Introducing...

…Amira Rayanne Jazayerli, who was born on Sunday, January 18^th, at 6:50 am. Despite being born a few weeks early, she weighed in at a healthy 7 pounds, 6 ounces, and she and her mother are doing very well, thank God – they left the hospital yesterday. Grandmothers are in town to help with the baby and – equally importantly – with her older sisters, allowing me to go back to my usual routine of goofing off on the internet all evening.

Things are slowly returning to normal, although I fear that my standards for what constitute “normal” will once again slip a little bit. But between the baby, my first experience with sciatica (mild, thankfully – I can’t imagine how bad a severe case would be) courtesy of an 11-year-old snowboarder who plowed into my back while I was sitting on the snow adjusting my board, and a computer crash which necessitated a complete reformatting of my hard drive – there’s been a lot of distractions going on around here. I appreciate your patience.

I’ll try to return to my Time Capsule on the 1995-96 Royals shortly, and I’m excited about the first RotR player interview, which hopefully will be ready soon. The interview has gone so well that we might run it over at Baseball Prospectus; if it does, it should be a non-premium article so that everyone can read it.

In the meantime, I owe you guys some Royals stuff to chew on…let’s talk about the arbitration cases, some that have settled, some that haven’t. Among the ones that did, there’s Jimmy Gobble, who will make almost exactly what he made last year ($1.35 million) in the hopes that he won’t pitch like he did in 2008 (8.81 ERA). Even in his worst season, Gobble held lefties to a line of .200/.246/.323; his one disastrous ten-run outing raised his ERA about two-and-a-half points. Between Ron Mahay, John Bale, and possibly Horacio Ramirez, the Royals have neither reason nor temptation to use Gobble except in the strictest of LOOGY roles. I’d argue that such a role isn’t a valuable use of a roster spot, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Gobble can be effective enough in that role to justify his salary.

Joel Peralta got $640,000. As a general rule, if you’re eligible for arbitration and settle for a six-figure salary, it’s tantamount to admitting that you’re lucky you’re still on the roster in the first place. Peralta’s salary is barely over the league minimum; a greater concern for the Royals is that he’s a good bet to be left off the roster completely, and I believe he’s out of options. Arbitration salaries are only one-sixth guaranteed, so while I’d advocate the Royals do the merciful thing and put Peralta out of his misery now, it’s hard to get worked up over 100 grand.

John Buck got $2.9 million, which just makes him and Miguel Olivo ($2.7 million) that much more indistinguishable. Every day I wait for Dayton Moore to realize how superfluous it is to have two low-OBP, moderate-power right-handed catchers in their late 20s on the roster, let alone to pay each of them close to $3 million, especially when you have a switch-hitting contact-oriented catcher in Brayan Pena who’s ready for a backup role (and out of options) and will get paid around the league minimum. So far, a trade is not forthcoming. I’m sure there is a plan here, but like a lot of Moore’s decisions this winter, I haven’t been able to pierce the shroud that covers it.

Four players have exchanged figures with the Royals. Three of them – Mark Teahen ($3.85/$3.05), Mike Jacobs ($3.8/$2.75), and Brian Bannister ($2.025/$1.45) are relatively inconsequential. The disparities in dollars are not enormous, none of the numbers appear out of whack, and there’s no reason for the Royals to sign any of the three to a long-term deal at this point. The Royals have not gone to an arbitration hearing with any player in the Moore era, and I don’t see that changing with these three guys – expect all three to settle near the midpoint.

The fourth player is Zack Greinke, who is asking for $4.4 million, and whom the Royals offered $3.4 million. Granted that I’m not any kind of expert in the arbitration process, but I must say that I found both of these numbers kind of low. I mean, Prince Fielder just signed a two-year deal with Milwaukee, but before signing he had submitted an arbitration figure of $8 million and the Brewers had countered with $6 million. Yes, Fielder has certainly had a better 2007-08 than Greinke did, but then, he’s just a three-year player, whereas Grienke is a four-year player.

I don’t mean to suggest that either side made a mistake. I’m just saying that the arbitration process does not assess the future value of a player so much as his past value, and in Greinke’s case – largely because he was not a full-time starter until 2008 – this has the effect of depressing his earning potential. Which, of course, helps the Royals.

But that help is likely to be fleeting if Moore doesn’t use this as an opening to get a long-term deal done. Greinke is going to make $4 million in 2009, more or less; if he has another season in 2009 as he did in 2008, I imagine his arbitration award in 2010 would be in the 8-10 million range. So let’s say $13 million over the next two years. I have previously advocated that the Royals offer Greinke a 4-year, $44 million deal – if anything, that might be generous, as it would be pegging his value in 2011-2012 at $31 million over two years. If Greinke continues to pitch like an ace, $15.5 million a year might well prove to be a bargain; on the other hand, in this economy that might prove to be his upside. More importantly, the cost certainty of having that contract in hand today instead of two years from now is worth a discount.

Cole Hamels just signed a 3-year, $20.5 million deal. Hamels, like Greinke and Scott Kazmir, is a product of the 2002 draft (nice first round for high school pitchers there), but is a super-two player who’s eligible for arbitration for the first time, so his salary is not exactly comparable. But keep in mind that his track record is significantly better than Greinke’s as well.

When you look at all the contract precedents out there, you can’t help but conclude that the Royals should be able to get a deal done for 4/44, or maybe even 4/40. (Or, better still, 4/40 with an option year or two in the $12-16 million range.) The Royals can absolutely afford such a contract, particularly since the contract can easily be backloaded – just transfer the money that Jose Guillen is stealing from the team to Greinke once JoGui’s contract is up.

I know I can’t go more than a few weeks without bringing up Greinke’s contract status and suggesting some new contract permutation that will work for both sides. But this is important, dammit. Everything else this winter is just window dressing. If Moore wants my support back, there’s no quicker way to get it.

Call me the incorrigible optimist that I am, but I think this could still happen. Greinke’s recent comments to Sam Mellinger left the door open to a long-term deal. There’s nothing in these arbitration numbers that send up a red flag. And while all the motion this winter hasn’t produced a lot of movement, it has at least produced the perception of movement in the minds of a lot of people – and people who happen to play for the Kansas City Royals are likely to perceive the acquisitions of established major league players a lot more positively than you or I. I’m not sure the Royals are any better than they were at the end of last season, but if they look better to Zack Greinke, and that factors into his decision to sign a long-term deal, then suddenly you have to look at the acquisitions of Jacobs, Farnsworth, Bloomquist et al in a much different light.

There’s a good chance that on Opening Day, for the second straight year, the Royals will not have any rookies on their roster. (Technically, Yasuhiko Yabuta was last year, but you get the idea.) That’s not ordinarily the sign of a young and improving team, but of course the Royals have tons of second- and third-year players. The difference is that jobs are not simply being handed to minor leaguers; they have to earn them. It’s very easy to take that philosophy too far and deprive deserving minor leaguers of a chance to perform in the majors – but the alternative, as we saw in the Allard Baird years, is that a team promotes every Tom, Ambiorix, and Leo who has a few hot weeks in Double-A. That philosophy didn’t simply stunt the development of some talented players – it also fed the perception that the Royals were a Mickey Mouse operation, that they weren’t a creditable major league organization. It’s no wonder that Greinke said, in his imitable way:

“The main way I look at it,” he says, “four years ago, when they asked me to accept the pitcher’s award, I was like, ‘Do I really have to? Do I have to go and say a bunch of stuff I don’t really mean? Whatever.’

“But now, when you look at how the team’s run, the team’s looking better, everything’s going in the right direction instead of at a standstill, you’re proud to do it. I don’t mind doing it. If it helps the team, I’ll be more than happy to do it.”

I don’t agree that everything is going in the right direction. But I can’t deny that if Greinke thinks that, well, perception drives reality. If Moore gets Greinke signed to a long-term deal between now and Opening Day, we’ll have to give him credit for being craftier than we thought.

That’s a big if. And the clock is ticking.

More on Bloomquist, the Royals, and the Nature of Democracy.

Well, I seem to have struck a nerve.

You could make a case that I overreacted to the Royals’ signing of a utility player to a modest contract…but if I have overreacted, then judging by the activity at virtually every Royals blog and forum in existence, we’re all overreacting. We’re overreacting to Willie Bloomquist, the player, because we’re really reacting to Willie Bloomquist, the symbol of a philosophy that has been failing to score runs in Kansas City for the better part of a quarter-century.

Mom always told me to count to ten before saying something when I was angry, and I was worried that I might have written something in the heat of the moment that I would regret later. But it’s been three days, and I wouldn’t take back anything I wrote. The Willie Bloomquist contract, examined in its context, is pretty much indefensible.

But I certainly can clarify some of my thoughts in light of the feedback I’ve gotten. Let’s start with the notion that a relatively minor signing has made me do a complete 180 with regards to my feelings about Dayton Moore. The reality is that I’ve been building to this moment all winter. This wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back so much as a straw-filled chest, but still, this was just the last of many personnel moves that individually were deflating, but collectively have me questioning my faith.

Joe Posnanski has already covered this, but the Royals will be spending about $25 million in 2009 on five players, at least four of whom will be in the starting lineup most nights, and four of those guys were acquired or re-signed this winter: Jose Guillen (career .323 OBP), Mike Jacobs (.318), Coco Crisp (.331), Miguel Olivo (.275), and now The Spork (.324). The acquisition of any one of these guys is forgivable – in Crisp’s case, even laudable – but to acquire all five guys defies common sense. For $25 million, you could have signed Mark Teixeira and still had money left over for Leo Nunez and Ramon Ramirez, who by the way would still be on your roster. (And I haven’t even mentioned the $6-7 million spent on Kyle Farnsworth and Horacio Ramirez.)

Baseball rewards balance, and punishes redundancy. One Jack Cust in your lineup is an asset, because he mashes the ball and you can hide him at DH – but if you’ve got four Jack Custs in your lineup, then you have no defense at three positions, and pretty soon you’re giving up runs faster than you can score them. Similarly, if you’ve got one low-OBP hitter in your lineup, he can bat ninth and compensate for his low OBP in other ways. But when you’ve got five low-OBP hitters in your lineup, then by definition some of them are going to have to lead off or bat in the middle of the order, and the liability of each additional low-OBP hitter has a multiplier effect.

With that said, my immediate reaction to the news that the Royals had signed Bloomquist was not spontaneous combustion. I reserved judgment until I knew the terms and context of the signing, and in fact had the word come down that the Royals were planning to release Tony Pena and that Bloomquist was signed with the clear purpose of serving as a seven-position utility player, I was prepared to surprise many of you by offering the contract my qualified support. But it didn’t, and so I didn’t.

Look, the front office is obviously going to talk sunshine and roses about a player who has just been acquired, and maybe my criticism of Hillman’s and Moore’s comments were unfair. (Although I still find Moore’s quote that Bloomquist is a “winner” just galling.) But what I find more meaningful than the boilerplate quotes about a player are the things that are not said. Dick Kaegel – and let’s keep in mind, Kaegel is an employee of the Royals, and as such can be considered the team’s mouthpiece – has written two articles on Bloomquist, and in those two articles Pena’s name appears only once – and that’s only in a listing of all the middle infielders on the 40-man roster. Alberto Callaspo’s name appears six times, including quotes like these:

“Bloomquist is expected to compete for the Royals' second-base job with Alberto Callaspo, who finished last season as the regular at that spot.”

and

“It’s a given that he’ll be able to outrun his principal second-base rival, Callaspo. Now he'll have to prove he's the better overall performer as well.”

Kaegel isn’t just pulling these statements out of thin air – these statements reflect the way that the Royals perceive Bloomquist. Even more damning, here’s a direct quote from Hillman:

“I hear he's a very good fielder at second base with plus-lateral range,” Hillman said. “He turns the double play just fine. He plays short just fine, but it's not his No. 1 infield position.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but saying that Bloomquist “plays short just fine” doesn’t sound like the most ringing endorsement of Bloomquist as the backup shortstop – particularly when the starting shortstop is Mike Aviles, who is perceived as a shaky defensive player. The most logical conclusion from all of this is that Bloomquist does not push Pena off the roster. The Royals have, incredibly, given a seven-figure contract to a guy who hits like a backup shortstop – and plan to waste another roster spot on a backup shortstop who hits like a pitcher.

Let’s hope I’m wrong. There are only four bench spots on a team with a 12-man pitching staff, and one of those goes to the backup catcher. That leaves three spots for Bloomquist, Mark Teahen, and Ross Gload, leaving Pena, Esteban German, and Shealy out in the cold. If Bloomquist represents the Royals’ decision to split the baby between German’s offense and Pena’s defense, wonderful. But pardon me for my skepticism; I’ve seen too many Royals teams hamstrung by bizarre personnel decisions. Teahen might get traded, or Gload might get released (a man can dream), or the Royals might go with a six-man bullpen. Or hell, if Callaspo has a bad spring they might waive him and give Bloomquist the everyday job. I’ll believe Tony Pena is a goner when he’s actually gone.

Beyond the direct on-field implications of having Bloomquist on the roster, there’s a sense that with each new acquisition, we’re finally getting a bead on Moore’s offensive philosophy, and it’s just more of the same – place a premium on the guys who hustle and run and give 110% and don’t beat themselves and insert-your-cliché-here, and stay away from the guys who, you know, hit for power and average and draw walks but don’t love the game with all their heart. It’s the same philosophy that didn’t work with Gerald Perry and Pat Tabler in 1990, and didn’t work with Tom Goodwin and Craig Paquette in 1996, and didn’t work with Terence Long and Joe McEwing in 2005, and I see no reason to think it’s going to work with Willie Bloomquist and Ross Gload in 2009.

Making this even more grating is that Moore has claimed, on many an occasion, that he is familiar with modern baseball analysis, that he understands the importance of OBP. And yet there isn’t a single player on the Royals’ roster – not one – that was acquired by Moore and has even a league-average walk rate. In 2008, the Royals drew fewer walks than all but three teams have in the past 75 years, and Moore’s solution has been to bring in three new players, none of whom has reached base even one-third of the time in his career. I’m tired of hearing one thing with my ears and seeing the exact opposite with my eyes. At some point, Moore’s credibility has to be called into question.

The other argument that I’ve seen used, in response to the notion that the Royals would have been better off signing a single premier free agent rather than spreading the money around to a bunch of mediocrities, is that no free agent worth his salt would sign with Kansas City. Sorry, but I’m not buying it.

The commenter “Stop the Madness” sums up this argument – I’m not picking on him, I’m using his post because he cogently lays out this line of thought:

“Can we please stop with the the fantasy baseball "we should sign X-player for X-million dollars" analysis? It takes two parties to enter negotiations... So, if you think Pat Burrell was just waiting by the phone for the Royals to call, or that he'd play for the Royals for the same salary he'd take from the pennant-winning Rays, you are being silly. Yes, silly. Any self-respecting agent for a GOOD player would take any offer from the Royals, and immediately shop it to 20+ other teams with better hopes of winning and probably make his client a few extra million dollars in the process.”

Do I think Pat Burrell would have signed with the Royals for the same contract the Rays offered? Of course not – all things equal, he’s going to sign with the better team. But do I think Pat Burrell would have signed with the Royals for more money than the Rays offered? Absolutely. All these arguments I’ve heard about the Royals being unable to sign a certain player that they wanted are true – but NOT ONE PLAYER signed with another team when the Royals had the best offer on the table.

Torii Hunter? The Royals offered 5 years, $80 million, and didn’t get him – because the Angels surprised everyone at the last moment with a $90 million offer. Andruw Jones? The Royals didn’t match the Dodgers’ 2 year, $36 million offer – and thank God they didn’t. Another commenter (ejfunk) argued “Did you really think Teixeira was going to sign with Washington?” No, because I didn’t think they’d have the best offer on the table – and they didn’t, not after the Yankees came through with an 8 year, $180 million offer.

It’s always possible – maybe even probable – that a quality free agent will listen to the Royals offer, but only in the hope that they can take that offer to another, better team and ask them to match it. But what if they don’t match it? Gil Meche was getting offered 4 years, $40 million from a pair of teams – the Royals tacked on another year and another million per, and guess what? No one matched it, and they got him. No one was willing to match 3 years and $36 million for Jose Guillen – for good reason – but the point is, the two times the Royals had the best offer on the table for a premier free agent, they signed him.

And as Sam Mellinger writes, “I hear from someone who would know that there was a time during Furcal's free agency that he would've gladly signed with a club like the Royals if they could've matched/surpassed the Dodgers' offer.”

So would Pat Burrell have signed with the Royals for 2/$16? No. Would he have signed for 2/$20? If the Rays weren’t willing to match, I’d say yes. And if they were willing to match, well, there’s Bobby Abreu, or Adam Dunn, or Ben Sheets, or…

I’m not advocating that the Royals should have signed Burrell, who wasn’t the greatest fit for the team – I’m just advocating that they should have targeted a premier free agent, and if they had put the best offer on the table, I’m confident it would be accepted.

(And let’s not compare the Royals to the Nationals. The reputation of the Royals with the national media notwithstanding, thanks to Moore & Co. the reputation of the Royals within the game is much, much better than it was two or three years ago. The Royals might rank lower on a prospective free agent’s radar than the Yankees or Angels, but they rank as highly as any other AL Central team.)

Here’s another way to look at it. Courtesy of ESPN’s Free Agent Tracker, I added up the 2009 salaries guaranteed by each team to free agents this winter. The Yankees top the list, obviously, at $66 million ($22.5 to Mark Teixeira, $23 to C.C. Sabathia, $16.5 to A.J. Burnett, $4 to Damaso Marte). The Cubs are second at $26.25 million, mostly to Ryan Dempster and Milton Bradley. Here’s the list of the top 15 teams, and the most pricey free agent each team signed:

NYY: $66 million

CHC: $26.25 million

SFG: $24 million

PHI: $19.5 million

LAD: $17.08 million

NYM: $13.46 million

LAA: $13 million

BOS: $12.5 million

CLE: $11.75 million

TBR: $10.3 million

CIN: $9.13 million

KC: $7.98 million

HOU: $6.25 million

The Royals rank 12^th out of 30 teams; they’d rank 11^th if I included John Bale, who is on ESPN’s list but who I’m not counting because the Royals released him with the express purpose of re-signing to a lesser contract. The only team in the AL Central who has spent more is the Indians; the Royals have spent more money in free agency so far than the other three AL Central teams combined.

And keep in mind, this doesn’t include the payouts to Miguel Olivo and Mike Jacobs, or Coco Crisp, not to mention Jose Guillen.

And that’s why this offseason has been such a failure: because with the economy in the dumps, and non-Red Sox/Yankee teams pulling back, the Royals have had a prime opportunity to leverage a reasonable outlay of cash to leapfrog the other teams in their division. Instead, they’ve been making cosmetic improvements.

I still think the Royals are likely to be a better team in 2009 than they were in 2008, because their trio of young players – Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, and Zack Greinke – are almost certain to play better in the aggregate, and because the Royals can’t help but improve on the 600 at-bats they got from Ross Gload and Tony Pena Jr. last season.

But if anything, that only makes this winter that much more frustrating. Before this winter started, I had pegged the Royals for somewhere between 76-79 wins in 2009. After a lot of movement but no real motion, I might put them somewhere between 78-81 wins – about two additional wins at the cost of millions of dollars. But if they had gone out and focused all their efforts on Adam Dunn, slotted him at 1B/DH, and eliminated all their other acquisitions except for the Coco Crisp trade, they’d probably be an 83-85 win on paper – close enough that if two of the big three had breakout seasons, they could take the division. Instead, their margin of error is much, much smaller.

And of course, the most important task on Moore’s plate for the last nine months – signing Greinke to a long-term deal – remains unfinished.

And that’s why I’ve withdrawn my support for Moore. That’s not to say that I am taking a position that he ought to be relieved of his duties. I just think it’s best that I reserve judgment for now. I’m done with offering my support without getting something in return. I’m no longer applauding a GM for acknowledging the importance of OBP until he actually acquires a single player with an above-average OBP. I’m finished with accepting talk as a substitute for results.

Finally, forgive me for getting a little worked up over the whole issue of fan loyalty. A number of people – some on this site, many more on other sites – have hinted that by jumping off the Dayton Moore bandwagon, that I have been disloyal to the Royals or otherwise damaged my credibility as a fan. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and I certainly encourage all of you to share those opinions freely on my site. But I find this line of thinking not just wrong, but dangerous.

Dissent is the sine qua non of any functioning democracy. The freedom to criticize one’s government without being accused of criticizing one’s country is the principle that led to the American Revolution and the foundation of a new nation. Believe me, as someone who has relatives that live in a country where publicly criticizing the government can and will lead you to prison, there are few rights I hold more dearly than the right to criticize those who have been entrusted by the people to govern on behalf of the people. Without belaboring the point too much, the conflation of dissent with disloyalty, of a lack of faith in our leaders with a lack of patriotism, has led to some of the ugliest periods in American history, from McCarthyism in the 1950s to some of the worst excesses committed in the past few years.

When it comes to our country, we at least have the right to choose our leaders; if we’re not happy with our president, we simply have to wait four years to elect a new one. But when it comes to our sports teams, we have no recourse to poor leadership except for dissent. If William Clay Ford had wanted to keep Matt Millen on as GM of the Detroit Lions for another eight seasons, Lions fans could do nothing but continue to wear bags on their heads. No one would call a Lions fan “disloyal” for any criticisms he might make regarding their team. No one would call a Chiefs fan “disloyal” for calling for Carl Peterson’s head the past few years, even if that same fan groveled at Peterson’s feet for the first decade of King Carl’s tenure. If a team is being run poorly, fans have the right – if not the duty – of calling out the people responsible.

It wasn’t anywhere close to being the worst moment in my time as a sports fan, but I don’t think I have ever been angrier as a sports fan than when Dick Vermeil, who coached a 13-3 team with the best Chiefs’ offense that anyone had ever seen, that had a first-round bye and opened the playoffs at home, lost that playoff game because the Greg Robinson-led defense surrendered 38 points without making the Colts punt once. But that’s not what made me angry. What made me angry was when, after quite literally two years of fan unrest regarding Robinson’s tenure leading up to that game, the Chiefs finally acknowledged the inevitable and fired Robinson immediately afterwards – only Vermeil spent most of the press conference castigating everyone who was critical of Robinson, defending his assistant to the bitter end.

We had heard for years about how high a priority Vermeil placed on loyalty, and that day we saw the ugly fruit of those misplaced priorities. Vermeil was loyal to his staff, alright – he placed loyalty to his staff above his loyalty to the team. He then lashed out at the rest of us for not sharing that loyalty, as if the point of being a Chiefs fan was to root for the front office.

Fans may get impatient, they may get stupid, but they never get distracted: their ultimate loyalty is always with the team. That’s the point of being a fan. Vermeil lost sight of that point. King Louis XIV said “l’etat, c’est moi,” and in that moment Dick Vermeil thought that he was the Chiefs, and I still think that that moment triggered the death spiral the Chiefs fell into over the next five years. (I hold Vermeil more accountable than Herm Edwards for the disaster that was the 2008 season.)

So if you think I’m wrong about Willie Bloomquist, speak up. If you think I’m wrong about Dayton Moore, rise up and make your voice heard. But please don’t say that I don’t care about the Royals anymore, or that I’m not rooting for them to win in 2009, or that I don’t hope with every fiber of my being that I spend all season eating my words as the Royals trample over the division on their way to the playoffs. And please don’t say that Rob Neyer isn’t a Royals fan anymore, even if he’s hinting at it himself. We all know he’ll be back the minute they start winning, and after writing professionally about baseball for the past two decades, observing as every non-Expo franchise in baseball except the Royals went to the playoffs, he’s earned the right to not have his fan credentials questioned.

It’s Dayton Moore’s job as general manager to put the Royals in the playoffs. It’s my job as a fan to hold him to that standard, and to call him out when I don’t think he’s doing his job. To say that I’m not a real fan because I have lost patience with Moore isn’t just misguided. It’s positively un-American.

xxx

I hope as many of you as possible are able to make it out to Royals FanFest, and that at least some of you make it to the revival of the Awards Night as well. I'd love to be there, but my wife is expecting our third child in two weeks, so I'm rooted here for now. I'm sure you all will be representing me in spirit.

Willie Bloomquist and the Howard Zone.

Man, I’m really getting tired of this sh*t.

I guess it’s appropriate that the Royals decided to interrupt my nostalgic trip to the mid-1990s by signing Willie Bloomquist, because Bloomquist reminds me of no one so much as a certain arch-nemesis of that era.

You see, if there was one player that summed up the frustration of being a Royals fan in the 1990s, it was our old pal David Howard. It’s hard enough to explain how Howard made it to the majors in the first place; he was a 32^nd round draft pick, and he never hit a lick in the minors. Howard actually raised his batting average over each of his first four years in the minors – the bad news is that he started at .194 in 1987, and over the next three years raised that number to .223, .234, and finally .250 for Double-A Memphis in 1990 – the same year he hit a career-high five homers.

Howard started the 1991 season in Omaha and went 5-for-41, but was recalled as a defensive substitution at that point. Then Hal McRae had a hissy fit over his defense at mid-year, and benched Kevin Seitzer and Kurt Stillwell and made everyday starters out of Bill Pecota and Howard. Howard batted 264 times that season, and hit .216/.267/.258. That should have been the end of that, but it wasn’t. From 1991 to 1997, Howard batted at least 100 times in six years out of seven (the exception being 1993, when he was felled by a viral illness called Bell’s Palsy and missed most of the year. Two years later I started medical school, and believe me, I aced that part of the syllabus.)

In those six seasons he never hit better than .243, or slugged better than .325, or on-based better than .310 – all of those numbers coming in 1995, which impressed the Royals so much that he was made a full-time starter in 1996. He hit .219/.291/.305. The following year Howard played Vic Wertz to Jim Edmonds’ legendary catch in centerfield, but what made that play so spectacular was the fact that Edmonds had to race back so far, because he was playing so shallow. Everyone played shallow on Howard.

Howard’s continued employment, and continued performance, was so aggravating precisely because the Royals were not a terrible team at that time, and the two or three additional wins that might have come from replacing Howard with a reasonably competent player might have actually had some relevance. To this day I have not figured out how Howard was able to hold onto his job for so long, but the best explanation was that the Royals were so blinded by his versatility, his athleticism (so many times we heard that Howard was the best athlete on the team), and his clubhouse presence that they simply could not see that DAVID HOWARD COULD NOT HIT.

Howard started a game at every position except pitcher and catcher during his Royals career, and even pitched one day in a blowout, walking five batters in two innings and allowing Scott Cooper (Scott Cooper!) to complete the cycle when Cooper singled to lead off the ninth in a game the Royals lost 22-11. To borrow the line about Moe Berg, Howard could play seven positions, and to the Royals it didn’t matter that he couldn’t hit at any of them.

Every team has a David Howard on their roster at some point; it’s just that usually it’s a different guy every year. It takes a special combination of incompetence and intransigence to willfully trot out the same guy year after year when he’s already proven he can’t hit. I didn’t witness a single comparable situation to David Howard and the Royals anywhere else in baseball throughout the 1990s. But in the 2Ks – that’s what I’m calling this decade – I finally got to laugh at another team’s inexplicable fetish for a (s)crappy ballplayer. For the first time since Howard left the Royals, another player seemed to have an equally mesmerizing hold on his organization. That player was Willie Bloomquist.

Bloomquist, like Howard, has no real track record of offensive prowess even at the minor league level. Bloomquist did hit an impressive .379/.457/.523 for half a season in the California League in 2000 – playing for Lancaster, a ballpark that makes Coors Field look like Chavez Ravine circa 1965. He was promoted to Triple-A at mid-season and hit .225/.253/.277 the rest of the year. The next year, he went to Double-A and hit .255/.295/.310 as a 23-year-old – eerily similar to Howard’s .250/.316/.336 line in Double-A at the same age. In 2002, Bloomquist hit .270/.328/.383 in Triple-A, then had the best-timed one-week hot stretch in the history of baseball, more or less. Called up on September 1^st, he played sparingly for three weeks, going 0-for-4 in that span. He then entered the lineup on September 22^nd and over the next seven games, batted 15-for-29, a performance which basically kept him in the majors for the past six years.

Bloomquist never hit that well – or hit, period – after that, but he was already in the Howard Zone. Versatility? Bloomquist has appeared at every non-battery position at least 30 times in his career (plus 20 career appearances at DH), and has started at each of those positions at least 11 times. (That’s right: on 11 different occasions, the Seattle Mariners – an actual major league franchise – have had Willie Bloomquist in their starting lineup as the first baseman.) Athleticism? I’ll let Trey Hillman speak for the defense: “Not only the versatility, but also the speed that he adds. He's a well-above-average runner and he gives us, depending on how things shake out in Spring Training, another added element because he might be in our lineup.” Character? Dayton Moore, please rise: “He's an on-base guy, a speed-type player and a hustler," Moore said. "He's a Craig Counsell-type who really plays hard, hustles and knows how to play.” (We’ll get back to that on-base thing later.) Hillman would like to take the stand again: “The reports are off the charts on character and team play and fire for the right reasons. That definitely came through in the conversation. He's hungry; he's excited.”

Versatility? Check. Athleticism? Check (he’s like Howard, only with speed!) Character? Off the charts! Can he hit? HELL NO.

Yep, we’re back in the Howard Zone.

Oh, there are reasons to think that Bloomquist isn’t quite as bad as Howard. His career line is just .263/.322/.324, with an OPS+ of 74, but that’s positively Ruthian compared to Howard’s .229/.291/.303 and OPS+ of 57. Bloomquist not only has speed, but seems to know how to use it; he’s 71-for-87 on the basepaths in his career. And he did have a .377 OBP last season, but unfortunately that seems to be Moore’s entire frame of reference for signing him. How else do you explain Moore calling him “an on-base guy”? Ignoring that cup of coffee in 2002, Bloomquist’s career high in OBP prior to last season was .321.

I don’t know what’s sadder: that Moore thinks that Bloomquist has suddenly established a new performance level at age 30, in a sample size of under 200 plate appearances; or that in the best year of his career, Bloomquist had a .285 slugging average. I mean, I’m all about OBP uber alles, but that’s obscene. As a commenter at Baseball Think Factory pointed out – beating me to the punch on the sort of obscure trivia I love – Bloomquist had the most hits (46) in modern major league history for a player with just one extra-base hit.

What is going to make it difficult for me to sleep tonight isn’t that Moore signed Bloomquist. It’s what the signing of Bloomquist says about the thought process of the entire front office. It’s not just that he signed Bloomquist (who, when all is said and done, has a place in the major leagues as the last player on the bench.) It’s not just that he signed Bloomquist for $1.55 million a year (with incentives!) It’s that he signed Bloomquist TO A TWO-YEAR DEAL, which hurts the team not just because of the financial commitment for 2010, but because of the roster commitment for 2010.

Last year Moore offered Ross Gload a two-year contract for no reason whatsoever; Gload wasn’t an impending free agent, and the Royals had all the leverage. Without the two-year deal, Gload likely would have been a non-tender target this winter much like Joey Gathright was. Instead, he’s still on the roster because the Royals feel the need to justify that contract. If Bloomquist craps the bed in 2009, thanks to Moore, he’ll still be back to soil some more sheets in 2010.

I don’t want to hang Moore by his own words, but he leaves me no choice with quotes like these:

“He's never really been an everyday player, but he's always had good people ahead of him like [center fielder Mike] Cameron, [shortstop Yuniesky] Betancourt and [second baseman] Jose Lopez.” Oh God, here we go with Yuniesky “We offered Billy Butler for him straight up” Betancourt. If Bloomquist is the new Howard, Betancourt is shades of Angel Berroa – a .280 hitter who swings at everything under the sun, and who came into the league with a good defensive rep but whose defensive numbers now suggest he’s almost unplayable. Jose Lopez? He never had an OPS+ of even 90 before 2008. The fact that Moore thinks these guys are “good people” is galling. The fact that Bloomquist backed these guys up is not a defense of him – it’s a condemnation.

“He's a winner, he has versatility and he's a very good offensive player.” That’s right: Dayton Moore just called Bloomquist “a very good offensive player”, and that wasn’t even the most counterfactual clause in the sentence. Willie Bloomquist is a winner, Dayton? In 2001, before Bloomquist reached the majors, the Seattle Mariners won 116 games, the most in AL history. The following year, when Bloomquist made his major league debut in September, they won 93 games. Since then, with Bloomquist on the roster each year, their win totals are 93, 63, 69, 78, 88, and 61. Before Bloomquist reached the scene, the Mariners hadn’t lost more than 85 games since back in 1992 – with him, they’ve lost more than 90 games three times in the last five years. Granted, the Royals have done so four times in the last five years – maybe that makes Bloomquist a winner in Moore’s book.

I wonder if the Cardinals thought David Howard was a "winner" when they signed him after the 1997 season, paying him $1.8 million for two years to do for St. Louis what he did for Kansas City. St. Louis went 83-79 and 75-86 with Howard on the roster; in 2000, with Howard gone, they won 95 games and went to the NLCS.

There’s one way that this signing can help the Royals: if it means that they boot Tony Pena off the roster (even better, and in all seriousness, if they try Pena in relief.) If the signing of Bloomquist is an acknowledgment that Pena no longer justifies a roster spot, and that the Royals are willing to pay a slight premium for a utility player who knows his role and isn’t a complete cipher at the plate, then this isn’t a bad move. Unfortunately, all the vibes suggest that Bloomquist is actually going to get to challenge Alberto Callaspo for the starting job at second base.

And that raises the tally on “payroll spent on replacement-level talent” to:

Mike Jacobs: $3 million (approx.)

Kyle Farnsworth: $4.6 million

Horacio Ramirez: $1.8 million (plus incentives)

Willie Bloomquist: $1.55 million (plus incentives)

Total: $10.95 million

I’m not crediting the Royals for the $1.6 million it would take to fill those four roster spots at the league minimum, but then, I’m not counting Miguel Olivo ($2.7 million) and Jose Guillen ($12 million) either. And keep in mind, every one of those contracts (except Guillen’s) was given out in the midst of the worst financial situation (baseball or otherwise) since collusion ended, when an absolute offensive beast like Pat Burrell is getting 2 years/$16 million and the still-imposing Jason Giambi (I'd rather have him in 2009 than Jacobs) got 1 year, $4.5 million.

Here’s an idea, Dayton: instead of spending all this money on a bunch of guys who don’t push you into contention, why not take all this cash and dangle it in front of Ben Sheets, a guy who when healthy is potentially dominant, and as an extreme fly ball pitcher is perfectly suited for Kauffman Stadium and a DeJesus-Crisp outfield? A Greinke/Meche/Sheets front of the rotation, and suddenly the Royals are a Gordon or Butler breakout season away from being the surprise contenders of 2009. But hey, that Willie Bloomquist can hustle.

Two weeks ago I wrote this: “Dayton Moore does many things well, and he still has my support as the man who could lead the Royals to the playoffs once again. But after three off-seasons to prove himself on the free-agent market, with one notable exception (Gil Meche), all he has proven is that he is prone to wildly overspending for highly replaceable talent.” Now that he’s signed Bloomquist, I stand by these words completely. Well, accept for the part that he still has my support.

I thought that we were finally past the point of being a national laughingstock. I thought I wouldn’t have to hear that awful mixture of pity and contempt from fans of other teams anymore. I never thought the Royals would enter the Howard Zone again. Now that they have, I’m having to re-consider every nice thing I’ve said about Moore and this front office. From where I sit, Moore is looking less and less like the GM that will take us to the promised land and more and more like a really good scouting director who’s in over his head every time his owner hands him his checkbook.

Dammit, Rob. I hate it when you’re right. And when it comes to the Royals, you're almost always right.

Royals Time Capsule, Part 1.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that on November 4^th, 1995, my life jumped onto a different track. That was the evening Gary Huckabay formally asked me if I wanted to help him write a baseball book – name TBD – along with the legendary creator of the DTs (well, he was a legend on rec.sport.baseball), Clay Davenport. Secure in the knowledge that the first year of medical school was pass/fail, I said sure, why not – what’s the worst that can happen? (Filed under “be careful what you wish for.”) Along with Chris Kahrl and Joe Sheehan, we were completely oblivious to what we were in for.

The first copy of that book, “Baseball Prospectus ’96” (I’m looking at the cover right now, and it’s ’96, not 1996, for some reason), sold maybe 150 copies – less if you don’t count family members. The “cover” is just a thicker piece of paper stock. After the book was printed, we realized that the font we used, when bolded – as it was, for instance, for all of the players’ names – the letters bled together until they were almost illegible. Oh, and that the St. Louis Cardinals’ chapter was missing. (Seriously. The prototype of baseballprospectus.com went up with the immediate intent of making that chapter available.)

Anyway, we were too dumb, too stubborn, or too single to get the hint. A second book followed (with a real cover! And the Cardinals!) Then a third (with a real publisher!) Keith Law, who joined us as writer #6 in 1997, decided a few years later that he’d have more fun working as the Assistant GM of the Toronto Blue Jays instead. A pair of guys who started as BP interns, Chaim Bloom and James Click, got hired by the Devil Rays. Keith Woolner joined the Indians. Dan Fox jumped to the Pirates. Nate Silver showed up on the Colbert Report. And the 14^th edition of Baseball Prospectus comes out sometime next month. As Bono sang, “Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce!”

And my one copy of that first book would probably be worth hundreds of dollars if I ever lost my mind and put it on eBay.

Oh look! It’s my navel!

The 14^th edition of BP is also the first edition that I have not written for, and just the second that I have not written the Royals chapter for. (I could have written the chapter this year, but that would have been 8000 fewer words for my blog, and that would never do.) So instead I thought it would be fun to pull out that very first book, and see what I wrote about the Royals 13 winters ago.

I don’t think I’ve cracked open that first book in a decade, so re-reading that Royals chapter last week was very much like digging up a time capsule, a time capsule I had created for myself back when I was 20, and finally got to unwrap at age 33. I thought some of you might enjoy this trip down memory lane.

The first half of the essay is below; I’ve added some commentary in colored italics. Enjoy.

***

The Kansas City Royals were once the model of how to operate a successful franchise. (This was around the same time that GM was the model of how to operate a successful corporation.) With a wealthy, patient owner, a commitment to developing players from within the organization, and a GM who concocted some of the best trades in baseball history, the Royals were able to go from the depths of expansion in 1969 to a dominant force in the AL West by 1976. (The Royals built a perennial playoff team from scratch in seven years. In twice as many seasons since the 1994-95 strike, they’ve built absolutely nothing: they have no one to blame but themselves.) The talent amassed in the mid-70s was enough to keep the Royals among the elite teams in baseball for the next decade, capped with an improbable run to the World Championship in 1985.

The fly ball that Andy Van Slyke hit to Darryl Motley to close the 1985 Series closed a chapter in Royals history, however, and the Royals have spent the last 10 years more as a symbol of baseball mediocrity than baseball excellence. (Ah, mediocrity. If only we had known had good we had it then.) Winning the title in 1985 tricked the Royals into thinking that the glory days of the late 70s had come again to Kansas City, and that they would be able to continue dominating the historically-weak AL West for many years to come. The reality, of course, was that 1985 was the last gasp of a team whose once-great offense was a mere shell of itself, a team which owed everything to a great pitching staff and an otherworldly final month by George Brett. (I wrote this in the earliest days of the World Wide Web; there was no baseball-reference.com with daily logs, and a claim like this was simply unverifiable. It turns out that Brett had a pretty terrible September; he hit .210/.319/.340 from September 1^st to 28^th. But from September 29^th until October 5^th, Brett was 11-for-23 with five homers, three doubles, and 13 RBIs as the Royals won five of their last seven games, including three of four in a crucial series against the Angels. He then hit .360 in the postseason; his Game 3 performance against the Blue Jays in the ALCS is the best single-game performance in team history. So if we define “final month” as from September 29^th to October 27^th, Brett hit .397/.489/.808. Yeah, that seems not of this Earth.) The 1976-80 Royals featured a lineup that averaged 788 runs and 93 wins over that five-year span; not once in the last fifteen years has any Royals team matched either of those numbers. (The Royals have scored 788 runs three times since – 1999, 2000, 2003 – in the heart of the high-octane era, and with the fences at Kauffman Stadium drawn in. And 93 wins? Only once since 1995 have they won 78 games.) The World Championship team featured an anemic offense that finished 13^th in the AL in runs scored, and the Royals have consistently finished in the bottom half of the AL in that category ever since.

The Royals have tried a variety of tactics to reclaim the lost greatness of the late ‘70s. Following their most successful season since 1985, the 1989 team which rode Bret Saberhagen, the Royals decided to make up for a dozen years of inactivity in the free-agent market in one offseason. The Royals succeeded only in proving that money is no substitute for intelligence in the front office, as they ignored the team’s biggest weakness – the offense – in an attempt to upgrade what was a stellar pitching staff with Storm “Run Support” Davis and Mark Davis’ evil twin brother. (I still submit that Storm – not Mark – Davis was the dumbest free agent signing in franchise history. There was no reason to think that Mark would develop Mark Davis Disease – analogous to Steve Blass Disease, only instead of suddenly and inexplicably being unable to throw strikes, you become suddenly and inexplicably unable to get anyone out. By comparison, there was EVERY reason to think that Storm Davis would suck. Just look at his 1989 season, but cover up his win-loss record first. His entire stat line is an ode to a borderline #5 starter – and remember, this was 1989, and Oakland had one of the best pitchers’ parks in baseball – but McGwire and Canseco bashed for him, Eckersley closed for him, and the Royals paid him for that 19-7 record.)

When that attempt crashed and burned, the Royals tried a new tack. They made a big trade in an attempt to beef up their offense – Saberhagen for Gregg Jefferies, Keith Miller, and Kevin McReynolds. (Quite possibly the most underrated trade in team history, largely because of the next sentence.) When the Royals saw how bad their defense had become with the influx of ex-Mets, they made an ill-advised trade to address that – Jefferies for Felix Jose. (One of the ten worst trades in Royals history, and probably the least-remembered of the top ten. Jefferies didn’t have a great 1992 season – he hit .285/.329/.404 in his one year in Kansas City – but it wasn’t a bad year, all told, for a 24-year-old third baseman, and there was plenty of reason to think he was capable of better than that – Jefferies was Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Decade for the 1980s. But Herk Robinson traded him for Felix Jose, who had put up pretty much the same numbers in 1992, only he was three years older, an outfielder, and had nothing like Jefferies’ track record. In two years with St. Louis, Jefferies hit .342 and .325 with power and speed, and made the All-Star team and garnered MVP votes both years. Jose hit .253 his first year in KC, .303 the next year, and was released just nine games into the 1995 season.) And, with the Royals now a hodgepodge of questionable talent that wasn’t going anywhere, they tried the free agent market again in an attempt to build a scrappy pitching-and-defense team that resembled that “great” Royals team of 1985. Greg Gagne and Wally Joyner were signed, Jose Lind was acquired in trade, the Royals offense continued to suffer, and the team continued to finish around .500. (Ah, .500. If only we had known how good we had it then.)

***

Reading this part of the essay 13 years later, I have to say that I’m impressed at how well it holds up. Last spring, I wrote the Royals chapter for a Baseball Prospectus book on the 1980s – a book that is currently on indefinite hiatus – and the analysis of the Royals decline in the 1980s that I wrote in 2008 isn’t much different than the analysis I wrote in 1995.

At least the first half of the essay. In the second half, let’s just say that Optimistic Rany makes an appearance. That’s right: in the winter of 1995-96 I was quite optimistic about the future of the Royals. Yeah, this isn’t going to end well.

Auld Lang Syne.

This is the most frustrating time of year for baseball fans. The year is almost out and the nation is shutting down for the holidays – which would be well and good if baseball shut down as well, affording all of us two weeks to detox from the Hot Stove League and re-introduce ourselves to our families and all that.

The problem is that while baseball almost shuts down, there’s always the possibility of some news, a trade, a free agent signing, so you can’t help but refresh on MLBTradeRumors.com (hi Tim, and thanks for the links) or your sports portal of choice. As soon as you think nothing’s going to happen while you’re on vacation between Christmas and New Year’s, bam! Ken Caminiti and Steve Finley are traded to San Diego for Derek Bell and Phil Plantier in a 12-player deal on December 28^th. So you have to stay plugged in, even though 99% of the time you’ll be watching the paint dry. (Yankees fans are exempt from this.)*

*: You could argue that the Royals – or at least David Glass – should be happy that Mark Teixeira signed with the Yankees. After all, the Yankees are always over the luxury tax threshold, so adding Teixeira means more luxury tax means more money in Glass’s pockets. The details are still coming in, but Tex’s contract looks to be about for $22 million a year. Multiply that by the 40% luxury tax rate = $8.8 million. Divide that by 29 other teams, and you get about $300,000. That’s 300 grand a year in David Glass’s pocket, and the actual number is probably higher than that, as (I believe) luxury tax revenue is apportioned to teams at least partly based on their own revenues, so a low-revenue team like the Royals will get more. So let’s say 500 or 600 grand a year. The Yankees get Mark Teixeira, and in return the Royals get a month of Kyle Farnsworth. Or, if they’re smart, a quality amateur signing out of Latin America.

If you’re desperate for any Royal rumors, Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Royals would like to sign Jerry Hairston, but don’t have the payroll flexibility to afford him. If that’s true, that’s unbelievably sad and criminally negligent on the part of Dayton Moore. It’s one thing to not afford Furcal, but Jerry Hairston? And with Furcal off the board, Hairston isn’t a bad fit for the team – he’s a decent hitter, knows how to draw a walk, and can play shortstop well enough that he’s a reasonable fill-in option, but not so well as to tempt the Royals into moving Mike Aviles off the position.

But the Royals can’t afford him, because they just spent $4.6 million a year on Farnsworth; $3 million (approximately) on Mike Jacobs; $2.7 million on Miguel Olivo; and $1.8 million on Horacio Ramirez. That’s $12.1 million for 2009; subtract out the league minimum for the four roster spots those guys will hold, and that’s $10.5 million spent on four players who do not materially improve the Royals next season (especially since you’d still have Leo Nunez.) That’s enough money to sign Rafael Furcal. Instead the Royals don’t have enough money to sign Jerry Hairston.

The Royals would have enough money to sign Furcal and Hairston if Dayton Moore hadn’t spent $12 million a year on Jose Guillen last winter. I don’t want to beat a dead horse into the ground, but I just have to point out that the Angels just signed Juan Rivera to a three-year deal for $12.75 million. Not $12.75 million a year - $12.75 million for all three years.

This is amazing and more than a little galling if you’re a Royals fan, because Juan Rivera and Jose Guillen are pretty much the same player. Guillen’s career line is .273/.323/.446, with a career OPS+ of exactly 100. Rivera’s line is .284/.331/.468 with a 106 OPS+. Rivera is 30 years old – Guillen was 31 when he signed with the Royals. Granted, when Guillen signed he had the better recent numbers, whereas Rivera missed almost all of 2007 and hit poorly in part-time play in 2008 (but mashed the ball - .310/.362/.525 – in 2006).

Baseball analysts (I dislike the term “sabermetricians”, because of the stereotypical images that it conjures up more than anything else) are constantly accused of caring about the numbers. The reality, though, is that we couldn’t care less about the numbers – we care about what the numbers mean. I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what Jose Guillen’s batting average was last year – but I can tell you that his overall mix of baseball skills is highly overrated and barely merits an everyday job, let alone $12 million a year. I don’t particularly care whether Jose Guillen or Juan Rivera is 1% better than the other. What I care about is that the established record suggests that Guillen and Rivera are pretty much the same player – highly-aggressive right-handed hitters with good power and questionable defensive value in a corner outfield spot. That one player is making three times the other is 10% a reflection of the economy, and 90% a reflection of the way these two players are perceived, a perception that does not jibe with reality at all.

There are many skills that are required of a general manager, and defining a GM as “good” or “bad” is terribly simplistic. Dayton Moore does many things well, and he still has my support as the man who could lead the Royals to the playoffs once again. But after three off-seasons to prove himself on the free-agent market, with one notable exception (Gil Meche), all he has proven is that he is prone to wildly overspending for highly replaceable talent. For all he does well – and really, Moore has done almost everything else well – the Royals are unlikely to make the playoffs unless and until he learns to ration his disposable dollars with more care.

We’ll probably be going dark here at RotR for the next week or so. Muslims don’t celebrate Christmas per se, but we certainly honor the spirit of the holiday. It is written in the Qu’ran (19:33) that when Jesus spoke from the cradle, he said, “So peace is on me the day I was born, the day that I die, and the day that I shall be raised up to life (again)!” We unfortunately don’t know what day he was born, but December 25^th works for me.

So if you’re celebrating Christmas on Thursday, then let me wish you a Merry Christmas. If you’re celebrating Hanukkah, then let me wish you a Happy Hanukkah. If you’re celebrating Kwanzaa or Festivus or any other holiday that I fail to mention – we Muslims just celebrated our Eid two weeks ago – I hope it is a happy and safe one. And I hope to see you all next year.

In the meantime, if any of you want to suggest ideas for what I ought to write about between now and Spring Training, please feel free to comment, with the caveat that I may feel free to ignore your idea. I do have at least one project I plan to write about in January – call it the Royals Time Capsule if you will. But that’s a project for another day.

Rany's Royal Ramblings.

Bill Simmons calls it The Ramblings. Joe Sheehan calls it Bullet Point Friday, or sometimes Short Attention Span Theatre. I call it The Column You Write When Your Brain Is So Fried By The Chiefs That You Can’t Focus On Any Topic For More Than A Hundred Words.

- My Spanish literacy is very limited, so I’m grateful to the Royals for their recent efforts to educate me. I mean, who knew that “Jairo Cuevas” is Spanish for “Tim Pugh”? (And how many of you even get that reference?)

- I lumped Doug Waechter in with Kyle Farnsworth in my last post, as the news had just come across the wire before I hit “publish”. Now that we know the details of his contract, it’s clear that was unfair of me. Waechter signed a one-year deal for $640,000, and there’s just no way you can describe a $640,000 deal to anyone as a bad deal. Waechter will be making about 14% of what Farnsworth will make in 2009, and even that understates the difference, because the league minimum is about $400,000 (it’s now indexed for inflation, so I’m not sure the exact figure). Waechter is making just $240,000 in marginal salary over some career minor leaguer – in terms of marginal salary, he’ll earn just 6% of Farnsworth’s income.

I don’t know much about Waechter except that he was once a crappy starting pitcher for the Devil Rays – back when that was sort of a requirement for his job – then blew out his shoulder and was re-invented as a useful reliever for the Marlins last year. The major difference between 2008 and the rest of his career was his performance against RHB. His line against LHB (.303/.358/.486) was along the lines of his career numbers (.289/.351/.521), but his numbers against RHB improved dramatically (.216/.281/.338 vs .267/.322/.432). It’s hard to compare Waechter the post-injury reliever to Waechter the pre-injury starter, but he did appear to be a fundamentally better pitcher last season; his strikeout rate (6.54 per nine) was easily his career best. At worst, he’s a useful ROOGY, a pale but still useful simulacrum of Ramon Ramirez.

- It’s been a week, and the Kyle Farnsworth signing continues to baffle me. I appreciate that Dayton Moore probably does not have time in his busy day to read my blog, but after I defended the Coco Crisp trade in large part by detailing how Moore has built a high-end bullpen almost entirely on the cheap, it just amazes me that he would suddenly rip a page out of the Allard Baird playbook by trying to spackle the holes in his bullpen with hundred-dollar bills. We’ve seen this play run before. It didn’t work with Roberto Hernandez. It didn’t work with Ricky Bottalico. It didn’t work with Doug Henry. I see no reason to think it’s going to work with Kyle Farnsworth.

- Here’s a friendly wager for Moore. Here’s a list of a number of players that are or were available for around the league minimum: Waechter, Eduardo Morlan (Rule 5 pick by the Brewers from Tampa Bay), Jesus Colome (non-tendered by Washington), Joe Nelson (non-tendered by the Marlins), and Muntader Al-Zaidi (just signed by the Yankees.)

Using whatever metric you prefer – ERA, ARP, WXRL, whatever – I’m willing to bet that including Farnsworth and the first four pitchers on that list (I’m not sure the shoeicide bomber is ready for prime time), Captain Tightpants will rank no higher than third among these five pitchers at the end of 2009. Unless the metric you prefer is “salary”.

- On the other hand, this almost made the Farnsworth signing worthwhile.

- When he’s not signing pitchers with big fastballs and big ERAs to big contracts, Moore continues to do good work on the margins. A few weeks ago the Royals designated Tyler Lumsden, once considered the key to the Mike MacDougal trade, for assignment. That gave them 10 days to trade him or let him go on waivers – when a player is DFA’ed, typically he’ll get traded for scraps or some spare change, as the alternative is that some other team will pick him up on waivers anyway. Lumsden had a 7.21 and 5.88 ERA in Triple-A the last two years; the wonder is that anyone would want him at all. Well, the Astros did, because the Astros’ farm system looks like the landscape to “Fallout 3”. So the Royals traded Lumsden to Houston for the ubiquitous PTBNL, a player whose name typically winds up being “Cash”, and I don’t mean Kevin. (I have this sinking sensation that I’ve used that line before.)

So I was dumbfounded when, immediately after the Rule 5 draft (i.e. as soon as the player was guaranteed not to be selected by another organization), the Astros completed the deal by sending the Royals Jordan Parraz. Parraz isn’t a great prospect, but he’s a prospect, the sort of prospect teams never get when they’re clearing their rosters of the Tyler Lumsdens of the world. Parraz was a sixth-round pick of the Phillies in 2003 as a high school pitcher; after a year of community college, he was a third-round pick of the Astros as an outfielder.

He’s a very good athlete, and has hit pretty well throughout his career, but for some reason has been promoted very slowly through the system – he’s now 24 and has yet to play in the high minors. But he has speed (54 steals the last two years) and plate discipline (lifetime .372 OBP, and .399 last season), and has shown flashes of power. If he were two years younger he’d be a great prospect; even as old as he is, I love athletes who have shown secondary skills even if they haven’t exactly learned how to hit yet. I would have traded Lumsden for him straight up even if Lumsden wasn’t on the 40-man roster and didn’t have to be DFA’ed.

This summer the Royals traded Horacio Ramirez to the White Sox for Paulo Orlando, a trade I heartily endorsed. I asked Kevin Goldstein who he liked better, and with the caveat that neither one is a great prospect, he preferred Parraz to Orlando. If it was shrewd to trade Ramirez, having a decent year as a middle reliever at the time, for Orlando, trading Lumsden for Parraz is larceny. Petty larceny, maybe, but still a criminal offense.

- Unfortunately, relaying this story just reminds me that Moore just paid Ramirez $1.8 million (plus $1.1 million in incentives!) for a return engagement. Let’s review, class, since some of you weren’t paying attention:

1) Signing a failed major league starter to a minor league contract, and trying him in relief: smart.

2) Signing the same pitcher, who was moderately successful as a reliever, to a seven-figure contract while attempting to move him back to the rotation: dumb.

- To clear payroll, the Royals axed John Bale and Joey Gathright. Bale might still re-sign, for less money than he would have earned in arbitration (a minimum of $1.6 million). If he can be resigned for less, I’d say he’s worth it; if you eliminate the three starts in his ill-fated trial in the rotation, over the last two years Bale has a 3.16 ERA in relief. Like Ron Mahay, he doesn’t have a big platoon split, so he can be used both ways, allowing the Royals to save Jimmy Gobble for LOOGY situations only. There’s some untapped potential here.

Few players have more untapped potential than Gathright, but cutting him was the right move for this team. Gathright doesn’t do anything that Coco Crisp can’t do; Gathright is faster, but he has yet to show he can translate that speed into game impact yet. Cutting Gathright is painful, given that Moore gave up J.P. Howell to get him, but it’s precisely because it was painful that I like this move. Howell is a sunk cost, and holding on to Gathright in the hopes that he might redeem that trade would have just thrown a bunch of money at a player who isn’t going to get enough playing time to justify his salary anyway.

On the other hand, this clears a path on the roster for Ross Gload. Speaking of sunk costs…

- The Royals are still doggedly in pursuit of Rafael Furcal, and while it doesn’t appear they can afford him, I can’t help but believe that Moore is going to find a way to shake down David Glass for the extra cash. If he can’t, he has no one to blame but himself. I’m not even talking about the Jose Guillen contract, though I certainly could spend 5000 words re-visiting the stupidity of that move.

I’m talking about the fact that Moore will be paying somewhere between $6.5 million and $8 million in 2009 for the services of Farnsworth and Ramirez – roughly 70% of the money needed for Furcal’s contract was wasted on two pitchers who are barely worth a roster spot. Furcal appears to have a 4-year, $40 million contract offer from Oakland (and let’s be honest: doesn’t the fact that Billy Beane is in the running to sign Furcal elevate Furcal’s standing in your eyes?) I think a 4/$44 contract will get it done, and in a world where A.J. Burnett is getting 5/$82.5, 4/$44 for one of the top 10 shortstops in baseball looks like a bargain.

So get it done, Dayton. Unless you want your next press conference to lead off with a question from an Iraqi journalist.

- This is just so sad on so many levels. In 2003, Rob Neyer and I met up in Kansas City for a weekend of baseball, and the first place we met on Friday morning was at the Negro Leagues Museum. Rob had some business to attend to – he was interviewing Buck O’Neil for one of his books, or maybe for his ESPN.com column. I would have had a chance to meet Buck as well, but I had never toured the museum before, and I lingered inside so long that by the time I finished Buck had came and went (immaculately dressed in a white suit, I was told.) I didn’t regret taking my time – the museum was that powerful. Afterwards I did get the opportunity to meet Bob Kendrick briefly, and was moved by the level of enthusiasm and passion that he had for the museum, Buck, and the greater cause that both were serving.

I don’t live in Kansas City and can’t speak to the specifics on this case. But when Joe Posnanski and Jason Whitlock agree on something this passionately, I defer to their judgment. I’m glad I’ve been through the museum already, so I’m not conflicted about not seeing it again. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend going once, because you’re just hurting yourself if you don’t. But if you have, well, if Poz ain’t going back, I ain’t going back.

- I wondered how long it would take for someone to make fun of my crush on Connor Barth after yesterday’s game. Looks like it took reader Dave about 3 minutes.

I could respond by saying that until yesterday’s game, not only had Barth converted all of his kicks, he would have made all his kicks if the uprights had been squeezed together by five feet on each side. I could respond by saying that both of his misses yesterday were by just a foot or two, and that I don’t know a Chiefs fan alive who thought there was any chance, given all that had just transpired, that Barth was going to nail his 50-yard attempt at the buzzer. Even KC Wolf was shaking his head before the kick. (I have no response for missing a 34-yarder. Yeah, that was pretty inexcusable – almost, dare I say it, Tynes-esque.)

But instead, I’ll just respond by saying that if Barth had squeezed his final kick through the uprights, this would not have happened. I said Connor Barth was The One…I just didn’t say that he was The One Who Will Get King Carl Fired. Hey, I told you he was money.

Farnsworth.

“We’ve added two productive everyday position players for about $9 million,” Moore said. “We would not have been able to do that in the free-agent market.”

No, Dayton, you’ve added two everyday position players – I’d hold off on proclaiming them both “productive” for the moment – for over $14 million.

Coco Crisp: $6.25 million

Mike Jacobs: $3.25 million (estimate)

Kyle Farnsworth: $4.625 million

You can’t claim that Coco Crisp only costs you $6.25 million when you spend almost as much money to replace the guy you traded to get him. That assumes Farnsworth is a true replacement for Ramon Ramirez – and given that the former had a 4.48 ERA last year, and the latter a 2.64 ERA, that’s an awfully bold assumption.

One of the most common mistakes a GM can make is to spend money just because he can. Moore has received a license from Dayton Moore to raise the team’s payroll, and he deserves full credit for obtaining that license, something Allard Baird, for whatever reason, could never do. But a license to spend money is not a mandate to spend money. Kyle Farnsworth will not be paid with a big pile of $100 bills that Moore had just rescued from a bonfire. That was money in David Glass’s bank account, and whatever your feelings are on the creditworthiness of banks at the moment, if Moore had left that money where it was, there’s a good chance it still would have been there if he came back with a request for more money later.

Like, say, if he had wanted to pull out all the stops to signing Rafael Furcal. I’m not 100% sold on the idea of signing Furcal – I think Aviles deserves a chance to prove he can’t play shortstop, and I think Callaspo deserves a chance to prove he can’t maintain a .360 OBP. But I’ve come around to Joe Posnanski’s point of view, which is that the Royals are a lot closer to contending than most people realize, and while Furcal is a risk given his age and recent injury history, if he’s healthy he’s going to be an impact player for at least the next two years. It’s not unreasonable to think he can have enough of an impact to alter the outcome of the AL Central.

The Royals could offer $11 million a year on Furcal, who might prove irrelevant but at the same time might have a huge, postseason-caliber impact on the team. Or they could spend nearly half that much money on a player who at his best is a decent middle reliever, and hasn’t been at his best in four years.

More and more, it’s clear that Moore is aggressively trying to make the Royals into a contender in 2009-2010, with the caveat that he won’t do anything that might hamstring the Royals from building a year-in, year-out juggernaut in 2012 and beyond. In that vein, I understand why he’d sign someone like Farnsworth over Juan Cruz, who several readers have pointed out is a Type A free agent and would have cost the Royals their second-round pick. All Farnsworth costs the Royals is some of David Glass’s money. If you’re of the opinion that the Royals are still two years away from contention, then this move doesn’t matter one way or the other.

But if you’re of the opinion that the Royals can contend in 2009 or 2010 – and so long as Zack Greinke is under contract, I think they can – then you have to ask yourself, was there a better way to spend this money to win more games over the next two years? Maybe Glass’s bank account is inexhaustible, and there’s still money left in the till for Furcal. But if there isn’t, then Moore just blew his chance to sign an impact everyday shortstop for a hot-headed, over-rated, meatball-grooving middle reliever.

(Make that two relievers: Doug Waechter?)