For the second straight season, the Royals have played well
enough in the second half to give us legitimate reason to think that, with an
off-season of maturation and a few savvy roster additions, they might be ready
to contend next year. Since the All-Star Break, the Royals have scored more
runs (285) than they’ve allowed (284).
Unfortunately, last year they also scored more runs than they allowed after the All-Star Break
(328-313), and we saw how well that turned out.
Still, the Royals have basically been a .500 team on paper
since the Break, which not coincidentally is around the time they got Salvador
Perez (and Lorenzo Cain) healthy and jettisoned the likes of Jonathan Sanchez
and Yuniesky Betancourt. In the AL Central, where 89 wins will probably take
the division this year, there is absolutely no excuse for a .500 team to go
into the off-season without a firm expectation that they will contend next
year. Particularly a team with the youngest offense in the majors for the
second straight year, and a team that won’t lose a single meaningful player off
its roster to free agency (with the exception of Jeremy Guthrie, I suppose.)
All this talk about 2014 is, frankly, a cop-out. The Royals
can win in 2013 if they make the right moves. It is therefore incumbent that
they make the right moves.
So in the limited time that I have to devote to this blog, I
plan to focus on a few big things. The “For Want of a Pitcher” series is
scheduled to return soon, looking at the many, many options the Royals have to
upgrade their rotation between now and spring training. I’ll be grading out the
current roster once the season ends, figuring out who should stay and who
should go. And I’ll be breaking down the Royals’ top prospects as time allows.
Aside from being an endeavor I particularly enjoy – dreaming about the future
is always more fun than lamenting the present – if the Royals are going to
acquire quality starting pitchers, they’re probably going to trade prospects at
some point. If they’re going to trade prospects, then it’s a good idea to know
which prospects are disposable and which ones are untouchable.
Writing about prospects also makes it easier for me to
artificially raise my article count – rather than writing about them 10 or 15
at a time, I might write about them 2 or 3 at a time and get my evaluations in
your hands that much faster. Or, like today, I might write about just one of
them.
#1: Wil Myers
Pos-B: RF-R
H-W: 6’3”, 205 lb
DOB: 12/10/1990
(Age 21)
Signed: 3rd
Round, 2009, NC HS ($2 million)
Overall Rank in Baseball:
Top 5
Stats:
2009:
.315/.429/.506 in low A/high A
2010:
.254/.353/.393 in AA
2011:
.314/.387/.600 in AA/AAA
It’s not exactly a stretch to put Myers at #1; he is Baseball America’s Minor League Player
of the Year, the third Royal to be so honored (after Tom Gordon and Alex
Gordon). It’s important to note that he’s not
the best prospect in baseball – the award is given to the top prospect who had
the best season, but that’s not necessarily the same thing. Jurickson Profar,
who didn’t have the numbers Myers did but is 19 years old and a quality
shortstop, is a better prospect. Oscar Taveras probably is. Dylan Bundy, even
though he’s a pitcher, probably is.
But after those three, there’s no one clearly better. Myers
rebounded from his injury-plagued 2011 and then some, a rebound which started
in the Arizona Fall League. He hit 37 home runs, finishing second in the
minors, and actually led the minors if you count his postseason exploits. He
hits for average, he walks a fair amount, and he has enough defensive
versatility that the Royals played him at third base 15 times for reasons not
clearly evident. (Myers actually played 87 games in center field, and only 18
in right. But he’s a right fielder, if not right away then soon enough.)
Meanwhile, with Lorenzo Cain out for the rest of the year,
the Royals are platooning Jason Bourgeois and David Lough.
You might think that I’m upset with this arrangement, with
the Royals giving playing time to a pair of non-prospects while their best
prospect, who has destroyed pitching at the highest levels of the minors, got
sent home after Omaha was eliminated from the PCL finals. You would be wrong.
I was annoyed with the Royals for not bringing him up in
July, or even in early August, when it was clear that he had passed every
reasonable hurdle in the minor leagues. But given that the moment has passed, I
think it would be a waste of resources to bring Myers up in September. For one,
the Royals aren’t playing for anything. The Rangers and Orioles are, which is
why Profar and (now) Bundy are both in the majors. If those teams were buried
under .500, they would have left their prized prospects in the minor leagues as
well.
The Royals have publicly stated that roster issues have
forced their hand in keeping Myers in Triple-A. As the prospect wave continues
to mature, the Royals have a lot of players who will become eligible for the
Rule 5 draft this winter if they are not protected on the 40-man roster.
Because Myers was drafted out of high school in 2009, he is not eligible for the Rule 5 draft, so
keeping him in the minors and off the 40-man roster opens up a spot for someone
who might otherwise be left off and drafted by another team. Whereas someone
like Jake Odorizzi, who was drafted in 2008, IS eligible for the Rule 5 draft,
needs to be added to the 40-man roster anyway – so he got called up.
There’s nothing wrong with this line of thinking, but I
think it’s more a convenient excuse for the real reason than anything else. The
real reason to keep Myers on the farm is – or should be – that you have a
chance to delay free agency by a year. In order to do that, though, it’s not
enough to keep Myers in the minors all of this season – it also means starting next season with Myers in Triple-A, at
least for about three weeks.
As well as he played this season, I thought that it would be
almost impossible to justify sending him back to Omaha to start next year,
which is why I was agitating for him to get called up around the All-Star
Break. But having made it this far, there’s a chance the Royals can pull it
off. They did so two years ago with Mike Moustakas, who was nearly as dominant
as Myers has been. Moustakas hit .322/.369/.630 between Double-A and Triple-A,
but in Triple-A hit .293/.314/.564. More importantly, in 52 games he walked
just eight times – that was sufficient reason to send him back to start last
season, to work on his plate discipline.
Myers didn’t really have that problem – after his promotion
to Omaha, he hit .304/.378/.554, and walked a healthy 45 times in 99 games. He
did strike out 98 times, and 140 times for the season. That’s not an enormous
total, but the Royals have conveniently focused on his strikeout rate as proof
that he still has things to work on. Myers had never struck out even 100 times
in a season before 2012. He had also never hit even 15 home runs in a season,
but if that’s the argument that succeeds in getting him back to Omaha for a
refresher next spring, we can overlook the logical fallacy embedded in it.
It’s hardly a lock that Myers will go back to Triple-A at
all. I imagine the plan is that he’ll come to spring training “with a chance to
win a job”, as it were. But for that to happen, 1) he’ll have to rake in March
and 2) Jeff Francoeur will have to look even worse than he has all of 2012. As
aggravating as it is that Frenchy is still on the books for 2013 (at $7.5
million!), his presence and that contract will give the Royals the opening they
need to send Myers back to Omaha to start the year. It means that Francoeur
basically gets the month of April to plead his case for his job, and if he
doesn’t hit out of the gate, Myers gets his job by Mother’s Day. Will it be a
buzzkill to see Francoeur in right field on Opening Day? Yes. Is it worth
losing a few weeks of Myers when he’s 22 to get another year of service time
from him when he’ll be 28 (and essentially at his peak)? Absolutely.
Still, this whole situation puts the Royals in a very
awkward position, one in which they’re essentially rooting for their best
prospect to not play too well and
force their hand. Fortunately, I have an idea that eliminates this problem and
is a win-win for everyone involved.
Five years ago, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had a similar
problem on their hand. Evan Longoria, who like Myers today was 21 years old,
had completed a fantastic minor league season, hitting .307/.403/.528 between
Double-A and Triple-A. He hadn’t advanced quite
as far as Myers had – he only played 31 games in Triple-A, and hit
.269/.398/.490 there – but he was also a superior defensive third baseman. He
had entered the season as Baseball
America’s #7 prospect in the land, and was #2 overall when the rankings
came out the next spring. It was very clear in spring training 2008 that
Longoria was ready for the major leagues.
Instead, the Rays (they had just dropped the Devil) sent
Longoria back to Triple-A Durham to start the year. It looked like a clear
manipulation of service time, especially when they called him up after he had
played just SEVEN games there (and was just 5-for-25). Longoria made his
major-league debut on April 12th, just two days past the point at which he
would have qualified for free agency a year early. It looked to the outside
layman like Longoria might even have a grievance on his hands.
Longoria never filed a grievance, because he was too busy
negotiating a long-term contract. On April 18th – six days into his major-league career – Longoria signed a six-year
contract with the Rays with three option years. He was guaranteed $17 million
over the six years, and a maximum of $44 million if all the options were
exercised. Obviously, the negotiations had started before Longoria had been
called up. His demotion to
Triple-A to start the year was only a formality until the contract was finalized.
The Rays didn’t screw over Longoria by delaying his service
time for a year – instead, they got him to sign what is widely considered to be
the most club-friendly contract in baseball today, if not of all time. If
Longoria had been a free agent after the 2014 season, he’d be in line for $20
million a year or more. Instead, the Rays can keep him for $11 million in 2014
and $11.5 million in 2015. Oh, and sending Longoria back to Triple-A briefly in
2008 didn’t hurt the Rays in the development of their young team – they went
from 66-96 in 2007 to 97-65 and the World Series.
Which brings us back to Wil Myers. Myers, unlike Eric Hosmer
and Mike Moustakas, is not represented by Scott Boras, which is a sign that he
should be amenable to at least listening to a long-term deal. He got $2 million
out of the draft, which is big money to you and me, but compared to the $4
million Moustakas got and the $6 million Hosmer got, it’s not exactly money he
can retire on – so he might be amenable to trading long-term upside for the
security of a guaranteed payout.
So yes, this is exactly what I’m advocating: between now and
spring training, Dayton Moore needs to open negotiations with Wil Myers and his
agents on a long-term contract, one that will potentially (if all options are
exercised) keep Myers under club control for nine years. Assuming Myers went
back to Triple-A for long enough to delay free agency by a year, it would only
buy out two years of free agency, which should be acceptable for a young player
in exchange for being set for life.
I think I’ve argued for the Royals to offer a long-term
contract to every good young hitter they’ve developed since John Hart and the
Cleveland Indians pioneered the concept back in the early 1990s. Unless my
memory is slipping, though, the Royals didn’t pull it off even once until
Dayton Moore was hired. (The closest they came was Mike Sweeney, who was close
enough to free agency that they paid close to market value, and the contract
turned into an albatross.) For all the mistakes Moore has made, his
aggressiveness in this regard has been an enormous boon to the organization.
Starting with Joakim Soria, then getting Zack Greinke signed
just before he went all Cy Young on us, buying out two years of free agency on
Billy Butler and Alex Gordon, and culminating with the perfectly-timed Salvador
Perez and Alcides Escobar deals, Moore has done a fantastic job of keeping his
best players in the fold at below-market prices. Obviously, the earlier you
start the better – Greinke, Gordon, and Butler gave a modest discount on their services,
while Perez’s and Escobar’s contracts are borderline theft. Perez, in fact,
might succeed Longoria as the player with the most team-friendly contract in
the game. (Grant Brisbee made that very argument earlier this week.)
Precisely because of Moore’s track record in this regard, I
think the biggest impediment to this kind of contract – ownership signing off
on it – is a hurdle that can be overcome. “Mr.
Glass, you remember when I came to you and asked if you’d guarantee $7 million
to our young catcher no one had heard off? Now he’s the second coming of Johnny
Bench, and between now and 2019 we’ll pay him less than Joe Mauer makes this
year alone. Our young shortstop who plays Gold Glove defense, has 30 steals,
and is flirting with .300? He’s ours through 2017 for the same price. So I hope
you’ll trust my judgment when I tell you I think we should guarantee this Wil
Myers kid eight figures…”
How much will it take to get Myers signed? The Longoria
contract sort of ruined it for top prospects – it’s pretty universally agreed
that he gave the Rays too much of a discount. That wouldn’t affect someone like
Perez, who wasn’t an elite prospect coming up, but for a can’t-miss guy like
Myers that matters. Longoria got $17/6 guaranteed, $44/9 upside. The Royals
won’t get a deal that good, and there’s inflation on top of that. So…$26/6
guaranteed, $56/9 upside? Myers wouldn’t be arbitration-eligible for the first
three years of the contract, so he’d make no more than about $2 million for
those three years anyway. That means he’s being guaranteed $8 million a year
for his first three arbitration years, and $10 million a year in options for his
last arbitration year and two free agency years. (Probably divvied up as
$8M/$11M/$11M.)
That’s a huge chunk of change, enough for Wil Myers to
retire on even if he suffers a career-ending injury the next day (unless he
spends money like Vince Young). But it’s absolutely something the Royals can
afford. If Myers is the biggest prospect bust of all time, they’re out $26 million
– so what? They wasted more than that on Jose Guillen. But even if he turns
into just a solid-average player, a Hunter Pence or something, that contract
represents only a mild overpay. And if he’s a perennial All-Star right fielder,
well, the Royals have an All-Star for no more than $11 million all the way
through 2021. (2021!)
I don’t think it’s likely
that this will happen; no player has ever signed a long-term deal while still
in the minors. (Although Longoria was almost still in the minors when he signed
his; he was only called up because of an injury.) But Moore has the track
record to make me think it’s possible. I'm sure he'd like to get one of the Hosmer/Moustakas/Myers triumvirate signed
long-term, and the other two guys ain’t interested. You’d like to think he has
earned the confidence of ownership at this point. And as he learned from
Salvador Perez, while there’s risk in putting your trust in a player so soon,
there’s also immense reward. If you truly believe that Wil Myers can be an
above-average regular in the majors – not even a star, just above average –
then there’s no better time to get him signed to a contract than before he’s
cashed his first big-league paycheck.
So get it done, Dayton. Give us all another spring surprise,
get Myers signed in March, and then you don’t have to adhere to some artificial
timetable as to when he gets called up – he’ll make the team the moment he
deserves to, and not a moment later.
I was at the Futures Game when Wil Myers was introduced, and
40,000 fans gave him a standing ovation. I can’t wait to see what kind of
reception he’ll get in his first major-league at-bat at Kauffman Stadium, if
the fans know he’s theirs well into the next decade.
