Now Playing Second Base...Seriously?

So I guess I need to be the last Royals observer to comment on the news that the Royals are seriously considering – I can’t believe I’m writing this – the idea of moving Mark Teahen to second base.

I’ll happily confess to laughing off the idea at first. Teahen has played 256 games in his career at third base, 229 games in right field, 31 in left, and 23 at first base. These positions all have something in common – they tend towards the bottom of the defensive spectrum. Teahen’s athleticism has helped him to carve out a nice role as a four-corners utility player even though he has only one above-average season with the stick on his resume. But playing the four corners – or even center field, which Teahen has done six times – is one thing. Playing the middle infield is quite another.

Bill Simmons has argued that sports teams would benefit greatly if they created a job for a “Vice President of Common Sense”, someone whose job it was to keep the front office from clearly self-destructive decisions. A VPoCS would have kept the Royals from trading Jermaine Dye for Neifi Perez, and would have earned the Mets a pair of division titles in 2007-08 by blocking the trade of Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano.

You’d have to think that a VPoCS would veto this idea, on the simple grounds that second base isn’t a position you can learn at the major league level. I love outside-the-box thinking as much as anyone, but moving a 27-year-old player to a position he hasn’t played since his freshman year of high school isn’t outside-the-box, it’s outside the boundaries of common sense. Especially when that position is second base, which after catcher is the most dangerous position on the field.

So no, when Sam Mellinger first reported this, I didn’t take it seriously at all.

But the Royals apparently are. Trey Hillman is serious about it: “We are definitely going to take a look at it.” Weeks before the news was made official, Mark Teahen was game: “[I]t’s something that I’d be willing to try, definitely if it assures me of being in the lineup every day.” Even Joe Posnanski thinks it’s a winning idea: “I think this is precisely the sort of risk-reward thinking the Royals should be doing right about now.”

And having looked into the idea a little more, I’ll admit that there’s some genuine merit to it. Dave Cameron wrote an interesting series of articles back in December that argued, in essence, that there is no evidence to suggest that second base is any more difficult to play defensively than third base, and that players who switch from one position to the other generally handle either position equally well.

Moreover, Cameron makes the point – one I agree with – that teams seem to separate players into “second basemen” and “third basemen” based as much on body type (specifically height) as on the skills needed to play the position. If you’re 6’3”, you’re a third baseman; if you’re 5’10”, you’re a second baseman. And because height correlates with power, this explains to a large degree why third basemen are better hitters than second baseman overall, even though the defensive demands at the two positions are similar.

A lot has been made of the fact that Teahen, at 6’3”, 210, would be one of the tallest second basemen in history. That’s certainly true, but I don’t think that you can take the leap and assume that Teahen is too tall to play the position. Teahen would be an unconventional second baseman, but “unconventional” does not equate to “bad”. Cal Ripken (6’4”) was an unconventional shortstop, but was so far removed from “bad” that he helped establish a new convention at the position – a convention that paved the way for Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Hanley Ramirez (all 6’3”) to play shortstop as well. I see no reason why a 6’3” player can handle shortstop but is too tall to play second base, so the fact that 6’3” second basemen are so rare strikes me as more of an historic anomaly as anything else.

Okay, I can see one potential reason why height might be more of a concern for a second baseman than for a shortstop. It’s the same reason why second basemen tend to develop more poorly than shortstops – what we call Brent Gates Syndrome. Second basemen turn the double-play pivot with their backs to the runner, which makes them susceptible to injuries, and in theory may also make them susceptible to minor but repeated leg traumas that over time may sap a player of his abilities. (I suspect this is what happened to Carlos Febles, for instance.)

Would a tall player be more susceptible to leg injuries? Possibly. There’s a good deal of evidence that catchers beyond a certain height – 6’1” or 6’2” – are more susceptible to injuries and tend to move out from behind the plate at a young age, probably because the constant squatting and standing is not good on the knees, and that stress on the knees is accentuated in tall players. (The original study for this was done by Bill James in, if memory serves, the 1987 Baseball Abstract. Since then, Mike Piazza showed no ill effects from being 6’3”, and Joe Mauer has raised the bar all the way to 6’5”. On the other hand, Mauer is 25 and has already dealt with knee injuries for years.)

This is a long stretch of an analogy to make, but I want to present both sides of the story here. In any case, I’m not really worried about the injury risk at second base for Teahen, both because he has shown himself to be a durable player throughout his career, and – not to be heartless – the fact is, he’s not so valuable that an injury would be all that crippling to the Royals.

Third base to second base transitions have worked in the past, most recently last year, when Akinori Iwamura moved from third to second to accommodate Evan Longoria. Iwamura handled second base surprisingly well – he was probably better there than at third – and the defensive upgrade at two positions was a big part of the Rays’ historic improvement defensively. As best as I can tell, Iwamura had never before played second base regularly as a pro, either in the US or in Japan. Then again, he did win six Golden Gloves in Japan at third base. And Iwamura is 5’9”.

Among the players that Cameron points out as playing both third base and second base last year, a pair of Rockies stands out. Jeff Baker (6’2”, 210) had never played second base in the majors before last season, and was a third baseman throughout his minor league career. With Garrett Atkins entrenched at third, Baker spent most of 2006 and 2007 rotating between first base and the corner outfield spots, but last year, at age 27, Baker played 49 games at second base. Judging from the fact that he made his first two starts at second, this was a transition that was likely planned during spring training or before. He wasn’t very good at second base, but then he wasn’t very good at third base either.

Baker’s teammate, Ian Stewart (6’3”, 205) was also tried at second base last season, after coming up through the minors exclusively as a third baseman. Stewart was a rookie and just 23, so he’s not directly comparable to Teahen, but the fact is that his body size did not dissuade the Rockies from trying him there.

So I guess this can work, but pardon me for remaining skeptical. It’s true that third basemen can adjust to second base more easily than is commonly recognized, and it’s true that getting a third baseman’s bat at second base is an upgrade. The problem is that it’s not clear how this pertains to Teahen, because Teahen really isn’t a third baseman any more. He hasn’t played third base regularly since 2006, and his only time spent there over the last two years came when he filled in for 19 games when Alex Gordon went on the DL. In those 19 games Teahen’s work only served to remind us why he had been the one to move to the outfield in the first place: he’s not a very good defensive player at third. Moving Teahen to second base is less reminiscent of Akinori Iwamura than it is of Gregg Jefferies, who was a butcher at both positions but slightly less destructive at the hot corner.

Even if Teahen manages to handle second base with some level of adequacy, it’s not clear whether his bat justifies the defensive hit. We’re talking about a player who has one above-average offensive season in his four-year career, a guy who hit .255/.313/.402 last year. Alberto Callaspo, the incumbent at the position, hit .305/.361/.371 last year. The fact that the Royals are even talking about moving Teahen to second tells you how confident they are that Callaspo can repeat those numbers.

I share those concerns – Callaspo has neither power nor speed, and his entire skill set revolves around his uncanny ability to make contact. (Callaspo has struck out just 34 times in 399 career at-bats.) You can hit .300 with that kind of contact ability, but Callaspo has to hit .300 to justify a starting job, because he’s not contributing in any other way. And without the speed to leg out an infield single a couple times a month, it’s going to be hard to sustain that average. The difference between a player like this with speed and a player like this without speed is the difference between Luis Castillo five years ago and Luis Castillo today.

Throw in the DUI and domestic violence issues with Castillo Callaspo, and it’s good that the Royals are looking for a Plan B that’s more threatening than The Spork. At the same time, I think Callaspo has earned the right to play every day and prove that last year isn’t a fluke. Power, speed, and defense aside, he did hit .305 last year, he will take a walk, he switch-hits, and he’s still just 25. Having definitively proved last year that he can’t play shortstop, he has negligible value as a bench player, so if he’s not playing every day he’s useless. Callaspo has too much potential for the Royals to bury him without giving him the opportunity to play himself out of a job.

So that’s one problem I have with this idea – as low as the odds are that Teahen learns to play a passable second base, the odds are even lower that the mix of offense and defense that he brings to the position proves more valuable than what the Royals can already get from Callaspo.

If the Royals were a Strat-o-matic team and the players were cards that could be swapped in and out whimsically, there would be a way to get everyone some playing time. Teahen starts in good home run parks and when Greinke is on the mound. Bloomquist starts occasionally against left-handers or when Hochevar pitches; Callaspo gets the rest of the playing time. Teahen supplements his at-bats by starting a couple times a month at third, left, right, and first base, and is the first left-handed pinch-hitter off the bench.

Players are not Strat-o-matic cards, but it’s a good exercise for a manager to think of his players purely in terms of their skill sets, their strengths and weaknesses, before figuring out how to deploy them. When he was hired, one of Trey Hillman’s strengths was supposed to be his willingness to use his entire roster in just such a fashion. We saw glimpses of that last season, but if Teahen handles his second base audition well enough, Hillman has the opportunity to prove his chops by the way he apportions out playing time at second base.

But my biggest issue with Teahen at second base is simply that I think the Royals are floating this idea out there for all the wrong reasons. I don’t think the Royals want to try Teahen at second base because they’ve suddenly become willing to sacrifice defense for offense, or that think he could be the second coming of Jeff Kent over there. I think the Royals want to try Teahen at second base because they don’t have any idea what to do with Teahen. Well, they did have an idea – they wanted to trade him, and don’t believe Moore’s denials – but that didn’t work out. The way the market has cratered for league-average talent, I can’t say I’m surprised. Why trade anything for Mark Teahen and his $3 million salary when you can sign Eric Hinske, as the Pirates did, for half that?

You could argue that the Royals should just cut Teahen rather than pay him the salary he’s going to make in arbitration. If Teahen hits like he did last year, he’s not worth $3 million. The argument for keeping him isn’t simply that he might approach his 2006 form again, but that if he does, you then get to keep him at below-market value for 2010 and 2011 as well.

But he can’t justify his salary if he’s not getting at-bats. I suppose this is one way of getting Teahen those at-bats. I think it’s worth a try, and I credit the Royals for entertaining the idea. I also think that come Opening Day, we’ll have already long forgotten the idea that the Royals ever thought Mark Teahen could play second base.

Jonah and the Whale of a Contract.

Clearly, I need to withdraw my support for Dayton Moore more often.

Twenty-four hours later, judging from the reaction in every part of Royals Nation, I think my incessant drumbeat for this contract to get done – going back to May of last year – has been vindicated. Rarely does a baseball transaction meet with such unanimous support. The only people unhappy with this contract are covetous Yankee fans (which is to say, all of them).

So with the acknowledgment that this is a tremendous coup for the Royals, let’s take a step back for a second and peruse this contract with cold, beady, analytical, little eyes. Greinke signed a 4-year, $38 million contract, which breaks down as:

2009: $3.75 million

2010: $7.25 million

2011: $13.5 million

2012: $13.5 million

The contract evenly splits into two parts: Greinke gets paid $11 million for his two arbitration years, and $27 million to surrender two years of free agency.

Between this year and next, Greinke was almost certain to make at least $11 million in arbitration awards – the midpoint between his offer and the team’s for 2009 was $3.9 million, and as a five-year player next winter he would have been able to use contracts signed by free agents as comparables when arguing before the arbitrator. Assuming he stayed healthy enough to make 30 starts in 2009, he almost certainly would have been awarded $7.1 million in 2010; if he had another year like 2008 in 2009, he probably would have made $8-9 million, and if he had a breakthrough season this year, he could have made a case for eight figures.

The $27 million guaranteed in 2011-12 also seems to be a reasonable discount any way you slice it. Put it this way: if Greinke were a free agent today, even in this economy, does anyone doubt that he’d get at least $13.5 million a year? Derek Lowe just got a four-year, $60 million contract from the Braves, and if you asked 30 GMs who they’d rather have under contract for the next four years, I’d have to think the majority would pick Greinke. Greinke’s ERA+ the last two years are 123 and 127, Lowe’s are 118 and 131. Lowe has proven durability and groundball tendencies, but then, he’s also 11 years older than Zack.

I think 4/$60 is a good ballpark for what Greinke would earn in a free market today, and that’s a baseline – if even two teams think he’s about to blossom as a Cy Young contender, that could easily get pushed into the $18-20 million range. The Royals signed Greinke to, conservatively speaking, a 15% discount for the next four years even factoring in the arbitration awards. That seems a reasonable tradeoff from Greinke in exchange for guaranteeing him enough money to ensure that he’s never forced to work outside of baseball a day in his life.

The only sour note in the contract is the lack of an option year. Even one additional season of potential club control would dramatically alter my perception of the contract, but I don’t think it’s fair to harp on this omission for too much, for the simple reason that I think that Moore and the Royals understood how valuable that option would have been and would have found a way to insert one if they could have. Moore gave a telling quote in the press conference when he said, “It was important for us to be very aggressive and do what we can to sign Zack for as many years as he felt comfortable with.” The key words are, “he felt comfortable with.”

Greinke deserves credit for committing to the Royals into his free agency years, but let’s be frank: this is still a franchise that has one winning season in the last 14 years, and it would neither surprise nor disappoint me if Greinke put his foot down and said, look, I want to stick around, but if we’re still the laughingstock of the league in 2012, I’m out of here, and there’s no way you’re getting me to give up that option. Under those circumstances, Moore did the best he could do, and that was still more than good enough.

The best way to evaluate this contract is to compare it with the ones signed by comparable pitchers, starting with Scott Kazmir, who we’ve used as Greinke’s best comp since Kazmir signed his contract last May. Here’s the two contracts side-by-side:

Year Kazmir Greinke

2009 $6 M $3.75 M

2010 $8 M $7.25 M

2011 $12 M $13.5 M

2012 $13.5 M* $13.5 M

Total $39.5 M $38 M

*: or $2.5 million buyout

Greinke and Kazmir are extremely comparable pitchers not just because of their track records and the fact that both were 2002 first-round picks who are the same age (Greinke is three months older), but also that their service time is almost identical: Greinke has 4 years, 57 days of service, Kazmir is at 4 and 42. Their contracts are structured differently – Greinke’s is more backloaded, and the total compensation is less, but his fourth year is guaranteed, whereas the Rays can walk away from $11 million in the event of a serious injury.

From a team standpoint, Greinke’s contract saves you about $2 million over four years, but Kazmir’s contract comes with an $11 million insurance policy. I’m not an actuary, so I have no idea which contract is worth more in the abstract, but I’m sure it’s pretty close. The difference is that Kazmir signed his deal with nearly three years until free agency, whereas Greinke signed his just two years away. For a small-market team trying to get a player to give up years of free agency, time is money – but it would appear that waiting an extra eight months to get this deal done didn’t cost the Royals a dime. Certainly the economy plays a role in that – David Glass continues to weather the recession as well as anyone – but regardless of the economy, the Royals did very well for themselves.

A player that I’ve never used as a comp before, but probably should have, is the Tigers’ Jeremy Bonderman, who two years ago (when, like Greinke, he was two years away from free agency) signed a four-year contract. Bonderman had just come off a 14-8, 4.02 season, 214 innings, 214 hits, 64 walks, 202 Ks – very similar to Greinke’s 202 innings, 202 hits, 56 walks, 183 Ks. Bonderman was actually a year younger than Greinke is today. He got $38 million, exactly what Greinke got, and it was a little more frontloaded ($4.5, $8.5, $12.5, $12.5).

Looking at these numbers, I have to think that Bonderman’s contract was prominently used in these contract negotiations as a standard. The market value for a budding ace in his early 20s had been set, and Greinke was willing to accept that market value without inflation. This tells me that, as much as I would have liked this deal to have been done a lot sooner, the holdup had nothing to do with the money.

So while it’s easy for me to whine that the contract is for “only” four years, the fact is that there is very little precedent for a team going beyond four years with a young pitcher, and in every other way Greinke’s contract compares favorably with those doled out to his peers over the last few seasons. It’s not an A+ move from Moore without an option, but it’s definitely an A.

I can see the argument, as cogently expressed here by Will McDonald, that the Greinke contract is a solid move but not a tour de force by any means. All that the Royals accomplished, in a sense, was the rights to a single player for two additional years, and in return they awarded that player the two largest single-season salaries in franchise history. And in two years, we’ll be right back where we were last week, with Greinke two years away from free agency and another deadline looming.

But I disagree with this assessment, because to me the Royals didn’t just get Zack Greinke to commit to the franchise for the next four years. They got Greinke to commit to the franchise for the next four years and kept open the possibility for an even longer commitment. The sense of urgency that I’ve had this past year to get Greinke signed wasn’t simply out of concern that Greinke’s price tag might increase beyond the Royals’ ability to pay. I wasn’t worried that Greinke would leave in two years because he was too expensive; I was worried that Greinke would leave in two years because he wanted to leave. Period.

We’ve seen this pattern before, and I was becoming increasingly worried that we were seeing it again. The Royals had started to get sorta kinda serious about signing Carlos Beltran to a long-term deal by 2003, but by then Beltran had already made his mind up that he was testing the market come hell or high water. I don’t blame Beltran for this, because there was a time when he was willing to sign an extension that might have bought out a year or two of free agency, and the Royals botched that window badly. But the reality is that once that window had closed, there was no way the Royals could re-open it.

I’ve been saying all along that, on paper, Greinke seems like the kind of player and person that might just be willing to stay in Kansas City for the long term. He is, obviously, a unique person. He may have learned to live with his social anxiety disorder, but it is still a part of who he is, and it’s unlikely that the seductive charms of New York or LA or Boston would appeal to him as much as they do so many other ballplayers. As Greinke said, “Kansas City is actually a great town for me. It’s pretty small, but it’s big, too.” Kansas City isn’t big enough for a lot of players; it’s big enough for Greinke. His personality would suggest that he would be happy to trade a little fame and fortune to stay in a comfortable and familiar environment for the rest of his career, and in Kansas City he has that: an organization that has nurtured him since high school, a friendly and small local media contingent, an adoring fan base. On paper, I thought Greinke was a candidate not to just sign a long-term deal with the Royals, but if all went well, to sign several of them.

Until yesterday, that was all a theory. I thought Greinke would be comfortable playing in a medium-sized city where he can have all the anonymity he wants, that he didn’t have a case of wanderlust, that he appreciated how the Royals stood with him in his darkest hours. I thought all that, but I didn’t know. Now I know, and that’s what makes this contract particularly sweet. At the risk of coming off as a naïve and sentimental sap, I believe (and have been told this by other sources) what Sam Mellinger said in his column: that this deal got done at least in part because Greinke saw the way that he was received by Royals fans on the caravan, and the way that David Glass treated him in a heart-to-heart, and decided that maybe the grass under his feet was green enough.

My inner fan says that between the Royals Caravan and the FanFest, Greinke felt the love from Royals fans, and decided to reciprocate. (My inner analyst was about to respond, but my inner fan decked him before he could talk, then stomped on his glasses and pocket protector for good measure.)

Now, having signed him once, it ought to be easier to sign Greinke again. For a player about to reach free agency for the first time, two years away seems to be the cutoff – once a player gets into the penultimate year before free agency, he’s too close to the finish line to surrender a taste of the free agent market. But with Zack having already established that he’s willing to re-sign, I don’t think the urgency that we had this winter will be there two years from now. The Royals can probably go into the 2011 season before they need to re-visit the issue of another extension, and possibly even until the 2011-12 off-season, when Greinke enters the final year of his contract.

That gives Moore three seasons to get things right, to put the Royals into contention and persuade Greinke to stick around a while longer. That’s crucial, because while I have very little conviction one way or the other as to how good the Royals will be in 2009, I have a good deal of faith that by 2010 and especially 2011, they should be an above-average major league team.

This is going to be a very interesting season, because the error bars on so many players are just so darn high. From Mike Aviles to Alex Gordon to Billy Butler to Kyle Davies to even Jose Guillen, there are an inordinate number of key Royals who could make the All-Star team or be on the bench by July, and right now you could tell me the Royals will win anywhere from 69 to 89 games and I wouldn’t flinch.

With Greinke unsigned, a season closer to the lower end of that range would have likely spelled the end of his tenure in Kansas City. Instead, the Royals have a built-in margin for error; if 2009 goes poorly, they can regroup next year, without having to worry that they may have lost a part of their future in the process. With Greinke signed, every key member of the Royals is under club control for the next three years. Zack’s signed through 2012; Gil Meche through 2011; David DeJesus has a club option through 2011. Soria is ours through 2014. Should either Davies or Mark Teahen have a breakout year, the Royals can keep them through 2011. Gordon can’t leave until after 2012, Butler until after 2013, Aviles until after 2014.

The year 2011 has long stuck out for me as the year the Royals could really make a statement – not only is every player above under contract, but Mike Moustakas might be ready to join the lineup somewhere, and with a ton of money being freed up after the 2010 season when Guillen’s contract expires (to which we can now add Coco Crisp’s, Kyle Farnsworth’s, and Willie Bloomquist’s), there’s a ripe opportunity for Moore to augment a built-to-win roster with a premium free agent or two.

But that calculus didn’t work so long as Greinke could walk after the 2010 season. With that loophole closed, Moore & Company can focus on building a long-term winner without having to worry that short-term considerations might impede their ability to keep their young nucleus of talent together.

Not that the Royals should stop trying to bind that young core to the team. Since Moore is evidently taking my requests, let me throw the gauntlet down: if you don’t want me to withdraw my support again, Dayton, then you’ll start laying the groundwork for a long-term deal (say, 2010-2013, with a 2014 option) with Alex Gordon now. But first you’ll have to sign Ben Sheets to a contract. Oh, and I want to throw out the first pitch at a game this summer. And my daughters want a pony…

Boo. Effing. Yah.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" - John Maynard Keynes.

I hope to have a longer post later, once we have the full details of the contract. For now, suffice it to say that I withdraw the withdrawal of my support for Dayton Moore. Well played, sir. We'll just call Willie Bloomquist the price of doing business.

And if it so happens that there's an option year or two tucked in at the end of the four-year contract, well, it's probably a good thing I already named my daughter.

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.