Oh, yeah, I guess I have
to talk about the offense.
As you and I saw this
weekend, it’s not so hot, and it’s not getting better. The Royals scored five
runs while getting swept in a three-game series in Boston; about the best thing
you can say about their performance is that at least Jon Lester didn’t no-hit
them again. Today’s shutout drops the Royals to 12th in the AL in runs scored,
and they're just eight runs ahead of the last-place Red Sox. (Yes, the Red Sox
have scored the fewest runs in the league. No, I don’t know how that’s
possible.) The Royals have scored 87 runs in their last 27 games. Maybe Dale
Sveum isn’t a witch after all.
The Royals now have the
9th-best record in the AL, meaning that even with two Wild Cards in play they
need to pass four other teams to make the playoffs. They are closer to last
place (4 games ahead of Minnesota) in the AL Central than first place (7 games
behind Detroit). They are nearly as close to last place as they are to the
second Wild Card (3.5 games behind Seattle). Since their 10-game winning streak
ended, the Royals are 9-17, which is to say, since their 10-game winning streak
started, they are merely 19-17.
The winning streak not
only looks like an enormous anomaly, it looks like it might have been the worst
thing for the Royals in the long run. Had they simply played .500 ball for six
weeks after they fell into last place on June 4th, the narrative of the season
would still be that they have been enormously disappointing. The winning streak
vaulted them into first place, into the national consciousness for a few
glorious days, and took the focus off the front office at a critical time.
(And before you argue
that the Royals are just unlucky because they’re 10-20 in one-run games, I’ll
point out that they’re 12-5 in two-run
games. For the season, they’ve been outscored by four runs, which is almost
exactly what you’d expect from a 48-49 team.)
For purposes of this exercise,
we will continue to treat the Royals as contenders, because their front office
thinks they are a contender, and the question of whether their front office
deserves to keep working will be left for another day. This is their last gasp,
and I assume they will do everything in their power to turn the season around.
Again.
Only…I don’t know
exactly what they can do. Let’s take a look at their lineup regulars:
C: Salvador Perez. Hitting .282/.327/.432. Fantastic defender.
Started the All-Star Game. Signatory to one of the ten best contracts in
baseball. I think they’ll keep him.
LF: Alex Gordon. Hitting .269/.350/.421. Fantastic defender.
Selected to the All-Star Game. Keeps himself in frighteningly good shape; the
best lead-by-example guy the Royals have had in years. I don’t know if he’ll be
a Lifelong Royal, but I wouldn’t complain if an effort was made to make him
one. He’s not going anywhere.
CF: Lorenzo Cain. Hitting .297/.334/.413. Fantastic defender.
Unable to play more than about 120 games a year, but the Royals are
well-situated with a replacement to fill in the gaps, hiding his only weakness.
He stays.
SS: Alcides Escobar. Hitting .281/.317/.383. Very good defender. Under
contract with club options through 2017 that would pay him $14.75 million over
the next three years – combined. When your shortstop has a higher OPS than your
team as a whole, your shortstop isn’t the problem. Or at least not your main
problem. He stays.
Okay, now it gets a
little more serious, in increasing order:
2B: Omar Infante. Only hitting .279/.317/.389, but he’s rebounded
nicely after a miserable start, hitting .344 since June 8th. He’s in the first
year of a four-year, $32 million contract, and is hitting almost exactly his
career norm of .280/.319/.402, which is to say he’s exactly what the Royals
should have expected. He’s also a massive upgrade from the likes of Chris Getz;
it’s hard to see how the Royals can upgrade here, or why they should try.
1B: Eric Hosmer. Three weeks ago this was a much easier call. After
hitting .320 through May 11th, Hosmer hit .186/.229/.266 from then through the
end of June; my suggestion in early June that he be sent down to Omaha was
being picked up by, well, pretty much the entire fanbase. But he’s now on a
16-game hitting streak, and is batting .424/.493/.627 in July. The overall
package remains unacceptable for a first baseman, but the Royals refused to
bury him when he was terrible; they’re certainly not going to give him a break
now. Hosmer has not only played every game this year, he’s played every inning this year.
3B: Mike Moustakas was hitting .152/.223/.320 when he was
mercifully sent to Omaha in late May. Since returning, he’s hitting
.221/.284/.402. That is both 1) unacceptable and 2) a huge improvement, not to
mention 3) about what Moustakas’ true ability is. The Royals could upgrade
here, although there is the matter of Danny Valencia, who is hitting .373/.397/.525
against LHP this year; if the Royals do upgrade, they would probably want just
a platoon bat so they could continue to let Valencia do what he does best.
This doesn’t leave a
lot of options; the Royals probably aren’t going to pay what it will take to
get Chase Headley out of San Diego, and it’s not clear that they should. The obvious
fit here is Luis Valbuena, who is hitting .246/.331/.408 for the Cubs, and who
is eminently available. But Valbuena wouldn’t be THAT much of an upgrade on
Moustakas, and he’s under contract for two more years after this one, driving
up his price for value that the Royals aren’t really looking for.
Anyway, we know this
ain’t happening. Moustakas, like Hosmer, was selected by Dayton Moore’s front
office in the first round. They can’t bring themselves to admit they made a
mistake on Bubba Starling and Christian Colon; they’re not going to bring in
someone to take Moustakas’ job.
RF: The Royals would be happy for someone to take Nori Aoki’s job; they’ve been
disappointed with him practically since Opening Day. He’s hitting
.255/.324/.316 with defense charitably described as “creative”, so it’s not
hard to understand why.
I could see the Royals
going for a name player here, possibly Alexis Rios, who is hitting
.302/.330/.435 and could be a free agent in three months. (He has a club option
for next year; at $13.5 million, he’s on the fence as to whether it should be
picked up.) But Rios won’t be cheap either, and again, I’m not sure he’s a
significant upgrade. His defense is below-average, and as I’ve written several
times, Jarrod Dyson’s defense is so far above
average that his overall value is higher than Rios, or Marlon Byrd, another
name that’s rumored.
I don’t understand why
the Royals won’t simply embrace their identity and go with the All-World
Defense outfield alignment of Gordon, Dyson, and Cain. Against lefties, Aoki
can start over Dyson; even this year Aoki’s hitting .348 against southpaws, and while it’s
extremely unusual for a left-handed hitter to have a “true” ability to hit
lefties better than right-handers, Aoki’s batting style is so unusual that it
might actually be the case for him.
Oh, and just for the
record: Jarrod Dyson’s .351 OBP leads the
entire team. The Royals, as they have pretty much every year since I was in
kindergarten, desperately need OBP. Replacing him for a guy like Rios or Byrd,
who would add power but subtract baserunners, seems like treading water.
Trading away prospects to do so seems like a mistake.
DH: And finally there’s everyone’s favorite punching bag, from
Caller Todd on line one to Ned Yost. Billy
Butler is hitting .269/.320/.348. He has three home runs. He has grounded
in 14 double plays. He was Jayson Stark’s pick for the AL Least Valuable Player
in the first half. He’s been terrible.
I’m not completely
convinced he’s done, but I’m growing more convinced by the day. Yeah, he’s only
28, and even slow overweight unathletic guys usually can hang on until they’re
30. But while Butler isn’t unusually overweight, he is unusually slow and (seemingly) unathletic;
even at his best he had literally one baseball skill. I wish it wasn’t so, but
this looks like the beginning of the end for Butler. Remember, this slump didn’t
come out of nowhere – last season he hit .289/.374/.412, his lowest batting and
particularly slugging numbers since 2008. He kept his on-base percentage high
by being more selective at the plate, but now that pitchers don’t fear his
power anymore, they’re just pouring strikes over the plate and he’s been unable
to adjust.
Ben Grieve was Rookie
of the Year at age 22. At age 24 he hit 40 doubles and 27 homers. That winter
the A’s traded him to Tampa Bay in the three-team deal that brought Angel
Berroa and Roberto Hernandez to Kansas City and sent Mark Ellis and Johnny Damon to
Oakland. As usual, Billy Beane picked the perfect time to trade Grieve; at age
26 he hit just .251/.353/.432, and he was done as a full-time player by the
time he turned 27.
Billy Butler hit .313
with 29 homers just two years ago. It doesn’t seem like he should be done. I
don’t want him to be done. But he might be done. And with a $12.5 million
option for next year looming, his time in Kansas City is almost certainly done.
So the question is, can
you improve upon him? If the question is “can you improve upon his performance
in the first half”, the answer is unequivocally “yes” – Butler is a below
replacement-level player this season, and that’s the very definition of what
replacement level means. But they don’t need someone better – they need someone
MUCH better, is why futzing around with Raul Ibanez is so pointless. This is
where Rios or Byrd would fit better, if they just slotted those guys in at DH
and left Dyson to roam the outfield.
The rumors that the
Mariners are still interested in Billy Butler seem too good to be true, but it’s
been well known that the Mariners have had their eye on Butler for years; their
interest in him was compared by a trustworthy source to Dayton Moore’s interest
in Jeff Francoeur, which is to say it’s almost inevitable that he’ll end up
there in some capacity at some point. Maybe my dream of snatching Nick Franklin
away from Seattle is unrealistic, although there’s no question they’ve soured
on him. But if the Royals can get something – anything – for Butler at the same
time that they replace him with an upgrade, they should do it. Yeah, Butler may
help Seattle, and the Royals are chasing Seattle in the standings, but given
the way he’s hit this year he’s equally likely to hurt them.
Speaking of Franklin,
there’s the guy I argued over the winter represented his absolute upside: Ben
Zobrist, who is out there, and given his ability to play all around the field,
would be the perfect solution for the Royals, who could trade for him first and
figure out where he played second. But Zobrist 1) may be paired in a trade with
David Price to extract maximum value and 2) even on his own would be very
expensive. Would you give up Miguel Almonte and Sean Manaea for him? If you
were fighting to keep your job, you might. And given the unpredictability of
pitching prospects, you might even be justified.
But the trade market
fits the Royals as poorly today as it did three months ago when it was clear they needed to beef up their offense if they wanted to contend. There just aren’t
that many hitters out there worth acquiring, and the positions that could stand
an upgrade the most are the positions where the Royals have the most invested
in their incumbent.
As I speculated they
would last week, they went out and made a small trade for a middle reliever,
grabbing Jason Frasor from the Rangers in exchange for Spencer Patton. Frasor
has accomplished the neat trick of being a middle reliever who’s never had a
bad year; in 11 seasons in the majors, he’s never had an ERA above 4.58, and he’s
had an ERA under 3.7 in six of the last seven years. Patton has pretty numbers
in Triple-A, or at least a pretty hit total – he had allowed just 26 hits in 46
innings. But he had also allowed 22 walks and 9 home runs, and he’s 26 years
old; he’s 18 months older than Tim Collins. He’s a fair price to pay.
But if the Royals are
going to replicate their whiz-bang second half from last season, they’re going
to need more than a reliever. They need offense, and it’s no easier to figure
out where they’re going to get that offense today than it was in May. Maybe
they’ll surprise me and deal for Zobrist, or Chase Headley, or someone who at
least has the potential to be a middle-of-the-order hitter for the next three
months. But, well, it will be a surprise. And if this is who the Royals are, after
getting swept in Boston thanks to a combination of managerial and lineup
failure, then writing columns about who the front office should go after
suddenly seems a lot less relevant than writing columns about whether their
front office should just go.
