Royals Today: 4/9/2010

The similarities between this season and last continue to impress. Like last year, the Royals lost on Opening Day when their bullpen blew a late-inning lead, which caused a fanbase that long expected the worst (including yours truly) to overreact to one game. Then, like last year, the Royals got two more dominant starting pitching performances in their next two games.

The difference is that last year, the Royals got good work from their non-Farnsworth relievers in Games Two and Three, and won both games. (It’s easy to forget this, but through May 17^th of last year, Juan Cruz had a 1.45 ERA and had allowed just 7 hits in 19 innings.) The bullpen implosion would come later.

There’s no need for patience this year. You’ve probably seen this graphic, but to reiterate:

Starters: 19.2 innings, 2 ER, 0.92 ERA

Relievers: 9.1 innings, 14 ER, 13.50 ERA

Yeah.

But I don’t want to ignore the contribution that the starting pitchers have made. That the bullpen has blown saves in all three games so far is testament to their decrepitude, but it’s also a testament to a rotation that has allowed the Royals to hold a lead after six innings in each game*, despite an offense that has only scored 10 runs in 3 games.

*: Back in 1999, the year the Royals had The Worst Bullpen of All Time, the team had a 73-68 record after six innings. As Joe Posnanski put it in a column the following spring, “the Royals would have been if they were playing slow-pitch softball.” But they weren’t, and they finished 64-97. This year, the Royals are 3-0 after six innings…and 1-2 overall. That 1999 team’s record seems impossible to break, and this year’s Royals at least have Soria. But as Buddy Bell said…

Zack Greinke, in fact, has had the worst performance by a starter so far. Yesterday Brian Bannister did what he always does when he’s healthy – do more with less than any Royals pitcher since at least Paul Byrd, and before him probably Dan Quisenberry. Bannister didn’t show us anything we didn’t already know so much as he reminded us that he’s still one of the most underrated pitchers around.

But what Luke Hochevar did on Wednesday night…that was something different. I’m not referring to the results, which were spectacular – 7.2 shutout innings, and 16 groundball outs vs. just 4 in the air. As outstanding as he pitched, he pitched that well or better three times last year – that’s what makes him, and his 6.55 ERA last season, so maddening. Plus, the weather was miserable – cold and rainy – which may have had something to do with the results.

What was different was his stuff. Or more specifically, his velocity. I knew something was up when the radar gun had his fastball consistently at 96 mph in the first inning. As I tweeted at the time, it was probably just a FOX gun hiccup – I haven’t taken the FOX gun seriously since the time it recorded Carlos Silva (Carlos Silva!) at 98. But Nate Bukaty, who tracks the game in the FOX truck when he’s not co-hosting his morning radio show on 810 WHB, tweeted back his assurances that the gun was accurate. And none of the other pitchers in the game were getting the same kind of tailwind – Max Scherzer, the opposing starter, was consistently 92-94 as you’d expect him to be.

There was only way to settle this – with Pitch F/X data, which isn’t perfect but is pretty damn close to it. I wasn’t the only one who had noticed Hochevar’s velocity – yesterday, Dave Allen of Fangraphs wrote this column analyzing the data. His conclusion: Hochevar is definitely throwing faster than he was last season; his fastball is as much as 2.5 mph faster than in 2009.

I’m skeptical that his fastball has jumped quite that much; while the velocities of other pitchers were more or less unchanged, Joakim Soria hit 92 and even 93 a couple of times, and his fastball is so consistent you could set a metronome to it – 90 on a slow day, 91 on a fast day. We’ll definitely want to see more data. But there’s no question that he was throwing harder than he ever had in the majors. Bob McClure worked on his delivery this spring, and Hochevar threw harder before he was drafted than after he signed, so this isn’t completely out of the blue. But it is a very, very welcome development. Before the season I said on Bukaty’s show that I felt this would be Hochevar’s breakout season. And I think Hochevar is the single most pivotal player on the roster this season. He won’t always be this good, but he can’t possibly be as bad as he was last year. If he’s closer to the former than the latter, the Royals just found themselves another quality starter.

That’s the good news. The bad news is…everything else.

- Well, okay, Soria’s performance wasn’t exactly bad news. Yes, he blew the save and cost Hochevar a victory with one strike to go. But there’s no way you can watch that at-bat and come to the conclusion that Soria was at fault. The only conclusion you can come to is that Miguel Cabrera is a very bad, bad mofo. That was a rather ridiculous piece of hitting – both fouling off everything Soria had to throw at him, and flicking an outside fastball off the right-field fair pole. Cabrera is a remarkably talented hitter who apparently has sobered up after possibly costing the Tigers a playoff spot with his drunken antics last season. If early results mean anything, he could be positively scary this season.

(While I’m on the subject of the Tigers – is Joel Zumaya’s shoulder made out of adamantium? The guy has had enough shoulder injuries to destroy most pitchers’ careers – and here he is, in his first outing after another shoulder injury, pumping 102 mph. I don’t get it.)

- More brilliant baserunning by the Royals in Game 2, when Jason Kendall made the third out of the inning trying to go from first-to-third on Getz’ RBI single. And then, on Rick Ankiel’s walk-off double, Willie Bloomquist – who had just pinch-run for Billy Butler – rounded third base hard, then held up at the last moment at Dave Owen’s orders, but Ankiel was already halfway between second and third. The Royals were saved when Scott Sizemore booted the relay throw, and the game ended. But if Sizemore had handled it cleanly, either the Royals would have had two men at third base, or Bloomquist was a dead duck at the plate. It was a terrible piece of coaching in a crucial situation that should have cost the Royals dearly.

It’s still the first week of the season, but it’s not too early to say this given his history: it’s time to tear down the Windmill. Dave Owen is costing the Royals runs with his decisions at third base, and eventually those runs will turn into wins.

- I’ve been impressed with Jose Guillen’s bat speed; he seems to be turning on fastballs as well as he did in 2008. Of course, in 2008 he was still a below-average hitter because he swung at everything, and I don’t see any reason to think that will change this year.

Case in point: in Game 2, after Cabrera had tied the game in the top of the 9^th, Ankiel led off the bottom of the inning with a single. Lefty specialist Phil Coke stayed in to face Guillen, fell behind 3-1, and then threw a fastball low and away which would have put two men on with none out. Instead, Guillen didn’t just swing at the fastball, he tried to pull it, resulting in an easy 6-4-3 double play to kill the rally.

- I don’t care what anyone else says: no one can protect a four-run deficit in the ninth inning better than Kyle Farnsworth. No one.

Tie games in the 11^th inning, on the other hand…in the span of five pitches, Farnsworth had managed to give up three singles and give the Tigers the lead. To his credit, he stopped the rally there, sandwiching two popouts around a savvy pickoff of Cabrera trying to commit to a double-steal too soon. He came away with the win, further debasing the uselessness of pitcher wins as a stat, but he still has no business pitching in a key situation.

- That is, unless the alternative is Luis Mendoza. You have to love the thought process here: yesterday afternoon, with the Royals clinging to a 2-1 lead in the top of the 8^th inning and with Soria likely unavailable, Dusty Hughes walked Johnny Damon to lead off the 8^th. (The Royals must lead the league in opposing rallies started by leadoff walks. Unfortunately, they have yet to learn the use of this weapon in their own arsenal.)

Four of the next five hitters bat right-handed, prompting a switch. It is at this point that Trey Hillman makes the genius move, not to bring in Juan Cruz, or Robinson Tejeda, or Roman Colon or even Farnsworth, but instead to bring in Mendoza.

Luis Mendoza was making his Royals debut. Mendoza, in 80 career innings, had a 7.73 ERA. Last season, he pitched only one inning for the Rangers, and gave up four runs. He spent the rest of the season toiling in Triple-A, where he managed a sparkling 4.53 ERA. His career ERA in the minors is 4.58. He’s like Roman Colon’s little brother: he’s shown no aptitude at retiring hitters in the majors or even in the minors, yet the Royals not only were thrilled to get him, they immediately used him in a one-run game, in the eighth inning, with a man on base, and with Magglio Ordonez and Miguel Freaking Cabrera due up next.

- Miguel Cabrera then hits a groundball to shortstop, where Yuniesky Betancourt immediately boots it. This was an obvious, clear, no-doubt-about-it error, and was scored as such at first, before the official scorer inexplicably decided to change it to a base hit. (There are conflicting reports as to the model of shotgun that Dayton Moore had wedged between the scorer’s shoulder blades at the time.) This set up Cabrera to hit another opposite-field homer, this time on an 0-2 count.

This wouldn’t end the Luis Mendoza show; Mendoza would give up a pair of doubles and a walk in the ninth, and then Colon would use his new magical slider to give up a single, a walk, and hit a batter before finally getting the last out in the ninth. Mendoza is currently tied for the league lead with 5 earned runs allowed this year. His career ERA is now 8.13.

- Betancourt’s error-turned-hit merely underscores that the Royals are incomplete denial about how bad his defense is. Twice on Opening Day, he had to lunge to pick up groundballs that weren’t more than ten feet to his left. He managed to get to both of them, but his lack of range was shocking – all the more so because we were told that his lateral movement had improved this spring.

His defense is a joke at this point. The Royals can call him Ozzie Smith for all I care; he is not a major-league caliber shortstop.

- Oh, and in regards to his plate discipline after his Opening Day home run? Yesterday, the Royals mounted a rally in the bottom of the eighth, scoring a run and putting the tying run on third base with one out for Betancourt. He immediately swung at the first pitch and hit a routine grounder to the shortstop, forcing the runner to stay at third. The Royals helped hide his failure by giving up three more runs in the 9^th, but the fact remains that his offensive game remains as unrefined – and seemingly uninterested in improving – as his defense.

Fortunately, his replacement is on the roster. In three games so far, Mike Aviles has one base-running appearance and zero at-bats. But he’s doing better than Mitch Maier, who hasn’t played at all.

I don’t mean to sound too down. The Royals are 1-2, and their bullpen is a shambles as expected. But tonight they send Kyle Davies to the mound, who is certainly erratic but compares favorably with almost any #5 starter in baseball. The day after Gil Meche and his rapidly-improving shoulder debuts, and then the rotation turns back to Greinke. (Correction: Greinke goes tomorrow, and Meche on Sunday. Always good to get the reigning Cy Young winner the opportunity to pitch as often as possible.)

Every day the Royals send a starter to the mound who has the ability to turn over a lead to the bullpen. Now they just need a bullpen capable of holding onto it.

Royals Today: Opening Day Edition.

So, what to write about Opening Day that hasn’t been written before – like, say, last year? What did we see from the Royals yesterday (with one big exception) that we didn’t see a hundred times last season? Yes, it’s just one game, and yes, maybe fans take Opening Day a little too seriously. But there’s a reason why so many Royals fans are putting so much meaning into one game. We’ve seen this movie before, way too many times. I think most of us have accepted that the Royals will suck again this season – but is it too much to ask that they suck creatively? Can’t they suck in a different way than they did last year? Evidently not.

- All those new veteran players brought in to impart a winning attitude to the team, all that time spent on fundamentals again this spring, and the Royals can’t get through the top of the first inning of the season without making a play that belongs on the team’s end-of-season blooper reel.

I don’t know who’s at fault for letting Carlos Guillen’s infield pop-up drop, and I don’t care. All I know is that six men looked up into the sky and swirling wind, and not one of them took charge to make the play. Greinke is exempt from criticism, both because he’s Zack Greinke and because pitchers never have responsibility on infield pop-ups. But the reality is that when he’s on the mound, he’s easily the best defensive player on the infield. At some point, he ought to just say f**k it, and make every play he can himself.

- It’s somehow appropriate that the first run Greinke gives up this season should be an unearned run. He gave up nine unearned runs each of the last two seasons, even though his pitching style should lead to very few unearned runs (as I documented here two years ago). Yesterday was a perfect example of this: with two men on, Greinke induces a pop-up, a ball in play which should almost never lead to an error – unless you’re asking the Royals to catch it.

- I’m not going to rag on Willie Bloomquist too much for taking the error, because that really was a team effort, and he did make a fine play later in the game that might have saved Greinke a run.

Besides, it’s not Bloomquist’s fault that he was the Opening Day third baseman. Yes, it took a perfect storm of injuries for that to happen, with Alex Gordon’s broken thumb and Alberto Callaspo’s tweaked oblique. (Tweaked Oblique sounds like a good name for a band, if anyone’s looking for ideas…) But it still doesn’t explain why Bloomquist started over Mike Aviles.

Actually, I do know why – because Trey Hillman doesn’t feel that Aviles is ready to play third base yet. This is perfectly reasonable – as quickly as he returned from his injury, and as well as he played this spring, we can’t forget that Aviles had Tommy John surgery less than 10 months ago, his arm strength still isn’t 100%, and it may still be a few weeks before Aviles can be safely trusted to play full-out.

I just have one question to ask, if I may: if Aviles isn’t yet ready to start at third base, WHY THE HELL IS HE ON THE ROSTER?

Aviles was a revelation in 2008, not just offensively but defensively, as he played an above-average shortstop while hitting .325 as a rookie. Last year was a lost season, obviously, and after not playing in a game in 10 months, Aviles has a lot to prove. But he certainly has the ability to upgrade the Royals considerably at shortstop, where the Royals have a starter who – as you may know – leaves a lot to be desired in both facets of his game.

So the obvious solution here is to send Aviles to Omaha on a rehab assignment, which allows him to get reps at the plate every day, and allows him to progress defensively from second base to third base to shortstop as his arm strength returns. A month or six weeks from now, Aviles ought to be ready to step in at any position the Royals might need him. In particular, should Yuniesky Betancourt struggle as he did after the trade last season, the Royals will have a viable option to replace him.

Instead, the Royals were so impressed with Aviles’ performance that they brought him north with the team…only to stash him on the bench, where he won’t get the chance to continue his hot hitting, where he won’t be able to work on his arm strength in game situations, and where he’s evidently so fragile that the Royals don’t feel confident that they can use him at all.

Yesterday, the Spork went 0-for-3 with 2 strikeouts in his first three times up. In the bottom of the eighth, Bloomquist was due up again with two outs, nobody on, and the 100 mph-throwing Ryan Perry on the mound. Seems like a good chance to get Aviles up in a low-pressure situation, then let him take the field for the last inning. Instead, Bloomquist batted, and struck out again.

If you’re not going to use Aviles off the bench in a tailor-made situation, then why have him on the bench to begin with? Two months from now, if not sooner, Aviles might be the best shortstop the Royals have. If the Royals were actively trying to prevent Aviles from regaining his previous form, they couldn’t have made a better decision than the one they have.

- Speaking of Betancourt, props to him for one of the most impressive plate appearances I’ve ever seen from him. Granted, that’s damning with faint praise. Still, I should point out that as stunning as it was to see him drive a Justin Verlander fastball 380-plus feet to left-center field, the most impressive part of the at-bat was that his home run came on a full-count. In particular, the pitch immediately before the homer was a 2-2 fastball about three inches off the outside corner, and Betancourt spit on it.

It was one at-bat. And if the 2-2 pitch had been a slider, Betancourt probably would have swung no matter where it was placed. But I have to give credit where credit’s due, and I plan to watch Yuni’s pitch selection a little more closely in the coming weeks.

- I should apologize for suggesting that the Royals lost this game the same way they lost last season.

On Opening Day last season, the Royals’ starter departed the game with a lead, and in their first inning of work, the bullpen gave up three runs and lost the game. On Opening Day this season, the Royals’ starter departed the game with a lead, and in their first inning of work, the bullpen gave up six runs and lost the game. Also, they lost the game in the 8th inning last season, the 7th inning this year. Big difference.

- There’s not much to say about the bullpen’s seventh-inning meltdown. Roman Colon, Robinson Tejeda, and Juan Cruz faced 10 batters in the inning. Three struck out, one walked, and the other six all got hits. There was some degree of bad luck – the Tigers were 6-for-6 on balls-in-play – but if luck is the residue of design, then bad luck is the residue of a lack of design.

Roman Colon is really the Yuniesky Betancourt of the pitching staff – the Royals promoted him last season, and continue to use him in tight spots, even though he’s never done anything remotely positive at the major league level. But he unveiled a new slider this spring that everyone has raved about, and a new pitch is sometimes all it takes for a pitcher to take a dramatic step forward.

The slider I saw yesterday was hardly new; it was a wide sweeping thing that any hitter could recognize about 30 feet from the plate. (Colon said so as much afterwards: “The slider didn’t work today.”) He lit the fire.

Tejeda, who was terrific last season, is nonetheless the kind of guy I’d feel much more comfortable with to start an inning – he needs some space to clean up his own messes, and coming in with two men on base eliminated that margin for error. He threw the worst pitch in the entire sequence, a 1-2 fastball to Miguel Cabrera that was right down the middle, and hit back up the middle for an RBI single.

Juan Cruz almost looked decent, at least after he iced the game by giving up a two-run double to Brandon Inge – he struck out three of the next four hitters. I still hold out hope that he’ll regain his pre-2009 form. I would just rather he prove that in non-clutch situations first.

Colon, Tejeda, Cruz…if I had just described a game from last July, would any of you know the difference? If you had told me that Greinke pitched a brilliant game despite defensive lapses behind him, but then Colon and Cruz came in and blew the game before Soria could get in, I’d say you were describing this game here that I attended last season. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

If insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, expecting the same result, what level of schizophrenia have the Royals descended to?

- I don’t care what anyone else says: no one can protect a four-run deficit in the ninth inning better than Kyle Farnsworth. No one.

- And finally, what would a Royals’ game be without a dose of insane baserunning?

In the fifth inning, recall, Chris Getz got the Royals rolling with a two-out single off Verlander. He stole second, David DeJesus hit a grounder up the middle that Adam Everett could only keep on the infield, and then Scott Podsednik worked a walk. This set up the perfect situation: Billy Butler at the plate, with the bases loaded in a tie game. Butler has owned Verlander in his career, and while I don’t put much stock in hitter-pitcher matchups (all the statistical evidence says that what a batter has done against a specific pitcher is almost meaningless), the fact is that Butler can catch up to a fastball like few others in the game, even one as fast as Verlander’s. Butler poked a single to right field, plating two baserunners.

Two innings later, after the Tigers had put up their six-spot to take an 8-4 lead, the Royals’ offense once again stirred. Jason Kendall beat out an infield single. Getz singled to left as Kendall pulled up at second. And with one out, Podsednik blooped a single into short center field, giving Billy Butler another chance to bat with the bases loaded, representing the tying run, likely against Ryan Perry, another cooks-with-gas right-hander who provides all the energy Butler needs to go deep if he runs into one…

…WHAT THE HELL?!

Yep, that’s the Royals’ catcher churning around third base, with one out, the Royals’ best hitter about to come to the plate, down four runs in the seventh inning. That’s the Royals’ catcher being thrown out at the plate, with the Royals’ best hitter about to come to the plate, down four runs in the seventh inning.

Yes, it was a terrific throw, and a bang-bang play. But so what? When you’re down four runs in the seventh inning, and you’re about to bring up the tying run at the plate in the form of your #3 hitter, the only excuse to have a runner thrown out trying to score is if he slips and falls down halfway to home, then gets back up only to step on a landmine. Otherwise, it’s a fireable offense.

Dave Owen, the Royals’ third-base coach, was not fired over the winter.

In his defense, though, Kendall’s not going to have the speed he once had before that severe ankle injury in 1999.

- Momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher. After the hissy fit we all threw on Opening Day last year, the Royals won their next two games against the White Sox, and suddenly they were 2-1 with three dominant starting pitcher performances under their belt, and they were well on their way to 18-11. So let’s not get too riled up this time around.

I do feel compelled to point out that last year, tomorrow’s starting pitcher was Zack Greinke. This year, tomorrow’s starting pitcher is…Luke Hochevar.

Hope still springs eternal. But spring better show up quick.

Prospect Rundown, Part 7.

Let’s finish up with a few quick comments on prospects that have so far escaped the reach of my keyboard. This isn’t necessarily a list of the best prospects that I haven’t covered yet, just the prospects that I think warrant mentioning because they’re relatively close to being major-league ready.

Jeff Bianchi: Well, this one’s easy – Bianchi’s out for the year with a torn UCL necessitating Tommy John surgery. His entire career has been an exhibit in promising talent limited by injury. He hit over .400 in rookie ball in both 2005 and 2006, but a torn labrum in his shoulder in 2006 ended his season after 12 games, and he was awful in 2007 and only slightly better in 2008. Last season, he showed the talent that made him a 2^nd round pick in 2005: he hit .300 in Wilmington and .315 at Northwest Arkansas, with a little pop (9 homers, 29 doubles) and some speed (22 steals). His plate discipline isn’t great (39 walks against 95 Ks) but acceptable for a shortstop.

When he was drafted, the upside comparison I heard was Michael Young. After last season’s resurgence, he projects as a poor man’s Michael Young – a line-drive hitter whose solid fundamentals allow him to play shortstop despite below-average range. That’s not a great player, honestly, maybe a league-average shortstop at his best, or a very good utility player. Still, he projected as better than Yuniesky Betancourt, which would have made his injury a big blow to the Royals – if Mike Aviles wasn’t the surprise of camp. If Aviles is healthy, the Royals won’t miss Bianchi this season.

We’ll see if he can come back next season and make good on his promise. It won’t take much for him to be a success by recent Royals standards. For as much attention as the Royals have received for the failure of their high first-round picks, they’ve gotten a pass for their 2^nd round picks, which have been terrible. Here’s a list of every 2^nd rounder drafted in the last 15 years:

1996: Taylor Myers

1997: Dane Sardinha (did not sign)

1998: Robbie Morrison

1999: Wes Obermueller & Brian Sanches

2000: Mike Tonis

2001: Roscoe Crosby

2002: Adam Donachie

2003: Shane Costa

2004: Billy Buckner and Eric Cordier

2005: Jeff Bianchi

2006: Jason Taylor

2007: Sam Runion

2008: Johnny Giavotella

You don’t expect to hit on all your 2^nd round picks, but oh my God, that’s awful. No wonder the Royals gave up their 2^nd round pick last season when they signed Juan Cruz.

Obermueller pitched briefly, and not successfully, in the majors; Sanches made it to the majors as a middle reliever when he was 27, and actually had a good year for the Phillies last season at age 30. Tonis got six at-bats in the majors. Costa was Shane Costa. Buckner has a 5.74 ERA in the majors.

And those are the success stories. No one else on that list reached the majors. (Eric Cordier was throwing 95 this spring and has a lot of people excited again about his future. Of course, he’s the guy the Royals gave up for Tony Pena Jr.) The two guys drafted after Bianchi, Jason Taylor and Sam Runion, are at the moment two of the biggest busts in the organization.

Jarrod Dyson: During my brief stay at the Winter Meetings the Royals held a press conference for Trey Hillman, and at the end of the presser I got in a question, asking Hillman what prospects he was looking forward to bringing up to the major league roster this season. He immediately brought up Dyson, which was…curious, given that Dyson wasn’t even listed when Baseball America ranked the team’s top 30 prospects.

It would be all too easy to mock the Royals for thinking so highly of Dyson, who is 25 years old and still hasn’t demonstrated the ability to, you know, hit. In four minor league seasons, he has a .270 lifetime average, and his next homer will be his first as a pro.

But Dyson has one undeniable tool – speed – and to his credit has developed that tool into two identifiable skills: baserunning prowess and defensive range. The kid can fly, and he’s a stolen base threat every time he reaches base – which is far too rare. (In his career he has reached base of his own accord 308 times, and has 107 steals – an incredible ratio.) But he’s also a defensive whiz in centerfield. Those two skills don’t make a ballplayer, but they do make for a handy fifth or sixth outfielder – if teams had the space for five or six outfielders, which they don’t.

I’ve seen people compare him to Joey Gathright, which is silly for two reasons. One is that Gathright actually hit: in his first full season, Gathright hit .331 in the minor leagues, then hit .334 the following season between Double-A and Triple-A, and was in the majors by the time he was 23. But the other is that Gathright, despite his amazing speed, was never a particularly good outfielder, which is why he has been unable to stick in the majors as a backup (he was just released by the Blue Jays the other day.) The better comparison for Dyson, I think, would be to a poor man’s Endy Chavez, who was briefly with the Royals as a Rule 5 pick many years ago.

Chavez has never hit well enough to play every day in the majors, but he could always run, and if he were an everyday player people would recognize him as one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball. His running over-the-wall ice cream-scoop catch of Scott Rolen’s home run ball in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS would rank as one of the three most important defensive plays in playoff history had the Mets not lost the game anyway on Yadier Molina’s ninth-inning home run.

I doubt that Dyson will ever develop enough to be a regular, or even semi-regular, outfielder in the majors. But if nothing else, he has tremendous value as a September callup, because when you have unlimited rosters, a guy who can pinch-run and play great defense off the bench will always have value. If anything, Dyson might be more valuable to a better team – a team that’s in the hunt in September could use a guy like Dyson that might steal them a game with his legs or glove. A team like the Royals needs September to look at guys who might be regulars for them in the future. Barring a radical improvement in his offensive game, Dyson won’t be that guy. If Hillman really thinks Dyson can help the Royals as an everyday player, he’s only fooling himself.

Kila Ka’aihue: The Royals keep trying to bury him, and he keeps making himself difficult to ignore. The power he showed in 2008 was unsustainable – Ka’aihue hit 37 homers but just 15 doubles, and that’s not a ratio that even the most hulking behemoth of a slugger can maintain for long. Sure enough, his homers dropped to 17 last season even as his doubles jumped to 27. But the drop in his batting average was more concerning; after hitting .315 in 2008, he hit just .252 for Omaha last year.

Fortunately, his plate discipline, his greatest skill, remained unharmed. He drew 102 walks last season after drawing 104 the year before. Remember, no Royal has walked 100 times at the major league level since Kevin Seitzer two decades ago. And while some guys draw lots of walks because they watch a lot of close pitches, including a lot of called strike threes, Ka’aihue has never struck out 100 times in a season.

He’s not as good as he looked in 2008, but he’s not as bad as he looked in 2009 – and in 2009, his performance still translated to have been a big improvement on Mike Jacobs. Jacobs is gone now, and while Jose Guillen has the DH spot for now, I have this suspicion that the odds Guillen loses the job to injury, non-performance, or simply a refusal to adapt to the position are quite high. Ka’aihue has had a monster spring, punctuated with a two-game stretch last week when he ended one game with a walk-off, bases-loaded walk, and hit the go-ahead homer in the eighth inning of the next game.

The Royals have pinned him with that awful label, “slider-bat speed”, a label that’s harder to get rid of than herpes. I’m not sure it’s true, and I’m not sure it’s relevant. Jacobs could hit a good fastball, but the problem was that he swung at a lot of bad fastballs as well. Ka’aihue may not be able to catch up to a perfectly-placed fastball, but few hitters can. And the good sense to lay off fastballs outside the strike zone mitigates that weakness.

Honestly, I wish some more of the Royals had slider-bat speed. If Guillen had slider-bat speed, maybe he’d actually hit some of those sliders he swings at. Somehow, the fact that Miguel Olivo had “fastball-bat speed” was okay. It’s okay if you swing over every off-speed pitch in the book, but God forbid you can’t hit a really good fastball.

Ka’aihue is one of the five best hitters in the organization right now, no matter what speed his bat is. If the Royals ever give him the chance to perform, they might be surprised at the results. Even if the rest of us won’t.

David Lough: When I spoke with J.J. Picollo a few weeks ago, I asked him for a sleeper from among the pitching and hitting ranks. His pitching sleeper was John Lamb, who we’ve already covered, and Lough was his hitting sleeper. His point wasn’t that Lough was an unknown – he ranks as the Royals’ #10 prospect by Baseball America, and reached Double-A last season, hitting .331/.371/.517 – but that this spring he looked even better than the Royals thought he was. They farmed him out early, but not before he made a big impression in camp.

It’s almost too easy to compare Lough to David DeJesus, but sometimes the easy comparison is easy for a reason. Like DeJesus, Lough projects as a tweener, a guy whose bat can play in center field, and whose glove looks good in a corner spot, but who might not fit at any specific position. And like DeJesus, Lough’s biggest strength is a lack of weaknesses. He hits for a good average, modest power (14 homers last year, 16 homers the year before), steals bases (19 last year, 12 in 2008), rarely strikes out, runs well, and has the range to hang in center or shine in a corner. The comparison even extends to his arm: like DeJesus, Lough doesn’t have great arm strength, but is very accurate with his throws. The biggest difference is that Lough doesn’t walk a lot – just 24 walks last season – and he’ll need to work on that if he’s ever going to have an acceptable OBP.

DeJesus has had a much better career than many expected, and it’s not because he developed any surprising skills like start to hit for power, it’s just that he was maybe 5% or 10% better across the board than he was expected to be, and at his level of performance, that’s the difference between fringe-average and average-plus, as the scouts say. DeJesus started his career in center field, where his glove was average but his bat was a little above-average, and then last year he moved to left field, where his bat was average but he was one of the best defensive left fielders in the game.

Coming into spring training, I was worried that Lough would be a true tweener, a guy who maybe was a good fourth outfielder but just wouldn’t hit enough to play every day. But as with DeJesus, a little improvement goes a long way when you’ve got a broad base of skills like Lough does. If Lough really does take his game to another level this season, he might be ready to take over if and when Rick Ankiel or Scott Podsednik break down, and may play well enough to hold onto the job all season. Lough’s a very athletic guy who was recruited to a Division II college to play football, and is still young in baseball terms, which means that even at age 24, continued development is not unlikely. If the Royals were seeing something real in spring training, he could soon be starting for them for a long time.

Johnny Giavotella: Johnny G is my sleeper, and not just because his name makes him sound like an extra in “Goodfellas”. Giavotella is a true sleeper, in that his first full pro season was widely considered a bit of a disappointment: he went to high-A Wilmington and hit just .258 with 6 homers. He’s also not considered to be a particularly good second baseman defensively.

But look deeper. He was just 20 when he signed – he was unusually young for a college junior – and played most of last season at age 21. Almost on cue, he hit better after he turned 22 in July; he hit .292/.355/.423 in the second half of the season. And he played for the Blue Rocks, where the ballpark is a notoriously tough place to hit, but particularly so for right-handed hitters. He has tremendous bat control; he walked 66 times against just 54 strikeouts last season. He has good speed, with 26 steals. Moving to a much-better hitters’ park in Double-A this year, I think Giavotella may surprise everyone with a breakout season offensively.

When he was drafted, I tried to find major league players that he would compare to, and finally settled on “Chuck Knoblauch without the speed”. So I was quite pleased when I opened this year’s edition of Baseball Prospectus, and under Giavotella’s projection, his most comparable player was…Chuck Knoblauch. (And yes, yes, I’m quite aware that the elves have invaded the PECOTA system this spring, and if you check online I’m sure Giavotella’s closest comp will be Ichiro Suzuki, or maybe Dan Quisenberry. I’ll stick with Knobby.) His glove will continue to be an issue, but you can do worse than a second baseman with a .370 OBP and speed, even if his defense is subpar. The Royals certainly have.

Prospect Rundown, Part 6.

Let’s finish off this prospect review before any more of them retire…

As an update to the last post: I had mentioned that prior to Tim Melville, the Royals only had two non-first-round picks signed to million-dollar bonuses going back to Bo Jackson, namely Derrick Robinson and Roscoe Crosby. I have been reminded that the Royals gave Luis Cota, their 10^th round pick in 2003, $1 million to sign. Cota’s case was a little different, in that he was a draft-and-follow who didn’t sign that summer, but went to community college in Arizona and showed first-round talent on the mound. The Royals controlled his rights until one week before the 2004 draft, and ponied up the cash to sign him.

In Cota’s case, the Royals didn’t draft him with the intent of giving him big money to sign, so it’s not an exact parallel to the draft phenomenon I discussed last time. But he warrants mention. (Cota briefly impressed scouts with his fastball in the Midwest League before his shoulder exploded; he’s still trying to work his way back and I think he’s still part of the organization, but his future looks bleak.)

To continue…while Melville is emblematic of the Royals’ new aggressive approach to the draft, he’s emblematic of another trend as well. The Royals were able to gauge his signability in part because he was a local. I’m using the term “local” generously here; Wentzville, Missouri is maybe half an hour west of St. Louis. But even by an expanded definition of “local”, the Royals have a disturbing history of passing on local talent, even as many local products have gone on to have fine major league careers.

Let’s define “local” as broadly as possible – as any player selected in a six-state area: Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. In 1988, the Royals used their 1^st-round pick on Hugh Walker, an ath-a-lete from an Arkansas high school who, alas, didn’t actually know how to hit. The Royals did a lot of that back in the late 1980s; presumably their success with Bo Jackson emboldened the franchise into thinking they could turn track stars into superstars, and never mind that Bo was actually a very productive collegiate hitter at Auburn.

The failure of Walker, in turn, might have cooled the Royals’ feelings towards local players. Probably not, but for whatever reason the Royals hardly ever drafted a local player with a high pick in the years to come. In 2005, the Royals selected Alex Gordon out of the University of Nebraska – a pick that was a no-doubt dead-cinch-lock pick that almost every team in baseball would have made with the #2 selection.

In the 17 drafts in between, from 1989 through 2004, the Royals selected only three players out of that six-state area in the first seven rounds of the draft. Interestingly, all three players made the majors, and at least one would have become a star in a kinder, gentler universe.

That would have been Jamie Bluma, who was the closer for Wichita State back when the Shockers were perennially contenders for the national championship. Bluma was taken in the 3^rd round in 1994 as an almost-major-league-ready college senior; he was in Triple-A within a year, and in the majors the year after that, never posting an ERA higher than 3.12 along the way. He debuted in the majors on August 9^th, 1996, and when Jeff Montgomery’s season ended with arm soreness on September 1^st, Bluma took over as the team’s closer, saving all five of his opportunities. In 20 innings, he allowed just 18 hits and 4 walks, striking out 14. He was in place to be Montgomery’s set-up man the following year, and Monty’s presumed successor in the closer’s role.

And then he was hit by the curse – “curse” sounds nicer than “Gene Stephenson destroyed his arm” – that afflicted almost every high-profile WSU pitcher of that era. (Tyler Green. Darren Dreifort. Mike Drumright.) Bluma was found to have a torn rotator cuff the following spring. He missed all of 1997, pitched three lousy seasons in the minors from 1998 to 2000, and then retired without ever pitching in the majors again.

If you were to put together a list of the 10 most significant injuries in Royals history, I think Bluma has to be on the list. Montgomery started to lose his effectiveness in 1997, was a liability in 1998, and a disaster in 1999 – the year the Royals had what I have previously argued was the worst bullpen of all time. Bluma didn’t really project as a Grade A closer, but at the very least he would have given the Royals some stability in that role in the late 1990s. With Bluma, the Royals wouldn’t have felt pressured to trade for a closer, and might have traded Johnny Damon for someone who was actually valuable instead of Roberto Hernandez. They might not have spent millions on Ricky Bottalico. The turn-of-the-century Royals might have been prevented from doing a lot of dumb things had Bluma not been hurt.

Then in 1999, the Royals selected two local players with early picks. Their second-round selection was Wes Obermueller, a pitcher out of the University of Iowa. Obermueller was a converted outfielder with a live arm, and judging from his performance record might have been better served staying in the outfield. He reached the majors for a brief stint with the Royals in 2002, then was traded the following summer as partial payment for Curtis Leskanic when Allard Baird went all-in during the Summer of Fool’s Gold. (We really need a good nickname for the 2003 season.) Leskanic pitched very well for the Royals down the stretch, but his pitching earned his release the following summer; picked up by the Red Sox, he pitched well for them in a limited role, and then became the answer to a trivia question that October: “who was the winning pitcher the night Dave Roberts stole second base?”

Obermueller pitched three seasons in Milwaukee and another in Florida, and the lowest ERA of his career was 5.07. At the plate, he was a career .237 hitter, and was 15-for-39 in 2004.

In the fifth round, out of the University of Nebraska, the Royals selected Ken Harvey. We poke fun of Harvey a lot here in the blogosphere – and I’m still waiting for someone to put together a YouTube “greatest hits” compilation of Harvey’s most memorable plays – but he did play essentially two full seasons in the majors as a starting first baseman. In draft terms, you’re doing well if your fifth-round pick makes it to the majors. If you drafted a Ken Harvey in the fifth-round every year, that would win you some games.

The last quality player the Royals drafted from those six states was a true local; David Cone was drafted out of Rockhurst High in 1981. (Notice I didn’t use the term “All-Star” – Harvey was, incredibly, the Royals’ representative in 2004.) But it’s not because the Royals couldn’t find any star talent in their neighborhood; it’s because they didn’t even bother to try.

This wouldn’t be a big deal if there simply weren’t any major league players coming out of the Great Plains. But, of course, there were. Here’s just a sampling of local players – all drafted in the 4^th round or later – from 1989 to 2004:

1989: Mike Oquist, U. of Arkansas, 13^th Round*

1990: Mike Myers, Iowa State, 4^th Round

1990: Mike Lansing, WSU, 6^th Round

1990: Pat Meares, WSU, 12^th Round

1992: Doug Mirabelli, WSU, 5^th Round

1993: Bill Mueller, Missouri State, 15^th Round

1995: A.J. Burnett, Central Arkansas Christian HS, 8^th Round

1995: Ramon Vazquez, Indian Hills CC (IA), 27^th Round

1996: Joe Crede, Fatima HS (MO), 5^th Round

1996: Casey Blake, WSU, 7^th Round

1996: Travis Hafner, Cowley County CC (KS), 31^st Round

1996: Junior Spivey, Cowley County CC (KS), 36^th Round

1998: Eric Hinske, U. of Arkansas, 17^th Round

1998: Mark Buehrle, Francis Howell North HS (MO), 38^th Round

1999: Nate Robertson, WSU, 5^th Round

2000: Cliff Lee, U. of Arkansas, 4^th Round

2000: Adam LaRoche, Seminole State College (OK), 29^th Round

2001: Ryan Howard, Missouri State University, 5^th Round

2001: Dan Johnson, U. of Nebraska, 7^th Round

2002: Kyle McClellan, Hazelwood West HS (MO), 25^th Round

2003: Ian Kinsler, U. of Missouri, 17^th Round

2003: Brad Ziegler, Missouri State University, 20^th Round

*: Oquist wasn’t all that good, but I list him here because he happened to sit down next to me on a plane as I returned from the 2003 SABR Conference in Denver back to Chicago – Oquist was returning to the Atlantic League after going home for the All-Star Break. He was incredibly gracious, and we had a very lovely conversation.

Notably left off this list is Albert Pujols, for the simple reason that including Pujols on a list of mere mortals would be an insult to his majesty. But let’s just remember that Pujols, who as a 13^th-round pick in 1999 is inarguably the GREATEST LATE-ROUND STEAL IN DRAFT HISTORY, went to high school IN KANSAS CITY, and was drafted out of Maple Woods Community College IN KANSAS CITY, and while attending Maple Woods one of his roommates WORKED AT KAUFFMAN STADIUM.

That’s an impressive list of talent, particularly when you consider that we’re looking only at guys drafted in the 4^th round or later. In particular, that’s a shocking amount of talent drafted in the late rounds (10^th or later). Just using players from the 10^th round and later, you could put together an infield of Pujols, Kinsler, Meares, and Mueller, put Hafner at DH, move Hinske and LaRoche in the outfield (or move Pujols out there), use Vazquez and Spivey as utility infielders, start Buehrle on the mound, and put McClellan and Ziegler in the bullpen.

The Royals drafted none of them.

I have no way of knowing without breaking down each region of the country the same way, but this strikes me as an incredible amount of major league talent that late in the draft, particularly for an area that’s not exactly known for being a baseball hotbed. This shouldn’t be surprising. Precisely because the area around Kansas City isn’t well-populated, and the quality of amateur baseball competition isn’t that high, it’s a lot harder to evaluate the major league potential of the non-elite prospects. Consequently, a lot of guys with big futures get buried in the late rounds.

Which makes the fact that the Royals didn’t focus their draft efforts in their own backyard for so long a criminal offense. The closest the Royals got to a late-round find in that span were two guys who just missed: Kit Pellow, a 22^nd rounder in 1996 who briefly made the majors with the Royals and Rockies, and has since taken his all-or-nothing swing to leagues all over the world; and Ruben Gotay, a 31^st round draft-and-follow out of Indian Hills CC in Iowa, who was the Royals’ starting baseman at the age of 21, and if his glove were a little better might still be a starting second baseman for someone today. And that’s it.

After Pujols, Ian Kinsler is one of the biggest out-of-nowhere college picks in the game today; he went from the 17^th round to quality major leaguer inside of 3 years. You’d think the Royals would have had more looks at him coming out of Mizzou than other teams.

Almost half the guys listed above were drafted from three places: Wichita State, the University of Arkansas, and Missouri State (formerly Southwest Missouri State). There was a golden opportunity there for the Royals to out-scout their opponents for someone like Ryan Howard. Howard’s power wasn’t exactly a secret, but no one knew if he’d make contact consistently enough to be a major league threat. The Royals had the opportunity to make that assessment better. Another Missouri State grad, Shaun Marcum (who’s not listed above because he was a 3^rd-round pick in 2003) also made the majors in short order. Meanwhile, the Royals haven’t drafted a player out of Missouri State in any round since 1993. (That year they took Bart Evans – who made the majors and briefly looked like a potential closer before suffering a serious ankle injury – in the 9^th round.)

With Melville, the Royals finally took a flyer on a player from their own area. Just to prove that wasn’t a fluke, the Royals took Aaron Crow with their first-round pick last season. Crow was technically picked out of an independent league, but he went to Mizzou for three years and was drafted out of college by the Nationals the year before. He also grew up in Topeka and attended Washburn Rural there. I advocated that the Royals draft Grant Green with their pick last season, but I admire the fact that in Crow, the Royals took a player that they must have seen dozens of times in college. Their scouting dossier on him figures to be thicker – and presumably better – than most teams.

It’s not a coincidence that this new focus on home-grown talent started after Dayton Moore was named GM, because Moore is a product of the Braves’ front office, and the Braves are the most famous – and most successful – example of a team mining its own backyard for major-league talent. The Braves didn’t starting drafting out of Georgia in earnest until the year 2000. Prior to that, their most successful local pick was John Rocker, an 18^th-rounder in 1993. (They also found Kevin Millwood out of neighboring North Carolina in the 11^th round in 1994.) But here’s a list of all the Georgia picks from the first 6 rounds from 2000 through 2005:

2000: Adam Wainwright, high school, 1^st Round

2000: Bryan Digby, high school, 2^nd Round (did not reach majors)

2000: Blaine Boyer, high school, 3^rd Round

2001: Macay Mcbride, high school 1^st Round

2001: Josh Burrus, high school 1^st Round (did not reach majors)

2001: Richard Lewis, Georgia Tech, supplemental 1^st Round (did not reach majors)

2001: Kyle Davies, high school, 4^th Round

2002: Jeff Francoeur, high school, 1^st Round

2002: Brian McCann, high school, 2^nd Round

2003: Paul Bacot, high school, 2^nd Round (did not reach majors)

2004: Clint Sammons, U. of Georgia, 6^th Round

2005: Will Startup, U. of Georgia, 5^th Round (did not reach majors)

In 2006, which was the draft when Dayton Moore had one foot in Atlanta and one in Kansas City, the Braves took a pair of college pitchers from Georgia in the 2^nd and 4^th rounds. And in 2007 the masterpiece of this draft strategy was picked: Jason Heyward, one of the best hitting prospects of this decade, was selected by the Braves with the 14^th overall pick.

Heyward was considered an elite talent – at the time Jim Callis of Baseball America declared him the steal of the first round – but he fell to the middle of the first round in large part because, playing against weak high school competition, he was pitched around so much that opposing scouts rarely got a chance to see him swing the bat. The Braves’ scouts, on the other hand, had been following him for years, and had seen enough repetitions to know what was hidden behind all those semi-intentional walks.

Last season, the Braves didn’t get around to drafting a home-state player until the 7^th round, the latest they’ve waited to take a local product this decade. On the other hand, their first-round pick – Mike Minor, who most thought was a reach with the #7 overall pick – went to Vanderbilt; they drafted a kid from Florida in the 4^th round; a kid from South Carolina in the 5^th round; and a kid from Alabama in the 6^th round. This is a strategy that is here to stay.

And it’s a strategy that has largely worked. Certainly, the Braves have made their share of mistakes, but they found a pair of stars in Wainwright and McCann, a pair of maddening but still talented players in Francoeur and Davies, some useful relievers in McBride and Boyer, and a potential superstar in Heyward. Given that only a third of these players were taken with first-round picks, and that the Braves were drafting at the end of each round most years, that’s a heck of a good job of drafting.

There isn’t as much talent in the Royals’ neighborhood as there is in the Braves’ neighborhood, and what talent there is has been much more likely to come out of college than out of high school. That’s not surprising; the Braves have taken advantage of the East Cobb Baseball organization, one of the best youth baseball organizations in the country, that has developed players into premium prospects by the time they’re 18, while players in Kansas and Missouri aren’t getting the playing time against other top talent they need to develop until they’re in college.

But the talent is there, and it’s high time the Royals take advantage of it. They’re going to miss on a few no matter what; already under Dayton Moore the Royals missed Derek Norris, who was drafted by the Nationals in the 4^th round out of Goddard High School in Kansas in 2007. (Even growing up in Wichita, we thought of Goddard as the sticks.) Norris is now one of the best catching prospects in the game.

But you can’t win if you don’t play. The Royals are finally starting to play. In 2007, Moore’s first draft, the Royals took a signability player named Zach Kenyon out of an Iowa high school in the 9^th round; Kenyon could not be persuaded to sign. In 2008, they took Melville. Then last year, they took Crow in the first round; a pitcher named Nicholas Wooley in the 12^th round out of a small Missouri college named William Woods University; a toolsy high school outfielder out of an Oklahoma high school named Lane Adams in the 13^th round; and in the 15^th and 17^th rounds the Royals took the starting keystone combination at the University of Arkansas, Scott Lyons and Benjamin Tschepikow.

Oh, and in the 7^th round they drafted a Missouri State player for the first time in 16 years – a short lefty named George Baumann.

They’re going to miss on a few of these guys. (I just heard that Lyons and Tschepikow both retired in the last few days.) But when it comes to the draft, failure is the rule, and success the exception. Common sense dictates that success is more likely when you know more about the players you draft, and you ought to know more about the players in your own backyard. The Royals continue to common defy common sense in many other ways, but when it comes to looking for talent in the draft, credit Dayton Moore & Co. for putting common sense to good use.

Back with some short(er) comments on a few other players, and a final farm system wrap-up, soon.

Prospect Rundown, Part 5.

(So this is what I’ve become. What started as a simple post about Tim Melville is already approaching 3000 words. It’s not really about Melville at all at this point, but then, that’s usually what happens when I start an article with one topic in mind and end up rambling about another. So rather than provide fodder for those of you who like to mock the lengths of my posts (that would be, um, all of you), I’m splitting this into two parts. Which of course means that I’m the guy who needed to split an article about Tim Freaking Melville into two parts. Whatever. On with the show.)

The Royals have ten prospects that clearly stand out from the rest, and I’ve discussed seven of them – the two first-round hitters (Moustakas and Hosmer), the five lefties (Montgomery, Arguelles, Duffy, Lamb, and Dwyer), and their first two picks last year (Crow and Myers). That leaves only Tim Melville, but I certainly don’t want to leave the impression that he’s an afterthought. On the contrary, Melville is one of the organization’s most meaningful prospects, both in terms of his own talent and in terms of two positive organizational trends that he represents.

If, sometime in the not-too-distant future, The Process™ starts to work and the Royals become a perennial contender on the basis of a perennially productive farm system, we may identify the exact point at which the franchise started to turn itself around as the moment the Royals drafted Melville. Even in the moment, as I refreshed MLB.com’s draft page on my iPhone while walking towards my daughter’s school play, I was stopped cold when Melville’s name popped out. His selection was, to that point, completely out of character for the organization, and the first real sign that – at least in terms of the farm system – Dayton Moore might live up to his promise.

See, the Royals drafted Melville in the 4^th round. They drafted him in the 4^th round even though, if players were drafted based purely on their ability and not on financial considerations, Melville wouldn’t have gotten out of the 1^st. He was a high school right-hander out of a Missouri high school who could throw in the mid-90s with a terrific curveball, and prior to his senior year there was talk that he might be a Top-5 pick. His velocity dipped a little as a senior – there’s been a lot of talk that his high school coach altered his throwing motion to his detriment – but he still projected as at least a late-1^st-round talent.

But he wanted mid-1^st-round money to sign, and for some reason his money demands – which weren’t that egregious – caused him to fall in the draft. The further he fell, the more teams fretted that he wouldn’t sign, and pretty soon he was in that downward spiral where teams don’t want to waste a 2^nd or 3^rd round pick on a player that might not sign, even if he has 1^st round talent. At that point, a prospect might well fall into the double-digit rounds, where some team will finally gamble on an “unsignable” player, perhaps using him as an insurance policy in case their own top picks don’t sign.

The Royals correctly gauged his signability, stopped his fall in the 4^th round, and gave him $1.5 million to sign, which is only slightly more than slot money if he had been drafted where his talent had projected him. Melville wasn’t a loser – he got the money he wanted – but the Royals were definitely winners. They got arguably the best high school right-hander in the draft in the fourth round. In his first pro season last year, Melville was a little wild and raw (43 walks and 10 homers in 97 innings) but also showed true power stuff (96 Ks and a 3.79 ERA.) His fastball is usually in the 92-93 range but sometimes higher, and has great sinking action. His curveball is a potentially dominant pitch that drops straight down but is tough to control. In this fine article, J.J. Picollo compares him to Andy Benes, which is obviously optimistic but not completely insane.

You have to understand: before Melville, this stuff NEVER happened to the Royals. It was other teams, big-market teams, that benefited when top prospects slid in the draft for signability reasons.

But after Melville, well, it’s almost become commonplace. Last year, of course, the Royals drafted Aaron Crow, who was only available in the first place because he had rejected the Nationals’ contract offer after they had selected him with the #9 overall pick the year before. Crow got over $3 million guaranteed and a major-league contract to sign. The Royals didn’t have a second-round pick, but they drafted Wil Myers in the 3^rd round and gave him mid-1^st-round money; they then drafted Chris Dwyer in the 4^th round and gave him late-1^st-round money. Meanwhile, the money that might have been used on a 2^nd-round pick was spent and then some on international free agents: Korean catcher Shin-Hin Jo ($600,000); Nicaraguan third baseman Cheslor Cuthbert ($1.35 million); and Noel Arguelles, the first Cuban defector the Royals have ever signed, to a 5-year, $6.9 million deal.

The Royals spent over $11 million in the 2008 draft, an all-time draft record at the time. Counting Arguelles, they spent more on amateur players in 2009 than they did in 2008. They’ve reached a point where Kevin Goldstein, in the process of ranking every organization in terms of their minor league talent, wrote of the Royals (who placed 10^th), “Some might even classify them as trailblazers when it comes to small-market teams spending big money in the later rounds, as it's still the best bargain in baseball.”

Analysts like myself have been saying this for years, as it’s one of the most obvious lessons in the game: the most cost-effective way to find talent is through the draft, and “overpaying” to draft elite talent is an investment that almost always pays off. One of the most aggravating things about being a Royals fan for the last 15 years – really, since Ewing Kauffman died – was that the Royals refused to acknowledge this very simple concept. The Royals decided to spend $2.7 million on Jeff Austin instead of $7 million on J.D. Drew. Starting in 2003 they drafted a bunch of college seniors starting in the 5^th round and offered them $1,000 take-it-or-leave-it offers to save money.

As recently as three years ago, they spent $4 million on Mike Moustakas instead of $6 million on Matt Wieters or $7 million on Rick Porcello. In fairness, the decision to draft Moustakas instead of those guys is too complicated to break it down as simply a matter of money – there was a legitimate concern (albeit one I consider far-fetched) that Scott Boras simply wouldn’t let either Wieters or Porcello sign with the Royals.

Regardless, if the Royals did draft Moustakas in part to save money, it’s the last time they pinched pennies in the draft. The following year, they spent $6 million to sign Eric Hosmer; regardless of whether he was the right pick, he was certainly the most expensive pick the Royals could have made in that spot. They then spent well over slot money to sign Melville in the 4^th round. Last summer, they gave Aaron Crow a major-league contract to sign, and he looked so good in spring camp that he might be the first starter the Royals call up this season if a need arises. They gave millions to Myers and Dwyer, and Myers already looks like he’ll justify the money.

Of the Royals’ top 10 prospects, seven of them would never have become part of the organization if the Royals hadn’t been willing to overspend to sign them. Moustakas and Hosmer both signed for over MLB’s mandated slot money (with the caveat that “slot money” for the top 5 picks is ridiculously low, and teams almost always exceed the recommended slot unless they’re being ridiculously cheap, as the Pirates were when they selected Daniel Moskos one pick ahead of Wieters.) Crow also signed for above-slot.

Melville, Myers, and Dwyer all got first-round money even though the Royals were able to snag them rounds later. Arguelles was the Cuban bonus baby. That leaves only Michael Montgomery, Daniel Duffy, and John Lamb as “traditional” draft picks that signed for slot.

Under a different, pre-Dayton Moore administration, the Royals’ Top 10 prospects might look more like a Top 3. For about the same amount of money as the Royals have paid Jose Guillen so far, the Royals have improved their farm system dramatically in two years.

The last two drafts have a chance to be two of the best drafts in team history. The 2008 draft, in particular, could be historic if Hosmer comes around – at this point, he’s the only disappointment in the first five rounds. Montgomery was a supplemental-1^st-rounder; the Royals got scrappy second baseman Johnny Giavotella, who I think has become quite underrated, in the 2^nd round. In the 3^rd round they took Tyler Sample, a raw but hard-throwing right-hander out of high school in Colorado. Sample made huge strides in his control last season, and is an excellent bet to move into next year’s Top 10 rankings.

Melville was drafted in the 4^th round, and John Lamb was drafted in the 5^th. If the Royals’ 7^th round pick, Jason Esposito, had signed, this draft would look even better. Esposito evidently agreed to a $1.5 million bonus before he was picked, foregoing a scholarship to Vanderbilt, but he had second thoughts afterwards and decided to go to college. He’s considered a possible first-round selection in 2011.

Last year’s draft doesn’t have the depth of talent, given that the Royals were missing their 2^nd round pick and didn’t have a supplemental pick, but with Myers that draft has arguably more star potential.

But it all started with Melville, more or less. The Royals did give $1 million to sign Derrick Robinson out of the 4^th round in the 2006 draft. Robinson was considered the fastest man in that draft but a project with the bat, words that unfortunately remain as true today as they were four years ago. And in 2001, the one time Allard Baird convinced David Glass to open up his vault for some 18-year-old kids, the Royals spent $1.75 million on their 2^nd round pick, Roscoe Cr…Roscoe Cros…I’m sorry, my fingers won’t let me time his name. (The Royals would end up recouping some of that bonus money. The story of what happened is long and still not entirely clear, but after signing, Crosby never appeared in a game. I don’t mean a major-league game – I mean a pro game. One of the most-hyped Royals draft picks of the decade never so much as suited up for a minor-league game before he was released.)

Before Crosby, unless I’m missing someone, the last time the Royals went way over budget to sign a draft pick was…Bo Jackson, who got a major-league deal for over $1 million (the largest bonus ever given to an amateur player to that point) as a 4^th round pick in 1986.

Between Melville, Myers, and Dwyer, the Royals have signed more high-priced draft picks in the last two drafts than they did in the 20 previous drafts. That’s a trend I can get behind.

More to come…

Prospect Rundown, Part 4.

(Before we get to the meat of this article, in our continuing effort to bring you all things Chris Hayes, here’s a nice piece on Disco in Saturday's Chicago Tribune, including a few choice comments from yours truly. Bonus: this article ran on the front page of the paper - not the sports section, the front page - along with a large picture of Hayes in full Royals uniform that you can see here. Be afraid, Chicagoans - the yokels from the Midwest are taking over. Next step: please welcome your new alderman, Zack Greinke.)

As discussed last time, the Royals have had a truly frightening track record of developing left-handed pitchers throughout their history. But due to a combination of good scouting and aggressive spending on big-money prospects, the Royals have no fewer than five lefties who have reasonable odds of becoming long-time pitchers in the major leagues.

We’ve already covered Mike Montgomery, the consensus best of the lot. It might be a little audacious to project Montgomery as a future #1 starter, at least unless he develops more velocity (which some still think may happen.) But at the very least he looks like a good #2 starter, comparable to a Danny Jackson or Jose Rosado in terms of effectiveness if not repertoire.

Here, in no particular order, are the other four:

Noel Arguelles: Arguelles is the $7 million cherry on the top of what was already a formidable amount of pitching depth in the minors. He was signed in December to a five-year contract after defecting from Cuba in the summer of 2008.

There’s always a risk in signing international free agents to big-time contracts, but that risk is multiplied when those free agents hail from Cuba. It’s not hard to understand why. Take Arguelles – aside from the occasional international tournament, he’s done all his pitching in Cuba, in a domestic league where the average talent level is comparable to a short-season league in the minors, in a totalitarian state off-limits to scouts, where he’s dependent on the government for everything from his daily meals to his glove to the right to travel out of the country with the national team. The Royals based their decision to spend $7 million on him largely by watching him pitch in showcases set up by his agents after he defected.

So it’s not surprising that Cuban defectors come with their own unique set of challenges and mysteries – even their listed date of birth can’t be taken at face value. This is why some Cuban players have proven to be bargains (Kendry Morales) and some quickly proved to be huge busts (Andy Morales).

So there’s no question that Arguelles has the most risk of any of the lefties on this list, even as he has the most upside. And he does have the most upside – he has true #1 starter potential, something not even Montgomery can claim at the moment.

Here’s what we know about him: his fastball runs around 93 mph, and his second-best pitch is a changeup with good deception. His curveball has a slider-like tilt, and the Royals are working with him to develop the pitch. He also has the body type of a potentially overpowering pitcher. When I spoke with a member of the front office, the first word they used to describe Arguelles was “physicality”. I even heard a C.C. Sabathia comparison – at 6’4”, 225 pounds, he’s not quite as big as Sabathia, but he’s also more athletic.

He gets high marks for his coachability, although of course he has to adapt to massive cultural differences like every other Cuban player. For that reason, the Royals expect to move him slowly, likely starting him at Wilmington even though he has the stuff to start in Double-A. He’s listed at 20 years old; if that really is the case, he has plenty of development time ahead of him, and there’s no sense in rushing him at all.

Before he’s even thrown a pitch, Arguelles cracked the final spot on Baseball America’s Top 100. Certainly, there’s risk here, but it’s worth noting that most of the true busts that have come out of Cuba have been hitters, while the pitchers have been generally (but not always; see Alain Soler) as advertised. This makes sense – it’s very difficult to evaluate a hitter against sub-par competition, whereas you can formulate an opinion about a pitcher just from seeing him throw on the side. If the radar gun says Arguelles throws 93 in warmups, he’s not suddenly going to throw 88 just because a hitter stands in.

Arguelles has inevitably been compared to Aroldis Chapman, the Reds’ $30 million bonus baby, given that they’re both lefties who defected around the same time. Chapman throws a legitimate 98-99, but his off-speed stuff isn’t as polished as Arguelles’ is. While no one would argue that Arguelles is the better prospect, the difference between them isn’t nearly as great as the difference in their signing bonuses would have you believe.

The Royals are being very cautious with Arguelles, understandable given his youth and the fact that he needed some rest after showcasing his arm from the time he defected until the time he signed. So we haven’t seen any game action from him this spring. By proxy, then, the fact that Chapman is impressing people above and beyond expectations for the Reds may be a good sign that Arguelles will do the same thing when the Royals take the bridle off him.

Danny Duffy: Duffy is the most experienced pitcher in the group; he’s the only one who’s been in the organization more than two years. Duffy was the Royals’ third-round pick in 2007 out of a small inland California high school, and a good piece of scouting. (He makes up for the fact that the Royals’ second-round pick that year, Sam Runion, looks like one of the bigger busts in recent memory.) He works with a standard-issue fastball-curveball combo, with his changeup still being a work in progress.

Duffy has known nothing but success since turning pro. Last year, he had a 2.98 ERA for Wilmington, allowed just 108 hits and 41 walks in 127 innings, while striking out 127 – and those were easily the worst numbers of his career. Nonetheless, he was passed by Montgomery as the Royals’ top pitching prospect last year, because on a pure stuff basis he projects more like a #3 starter than an ace.

I will admit: I’ve always been a little skeptical of Duffy, because the more success he has pitching in the minor leagues, the more he reminds me of Chris George and Jimmy Gobble, both guys who overmatched hitters in the low minors but whose stuff was too short to succeed in the majors. I shared these concerns with a scout a few months ago, and he alleviated my concerns a little, pointing out that Duffy’s fastball ranges from 88 to 92, which is at least an average major-league fastball from a lefty, and harder than either of the G-men threw.

Duffy’s short-term outlook is clouded by an elbow strain he suffered earlier this month, evidently after he tried to impress the Royals in his first major league camp by throwing too hard too soon. I’ve been told his elbow is “intact and structurally sound”, but he’s going to miss at least a month of the season as a precaution. If he’s healthy, he should slot right into the Double-A rotation.

The temptation is there to rush him, as he’s close to major-league ready – indeed, he was talked about as a dark-horse bullpen candidate out of spring training before his sore elbow cropped out. I think the Royals would be better served taking it slow with Duffy, despite his polish. Alternatively, given the other lefties he’s competing with, and the fact that the major league rotation isn’t suffering from a lack of candidates to begin with, Duffy ought to be a trade candidate if and when the Royals decide to trade some of their pitching excess for some bats.

Chris Dwyer: Dwyer was drafted out of the third round last year as the rare draft-eligible freshman. He was held back a year in school early on, and then made up another year in high school after transferring to a private academy, which is why he didn’t enter college until he was 20. He’s actually the oldest of the lefties on this list, as turns 22 next month.

All that means that there isn’t much projection left in Dwyer’s body. The Royals drafted him anyway – and gave him late first-round money ($1.45 million) to sign – because they think his stuff is plenty good already. He throws 90-94, and his curveball has a lot of downward bite. His changeup is also a plus pitch when he’s on. The problem with Dwyer is his command, which is spotty, as are his mechanics.

In his one season in college, you can see his strengths and flaws on his stat line – he struck out 95 batters in 86 innings, but also walked 33 and allowed 11 homers, leading to an unimpressive 4.92 ERA.

The best way to describe Dwyer is that he has the combination of stuff and rawness you’d typically find in an 18-year-old – only he’s 21. (Think of him as the Dee Gordon of pitchers.) He’s a pure scouting pick, but how he develops may tell us more about the Royals’ development process than about their scouting department.

John Lamb: While Dwyer is a college pitcher with the profile of a high school guy, Lamb is a high school pick with the polish of a collegiate arm. He’s not so much a scouting find as a medical find, as the Royals banked he would regain his stuff after he suffered an injury before the draft. (The Royals have done this a few times in recent drafts, most notably with Keaton Hayenga, a late-round pick the Royals gave $300,000 to in 2007 even though he tore his labrum sliding into a base before the draft.)

Lamb had broken his elbow in a car accident, and the Royals reasonably gambled that once healed it would present no further problem. It hasn’t, and his stuff returned as good as new. He returned to action last summer and struck out 71 batters in 69 innings.

He throws his fastball 90-91, but in the words of one front-office source, “he throws strikes with his fastball more consistently than anyone else in the system.” His curveball and changeup are still developing, but both project as plus pitches. Lamb’s best attribute is simply that “he can really pitch” – not only does he throw strikes, but he knows when to add and subtract, he keeps the ball down in the zone, he never gets rattled, etc.

He’s still only 19, and while he’s listed at 6’3”, I was told he’s actually 6’5”. Either way, there may be some projection left there. He’s the guy whose name came up when I asked the Royals for a sleeper among their pitching prospects. If there’s one guy in the system that could vault his way onto a Top 100 Prospects list next season, it would be Lamb.

If I were to rank the five lefties in terms of upside, it would look like this:

1. Noel Arguelles

2. Mike Montgomery

3. Chris Dwyer

4. John Lamb

5. Danny Duffy

Ranking them in terms of the odds that they’ll develop into at least a #3/#4 starter in the majors, I’d rank them like this:

1. Mike Montgomery

2. Danny Duffy

3. John Lamb

4. Noel Arguelles

5. Chris Dwyer

However you rank them, all five ought to have significant major league careers, in the bullpen if not in the rotation. And the sheer number of lottery tickets makes it likely that at least one will develop into a front-line starter. The term “dominant Royals southpaw” may not be an oxymoron for much longer.

I’ll be back soon to finish up with a few other prospects, as well as an overall assessment of the state of the farm system.