The Meaning of the Minors, Part 3.

To answer the question of whether the Royals can build a contender through player development alone, I thought it would be helpful to look at recent teams who were able to assemble a contender fairly quickly after a prolonged stretch of losing. I used the following criteria:

1) A team which had at least five consecutive losing seasons, followed by

2) A playoff appearance in the first or second year after the stretch of losing seasons.

I was surprised by how many teams I found. In the last 20 years (1991-2010), 11 teams met those criteria, including one team last year (the Reds). Last year’s Rangers almost qualified as well – they reached the World Series after losing seasons from 2005-2008, and again from 2000-2003 – their winning season in 2004 kept them from making the list even though it was their only winning season in a nine-year stretch.

(Ned Yost’s 2008 Brewers also came very close – only an 81-81 record in 2006 kept them from 14 consecutive losing seasons from 1993-2006.)

It’s too early to know whether the Reds will sustain their winning. But of the other 10 teams, seven of them made another playoff appearance within two years. That itself is fairly impressive; after a prolonged period of losing, you would suspect that some of these playoff appearances would be flukes, but for the most part they were not. Let’s dispense with the three teams that did not go on to repeat glory:

The 1993 Philadelphia Phillies. Speaking of stone-cold flukes…the Phillies had six consecutive losing seasons from 1987 to 1992, and seven straight losing seasons from 1994 to 2000, but somehow won 97 games and the NL pennant in 1993. That Philly team was hardly a youth movement; six of the eight regulars in the lineup were 30 or older, and the offensive philosophy was pure Moneyball, ten years before the book was written. The Phillies had three guys – Darren Daulton, John Kruk, and Lenny Dykstra – draw at least 110 walks. Only one other team in major league history (the 1949 Philadelphia A’s) can make that claim.

The 2003 Florida Marlins. The Marlins celebrated their second World Championship in 2003 – and also celebrated their second winning season ever. (The 1997 team would be on this list, except that the franchise didn’t play its first game until 1993, so it only had four losing seasons in the tank at that point.) It’s hard to know what lessons to take from this team, which doesn’t allow winning to become a distraction from its main priority of profit-taking. The Marlins did have a lot of homegrown players, such as Luis Castillo, Alex Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and spectacular rookie performances from Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. Mike Lowell and Brad Penny had also been acquired as minor leaguers in shrewd deals. Despite trading Derrek Lee right after the season, the Marlins managed to stay above .500 the next two seasons, and have been around .500 ever since.

The 2006 Detroit Tigers. I’m not going to break down this team again, because I have already done so – in excruciating detail – here and here. Suffice it to say that while there was some homegrown talent here – primarily Brandon Inge and Curtis Granderson on offense, Justin Verlander, Jeremy Bonderman, and Joel Zumaya on defense – the 2006 Tigers are an exhibit in what a GM can accomplish with shrewd trades and free agent signings in just three years. Five years later, it’s still hard to impress upon people just how impressive a job Dave Dombrowski did with that franchise. If you want to criticize Dayton Moore’s job with the Royals, the easiest way is to compare him to Dombrowski’s job with the Tigers at a comparable point in his tenure.

But precisely because Dombrowski’s magic act involved a heap of veteran talent, it has proven harder for him to sustain the Tigers’ success. The Tigers have remained competitive, and of course lost the AL Central crown in a one-game playoff to the Twins in 2009. Regardless, the 2006 Tigers are not a good comparison for what the Royals are trying to do.

That leaves seven other teams. In increasing order of relevance, they are:

The 2005 San Diego Padres. I’m tempted to disqualify them, because their appearance on this list is solely the result of being a part of the weakest division in major league history, the 2005 NL West. The Padres won the division with 82 games, the lowest winning percentage ever for a first-place team. They actually won more games (87) the year before, after losing seasons from 1999-2003.

On top of that, this wasn’t a young team at all; five of their eight regulars were 33 or older. In any case, the Padres won the division again in 2006, were competitive in 2007, and then the bottom fell out in 2008.

The 2000 Oakland Athletics. I wouldn’t say that what the A’s did is irrelevant to the Royals, but the perception of the A’s is so colored by Moneyball that it’s hard to tease out reality. The first of four consecutive playoff teams was exceedingly young in places; the A’s had Eric Chavez (22 years old) at third base, Ben Grieve (24) in left field, Terrence Long (24) in center field, Ramon Hernandez (24) behind the plate, and Miguel Tejada (26) at shortstop. Long had been acquired from the Mets in a trade deadline deal the year before; the other guys were all signed by the A’s. And on the mound, of course, sophomore Tim Hudson (24) was joined by rookies Mark Mulder (22) and Barry Zito (22).

So half of the A’s roster was the product of a youth movement that the Royals can only hope to emulate. But the other half was pure Moneyball. Jason Giambi was homegrown, but he was 29 and pure take-and-rake. Matt Stairs patrolled right field. Randy Velarde was the second baseman. The DH was supposed to be John Jaha, but after he failed spectacularly (in 97 at-bats, Jaha batted .175, but still managed a .398 OBP), the A’s turned to some combination of (Royals castoff) Jeremy Giambi and Olmedo Saenz. The rotation contained stalwarts Gil Heredia and Kevin Appier, and insomuch as Moneyball was supposed to be outsmarting your opponents, I will always submit that any team with Kevin Appier is outsmarting its opponents.

The bullpen was the perfect manifestation of baseball arbitrage, taking advantage of undervalued assets. The year before the A’s had traded Billy Taylor, who had been their closer for years but was pitching on fumes, for a once-heralded arm coming back from major surgery, Jason Isringhausen. Izzy was put into the closer’s role immediately and excelled; his set-up men in 2000 included soft-tosser Jeff Tam and 43-year-old changeup artist Doug Jones.

The A’s would win go on to three more playoff appearances in a row, and while their Moneyball ways played a part, having Tejada, Chavez, and The Big Three starters played a substantially bigger one.

The 2008 Tampa Bay Rays. One of the arguments I’ve heard as to why it’s unrealistic for the Royals to build a contender solely through their farm system is that for as much as the Tampa Bay Rays owe their success to their farm system, they would not have won the AL East twice in the last three years without acquiring talent in other ways.

Sure, their farm system was responsible for Longoria and Upton and Crawford, but the rest of the 2008 offense came from outside: they pilfered Dioner Navarro from the Dodgers, grabbed Ben Zobrist in a small deal with the Astros, and got Jason Bartlett in that huge Delmon Young trade with the Twins. They signed Carlos Pena off of the scrap heap and brought in Akinori Iwamura from Japan. The Navarro deal also brought them Edwin Jackson, and they also got Matt Garza in the Young trade, complementing their home-grown staff of Scott Kazmir, Andy Sonnanstine, and James Shields.

They won in part by radically upgrading their defense; Iwamura was moved from third to second to accommodate Longoria, Upton moved from second base (where he was awful) to center field (where he was excellent), and Bartlett was a plus defender acquired for a defensive liability in Young. And the Rays’ entire 2008 bullpen – Troy Percival, J.P. Howell, Grant Balfour, Dan Wheeler, and Trever Miller – came from outside the organization, at least until David Price came up at year’s end and took over as the closer.

The Rays would win the division again two years later, with almost the same group of players. Price had ascended to the role of ace, and Jeff Niemann and Wade Davis gave the Rays a rotation that, aside from Garza, was completely homegrown.

The 1991 Atlanta Braves. I’ve written about the ’91 Braves almost as much as I have written about the 2006 Tigers, so let me keep this brief. The key point to understand about the Braves is that while they were building the elite farm system in all of baseball in the early 1990s, most of that talent had not arrived in Atlanta by 1991, making their pennant-winning team that much more impressive. Yes, Tom Glavine and Steve Avery were drafted by the team, John Smoltz acquired when he was a Double-A pitcher going nowhere, and Ron Gant and David Justice were key hitters in their lineup.

But what propelled that team from last to first was one of the greatest defensive makeovers of all time, at least until the 2008 Rays came along. The Braves signed Terry Pendleton to a four-year contract that belongs on the Top 10 list of “worst-looking free-agent deals that worked out beyond everyone’s wildest imaginations.” Rafael Belliard, perhaps the worst hitter in major-league history to last 17 seasons in the majors, played shortstop. Sid Bream played first base. Otis Nixon was brought in to run everything down in left field. And as a result, the Braves went from dead last in the NL in runs allowed in 1990, to third-fewest in 1991.

Greg Maddux would sign in 1993, Javy Lopez came up in 1994, Chipper Jones in 1995, Andruw Jones in 1996, and the Braves were on their way. But at least at the beginning, the Braves were not an entirely home-grown team.

The 2007 Colorado Rockies. The Rockies were not only on a stretch of six straight losing campaigns before 2007, the franchise had never won more than 83 games in a season. And with two weeks left in the season, it didn’t look like they’d win more than 83 games in 2007 either, before they won 21 of their next 22 games, the last seven in the NLDS and NLCS, in one of the greatest closing kicks of all time. (They then got a swift reminder as to which league was superior at the time, getting swept by the Red Sox in the World Series.)

Dan O’Dowd had learned his lesson from the debacles of the Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle signings, and the Rockies were largely homegrown. In contrast to the Royals, however, the Rockies’ prospects had matured over a wide timeframe. Troy Tulowitzki was a rookie in 2007, but Garrett Atkins and Matt Holliday were both 27, Brad Hawpe was 28, and Todd Helton was 33. On the mound, Jeff Francis and Aaron Cook were a pair of home-grown aces, and the Rockies got a big second-half lift from rookies Ubaldo Jimenez and Franklin Morales. Closer Brian Fuentes had been acquired as a pre-rookie in a 2001 trade of Jeff Cirillo, but Manny Corpas was the only other homegrown reliever in the pen.

The Rockies fell below .500 again in 2008, but won 92 games and the NL Wild Card again in 2009, and are now a perennial pre-season contender in the division.

The 1995 Cleveland Indians. Speaking as a baseball fan, what John Hart and his front office did in Cleveland ranks as my favorite rebuilding process ever. From 1982 to 1993, the Indians had 11 losing seasons in 12 years. In 1994, they were over .500 and nipping on the White Sox’ heels when the strike came – giving us just a taste of how good they were about to be. In 1995, they won 100 games. In a strike-shortened season. Their 100-44 record was the highest winning percentage by any major league team since the 1954 Indians went 111-43. They would go on to win five more AL Central titles over the next six years.

At DH, the Indians had brought in 39-year-old Eddie Murray, who had his last great season, and behind the plate they had brought in 38-year-old Tony Pena to caddy for Sandy Alomar, who wasn’t an Indians farmhand but had won the Rookie of the Year award in 1990 after the Indians acquired him and two other players for Joe Carter. One of those other two players was Carlos Baerga, the starting second baseman.

At first base, the Indians had Paul Sorrento, who they had traded Curt Leskanic and Oscar Munoz to acquire prior to the 1992 season. At the time Sorrento had less than 200 major-league at-bats. In center field, there was Kenny Lofton, who the Indians acquired as a pre-rookie at the 1991 winter meetings for catcher Eddie Taubensee (who had been a Rule 5 pick the year before!), in one of the most lopsided trades of the decade.

The other three guys in the lineup were all drafted by the organization: Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, and Albert Belle. If you’re looking for an absolute best-case scenario for Messrs. Moustakas, Hosmer, and Myers, well, you found it. Eight of the nine regulars in the Indians’ lineup were either drafted by the team or acquired before they had batted more than 200 times in the majors.

I don’t have the time or the expertise to do it myself, but if you were to come up with some sort of formula to rank the greatest lineups of all time – based not only on what the hitters did that year, but on what they did over their careers – I’d be surprised if the 1995 Indians weren’t near the top of the list. They had two clear Hall of Famers in Thome and Ramirez, two guys who played at a Hall of Fame peak for a period of time in Lofton and Belle, and even Baerga looked like a future Hall of Famer at the end of that season, with a .305/.345/.454 line and 971 career hits, as a second baseman who was just 26 when the season ended.

The pitching staff, though, was mostly acquired. Only two starters – Charles Nagy and Chad Ogea – were homegrown, as was key set-up man Julian Tavarez. Dennis Martinez and Orel Hershiser were savvy free-agent signings, and Jose Mesa was a failed Orioles starter turned elite – for a time – closer. John Hart did a masterful job of supplementing a historic wave of offensive talent from the minors with veterans who filled in the holes with average performances. But the team was not a pure youth movement.

So to review: six of the nine franchises that built a playoff team after years of losing proved to have staying power. More notably, five of the six teams that were built mostly with young talent would go on to make multiple playoff appearances, with the only exception being the 2003 Marlins, a team that isn’t representative for a variety of reasons.

That brings us to the final franchise, the only team in the last 20 years that can claim to have built, almost entirely from within, a contender out of a perennial loser. That team is…worthy of its own column. Check back here tomorrow for more on that team, and the lessons that Royals fans might be able to take from them.

The Meaning of the Minors, Part 2.

Here’s what you missed on Glee…er…in my last article.

This study here by Scott McKinney finds that only about 30% of Baseball America Top 100 Prospects go on to be successful major leaguers. The Royals have nine Top 100 Prospects this year, but given the odds, we can expect no more than three or four of them to be quality players in the majors. Ergo, the Royals’ youth movement is doomed to failure. Only I disagree.

Two years ago, on one of the earliest episodes of “Rany on the Radio”, before any of us knew where the farm system was headed, I asked my guest – the intrepid Kevin Goldstein – to name a sleeper in the Royals’ organization. He gave me the name of Salvador Perez, who was such a deep sleeper he was almost comatose – at the time Perez was struggling to hit .200 in the Midwest League. He was just 18 and had plenty of projection, but he had a long, long way to go. Perez struggled so badly that he was eventually sent back to the short-season leagues once their season got underway.

Last year, though, Perez was a quiet revelation. The Royals aggressively started him in Wilmington, jumping him past the same Midwest League where he had struggled so mightily the year before. Despite being the youngest player in the Carolina League to start the year – he didn’t turn 20 until May – Perez hit well over .300 in the early part of the season, before going into a tailspin mid-year when pitchers started taking advantage of his aggressiveness at the plate. But around mid-July Perez adjusted right back, hitting over .300 the rest of the way.

For the season, Perez hit .290/.322/.411, with 7 homers and 21 doubles in 365 at-bats. He was an aggressive hitter (just 18 walks), but also made excellent contact (just 38 strikeouts). Those are respectable numbers for any 20-year-old catcher, but coming in the hitters’ graveyard of Wilmington, they were especially impressive. This is the same ballpark where Mike Moustakas had hit just .250/.297/.421 the year before. This is the same ballpark where Carlos Beltran hit .229/.311/.363, just two years before Beltran was the American League Rookie of the Year.

Defensively, Perez earned nothing but praise, being named the best defensive catcher in the system. He threw out 42% of attempted basestealers, and showed good agility and plate-blocking skills behind the plate.

Last November 8th – the iPhone does a good job of record-keeping – I got a text message out of the blue from Joe Sheehan, who was watching games in the Arizona Fall League. “Salvador Perez just hit a freaking bomb.” He continued. “Extremely young and a big kid. I’m getting a Sandy Alomar feel, and I mean that in a good way.” Alomar was an overrated player throughout his career, as he rarely played at the level he established as the Rookie of the Year in 1990. (That year, Alomar hit .290/.326/.418, numbers eerily similar to Perez’s numbers last year.) But Alomar did play 20 seasons in the major leagues.

(As an aside, with regards to the comments I made about Wil Myers a few days ago, it’s worth pointing out that Alomar was 6’5”, and was so injury-prone – generally suffering from knee problems – that he played in 100 games in a season just four times in his career. Perez is tall, but fortunately not that tall, at 6’3”.)

This spring, as Bob Dutton wrote recently, Perez has been the talk of camp.

“He’s as good a thrower as I’ve ever seen — as I’ve ever seen! — behind the plate,” said manager Ned Yost, himself a former catcher. “I always thought that a 1.8 (second) throw to second base was a myth. I’d never seen one. This kid is constantly in the 1.8s.

“He blocks the ball very well and has great energy behind the plate. He has a lot of leadership qualities. There’s a lot going on with that kid, and it’s all positive.”

There’s even this line later in the article: And Perez is already turning heads while drawing comparisons to Sandy Alomar because of his size and skills.

The Royals moved Wil Myers to the outfield in order to preserve his bat, and in order to get him to the majors more quickly. But there’s no doubt that the decision was made easier by the fact that they already had a prospect in the organization who projects as an above-average catcher. Perez will probably be a solid-average hitter for a catcher, with plus defense. Given his superior defense and high-contact batting skills, I’ve also used Yadier Molina as a potential comp.

Perez should head to Double-A this spring. Most Royals hitters put up raw numbers in Northwest Arkansas that are at least as good as their numbers in Wilmington, and I expect Perez to flirt with .300 once again, with perhaps a little more power. He’s on course to be the Royals’ starting catcher by mid-2012, shortly after his 22nd birthday.

Now here’s the punchline: according to Baseball America, Salvador Perez is the SEVENTEENTH-BEST prospect in the system. According to Kevin Goldstein and Baseball Prospectus, Perez is the TWENTIETH-BEST prospect in the system.

Even better: both of those rankings were issued before the Zack Greinke trade. Once you make room for Jeffress and Odorizzi, Perez moves down two more slots. A player that is widely viewed as a future everyday catcher in the major leagues may or may not be one of the 20 best prospects in the Royals’ organization.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I believe in this farm system. As impressive as the high-end talent in the farm system is, I’m almost more impressed by the quantity of prospects that Dayton Moore has collected than the quality.

That is why I believe that, even with the devastating attrition that waylays travelers on the road from prospectdom to major league stardom, the Royals have enough talent in their system to become a contender.

True, the majority of Top 100 Prospects don’t become successes in the major leagues. But you know what? A sizeable minority of successes in the major leagues weren’t Top 100 Prospects. Not every major-league star was as highly-touted coming through the minor leagues as Chipper Jones or Alex Rodriguez. Brandon Webb was never a Top 100 Prospect, not even prior to the 2003 season, when he was called up in April and wound up throwing 181 innings for the Diamondbacks with a 2.84 ERA. John Lackey was never a Top 100 Prospect, not even prior to the 2002 season, which ended with him being the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the World Series. Johan Santana was never a Top 100 Prospect. Mark Buehrle was never a Top 100 Prospect, nor was Danny Haren. Jim Edmonds never made BA’s Top 100 list, nor did Brian Giles, nor did Jorge Posada. Mariano Rivera, of course, was never a Top 100 Prospect.

Hell, just look at the best players the Royals have developed in recent times. Johnny Damon and Beltran and Zack Greinke were top prospects, sure. But Mike Sweeney was never a BA Top 100 Prospect, not even after he conquered that Wilmington ballpark to the tune of .310/.424/.548 in 1994. Neither was David DeJesus, although I will immodestly point out that in BP 2004, I rated DeJesus the #26 prospect in baseball prior to his rookie season. Joe Randa was never a Top 100 Prospect, nor was Joakim Soria, nor was Jose Rosado.

The Royals don’t simply have more Top 100 Prospects than any team in the history of Top 100 Prospects lists. They also have one of the strongest collections of talents in the next Top 100 Prospects, the guys that you might rank from #101 to #200 in baseball. Don’t take my word for it. I asked Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus, Jim Callis of Baseball America, and Keith Law of ESPN.com that question: “Off the top of your head, how many Royals do you think would rank between #101 and #200 in all of baseball?” Their answers:

Goldstein: “Somewhere between 3 and 5 guys, I think?” Goldstein, however, has TEN Royals (the same nine guys from BA’s list as well as Jeremy Jeffress) in his Top 101.

Law: “I'm thinking at least 7, probably more like 8-10. Dwyer, Odorizzi, Ventura, Colon, Yambati, Jeffress, Adam for certain. Probably Collins because at some point I'll start ranking relievers, plus Eibner and Crow. That's 10.” Keep in mind that Law had only six Royals in his Top 100, although he had Dwyer and Odorizzi among his 10 prospects who “just missed”.

Callis: “Guys who I ranked 101-150: Crow, Eibner, Jeffress. Guys who other BA editors ranked 101-150: Adam, Ventura, Collins. If you take it down to 200, you could make a case for Melville, Cuthbert, Yambati, Perez--everyone's lists are all over the place at that point.

I think it's safe to say you could put as many as 17 Royals on the Top 200 (or eight from 101-200).”

There seems to be a consensus that the Royals have somewhere between 14 and 17 players that would rank on a Top 200 list. Let’s split the difference and call it 16 – which means that if the Royals have 9 prospects among the Top 100, they have 7 more among the Next 100. I imagine that number also ranks among the highest in baseball.

To put it another way, a month or two ago I asked Jim Callis where the Royals’ farm system would rank if you simply ignored their entire Top 10 list – if the Royals just released their ten best prospects. His answer: “middle of the pack, probably.” The Royals have basically an entire organization’s worth of talent behind their 10 best prospects.

Here’s a list of Baseball America’s 10 best Royals prospects who are not in their Top 100:

1. Aaron Crow

2. Jeremy Jeffress (I’m guessing this is where he’d be ranked)

3. Brett Eibner

4. Jason Adam

5. Yordano Ventura

6. Tim Collins

7. Tim Melville

8. Cheslor Cuthbert

9. Robinson Yambati

10. Salvador Perez

Jeffress and Collins will probably never make the Top 100 list, both because they’re relievers and because they’ll likely exhaust their rookie eligibility this season. Crow might also not qualify for the Top Prospect list next year, although it’s worth remembering that he already made the list at #40 last year. But the other seven guys on this list all have an excellent chance to make the Top 100 in the future. Just two of those seven (Perez and Tim Melville) have so much as played a game in a full-season league yet.

Between these 10 players, and the #5 overall pick the Royals have in the upcoming draft, the Royals could easily place another four or five prospects in next year’s Top 100 – along with the guys on this year’s Top 100 list who don’t lose their rookie eligibility. It’s not out of bounds to suggest the Royals might break their own record for most Top 100 Prospects on next year’s list.

And then there are the players who are already on the Royals roster. Alex Gordon was the #2 prospect in the game four years ago, and if he serves to remind people of the risk of even the best of prospects, he also shouldn’t be dismissed as a guaranteed bust just yet. I’d say the odds that Gordon still establishes himself as a “success” are at least as high as your typical Top 100 Prospect. Billy Butler was a Top 100 Prospect three times, topping out at #25 in 2007. Luke Hochevar was a Top 100 Prospect twice. And last year, along with Crow at #40, Noel Arguelles checked in at #100.

Those five Royals represent McKinney’s study writ small: only Butler is a clear success at this point, although the other four still have the potential to be impact players. But add those five to the nine current Top 100 Prospects, add on another four or five on next year’s list, and now you’re talking about 18 or 19 players of a “Top 100” caliber. Even if the Royals hit on just a third of them, that’s six quality players. (And keep in mind that Gordon won’t be a free agent until after 2013, Soria until after 2014, and Butler until after 2015.)

Then factor in the guys who never see a Top 100 list. There’s Soria, of course, and also Kila Ka’aihue, who will get the opportunity to prove himself this year. Mike Aviles never sniffed a Top 100 list, but is a versatile and useful player. And the Royals are stacked with relievers – I mentioned Jeffress and Collins above, but there’s also Louis Coleman and Patrick Keating and a half-dozen other guys who could be quality relievers without ever being considered for a Top 100 Prospect list. Hell, Baseball America has David Lough as the #25 prospect in the system, and I still think he has a chance to be the second coming of David DeJesus.

That is a simply enormous amount of talent. It’s rare to find a team with so much minor league talent that even if just one-third of it pans out, the remaining talent is still sizeable enough to form the backbone of a contending team. But this is one of those rare instances.

I am not claiming that the Royals have enough talent in their system to win in 2013 and beyond. No doubt, Dayton Moore will have to go outside the system to fill in holes, and he will have to do so far more judiciously than he has done so in the past. But there’s a perception out there that Moore will have to bring in a massive amount of talent to complement his own, because the Royals’ prospect pipeline will turn out to be just a garden hose. I don’t think that’s the case. Moore has to steer clear of the pitfalls he has plunged into in the past, but he doesn’t have to be the second coming of Cedric Tallis.

Keep in mind that with the Royals’ payroll likely to be the lowest in the majors this year, and with only Butler and Soria under contract after 2011, the Royals have the two most desirable commodities any team can have on the trade market: prospects, and the ability to take on salary. The Royals are perfectly positioned to trade some of their excess prospects for an established major leaguer who is expensive and perhaps even overpaid, but who is a championship-caliber player at a position the Royals need to fill.

If, come the summer of 2012, the Royals are short a corner outfielder, could they trade Chris Dwyer, Cheslor Cuthbert, and Johnny Giavotella for Nick Markakis? If they need a catcher, could they trade Robinson Yambati and Derrick Robinson for Miguel Montero? If they’re desperate for another starting pitcher, could they trade Tim Melville, Humberto Arteaga, and David Lough for Wandy Rodriguez?

Maybe. Don’t focus on the specific trade proposals here; that’s not the point. The point is that in a market where teams have become almost overly reluctant to surrender prospects for ready-now major-league talent, the Royals have an excess of prospects that they can shop around in what is a seller’s market. If Joe Saunders, a borderline Top 100 prospect (Tyler Skaggs), and two non-descript arms can fetch Dan Haren…the Royals may be able to acquire impact players without ever resorting to free agency, and without surrendering any impact prospects in return.

With all that said, it would be easier to make the case that an exceptional farm system can build a contending team all by itself if we could point to some team out there that has done so in the past. Well, there is one, and in my next article we’ll look at that team in more detail. You might be surprised by who it was. I know I was.