Friday, April 13, 2012

The Score Board: 4/13/12.

(Thanks to reader “kctiger” for the title of this new column. “Score” as in 20, “Board” as in my analysis of where the Royals are at the moment.)

After the Cleveland Indians rendered this afternoon’s game the most anti-climactic home opener in Royals history, scoring seven runs before the Royals came to bat, the general consensus among fans was to blame Luke Hochevar for the full-on face plant.

That’s a reasonable first reaction. Hochevar did give up seven runs in the first inning, all of them earned. He allowed more runs in the first inning than the Royals had allowed in any of their six previous games. He allowed as many earned runs in the first inning as the Royals’ starters had allowed in the six previous games combined.

I’m not here to defend Hochevar. He was not sharp at all at the beginning of the game. He allowed eight hits in the inning. But let’s look at what happened in a little more detail:

Michael Brantley singled to center. This was a bloop single, a Texas Leaguer, not anything to get riled up about.

Asdrubal Cabrera doubled to deep right. This was a bad job by Hochevar – giving Cabrera a hittable pitch on a 1-2 count.

Shin-Soo Choo singled to right, Brantley and Cabrera scored. This is the turning point of the inning – Choo dribbled a ground ball to the right side, and Yuniesky Betancourt inexplicably was unable to move ten feet to his left to field the ball before it scooted past his outstretched glove.

You know how Alcides Escobar makes a fantastic play from deep in the hole and you have to rewind the play several times to figure out how he did it? This was the exact same thing, only the exact opposite – I had to watch the play over again just to figure how on God’s green earth Yuni didn’t get to this ground ball.

And on this one play, in the first inning of the first game at Kauffman Stadium this year, the concept that Betancourt might be a less atrocious defender at second base than he was at shortstop shattered. It was already fragile, mind you, but all spring long we heard the Royals make the claim that oh-my-God Betancourt is just such a good defender at second base, and we have to get him in the lineup, and you just wouldn’t believe the range he has at his new position.

And then he waves at a groundball that Frank White would have personally escorted to second base. I mean Frank White today. Rex Hudler could have come down from the announcer’s booth in his suit and tie and made that play.

Instead, it went for a two-run single, and the rest of the inning went downhill. If Yuni gets one out on that play, the inning ends with just two runs scoring. There’s no way to know what would have happened in subsequent innings; maybe Hochevar just keeps giving up line drives the next inning. But the arc of the game would have been completely different.

Carlos Santana struck out swinging. Shin-Soo Choo stole second base.

Travis Hafner grounded out to first. Choo advanced to third base.

Shelley Duncan singled to right. Choo scored.

This was one of the luckiest hits you’ll see all year. I’m serious. On an 0-1 count, Duncan was just trying to get out of the way of an up-and-in fastball, and somehow the ball hit the barrel of the bat – Duncan wasn’t even looking at the pitch as he tried to pirouette out of the way – at such an angle that it drifted over Eric Hosmer’s head and plopped down in no-man’s land down the right field line. It happens.

Casey Kotchman singled to right. Duncan advanced to second base.

Bad pitch. A hittable fastball on an 0-2 count.

Jason Kipnis tripled to deep center. Duncan and Kotchman scored.

The other brutally bad defensive play in the inning. Jarrod Dyson, who has played outstanding defense in his limited major-league playing time in the past, either completely misjudged the ball or completely misjudged the wind, allowing the ball to get over his head and land just out of his reach. This should have been the fourth out of the inning.

Jack Hannahan then singled, then Hochevar threw a wild pitch, then Brantley – who had one hit all season before the game – got his second hit of the inning, a double to cap the scoring. When Hochevar falls apart, he falls apart. That’s nothing new for him – his biggest weakness throughout his career has been his poor performance with runners on base compared to when the bases are empty.

But with a decent defense behind him, the Indians score two or three runs in that inning, and the Royals tie the game by the fourth inning. Dyson’s miscue was terrible, but it was also completely out of character for him. But while Dyson’s misplay was more obvious, it was Betancourt’s misplay that was inexcusable.

Not inexcusable for Betancourt himself – this is who he is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an infielder who has more difficulty going to his left. (Hard to blame him – he is a Cuban defector, after all.) When he played shortstop, it was the groundball up the middle that he couldn’t reach – now it’s the groundball in the 4-3 hole. But again, we knew that going in. The Royals, inexplicably, did not. The Royals sent down Johnny Giavotella because of his defense, but somehow are convinced that playing Betancourt over Chris Getz – against a right-handed pitcher, mind you – makes perfect sense.

It does not. It has not. It will not. Yuniesky Betancourt is a defensive liability, the one liability on the field this afternoon, and if the Royals want to give their pitching staff the best possible defense, they need to stop with this charade.

Maybe it’s a good thing that this happened in the home opener, because the Royals have the Field f/x equipment installed at Kauffman Stadium now. I can only hope that when Mike Groopman and John Williams get the data for that play, they’ll react with the sort of urgent panic you’d expect from the army translator who just picked up some chatter that the Soviets are about to launch.

If Getz is in tomorrow’s lineup, we can hope that Jin Wong burst into Dayton Moore’s office early this evening with a printout in his hand and a look on his face that said, “I have bad news.” The Royals’ mystifying commitment to Betancourt has cost them enough games.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Royals Today: 4/12/12.

So here’s the deal: if I’m going to keep this blog active and productive, I’m going to have to make some changes around here. Mainly, I’m not going to be able to write for long stretches at a time, so I’m going to have to make up for it by writing more often.

A few years ago, back when he was writing his blog, our dearly departed friend Chris Hayes used to have “One-Minute Mondays”, where he would blog as fast as he could for one minute and then post, usually in mid-sente

I can’t give you anything worth reading in one minute, but hopefully 20 minutes will suffice. The clock is ticking, down to 17:14 and counting. I’ll try to do this three of four times a week, sacrificing quality for quantity. We’ll try this out; let me know if this works for you in the comments. Oh, and if you have a catchy name for this column, let me know. “Plenty in Twenty”?

- The big news in the first week of the season is the rotation, which has been sensational – through six games, the starters have a 1.85 ERA, second in the major leagues behind only the Phillies.

There’s two ways of looking at this: you can argue that the rotation is going to be a lot better than we thought – or you can argue that the Royals just got one of the best weeks they’ll get from their starters all season, and they’re still just 3-3.

I argued before the season that the rotation isn’t quite as bad as everyone thinks, but I’m not about to claim victory based on one week. In 34 innings, the starters have combined for 15 walks and 25 strikeouts – hardly anything to boast about. Their success has come from allowing just 22 hits (meaning a .233 BABIP) and a single home run. The team as a whole has allowed just two homers in six games.

That’s not going to last. I think Luke Hochevar may have figured things out, and Danny Duffy’s first outing certainly was exciting. But I wouldn’t read anything into the first week’s performances.

- The bullpen, on the other hand, looks legit. They have a 3.38 combined ERA, and with just 5 walks and 25 strikeouts in 19 innings, they may be even better than that. (The bullpen’s BABIP is actually .400.) Tim Collins has thrown strikes so far, which potentially gives Ned Yost yet another late-inning power option he can trust.

He might need that new option if Jonathan Broxton doesn’t quickly bounce back and prove that his meltdown on Wednesday was a fluke. It was a save outing straight out of the Ricky Bottalico/Roberto Hernandez catalog, complete with an error, two walks, and two first-pitch hit batsman.

I don’t want to push the panic button just yet. In Broxton’s previous outing, he came in for the save, faced three batters, and struck out all three of them. That’s only the eighth time a reliever has done that in Royals history. In the first week, we’ve seen Broxton at his very worst, but also at his very best. We don’t know which is the anomaly yet.

I argued before that I’d rather have Broxton in the anointed closer role even though Holland’s the better pitcher, and you saw why on Wednesday – in a tie game, Holland came in to pitch the bottom of the eighth, and was allowed to get six outs. As a Capital-C Closer, he wouldn’t have done any of that – he wouldn’t have pitched the eighth, he wouldn’t have entered a tie game, and he wouldn’t have been allowed to pitch more than one inning.

The downside, though, is that when the Royals did have a one-run lead to protect, they brought in Broxton. The theory is sound; the problem is that the theory implies that while you use your best reliever in the most key situations, you use your second-best reliever in the closer’s role. It’s quite possible that Broxton is the fourth or fifth-best reliever in the pen.

For now, I’m fine with letting Broxton pitch the next time a save situation rolls around. But the second his control wavers, I’d have Aaron Crow or Holland or Collins getting loose as quickly as possible. Yost is a patient man, and his patience is a great asset when it comes to handling young players. It’s not an asset when it means sitting on your thumbs while your closer allows the tying and winning runs to score without the benefit of a base hit.

- This might – okay, this is – one of the dorkier things I’ve ever suggested, but for those of you attending the home opener tomorrow, may I make a suggestion?

Go ahead and cheer Eric Hosmer lustily when he’s introduced before the game. But save even louder cheers for Alcides Escobar. And when Alex Gordon’s name is announced, rustle up enough noise to make the stadium shake.

There is essentially nothing fans can do to influence the business decisions that teams and players make. If Eric Hosmer wants to sign a long-term deal with the Royals, it will get done, and if he doesn’t, then no amount of pleading on the part of the fanbase is going to change that.

But this is the “essentially” part. There’s a buzz about this team, and there’s a momentum that comes from having three players sign long-term contracts in the span of one spring training. That’s not enough to get Hosmer to sign, but it might be enough to get him to think about it. Tomorrow, send a clear signal to him, and to Moustakas, and to whoever else might be thinking about making a long-term commitment to the team: we take care of our own. We love all you guys, but the ones who love us back are getting the biggest cheers of all.

And if Salvador Perez – who is in town – gets introduced, bring the damn stadium down.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Royals Season Preview 2012.

It might seem a little ridiculous to publish a season preview after the opening series of the season, but then, my life has been a little ridiculous lately. Before Friday’s first pitch, I put out my prediction on Twitter for an 81-81 season. I’d like to explain that projection in a little detail.

As much as I would have loved to predict a postseason run for the Royals this season, I could not in good conscience do so. Maybe if they had signed Edwin Jackson, and maybe if Salvador Perez and Joakim Soria hadn’t been hurt, and maybe if the Tigers hadn’t signed Prince Fielder, I would have been tempted to. I certainly think the Royals could win the division – if we were setting odds on it, I’d put the Royals around 15% to win the AL Central, which is probably three times higher than those odds would have been in any of the last seven seasons. But I still think the Tigers have to be the favorite, and I felt that way even before they opened up an entire case of whoop-ass – and a couple of cans of last-at-bat magic – on the suddenly hapless Boston Red Sox this weekend.

But I think .500 is a very reasonable expectation for the Royals this season. Most objective projection systems out there don’t agree. Dan Szymborski, who does his ZIPS projections for ESPN these days, projects the Royals to finish 74-88 and in fourth place. Szymborski is an incurable optimist compared to Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections, which have the Royals tabbed for a 68-94 record.

No, seriously: 68-94. PECOTA thinks the Royals are the second-worst team in the major leagues, ahead of only the Astros.

It is perhaps for the best that you can’t actually wager on the lines that PECOTA sets, as that would sorely test my religious convictions against gambling. (I mean, that’s not gambling – that’s taking candy from a baby. Totally different.) The real Vegas lines, from what I understand, are somewhere in the 77-80 range for the Royals’ win total. That’s certainly more reasonable, but I expect the Royals to do better. Here, in a nutshell, is why.

1) They were a lot better last year than their record suggests.

The Royals were 71-91 last season. They were outscored by just 32 runs all season.

In 2003, the Royals were 83-79. That team was outscored by 31 runs all season.

We’ve known for over a quarter-century now that an estimation of a team’s win-loss record by looking at its runs scored and runs allowed, is a better predictor of the following year’s record than looking at its actual wins and losses. Bill James invented what he called the Pythagorean Theorem to express what a team’s record should have been based on how many runs they scored, and how many they allowed. By that formula, the Royals shouldn’t have finished 71-91; they should have gone 78-84.

That’s a pretty big difference. The Royals were ten games under .500 in the standings, but just three games under .500 on paper. I don’t think predicting the Royals to improve their underlying performance by three games is all that big a deal.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that the Tigers, who won 95 games last season, only outscored their opponents by 76 runs, and had a Pythagorean record of 89-73. The Tigers were nearly as lucky as the Royals were unlucky. The Tigers were 29-17 in one-run games, the Royals were 25-32. What looks like an insurmountable 24-game gap in the standings is cut by more than half simply by looking at the runs each team scored and allowed.

That doesn’t mean it’s likely the Royals will close the entire gap this season, but it’s certainly a lot more likely than you would think simply by looking at win-loss records.

That’s also why I think the Baseball Prospectus prediction is so…weird. Somehow, PECOTA thinks that the youngest team in the majors last season, a team with one of the game’s best farm systems, is going to decline by 10 wins in terms of actual team quality. I find this unlikely.

2) I believe in Kevin Seitzer.

I haven’t done my front office/coaching grades for 2011, but it won’t be a spoiler to tell you that Seitzer grades very highly. I loved his approach to hitting when he was a player, I loved his philosophy when the Royals hired him to be their hitting coach, and I loved the results last season.

One of the biggest reasons the projection systems are relatively down on the Royals is that they foresee regression – in some cases, massive regression – from many of the Royals’ best hitters last seasons. PECOTA’s weighted mean for Alex Gordon, for instance, is .262/.348/.432 – almost identical to his career numbers, which is to say that it doesn’t believe in last season’s breakout at all. Jeff Francoeur is projected to hit .270/.315/.411 – actually a touch worse than his career line of .270/.313/.433.

I don’t think that either Gordon or Francoeur will hit quite as well as they did last season. But I do think that the dramatic improvements in their performance were at least partly structural. I think that Seitzer altered their approach and their swing, and I think that was at least partly responsible for their improvement. And I think much of that improvement will hold this season.

PECOTA, by the way, projects the Royals to score 671 runs this season – fewer than every other AL team except the A’s and Mariners, both of whom play in pitchers’ parks. The Royals finished sixth in the AL in runs scored last year, with an offense that was nearly two years younger than every other team in the league. (Royals’ hitters averaged 25.8 years of age. The Minnesota Twins, at 27.6 years old, were the second-youngest offense in the AL.) Sorry to bite the hand that once fed me, but the idea that an offense that was both the youngest in the league and above-average in production should suddenly fall apart strikes me as unlikely. Very unlikely.

Speaking of youth and offense…

3) I think Eric Hosmer is about to go off.

He might have already gone off, actually, with two home runs in the season’s opening series. But even before that, all signs were there. The swing that lures scouts into thinking sinful thoughts. The statistical beauty of a .338/.406/.571 line in the minors at the age of 20. The .439 average in a month of Triple-A. The .293/.334/.465 line, with 19 homers, as a 21-year-old rookie.

I’ll say it again: rarely has any prospect compared to a former elite player as closely as Hosmer has compared to Will Clark. As a sophomore, Clark hit .308/.371/.580 with 35 homers. That slugging average may be a little optimistic for this season – particularly playing in Kauffman Stadium – but I don’t think Hosmer will be far off the pace.

4) I don’t think the starting pitching will be quite as bad as people think.

We’ve already seen a brilliant outing from Bruce Chen, which was gratifying to be sure, but shouldn’t change our perception of him too much – we know that he is capable of keeping a lineup off-balance for six innings. But I am optimistic – maybe hopeful is a more honest word – that we’re seeing a new Luke Hochevar. Or more precisely, we’re seeing the same Hochevar we saw in the second half of last season, which was a different guy than the pitcher we saw in the previous three-and-a-half seasons. He really does seem to have a different approach on the mound, working inside with much greater frequency to left-handed hitters, and his cutter - as Alberto Callaspo told Joel Goldberg yesterday - has become a real weapon.

A full-season of second-half Luke Hochevar, compared to what has passed for a full season of Hochevar in the past, would be worth something like 40 runs. That ain't beanbag.

I don’t know what to expect from Danny Duffy or Luis Mendoza, and I don’t think anyone knows what to expect from Jonathan Sanchez. I don’t know when or whether Felipe Paulino will return to form. But you throw those guys together, and I think that two of the four pitchers will emerge as reliable starting pitchers. The back-end of the rotation may be messy for the next month or two as the Royals sift through their options, but I’d rather have a bunch of high-variance pitchers then a bunch of safe Jeff Francis types. The Royals may take their lumps early, but by June they might have four starting pitchers who are average or close enough to average.

And regarding that fifth spot…

5) I think someone from the minor leagues will step up.

I don’t know who it will be. But the whole point of having depth in your farm system is so you don’t have to know who will step up. It might be Mike Montgomery, if he works out the kinks in his command. It could be Jake Odorizzi, who was brilliant in his season debut (5 innings, three hits, no walks, 8 Ks) and could be ready for the majors late in the season. It could be a complete wild card like Chris Dwyer. But I think that by August, the Royals will have a legitimate starting pitcher on the mound every night. They may not all be great; they may not even all be good. But they will be better than people think.

6) The defense will make the pitching staff look better.

Alcides Escobar. Lorenzo Cain. Salvador Perez by mid-season, and until then, probably a lot more Humberto Quintero than the FDA recommends. Even the Chrisiesky Getzancourt platoon at second base is there in part for (perceived) defensive skills. Gordon and Francoeur with cannons on the corners. Last year’s defensive numbers aside, Hosmer has the reputation of being a well-above-average first baseman. Even Moustakas, having lost a noticeable amount of weight this winter, has been a pleasant surprise so far at third base.

I wouldn’t say this is a great defensive team. But it’s a good one, maybe even a very good one. It’s probably the best defensive Royals squad since 1999, when Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltran, and Jermaine Dye patrolled the outfield, when Joe Randa and Rey Sanchez and Carlos Febles played the infield. It’s not a panacea for the rotation, but it will make a below-average rotation look slightly less below-average.

7) Bullpens keep taking on a more prominent role in run prevention, and this is a good bullpen.

It’s a universally agreed principle that bullpens have continuously become a more important part of the game pretty much since the NL was founded in 1876. Somehow, though, a lot of people seem to miss the corollary that goes with that: that as bullpens become more important, rotations by definition become less important. We saw it last year in the World Series, when the Cardinals won while getting more innings from their relievers than their starters, and yet people persist in dismissing the Royals in large part because their rotation is so weak.

It is weak, but it’s a weakness that is much easier to overcome when you have a bullpen that 1) should be well above-average, and 2) should throw an awful lot of innings. Last year, the Royals’ starters averaged 5.82 innings a start, and relievers tossed 35% of the team’s innings. There’s no reason to think that the relievers will contribute less this season; given the wealth of options in the pen, and the reinforcements (like Louis Coleman) biding their time in Omaha, they might contribute even more. I mean, it’s annoying that Jonathan Sanchez can’t get through five innings on Sunday without throwing 99 pitches, but on the other hand, if he can go five innings and allow two runs every time out, the Royals have the bullpen depth to take it from there.

They say you can’t win with a terrible rotation, and it’s true – you can’t win with a terrible anything. But even if the Royals’ rotation is as bad as people think, their offense should be average to above-average; their defense should be above-average; their bullpen should be above-average to well above-average. Pitching isn’t 90% of the game; it’s not even 50% of the game. (Run prevention is 50% of the game, but run prevention includes pitching and defense.) This runs counter to conventional wisdom, but starting pitching is probably about 30% of the game. So I refuse to believe that the 30% is going to take the other 70% down with it.

If you’re looking for goals to set for this season, the Royals’ incompetence over the last umpteen years facilitates this task for you. Here is a list of accomplishments the Royals can shoot for, in approximate order of difficulty:

1) Win 76 games, the most by any Royals team since 2003.
2) Win 78 games, the second-most by any Royals team since 1993.
3) Finish in third place, the highest rank by any Royals team since 2003.
4) Reach .500 for the first time since 2003 and the second time since 1994.
5) Outscore their opponents for the first time since 1994.
6) Finish in second place, the highest rank by any Royals team since 1995.
7) Win 84 games, the most by any Royals team since 1993.
8) Win 85 games, the most by any Royals team since 1989.
9) Win the division or qualify for the playoffs, for the first time since 1985.
10) Win 93 games, the most by any Royals team since 1980.

Just shoot me now, by the way.

Royals fans grade on a curve; we evaluate our teams on a different scale than most. Knocking off even just the first item on this list would qualify the season as a modest success, albeit a modest disappointment as well. We’ll see how things go, but I’m confident that by year’s end, you can cross the first four items off. Items #5 and #6 are definitely in play; with a little luck we could get down all the way to #8.

All that really matters, of course, is #9. I don’t think they’ll get there this year. But I think we’ll have a lot of fun watching them try.