields and Chris Getz, and while I liked the deal at the time, I wanted to see how all the pieces fit together first. It’s January now, and the pieces are more jumbled than ever. Podsednik might play center field, or they might play him in left and move David DeJesus back to center field. Brian Anderson probably makes the roster, but what of Mitch Maier, who is out of options? Jose Guillen might play right field, or he might DH. If he plays DH, the defense improves dramatically, but Kila Ka’aihue won’t get a chance to play. On the other hand, we all know that Ka’aihue won’t play for the Royals if he’s the last hitter on Earth.

Does Callaspo play second base? Does Getz go back to Triple-A? Are the Royals really hinting that Alex Gordon might not play third base every day? Right now, only three position players have guaranteed jobs at a specific position – and two of them are named Jason Kendall and Yuniesky Betancourt.

The Royals have a bunch of questions to settle between now and Opening Day. Podsednik might be the answer to one of them, but he might also might raise more questions than he answers. But focusing on Podsednik distracts from what should be the real focus of Royals fans as much as the Royals’ front office – making the farm system the envy of baseball. Ultimately the only reason to be livid about his signing is if the money spent on Podsednik limits the money the Royals are spending on the farm system.

In the middle of writing this, I learned that the Royals are expected to sign Paul Carlixte, a Dominican shortstop with a questionable birth certificate but unquestioned tools, for about $1 million. For all of my many, many beefs with Dayton Moore, so long as he continues to make moves like this, I continue to have faith in the long-term direction of the Royals. No matter how muddled their short-term situation may be.