- Our long national – or at least local – nightmare is over.
Jonathan Sanchez has been released back into the wild, and it only took the
Royals giving him two additional starts after he had proven to anyone with even
a modicum of common sense that he was done, damaged beyond repair and devoid of
hope. In those two starts, he threw a total of seven innings and allowed 11
runs; the Royals lost both games.
I want to be fair here; it’s easy for me to say after his
June 30th start, as I did here, that Sanchez needed to be released. It’s much
harder for Dayton Moore to go to ownership and ask for permission to release
Sanchez, eight months after he traded for him, and with Melky Cabrera leading
the NL in hits. (His job wasn’t made any easier when Cabrera won All-Star Game
MVP honors at Kauffman Stadium.) The Royals eventually came to the right
conclusion; compared to the Denial Tour that was Jose Lima’s 2005 season, this
time they were downright sensible.
But I just want to make the point that there are times when
the Royals – or any front office – make decisions which are not just
inexplicable, but indefensible. And just because I or another analyst isn’t
privy to inside knowledge doesn’t mean that we aren’t completely justified in
ripping that organization a new orifice for making that decision. After 15
years of doing what I do, I’ve recently sensed some pushback from some parts of
the analytic community, a sentiment that front offices have access to far
greater amounts of information than outsiders like us can possibly have, and
therefore they have reasons for making decisions that we can not possibly
fathom.
I don’t doubt the validity of that. But just because an organization makes more informed decisions doesn’t
mean they make better decisions. Knowing little more than Sanchez’s stat
line and the track record of similar pitchers in the past, I knew that Sanchez
was toast weeks ago. It’s not like I had an axe to grind with Sanchez – I was
generally positive about the decision to trade for him. The Royals undoubtedly
had access to the same database that I did, and chose to let him torch a few
more games before pulling the plug.
Did they know things about Sanchez that I didn’t?
Undoubtedly. Did they also have to deal with complexities that may have clouded
their judgment? I think so. I didn’t have to worry about how my owner would
react to me admitting to him that this trade was FUBAR. I didn’t have to sit
Sanchez down in my office and tell him that we were letting him go. I didn’t
have to deal with teammates who might have felt Sanchez was getting a raw deal.
(Although my guess is that they didn’t. I mean, they were forced to watch every
one of his starts.)
Sure, as an outsider we don’t know all of the variables. But
sometimes not knowing all the variables makes for a clearer, cleaner, more
sober analysis. Sometimes data is useful, and sometimes it’s just noise. I
didn’t need to hear all the office chatter to know that Sanchez should have
been cut a while ago. The Royals, for whatever reason, needed a few more data
points to convince themselves.
In the end, it might have cost the Royals a win, or it might
not have; they scored six runs in Sanchez’s last two starts. Sticking with
Sanchez a little too long isn’t close to the worst thing that the Royals have done
recently. But it’s a good reminder that there’s value in an outside
perspective. If there wasn’t, Warren Buffett wouldn’t be worth billions, Nate
Silver wouldn’t be read by politicians on both sides of the aisle, and I would
have stopped writing about baseball years ago.
Just since Sanchez was released, Bruce Bochy has gone on
record as saying that Hector Sanchez is a better hitter than Brandon Belt – and
pinch-hit for Belt with someone named Justin Christian – and the New York
Knicks refused to match the Houston Rockets’ offer sheet on Jeremy Lin, a
decision so jaw-dropping that it transcends the NBA. Sports organizations worth
hundreds of millions of dollars are capable of making decisions of profound
stupidity. This shouldn’t be news to anyone; corporations worth billions of dollars do the same thing.
(New Coke? Netflix’s plan to create Qwikster? Every investment firm that
thought real estate prices would go up forever?)
The Royals’ decision to stick with Sanchez is, relative to
the examples in the last paragraph, harmless. But the next time someone tells
you to trust the experts – whether those experts run your favorite baseball
team, the company you work at, or the country you live in – politely tell them
to shove it. No one has a monopoly on the truth. Not even people who have a
monopoly on proprietary information.
- Sanchez leaves us with some amazing stats. You may have
heard that Sanchez had the third-worst ERA in Royals history (min: 40 IP),
behind only Chad Durbin’s 8.21 ERA in 2000 and Blake Stein’s 7.91 ERA in 2002.
But in 2000, the AL ERA as a whole was 4.91; in 2002 it was 4.46.
This year, it’s 4.06. And remember, in the late 90s and early 2Ks, the fences
at Kauffman Stadium were 10 feet closer than they are now, making the stadium a
much better hitters’ park than it is
now. Sanchez’s ERA+ is 53, which means that after adjusting for the context of
the league and the ballpark, his ERA is nearly double that of the AL as a
whole. That’s easily the worst in
Royals history. (Second-worst? Sean O’Sullivan, whose 7.25 ERA last year was
good for an ERA+ of 57.)
And even without adjusting for league, Sanchez’s WHIP of
2.044 is the worst in Royals history. In 53.1 innings, he allowed 65 hits and
44 walks. Batters hit .302/.425/.512 against him.
- Sanchez’s disastrous start on Monday night forced the
Royals to use Everett Teaford in relief for five innings. This led to a mad
scramble to find a starter for Tuesday’s game, which led to Ryan Verdugo making
his major league debut. I have nothing against Verdugo; I think he might have a
future in the majors. But if he does, it will probably be in middle relief. In
88 innings in Omaha, he had allowed 14 homers, and walked 44 batters with just
72 strikeouts. His ERA was a solid 3.58, which hid the fact that he wasn’t
pitching all that well.
He then went out and gave up six runs in 1.2 innings, which
is to say that he had a worse major league debut than Eduardo Villacis. He
still pitched better than Sanchez had the night before, though.
- To the Royals’ credit, they immediately sent Verdugo back
down to Omaha, and called up Will Smith, who pitched yesterday on normal rest.
The rotation now appears to be, in some order, Luke Hochevar, Bruce Chen, Luis
Mendoza, Will Smith, and Everett Teaford.
I approve. That’s a terrible rotation on paper, and probably
in reality as well. But those are also the five best starting pitchers the
Royals have at the moment, at least until they feel that Jake Odorizzi is
ready. None of those pitchers project to be even a #3 starter at any point in
the future. But you can make a case for all five of them being solid #4/#5
starter types going forward. At the very least, they all have a chance to keep
you in a ballgame.
Smith, in particularly, has made enough progress this season
to warrant a long look. His seasonal line in Omaha isn’t great – a 3.61 ERA in
90 innings, and 104 hits allowed. But his high BABIP obscures a fine
strikeout-to-walk ratio: 74 Ks, 22 BBs. Moreover, in his last eight minor
league starts, Smith had a 2.73 ERA, and in 53 innings had 44 Ks against just
10 walks. He’s left-handed, and he just turned 23. Again, I don’t see a lot of
upside here – but I do see a pitcher who might survive in the back end of the
Royals’ rotation for a few years. Of course, we said the same thing about Sean
O’Sullivan. There’s only one way to find out, and I’d rather see him and
Teaford get a chance to sink or swim over the next few months then mess around
with retreads like Vinny Mazzaro.
Smith’s line in his return to KC was 6.1 8 4 4 2 5, and I
heard some suggest that the performance of Verdugo and Smith makes it
understandable that the Royals stuck with Sanchez as long as they did. I
couldn’t disagree more. Verdugo was not picked for the quality of his pitching,
but for his availability. (Ned Yost himself, when asked: “No. 1, he was available to pitch. No. 2, he’s got pretty good numbers
at Triple-A.” The order of those numbers is not an accident.) And while
Smith didn’t have a great first start, it’s miles better than what we’d expect
from Sanchez. Consider:
- Smith threw 6.1 innings. Sanchez hasn’t gotten an out in
the seventh inning of a game since May 28th, 2011 – 21 starts ago.
- Smith walked two batters and struck out five. Sanchez
hasn’t had more than twice as many strikeouts as walks in a single start since
the same game, 14 months ago.
The wild card here is Odorizzi, who you could easily make a
case for being one of the five best starting pitching options in the
organization right now. Even if he isn’t, there’s a strong case to be made that
allowing him to take his lumps in the majors over the next 2-3 months will make
him that much more prepared to pitch well out of the chute next year. My
feeling is that he should be in the Royals’ rotation by early August. I’m fine
with him being the sixth man for the moment, if only because it’s highly
unlikely the rotation as it’s presently constituted will hold up for more than
two or three weeks anyway. It’s even less likely that it will hold up with all
five starters pitching well enough to keep their jobs. I expect an opportunity
for Odorizzi to present itself soon enough.
- And, of course, pretty much everything I wrote above went
out the door Friday morning, when the Royals somehow traded Jonathan Sanchez to
Colorado in exchange for Jeremy Guthrie.
On initial reflection, this is an absolutely incredible
deal, not because it changes the fortunes of the Royals franchise dramatically,
but simply because another team was
willing to employ Jonathan Sanchez. The Rockies have had an incredibly strange
year. I’m not sure they’re the worst-run team in the majors at the moment, but
they certainly seem to be the most impetuous team, doing things like going to a
four-man rotation on the fly, giving 49-year-old Jamie Moyer a shot in their
rotation, and of course, continuing to employ Jim Tracy despite a managerial
rap sheet a mile long. Take a pitcher who has averaged over two baserunners an
inning, and put him in Coors Field? That’s insane, but for the Rockies of late,
that’s par for the course.
Guthrie has hardly been better this year; he might have been
worse. Like Sanchez, he was the wrong end of an off-season trade which seemed
balanced at the time, but turned into one of the worst trades of the past year
– in exchange for Guthrie, the Orioles got Jason Hammel, who has a 3.54 ERA in
18 starts pitching in the AL East, and Matt Lindstrom, who was hurt for six
weeks but has a 2.53 ERA in 22 innings for Baltimore. Guthrie, meanwhile, has a
6.35 ERA for the Rockies in 91 innings, and leads the NL with 21 homers
allowed.
But here’s the thing: he’s pitching in Coors Field. And
after years of behaving like just an ordinary hitters’ park, as opposed to one
of the most extreme hitters parks of all time, it’s like they turned the
humidor off in Denver this year. From 2005 to 2008, Coors Field increased
offense by 5-10% (i.e. the park factors were between 105 and 110). But over the
last four years the park factors have steadily increased, and this year it’s
back to around 120. That’s not quite as high as it was in its heyday – in 1996
and 2000, Coors Field had a park factor of 129, and that was on top of a
historically high level of offense. But it’s clear that Coors Field is back to
making mediocre hitters look great, and mediocre pitchers look terrible.
In 42 innings at home this year, Guthrie has a 9.50 ERA – he
allowed 67 hits, including 14 home runs. In 49 innings on the road, he has a
3.67 ERA, and has allowed 7 home runs.
I wouldn’t read too much into that ERA – he hasn’t pitched
quite that well on the road, with 27 strikeouts and 17 walks. But he’s clearly
been better. He’s clearly no Jonathan Sanchez.
There’s definitely some upside here. Guthrie’s a former
first-round pick who flopped with Cleveland – but the Orioles picked him up on
waivers before the 2007 season, and was one of the great waiver-wire finds of
recent times, basically the healthy version of Felipe Paulino. From 2007
through 2011, Guthrie averaged 31 starts and 197 innings a season, with a 4.12
ERA, pitching nearly half his games against the four giants of the AL East.
Last winter, I had him on my list of possible acquisition targets for the
Royals, albeit at the bottom of my preferences, given his age (33) and the fact
that he was under contract for just 2012.
But I didn’t expect him to fall apart like he has, and
unlike Sanchez, there is an extenuating circumstance here that at least gives
you a little hope he can turn things around. Coors Field – when it’s playing
like Coors Field – can turn even star
pitchers into mincemeat. Darryl Kile had finished 5th in the Cy Young vote in
1997, having thrown 256 innings for the Houston Astros with a 2.57 ERA. He
signed a free-agent contract with the Rockies, and was beyond awful. In 1998,
he had a 5.20 ERA and led the NL with 17 losses; in 1999, he was much worse,
finishing with a 6.61 ERA and leading the league in earned runs allowed. At the
time, his collapse was so profound that it didn’t look like it was simply a
Coors Field effect – in 1999, he walked 109 batters and struck out 116, which
is untenable.
But the Cardinals correctly surmised that if they could just
get him away from that ballpark – and work with Dave Duncan, I’m sure – he
would be fine. They traded four nobodies for Kile after the 1999 season; in
2000, he threw 232 innings with a 3.91 ERA, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio
improved to 192-to-58 – MORE THAN TRIPLE his ratio the year before. He was even
better in 2001, and was pitching well in 2002 when he tragically died of a
heart attack.
Jeremy Guthrie is no Darryl Kile. But it’s not unreasonable
to think there’s a chance that he can be Jeremy Guthrie again, and Jeremy
Guthrie was a solid starting pitcher. Jonathan Sanchez is not.
The only downside here is that the Royals took on a larger
salary – Guthrie is making about $2.6 million more than Sanchez this year, and
no money changed hands in the deal, so this will cost the Royals about $1.2
million the rest of the way. Presumably, this is why the Rockies agreed to the
deal. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were thinking of designating Guthrie for
assignment; this way even if they cut Sanchez tomorrow, they’ll save some
money. But it’s not a prohibitive amount of money, and the chance that Guthrie
rebounds over the next two months is worth a little payroll.
So I do like the trade, though not for the obvious reason. I
don’t really care if Guthrie helps the Royals win an extra game or two this
season, and he’s a free agent at the end of the year, so he really doesn’t help
the franchise directly. But there are two ancillary benefits here:
1) There’s a non-zero chance that Guthrie pitches well
enough over his first 5-6 starts with the Royals that a contender expresses an
interest in him for the last 6-8 weeks of the season. Remember, with two wild
cards per league, the number of potential contenders increases, but because the
value of a wild card is cut in half, teams in the wild-card race are unlikely
to make a huge sacrifice in blood and prospects for a true impact player.
They’re more likely to dabble on the fringes, trading a modest prospect for
someone who might help them in the race, but who is unlikely to cause them a
great deal of regret if they fall short.
Also remember that while July 31st is the non-waiver trading deadline, teams can
still trade after that if the player clears waivers. Guthrie, making $8.2
million this year, will almost certainly clear waivers – and if he doesn’t, the
Royals can simply let him go, saddling his new team with his full contract and
saving more money than they spent to acquire him. Realistically, Guthrie will
be out there if some team suddenly realizes they’re three games out of a
wild-card spot on August 15th. He might fetch the Royals an arm, or save them
some money, or both. This isn’t a particularly likely scenario, but it’s far
from impossible.
2) Trading for Guthrie should – hopefully – dampen the
Royals’ enthusiasm for trading for an elite starting pitcher who they would
only control through 2013. I’m speaking specifically of Matt Garza, but there
are other names (e.g. Paul Maholm, Wandy Rodriguez) that also fit the bill.
The word on the street is that the Royals have suddenly
awoken to the fact that as constituted today, their rotation next year will be
just as awful as it was this year, and that they need to make some drastic
changes or waste 2013 the way they’ve wasted 2012. It’s great that they’ve
finally realized that, but trading for Garza is not the solution. Garza is
going to be very expensive, precisely
because he can impact two pennant races, not one. If you’re the Tigers or the
Reds or another team that’s in the race this year, you’ll crack open the piggy
bank for Garza, because he’ll help you make the playoffs this year, and then
you’ll get a full season out of him next year. But for the Royals, the first
part of that equation is out. If the Royals outbid other teams for Garza, it
means they value his contribution in 2013 alone
more than other teams value his contributions in 2013 and 2012. Which is nuts.
If the Royals want to make an impact trade for a starting
pitcher now, they’re better off targeting guys who are at least two or three
years away from free agency. They’d still be wasting the first half-season of
that guy’s career in a Royals uniform, but at least they’d be getting a higher
percentage of his value in seasons where they might actually contend. Buster
Olney wrote about this in a recent column, and speculated on names like Jon
Lester and Jeremy Hellickson. Those guys would be crazy expensive too, but at
least they’d have the chance to impact multiple pennant races for the Royals.
When you think about Dayton Moore’s track record, one thing
that really stands out is that when he strikes early, he tends to strike out.
Think about the moves he has made within days of the World Series ending:
trading Cabrera for Sanchez, trading David DeJesus for Vinny Mazzaro and Justin
Marks, trading Leo Nunez for Mike Jacobs. When Moore tries to jump the market
instead of waiting to see what the market will bear, he has almost always
misjudged things badly.
I’m worried that he would do the same here for a guy like
Garza. So if acquiring Guthrie scratches that itch for the time being, and
lessens the sense of desperation in the rotation until the winter, that alone
makes his acquisition worthwhile.
I’ve heard the argument that the Royals might want to trade
for an impact pitcher now because if they don’t, those guys will be traded
elsewhere anyway, and they won’t be on the market when the Royals go shopping
this winter. That may be true, but at the same time, pitchers who may not be on
the market today will be available in the off-season. This time last year, I
didn’t think that Trevor Cahill and
Gio Gonzalez would be available from the A’s, or that the Padres might be
willing to part with their best starting pitcher in Mat Latos. But in the
off-season, teams are willing to move integral parts of their rosters because
they have the time to rearrange their rosters before playing another game. And
if the Royals are going to make a blockbuster deal, it’s that kind of pitcher –
a pitcher with three or four years of club control – that they should be
targeting, not an 18-month rental like Garza.
Besides which, if they really want to add a starting
pitcher, they can always sign one in free agency. Reports suggest they might be
willing to do that. I’d rather spend money than prospects.
- Speaking of trading young assets for established starting
pitchers, the Royals got another one of those on Wednesday, when they “won” the
new competitive balance lottery and got an extra draft pick.
I say “won” because while they got the first pick, almost
every eligible team got a draft pick of some sort. Fourteen teams were part of
the lottery, and 12 picks were awarded – every team but the Cardinals and Rays
got one.
The picks came in two varieties – six of the picks will come
between the first and second rounds (Round A), and six of them will come
between the second and third rounds (Round B). The Royals got the highest of
the 12 picks, which slots at #32 right now (it will probably wind up around #40
overall once compensation picks are awarded this winter). But the important
thing is simply being one of the six teams who got a Round A pick (essentially
the same as a supplemental first-round pick) instead of a Round B pick (which
we might call a supplemental second-round pick). Keep in mind that in Dayton
Moore’s entire tenure in Kansas City, the Royals have had just one supplemental
first-round pick under the old rules. They used that pick (#36 overall) to
select Mike Montgomery. So clearly the pick has some value. (Jeff Zimmerman takes a closer look at the value of the
draft pick here.)
This is another reason – certainly not the primary reason –
why I felt that all the commotion about how the new CBA was going to hurt teams
like the Royals, small-market teams who spent aggressively in the draft, was
overblown. The Royals were certainly hurt this
year, because they had just one of the first 64 picks, and their draft pool was
below-average. But they’re almost certainly going to be a team that qualifies
for the competitive balance lottery every single year going forward, which
means they’re going to get an extra pick 80-90% of the time. And with that pick
comes draft pool money – the 40th pick this year was allotted $1.291 million,
which would be added to the Royals’ pool money next summer.
The other interesting thing to note is that for the first
time in history, these competitive balance picks – and only these picks – are tradeable. The Royals can trade this pick
(and the money allotted to it) to another team. If the Royals are serious about
adding an established starting pitcher, this pick could come in handy; it’s not
going to get the deal done by itself, or even headline the deal, but as a third
or fourth asset in the trade, the Royals might prefer to move the pick instead
of another prospect already in the system.
What’s frustrating is that – for no apparent reason
whatsoever – these picks can only be
traded during the season – either between now and the end of the regular
season, or between Opening Day next year and the day of the draft itself. Which
is pointless, and means that if the Royals wait until the off-season to make a
trade – which they probably should – they won’t be able to use the pick as
bait.
- Finally, I can’t end without saying something about Jason
Kendall.
Jason Kendall sucks. The End.
Oh, if it were only that easy. Kendall is 38 years old, and
hasn’t played this year rehabbing a shoulder injury. When he was 37, he missed
the entire season rehabbing a shoulder injury. When he was 36, he hit
.256/.318/.297 for the Royals. He hasn’t hit a home run since he was 35. He
hasn’t been a remotely good hitter since he was 32. He hasn’t been a great
player – and for many years, in his youth, he was a genuinely great player –
since he was 30.
And now he’s back. In Double-A, but still: Jason Kendall is
back.
Some pundits have argued that Royals fans are making way too
much of this, that Kendall is just like any other thirtysomething catcher who
doesn’t want to leave the game and still has something to offer, at least in
terms of developing young pitchers in the minor leagues. The Royals had Vance
Wilson filling the same role a few years ago.
To which I would say: if the Royals had signed anyone,
literally anyone, other than Jason Kendall, they might have a point. But they
didn’t. They signed Jason Kendall.
For reasons that remain mysterious to me, Kendall holds a
svengali-like attraction on the Royals, much the way Yuniesky Betancourt does,
or Roman Colon has. It doesn’t make any sense for the Royals to give Kendall a
day of service time in the majors this year – but if the Royals were at all
rational about Jason Kendall, they
wouldn’t have signed him to a two-year, $6 million deal back in 2009.
Remember, they cut Miguel Olivo AND John Buck in the span of about 48 hours,
all so that they could go with Kendall as their starting catcher – for more
guaranteed money than they would have had to give Olivo and Buck COMBINED.
I’ve said this before, but that decision still ranks as the
moment I’ve felt the most hopeless as a Royals fan in the Dayton Moore era.
This was before the farm system became a fully-operational Death Star, and
after follies like Jose Guillen and Yuni and destroying Gil Meche’s arm. At
that moment, it appeared the Royals had absolutely no idea how to put together
a winning team, and didn’t seem terribly interested in learning how to do so.
Come to think of it, that’s not much different from where
they are now. The Royals are 39-53 as I write this, a half-game from having the
worst record in the American League. And they’re futzing around with
38-year-old Jason Kendall. And if you think Kendall’s going to be happy just
tutoring Mike Montgomery on the finer points of pitching and giving a catching
tutorial to Manny Pina, you’re out of your mind. He’s already made statements
that he has every intention of getting back to Kauffman Stadium this summer.
And the sad part is, I think the Royals have every intention
of giving him that opportunity. The Royals may have information that we don’t
have. But they still appear to lack the same trait that’s been missing for most
of the last 20 years: common sense.
