Royals Today: 4/25/2008.

The Royals sure know how to kill a buzz.

Eight years ago, the Royals were the talk of baseball in early April. They started the season 8-3, the last three of those wins coming in succession on walk-off home runs, the last (by Rey Sanchez) provoking Denny Matthews' "What is going on?" call. They were tied for first place on April 13th, and spirits were high as they embarked on a nine-game road trip.

They lost all nine games on that trip. By the final series in Seattle, the team was playing so poorly that I was starting to wonder if they'd ever win again. They eventually would, and in fact would fight their way back over .500, reaching a high-water mark of 30-26 on June 5th. They finished 77-85 that year; those 77 wins are the team's second-most in the last 15 years. (Wow, I can't believe how depressing that sentence is, and I've covered them throughout those 15 years.) But the party was over early.

This year, the Royals were 8-5 and in first place on April 14th, 9-6 and a half-game out two days later. They've been outscored 57 to 18 ever since. They'll turn this around eventually - as Sparky Anderson said, "momentum is tomorrow's starting pitcher", and Greinke toes the hill tonight. But once again, the Royals have killed the wonderful delusion that is early-season baseball before April is out. Thanks, guys.

- At what point does Hillman concede to common sense and start Callaspo over Pena at shortstop? Callaspo has more hits (9-8), more extra-base hits (2-1), and more walks (2-1) than Pena, even though Pena has more than twice as many at-bats (59-26). Callaspo also has yet to strike out this year, which is a nice trick if you can pull it off.

I've credited Hillman multiple times for being willing to pinch-hit for Pena with Callaspo in game situations. Well, last night, with the Royals down 2-0 in the ninth, Hillman let Pena hit against Cliff Lee in a situation where baserunners are paramount. Grudzielanek was unavailable, and I suppose you could argue you don't want to let Gathright or Gload bat against a LHP (except that Gload has hit LHP better than RHP in his career, and anyway, Hillman already showed he's willing to give up the platoon advantage when he pinch-hit for Gathright with Olivo against a RHP.) But why wouldn't you use Callaspo there? Callaspo's a switch-hitter, but in his brief major-league career he's actually hit LHP (.264/.316/.340) better than RHP (.226/.277/.289). He's 2-for-3 against LHP this year.

I'm not going to echo the sentiments of one Rob Neyer, who said of this move, "I think we have to start wondering if Hillman just isn't real good at this job." But it was a bad decision. Tony Pena is a glorified defensive replacement, and you'd think a team that's struggling to score runs as badly as the Royals are would recognize that.

- Can we stop with the "maybe Billy Butler can handle first base" talk until he actually makes a difficult play even once? Yesterday, he had only two chances that could remotely be described as difficult, and he flubbed them both. One was a hot shot by Travis Hafner that he tried to backhand, but misjudged the ball - it bounced a foot or two in front of where he thought it would go, so instead of bouncing into his glove it bounced off it and into right field. It was charitably called a hit, a scoring decision which loomed rather large for a while given that the play was the only thing keeping Brian Bannister from having a perfect game into the 7th inning.

The other was a groundball to his right in the 7th inning with a man on second base, an easy grounder that somehow went under his glove; Esteban German alertly backed up the play and Bannister did a terrific job of reaching for German's throw and getting a toe on the bag, barely preserving the out.

Yet to listen to the announcers, you'd think that Butler was doing okay out there, because hey, he's trying his best. I wrote in our Baseball Prospectus book this year that Butler "fields at a first-grade level," and it seems like everyone's taking that a little too literally. Hey, he can't field the position, but let's give him an "A" for effort! I'm waiting for Ryan Lefebvre to award him a gold star for not tripping over his shoelaces on the way to the bag.

The reality is that I'm less convinced that Butler will ever play an acceptable first base today than I was at the start of the season. The sooner we stop with the denial, the sooner we can focus on finding a real solution for first base, a solution which does not involve the words "Ross" and "Gload".

- The Royals scored six runs in the opener (a season-high!) and were shut out in the finale, but I was probably more upset the offense's approach in game 1. If you don't believe me, please - please - read this. This concisely explains the single biggest flaw the Royals have had as a franchise since the early 1980s. The box score tells you that the Royals drew four walks against Carmona in five innings. The box score can't tell you that there could - should - have been much more. And given all the baserunners that Carmona put on base, even a few more baserunners might have led to a lot more runs.

- Lee, on the other hand, was just filthy - he probably would have shut out half the teams in baseball last night. He worked the inside and outside corners all night; I think he threw two pitches down the middle the entire game. He's been doing this all season; he allowed four hits and unearned run in 6.2 innings in his first start of the season, and that has been his worst start all year. Lee's last three starts have produced lines of 8 2 1 1 0 8, 8 2 0 0 1 8, and 9 3 0 0 0 9. That's not just impressive, that's downright historic.

In his last three starts, Lee has 1) pitched 8 innings or more, 2) surrendered no more than 3 hits; 3) surrendered no more than 1 walk; 4) struck out at least 8 batters. In the Retrosheet era (i.e. since 1956), do you know how many pitchers have met all those parameters in three consecutive starts?

None. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Until Cliff Lee.

If you eliminate the strikeout provision, only two pitchers have had 3 straight starts with 8+ IP, <= 3 hits, <=1 walk. The most recent was Woodie Fryman, in 1966. The other was Sandy Koufax, in 1963.

Damn.

- Those two pitches that Lee threw down the middle were the two pitches that Jose Guillen spanked for basehits. Guillen hit the second one about as hard as you can hit a baseball; when it came off the bat it looked like it would fall into leftfield for a hit, then it looked like it would carry to Dellucci, then it became clear that the ball wasn't following the normal rules of gravity and went over Dellucci's head, surprising him more than anyone. We've established, at least, that Guillen can hit fastballs down the middle with authority. The evidence is still out on the other 95% of pitches he'll see.

- Is anyone still even worried that Bannister is going to turn into a pumpkin? You can add this humble writer to the swelling ranks of the Cult of Brian. He was all-but-perfect through six innings, and while he lost it in the 7th, that was apparently because he was still hurting from the liner he took off his leg in the 6th. Anyway, Dellucci's homer was a 300-foot flyball that caught up in the wind.

That homer was the first Bannister's given up all year. Which is interesting, because despite what you may have heard, Bannister is not a groundball pitcher. ESPN.com lists his G/F ratio this year at 1.05, right around his career level of 1.06. The league average is about 1.2, so he actually has slight flyball tendencies. A pitcher who gives up that many flyballs can't sustain a home run rate of 1 per 33 innings - Brandon Webb would have trouble maintaining a home run rate that low.

Bannister has a few things working in his favor. He pitches in Kauffman Stadium, which is tough for home run hitters. He has shown the ability to limit homers before; his career totals are 20 homers in 236 innings, which is above-average. And, of course, he's Brian Bannister: he's the baseball equivalent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a physics concept that boils down to - my apologies to any physicists reading this for my horrible description - the idea that there will always be uncertainty in any physical measurement, because (for instance) in the process of trying to establish the exact location of a particle - let's say an atom - you will have to bounce energy off the proton in the form of a photon to establish its location, but by bouncing energy off the atom you will have changed its location.

In other words, the mere act of measuring a phenomenon changes the phenomenon. And the mere fact that Brian Bannister understands sabermetric principles changes those principles as they apply to him.

Now, I still don't think he can sustain his career BABIP, which is now .254 and dropping fast. But I think he has the ability to keep it below league average. More importantly, I'm not even sure it matters. So far this year, he's whiffed 18 batters in 32.2 innings, a rate of 4.96 per nine. That's still below average, but it's better than last year. And in those 32.2 innings, he's walked six (1.65 per nine) and allowed just one homer. He's actually ninth in the league in strikeout-to-walk ratio.

You give me a pitcher that doesn't allow walks and homers, and even if he doesn't have the ability to lower his BABIP you're talking about a guy who could be Carlos Silva or Bob Tewksbury. That's pretty valuable. If he does sustain a low BABIP to boot, you've got, uh, Brian Bannister. Well, you've got him if you're a Royals fan. If you're not, then buzz off. He's ours.

Royals Today: 4/23/2008.

Well, that really sucked.

If there’s one weakness I have as an analyst – humor me here, I know I have a lot more than one – it’s that no matter how hard I try, I always give early season results more meaning than I should. This is a weakness that carries over into other areas of life as well – in any kind of debate I’m always inclined to agree with the last argument. I’m a little too trusting of my fellow man, I think, when I should have my bulls**t detector on. That goes for small sample sizes as well as arguments. I know I shouldn’t have been excited when the Royals were 6-2, but I was. And now that the Royals have gone 3-9 since, it’s hard not to abandon ship. It helps to remember the words from that sage philosopher, Rob Neyer: “a team is never as good as it looks when it’s winning, and it’s never as bad as it looks when it’s losing.”

Which is a good thing. Because the Royals looked as bad as they ever have last night, losing 15-1. In their last five games, they’ve been outscored 46-15. The Tigers were outscored 44-15 in their first seven games and everyone (myself included) was openly mocking them; they’ve won 8 of 14 since and have crept to within 1.5 games of the Royals. Things turn around quickly in baseball. They better.

Small sample size or no, these guys are worrying me:

- I’m not that concerned about The Epic, even though he does have an ERA of 8.00 after five starts. He’s given up a couple more homers than you’d like, and his control hasn’t been there yet, but most of his problems stem from the .337 BABIP, which should come down over time.

But looking over the long term, keep in mind that after starting last season with a 1.91 ERA in his first nine starts, he had a 4.36 ERA the rest of the way. Breaking up seasonal stats by month and trying to explain the trend is usually a fool’s errand, as the best explanation is almost always “dumb luck”. (The main exception to this is with a rookie making his major league debut. While I haven’t seen research done on the topic – it’s probably been done, I just haven’t seen it – I’m almost certain that players, on the whole, need an adjustment period of about 100 plate appearances before they find their true talent level in the majors, and so an improvement after that point might be for real. Exhibit A: Alex Gordon.)

But over the last 11 months and 30 starts, Meche has a 4.90 ERA. Should we be concerned? In 182 innings over that span, he has 60 walks, 129 Ks, and 21 homers – not great peripherals, but not 4.90 ERA bad either. He’s given up 195 hits, which are more than you’d expect from his other peripherals. Like I said, I’m not concerned. And I still think he’s been an excellent signing. But it would be nice if he would put up a Game Score of better than 51 at some point – that’s his best score in five starts this year.

- We don’t have the equivalent of Game Score for relievers, so allow me to invent a completely useless stat on the spot: a “Dominant Outing”, or DO. A DO occurs when a reliever:

1) Does not surrender a run;
2) Strikes out at least one man per inning pitched;
3) Surrenders no more than one baserunner (walk + hit) per inning pitched;
4) Has at least as many strikeouts as baserunners allowed.

This is something you can figure out from the box score line.

1 1 0 0 0 1 is a DO. 0.2 1 0 0 0 1 is not.
1.1 1 0 0 0 2 is a DO. 1.2 1 0 0 1 2 is not.

This doesn’t have any analytical value at all; the point is simply to say whether a reliever has shown the ability to overpower hitters in a short outing. Joakim Soria, for instance, had 3 DO’s in his first five major league appearances – a pretty good sign that he had the potential to be dominant. Soria had 28 DO’s in 62 appearances last season; I suspect anything close to 50% is amazing. (Jonathan Papelbon had 30 DO’s in 59 appearances as a rookie.)

What worries me about Yasuhiko Yabuta isn’t that he walked four batters in less than an inning last Friday. It’s that in seven appearances so far, he hasn’t had a Dominant Outing, and really hasn’t come close. I want to see some sign that plucking him out of Japan hasn’t been a mistake, that he bears more resemblance to Takashi Saito or Hideki Okajima than to Masao Kida or Masumi Kuwata.

I loved the decision to sign Yabuta, because while there have been a fair number of starting pitchers from Japan who turned out to be busts, the vast majority of relief pitchers have turned out well. Here’s a list of every native Japanese pitcher with 40 or more relief appearances (and no more than 10 starts) in the majors:

Shigetoshi Hasegawa: 124 ERA+
Masao Kida: 81 ERA+
Hideki Okajima: 225 ERA+
Akinori Otsuka: 170 ERA+
Takashi Saito: 240 ERA+
Kazuhiro Sasaki: 138 ERA+
Shingo Takatsu: 137 ERA+
Keiichi Yabu: 103 ERA+

While there have been other relief pitchers who washed out before they made 40 appearances, in almost every case those were marginal guys who weren’t expected to do much in the first place; Kuwata, for instance, was 39 years old and essentially unwanted back home. None of them were signed to multi-year deals, like Yabuta was. So of the eight guys to whom Yabuta can be directly compared, Kida was a mistake, Yabu has been barely average (though he was 36 when he came over, and also lightly-regarded), and the other six have been sensational.

Saito, in particular, ranks among the greatest free-agent signings in history. He was thought to be over the hill back home, and was so lightly regarded here that he signed for the league minimum back in 2006. Instead, he’s delivered a 1.88 career ERA to date in 149 innings, with 191 strikeouts and just 86 hits allowed – those are Playstation numbers.

Given the track record of Japanese relievers, it’s fair that we should expect Yabuta to be a solid-average set-up man at the very least. You can argue that the success of Japanese relievers has led major league teams to scrape further down the barrel, and you might have a point. Three relievers came over from Japan this winter. Masahide Kobayashi, who Yabuta set up for in Japan, has been okay for the Indians so far. The third guy, both in this paragraph and in reputation, is Kazuo Fukumori, who in three outings for the Rangers has allowed six hits and four walks in 1.2 innings.

So maybe the Royals reached for a reliever who’s not in the same tier as Okajima and Sasaki and the like. The problem is that they’re paying him like he is; you don’t spend 2 years and $6 million for a mop-up man. Credit Hillman at least for realizing before Opening Day that while Yabuta was signed to be a set-up man, the job belonged to Leo Nunez on merit. It’s still very early, but the signs are there that Yabuta may prove to be a waste of cash.

- Speaking of wastes of cash…Jose Guillen. My goodness. We heard that the possibility of a suspension was weighing on his mind. We heard that he just can’t hit in cold weather. Well, the suspension was waived over a week ago, and the weather here in the Midwest has been at least in the 60s for at least that long. And last night, facing a left-hander (Guillen hit .362/.433/.616 vs. LHP last year), he struck out four times in four plate appearances. He’s batting .165/.195/.291, in 82 plate appearances.

There’s no question in my mind that, whatever his performance has been, the Royals overpaid for Guillen. I say that because they were essentially bidding against themselves; there were never any other credible other offers for Guillen that were reported. I think it’s very telling that after hemming and hawing about the Royals’ offer, the minute the Royals dropped the rumor into the media that they were changing gears and trying to sign Andruw Jones instead – Guillen signed the next day. Given how quickly the market dried up after Guillen and Carlos Silva signed, I’m quite certain the Royals could have signed him for $8 million a year instead of $12 million. And they might have been able to go lower than that.

All that is money under the bridge at this point. What isn’t is Guillen’s performance, which is awful six ways from Sunday. It’s almost like he’s afraid to draw walks – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen him calmly take pitches until he had three balls, then start swinging at 3-1 and 3-2 pitches at his ankles or up at his neck.

I looked through his career numbers trying to find a month in which he batted this poorly with at least 50 plate appearances. Only two months come close: September 2005, when he hit .151/.264/.219 in 87 plate appearances, and April 2001, when he hit .203/.213/.220 in 61 PA.

He missed half of the 2001 season with an injury, but from May 1^st to the end of the year he did hit .329/.393/.500, albeit in just 84 plate appearances. And in 2005, in a full season he hit .303/.350/.519 through the end of August before going into a tailspin. So I guess you can hold out hope that Guillen has shown a history of playing like utter crap for a few weeks and then hitting like an All-Star the rest of the way. That light bulb better turn on soon, or the comparisons to Kevin McReynolds may turn out to be hopelessly optimistic.

(Late update: apparently Guillen’s not in the lineup tonight. Hillman can read the numbers as well as we can.)

- For those of you with satellite radio, I’ll be appearing on my friend Jeff Erickson’s show tomorrow (Thursday) morning at around 11:05 CDT. I imagine we’ll talk about the Pennsylvania primary and the impact of high oil prices on the global economy. Also the Royals.

Royals Today: 4/21/2008.

Well, that sucked.

A sweep at the hand of the mighty A’s – don’t you ever get the feeling that Billy Beane exists purely to make life hell for Royals fans? – exposed the team’s gaping chest wound of a flaw for all the world to witness. Namely, the team can’t score runs, and if the starter has an off-day (like Friday), or the bullpen is less than perfect (like Saturday), or the defense lets a few potential outs drop in (like Sunday)…the Royals are toast.

In 19 games, the Royals have 63 runs. In 19 games, the Giants have 61 runs. And when you adjust for run elements and schedule – what we at Baseball Prospectus call “third-order” record – the Royals should have scored 64 runs in a neutral park against an average opponent. That’s the lowest mark in baseball – lower than all 16 teams that play without a DH.

That’s bad, folks. Really, really bad.

I’m not sure what the Royals can do to shake their funk. The only obvious move – other than, you know, finding a real first baseman – is that instead of starting Pena at shortstop and using Callaspo to pinch-hit when the Royals are losing, Hillman should start Callaspo and use Pena to play defense when the Royals are winning. Teams are extremely averse to playing the bat over the glove at shortstop, and understandably so. No less a sabermetric authority than Earl Weaver, whose book “Weaver on Strategy” should be absolute required reading for any new manager, advocates starting the glove and using the bat off the bench rather than the other way around.

(By the way, Trey, I’m serious about reading “Weaver on Strategy.” I’ll send you my copy if you want.)

Weaver made the excellent point that the glove is more useful at the start of the game than at the end of the game because your relief corps is likely to strike out more batters than your starters will, and so your starters will surrender more balls in play for your shortstop to handle. And he did manage the Orioles to six AL East titles, four pennants, and a world championship with Mark Belanger as his starting shortstop the whole time. Belanger hit just .228 with a .280 slugging average for his career, and like Hillman has with Pena, Weaver would pinch-hit for him whenever the Orioles were losing late.

Pena has a career .252 average and has slugged .337, but even so there are reasons why Hillman should be more willing to bench his glove than Weaver was. For one, Belanger was an absolutely phenomenal defensive shortstop, an 8-time Gold Glove winner, and that might be underselling him. Dan Fox’s defensive fielding system (called simple fielding runs, or SFR), which he unveiled at Baseball Prospectus just before he accepted a job with the Pirates, credits Belanger with an outstanding 262 runs saves over an average shortstop over the course of his career. That’s the highest of any shortstop in our database going back to 1957, including Ozzie Smith, although we’re missing data for some of Ozzie’s prime years. (In terms of runs saved per game the Blade and the Wizard are almost dead even.) Pena’s good; he’s not that good.

Plus, Belanger made up for his feebleness with his stick by not swinging it unless it was absolutely necessary; he walked about once for every 10 at-bats in his career, which is about the upper limit of a walk rate when pitchers don’t fear you at all. Pena has drawn 13 walks in his career of over 600 at-bats, so despite out-hitting Belanger by 24 points, Belanger has a 30-point lead in OBP, .300 to .270. Then there’s the fact that Belanger played in a much tougher offensive context than Pena; neutralize his stats to a 715-run context and his career numbers are .252/.330/.310. Do the same with Pena and he’s at about .240/.255/.320.

Most importantly, looking through the logs of the Orioles’ roster throughout the 1970s, it doesn’t appear that they ever had another option to start at shortstop that was comparable to Callaspo. Except once.

In 1972, Belanger had the worst season of any year between 1968 and 1978, hitting just .186/.236/.246. Not coincidentally, that was the only year in that stretch that Belanger didn’t get 300 at-bats in a season; he only started 86 times at shortstop that year, even though he does not appear (by looking at game logs) to have been placed on the DL at all. Instead Weaver gave a 23-year-old near-rookie his first real playing time, starting him 68 times at shortstop. Kid by the name of Bobby Grich.

It took Weaver a while to come around to the idea that the new guy should be starting; Grich only started six times in the season’s first six weeks, but he was in the lineup almost every day from May 24^th on, playing second base on the days that Belanger was in the lineup. Grich finished the year with a line of .278/.358/.415, which was pretty damn impressive for a middle infielder in that era; he was an All-Star and ranked 14^th in MVP voting. The next year Grich started every game at second base, won the first of his four Gold Gloves, and his borderline Hall of Fame career was on.

It so happens that 1972 was the only year between 1969 and 1974 that the Orioles didn’t finish first. But that’s hard to pin on Grich’s defense; the Orioles led the league with a ridiculous 2.53 ERA. I’m going to wager that the fact that Paul Blair hit .233 with 8 homers – and the fact that Blair led the entire outfield in both categories – may have had more to do with it.

Callaspo is no Bobby Grich any more than Tony Pena is Mark Belanger. But just as Grich gave the Orioles a shot in the offensive arm at shortstop while waiting for the second base job to open up (the Orioles would move Davey Johnson to Atlanta that off-season, just in time for Ol’ Davey to hit 43 homers the next year), Callaspo can help the Royals today by playing shortstop in anticipation of grabbing Grudzielanek’s job next season.

We don’t know for sure that Callaspo can hit at all; this is a guy who hit .215 last season, in almost 150 at-bats. But the early returns this year are positive, and anyway the sooner we know the better. Grudzielanek refuses to cooperate by getting hurt, and he’s playing well enough that you really can’t argue he should be benched. (Though J.P. would solve that dilemma by releasing him.)

By starting Callaspo you might also free up some playing time for Esteban German, who’s on pace to bat about 110 times this year. I’d like to say that Hillman’s a moron for not getting German more playing time, but what’s his alternative? The fact is that, between Callaspo and German, the Royals probably have two of the ten best utility infielders in baseball on their roster. German has that .381 OBP over the last two seasons we’ve talked about; Callaspo has hit .337 and .341 in Triple-A the last two years. Callaspo can play second base well and shortstop passably; German can’t handle shortstop, but can play third base and the outfield as well as second.

The situation screams “trade”, and the longer German goes without sustained playing time the more his trade value drops. Starting Callaspo every day means that you can use German as an early-inning pinch-hitter in addition to starting him in the outfield vs. LHP on occasion and at second base to spell Grudz on Sundays. Pena gets a pair of plate appearances and 18 innings in the field every week.

(Random trade idea: the Dodgers have expressed interest in German, but are understandably reluctant to part with Chin-Lung Hu. How about Ivan DeJesus? He doesn’t turn 21 for another week, he’s hitting .328/.446/.459 in Double-A, and the Dodgers are so flush with talent that they don’t know what to do with him. Plus, his dad was once traded for a prospect named Ryne Sandberg, and it would be poetic justice if Junior made the Dodgers regret letting him go the way Ryno did with the Phillies.)

- I know a lot of people are excited that the Royals called up Luke Hochevar, and I share that excitement. I liked what little I saw on Sunday, where he was outstanding for three innings and then got bled to death in the fourth. But keep in mind that Hochevar came into the season with 27 days of service time. He was called up on 21^st day of the season, which means that if he stays on the major league roster all year he’ll have a full year of service time, moving his free agency up a year.

There are roughly 11 more days over the course of a season than are needed to be credited with a full year of service time, so Hochevar would have to go back to Omaha and stay there for about three weeks if the Royals want to keep him under contract through 2014. He’s the best option for the fifth starter’s role right now, and 2014 is a long time from now. Just remember that this is a decision that might cost the Royals in the distant future.

- A few days ago I pointed out the Royals’ great defensive efficiency and wondered if the improvement was for real given that the defense was substantially similar to last year’s. Well, I think we know now: it’s not. On Sunday the Royals struck out 12 batters in eight innings, did not surrender a homer…and still gave up 11 hits. The A’s had a .458 BABIP that day. For the season the Royals now have a .683 defensive efficiency, 12^th in the league and worse than last year’s mark. The defense isn’t that bad, but the evidence that the Royals had taken a defensive leap from last year has evaporated.

- Growing up in the late 1980s, I watched all the movies your typical early teenager would watch, which meant I saw a lot of Penelope Ann Miller on the big screen. Along the way Miller somehow became the epitome of wholesomeness for me – it seemed she always played a sweet, innocent woman, sometimes ditzy and sometimes clueless, but never overtly raw or, ahem, mature. Looking at her IMDB page, the movies that stand out are Adventures in Babysitting (1987), The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag (1992) and especially Kindergarten Cop (1990). I never saw Big-Top Pee Wee (1988) but I’m sure that fits in the same category.

So when I walked into a theater one day in 1993 to see Carlito’s Way, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Seems Ms. Miller decided that if she was going to be taken seriously as an actress, she was going to have to shed that sweet, innocent persona. She was going to have to go topless.

I was not prepared for this. It was like opening the new Playboy magazine and finding your 10^th-grade English teacher inside. When the movie ended, what was on my mind wasn’t that Al Pacino gave his usual performance or that Sean Penn had just resurrected a career that seemed to have been in a tailspin ever since “Shanghai Surprise”…it was that I had just seen Penelope Ann Miller’s breasts. I was not prepared for this.

Miller was evidently not prepared for this either. Her movie career ended almost on the spot; her IMDB page shows no listings at all for three years, and pretty much everything since then has been on the small screen, including such highlights as “All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story” and “National Lampoon’s Thanksgiving Family Reunion.” I’m thinking she wishes she had the opportunity to work in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie again. (Although she’s currently filming “Robosapien: Rebooted.” So she’s got that going for her.)

I guess I should have learned from this that you never know when sweet and innocent is just a cover. But I didn’t. Because I never in a million years would have expected to find a cursing contest between Scott Raab and Pat Jordan, two of the finest artists of that genre, being refereed by…Joe Posnanski.

Poz? The man I once called “Mister Rogers with a keyboard?” Using actual f-bombs in his writing? Debating the best place to position the f-bomb in a phrase? I need to lie down. The story that Mister Rogers ended one of his shows by saying “that ought to shut the f@!kers up” because he didn’t realize the cameras were still rolling was one of the great urban legends of my adolescence. But it was false. This urban legend is true. Joe Posnanski just hosted a Swear-Off between Scott Raab and Pat Jordan. (Or as I like to call it, “The Great American F@!k-Off.”)

You could tell that Poz almost immediately regretted using curse words (as opposed to merely quoting other people’s curse words), because in his next column he completely replaced all his curse words with $*#@%# punctuation marks, like he was writing a Beetle Bailey comic strip. But the cat’s out of the bag, Joe. Heed the warning of Penelope Ann Miller, lest you find yourself forced to make ends meet by writing B-movie screenplays in ten years. On the bright side, maybe you can get Miller to star in them.

(EDIT: It appears that some of you may be taking my playful jabs at Posnanski as genuine criticism. That's my fault, as unlike the subject of my jabs, I'm not a particularly gifted writer. So to be clear: I'm not trying to criticize Poz. I'm not offended by anything he or his guest writers wrote - the man placed enough "Parental Advisory" stickers on his post to satisfy both Tipper Gore and Lynn Cheney. I'm just having fun with him. Please. The man sh!ts - pardon my Poz - better prose than I write on my best days.)

Royals Today: 4/18/2008.

My criticism of Hillman’s decision to pinch-hit for Gathright with Olivo has attracted a fair amount of response, not all of it positive. I stand by the point I made – that it was the wrong move to make – but dedicating an entire post to the move gave it a prominence that it didn’t really deserve. It was the wrong move, but it wasn’t an egregious one; it might have lowered the Royals’ chance of winning by 2 or 3 percent. I wrote about it because I happened to be at my computer as the ninth inning played out, and because it’s interesting to write about all the different factors that go into a decision like that.

It’s not as interesting to say “the Royals should stop running so much,” in part because it’s so obvious. But Gordon’s decision to try to steal second with the tying run at third base in the 4th inning probably lowered the team’s win probability by something like 5 percent. More importantly, this was just the latest in a series of low-probability baserunning decisions that have cost the Royals outs. Outs that have cost the Royals runs. Runs that have cost the Royals wins.

Consider this: at this moment, the Royals and Indians have roughly the same caliber of offensive stats. The Royals have hit .275/.325/.370 as team; the Indians have hit .241/.336/.365. The Royals have basically exchanged 5 homers and 19 walks for a pair of doubles and 27 singles.

Yet in the same number of games, the Indians have 74 runs, and the Royals have 55 – a difference of over a run a game. The Indians have hit a little better with runners in scoring position; they’ve hit .264/.399/.408 as a team, while the Royals have hit .266/.331/.331 in the same situations. That’s worth a few runs, but just a few. The difference is that the Indians have stolen 9 bases and been caught twice; the Royals have stolen 14 bases but have been caught nine times.

It’s not just the frequency of the caught stealings – it’s the timing. The Royals have been thrown out five times with a runner already in scoring position. Three of those were guys thrown out trying to steal third base (Gathright twice, Gload once), and twice they were guys trying to steal second with a runner already on third.

And then there’s all the outs made trying to take the extra base. According to Craig Brown at Royals Authority, the Royals have made 10 additional outs on the basepaths – either pickoffs or what I call “discretionary outs”, outs made when attempting to take an extra base. That’s a total of 19 baserunning outs, more than one a game. That’s insane.

You can argue that the Royals are still 9-7, so it can’t have hurt them that much. On the other hand, they’re just a game over .500 even though they’ve given up the fewest runs in the league, and every other team has given up 0.75 runs more per game. It’s a fair statement to say that the Royals have already cost themselves a game with their baserunning tactics. It’s time to end the madness. Hillman seems like a smart guy, and I’m confident that he recognizes that the costs of his running game have far exceeded the benefits. If he doesn’t, well, maybe I’m wrong about him.

- It’s been two weeks since the Royals foisted their team calendar on the world, and I still can’t get over this photograph of Mark Grudzielanek (scroll down.) Who took this photo? Robert Mapplethorpe?

Memo for Mr. Hillman...

Trey,

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I know you're a busy man.

I really love the way you use everyone on your roster. I really love the fact that you manage without fear, that you're willing to use your backup catcher as a DH, or the fact that even after you've pulled your starting center fielder earlier in the game, that you're willing to pinch-hit for his backup with the same backup catcher in order to take a shot at an game-tying extra-base hit or even a go-ahead homer. Even if it means a potential defensive arrangement that involves Mark Teahen or Esteban German in center field if the game continues.

But if you're willing to make whatever move is necessary under the circumstances, can you at least take the circumstances into account? With one out in the top of the ninth, with the tying run at first base, you pinch-hit for Joey Gathright with Miguel Olivo, with Francisco Rodriguez on the mound.

Admittedly, Gathright has about as much chance of driving that run home from first as I do. But Gathright is a left-handed hitter. Olivo is right-handed. And Rodriguez, whose claim to fame is that he has one of the best sliders in baseball, has (like most pitchers with a great slider) a marked platoon split. In his career, LHB have hit .205/.300/.329 against K-Rod. RHB have hit only .166/.251/.265.

More than that, Olivo's success in the majors has been almost entirely against southpaws, against whom his career line is .293/.322/.532. Against RHP, he's hit .220/.258/.362. Gathright, like most speed guys, doesn't have a marked platoon split.

Look, I understand that you need more than an infield single to tie the game in this situation. With two outs, I'd almost understand this move, because the odds of Olivo knocking a double into the gap are almost as good as the odds that Grudzielanek would follow Gathright's single with one of his own to drive in the tying run.

But with one out, a walk or an infield single puts the tying run in scoring position, and gives you two shots to tie the game, with Grudzielanek and - more importantly - with Mark Teahen, who's a left-handed batter with great plate discipline, the perfect weapon against K-Rod's suddenly-diminishing repertoire. (Witness what Alex Gordon had done to him earlier in the inning.) If Gathright gets on, the worst case scenario is that you have Teahen facing K-Rod where a single ties the game. And as a bonus, you get Gathright - representing the go-ahead run - on the bases. Anything in the gap and Joey might lap Buck home.

There is a time and a place where pinch-hitting for Gathright with Olivo makes perfect sense. But I had never seen a scenario in which it made sense to deliberately give up the platoon advantage in order to send up a free-swinging hitter with a career .220 average against RHP to face the hard-throwing right-hander with a nuclear slider. And I still haven't seen it.

We probably would have lost the game anyway, and frankly this is small potatoes compared to your persistent use of kamikaze baserunning tactics in defiance of overwhelming evidence that this is absolutely killing the team. (What were you thinking, letting Alex Gordon try to steal second with the tying run at 3rd base? Against one of the toughest right-handed pitchers in the game to run against? Two guys managed to steal a base against Garland in all of 2007. Six died trying. In Garland's career, exactly half of attempted steals have ended in failure.)

Again, I admire the aggressiveness of your tactics. But as you yourself have said, what you want in your hitters is controlled aggression at the plate. You might want to control some of that aggression on the basepaths as well. And tonight, controlled aggression might have kept you from sending an inferior option to the plate in the 9th inning.

Your friend,

Rany.

Reason #1: The Boss.

Like there was ever any doubt.

There’s little to say about Dayton Moore that hasn’t been said before, and probably said by me before. But nearly two years after he was hired, it is undeniable that the day the Royals hit rock bottom was the day before they hired Moore. (True story: there was a rumor going around shortly before Moore was hired that the Royals were prepared to offer the GM position to…Steve Phillips. For about 48 hours I was contemplating switching my allegiances to a less star-crossed ballclub. Like, say, the Cubs.)

Allard Baird was not, in the grand summation of things, a terrible GM. He made some terrible moves, to be sure. Some were of his own volition (Johnny Damon and Mark Ellis for Angel Berroa and Roberto Hernandez.) Some were forced upon him (Jermaine Dye for Neifi Perez.) But he also made some moves that were truly inspired. Baird traded Carlos Beltran for Mark Teahen, John Buck, and Mike Wood, a trade which has at various times over the years looked terrible, brilliant, and terrible again, but from where I’m standing today looks like an excellent trade given the circumstances. (Especially when you consider that a lot of analysts thought the Royals would have been better off going after the Angels’ star third base prospect, Dallas McPherson.)

When Baird became disenchanted with his options on which to use the #1 pick in the 2005 Rule 5 draft, he found an eager buyer for the pick in the Texas Rangers and extracted Esteban German from them. Joe Posnanski wrote a column the following day detailing his epic quest to figure out who the Royals were trading for – Baird had given him a few clues – and his disappointment when he finally solved the puzzle:

“You know,” I tell [Baird], “I spent an awful lot of time trying to figure out your mystery second baseman. I didn’t think I would end up with some guy I never heard of, Esteban German, who had four at-bats in the majors last year. I’m not sure that was worth it.”

It was worth it. A total of 89 players have batted 700 or more times in a Royals uniform, and German ranks 2nd with a .381 OBP, just ahead of Kevin Seitzer’s .380 mark. (I’ll let you guys use the comments to speculate over who ranks first, with a .385 OBP.)

My favorite Baird trade, though, was probably the time he suckered the Pirates – a few days after they had dumped Jason Kendall’s salary to Oakland – on the need for a veteran backup catcher. Benito Santiago played in six games for the Pirates before his career ended. In exchange the Pirates took on half his salary (a cool $1 million)…and Leo Nunez.

On the whole, Baird was a mediocre GM. He was absolutely hamstrung by ownership at times, but that can’t excuse the Damon trade, or picking up Matt Diaz but then designating him for assignment after he had hit .371 in Omaha, after hitting .332 and .354 in Tampa Bay’s farm system the two previous years. And it absolutely can’t excuse the 2001 draft, one of the most disastrous drafts executed by any team in history. Remember, David Glass opened up his pocketbook to sign both Colt Griffin and Roscoe Crosby. It wasn’t the owner who argued in favor of Bust One and Bust Two, it was his front office. (The sidenote to that draft was that the Royals’ third-rounder, Matt Ferrara, who played shortstop at Alex Rodriguez’s alma mater, wasn’t even listed in Baseball America’s draft preview as a potential Top-15 round pick. Ferrara hit .220/.301/.350 in his career, never escaped rookie ball, and was finished at age 21.)

Even some of Baird’s best moves, as they appeared at the time, lost their luster quickly. He traded Jason Grimsley for Denny Bautista, which at the time looked like the heist of the year. He traded Jose Bautista for Justin Huber. The Royals were supposed to get an above-average starter and a middle-of-the-lineup hitter out of those deals; instead they ended up with a lot of heartburn.

But it’s the team’s failures in drafting and player development that stung the most. There’s only so much talent you can acquire by swindling other GMs. When you’re a small-market team and you’re limited in how much talent you can buy, the only remaining option is to be an industry leader in the talent you develop. Under Baird, the Royals were always lagging behind others in that regard.

So in evaluating Moore, we have to keep in mind that it will take years before we can truly evaluate the most important part of his job, his ability to lead an organization that identifies, signs, and develops amateur players better than anyone else. Moore was hired a week before the 2006 draft, but Atlanta sensibly denied him the opportunity to assist the Royals in the war room, given that he had been preparing for that draft as a member of the Braves all spring. (Not surprisingly, that was a rather disjointed draft for the Royals. Hochevar emerged as a compromise pick at #1 overall, and second-round pick Jason Taylor was suspended for all of last season for off-field issues. Third-rounder Blake Wood looks awfully good, though.) It will be years before we can evaluate the 2007 draft and the players signed out of Latin America in the last two signing periods.

We can’t evaluate the results, but we can evaluate the process. The Royals added a third short-season minor league affiliate last season, and are one of only two franchises with that set-up. More teams means more playing time, more playing time means more players with an opportunity, and the more players with an opportunity to develop, the more likely you are to get lucky and find a diamond in the rough. Now that MLB has eliminated the draft-and-follow process, teams can no longer draft 50 guys, sign 20 of them, and then watch the other 30 play in junior college. If your 27th-round pick suddenly adds 5 mph to his fastball when he returns to campus, well, you’re out of luck. But if you signed that pick because you have a third affiliate to place him at, you’re prepared to reap those rewards.

The Twins, to pick an AL Central rival with a well-regarded player-development crew, signed only 22 of their draft picks from last season. The Indians signed 26, the White Sox 24, the Tigers 29.

The Royals? They signed 35.

Then there’s the fact that Moore has gotten Glass to open up the pursestrings for amateur talent in a way that Baird, for whatever reason, never could. The Royals signed five different players out of Latin America to six-figure signing bonuses, which is more Latin players signed to six-figure bonuses in the previous decade combined. (I’m almost certain on that, although the lack of data on bonuses to foreign players makes it impossible to check.) None of those players are likely to surface in the majors until 2011 at the earliest, but the focus on the long term is exactly the sort of thing the Royals have been lacking for the last 15-20 years, ever since Ewing Kauffman’s health started to fail and the Royals started making short-term moves to win him one more title.

The focus on player development ought to have a huge impact on the organization in a few years. In the meantime, Moore has done what many thought was near-impossible before he was hired: he has made the rest of baseball respect the Kansas City Royals again.

Moore was highly respected himself throughout baseball well before he became a GM. Baseball America named him the top GM candidate in baseball back in 2004, and the Red Sox had offered him their GM position when Theo Epstein briefly left the team the following year. But there was concern that the Royals would infect him with their stench of hopelessness. Instead, it’s been the other way around – Moore’s confidence, preparedness, and baseball intellect has rubbed off on the rest of the organization.

I knew things had changed in Kansas City when I was speaking to a scout right after the Royals signed Gil Meche. It wasn’t that the scout liked the Meche signing; like virtually everyone else in baseball, he thought the Royals overpaid. It was that the mere fact that Dayton Moore signed him made him reconsider. “He looks like a good #4 starter to me,” he said, “but if Dayton wanted him that badly…now I’m not so sure.”

That, my friends, is respect. And that’s respect that Moore had earned before he had done anything as a general manager. Eighteen months later, after the Meche signing – and many other moves – worked out better than almost anyone outside the organization had expected, that respect has only grown. Throughout baseball, throughout the Royals fan base, and certainly throughout this blog.

I’ll stop here, but hopefully I’ll be back later with an analysis of every significant move that Moore has made since the day he was hired. No doubt there have been some clunkers. It’s just that you have to sift through some real gems in order to find them.

Royals Today: 4/15/2008.

Updating y’all on our stat nugget from yesterday…the Royals have now allowed 33 runs in 13 games. Going back to 1982, here’s a list of every AL team which allowed 33 or fewer runs in its first 13 games:

26: 1988 Cleveland Indians, who finished 78-84, sixth in the AL East, and 8^th in the league in runs allowed.

28: 1982 California Angels, who led the league in runs allowed and went 93-69, losing to Milwaukee in the ALCS.

28: 2001 Boston Red Sox, who finished 82-79, the worst record of any Red Sox team in the last decade. They also finished just 5^th in the league in runs allowed.

33: Four teams: the 1985 Kansas City Royals (won a world championship, 2^nd in the AL in runs allowed), the 1991 Red Sox (finished 84-78, 7 games out, and 6^th in the league in runs allowed), the 2007 Red Sox (won a world championship, led the league in runs allowed), and the 2008 Royals.

So of the six other teams on the list, two won a championship, one lost in the playoffs, two finished a little over .500, and one lost 84 games. Half the teams finished 1st or 2nd in runs allowed, the other half finished around the league average. The Royals are following in the footsteps of some great teams...but also some mediocre ones.

Again, the mitigating factor for the Indians was that they played so many games against a hapless Baltimore Orioles team. The Royals have no such crutch; regardless what you think of the Tigers as a whole, you can’t deny that their lineup is formidable.

The Royals have had the weather in their favor; it’s hard to hit in cold weather, which is why offense is always down in April (and this has been a particularly cold April, which is why the American League as a whole has scored just 4.42 runs a game.) Back in the 1980s, the season started later and teams were not subject to early-April cold as much. (The 1985 Royals had only played 5 games through April 15^th.) On the other hand, offenses were much less productive in general in the 1980s; the league as a whole scored 4.56 runs a game in 1985.

Thirty-three runs in 13 games is impressive no matter how you slice it. If the worst-case scenario for the Royals is winning 78 games, we’ll take it. But we’ll also hold out for the best-case scenario.

- It’s not all pitching. The team’s defensive efficiency is .737, which sounds amazing – last year the team’s mark was .689. But there’s a lot of confounding factors there. The cold weather that is keeping offense down also artificially inflates defensive efficiency. The median defensive efficiency right now is .7065, a full 13 points higher than last year’s full-season mark. Even so, the Royals, who ranked 23^rd last season, currently rank 4^th in the majors. Do we give Brian Bannister credit for that? If it’s true that he can manipulate BABIP in his favor, that would mean that the team’s defensive efficiency (which is basically the inverse of BABIP in the first place) would have improved through no fault of the defense.

And comparing this year’s defense to last year’s…where would such an improvement come from? The only significant difference between 2007 and 2008 is that Jose Guillen is in right. Guillen has a gun, but no one has accused him of possessing tremendous range. Has the fact that Joey Gathright played most of the innings in center made a difference? Alex Gordon got off to a horrible defensive start last year, and has been much more steady this year. But I don’t see an obvious reason for the Royals to have made this kind of improvement, other than the fact that what looks like defense may in fact be pitching. This will be a development to keep an eye on as the season unfolds.

- I love the fact that Hillman has twice used Miguel Olivo as his DH against LHP. Love love love. Olivo crushes LHP – his career mark is .293/.322/.532 – and getting both Buck and Olivo in the lineup at the same time makes the most of a catching “platoon” that involves two remarkably similar players. Essentially Hillman is platooning Olivo with Gload, with Butler moving from DH to 1B. This gets Olivo more playing time than your typical backup, without taking PT away from Buck. It also eases Butler into playing first base, giving the Royals the opportunity to evaluate him for full-time play.

The downside – and the reason I’m so impressed Hillman has made this move – is that your backup catcher is DHing, which means if your starter gets hurt you have to lose the DH in order to get Olivo behind the plate. It’s a minimal risk – how often does a catcher have to leave a game because of injury? – but that minimal risk is the entire reason why most managers are terrified of DHing their catcher. Most managers will always take the risk-averse option. On this point, Hillman has not, and last night his gamble led to a key 2-run homer.

- Now that we’ve properly massaged Hillman’s ego, can I make a suggestion? Can we please go back to 11 pitchers?

Seriously, this is ridiculous. You have a starting rotation which has given you over 6.6 innings per start. Hillman has shown a willingness to push the envelope a little with pitch counts; Bannister went 111 pitches Sunday and Greinke’s gone 107 pitches in back-to-back starts, which is nothing unusual in the middle of summer but a little aggressive at the beginning of April, in cold weather. The Royals have back-to-back complete games which represent a full one-third of the AL’s total of CGs all year. More than that, the Royals starter has completed five innings every time out, and has gone at least 6 innings in ten of thirteen games.

On top of that, the top six men in your bullpen have allowed 4 runs in 29 innings 1 run in 26 innings. They’re lights out. Joakim Soria, Leo Nunez, and Ramon Ramirez – the Hispanic Panic (if you’re the other team) – have combined for 14.1 scoreless innings, with 8 hits, 2 walks, and 19 Ks. All six guys are fully capable of protecting a one-run lead in the ninth or keeping a game tied in extra innings if the need arises.

So why do we need Hideo Nomo, or any pitcher in that slot? Jimmy Gobble has thrown all of 2 innings this year – two devastating innings, I might add. He’s on pace for 25 innings all season. If we can’t find enough innings for Gobble, what do we need Nomo for?

Bring up another hitter. It could be a lefty hitter to pinch-hit when one of the catchers is stuck facing Pat Neshek or some other sidewinding righty in the late innings. It could a be righty slugger to pinch-hit for Gload or Gathright or DeJesus against a LOOGY. It could be a third catcher if Hillman really wants to be aggressive about playing Buck and Olivo at the same time. Whoever you bring up is going to have some value. Which is more than you can say about the Royals’ seventh reliever at this point.

(Having said that, I must concede that if you’re going to have a four-man bench, the Royals would be hard-pressed to come up with a better one than the one they have. Gathright plays everywhere, and can come in to bunt or pinch-run. Callaspo compensates for the lineup’s biggest weakness – Pena having to bat when the Royals are losing – and between him and German the Royals have two guys who can play everywhere but catcher. Olivo has already proven he can do more than just play when the starting catcher needs a break.)

- I’m supposed to be on with my friends at 810 WHB, Steven St. John and Nate Bukaty, tomorrow (Wednesday) morning around 8:30. If you’re interested.

- Dayton runs tonight or tomorrow morning. I promise.