Reason #15: The Pick.

Here’s something that Yankee fans can’t say about their team: the Royals have drafted in the top half of the first round every year since 1996. (So there.) Unfortunately, drafting that early is hardly a guarantee you’ll land a great player. It’s drafting guys like Dee Brown (#14, 1996), Dan Reichert (#7, 1997), Jeff Austin (#4, 1998), Kyle Snyder (#7, 1999), Mike Stodolka (#4, 2000), and Colt Griffin (#9, 2001) that led to the Royals continuing to pick early in the first round.

(Take a look at that list of players again. Six straight years with Top-15 picks, the last five picks in the Top 10. Two of those guys never made the majors – Stodolka still might, but as a hitter now. Snyder might be the best pick of them all; he’s 8-17 with a 5.45 career ERA. And you wonder how the Royals lost 100 games three straight years.)

But since 2002, the Royals have drafted Zack Greinke (#6, 2002), Chris Lubanski (#5, 2003), Billy Butler (#14, 2004), Alex Gordon (#2, 2005), Luke Hochevar (#1, 2006), and Mike Moustakas (#2, 2007). Lubanski might still be a flop, and it’s too early to say much about Hochevar and Moustakas. But the other three guys alone make this run of first-round picks a success. So with the #3 overall pick this June, with guys like Pedro Alvarez and Justin Smoak available from the college ranks, and Tim Beckham and Tim Melville out of high school, the Royals are in perfect position to add another Grade A prospect to their stable.

For all the talk about competitive imbalance in baseball, the reality is that the draft remains an incredibly powerful tool to reversing that imbalance…so long as that tool is used wisely. The Rays are proof that, if you draft with even some intelligence, eventually all that sucking is going to work in your favor. It’s not just that the Rays have drafted in the Top 8 for nine straight years, and have used those picks to draft Rocco Baldelli, B.J. Upton, Delmon Young, Evan Longoria, and David Price (not to mention Josh Hamilton, and there’s still hope for Jeff Niemann.) It’s that, drafting at the very top of the second round, they got first crack at the leftovers, and came away with Carl Crawford and top prospect Reid Brignac. In the third round, they got Wade Davis, and that round would look a lot better if 1) Elijah Dukes wasn’t a misogynistic, violent creep with a temper problem and 2) if they had signed Andrew Miller out of high school in 2003. Throw in 2004 fifth-rounder Jacob McGee, and five of the top six prospects in the best farm system in baseball are in this paragraph.

But you have to draft well. The Royals didn’t for many years, and they’re still trying to pick their way through the rubble. From 1994 to 2002, the Pirates drafted Mark Farris, Chad Hermansen, Kris Benson (#1 overall pick), J.J. Davis, Clint Johnston, Bobby Bradley, Sean Burnett, John Van Benschoten (who they, alone among the 30 teams, decided to use as a pitcher after he led the NCAA in homers his junior year), and Brian Bullington (another #1 pick, who their owner forced them to take over B.J. Upton.) That’s how you continue to pick at the top of the draft every year. GM Dave Littlefield didn’t seem to learn, as he used last summer’s #4 overall pick on Daniel Moskos, a perfectly good college left-handed pitcher – a left-handed reliever. To the relief of Pirate fans everywhere, that final insult seemed to be, well, the final insult: Littlefield was canned not long thereafter.

The Royals’ draft efforts from 1996 to 2001 are the reason why the Royals continued to draft high from 2002 to 2008. But the draft efforts from 2002 to 2008 may enable this cycle to finally end.

Last year’s draft, the first one with Dayton Moore at the helm, looks very strong at this point. Moustakas looks like a good pick in the first round, albeit he’s not Rick Porcello. Second-rounder Sean Runion had a decent debut for a projectable high school pitcher, and third-rounder Daniel Duffy, a lefty out of a small California high school, was a revelation in rookie ball. Matt Mitchell, another pitcher from an out-of-the-way California school, was drafted in the 14^th round and Baseball America wrote this winter that “the Royals might have come away with one of the steals of the 2007 draft.” The Royals gambled $300,000 to sign their 31^st-round pick, Keaton Hayenga, at the deadline.

The Royals need to keep the strong drafts coming, because there’s simply no way a small-market franchise can become a contender without a perpetual supply of young talent. To their credit, the team (or more precisely, the owner) finally realizes that, and has authorized money to be spent both in the draft and in the international amateur market. The Royals can’t afford to waste the #3 pick this June. If they don’t, there’s a good shot it will be the last time they draft that high in a long time.

***

Just a heads-up: RotR will be going dark for a few days. I should be leaving shortly for Indianapolis, where I will be appearing with Joe Sheehan and Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus, and John Gasaway from our new Basketball Prospectus, at the Marriott downtown; come out if you live in the area. Then this weekend Joe and I will be playing in a Stratomatic tournament in Indy. Yes, I'm a geek.

Reason #16: The Neighbor.

It’s a little-known rule outside Kansas City, but the locals all know: the Royals and the Chiefs can’t be competitive at the same time. Don’t question why. Nobody knows why. But they can’t. Forty years of history have borne that out.

I’ve put together a list below of the records of the Royals and Chiefs going back to the Royals’ first season in 1969. Games +/- .500 are also listed, but for the Chiefs I multiplied this number by four to account for the shorter season. By this method, a 10-6 season rates as a +16, the same as an 89-73 season in baseball. A 10-6 team is on the bubble, but will make the playoffs more often than not; an 89-73 baseball team is on the bubble, but would make the playoffs more often than not if MLB expanded the playoffs to 12 teams. A 14-2 team powerhouse equates to a 105-57 juggernaut in baseball. A 16-0 NFL team would be equivalent to 113-49 in MLB, which makes the Patriots the 2001 Mariners of football. Asterisks denote playoff teams.

(I apologize for the formatting - no matter how hard I try, I can't get the columns to line up, even in Courier font. If someone who knows blogger.com formatting can help, please leave a comment. Thanks.)

                                                                                
Year  Royals  +/- .500  Chiefs  +/- .500 (*4)  Total
1969      69-93    -24     11-3*      +32          + 8
1970       65-97    -32      7-5-2     + 8          -24
1971      85-76    + 9     10-3-1*    +28          +37
1972      76-78    - 2      8-6       + 8          + 6
1973       88-74    +14      7-5-2     + 8          +22
1974       77-85    - 8      5-9       -16          -24
1975      91-71    +20      5-9       -16          + 4
1976      90-72*   +18      5-9       -16          + 2
1977  102-60*   +42      2-12      -40          + 2
1978       92-70*   +22      4-12      -32          -10
1979       85-77    + 8      7-9       - 8            0
1980       97-65*   +32      8-8         0          +32
1981       50-53*   - 3      9-7       + 8          + 5
1982       90-72    +18      3-6       -12          + 6
1983       79-83    - 4      6-10      -16          -20
1984       84-78*   + 6      8-8         0          + 6
1985       91-71*   +20      6-10      -16          + 4
1986      76-86    -10     10-6*      +16          + 6
1987       83-79    + 4      4-11      -28          -24
1988       84-77    + 7      4-11-1    -28          -21
1989       92-70    +22      8-7-1     + 4          +26
1990       75-86    -11     11-5*      +24          +15
1991       82-80    + 2     10-6*      +16          +18
1992       72-90    -18     10-6*      +16          - 2
1993       84-78    + 6     11-5*      +24          +30
1994       65-51    +14      9-7*      + 8          +22
1995       70-74    - 4     13-3*      +40          +36
1996       75-86    -11      9-7       + 8          - 3
1997       67-94    -27     13-3*      +40          +13
1998       72-89    -17      7-9       - 8          -25
1999       64-97    -33      9-7       + 8          -25
2000       77-85    - 8      7-9       - 8          -16
2001       65-97    -32      6-10      -16          -48
2002       62-100   -38      8-8         0          -38
2003       83-79    + 4     13-3*      +40          +44
2004       58-104   -46      7-9       - 8          -54
2005       56-106   -50     10-6       +16          -34
2006       62-100   -38      9-7*      + 8          -30
2007       69-93    -24      4-12      -32          -56
  

A few notes:

1) The Royals have made the playoffs seven times, the Chiefs 12 times, but they’ve never made the playoffs in the same year. Assuming I’m doing the math right, the odds that two teams will make the playoffs 19 times combined over a 39-year span without ever reaching the playoffs in the same year is 0.49%. (The formula I used to calculate the odds was (39!/20!)/(39^19), if you care to know.)

2) The Royals’ all-time best record was set in 1977, the same year the Chiefs had their all-time worst record.

3) The Royals’ only losing record between 1975 and 1982 was 1981 – granted, they made the playoffs that year thanks to the minor-league split-season schedule MLB adopted after the strike. The Chiefs’ only winning record between 1974 and 1985 came the same year.

4) In 1986, the Royals finished 75-86, their worst record between 1971 and 1989. (Royals fans, read that again, and weep.) That fall, the Chiefs won 10 games and made the playoffs, the only time they had managed either feat between 1972 and 1989.

5) The Royals have finished above .500 18 times, and in those season the Chiefs have a combined record of 124-141-5. In the 21 years the Royals finished under .500, the Chiefs are 179-147-2.

6) The Chiefs and Royals have both had winning records in consecutive seasons only once, in 1993 and 1994. They have both had losing records in consecutive seasons only once, in 2000 and 2001.

7) This balance seems to have fallen apart in recent years. Between 1969 and 2000, the “combined” records of the Royals and Chiefs fell between a band of -25 and +37 every single year. Since 2001, the combined records have fallen outside that band every year – generally on the low end, although in 2003 the teams had their best combined year ever, as the Royals stayed in the playoff hunt into September and the Chiefs had another one of their “13-3, undefeated at Arrowhead during the season, lose at Arrowhead in their first playoff game” specials. Not that I’m bitter.

8) Last year was the worst season for a Royals/Chiefs fan in history.

There's a formula known as the Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient, which allows us to determine how two separate entities are correlated. Using this formula, the correlation coefficient between the Chiefs and Royals record over the last 39 years is -0.31, which means they tend to run in opposite directions by a significant, though not overwhelming, margin.

There’s no obvious reason why these two franchises always seem to be headed in different directions. The Chiefs had built a dominant team in the old AFL, but the front office kept an aging team together for too long (sound familiar?) and the team fell apart at the same time that an incredibly savvy Royals’ front office was building a terrific base of talent through the draft and lopsided trades. The Royals stayed at least competitive right until their Ewing Kauffman, one of the game’s great owners, passed away in 1993, but it took the Chiefs until the late 80s before Lamar Hunt, one of the NFL’s great owners, finally brought in a competent GM in Carl Peterson and let him make whatever changes were necessary in order to build a winning team again.

The Chiefs lost their way in the post-Schottenheimer years, save for a brief renaissance under Dick Vermeil (that came crashing down from years of draft neglect last season). But just as Lamar Hunt brought in Carl Peterson, David Glass brought in Dayton Moore, and the trajectories of both teams have once again reversed. Even before this most recent, disastrous football campaign, my brother and I agreed that, the way each team was headed, the Royals were likely to reach the World Series before the Chiefs reached the Super Bowl.

Rooting for the Royals and Chiefs over the last 15-20 years has led to two very different experiences, but with one thing in common: they both led to heartbreak. The Chiefs are going to need some time to regain their footing, although recent comments from Clark Hunt, who inherited the team from his father, give us reason to hope. In the meantime, let’s hope that one team’s winter is another team’s summer.

Interlude II.

First off, a warm welcome to those of you who were led here by FoB (friend of the blog) Bill Simmons. The amount of support I’ve received from the rest of the baseball blogosphere has been deeply gratifying. This site has now been linked to by both ESPN.com and Deadspin, which might actually be illegal.

In honor of my first appearance in a Simmons column, here’s an email that I sent to him immediately after the Patriots lost to the Colts in the AFC Championship game a year ago. In light of recent events, I think the comparison bears repeating.

“The parallels between the 1996-01 Yankees and the 2001-06 Patriots are pretty eerie, when you think about it:

1) The Yankees won four championships in five years; the Patriots won three.

2) Both teams won their first championship with a squad that really wasn't all that impressive. The '96 Yankees had nothing on the '98-00 version, just as the Patriots' 2001 team looked nothing like the 2003-04 squad.

3) Both teams were huge underdogs in their first World Series/Super Bowl and won stunning victories. The Yankees lost the first two games - at home - to the Braves, who were the defending world champs and looked like they would be the team of the 1990s. The Patriots weren't given a shot in hell against the Rams, who won the Super Bowl two years prior and looked like they were in the midst of a dynasty run.

4) Both teams had an off-year the following season, then started Year 3 on a bad note - the Patriots got blown out by Buffalo, 31-0, and the Yankees started the 1998 season 1-4 and rumors were swirling that Joe Torre was about to get canned.

5) Both teams then went on truly historic runs of dominance. The Yankees went on a ridiculous 60-16 tear after their 1-4 start, finishing with 114 wins and tacking on 11 more in the postseason. The Patriots would go 35-3 after the loss to Buffalo that included a 21-game winning streak.

6) Both teams had developed an aura of invincibility just as their run was about to end. The Yankees made it to the World Series in 2001 only because they came back from a 2-0 deficit against Oakland in the first round (and only won Game 3 because Derek Jeter made a smart play and Jeremy Giambi forgot to slide), then had to face the Mariners - who had broken the Yankees' own record for AL regular season wins with
116 - and dispatched them in five games. The Patriots had to go on the road to face the 14-2 Chargers and all-time TD record holder LaDanian Tomlinson, and won even though the Chargers had nearly triple the rushing yards and Brady threw three picks.

7) Both teams had their run of dominance end on a rare failure by one of their signature players, the Yankees when Mariano Rivera failed to hold a one-run lead in the ninth, the Patriots when Tom Brady threw an interception on a two-minute drill.

The analogy isn't perfect; for one thing, today's game wasn't the Super Bowl. On the other hand, it was Pats-Colts, which is a more compelling matchup than any game involving an NFC team. The fact that Boston didn't come under a terrorist attack eight weeks ago also stretches the analogy a bit.

Nevertheless, it holds. And just as the Yankees gained even more respect for the way they went down swinging even in defeat, I have to say I hold the Patriots in higher regard now than I did 24 hours ago. That they made it to within 60 seconds of a Super Bowl with Jabar Gaffney and Reche Caldwell as their best receivers, with a rookie kicker, with the roster devastated with injuries, with half the team recovering from the flu...that's a bad-ass performance. There's no shame in that.

But just as the Yankees learned, in the ensuing years, what the rest of baseball already knew - that winning a championship is very, very hard, even if you have the talent to make the playoffs every year – I have a feeling the Patriots are going to struggle to win another Super Bowl again with this collection of talent.”

A year later, and you can add one more piece to this analogy. The New York Yankees became the first baseball team to choke away a 3-0 lead in a playoff series, to the Boston Red Sox. The Boston – well, New England – Patriots became the first NFL team to lose their first game of the season in the Super Bowl, to the New York Giants. In this analogy, Dave Roberts’ Steal = David Tyree’s Helmet Catch.

The Yankees have gone to the playoffs every year since 2004, but the aura of invulnerability is long gone, and their solution to their repeated playoff failures has been to throw more and more money at the problem. It remains to be seen how the Patriots respond to their most recent loss, but I will be shocked and ridiculous impressed if they rebound from this to win another Super Bowl.

Moving on…I had a couple of sources from front offices around the league comment on my previous entries. One source stated that I shouldn’t be so sure that Justin Huber would be picked up off of waivers if he doesn’t make the roster out of spring training. His point was that the Rangers just snuck Chris Shelton off their roster, and no other team bit on him.

It’s an interesting comparison. Shelton’s two years older than Huber, and only hit .269/.381/.420 in Triple-A last year, but on the other hand he actually has two major league seasons on his resume which say he can hit, 2005 and 2006, which is two more seasons than Huber has. I stand by my original point, which is that given the alternatives at first base (or DH if Butler shows he can field the position), Huber might be the best option to play even if he did have options.

Anyway, it appears we’re going to find out if he can clear options or not; the Royals have just announced that he’ll be playing solely in left field this spring. I was starting to get worried there – it’s been months since he’s been asked to change positions. His one hope here is to make the team as a replacement for Jose Guillen while the latter serves his suspension, and then to hit like gangbusters for the first two weeks. Hey, it worked for Mike Sweeney in 1999.

Another source disagreed with my evaluation of Luke Hochevar, deriding him as having “average starter stuff at best, and I don’t see an out pitch there.” He made the very valid point that Hochevar’s velocity has never approached the numbers he was hitting on the gun for the independent Fort Worth team he played for right before the draft.

I completely agree that the Royals made a huge mistake in overemphasizing their most recent impression of him before the draft. Teams get into trouble all the time drafting a player based on a few well-timed good months, and conversely, guys who have a disappointing junior season (or senior season of high school) turn out to be draft steals more often than not. One of the best draft picks the Royals ever made was Johnny Damon, who was talked about as a possible #1 overall pick before his senior year, then let the pressure get to him and hit so poorly (he failed to hit .300 that year) that he fell to the 35^th pick in the draft. The Royals signed him, he batted .349 in rookie ball, and there’s been no looking back. For an example of a guy the Royals drafted based entirely on his senior year performance, I give you two words: Colt Griffin.

But I still think Hochevar has the stuff to be at least a #3 starter. He might not have an out pitch, but he makes up for it by throwing four pitches that are at least average. He started for the Royals on the last day of the season and hit 90-91 on the gun, with good movement. But more and more I’m warming up to the idea of apprenticing him in relief, so long as the team has the roster space to accommodate him while not losing one of their other young arms.

Finally, Jorge de la Rosa appears to be making one of the strongest early impressions in camp, and the Royals plan to start him in place of Brett Tomko in the spring training opener this week. I think de la Rosa’s arm is way too lively to give up on, and for the life of me I can’t understand why no one has broached the subject of using him in the bullpen. You’ve got a lefthander who throws in the mid-90s but can’t throw strikes? Doesn’t the bullpen seem like the perfect tonic for a guy like that?

I’ll touch on this more later, but this yet another reason why I strongly dislike (I’m tempted to use the word “hate”) the signing of Ron Mahay. Suddenly the Royals have three left-handed relievers projected to break camp with the team (including Jimmy Gobble and John Bale), and they still have Neal Musser and his 0.49 ERA in Omaha last year lying around. They didn’t need Mahay, and now they’re in a situation where de la Rosa either gets a rotation spot or gets a one-way ticket out of town.

Reason #17: The Enigma.

Twenty-five years ago, Jose Cruz Sr. was earning the title as “the most underrated player in baseball”, at least in sabermetric circles. There was good reason for this: he played in the Astrodome, a park that absolutely killed his power numbers, in an era when pretty much everyone outside of sabermetric circles seemed to be in denial that park effects existed. It became almost a running joke in Bill James’ annual abstracts: another year, another season in which Cruz put up MVP numbers on the road.

It was in the power department that the splits were most glaring. In 1980, Cruz hit 7 homers on the road, 4 at home. In 1981, it was 10 on the road, 3 at home; in 1982, it was 6 and 3; 11 and 3 in 1983; an amazing 12 and 0 in 1984; 8 and 1 in 1985. Over that six year stretch he hit 54 homers on the road, 14 at home. In 1984 he hit .344/.394/.545 away from the Astrodome, just .276/.367/.371 in Houston.

But here’s the funny thing: call a player underrated long enough and, at least in sabermetric circles, he might have become overrated. It’s not like the mainstream media didn’t notice him at all – he finished in the Top 10 in MVP voting in 1980, 1983, and 1984, and won Silver Sluggers in both 1983 and 1984. And the focus on his home run totals and his extreme splits in 1984 obscured the fact that most years, he wasn’t particularly hurt by his home park. In 1982, he had a higher OPS at home than on the road, as well as every year from 1977 to 1980. In 1978, he hit more homers on the road than at home (9 to 8), but he hit for a higher average at home (.312 to .288), drew more walks at home (41 to 28), and had more doubles and triple at home (23 to 18). His overall splits that year were .312/.394/.517 at home, .288/.344/.440 on the road.

For his career, Cruz managed to hit 106 homers on the road, just 59 at home, almost certainly one of the most pronounced home/road splits of any player in history with that many home runs. And yet for his career, his home splits (.289/.366/.418) are better than his road splits (.280/.344/.422). There’s no question that Cruz, at his peak, was hurt by an oppressive home field, but he was probably affected less than, say, any San Diego Padres hitter is today.

All of this is an incredibly long-winded, tangential, and possibly irrelevant way of saying that just as Jose Cruz was considered so underrated that he became overrated, I’m beginning to think that Luke Hochevar has been called overrated – or synonyms like “draft mistake” and “not Tim Lincecum” – so often that he’s now become underrated.

Ignore the fact that he was the #1 overall pick in 2006, that the Royals took him over Andrew Miller and Lincecum, to say nothing of guys like Joba Chamberlain or Clayton Kershaw (neither of whom, despite obvious talent, were considered realistic #1 overall picks at the time). Just look at his body of work:

1) In his first full professional season, he started the year in Double-A, moved up to Triple-A in August, and pitched well (2.13 ERA) in a September callup.
2) Struck out nearly three times as many batters as he walked (138 to 47) in the minors.
3) Showed no signs of fatigue or injury all season.

That’s not a bad debut for a prospect, even a top prospect, is it?

The criticisms of Hochevar seem to boil down to this:

1) He gave up way too many hits and home runs in the minors;
2) He was a #1 overall pick.

Also, owing to his holdout, he was awfully old for a draft pick, and is already 24. On the other hand, age is not nearly as meaningful a factor for pitchers as it is for hitters, and if there is such a thing as an injury nexus, Hochevar is probably past it.

The hits, and especially the homers, are concerning. Hochevar is a flyball pitcher, and he’s going to give up his share of big flies. But the high BABIP is likely to be one of those fluky things that won’t stay with him in the future. Not to make excuses for him, but the Royals reportedly would sometimes restrict his repertoire during the season to tighten up his breaking pitches. More importantly, the scouts who saw him did not feel that his erratic performance was reflected in his stuff, which was still #2-starter caliber.

I only saw him pitch in September, but what I saw reminded me a lot of Gil Meche. Like Meche, Hochevar works off a good fastball and an excellent big-breaking curveball, but all four of his pitches are at least average. Maybe Meche isn’t the comparison I want to be making, given that it took him 7 years for his stuff to translate into results. But Meche’s medical reports could fill a file cabinet; Hochevar’s wouldn’t fit inside the MacBook Air.

I don’t think he’s ready for a rotation spot now. Another half-season in Triple-A would be ideal, but the notion of breaking him in as a reliever is not a bad idea so long as it remains a temporary one. Hochevar could also be compared to the Mets’ Aaron Heilman, a first-round pick who also spent his first full season in Double-A and Triple-A. Hochevar’s K/BB ratio last year was 138-to-47; Heilman’s K/BB ratio that year was 132-to-44. But Heilman struggled in the Mets rotation for parts of the next two years, and was starting to smell like a bust before the Mets moved him to the bullpen in 2005, where he’s been tremendous ever since. The problem is that the Mets are so concerned about his previous struggles in the rotation that they’ve decided to leave him in the pen permanently, despite a starter’s repertoire, and as a result his talents have been somewhat wasted.

If using Hochevar in middle relief for a season makes his transition to the rotation easier, I’m all for it. Better one year in relief now than a lifetime in relief later.

Do I wish the Royals had drafted Lincecum or Kershaw instead? Yes. Do I think that Hochevar could be an above-average major league starter in 2009? Yes. What’s past is prologue. The future for Hochevar is still pretty bright.

Reason #18: The Example.

Have you ever given much thought to which team, in the history of baseball, you wish you could have followed as a fan for one specific season? I first thought about this back in the winter of 1995-1996, when I was writing the New York Mets essay for our first edition of Baseball Prospectus (the one that was printed on paper stock, had a typeface that, when it was in bold, was almost unreadable, and sold about 160 copies.)

I made the point that few fans have ever enjoyed a season as thoroughly as Mets fans did in 1986. The team was a juggernaut during the regular season, winning 108 games (the most of any team in a decade), then won one of the most dramatic NLCS ever played. And then they came back from two down in the 10^th in Game 6 against the Red Sox. (And then they came back from three runs down in Game 7.)

Ever since then, I’ve judged teams on the basis of how much fun it would be to root for them. Depending on your criteria, you could choose a number of them. For pure, unadulterated excellence, the 1998 Yankees won 114 games and then went 11-2 in the playoffs; except possibly for the start of Game 4 of the ALCS against Cleveland, there was no point after about April 15^th that you had any doubt as a Yankees fan your team was going to win a world championship. For the guy with a chip on their shoulder, the 2005 White Sox had their doubters all the way until they went 11-1 in October. The 2001 Diamondbacks had to come back against Mariano Rivera in the 9^th inning of Game 7, and even worse, from having Byung-Hyun Kim as their closer. For the underdog, nothing beats Orel Hershiser, Kirk Gibson, and the 1988 Dodgers. If you’re a history buff, the 1914 Boston “Miracle” Braves; if you’re a baby boomer, you’ve got the 1969 “Miracle” Mets. (Are there are any other teams that can claim “Miracle” as their middle name?)

Of course, none of these examples hold a candle to the 2004 Red Sox, at least if you take history into account.

But if you could only pick teams that did not win the World Series…you’d have to make strong consideration for the 2007 Colorado Rockies. I couldn’t have been the only person that was intensely jealous of Rockies fans last October. On the morning of September 16^th, the Rockies were in fourth place in the division, 6.5 games out. They were 4.5 games out and in fourth place in the wild-card race. They had no hope. They were dead. The Baseball Prospectus postseason odds report pegged their playoff chances at 1.8%, and that seemed generous.

And then they got hot.

The funny thing is, the Rockies won their next 11 games, and all the while I kept thinking, “man, it’s a damn shame they didn’t play a little bit better earlier in the year.” I was rooting for the Rockies even though I didn’t think they had a chance in hell to make the playoffs. They had shed the legacy of the Mike Hampton/Denny Neagle Rockies, beefed up the farm system, and gone with young players everywhere. When the team found itself on the fringes of a pennant race in August, instead of bringing in veterans to patch up their holes, they doubled down on youth, promoted Franklin Morales and Ubaldo Jimenez, and stuck them in the rotation.

Back in 2003 I had the opportunity to speak on a panel at the SABR Convention that was held in Denver that July, on the subject of “Baseball at Altitude”. The other two men on the panel were Robert K. Adair, PhD, who literally wrote the book on The Physics of Baseball, and Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd. One of these things is not like the other…

It’s so easy as an outsider to ridicule front office people, labeling the authors of stupid decisions as stupid people. O’Dowd had made some whopping errors in his time as the Rockies’ GM, Hampton and Neagle being front and center. By the time I sat on the panel, it looked like his job was already on thin ice. When it came to his turn to talk, I confess I expected him roll out the usual tired clichés about the difficulties of building a team in such an unusual environment. I expected him to use altitude as a crutch.

I learned that day that you don’t get to be a GM – even a bad GM – without being really smart. O’Dowd laid out the challenges of building a team in a high-altitude environment candidly and in impressive detail. He brought up issues I hadn’t even realized existed, like the fact that the low oxygen pressure in the atmosphere prolonged muscle recovery in athletes, making it particularly difficult for starting pitchers to recover from a typical workload.

He described studies the Rockies had done themselves on the resiliencies of baseballs at different temperatures and humidity, conducting such experiments as dropping balls from the top of the stadium and seeing how high they’d bounce. It was as a result of doing all this that the Rockies decided to implement the humidor, essentially accepting to exchange their home-field advantage (which was considerable) for a lower-scoring context that would make it easier to developing pitching.

He also agreed with my theories (which you can read about here) that since the overwhelming effect of Coors Field was to benefit power hitters, they should aim to build a team with power at every position, emphasize defense in the outfield, and eschew power pitchers in favor of groundball specialists with good control.

Four years later, O’Dowd is still at the helm, and it turns out that maybe he’s not such a bad GM anymore. Power at every position? The Rockies promoted Troy Tulowitzki at shortstop. Defense in the outfield? They traded for Willy Taveras. Pitchers that keep the ball down and throw strikes? Their pitching staff finished 14^th in strikeouts, but third in walks and fifth in homers allowed.

But just as they went into the final weekend with a real shot at the playoffs - just two games behind Arizona, a game out in the wild-card chase – they lost to Brandon Webb on Friday night, and were dead in the water. They needed to win their last two games and the Padres to lose their last two games. They needed Tony Gwynn Jr. to earn the cold shoulder at the family dinner table for the rest of his life. (Great article on the most underrated story of 2007 here.) They needed to beat the best pitcher in the NL in a tiebreaker. They needed to come back from two runs down against the all-time saves record holder in the bottom of the 13^th.

They did all that, then they swept the Phillies, then they swept the Diamondbacks. Twenty-one out of 22, people. In the last thirty years, going back to when the 1977 Royals won 24 out of 25, you could count the number of teams that won 21 out of 22 on your hands - at any point in any season. The Rockies won 21 out of 22 to get to the World Series when 20 out of 22 would have earned them third place and a hot start the following April.

The Rockies then faced an American League team for the first time in months, and…well, after the fifth inning of Game One I sent out the following email to the Baseball Prospectus mailing list:

“Is it just me, or does anyone else look at tonight's game and think back to the classic Simpsons baseball episode? The Rockies are Homer Simpson, blissfully unaware that their 21-1 streak (Wonderbat) is the result of facing inferior competition in the National League (the company softball league). Tonight's game features the Rockies/Homer finally standing in against Roger Clemens/the Red Sox, whereupon the 21-1 streak/Wonderbat immediately gets beaten down to a 13-1 pulp after five innings/disintegrates into thin air.”

It was still an incredible ride. In baseball history, the only pennant winner (but World Series loser) I can think of that matches the 2007 Rockies for pure exhilaration is the 1951 Giants.

The Rockies did the Royals – and all small-market teams – a favor. They showed you can with a small payroll (they ranked 25^th in the majors with a payroll of $54 million, $13 million lower than Kansas City.) And they reminded us that there’s no better tonic for a team that’s driftless and without direction than a full-fledged commitment to a youth movement.

The Rockies didn’t do anything particularly sexy: they just stopped worrying about how to win at altitude, and focused on how you win everywhere else. Almost every key player on their roster – Tulo, Atkins, Holliday, Hawpe, Helton, Francis, Cook, Morales, Jimenez, Corpas – was drafted or signed as an amateur by the Rockies. Taveras, Jeremy Affeldt, and Brian Fuentes were acquired in trade. The most prominent players on the roster that were signed out of free agency were Kazuo Matsui and Josh Fogg.

The Royals aren’t following the Rockies’ blueprint exactly. Their farm system hasn’t been nearly as productive so far, but they’ve been far more aggressive in free agency, and Meche alone is more valuable than all the Rockies’ free agents combined. But long-term, the Royals are doing everything in their power to build from within. A Rockies-like miracle, if it occurs, won’t happen until 2010 when Mike Moustakas and Danny Duffy come up in mid-season.

For 2008? Even I can’t put much stock in such miracles. But miracles do happen. We just saw the first 18-0 team in NFL history, a team that set the record for points scored, for touchdowns passed by one player, and for touchdowns received by one player, play the NFC’s #6 seed in the Super Bowl. And the #6 seed won, paced by – most miraculous of all – Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning.

I have no expectations that the Royals will anything substantial in 2008. But I'm prepared to have my expectations altered. If the Rockies can win 21 out of 22 games, if a 10-6 team can topple Team Undefeated, nothing is impossible. Or impossible is nothing. That's a good slogan; a shoe company should market that.

A few housekeeping notes:

1) Last week, showing the bluntness and insensitivity that bloggers are famous for, I took some minor shots at longtime Royals’ scout/executive Art Stewart. What I didn’t know at the time was that Art’s wife Donna was dying of cancer; she passed away this Tuesday. Donna was a permanent fixture at Royals games, a loyal supporter of the team to the very end. She will be missed. Our thoughts are with her and with Art.

2) Rob and I turn off the lights over at Rob & Rany. It’s going to be weird not having someone to bounce immediate impressions off of when the Royals make big moves. But it was time. Rob was already thinking of closing up shop when I mentioned to him that I was planning on starting this blog; I think he was more excited than I was.

But please, guys: just because Rob has been, shall we say, less optimistic than I have been over the years is no reason to attack his loyalty to the team or tear him down for walking away at this time. Yes, he’s been down on the Royals a lot more than I have – can you blame him? We started our discussions of the Royals in 1998, having no idea that we were about to witness one of the worst decades for a baseball team in major-league history. Whenever I see Royals fans rip on Rob for not keeping the faith, all I can say is, “have you guys been watching this team for the last 10 years?” If you have, how can you argue that someone has been too pessimistic about the franchise? Is that even possible? Whatever negative things Rob has had to say about the Royals, they’ve earned it. And then some.

We’re leaving on good terms, I’m happy to say; Rob even sent me his 2003 Mike Sweeney Bobblehead Doll as a sort of blogwarming gift the other day. (Despite being packaged carefully, when I took the doll out of its box, I found that Sweeney’s bat had cracked in two. I wish I was making this up. At least it wasn’t his back.

3) Just an FYI: don’t expect these posts to continue to run this long. I started writing some of these entries weeks ago – even I can’t write this many words on a daily basis. What, do I look like Joe Posnanski?

Reason #19: The Coach.

There are many, many ways to describe how poorly the Royals were run during their dark period, a period which I can only hope is finally lifting. One of my favorite ways is to simply point out this fact: the Royals employed seven different pitching coaches in a little over six years, and eight pitching coaches in a little under eight years.

The chronology, as best as I can figure:

Bruce Kison (1994 – mid 1998)
Mark Wiley (mid 1998 – end of 1999)
Brent Strom (beginning 2000 – May 2001)
Al Nipper (May 2001 – June 2002)
John Cumberland (June 2002-June 2004)
Mike Mason (June 2004 – end 2004)
Guy Hansen (2005)
Bob McClure (2006-present)

McClure, assuming he doesn’t get axed before the season starts, will become the Royals’ longest-tenured pitching coach since Bruce Kison. Not coincidentally, it was under Kison’s tutelage that the Royals last had anything remotely resembling a pitching staff. From 1994 through 1996, the Royals ranked 3^rd, 4^th, and 2^nd in the league in runs allowed. In 1997 the team fell to a still-respectable 8^th; in 1998 the team finished 13^th as Kison got fired and the pitching funhouse began.

1999: 14^th (i.e. dead last)
2000: 13^th
2001: 11^th
2002: 13^th
2003: 12^th
2004: 14^th
2005: 13^th
2006: 14^th

It has to be difficult to develop your career in any field when you have a new boss every year. I don’t suspect it’s any easier to develop as a young pitcher when you have a new pitching coach every year, particularly when each coach is telling you a different thing. It’s not like the pitching coach has a minor role on the team – the pitching coach has more influence on a team’s success than anyone other than the manager, certainly more influence than the hitting coach.

Hitting is reaction – you can have the best coach in the world, but in the end you have less than a quarter-second to react to a pitch, decide whether to swing, and determine where you place your bat to make contact with the ball. You can have the best hitting approach in the world, but if it takes half a second to execute, it’s worthless. Pitching, on the other hand, is action; baseball, after all, is the only major sport in which the defense, not the offense, controls the ball. And if pitching is action, that means that pitching, unlike hitting, can be planned.

And so a pitcher who does a good job of preparing each pitch, placing each pitch in the right location, changes speeds, uses finger pressure to subtly move the ball around, mixes his pitches so the hitter never knows what’s coming next – that pitcher can succeed beyond his natural abilities. Greg Maddux was the best pitcher in baseball at his peak, one of the best the game has ever seen, and rarely broke 87 on the gun. Almost all the best starting pitchers in the game are noted for their intelligence. Conversely, some of the greatest wastes of talent on the mound have been guys who simply didn’t have the brainpower to make smart decisions out there.

You don’t have to be smart (in the traditional sense of having a high IQ) to be a tremendous hitter. I have no idea if Manny Ramirez is really a budding Rhodes scholar under that façade, but he certainly doesn’t come across as a brilliant human being. Juan Gonzalez does not appear to have any Nobel Prizes in his future. I have no idea how smart Vladimir Guerrero is – is there any future Hall of Famer about whom we know less than Guerrero? But his approach at the plate doesn’t require intelligence. See ball, hit ball. If you have tremendous hand-eye coordination and enough fast-twitch muscles, that’s a perfectly acceptable approach at the plate.

A prepared pitcher is a better pitcher, and it’s the pitching coach’s job to make sure his pitchers are prepared, which is why a pitching coach can do much more to impact his charges – positively or negatively – than a hitting coach. It’s not a coincidence that there are very few hitting coaches with a “guru” reputation. Royals fans are of course familiar with Charley Lau, but he passed away 24 years ago, and who else rises to that rank? Whereas on the pitching side, you’ve got Leo Mazzone, of course, but at various times people like Ray Miller, Roger Craig, and Dave Duncan have been described as miracle workers.

Bob McClure isn’t a miracle worker, but he’s done good work. He change Gil Meche’s delivery to make him land on his toe instead of his heel, and wonder of wonders, Meche had the best season of his career. He helped Brian Bannister junk his cutter in favor of a refined curveball last spring, and Bannister was a surprise Rookie of the Year candidate. Joakim Soria pitched like a 10-year veteran out of the bullpen; Zack Greinke resurrected his career and got stronger as the season went on. He’s gotten good work out of the modest talent of Joel Peralta, and Jimmy Gobble seems to be adjusting to life as a LOOGY.

McClure wasn’t perfect; he almost worked a miracle with Jorge de la Rosa, who in his first nine starts had a 3.59 ERA and 12 walks in 58 innings, but then de la Rosa went to hell. McClure didn’t fix Kyle Davies, although there’s still time for that. He didn’t save Scott Elarton, but no one this side of God Himself could have done that. Overall, the good definitely outweighs the bad.

As important as McClure’s ability is his stability – it made no sense that the Royals would turn over their pitching coaches as often as they did, as a few of those guys almost certainly would have done better had they been given more time to do it. Guy Hansen was a tremendous pitching coach for the Royals in the early 1990s; he also scouted Kevin Appier, recommended the Royals draft Bret Saberhagen (a 16^th round pick), and after a stint as the pitching coach at UCLA, returned to the Royals and recommended they take a flier on one of his pitchers who could really hit – and the Royals drafted Jeff Conine in the 58^th round. But after one admittedly unimpressive season, he was axed.

If I bought my own major league franchise tomorrow, Brent Strom would be one of the first guys I’d hire. He’s smart, educated, and willing to learn new things, to an extent that’s very unusual for a baseball lifer. He gets bonus points for reading “Rob and Rany” regularly while he worked for the Royals, and while he didn’t agree with much of what we wrote, he took at least some of it to heart, particularly our frequent blatherings about pitch counts. He was made the scapegoat for the team’s terrible start in 2001; apparently after winning all of 75 games the year before, the Royals expected great things from the likes of Chad Durbin, Dan Reichert, Mac Suzuki and Chris George.

We exchanged some emails shortly after he was fired, and I’ll never forget something he wrote about Jeff Suppan. Commenting on how difficult it was to fix the mechanics of some of the team’s young pitchers, he held up Suppan as a model for pitching mechanics and wrote, “If Suppan ever hurts his arm, I’ll turn gay.” In the seven seasons since, Suppan has made at least 31 starts every year. I think we can let Strom off the hook now, which should be a relief to his wife. (Not to mention gay men everywhere.)

My point is that the Royals have had good pitching coaches before, but never gave them enough time to succeed. McClure has been given that time, and he’s delivered on it. As important as the hiring of Trey Hillman was, almost as important was the fact that the hiring of a new manager did not reflexively lead to a new pitching coach as well. McClure’s done good work so far, and I’m glad he’ll have the opportunity to build on it.

Interlude.

We’ll get back to the Top 23 list soon enough, but at the rate I’m going the whole list won’t post until mid-March, and in the meantime spring training is underway and stories are starting to emerge. So let’s talk about them.

1) Does anyone think that if Hideo Nomo was from Jersey instead of Japan, that he’d be getting one-tenth as much attention? I understand why the Japanese press is following him around in hordes – he’s a legitimate legend, the man who not only broke the hemisphere barrier but also the man who proved that Japanese baseball was not a vastly inferior product to the American version. (A sentiment that was held by scouts and statheads alike in the early 90s.)

Having said that, he’s done. He hasn’t pitched in the majors since 2005, and his ERA in his final two seasons were 7.24 and 8.25. (His 8.25 ERA in 2004 is the second-highest in history for a pitcher with more than 15 starts – only Steve Blass’s final season, the one that got a disease named after it, was higher.) He had an ERA over six in winter ball this year. Is there any reason to think he still has something left?

I see no harm in bringing him in. His success was so dependent on his splitter that if he finds it again, I suppose he could be successful again. The bullpen has always been a haven for broken-down starters, and the splitter is definitely a pitch that translates well there. But I think it’s telling that the Royals signed him without ever scouting him over the winter: they really don’t care how he pitched. He’s here for one reason, to be Yasuhiko Yabuta’s buddy. If he shows something on the mound, great. But let’s not talk about him anymore unless and until he does.

2) Do the Royals need to hire some new Spanish translators? First, there was the “confusion” with Jose Guillen as to whether he was guaranteed to play rightfield after he was signed – Guillen thought he was, Trey Hillman said no decision had been made. Hillman managed to smooth things over with Guillen, and coincidentally enough he has been promised the rightfield spot, with Teahen moving over to left.

I don’t have a problem with the positioning; Teahen’s defensive numbers last year were not very good (with the notable exception of his 17 assists.) He showed a good arm in the outfield, but a lot of those assists came because runners were testing his surgically-repaired shoulder early in the year. But I like to have defensive alignments picked out by the manager, not by the players; I’m old-fashioned that way.

And now we have a mini-flap brewing with Miguel Olivo, who apparently thought he was promised the starting catcher’s job when he signed. The Royals have done their best to assuage his feelings and paper over any problems. But you have to wonder who was doing the talking when the Royals signed these guys.

3) Speaking of Olivo, Hillman has reportedly discussed the idea of playing him some in left field. This sounds ridiculous on the surface. Moving a slow, squat guy with a shaky bat to a position where speed and offense are at a premium is, generally speaking, stupid. You don’t have to remember Carlton Fisk’s infamous move to left field in 1986 (thank you, Hawk Harrelson!) to know that.

It’s not quite as ridiculous when you look at the specific circumstances here. For one, Olivo can run a little better than your typical catcher – in his last year in the minors, the White Sox let him go, and he somehow stole 29 bases in 42 attempts. (He’s never swiped more than seven bases in any other season, majors or minors.)

Secondly, Olivo has a fairly enormous platoon split, one of the largest of any active player. Against right-handed pitchers he’s hit a weak .220/.258/.362, but against southpaws he has a career mark of .291/.319/.524. That will play at any position. If Olivo were backing up a left-handed catcher, he’d be an enormous asset, but he’s backing up John Buck, a remarkably similar player. It may well make sense for the Royals to play both Buck and Olivo against left-handers, and better to have Olivo play the field than at DH, where you’d lose the DH altogether if Buck had to come out of the game for any reason.

But does this mean Teahen becomes a platoon player? Does Teahen play first base against LHP? All of this is still in flux – we have no idea who the primary first baseman is going to be, for one thing. I like out-of-the-box thinking in a manager, I’m just not sure this is one of those decisions that should be out of the box.

4) The Star reports that Luke Hochevar may be looked at as a bullpen option this year. As long as this is temporary – one never knows with the Royals – I’m all for it. We don’t see nearly enough teams develop pitching prospects for a year in the bullpen before moving them into the rotation. It works – look at Johan Santana’s career – and for good reason: pitching out of the pen is easier than pitching in the rotation. Nate Silver’s work with PECOTA has shown that if you project a pitcher to move from full-time starter to full-time reliever, his ERA drops as much as 25%. A starter with an ERA of 5 – barely replacement-level – suddenly becomes a reliever with an ERA in the high 3s, which is a useful pitcher.

Hochevar may not be ready for the majors, and given the logjam on the back of the pitching staff, may be best served by another few months in Triple-A. But just because he has a starting pitcher’s arsenal doesn’t mean he can’t thrive in the bullpen and develop his pitches at the same time.

5) Dick Kaegel’s weekly mailbag feature for the team’s website is not normally on my list of useful columns for Royals fans – I swear some of the questions seem so contrived that you wonder if they’re made up. But he dropped a very useful piece of information on Monday:

“Which Royals pitchers are out of options? -- Chris K., Lincoln, Neb.

Pitchers with no options remaining are John Bale, Jorge De La Rosa, Jimmy Gobble, Luke Hudson, Ron Mahay, Gil Meche and Leo Nunez. You didn't ask about position players, but here they are: Buck, Alberto Callaspo, Joey Gathright, Esteban German, Ross Gload, Jose Guillen, Justin Huber and Tony Pena Jr.”

Going at this player by player: Bale, Gobble, Mahay, Meche, Guillen, and Pena have roster spots locked up. Callaspo, Gathright, German, and Gload presumably do as well – but if you assume they’re all bench players, and toss in Olivo, that means the Royals’ bench is completely set. With a lineup that’s guaranteed to include Teahen, DeJesus, and Guillen in the outfield, Gordon, Pena, Grudzielanek on the infield, Buck behind the plate and Butler at DH, and assuming the Royals go with 11 pitchers, that leaves only one position unfilled: first base. (If Gload starts at first base, then a backup 1B/OF/DH type instead.)

And this is where Huber’s lack of options come into play. The Royals have mangled Huber’s career as badly as any prospect they’ve had this decade – he came over with a lot of pomp and ceremony, he won the Texas League MVP with a .343/.432/.570 performance as a 22-year-old, and the Royals have screwed with him ever since. It’s now or never for him, as there’s no chance he’s getting through waivers (Billy Beane is already salivating, I’m sure.) The saving grace is that Ryan Shealy does have an option available, and given that he needs to show the team that last year was an injury-marred fluke, there’s an obvious solution here. I just have this bad, bad feeling that the Royals won’t see it.

The other player on the bubble is Leo Nunez, who rescued himself from Huber-like purgatory with a fine performance for the Royals down the stretch. He’s still not guaranteed a roster spot. He should be; he’s a valuable swingman, and with his fastball and his command, deserves a much greater role on this team than the Royals are planning for him.