Royals Today: 6/2/11

Some random thoughts for your perusal:

- Twelve of the Royals’ first 55 games went extra innings, and I think it’s easy to miss how unusual that is. Two years ago, the Royals played nine extra-inning games all season. The franchise record is 22 in a season. The Tigers have gone overtime just twice all year.

What makes this so unusual is that the Royals have, by and large, avoided the massive decrease in scoring that has afflicted most of the majors this year – on both ends. The Royals are sixth in the league in runs, but next-to-last in runs allowed, so on the whole 529 runs have been scored in their 55 games, or 9.62 runs per game.

You would expect extra-inning games to become more prevalent as run-scoring decreases – the fewer runs each team is expected to score, the more likely that both teams are going to end up with the same integer at the end of regulation. (This is why soccer games end in a tie so often.) The A’s, who also have played 12 extra-inning games, have allowed the fewest runs in the AL and have scored the third-fewest. All told, just 406 runs have been scored in their 57 games (7.12 per game) – 26% fewer runs than typically seen in a Royals game. I would expect the A’s to play a lot of extra-inning games; not so the Royals.

I think it would be dangerous to try to read any meaning into this; as this XKCD comic illustrates, sometimes random things happen. The Royals do have a very deep bullpen that can keep opponents off the scoreboard for extended stretches, as they did Friday night. And the Royals have hit particularly well in the ninth inning; they have a .288/.356/.472 line and have scored 27 runs in just 44 innings (some of which ended early on a walk-off.) But I don’t think the Royals are inherently more likely to play extra-inning games than any other team, and the franchise record of 22 extra-inning games in a season is more likely safe than not.

- That said, all those extra-inning games have certainly taken a toll on the pitching staff. In 55 games, the Royals have thrown 507 innings – an average of 9.22 innings per game. That’s very unusual – most teams average less than 9 innings of pitching per game, because whatever extra innings are played are more than made up for by the fact that teams don’t pitch the bottom of the ninth on the road when they’ve lost. Last year, the Royals averaged 8.87 innings a game. The Tigers this season have averaged just 8.82 innings.

Add in a starting rotation that’s been very erratic at times, and Royals’ relievers have combined to throw 192 innings this year. Only the Reds have thrown more, with 198, and they’ve played two additional games.

In the same number of games as the Tigers, the Royals have pitched 22 more innings, almost the equivalent of one additional full-time reliever. I hate the idea of an eight-man bullpen in the abstract, and I hope the Royals send one down in favor of a fourth bench player soon. But I can understand why they’ve felt the need to have an eighth reliever over the last two weeks.

- On Friday, the Royals played a game that was simultaneously an extra-inning affair and a blowout, thanks to the five-run 14th. Homers by Melky Cabrera, Eric Hosmer, and Brayan Pena not only iced the game, but it led to my favorite stat of the year (at the time): The Royals had hit more home runs in the 14th inning this year (3) than they have in the 1st inning (2).

That stat was rendered invalid when Alex Gordon and Eric Hosmer went deep in the first inning on Monday, but it’s still true that they’ve hit more homers in the 14th than in the 3rd inning (2) or 5th inning (2). No, it doesn’t mean anything. Yes, it’s still awesome.

- Alex Gordon’s stats broken down:

3/31/11 to 5/1/11: .339/.395/.545

5/3/11 to 5/19/11: .153/.219/.254

5/20/11 to 6/1/11: .320/.404/.640

We all knew that Gordon would eventually hit a slump after his hot start; the question was whether he’d navigate himself out of it. He seems to have passed this test; after looking helpless at the plate for two weeks, he’s back on a tear. In his last 12 games, he has four doubles, four homers, and – reassuring those who thought his performance had come at the expense of plate discipline – seven walks. It’s probably a coincidence that his hot stretch started just after he was moved into the leadoff spot, but still, it clearly hasn’t hurt his offense. In 14 games as a leadoff hitter, he’s scored 10 runs. And remember: the leadoff hitter gets the most at-bats. If Gordon isn’t in the leadoff spot last Friday night, he doesn’t bat in the ninth inning, he doesn’t go upper deck on Neftali Feliz, and the Royals lose.

I was asked on the radio a few weeks ago as to who, at the end of the season, would wind up as the Royals’ most valuable player. My answer was Alex Gordon, and with a nod to Hosmer, I’ll stand by that. Gordon’s overall line of .285/.351/.489 may not look like much in this Year of the Pitcher, but he is clearly the best left fielder in the American League:

Highest Cumulative OPS by AL Left Fielders

1. KC, 845 (.286/.361/.485)

2. NYY, 732 (.246/.321/.412)

3. OAK, 724 (.232/.321/.403)

4. TB, 682 (.227/.293/.389)

5. BAL, .675 (.224/.291/.383)

Granted, that list says more about the state of left fielders in the AL than it does about Gordon. I mean, my God, the Rays’ left fielders have combined to hit .227/.293/.389, and that’s the fourth-best line in the American League? What the hell? This is purely an AL phenomenon, incidentally. The Royals rank fourth in the majors behind the Cardinals, Brewers, and Marlins. The Yankees, who are second in the AL, are TWELFTH in the majors. Ten of the 16 teams in the NL have had better production from their left fielders than every AL team except the Royals.

I have no idea why the left fielders of the American League are suddenly and collectively hitting like 1980s-era backup catchers. But the Royals have been unilaterally and conspicuously spared this fate. Gordon still strikes out too much, and his power tool still outstrips his home run production. But he leads the league in doubles, he gets on base, he’s a very good baserunner, and he’s taken to left field remarkably well. He’s shown excellent range, has yet to make an error in left, and has a third baseman’s arm that has racked up five baserunner kills (outfield assists) already.

They don’t have to make a decision today, but if Gordon maintains his performance through the end of the season, the Royals ought to make a long-term deal for Gordon one of their highest off-season priorities. He’s under contract for two more years after 2011, so he’s in the same contractual spot that Zack Greinke was in when he signed his four-year deal. I think an appropriate deal for Gordon would be in the same range, perhaps for three years with an option for a fourth, or a four-year deal with an option for a fifth. A four-year deal would lock up Gordon from the age of 28 to 31, with an option at age 32, insuring that the Royals get his prime years without being on the hook for his decline phase. The money wouldn’t be oppressive – maybe $20 million for 3 years or $30 million for 4 years.

As much as Soria’s mysterious decline has taken the Royals a step backwards from contention in the near term, Gordon’s breakout has taken them a leap forward. Two months of data is not enough to make a decision on, obviously. But if his final line is anywhere close to where it is now, the Royals would be well-served to lock him up. And I think they will. It’s been a gigantic struggle for Gordon to get to this point, but all’s well that ends well. Let’s just hope it ends well.

- On the other hand, here are the splits for the Royals’ other corner outfielder:

Jeff Francoeur, 3/31/11 – 5/4/11: .316/.357/.623, 8 HR in 29 games

Jeff Francoeur, 5/5/11 – 6/1/11: .232/.286/.305, 1 HR in 24 games

There’s a reason why, a few weeks ago, I speculated that while Gordon’s breakout was for real, Frenchy was – once again – just a tease. Francoeur hit like peak-era Jermaine Dye for about five weeks, and like nadir-era Jeff Francoeur since.

That’s not to say the Royals should write him off. His overall season line is still .278/.325/.478, which is a pretty awesome line in this day and age. While Francoeur, unlike Gordon, isn’t under contract beyond this season (mutual options don’t count), the Royals still shouldn’t be in any rush to make big decisions with Francoeur. Let him play every day for the next six weeks. If he bounces back and his overall line is even better in mid-July than it is now, well, then they have to at least consider a long-term deal. There would obviously be a lot of risk involved – more than there would be with Gordon, I think – and the Royals would also need to decide what to do with Wil Myers, who is still expected to warrant the right field job by the end of 2012. But having too much talent on hand is never a bad problem.

More likely, though, Francoeur’s numbers will continue to creep slowly downward, but his April performance ought to keep his overall line high enough to warrant some suitors on the trade market. Not massive interest, but enough to get a legitimate prospect or two.

I’ve mentioned before that Wilson Betemit is likely to earn Type B free agent status at the end of the year. Thanks to the Elias Sports Bureau’s outdated formula (seriously – it was devised in the 1980s and hasn’t been updated since), Francoeur probably will too. The rating system values playing time, and Francoeur was pretty much a full-time player in 2010, and is certainly one this year. The system values counting numbers like homers and RBIs, and acts like OBP doesn’t exist. So if nothing else, Francoeur has value as a draft pick generator.

(Update: I heard from Tim Dierkes, the proprietor of the indispensable MLB Trade Rumors website, who informs me that the Elias rating formula does, in fact, include OBP as one of the categories. My apologies for the error. However, not only are average, HR, and RBI categories, but the fifth category is...plate appearances. I still think Francoeur is likely to merit Type B status at the end of the year.)

All this presumes that Dayton Moore isn’t so infatuated with Francoeur that he’s going to offer Frenchy a long-term deal no matter how he plays the rest of the season. That’s certainly possible, but if nothing else, Myers’ presence should reduce the temptation to sign Francoeur just for the sake of having a right fielder. I don’t know what the Royals are going to do with Francoeur, and frankly, I don’t know what they should do yet. We’ll have some clarity in six weeks; right now, there’s nothing wrong with staying the course.

- You want to know what parity looks like? The Royals are 25-30, and they’ve now fallen a half-game behind the surging White Sox to sit fourth in the AL Central, but a comfortable 7.5 games ahead of the Twins. What you might not realize, though, is that while the Royals have a better record than the Twins, the Twins are the only team in the AL with a worse record than the Royals. The Royals are 13th of 14 teams despite being just 5 games under .500.

Just three teams in the AL (the Indians, Yankees, and Twins) are more than 5 games away from .500 in either direction. The Twins, who are 20 games under .500, are farther away from .500 than the other four teams with a losing record combined.

Which is to say – nothing has been decided yet. The Royals’ playoff hopes, slim as they are, are as dependent on the Indians going forward as on their own performance. If the Indians continue to win 60% of their games, we can close up shop now. But if their hot start was a mirage, well, the Tigers are 29-26, the Sox are 27-31, and the Twins are done.

I’ve been reluctant to buy into the Indians’ hot start all year, and they lost five of six games – by the combined score of 44-12 – before winning their last two. They’re still the favorite in the division; if they play just .500 the rest of the season they’ll win 87 or 88 games, and that seems to be about the Royals’ upside even if everything goes just right. But if they’ve got a little 2003 Royals in them…well, the Royals are still a long shot to make the playoffs. But a long shot is still a shot.

- I’ve given Dayton Moore a lot of crap for how he’s wasted the team’s discretionary free agent dollars over the years, so I feel compelled to point out the following list:

Jeff Francoeur: $2.5 million, .278/.325/.478, 1.4 WAR

Melky Cabrera: $1.25 million, .269/.306/.441, 0.5 WAR

Bruce Chen: $2 million, 3.59 ERA in 43 innings, 0.7 WAR

Jeff Francis: $2 million, 4.46 ERA in 75 innings, 1.0 WAR

Matt Treanor: $850,000, .212/.350/.303, 0.7 WAR

Treanor wasn’t signed as a free agent, but his contract was basically purchased from the Rangers in the dying days of spring training, so close enough.

Those are the only five guys the Royals signed as free agents this winter. All five have performed well for the Royals. (Cabrera’s WAR is that low only because Baseball-Reference hates his defense, rating him 10 runs below average already. He’s bad, but probably not that bad.) The five players are making $8.6 million combined, and none of them have a guaranteed contract for next year.

That’s a pretty good collection of free agent talent, particularly since the Royals were shopping in the bargain bin this off-season. One of the greatest criticisms of Dayton Moore has been his inability to use the free agent market wisely. It’s a deserved criticism, and one off-season doesn’t change that. But at least, for the first time we have a data point that says he can make intelligent free-agent decisions. Five free agents, and not a Horacio Ramirez or Willie Bloomquist – let alone a Jose Guillen or Jason Kendall – among them.

Last year, Moore finally figured out that the only value veteran players had to the Royals were as trade chips, even if they only brought back marginal talent. Scott Podsednik, Jose Guillen, Rick Ankiel, and Kyle Farnsworth were moved for six players, five of whom were organizational talent, and one of whom was Tim Collins. Collins, alone, justified the trades. (Collins is also more valuable than the four players the Royals got for Alberto Callaspo and David DeJesus combined, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

Moore had the right strategy, but his implementation was hamstrung by the fact that none of his veteran players were all that useful. This year, with Betemit, Francoeur, Cabrera (who isn’t a free agent until after next season), Francis, and Chen, the Royals have the opportunity to get some real talent this July. And if Moore does as fine a job signing veterans to fill in holes for next year’s team as he did for this year’s team, we might not be talking about cashing them in at the deadline – we might be talking about how they fit on a playoff roster.

- If you’re a Royals fan, you don’t need statistics to evaluate Alcides Escobar’s defense. Frankly, if you’re a Royals fan, you won’t trust any statistic that doesn’t evaluate Escobar’s defense as Gold Glove-worthy. He has been that good, and that consistent.

Still, it’s good to know that Baseball Info Solutions, who have (in my opinion) the most accurate defensive metric, rate Escobar’s defense as 9 runs above average – in just a third of a season. Fangraphs has Escobar at “only” 5.4 runs above average. Extrapolate those numbers to a full season, and Escobar would save somewhere between 16-27 runs over an average shortstop. Those numbers are absolutely Gold Glove caliber. It’s always nice when the scouts and stats agree.

Unfortunately, he’s still a below-average shortstop overall, simply because his offense has been so execrable. He’s hitting .212/.249/.249. Read that again: .212/.249/.249. He has the lowest OPS of any qualifying shortstop in baseball. He has the lowest OPS and OPS+ of any qualifying shortstop in Royals history – and remember, shortstop has been a gaping hole for this franchise for most of its history.

None of that is to say that he shouldn’t be starting for the Royals today. Even if he is the worst-hitting shortstop in Royals history, he might be the best-fielding shortstop in Royals history – he’s certainly the best fielder I’ve ever seen. And at the age of 24, with his minor-league track record, it’s more likely that he’ll learn how to hit than that he’ll unlearn how to field.

I don’t understand why Ned Yost thinks his development will be hurt by pinch-hitting for him when the Royals are losing in the late innings. (You don’t let a pitcher who’s struggling to succeed in the major leagues pitch in crucial situations, so why wouldn’t you do the same for a hitter?) But I understand why Yost is so reluctant to lose his glove at shortstop. He’s a joy to watch.

- Finally, I’ll end with the sad but expected news that John Lamb is scheduled for Tommy John surgery tomorrow. Obviously, this is a big blow for a guy who some scouts considered to be the best pitching prospect in the system before the season.

But in all honesty, not only am I not that disturbed by this development, I’m almost relieved by it.

I’m not disturbed, because arm injuries are an unavoidable cost of doing business with pitching prospects. The Royals had five starting pitchers on Baseball America’s Top 100 list: Montgomery, Lamb, Duffy, Dwyer, and Odorizzi. Before the season, I fully expected that one of those five would suffer a significant arm injury in 2011. It’s simple math; pitchers get hurt, and expecting five out of five pitchers in their early 20s to stay healthy was unrealistic.

That said, there are arm injuries, and there are arm injuries. This is the former. This isn’t a shoulder problem, which could be a career-ender. Tommy John surgery is significant, it will keep Lamb out for a year, and it certainly affects the Royals’ rotation plans for 2012. But I can’t stress this enough: when it comes to Tommy John surgery, a prospect delayed is (usually) NOT a prospect denied. Roughly 90% of pitchers come back from TJ surgery with the same stuff they had before, and some throw even harder, although those are usually the pitchers that were pitching hurt before their surgery.

And that’s the reason I’m relieved by it – because Lamb’s velocity had been down all season. The Royals were blaming it on a strained lat muscle, and maybe that was the cause, but maybe the cause was that a tendon in his elbow that was hanging by a thread. Lamb, remember, was in a car accident his senior year of high school that resulted in a broken elbow and kept him off the mound – which is how the Royals stole him in the fifth round to begin with. I don’t know that the accident predisposed him to this injury, but if I had had to guess which top Royals’ pitching prospect would have his elbow operated on this season, I would have guessed Lamb.

And if I had to answer which Royals’ pitching prospect I preferred to have required Tommy John surgery, I would have answered Lamb. I don’t mean to be mean or callous – I wouldn’t wish injury on anyone. But of the five pitchers, Lamb is the youngest – he doesn’t turn 21 until July. I subscribe to the strain of thought that says that pitchers are particularly susceptible to arm injuries – the fabled “injury nexus” from the age of 18 until 22 or so. Lamb’s surgery and rehab will keep him off the mound until roughly his 22nd birthday, which will allow the other components of his arm to rest and hopefully minimize his risk of more serious arm problems when he returns. Lamb also doesn’t need to go on the 40-man roster until after the 2012 season, so the Royals don’t need to waste a precious roster spot on a bum arm.

Lamb is also lauded for his makeup and is the son of a scout, so I imagine he will devote himself fully to his rehab, making the likelihood of a full recovery that much greater.

It’s unfortunate that we’ll have to wait to see one of our finest prospects. But I’m confident that he’ll still be worth the wait. And in the meantime, we have a lot of other toys to play with.

Mexicuted.

This was supposed to be the optimistic flip side of my last post. That plan was put in place before Joakim Soria blew the save, and took the loss, in back-to-back games.

“Somewhere, at some point, Joakim Soria has somehow morphed into a nightmarish combination of Ambiorix Burgos, Andrew Sisco, Mike MacDougal, Ricky Bottalico and every other failed Royals closer of the last generation.”

Bob Dutton wrote that sentence before today’s game. Yesterday, the Royals lost a game despite having a two-run lead with six outs to go. Today, the Royals lost a game despite a three-run lead with six outs to go – and the opponents didn’t even have to take advantage of extra innings in either game.

So if you’re wondering whether this brings back awful memories of The Worst Bullpen In Major League History, the 1996-2006 Kansas City Royals*…yes. Yes it does.

*: I’ve mentioned this before, but for those of you who are new around here: from 1996 to 2006, the Royals were 172-275 in one-run games, a .385 winning percentage. That is, by far, the worst record in one-run games over an 11-year span for any franchise in major league history. That stretch ended in 2007 – Joakim Soria’s rookie year.

For the better part of a decade, I was terrified any time the Royals went into the ninth with a slim lead. But as unreliable as the Royals’ closer – whoever their closer happened to be at the time – was, it was exceedingly rare for them to blow a save and take the loss in consecutive games. (For one thing, that required the Royals to actually have a late lead in consecutive games, a task the early-21st century Royals were ill-equipped to complete.)

On July 30, 1977, Doug Bird blew the save and took the loss for the Royals, then repeated the feat in the first game of a doubleheader the next day. (This only succeeded in making the Royals mad, as they went 44-12 in their next 56 games.) Amazingly enough, this was the only time in the 20th century that the same Royals pitcher blew a save and took the loss in consecutive games.

It happened again in 2002, when Roberto Hernandez blew back-to-back saves on July 4th and 5th. In 2006, Ambiorix Burgos turned the trick on May 14 and May 16. And in 2009, Juan Cruz blew the save and took the loss on July 17 and July 18 – a particularly neat trick given that he wasn’t even the closer. I was at Kauffman Stadium for those games, and they inspired this post.

Joakim Soria is the fifth pitcher in Royals history to accomplish such an epic fail in consecutive games. He is by far the most unlikely of the five.

It’s worse than that, though, because in Soria’s last three save opportunities – today, yesterday, and last Tuesday against the Orioles – he blew the save and took the loss. It came over a six-game stretch, and Soria actually pitched in a non-save situation during that stretch, but that doesn’t mitigate his accomplishment.

You might think that it’s not unusual for a closer to have a stretch that bad – Brandon League did the same thing just three weeks ago, and in his appearance before that stretch, he came into a tie game and took the loss. But it’s actually incredibly rare.

Ricky Bottalico never took the loss in three straight save opportunities with the Royals.

Roberto Hernandez never took the loss in three straight save opportunities with the Royals.

Neither did Mike MacDougal, or Ambiorix Burgos, or Jeremy Affeldt, or the granddaddy of all closer flops, Mark Davis.

In the history of the Royals, only one other pitcher had ever taken the loss in three straight save opportunities – Curtis Leskanic, on April 14th, 23rd, and 29th, 2004.

And now Soria has done so. But hey, I’m sure his arm is fine.

The tale of Soria’s season is actually divided into two parts. In April, you might remember, stat guys were freaking out about the fact that he wasn’t missing bats – in 11.2 innings, Soria struck out just five batters, while walking six. But with the exception of the meltdown against the White Sox, when the Sox mounted a four-run comeback with two outs and no one in the ninth, the end result was fine – Soria didn’t blow any other leads that month, and the Royals insisted everything was fine.

In May, Soria’s strikeout rate has returned to his career norms and then some. He actually struck out the side today, and in 10.1 innings this month, he has 14 strikeouts. He’s also allowed 17 hits, and 3 homers – one in each of his three blown saves – and 10 runs. And, of course, the Royals have lost four games that they shouldn’t have – his three blown losses, and also the game against the Rangers on May 18, when he came into a tie game in the ninth and allowed a run. Neftali Feliz gave it back in the bottom of the inning – Feliz and Soria seem to be in a competition as to which elite closer can terrify their fan base more, a competition Soria is winning – but the Royals lost the game in extra innings. And no one has any idea what’s going on.

According to Fangraphs, Soria’s average fastball velocity is down about 1.5 mph, but the speed of his secondary pitches is unchanged, and it’s not clear from the data whether the decrease in his velocity is because he can’t throw as hard or because he’s simply throwing more “slow cutters” which are designed to have less velocity. But while his velocity isn’t off much, the results are. Hitters are swinging at fewer pitches (40.3% of his offerings, compared to a career average around 47%.) When they do swing, they’re not missing often – they fail to make contact on only about 15% of their swings, compared to a career average of about 25%.

The data is clear that hitters are no longer being fooled. What isn’t clear is why. The Royals can go on and on about how he’s just having trouble locating his pitches, or finishing his pitches, or scuffing his pitches, or whatever excuse they’ll come up with today. But when a pitcher who has been an elite closer for four years suddenly can’t get anyone out, there’s only one conclusion. This isn’t a court of law: he’s injured until proven healthy. I have no reason to think that Soria’s hurting other than the results on the field. Frankly, those results are enough.

For now, Ned Yost has announced that Soria will take a breather from closing, and Aaron Crow will take over the glamour role. That’s all fine and dandy if the point is winning tomorrow’s game. If the point is to figure out what the hell is wrong with Joakim Soria, this is a massive fail. It takes a massive amount of stubbornness to not acknowledge that such a precipitous decline probably has a structural reason, and shifting Soria into a different role is not going to isolate, let alone fix, the problem. But then, it takes a massive amount of stubbornness for the Royals to have denied there was anything wrong with Soria to this point in the first place.

My last post, about the missed opportunity the Royals had by not trading Robinson Tejeda when they had the chance, is almost comical when you put Tejeda’s situation side-by-side with Soria’s. Soria had a massive amount of trade value this winter. He was widely considered to be one of the five best closers in baseball; only Mariano Rivera was clearly superior. He was 26 years old. He was signed to an insanely club-friendly contract, that paid him just $4 million this year, and $22.75 million from 2012 to 2014. Given his age and contract status, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he had the highest trade value of any reliever in baseball. And the Royals, in trading Zack Greinke, made it clear that they were clearing the decks of established players one last time before the Blue Wave arrived.

We may never know if the Yankees really did offer Jesus Montero for Soria, or if that story was apocryphal. What we do know is that the Yankees panicked and – against their GM’s advice – signed Rafael Soriano to a ridiculous 3-year, $35 million contract that actually gave Soriano the option to walk away after a year. (I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that he won’t exercise that option.) Based on all the circumstantial evidence, I think the Yankees either offered Montero, or would have parted with him had the Royals made the offer.

I’m not going to rip the Royals too harshly for not moving Soria when they had the chance, because on some level I bought into the notion that Soria was different as well. He’s not a max-effort, here’s-my-best-fastball-and-good-luck kind of reliever. (Unlike Neftali Feliz, who pointedly refused to throw anything but his fastball against the Royals. Thanks, Neffi!) While closers, like all relievers, have a shelf-life only slightly longer than mayonnaise, I thought that Soria might be the exception to the rule. Rivera obviously is; Trevor Hoffman was. I still would have traded Soria for Montero if I had the chance, simply because even if he remained dominant, there’s only so much value that you can have when you pitch 65 innings a year. But I wasn’t adamant about it.

(And it must be said that it’s not clear what the Royals would do with Montero. He’s still a long shot to stay behind the plate even briefly in the majors. He’s also having a bit of an off-year offensively in Triple-A. He’s still just 21 and a long-term beast, but if he winds up at first base, he’s been passed by Eric Hosmer. If nothing else, he would make one hell of a trading chip.)

So consider myself, along with the Royals, chastened by what’s happened to Soria. It’s not even the end of May, and he’s already set a career high in blown saves. It’s not even the end of May, and he’s already given up more runs than he did in any of the last three seasons. And as a result, his trade value has dropped from massive to absolute zero in the span of two months.

At this point, it’s not even clear whether the Royals would deign to pick up his option for next year. If they had to decide today, I think they would, and I think they should – aside from the fact that they would be well-served to pay Soria back for signing such a club-friendly contract in the first place, if they turn down the $6 million option for 2012, they also would lose the option on Soria in 2013 and 2014 if he regains his form.

And he might. Just as we don’t have an explanation for why Soria’s pitching has gone south, we don’t have any reason to think he can’t suddenly right the ship. The inestimable Joel Goldberg tweeted earlier that Jeff Montgomery had a similar stretch in his career, and he’s right. On July 10, 1997, Montgomery had a 7.09 ERA, and in 27 innings he had allowed 38 hits, 10 walks, and eight homers.

The rest of the season, Montgomery allowed two earned runs in 33 innings, with just 15 hits and eight walks, and didn’t blow another save all year. That was Montgomery’s last hurrah – his ERA was nearly 5 the following year and nearly 7 in 1999, after which he retired – but Montgomery was 35 years old. Soria is 27.

So yes, if Soria isn’t hurt, I think he’ll pull out of this. Maybe he won’t be the ridiculously effective pitcher he was the last four years – his career ERA coming into the season was 2.01 – but he’ll be effective enough. If he isn’t hurt.

But if he is, then every time he takes the mound just increases the risk that the Soria we knew and loved is gone for good. The downside to an arm injury is such that if there’s even the slightest risk he’s hurt, he ought to be shut down. Call it a mental break if you have to. What’s the downside to giving him a few weeks on the DL, putting him through some imaging tests, then letting him embarrass Triple-A hitters for a week or two before coming back? It might hurt our playoff chances? Please.

If the Royals had an impeccable record of not sending players out onto the field when they were already playing through an injury, I might give them the benefit of the doubt. They don’t. The new training staff seems to be an improvement on the old one, but I’m sorry, as a fan, I need to see more before I sign off on the decision to keep sending Soria out there to take his lumps.

Dayton Moore has been in charge of the organization for almost exactly five years, and every time the organization has made a mistake under his watch – from signing Jose Guillen to destroying Gil Meche’s arm – I hoped that, if nothing else, the Royals would learn from that mistake, so that when the organization was finally in a position to contend, they would avoid the missteps of the past.

The way they’re handling Joakim Soria is evidence that they still need to touch the stove a few more times before they realize that it’s burning their hand. Only this time, with the Royals supposedly as little as a year away from contention, the stakes are a lot higher. If Soria gets his groove back and we’re all looking back at this stretch in wonderment come August, all will be forgiven. If the Royals are simply trading a short DL stint now for a long one later, well, forgiveness will be in awfully short supply.

Royals Today: 5/28/11

Never a boring moment with this franchise, and yes, I know I say that a lot. Let’s catch up.

- I don’t know if he just gets bored while he’s on the job, but Dayton Moore can’t go more than a month or two without making a WTF? transaction. I’m not necessarily saying the moves are terrible, just that they seem to come out of left field, and a member of the roster who appeared to have rock-solid job security gets cashiered with no warning.

On Thursday night, the Royals made the decision to claim Felipe Paulino on waivers – more on him in a moment – and designate Robinson Tejeda for assignment. This was clearly a mistake on the Royals’ part – it’s just not clear whether the mistake was made now or over the off-season.

The Royals claimed Tejeda off of waivers in June of 2008, and he immediately settled in as a solid middle-innings option for the Royals, adding to the sentiment that the team had built their best bullpen in ages – behind the transcendent Joakim Soria, the Royals had Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez, and Ron Mahay was arguably the best left-handed set-up man in baseball at the end of July before his arm started to hurt.

But in 2009, Ramirez and Nunez were gone and Mahay was ineffective, and Tejeda quickly established himself as the second-best reliever on the roster. He had a 4.07 ERA in the bullpen, and moved to the rotation for a September trial, he had a 2.84 ERA in six starts and allowed just 15 hits in 32 innings.

The Royals were so impressed by this that they moved him back to the bullpen last year. He again served as the bridge to Soria, although he was technically only the third-best reliever on the roster, thanks to Kyle Farnsworth’s unlikely resurgence. In three seasons with the Royals, Tejeda’s highest ERA was 3.54.

And now, after 7.1 innings pitched this season, he’s been waived.

If the Royals had so little faith in Tejeda that they were willing to cut him after just seven innings, why didn’t they trade him this off-season? Or just release him over the winter? They had enough faith in him to tender him a $1.55 million contract – and now they’re willing to eat that contract – the ninth-highest salary on the roster – after just seven innings?

Absolutely, Tejeda didn’t look like himself when the season started; his velocity was down about 5 mph from previous years, and he couldn’t strike anyone out. That’s not the mark of a pitcher who needs to be cut; that’s the mark of a pitcher who needs to be disabled. Tejeda was, and he got a cortisone shot in his arm, and he rehabbed back, and his velocity upon his return was better – not all the way back, but better. He had pitched all of two innings up on his return.

So on the basis of two innings’ worth of data from a healthy pitcher, the Royals decided to cut their second-best reliever from 2008 to 2010. I find this disturbing.

It’s not as if the Royals lacked for other options if they wanted Paulino that bad. They could have sent Blake Wood or Greg Holland back to Omaha; while both have their uses, it’s not clear that either one is going to be more effective going forward than even a diminished Tejeda. And while the 40-man roster is becoming increasingly crowded (more on this next week), they could have cut Jesse Chavez or Kevin Pucetas without raising an eyebrow.

Instead, they cut Tejeda, who even with his struggles this season leaves the Royals with a 3.57 ERA in 181 career innings. In Royals history, 84 pitches have thrown 180+ innings; only Soria has struck out more batters per nine innings (9.64) than Tejeda (9.23). And only Soria has allowed a lower opponents’ batting average (.202) than Tejeda (.203).

I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. The decision to cut Tejeda is so inexplicable that I wondered whether, like the decision to cut Juan Cruz last April, there were off-field issues that precipitated the move. But I’ve checked with sources, and this appears to be a purely baseball move. That doesn’t make it an astute one.

The Royals may well be thinking that if another team claims Tejeda, they’ll be able to save somewhere around $800,000, and if they don’t, than Tejeda would rather report to Omaha than forfeit the money himself. (I believe – but am not certain – that because Tejeda was DFA’ed instead of released, that he is not entitled to the rest of his salary if he opts out of his deal. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.) If that’s the case, then there may be some modest upside to the move.

But regardless, if the Royals aren’t making a mistake now – if Tejeda has simply lost it and his stuff isn’t coming back – then they definitely made a mistake in the off-season by not trading Tejeda for whatever they could get. Relievers are such unpredictable commodities – just look at Soria right now – that you’ll almost never go wrong by trading them when they’re at their peak.

Dayton Moore knows this – we know he knows this because he traded Ramirez and Nunez when he had the chance. The problem is that he traded Ramirez for Coco Crisp – a sensible trade which didn’t work out – and Nunez for Mike Jacobs – a trade that was a mistake from the moment he signed off on it. I don’t know if Moore got gun-shy after that, but regardless, he elected not to move Tejeda when his value was high and his salary was only starting to escalate, and now he’s going to get nothing for him.

I’ve heard from some people that, in Moore’s defense, before the season the Royals had no way of knowing that their bullpen would be so good that Tejeda would be expendable. To which I can only say, don’t they read their own press clippings? The Royals have built perhaps the deepest bullpen in their history*, and with the exception of Aaron Crow and maybe Blake Wood, are any of these guys pitching better than we expected over the winter?

*: In fairness, it’s easy to have the “deepest” bullpen in history when you’re carrying eight relievers. The last time the Royals were good, they typically carried five or six.

I mean, if anyone ought to know how good the Royals’ farm system was, it’s the Royals. If we all knew that with guys like Tim Collins and Louis Coleman and Jeremy Jeffress, that the bullpen was where the first wave of the farm system would wash ashore, shouldn’t the front office have known? And above all, we knew that with Soria already on hand, that the Royals already had the most important job in the bullpen locked up. One of the great fringe advantages of having an elite closer is simply that you’re not tempted to overpay for a proven commodity in that role. (Otherwise you end up doing dumb stuff like trading Johnny Damon to get Roberto Hernandez.) This winter, the Royals knew that they had a terrific stable of rookie relievers just about ready to go, and they knew that even if some of those guys struggled, that they’d be protected by one of the best closers in baseball.

But they kept Tejeda anyway. That’s a defensible decision if you actually believe in Tejeda – but given the way the Royals dropped him like a hot potato at the first opportunity, and given that the Royals refused to consider him for the rotation last year after he was lights out the previous September, you have to wonder how much faith they ever had in the guy. If they didn’t have faith in him, they should have traded him to someone who did.

We all assume that the Royals wouldn’t be dumb enough to turn down a fair offer for Wilson Betemit because they’re not sure if Mike Moustakas is ready, or to turn down an offer for Melky Cabrera because they’re afraid of entrusting center field to Lorenzo Cain. But essentially, that’s what the Royals did here. One of the added advantages of having an elite farm system is that it gives you the flexibility to trade your existing players when their value is at its apex. Or, you know, you can just cut them when their value is at its nadir.

- Then again, Dayton Moore traded David DeJesus when his value was presumably at its peak, and look how well that worked out.

Vinny Mazzaro threw six good innings for Omaha last night, allowing just one run, which is a good thing, because he’ll probably be pitching for Omaha for the foreseeable future. When you fashion the worst relief appearance in major-league history and get demoted to the minors before the beat reporters even have a chance to finish their stories, you’re probably not coming back any time soon.

When the Royals made the trade, I was critical of it, but in all honesty, I wasn’t critical enough. Maybe I was blinded by all the successes of the farm system last season, but I assumed that the Royals had to know something about Mazzaro that we didn’t – that they had reason to believe the best was yet to come. I mean, they wouldn’t have traded DeJesus for a pitcher with a 4.72 ERA and a terrible strikeout-to-walk ratio unless they thought he was going to get better, would they?

Apparently they would. Forget the numbers; I have yet to talk to a scout who thought that Mazzaro would ever be more than a #4 starter in the majors, and the consensus opinion was that he was a #5/fringe starter/Four-A pitcher. You don’t trade your best position player, even one with only a year left on his contract, for that. (Yes, the Royals also got Justin Marks in the deal. No, he doesn’t make a difference.)

I’ve heard the trade described as a salary dump, that the Royals just wanted to get rid of DeJesus’ $6 million salary for 2011. If that’s the case, they could have dumped his salary the direct way – they could have declined his option. Better still, since DeJesus was a Type B player last year, they would have picked up a supplemental first-round pick in the draft this year – a draft which, even over the winter, was shaping up to be one of the deepest drafts of the century.

What would you rather have – Vinny Mazzaro and Justin Marks, or a sandwich pick next week? Particularly since the Moore administration’s signature skill is scouting amateur talent, I think the answer is clear.

Meanwhile, the A’s have DeJesus – whose .259/.337/.404 line is a lot better than it looks in The Year of the Pitcher, good for a 106 OPS+. And when DeJesus’ contract ends this winter, the A’s have a good shot at a supplemental pick of their own. Billy Beane wins again.

The reason I bring this up is that Wilson Betemit is likely to be traded in the coming months, if not weeks; the Royals will want Moustakas in the majors as soon as he’s safely passed the Super Two point, and Betemit is hitting .315/.384/.448. There are a ton of contending teams that could use a third baseman. (The Rockies’ third basemen have combined to hit .179/.228/.272. The Cardinals are in first place, but with David Freese out they’re so desperate for a third baseman that they moved Albert Pujols over there for a start.)

Betemit is worth a fair amount of talent on his own, but what’s important is that if he continues to be an everyday player all season, he will almost certainly qualify as a Type B free agent this winter, earning his team a top draft pick. If the Royals do trade him, they absolutely need to factor in that whatever team trades for him is also trading for that draft pick, and his price needs to be elevated accordingly. Given the meager returns the Royals got for DeJesus, you have to be worried that whatever teams acquires Betemit will give up less for the privilege than they’ll receive in return when he signs elsewhere this winter.

- One last thing about Mazzaro. The combined ERA of the Royals’ bullpen this season is 3.66, 19th in the majors and exactly the MLB average. Subtract Mazzaro’s one relief outing, and their ERA drops to 2.99 – fifth in the majors. That’s one spectacular outing – Mazzaro surrendered nearly one-fifth of all the runs the Royals’ bullpen has given up this year.

- Getting back to Felipe Paulino…I don’t want my criticism of the way the Royals handled Tejeda to overshadow the decision to claim Paulino, which I think was a very shrewd move.

Three years ago, the Royals claimed Tejeda on waivers from Texas. Tejeda had pitched well as a swingman for the Phillies as a rookie in 2005, and after a trade to Texas had given the Rangers a 4.28 ERA in 14 starts in 2006. But in 2007 he was awful (6.61 ERA), walking 60 batters and allowing 17 homers in just 95 innings. The Rangers moved him to the bullpen in 2008, but after just four appearances they gave up on him. The Royals got him, and he was terrific from his very first appearance. He always had the power arm, and simply needed some time to cultivate his command in short stints – time the Rangers didn’t have to give him.

Thursday morning, if you had asked me to draw up a list of the pitchers in baseball most likely to pull a Tejeda – a pitcher with little history of recent success, likely available for a song, who had the stuff to dominate if he could simply start throwing strikes – Paulino might well have been at the top of it.

Paulino made 31 starts for the Astros in 2009 and 2010, and was pretty terrible; his career ERA with the Astros was 5.82. On the other hand, it was the Astros. His stuff was tremendous; Fangraphs lists his average fastball at 95.4 mph for his career. His slider averages 86.9 mph. His stuff hadn’t translated to results, but he had never been tried in the bullpen consistently. When the Rockies acquired Paulino for the execrable Clint Barmes this winter, Joe Sheehan was so appalled by the Astros’ decision to let Paulino go that cheaply that he devoted a good chunk of one of his newsletters to this seemingly trivial move. (As Joe pointed out, only two starting pitchers had a faster fastball than Paulino last year – Ubaldo Jimenez and Stephen Strasburg.)

Paulino made 18 relief appearances for the Rockies and didn’t fare much better, with a 7.36 ERA. But he was pitching in Coors Field, and had never had a home ballpark that wasn’t terrible for pitchers. He’s 27 years old; Tejeda was 26 when the Royals claimed him.

So yes, I liked the claim a lot, and that was before Paulino shut the Rangers down last night, retiring 13 of the 14 batters he faced and allowing the Royals to come back and win the game. (If Dallas isn’t an airport hub, the Royals probably lose. Paulino encountered travel delays and didn’t get to the ballpark until gametime, and was on the mound by the third inning.)

One appearance means nothing, and Paulino might be sent packing again soon. But he has undeniable talent, the Royals are pretty good at scouting this sort of talent, and they have a track record of rehabilitating exactly this sort of pitcher. He may yet have a future in the rotation, and he isn’t a free agent until after the 2014 season. Let’s just hope that if he does work out, the Royals manage his departure better than that of the man he replaces.

Whew. 2500 words and I haven’t gotten to the good stuff yet. Be back with more positive comments soon.

A New, And Improved, Lineup.

Here, presented without any commentary, are the combined statistics for the nine slots in the Royals’ lineup. Take a minute to look it over and see what stands out to you:

#1: .201/.281/.331

#2: .275/.313/.462

#3: .296/.353/.491

#4: .285/.394/.437

#5: .234/.307/.449

#6: .271/.333/.426

#7: .264/.323/.405

#8: .211/.340/.308

#9: .257/.303/.326

There are a lot of conclusions one can draw from those numbers, but I think it’s safe to say that the first thing most of you will notice is this: the Royals’ worst lineup slot this season has been their leadoff hitter.

Or to put it another way, the guy in the lineup who bats the most has also been the guy in the lineup who hits the worst.

There has been a lot of research done on the optimum way to build a lineup, as well as on just how important it is to have an optimum lineup in the first place. Most analysts agree that the difference between the absolute best possible lineup and a poorly-constructed one is rarely more than 20 or 30 runs. On the other hand, 1) 20 or 30 runs means two or three wins, which can be the difference between first and second place; 2) the majority of the difference can be had by prioritizing a few simple things.

The first thing to prioritize is this: let your best hitters bat more often.

The next thing to prioritize is this: put the hitters who get on base ahead of the hitters who can drive them in.

So far this year, in 41 games, the Royals’ worst hitter has batted most often. More than that, the Royals’ leadoff hitter has reached base less often than every other spot in the lineup. That’s an impressive trick. The Royals’ leadoff hitter has a .281 OBP, which is Yuniesque. The Royals don’t lack for hitters who can drive in runners – indeed, the #2 through #7 spots in the lineup all have higher slugging averages than the AL mean. What they lack is the hitter who gets on base ahead of them.

(Amazingly enough, two AL teams – the Orioles (.279) and Rays (.277) have lower OBPs from the leadoff spot. It’s still nothing to be proud of.)

It’s been a group effort from the leadoff spot. Chris Getz has led off 19 times, and has hit .181/.274/.236. Getz isn’t hitting from any spot in the lineup, and one can only hope that the Royals’ insistence that he’s a major-league caliber second baseman is starting to weaken. Mike Aviles has started 15 times, and while he’s a good hitter, he’s woefully ill-suited for the leadoff spot – he’s hitting .203/.253/.420. (Jarrod Dyson has started six times, and is 3-for-20.)

The one thing that the leadoff hitters have brought collectively is speed – they are a perfect 13-for-13 in steal attempts, while no other lineup spot has more than seven. And if this were 1979, people might even say that it was worth putting up with the low OBP to keep the speed at the top of the lineup. I mean, it worked for Omar Moreno.

We know better now. For one thing, if the ultimate goal of any leadoff hitter is to score runs, we can simply look at the total number of times the leadoff hitter has crossed home plate – and despite all those steals, the Royals’ leadoff hitter has scored just 19 runs in 41 games. That’s a horrific number – the leadoff hitter is on pace to score 75 runs all year, and that’s for a mythical leadoff hitter that plays every inning of every game. And that’s with a well above-average middle of the lineup to drive him in.

Or look at it another way. The only inning in the game where you know exactly who is scheduled to bat is the first inning – a well-constructed lineup should score a higher percentage of its runs in the first inning than in any other inning. In 41 games, the Royals have scored 14 runs in the first inning – 0.34 runs per inning. That’s 35% lower than their average of 0.52 runs per inning. In the second inning – when the middle of the lineup is generally due up – the Royals have scored 24 runs.

By comparison, the Royals’ opponents have scored 36 runs in the first inning. After one inning, the Royals have led just five times, but have trailed 16 times.

Suffice it to say, the Royals have had no success to speak of from the leadoff spot, and this one weakness has led to a dysfunctional offense that has hamstrung the Royals’ ability to score early.

Enter Alex Gordon.

You may recall that when Hosmer was called up, I suggested that he bat leadoff. This led to a discussion with Nate Bukaty and Steven St. John on 810 WHB, with Nate suggesting that for clubhouse reasons it wasn’t practical to lead off with Hosmer, but that you might be able to do it with Gordon. Which was fine with me. At this stage of their careers, Hosmer and Gordon are pretty similar offensive players – left-handed hitters who can hit for a good average, will take a walk, and have power to the gaps if not to the bleachers, and while neither one is a threat for 40 steals, they both have the speed to take the extra base and occasionally catch the opponents napping with a steal.

If anything, from what we’ve seen from Hosmer so far, he probably has more home run power than the re-tooled Gordon. In which case he might be the better candidate for the #3 hole.

Done and done. Tonight’s lineup:

L 7 Gordon

S 8 Cabrera

L 3 Hosmer

R 9 Francoeur

R 0 Butler

S 5 Betemit

R 2 Treanor

L 4 Getz

R 6 Escobar

This isn’t the ideal lineup – any lineup with Getz in it can’t be called “ideal” – but it’s close. In a world without relievers, an ideal lineup would probably have Hosmer batting second – the most controversial finding of lineup analysis, but one I firmly believe, is that you want your best hitter to bat second, not third. But a real lineup has to split up the lefties and righties, and this lineup does that pretty well. I’d flip-flop Betemit and Cabrera – Betemit gets on base more, and if you bat him higher in the lineup, you can get more at-bats out of him before pulling him for defense in the late innings. But otherwise it’s pretty good.

What’s really interesting about the lineup is that Butler has moved down to fifth. I can’t speak to the psychological issues here; if Butler views this as a demotion and pouts, that could be a problem. (Remember, a permanent move to DH combined with a lineup demotion just sparked a huge controversy in New York.) But if Butler is okay with batting fifth, I actually like the move a lot.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, you don’t want a low-OBP slugger in the #5 hole. Why is that? Because the #5 hitter is most likely to lead off the second inning. If Butler doesn’t bat in the first inning, he’s going to bat first or second in the second inning, where his OBP skills come into play. And if he does at in the first inning, it’s likely to be with two outs, which takes his GIDP skills out of play.

This change in the lineup isn’t going to be worth a run a game, or a quarter of a run a game; it might be worth a tenth of a run per game. But every run counts. Teams pay millions of dollars for players who might help them score 10 or 15 runs more per season. Tonight the Royals are getting a similar boost without paying a dime.

So kudos to Ned Yost for doing the unthinkable and listening to the blogs and sports talk radio. (Or coming up with a blog/sports talk radio idea on his own, which would be equally impressive.) Let’s just hope he has the conviction to stick with an unconventional, but more effective, lineup all season.

Eric Hosmer And The Gathering Horde.

(So I started working on this piece yesterday, and I expected to finish it up last night after taping my weekly podcast with Joe Sheehan. And then, well, this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. So this has gone through a bit of a re-write, and is even more meandering and off-point than most of my stuff.)

By promoting Eric Hosmer when they did, the Royals made a statement that they were taking their playoff hopes seriously. At the same time, by promoting only Hosmer when they did, even though there are perhaps half-a-dozen guys in Omaha who are ready for major league duty, the Royals also made a statement that they weren’t willing to go all-in just yet. Which they shouldn’t be. The Royals may register on the postseason radar, but their odds have only upgraded from “none” to “slim”. Until the Royals get some clarity regarding their playoff hopes, they risk paying out millions of dollars in future salary for every top prospect they call up, and getting nothing in return except a lower draft pick next season.

Hosmer wasn’t simply ready – he was wasting his time in Triple-A when he was called up. And even with that, there’s no consensus as to whether the Royals should have called him up when they did. Jeff Passan argued they should have; Sam Mellinger argued they shouldn’t have. Kevin Goldstein argued the former, and then changed his mind.

It’s not an easy question to answer, just because the stakes are so high. But the case to be made for calling Hosmer up isn’t simply to argue he makes the Royals a better team, because even the best players are rarely worth more than 6 wins a season over a replacement player, which is to say, one win a month. To argue that the Royals couldn’t wait one month to call up Hosmer because they needed that one win so badly – that might be the case if the Royals were legitimate contenders. If they were the Indians, and had built up a large lead on the division, that would be one thing. (Baseball Prospectus’ playoff odds gives the Tribe a 28.5% chance of making the playoffs.) But the Royals are still fringe contenders, who are playing over their heads and still just fighting for second place. (BP puts their odds at 0.6%.)

Those odds are unrealistically low, because BP projects the rest of the season with the assumption that each player is exactly the same player they were at the beginning of the season. In other words, BP just assumes that Jeff Francoeur is the same crappy player he’s been for the past five years, and that the Royals are therefore the same crappy team they’ve been for the past seven years. The computer formula can’t account for the possibility of radical transformation. But even so, it’s hard to argue that the Royals’ playoff odds are any higher than 10%. Those odds are improved by the addition of Hosmer, but not enough to justify bringing him up a month early.

The argument for Hosmer, though, is simply that he was dominating Triple-A to such an extent that he simply had nothing left to learn against minor league pitching, and keeping him in the minors would hinder his development. Most hitting prospects – even most top hitting prospects – are not finished products as rookies. Yes, there’s a chance that Hosmer is Albert Pujols, who was one of the five best players in baseball on his first day in the major leagues – but more likely than not, he’ll be a better player as a sophomore than he is as a rookie. The more reps he gets this year against major league pitching, the more likely he is to go off on the league next year – and next year, the Royals will want their best team on the field from day one, because next year their playoff odds figure to be a lot higher than 10%.

It’s nearly impossible to quantify the true benefit of having Hosmer up early, and so it’s nearly impossible to say with any conviction whether bringing him up on May 5th was the right thing to do. I know very smart people on both sides of the aisle. But the tiebreaker goes to the player – when in doubt, I think I speak for all Royals fans when I say, we’d like to see the kid.

Particularly if he plays like he did last week. On Wednesday, in the fifth game of his career, Ned Yost batted him third. My initial reaction was to mock Yost – until I remembered that he did the same thing with Ryan Braun in the third game of Braun’s career, and Braun responded by leading the NL in slugging as a rookie, winning Rookie of the Year honors, and has batted third (or occasionally cleanup) ever since.

Yost’s confidence in his players – especially young players – is his defining trait as a manager, and the reason why I think that, despite his tactical weaknesses, he’s the right guy for the Royals right now. Of course, it helps when that young player happens to be Eric “Yankee Killer” Hosmer. Hosmer homered into the second deck against A.J. Burnett, which was even more impressive given that it was the only hit Burnett surrendered in seven innings of work. And in the 11th, Hosmer had an equally impressive at-bat; with the bases loaded and one out, he fell behind 0-2, then reached out and poked a ball at shoe-level and managed to hit it deep enough to score Chris Getz from third base for the winning run.

(A surprise #3 hitter…a home run…the game-winning RBI in extra-innings…where have I seen this before?)

Hosmer homered again on Thursday night – this time a laser beam that just cleared the fence – and singled, and hit an excuse-me double down the left field line on a check swing, and the Royals won their first series at Yankee Stadium since 1999. He went hitless against the Tigers on Friday and Saturday, although he was robbed of extra bases twice by Austin Jackson on Saturday, once on one of the best catches of the season. As a Royals fan, I can’t say I’m used to this – I’m used to top prospects struggling out of the gate, and then we have to wait months, or maybe years, to see if they reach their potential. Having a top prospect come up to ridiculous expectations and meet them right away? Watching him hit two homers in his first week in the majors? At Yankee Stadium? I’m getting a little woozy just thinking about it.

I know it’s been barely a week, but if Eric Hosmer is at all representative of The Greatest Farm System In The History Of Whatever…the next six-plus seasons ought to be a blast.

And with that in mind…let’s take a look at how the Blue Wave – hey, that’s what Baseball America called them – are doing right now. These are the nine Royals that made BA’s Top 100 list, in the order they appeared:

#2: Mike Moustakas (.267/.346/.481 in Triple-A)

Moose struggled to start the season and got left in the dust by his bosom buddy Hosmer, but I’m actually very encouraged by the shape of his season so far. I said before the season that I thought he needed a few more months in Omaha, service time issues or not, because while his power was ready for the majors, the rest of his game wasn’t. He didn’t hit lefties much last year, and he swung at entirely too many pitches.

Sure enough, he came out of the gate cold, and hit just .229/.304/.410 in April. But he’s heating up, hitting .351/.444/.703 in his last ten games. He came back yesterday from missing a couple of games over the weekend after getting hit in the arm by a pitch, and doubled and homered.

More importantly, he’s making progress on the two weak spots in his game. While he’s only hit .234 against lefties, he has three doubles and three homers in 47 at-bats, and is slugging .489 vs. southpaws. He also has 14 walks in 135 at-bats, none intentional. (In this lineup? Pick your poison – if you’re not facing Moose, you’re facing Clint Robinson.) That would be the highest walk rate of Moustakas’ career.

He’s been somewhat error-prone at third base, with eight already in just 33 games. On the other hand, he’s making more plays than ever before – his range factor is 3.12 chances per game, and while range factor is a very weak defensive stat, any third baseman making more than three plays a game is doing something right. The scouting reviews of his defense are the same as ever – a little stiff, but certainly playable.

#3: Wil Myers (.284/.357/.392 in Double-A, in just 20 games)

Myers has been slowed down by some knee problems – he missed ten days at the end of April after he apparently slipped and fell on the asphalt outside his apartment and gashed his knee open good. And now he’s got an infection in the same knee that’s put him on the DL.

Aside from that, he’s been fine. He’s not dominating Double-A like he did the two levels below, but he’s 20 years old, and he’s holding his own. The only area of concern, if it is one, is that his strikeout-to-walk ratio is 20 to 9 after he had nearly as many walks as strikeouts last year. But he’s only played 20 games; I’m not worried about it. The defensive reports of him in the outfield are encouraging. The slim odds before the season that he might rip through Double-A and force the Royals to promote him to Kansas City this season have dwindled to almost nothing. But he’s still on target for a mid-2012 debut.

#4: John Lamb (34 IP, 33 H, 13 BB, 21 K, 3 HR, 3.15 ERA in Double-A)

The first thing you need to know about Lamb is that his velocity has been down since late in spring training; his fastball is in the 88-91 range after being a couple ticks faster last year. The second thing you need to know is that he’s been pitching through a strained lat muscle, which everyone assumes is the cause of his dip in velocity.

If that’s the case, and if his velocity gets back to its 2010 level, he’s going to be fine. Even with the decreased velocity, he’s been effective if not particularly dominant in Double-A. Like Myers, he’s still 20. Like Myers, I’d be concerned if his performance doesn’t improve as the season progresses and he gets healthy. And like Myers, his ETA is more likely to be 2012 than 2011. But again like Myers, his long-term outlook is minimally, if at all, changed.

#5: Mike Montgomery (42 IP, 38 H, 25 BB, 33 K, 2 HR, 4.25 ERA in Triple-A)

Montgomery – not Hosmer – was the most impressive player on the field at the Royals’ Futures Game, and his performance since the games started to count has been disappointing. The primary concern has simply been his command – he’s still throwing in the mid-90s, he just isn’t throwing the ball where he wants to.

His numbers look a lot better if you take out his last outing – he had a 2.84 ERA before Saturday, when he allowed nine hits, four walks, and 11 runs in 4.1 innings. I wouldn’t worry – he was pitching in Colorado Springs, where the ball flies. Put it this way – if he had managed to finish the fifth inning, he would have gotten the win – the Royals won the game 16-11, as Lorenzo Cain hit for the cycle with 7 RBIs. Montgomery won’t have to pitch in those kinds of conditions in the major leagues.

I’d like to see fewer walks, and more strikeouts, from Montgomery. But he’s still on target – remember, before spring training the expectation was that he was headed to Double-A, but he looked so good that he forced an accelerated timetable. He’s still only 21. He turns 22 on July 1st, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he celebrates his birthday with the big club.

#6: Christian Colon (.263/.346/.347, 8 for 12 in SB)

I’m still not entirely sure what kind of player Colon is going to be, in part because he’s been two different players in 2010 and 2011. Last year, he signed right after the draft and got into 60 games in Wilmington, where he hit .278/.326/.380. Those are good numbers for a guy straight out of college in a tough hitters’ park, but I was concerned by the fact that he walked only 13 times in 60 games, with 33 strikeouts.

This year, he’s hitting only .261 with very little power – he has just five extra-base hits in 115 at-bats. But he’s already drawn 14 walks in 32 games, with just 11 strikeouts. He’s also stolen eight bases already after he stole just two bases (in six attempts) all of last season.

The other mitigating factor here is that Northwest Arkansas has run into some absolutely brutal weather. They had an off-day on April 20; they were rained out on the 21st, and after playing a doubleheader on the 22nd (minor-league doubleheaders go only seven innings each), they were rained out again on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th. They also got rained out on back-to-back days on May 1st and 2nd. I’d like to see what Colon can do when he’s getting to play every day. For now, he’s been a little disappointing, but he’s a 9-for-15 stretch away from batting .300 and justifying the comparisons to Placido Polanco. And – like most everyone on this list – he’s still awfully young, having just turned 22 on Saturday.

I can’t say I’m not worried that the Royals used the fourth pick in the draft on a role player, but then, I was worried about that last June, and it’s not like the other players the Royals might have taken have been much better. Chris Sale is a left-handed reliever for the White Sox, and he’s struggling. Yasmani Grandal, the catcher the Royals were rumored to want, would have been a better fit for the organization after the Royals traded for Alcides Escobar. He’s hitting .292/.419/.542 for the Reds, but he’s in A-ball, and in a hitters’ league. He might prove to be the better player, but it’s way too early to say for sure.

The one thing I know is that the Royals were two losses in 2009 – or one loss, if it had been to the Orioles – away from drafting Manny Machado last year. Machado is hitting .333/.450/.611 as an 18-year-old shortstop in the Sally League, and has future star written all over him. So do the two guys taken before him, Bryce Harper and Jameson Taillon. But we knew going into the draft that the Royals had the first pick of the common pile. Nothing that’s happened since the draft has changed that perception, or the perception that the Royals made the best pick they could under the circumstances.

#7: Danny Duffy (36 IP, 30 H, 10 BB, 43 K, 4 HR, 3.00 ERA in Triple-A)

A year ago today, Duffy was retired, and the best you could have hoped for a year later was that he’d be pitching somewhere in the system. Instead, after just seven starts in Double-A last season he joined Montgomery in Triple-A to start 2011, and has been the ace of the staff. His last start, when he gave up nine baserunners and four runs in four innings, was his first poor outing of the season.

A year ago, I was worried that even if Duffy returned, that his profile was a little too close to Jimmy Gobble’s or Chris George’s profile for comfort. He had good command of three pitches, but his fastball rarely broke 90, and he didn’t have any sink on it. Only a funny thing happened when he returned – he started throwing harder than ever, consistently 92-93, touching 95. And even better, he maintained that velocity all season, and he still had it when he showed up in camp this spring. Best. Retirement. Ever.

And now, he’s in the major leagues, because as I write this, the Royals have announced that Danny Duffy will be starting at Kauffman Stadium tomorrow night. (Another fringe benefit of having The Best Farm System In The History Of Whatever: you can wash away the bad taste of a 19-1 drubbing with the flick of a pen.)

Is he ready? Well, he’s certainly not as ready as Hosmer was, but it’s hard to argue that he’s being rushed either. He walked three batters and struck out just two in his last start – but in the six starts before that, his worst strikeout-to-walk ratio came on April 21st, when he struck out five and walked two. Prior to his last start, his last three lines looked like this:

6 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 8 K, 0 HR

6 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 2 BB, 9 K, 1 HR

6 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 8 K, 1 HR

Let’s put it this way: if it weren’t for the service time concerns, no one would bat an eye about Duffy’s callup. There are going to be some bumps in the road, and Duffy is an extreme flyball pitcher who’s going to give up his share of homers (although Kauffman Stadium will help with that.) But is he better than the alternatives? Absolutely. No one would be surprised if he winds up being the Royals’ best starter the rest of the season.

But the service time concerns are there – if you assume that Duffy is going to turn into an above-average starting pitcher, this might cost the team $5 million in additional payroll over the next six years. As recently as last week, I was arguing that having called up Hosmer, the Royals needed to hold the fort for another month, because no one else in Omaha had proven without a doubt that they were ready for the majors.

I’m deeply ambivalent about the Duffy call-up, because as I said at the start of this piece – which I wrote when a call-up looked remote – the odds are slim that calling up Duffy now will make the difference between the playoffs and the couch in October. On the other hand, if you listened to last week’s podcast, when Joe and I talked about the callups of Hosmer and Julio Teheran and other top prospects around the majors, Joe made the point that with starting pitchers, there’s only so many bullets in their arm, so you might as well call them up when they’re ready. Many of you are familiar with the concept of TINSTAAPP (There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect), which Joe and Gary Huckabay popularized at Baseball Prospectus years ago. People have understood that expression to mean that even the best pitching prospects are so injury-prone that you can’t rely on any of them.

That’s part of what the expression means – but the other part is that when you do have an elite pitching prospect, a Mark Prior in the minors or Stephen Strasburg last May or whatnot, he’s not really a pitching prospect – he’s a major-league pitcher just biding his time in the minors. Pitchers, unlike hitters, can hit the ground running. And whereas most hitters improve until the age of 27 or so, the age curve for pitchers is quite variable. Some pitchers don’t hit their stride until their 30s, but far more pitchers peak in their early 20s – and many pitchers are as good at the age of 22 or 23 as they’ll ever be. If you hold those guys in the minors for too long, you run the risk of missing their peak entirely.

Danny Duffy is 22. He’s not an elite prospect, but he is a very, very good one, and he’s ready for the majors. If the Royals are going to continue to play for this year – and after last night, I’d understand if they weren’t – but if they are, they need Duffy in their rotation now. With Davies on the DL, and Mazzaro having been sent back to Omaha because the Royals don’t have an affiliate in Outer Mongolia, the Royals either start Duffy or they call up Jeff Suppan. If they call up Suppan, you can go ahead and plan that vacation to Europe in October. The path to the playoffs is a treacherous one, but the only person who can navigate it right now is Duffy. I know the Royals would rather have waited a month to call him up. But I don’t blame them for doing what they had to do.

#8: Jake Odorizzi (37 IP, 28 H, 8 BB, 55 K, 1 HR, 2.45 ERA in High-A)

Jackpot. I felt from day one that Odorizzi was the most underrated part of the Greinke deal, and possibly the most valuable of the four players the Royals received in the deal. (The original trade rumor did not have Odorizzi in the deal, and I did not like the trade for the Royals at that point – Odorizzi’s inclusion rotated my thumb 180 degrees.) Odorizzi wasn’t a Top 25 prospect, but he had the stuff, projectability, and athleticism to say that, if everything went right in 2011, he’d be a Top 25 prospect by the end of the year.

So far, everything’s gone right. He’s made seven starts, and hit double digits in strikeouts three times. Prior to his last start, he had struck out over a man an inning in every start this season. He gave up a season-high three earned runs in 4.2 innings in his last start, striking out four while walking none.

The interesting thing is that this breakout has not been accompanied by an uptick in velocity – his fastball generally is in the 92-93 range, occasionally faster, which is where he was last year. The difference, though, is that he has much better command of his curveball and changeup. His fastball might preclude him from being a #1 starter in the majors – but a pitcher with a plus fastball and two plus off-speed pitches projects as a #2 starter at the very least. Oh, and he’s just 21 years old – there’s still a chance that he’ll add velocity over time. I expect him to be in Double-A soon; if everything goes according to plan he’ll start next season in Omaha, and this time next year we’ll be agitating for him to join the big-league rotation.

#9: Chris Dwyer (33 IP, 33 H, 19 BB, 26 K, 3 HR, 6.61 ERA in Double-A)

There was going to be a clunker somewhere. Dwyer was always the Ringo of the Fab Four lefties, on account of his lack of polish, and his command issues have been exposed this year. The good news is that I haven’t heard any rumblings that his stuff has gone downhill, only his ability to throw strikes have. He’s more of a two-pitch pitcher (fastball/curveball) than the other three lefties on this list, and my suspicions that he’d wind up in the bullpen are only growing. He still projects as an impact arm in some role.

If you evaluate these nine prospects in sum, you might be a little disappointed with them overall. If you re-ranked the Top 100 Prospects at the moment Hosmer was called up, Hosmer himself might have moved up as high as #3 – the only prospects in baseball clearly better than him were Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. But Moustakas and Myers wouldn’t be Top 10 guys – they’d probably be in the 20s. Montgomery would be unchanged, but Lamb would probably drop from #19 to #40 or so. Colon would move down, and Dwyer would be off the list entirely. On the other hand, Odorizzi and Duffy would both be comfortably in the Top 50, meaning the Royals would have 7 of the top 50 prospects in the game.

Farm systems are like players – great seasons are bound to regress. If a player hits .390 for a full major league season, you expect his average to drop the next season, because a .390 average is so rare that it can only occur when great ability is combined with great luck. Players don’t have breakout seasons and then get even better the next season, unless their name is Jose Bautista.

The Royals’ farm system in 2010 hit over .400. There was no way they could sustain that this year, and they haven’t. But they haven’t been exposed as a fluke or a mirage either. Notably, none of the team’s top pitching prospects have suffered an arm injury, which is generally the bane of any farm system loaded with pitching prospects.

Besides, a new season gives opportunities for other players to emerge. David Lough is batting .336/.367/.564 for Omaha and making those David DeJesus comparisons look realistic. Everett Teaford, who couldn’t even crack the Royals Top 30 Prospects according to Baseball America, has been fantastic in Omaha (27 IP, 16 H, 6 BB, 24 K, 3 HR), and got called up to replace Vinny Mazzaro last night. I’m not sure what his role will be – he could be the lefty specialist, a long man, or even be in the rotation – but he should be an asset however he’s used. (Teaford and Duffy will be the fifth and sixth pitchers to make their major league debut with the Royals this season. The Royals had just four pitchers debut in all of 2009 and 2010 combined.)

Clint Robinson continues to mash, and while no one believes in him, he’s been proving his doubters wrong for so long that he might be able to fetch some value on the trade market. Kelvin Herrera, a kid many of you have never heard of, was a starting pitcher who threw in the mid-90s and made it to full-season ball when he was 18, but assorted arm problems derailed him – he pitched in only nine games in 2009 and 2010 combined. The Royals finally decided to move him to the bullpen to keep him healthy, and he’s already rocketed through Wilmington and is pitching well in the Naturals’ bullpen. With his fastball and a great changeup, he’s sort of a better version of Leo Nunez.

Rey Navarro, who the Royals quietly acquired from the Diamondbacks for Carlos Rosa last year, is hitting .324/.376/.485 in Wilmington as a 21-year-old second baseman and is starting to get second looks from scouts. And potentially the biggest news is that Noel Arguelles, the $6.9 million Cuban bonus baby who missed all of last season with shoulder problems, is not only pitching but pitching well, with a 2.43 ERA in 7 starts for Wilmington.

I wouldn’t get too excited about Arguelles – whereas he was supposedly throwing 94 when the Royals signed him, after surgery his fastball is in the 88-90 range now. On the other hand, that velocity will play for a lefty, and he has shown shockingly good command for someone coming off surgery, particularly of his slow curve and his changeup. While he only has 23 strikeouts in 33 innings, he’s also walked just three batters all year. I hesitate to project what he’ll be because it’s so dependent on whether his velocity returns, but he ought to be something.

And finally, we’re just now starting to see the second wave of prospects make it to full season ball; as the weather finally warms up here in Chicagoland, the Royals are starting to send their elite teenage arms to Kane County. Yordano Ventura, who’s 19 years old, stands 5’11”, and throws 99, made his full-season debut on Sunday (he didn’t pitch well). Jason Adam, the Kansas City kid who has been getting rave reviews since he signed last summer, makes his pro debut tonight.

A season like 2010 for the Royals’ farm system could not be repeated, and it’s not. But the talent that projected to make the Royals a perennial contender by 2013 is still there, and if anything, the timetable is moved up. The Royals almost certainly won’t be the #1 farm system in the game, let alone in history, at the end of this season. For one thing, the Rays were already #2, and in one month they get to cash in on the greatest haul of draft picks in the history of the draft, in one of the strongest drafts anyone has ever seen.

But more importantly, the farm system is a victim of its own success, as it ought to be. Hosmer is not a minor leaguer anymore, neither is Duffy, and by the end of the year, Moustakas and Montgomery will probably have exhausted their rookie eligibility as well. That leaves Myers, Lamb, Colon, Odorizzi as the only elite prospects left from the start of the season. Throw in the #5 pick in the draft, and maybe Jason Adam and another elite arm or two, and it will still be a good farm system, a Top 10 farm system – but not one of the best in the game.

But that’s not the point, and it was never the point. The point is to do what the Royals are doing now, which is to get these guys to the majors. I said at the start of the year that we might see a prospect debut in the majors every few weeks this season. That timetable has accelerated slightly – the Royals had three debut on Opening Day, Louis Coleman a few weeks later, Hosmas was May 6th, and now Teaford and Duffy are here together. I suspect that this is the last of the debuts until we’re past the Super Two deadline, but if the Royals are all-in for this season, they’re all-in, and if Montgomery turns the corner in his next two starts, I wouldn’t rule out an early promotion for him. If the Royals finally accept that Chris Getz is never going to hit, you might even see Johnny Giavotella (.298/.355/.397 in Omaha) soon.

In all honesty, all this activity doesn’t change the fact that the Royals are facing long odds to make the postseason this year. They’re a .500 team, the Indians seem unbeatable, and the Tigers are getting hot. And yeah, one day the Royals might regret committing millions of dollars in future payroll in their quixotic attempt to make the postseason a year ahead of schedule.

But don’t let the Royals’ long odds this year distract from the more important point – which is that the Royals are much better set up to win the Central in 2012 than people thought even a few months ago. Their top eight prospects to start the season are all on course to be in the major leagues by mid-June of next year, and they’ll find a bullpen waiting for them. The Royals need to find a battery – they’re about one starting pitcher and one catcher short of having a complete team for the second half of next season. But right now, gun to my head, if I had to predict what team would win the AL Central next season – I’d pick the Royals. And I suspect I’m not the only one.

In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the show. Everett Teaford might debut tonight. Danny Duffy will debut tomorrow. And the iceberg extends deep.