State of the Royals: May 2008.

I had this idea of doing a summation of where the Royals stand at the end of each calendar month, only to find when I woke up yesterday that Sam Mellinger had pretty much the same idea. Which goes to prove that great minds think alike. Also, that Sam can be very annoying. (On the other hand, his take on the Bissinger mess was excellent. If you guys aren’t Buzzed out by now, I might give you mine at some point.)

Anyway, I figured I’d go ahead with one anyway. The Royals are 12-16, a .429 winning percentage virtually indistinguishable from last year’s .426 mark. Moreover, whereas last year’s team scored 704 runs and allowed 788, leading to a Pythagorean record of 74-88, this year’s team has scored 101 runs and allowed 131, which over the course of a full season would lead to a 60-102 record.

I wouldn’t be overly concerned. The Royals are not outperforming their Pythagorean record because of a flukish performance in one-run games. In fact, despite an excellent bullpen (and teams with excellent bullpens have been proven to do better-than-expected in one-run games), the Royals are just 3-3 in one-run games. They’re 1-5 in two-run games, so they’re record in games decided by two runs or less (4-8) is worse than their record otherwise (8-8).

The downfall of the team is that they’re 0-6 in games decided by 5 runs or more. That is a meaningful stat – the mark of good teams is that the ability to clobber the opposition – but the Royals’ inability to blow out their opponents may have more to do with their inability to score enough runs to qualify as a blowout no matter how good their pitching is. Twice the Royals have lost by 10 runs or more – take out those two games, and the team would be 12-14 with 98 runs and 103 runs allowed. In other words, the Royals are two games away from actually having a Pythagorean record that’s better than their actual record. Meanwhile, the Royals can’t have won any games by 10 runs or more, because they haven’t scored 10 runs in a game yet.

And that’s the crux of the problem. The Royals have scored 3.61 runs per game, and you can’t aspire to even .500 with that kind of an offense, no matter how good your pitching is. Put it this way: the sweet spot of run production is between 3 and 5 runs in a game. So far in 2008, the other 29 teams are 163-175 (.482) when they score between 3 and 5 runs per game. The Royals are 9-4. That’s an amazing record, and a testament to the quality of their pitching. The problem is that they’ve already played 10 games in which they’ve scored fewer than 3 runs, and they’re 1-9 in those games. (Also, they’re just 2-3 in games they’ve scored more than 5 runs, which is probably a fluke.)

You might remember, the Royals scored between 3 and 5 runs in each of their first 8 games, and were 6-2. Well, they’ve now gone 10 straight games without scoring between 3 and 5 runs; their runs scored have gone 1, 1, 6, 0, 8, 2, 2, 9, 9, 1. In six of their last ten games the offense has given the pitching staff no margin for error, and not surprisingly the Royals are 3-7 in that span.

- The pitching staff ranks 11^th in the league in runs allowed per game, and despite what you might think, that’s not all Hideo Nomo’s fault. (If Nomo had given up 2 runs instead of 9 in his Royals stint, the Royals would still rank 10^th in the league.) The pitching staff has been more schizophrenic than Sybil. Fourteen pitchers have toed the hill for Kansas City – five of them have ERAs under 2.40, seven of them have ERAs above 5.90, and only two (Bannister and Gobble) are in the middle.

Behold the power of the small sample size.

Taken as a whole, the team’s pitching staff gives reason for optimism. In 245 innings, the staff has walked just 81 batters (2^nd in the league) with 181 strikeouts (7^th in the league) and 25 homers allowed (7^th in the league). The team ranks as poorly as it does in runs allowed because the staff has allowed 261 hits, ranking only 9^th in that category, despite the fact that the Royals have played the fewest games in the league.

Early in the season I pointed out that the Royals ranked near the top of the league in defensive efficiency, despite no defensive upgrades that would explain such a ranking, and that the team’s defensive performance might be a fluke. Well, we have our answer: it was. The team’s Def-Eff is now .687, which ranks 3^rd from the bottom in the majors, ahead of only the Pirates and Rangers. I didn’t believe the Royals top-five ranking was legitimate then, and I don’t believe their bottom-five ranking is legitimate now. The defense should do a better job of turning batted balls into outs as the season goes on, which means that we can expect the pitching staff to hold steady or possibly improve even as the weather warms up.

- The offense is similarly schizophrenic, just at a much less ambitious level. Nine guys have played in 15 or more games this season. Four of them (Grudzielanek, Gordon, Teahen, and Butler) are hitting close to league average (OPS+ of between 97 and 114). Two guys (Buck and Gload) are doing poorly but not egregiously so (OPS+ of 82 and 83). Two guys flat-out suck (Gathright and Guillen, OPS+ of 52 and 46). And one guy is threatening to redefine offensive suckitude as we know it – Tony Pena’s OPS+ is 1, and he needed a two-hit game on Wednesday to get it out of negative territory.

Guillen’s performance to this point is the single most worrisome development of the season. He’s hitting .176/.212/.333. I realize he’s a streaky hitter, and you can argue that since starting the season 6-for-49 that he’s been on a hot streak the last 16 games. If .220/.258/.475 is Guillen’s idea of a hot streak, Dayton Moore just flushed 36 million dollars down the drain.

- You may not be happy with how the Royals are performing, but Guillen notwithstanding, if you’re a Royals fan you have to be happy with who is doing the performing.

Of the 13 men who have batted for the Royals this season, here’s how I would have ranked them at the start of the season in terms of their future importance to the Royals:

Gordon
Butler
DeJesus
Guillen
Teahen
Callaspo
Buck
Gathright
German
Gload
Pena
Olivo
Grudzielanek

The first seven guys all project as starters in 2010; the other six are either free agents or probable backups at that point. So if you’re simply judging the Royals on how well they’re building a lineup for 2010, then you look at those top seven and you see two guys hitting extremely well in a small sample size (DeJesus and Callaspo), three guys hitting roughly as expected (Gordon, Butler, Teahen), one guy who’s a little disappointing (Buck), and then an outright disaster in Guillen.

Here’s the same thought experiment with the pitchers:

Bannister
Meche
Soria
Greinke
Hochevar
BIG GAP
Bale
Nunez
Ramirez
Gobble
BIG GAP
Yabuta
Mahay
Tomko
Peralta
ENORMOUS GAP
Nomo

(Greinke ranks as low as he does simply because he’s a free agent after the 2010 season. If Moore hasn’t already broached the subject of a long-term deal with Greinke’s agent, he’s not doing his job.)

As much as I love what Nunez and Ramirez have done this year, the reality is that middle relievers are fungible – the fate of the Royals’ pitching staff rests in the hands of the first five guys on that list. Meche has been a disappointment. The other three guys have, each in their own ways, vastly exceeded what most people thought they were capable of, Bannister because everyone thought his rookie season was a fluke, Greinke because people questioned whether he had the mental toughness to succeed, and Soria because it was hard to imagine that Soria could pitch any better than he did last year.

Bannister has a 4.04 ERA and Greinke has a 1.47 ERA, but there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference in their real performance this season. Against Bannister, opposing hitters are batting .224/.273/.343; against Greinke they’re at .215/.262/.348. The difference is that Bannister had to pitch in Arlington the night there were gale-force winds blowing to right field, and that with runners in scoring position this year hitters are 8-for-22 against him. (Against Greinke, they’re 3-for-34.) They’re both on pace to be among the 15 best starters in the league this year.

It’s hard to judge Hochevar so far, but in five starts between Triple-A and the majors, e was outstanding in four of them. And quietly, he has shown excellent groundball potential; in his two starts in the majors, 24 of the 38 balls put in play against him have been grounders, which is outstanding.

As important as performance is health. And none of the pitchers (or hitters for that matter) have suffered any kind of serious injury.

The Royals may only be 12-16, but would you be happier if they Royals were 16-12 but they were doing so because Grudz was hitting .380 and Miguel Olivo had won the starting job behind the plate and had banged 8 homers and Brett Tomko was pitching out of his mind? I think not.

If you’re focused on the Royals’ chances of winning this year – and given how wide-open the division has been so far, I can’t blame you – then they’re performance this season, purely in terms of wins and losses, is disappointing. But if you evaluate the team with an eye to the future…well, the future of the Royals is, by and large, playing well.

***

Other subjects…Bob Dutton got some choice quotes from Hillman on the subject of pitch counts, and many thanks to Bob for following up on the topic. At this point, I’m not concerned. Hillman said, “I thought pitch counts are very relevant; I just think we hold onto them too closely.” In all honesty, he might be right. Baseball’s position on pitch counts has moved so rapidly over the past decade that it might be time to take a breather and re-evaluate.

I have no problem with a pitcher hitting 100 pitches regularly, and I have no problem with a veteran pitcher throwing 110-120 pitches regularly. Beyond 120, I do get nervous. But the reality is that, as Bob pointed out, aside from Meche’s long outing no Royals pitcher has thrown more than 111 pitches in a start. We’ll have to see how Hillman handles the staff as the weather warms up. But if the Royals’ pitch counts continue to resemble their April numbers all season, I will have no objections.

- When The Baseball Jonah was a rookie, I compared him to Bret Saberhagen as much for his precocity as for his pitching style, which was all about control. But I think the obvious comparison now is to Curt Schilling. I already connected the two together a few weeks ago when I mentioned how the two pitchers are among the stingiest in baseball history at giving up unearned runs. There’s a good reason for that. Greinke is on the verge of emerging, like Schilling, as a pitcher with a fantastic strikeout-to-walk ratio, but who can be beat with the long ball. Greinke’s last outing (7 4 2 2 0 9, 2 HR) looks like it was ripped right out of Schilling’s game log. Schilling didn’t become vintage Curt Schilling until he was 30 years old, but then, Greinke has always pitched with the moxie of a much older man.

The Schilling approach happens to be perfectly suited for Kauffman Stadium. Greinke lost on Thursday because he gave up 2 solo homers, because he had the misfortune of pitching in Arlington. Kauffman Stadium is one of the toughest home run parks in baseball, which neutralizes Greinke’s biggest weakness.

- It’s easy to diss Hochevar for not being Tim Lincecum or Joba Chamberlain. But on draft day, 2006, the consensus #1 player in the draft was neither Seabiscuit nor Joba. It was Andrew Miller.

Today, who would you rather have?

Hochevar was a disappointment in the minors last year, mostly because of a high ERA, but his peripherals were pretty good. Throw in his three good starts in Omaha this year, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio in the minors is 166 to 55, a tick better than 3 to 1. In 23 major league innings, he has a 3.86 ERA and has allowed one homer.

Miller, on the other hand, has a 6.57 ERA in 100 major league innings, including a 9.12 ERA this year, with 48 hits surrendered in just 26 innings. True, Miller had better minor league numbers, and no question has been hurt by being rushed to the majors. And yes, the Marlins defense has done him no favors this year.

But still…would you trade Hochevar for Miller right now? I’m not saying I wouldn’t. I’m just saying I’m not sure I would. Of course, Hochevar might get rocked by the time you read this.

- You are working on a long-term contract with Greinke’s agent, right, Dayton?

Royals Today: 5/1/2008.

Sometimes, you sit down to write a column with an idea of where the column is going, only to find that the evidence veers you off course. You had an axe to grind, a vendetta to fulfill, but the data simply didn’t cooperate.

What do you do? If you’re, I don’t know, Gerry Fraley or something, you just plow on ahead, logic and facts be damned. But the whole creed of sabermetrics is that you go where the evidence takes you.

I sat down last night planning to rip on Trey Hillman for his bizarre usage of Joakim Soria. Here’s what I wrote:

“I was a fan of the decision to hire Trey Hillman, and I still think that he has the makings to be a fine manager, the best we’ve had in a long time. But more and more I’m becoming concerned that, while he may be an asset in the clubhouse, he’s not a competitive advantage when it comes to making tactical on-the-field moves. In order to have a competitive advantage on your opponents, you have to do things differently than your opponents. Hillman has shown some signs of that, most notably his decision to occasionally play the entire outfield shallow in the hopes that the doubles and triples which get past them will be more than made up for by the many would-be singles that don’t fall in.

When Andruw Jones was at his absolute defensive peak – at which time he was probably one of the five greatest defensive centerfielders of all time – the key to his success was that because he was so good at reading balls off the bat, and had such a quick first step, that he could play 30-40 feet shallower than other centerfielders and still go back to catch flyballs hit over his head. In exchange, the combination of shallow positioning and great instincts made him death to Texas Leaguers, ducksnorts, looping flyballs in no-man’s land. In 1999 Jones made 493 putouts in centerfield, which meant he caught 96 more flyballs than any other centerfielder in the land (Steve Finley, with 397.) No amount of park factors or pitching staff tendencies or durability can account for 96 more putouts; Jones was playing centerfield on a completely different plane than everyone else.

I have no idea how much of Jones’ brilliance came from his talents and how much came from his positioning, but since then I’ve always wondered whether teams really have positioned their outfielders in an ideal manner. We now have enough data on batted balls to figure out whether moving outfielders 10 feet closer to home plate might prevent enough singles to make up for the doubles and triples. Someone who’s good at massaging that data should definitely make a study out of it. (If that study has already been done, please let me know.) But I’m glad Hillman’s at least thinking outside the box to improve his defense.

I digress. For as much as Hillman might be willing to think outside the box with his defense, his handling of his pitching staff is pure, unadulterated conventional wisdom. I speak specifically to his philosophy on using Joakim Soria, a philosophy that to this point seems predicated on extracting as little value from his best pitcher as possible.

Joakim Soria has pitched in 11 games this season. In all 11 games he came in at the start of the inning. This in itself is a little bothersome – if you’ve got a pitcher that never gets into a jam of his own, why not use him to clean up other people’s messes either? If a first-and-third, one-out jam in the eighth doesn’t call for Mr. Incredible, what does?

Anyway, Soria completed all 11 innings, and in every game he was the final Royals pitcher – 11 games, 11 games finished. He has faced 38 batters this year; not only have none of them scored, but only one of them – the aforementioned Clete Thomas – has reached third base. Aside from Thomas, the only one to reach second base is Milton Bradley, who reached on a Grudzielanek error last night. Soria has retired 33 of 38 hitters, including 24 straight at one point. He’s given up a double, two singles, a walk, and the ROE. Opposing hitters are hitting .083/.108/.111 against him this year.

So if you’re the manager, and you have the perfect fail-safe weapon in your arsenal, how would you deploy it? You’d use that weapon as much as possible, and you’d use it in the most critical situations, right?

Soria has thrown 11 innings in 26 games; he’s on pace for 68.2 this season. That’s a little lower for a 24-year-old reliever, but I’ll let that slide.

Let’s break down those innings. Nine of the 11 appearances were in the ninth inning, one was in the 11^th inning (Opening Day), and one was in the 8^th. As we said before, Soria has been used exclusively to close out games. That’s what closers do.

Now look at the score when Soria came in:

Leading by four: 3
Leading by three: 2
Leading by two: 1
Leading by one: 3
Tied: 0
Losing by one: 0
Losing by two: 1
Losing by five: 1

Twice Soria has been used when the Royals losing, including once in a pure mop-up role; both appearances were purely to get Soria some playing time after he hadn’t pitched in a while.

Six times Soria has pitched in a save situation, although two of those were when the Royals were leading by 3 runs, the softest save situation of all and one that drives us analyst types batty.

And three times Soria has pitched with the Royals leading by four runs, including last night.

I got this information from Soria’s page at baseball-reference.com, which also lists Soria’s “leverage” factor for each game. Leverage is a statistical tool that measures how much the game was on the line when a pitcher came into the game. A leverage score of 1.00 means that the leverage for that appearance was the equivalent of the start of the game, i.e. a 0-0 score in the first inning. The whole point of having a closer is that, while a closer might only throw 60-80 innings all year, he’s being used to protect small leads in the late innings, where the impact of a run allowed is huge. Typical closers will have Leverage scores around 2.

Four of Soria’s 11 appearances this year – basically, the four times he came in protecting a lead of one or two runs – have been high-leverage situations. His other seven appearances all had leverage scores of less than one. In nearly two-thirds of his appearances this year, Soria was used in a situation that had so little on the line that he would have been more helpful starting the game and then leaving after an inning.

That’s a criminal mis-use of resources. Why the hell do we need Soria to protect a four-run lead in the ninth? Yasuhiko Yabuta will protect a four-run lead 90% of the time. Hell, Hideo Nomo would get three outs before surrendering four runs 60-70% of the time. I’m not asking for Hillman to taunt the opposition by using the last man in his pen – just go with Leo Nunez, or Jimmy Gobble, and save Soria in the event they get into a real jam.

So far this year, Soria’s overall leverage – using the Baseball Prospectus measurement, which probably differs from the bb-ref stat a little – is just 1.41.”

Everything I wrote above is factually correct, but when I started looking at the facts a little deeper, I realized that as inefficient as Soria’s usage has been, I’m not sure how Hillman could have done much better.

I went through the box scores of every game this season, looking for high-leverage situations from the 7^th inning on in which Soria could have pitched. In particular, I wanted to figure out why, from April 8^th until April 24^th, a span of 14 games, Soria pitched just twice – on the 15^th and 16^th. He had six days of rest, pitched in consecutive games, then had seven days of rest again. There had to be situations in which Hillman could have made better use of his best pitcher, right?

Not really.

On April 4^th, the Royals trailed by one run from the fourth inning until the game ended. The next day they would trail by two runs in the seventh and eighth. Soria had pitched on April 2^nd and 3^rd, and would pitch on the 6^th, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t pitch in these two games.

On April 12^th, the Royals trailed 1-0 going into the seventh, and 2-0 thereafter.

On April 19^th, the Royals were tied 4-4 going into the bottom of the 7^th before the A’s scored two runs; the Royals would score a run in the ninth but fall short.

And…that’s pretty much it. The Royals have now played 27 games, and in only four of them did they have a one or two-run lead to protect in the late innings. Soria pitched the ninth, and got the save, in all of them.

Just five of the Royals’ 27 games have been decided by one run; they’re 3-2 in those games. That’s a very low total for any team, but especially the Royals, who are both scoring and allowing fewer runs than the league average, and the less run-scoring you have, the more likely you are to have a game decided by one run. There have been a total of 209 runs scored in the Royals’ first 26 games, an average of 4.02 per game per team.

To get an idea of how often the Royals should be playing one-run games, I went back to the 1985 NL, which averaged 4.10 runs per game. The 12 NL teams averaged 53 one-run games, ranging from 42 to 64 per team. So the Royals should expect to play a one-run game about a third of the time, but so far they’ve played far fewer than that.

(I ran these numbers before the mini-slugfest in Arlington last night, which increased the team’s runs per game figure to 4.24. That doesn’t change the expectations that much.)

They have now played six two-run games, but they’re 1-5 in those games. More importantly, every one of those five losses, and one of their two one-run losses, were games in which the Royals were down early and never came back to even tie the score.

For whatever reason – or more likely, no reason at all – the Royals simply haven’t had many close leads to protect in the late innings. When they have had the lead, they haven’t coughed it up, Soria or not. Do you know how many times the Royals have lost a game in which they were leading after four innings?

Twice. On April 18^th, when Bannister nursed a 2-1 lead into the sixth before coughing up four runs, and the next day, when the Royals had a 4-0 lead after four innings, but Greinke gave up three in the fifth, Ramon Ramirez gave up the tying run in the sixth, and the A’s scored the winning runs in the 7^th. That’s the only loss the Royals’ bullpen has had all season.

There are only two other games the Royals have lost in which they were tied after four innings, and in both of those games it’s because the Royals didn’t score any runs after the fifth inning. On April 27^th the Blue Jays broke a 2-2 tie with a run off Meche in the fifth, and won 5-2; on April 24^th the Indians and Royals were scoreless until the Indians got to Bannister for two runs in the 7^th.

The reason Soria hasn’t pitched more in high-leverage situations is simply that the Royals haven’t had many high-leverage situations. I mentioned before that Soria’s leverage score is 1.41. Well, Leo Nunez’s score is 1.56, which is higher than Soria’s (it’s not unusual to have a set-up man with a higher Leverage score than his closer) but not particularly high either. More importantly, every other reliever on the team has a Leverage score below one. The Royals have a great bullpen – well, a great top-half of a bullpen – and no opportunity to really use them so far.

And it’s hard to argue that Hillman’s usage of Soria has cost the Royals ballgames, because the Royals have yet to lose a game they were leading after 7, and have lost only two games were losing after 4.

It’s a lot more emotionally satisfying to throw stuff at my TV set when Hillman brought Soria in to pitch the ninth in a 9-5 game on Tuesday night. But looking at this rationally, we simply can’t evaluate Hillman’s use of his closer fairly at this point, because the season has so far conspired to give him precious few opportunities to do so.

"The Epic" Is Supposed to Refer to His Name, Not His Workload.

I know there’s a lot of topics I should cover since we last spoke, but first things first. 129 pitches? Really?

Even before the season began I was a little worried that Trey Hillman might bring with him, of all the philosophical differences between Japanese and American baseball, the one Japanese viewpoint that I disagree the most vehemently with: the cavalier attitude towards pitcher workloads. We’ve all heard the stories of how Daisuke Matsuzaka threw 250 pitches in leading his high school team to the Koshien championship, or how Matsuzaka and many other Japanese starters would be pulled from the game after throwing 140 pitches, only to go throw another 100 in a bullpen session immediately afterwards.

I’d like to think we’re a little more enlightened over here. We didn’t treat our pitchers that way when Hillman left for Japan 5 years ago, and we certainly don’t treat them that way today. But maybe Hillman missed the memo while he was gone.

In 1988, a starting pitcher threw more than 130 pitches in a game 211 times in the major leagues. In 2000, that number was down to 65. By 2004, it was 14.

Last year, it was zero.

Now, I’m not saying that a pitcher should never throw more than 130 pitches in a game, and frankly I’m surprised the pendulum has swung as far as it has the other way. A veteran pitcher, in a pennant race, in a tight game, with a shaky or overworked bullpen…there’s definitely a time and a place for 130+ pitches.

But in April? For a team that (realistically speaking) is unlikely to contend? It’s telling that, as David Boyce pointed out in the Star today, Meche had the highest pitch count of any Royals pitcher since July 28, 2001, three managers and a lifetime in the evolution of pitch counts ago.

That pitcher was Chad Durbin, who threw a complete game that day even though the Royals led 9-2 going into the ninth. Ah, the genius of Tony Muser. (The game I remember more than that one was the game on June 2^nd, when Durbin was sent out to pitch the 8^th in a 2-2 tie and gave up a single, a walk, and finally the deciding single on his 132^nd and final pitch. What made that game so memorable was that the entire inning Denny Matthews was telling us how tired Durbin looked on the mound, how he was, in Denny’s words, “really fighting it.” Our radio announcer was a far better judge of pitcher fatigue than our manager, which summed the Royals up pretty well.)

It’s not a coincidence that Durbin, who was a well-regarded prospect and was in the Royals rotation at the age of 22, blew out his arm the next spring and took six years to re-emerge last season as a competent swingman. Now, Durbin probably never would have become anything more than a league-average innings-muncher even had he never been hurt. Jose Rosado, on the other hand, was a two-time All-Star by the time he was 24 when he was allowed to throw 120 pitches seven times in eight starts in the summer of 1999. When that streak started, Rosado had a 2.80 ERA in 15 starts; he would post a 4.71 ERA the rest of the season.

The next season he would gut out five starts in April despite pain in his shoulder; the Royals claimed they were monitoring it but refused to get an MRI (hey, they cost almost two grand a pop!) until, after his fifth start – which he won – the pain was so excruciating that he could not bear it any more. The MRI showed that he had basically destroyed his shoulder. He never threw another pitch in the majors.

So pardon us if we’re a little paranoid about the care of our starting pitchers, particularly one who is under contract for $11 million a year from now through 2011. Yes, I realize they do things a little different along the Pacific Rim. Some guys can handle it fine. You just said goodbye to Hideo Nomo, who was subject to a workload in Japan that bordered on criminal, and was still a great starting pitcher until he was 34 – when he lost his fastball overnight. (By the way, that was five years ago. I’m glad you finally noticed.) Some guys can’t. You might remember seeing Chin-Hui Tsao in camp this spring. Tsao was one of the best pitching prospects in baseball five years ago; now he’s struggling to make it out of Triple-A as a reliever. This might have something to do with it.

I realize I'm one of the leaders of the pitch count revolution, given that I've been writing about the subject for almost ten years. But I’m really not that concerned about one start, Trey. Meche is 29; his arm is fully-developed. He hasn’t had any major injury issues in six years. The Royals had a day off yesterday, so presumably he’ll get an extra day of rest before his next start. He had only thrown 83 pitches his last time out. Nunez and Soria had both pitched three days in a row, Ramirez had thrown two of the last three days, so maybe you asked Meche to gut it out in a close game rather than leave the game up to the bottom-feeders in the bullpen.

If that’s your rationale, I’m fine with it. If 129 pitches represents the rare confluence of a number of unusual factors, an anomaly that’s unlikely to be repeated any time soon, then I’m cool.

But I don’t know that for sure. (And my friends at the Star have not, to this point, asked you about it.) All I know is that, less than a month into your managerial career in North America, you let one of your most valuable commodities throw 129 pitches in an April game, the most pitches thrown by a starter in April since Curt Schilling threw 133 on April 25^th, 2006. If you’re willing to do that in April, when most pitchers are still stretching out their arms and haven’t hit their mid-season stride, what are you going to do in July?

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?