For Want Of A Pitcher: Bruce Chen.

Last week I took my first real vacation in a long while, unplugging from the grid on a 7-day cruise with my family aboard Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, which along with its sister ship the Allure of the Seas is, I believe, the largest cruise ship in the world. So it says something about me that the most memorable part of the cruise for me was noticing Mitch Maier walking through one of the restaurants during breakfast one morning. Despite undoubtedly being mortified at seeing the only person on the boat wearing a Royals cap coming straight at him, he was very gracious when I said hello.

The world didn’t stop while I was on the boat, and the new Collective Bargaining Agreement that was finalized while I was gone contains some major implications for the Royals. I’ll discuss those when I get the chance, but meanwhile Dayton Moore couldn’t sit still, maintaining his reputation as a GM who, once the off-season starts, shoots first and asks questions later.

First, he re-signed Bruce Chen to a two-year, $9 million contract (with incentives of about $1 million a year.) If bad news is buried on a Friday evening, you have to wonder why the Royals slipped this signing in on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving.

The return of Chen is hardly bad news. He has been the Royals’ best starter over the past two seasons combined, whether you use the oldest of stats (Chen leads the team with 24 wins over the past two years; only Luke Hochevar has more than ten) or the newest (Chen had 4.6 bWins Above Replacement in 2010-11; Zack Greinke is second among starters at 2.3 bWAR.) Neither the time nor dollars committed in this deal are overwhelming. It’s been reported that Chen turned out slightly higher offers from other teams, and I don’t doubt that.

But I’m not convinced that this is particularly good news either. Chen had a 3.96 ERA over the past two years, and a starting pitcher who can give you a 3.96 ERA is worth a hell of a lot more than $4.5 million a year. But there’s little about Chen’s underlying performance to suggest he can maintain an ERA under four.

Over the last two seasons, Chen has walked 3.08 batters per 9 (as always, intentional walks have been stripped out) and struck out 5.94 per 9. His career marks in those categories are 3.21 and 6.82. Granted that Chen benefitted from facing pitchers during his time in the NL, Chen’s success the last two seasons has not been accompanied by any improvement in his command or ability to miss bats. The only thing he’s been able to do is limit the long ball – he’s allowed 1.07 homers per 9 innings, down from a career mark of 1.55 per 9.

That’s a huge difference. Any pitcher who is able to cut his home run rate by a third is going to have a lot more success. But the most durable way to limit your home runs is to limit the flyballs you give up, and Chen hasn’t done that – if anything, he’s been slightly more of a flyball pitcher these last two years than he was before. Somehow, just 8.1% of the flyballs he allowed the last two seasons wound up over the fence. In each of his previous seven seasons, at least 11.1% of the flyballs he allowed were home runs. Pitchers have little ability to influence their HR/FB ratio, so this suggests that Chen hasn’t been a better pitcher the last two years; he’s just been luckier.

It’s not quite that simple. Kauffman Stadium, while a neutral park overall, is one of the toughest parks in baseball to hit homers in (it’s a very good park for batting average and triples). Over the last two seasons Chen allowed just 15 homers in 148 innings at home, but 20 homers in 147 innings on the road. There’s no question that Kauffman is a good fit for him. Except that his ERA at home has actually been higher the last two years (4.28) than on the road (3.73).

Also, while Chen’s home run rate has been uncharacteristically low the last two years, that’s the only part of his game that seems to have been infused with luck. Notably, he has not been particularly lucky on balls in play. This may surprise you to know, given that his batting averages on balls in play the last two years were .279 and .280, much better than the MLB average of around .300. However, Chen’s career mark is .282. Extreme flyball pitchers like Chen tend to have lower BABIP’s than average – flyballs (at least the ones that don’t clear the fence) are less likely to fall in for hits than groundballs. If Chen can continue to keep the ball in play, he can continue to be successful.

However, there’s the durability factor to consider. Chen made only 25 starts and threw only 155 innings last year. In 2010 he only threw 140 innings in the majors, although he did throw 21 innings in the minors and spent a few weeks in the bullpen before he earned a spot in the rotation. But you can’t ignore that in 13 seasons in the major leagues, Chen has never thrown 200 innings in a season, and last season was actually the second-most innings he’s ever thrown in the majors.

And then there’s the fact that he turns 35 in June. And that his fastball averages about 86 mph.

I’m not saying that Chen is a tech bubble ready to pop. But we have to temper our expectations here. The Royals didn’t sign a slightly above-average starting pitcher; they signed a slightly below-average one. That still has value, and so does Chen’s affability and popularity, both in the clubhouse and with the fan base. Re-signing Chen is a darn sight better than trading for Jair Jurrjens. But the Royals need to improve their rotation, and bringing back the one starter most likely to regress from his 2010 performance isn’t improvement. At best, the Royals spent $9 million to stand still.

The Royals didn’t just commit money to Chen; they also committed a roster slot, and if they’re going to genuinely upgrade their rotation, they’re running out of places to do so. Chen will be in the rotation, along with Hochevar, Jonathan Sanchez, Felipe Paulino, and Danny Duffy. As it stands, the Royals’ rotation is complete; if the Royals do manage to acquire a truly above-average starter, one of those guys is going to lose their job. If it means that Danny Duffy goes back to Triple-A to work on some things, delay his arbitration eligibility by a year (he’d need about a month in Omaha to do the trick), and waits in the wings for the inevitable injury that opens up a rotation spot, perfect. Unfortunately, I worry that even if the Royals do something bold like sign Roy Oswalt, it will lead to Felipe Paulino somehow getting the shaft. You guys know what I think of Paulino. You guys also know that I seem to be in the minority here.

I still think that there’s room for the Royals to sign another starter, because no matter how good their training staff is, it’s almost impossible to get through a season with only five starters. In the last 16 seasons, just four teams – the 2003 Mariners, the 2005 Cardinals and Indians, and the 2006 White Sox – had five starters each make at least 30 starts. The tentative 2012 Royals rotation above is acceptable if all five guys stay healthy; they almost certainly won’t. But add an Oswalt or an Edwin Jackson, and then Danny Duffy is your #6 starter, and Luis Mendoza is your #7, and by mid-season Mike Montgomery or Jake Odorizzi ought to be ready, and suddenly the specter of losing your #3 starter to an oblique pull for two months isn’t so scary.

This season, the Royals gave 14 starts to Sean O’Sullivan and Vinny Mazzaro. Handing those 14 starts to pitchers who actually deserve the responsibility might be worth an extra three or four wins right there.

This ignores the fact that the Royals might already have that extra starting pitcher on hand in the form of Aaron Crow. They certainly seem to think so; how else to explain the Jonathan Broxton signing? But more on that next time.

Royals Report Card 2011: Part Two.

I normally save the off-field personnel to the end, but there are special circumstances here:

Nick Kenney, Kyle Turner, and the Rest of the Training Staff: A+

Two years ago, the Royals’ Head Athletic Trainer was Nick Swartz. He had been the team’s trainer for nearly 20 years.

That April, Joakim Soria was allowed to pitch through some shoulder pain. His pain worsened, and he went on the DL in early May for nearly a month. Around the same time, Mike Aviles, who had tried to play through some tenderness in his forearm, was finally diagnosed with an injury to his elbow that required Tommy John surgery.

In late May, Coco Crisp missed some time with a sore shoulder, which it turns out he had been suffering since spring training. He tried to play through the pain, the injury got worse, he rested some more, he played some more, the injury got worse, and finally on June 19th he was seen by Dr. James Andrews, who diagnosed a torn labrum that required season-ending surgery.

Two days later, Gil Meche took the mound despite some soreness in his shoulder, which he had noticed after throwing 132 pitches in a complete-game shutout his previous time out. Meche gave up nine runs that day, but was allowed to stay in the rotation, even after giving up four runs in five innings on June 26th, even after he complained of a dead arm. On July 1st, with that dead arm, Meche threw 121 pitches against the Twins, and was allowed to face the heart of the Twins’ lineup with the game tied in the sixth inning. He would make just 15 more starts in his career, just two of which were Quality Starts.

While acknowledging that the above decisions cannot all be blamed on the trainer – in particular, Trey Hillman and Bob McClure still haven’t answered for their complicity in the murder of Meche’s career – it was a breathtakingly terrible performance by Swartz. You may remember this.

Swartz was let go after the season, and the Royals hired Nick Kenney, who was previously the Assistant Head Trainer for the Indians, as his replacement. The Royals also brought in a new Assistant Head Trainer (Kyle Turner), a new strength and conditioning coach (Ryan Stoneberg), and this year even brought in a new team physician (Dr. Vincent Key).

In 2010, the Royals’ health performance was improved. Some injuries were unavoidable; Meche was already damaged goods, and Jason Kendall’s shoulder finally told the tale of his 15 years as a consummate warrior behind the plate. But you could already sense a change afoot.

In 2011, the Royals had one of the most injury-free seasons you’ll ever see.

Five different Royals – Billy Butler (159), Alcides Escobar (158), Melky Cabrera (155), Jeff Francoeur (153), and Alex Gordon (151) – all played in over 150 games. In the history of the franchise, only two other Royals teams had five players play in that many games in a season – the 1976 and 1977 Royals. Good company to be in.

The Royals’ starting outfield was so healthy and productive that Mitch Maier’s lack of playing time became a running joke among the fan base – Royals Review likened Maier to the kid at summer camp who never got to play. Finally, Francoeur and Gordon were shut down for the season’s last four games just so that Maier, along with Lorenzo Cain and Jarrod Dyson, could get some reps in. Otherwise, the Royals would have had five different players appear in 155 games each.

That’s not unprecedented; the 2009 Phillies had six players appear in 155 games or more. But then consider that after he was called up on May 6th, Eric Hosmer appeared in 128 of the Royals’ remaining 131 games. (Counting his minor league time, Hosmer actually played in 154 games this season.) Mike Moustakas was promoted on June 10th, and played in 89 of the Royals’ remaining 99 games – and the games he missed were more about his early struggles than any injury concerns. From August 5th until the end of the season, Moustakas missed only three games.

Once Hosmer and Moustakas were in place, then, seven of the nine lineup spots were spoken for almost every night. The only exceptions were at second base, where the Royals struggled to find a player worthy of playing every day, and catcher, which by nature of the position requires the occasional day off. (Although don’t be surprised if Ned Yost tests those limits. Yost got 149 starts out of Jason Kendall in 2008, and you know he’ll want to do the same next year with Salvador Perez.)

As best as I can tell, the entire Royals offense only used the DL twice during the 2011 season: Kendall, who spent the entire season on the DL in a failed attempt to return from a severe shoulder injury, and Treanor, who spent a month on the DL (half of it on a rehab assignment in the minors) after suffering a concussion on a collision at the plate.

The Royals had perhaps the youngest offense in baseball, and young players are less likely to get injured. But there’s no way to spin this as anything other than a fantastic job by the Royals’ training staff.

There were more injuries on the pitching staff, but only a few more. Bruce Chen went on the DL in early May with a strained lat muscle, and missed six weeks; he returned in late June and had no problems thereafter. Kyle Davies was mercifully put on the DL with shoulder pain in mid-May; he returned in early July, but last only four more starts before he went back on the DL, and eventually was transferred to oblivion.

No other starting pitcher so much as missed a start as a result of injury. Luke Hochevar made 31 starts before he was shut down in late September when he reached his innings limit. More impressively, Jeff Francis, who missed all of 2009 with a torn labrum and a full month in 2010 with more inflammation in his shoulder, took the ball for all 31 of his scheduled starts this year.

Felipe Paulino was plucked off waivers in late May, went into the rotation after one relief appearance, and made every start thereafter. Danny Duffy made every one of his starts after his call-up in May. No other pitcher that started for the Royals this season missed any time with an injury. Vinny Mazzaro and Sean O’Sullivan missed time because they sucked, but that’s not the same thing.

The bullpen was equally healthy. Robinson Tejeda didn’t look right from day one, and after nine ineffective outings went on the DL for a month with shoulder inflammation; after giving up runs in his first two outings upon his return, he was outrighted to Omaha.

Joakim Soria got hit hard early in the year, which made us suspect a recurrence of his arm problems from 2009, but he managed to work through his struggles, which in the end were probably the result of an over-reliance on his cut fastball. Soria did miss the last three weeks of the season with a strained hamstring. Aaron Crow battled through a strained shoulder in the second half, and while he never went on the DL, he pitched ineffectively and infrequently after the All-Star Break. (He only threw 11 innings in the season’s final two months, and allowed 28 baserunners and nine runs.) In retrospect, the Royals should have just shut him down completely for a few weeks.

And that’s it. For the season, the entire Royals roster spent a total of 271 days on the Disabled List. That is astounding. And today, not surprisingly, the Royals’ health record earned their training staff the Dick Martin Award.

The Dick Martin Award was started by Will Carroll back in 2005, as a way of honoring the best trainers in the game. While Nick Swartz was the head trainer, the Royals never won this award. The Royals never came particularly close to winning the award. With Nick Kenney – who was the Assistant Head Trainer in Cleveland when the Indians won the award in 2007 – at the helm, the Royals won in their second season. Keeping players healthy is a skill, and Kenney seems to have that skill in spades.

I don’t want to rehash the events of the summer of 2009. I wrote some deeply critical things about Swartz, the Royals responded in kind. Both sides probably crossed the line. And in fairness to Swartz, the failure of the organization to keep its players healthy was a systemic issue that ran a lot deeper than any one person.

So it’s telling that when the Royals made changes after the 2009 season, they didn’t stop with Swartz; they turned over the whole operation. And this year, they reaped the rewards.

I have some regrets about the way I handled the situation. But I have no regrets about bringing the issues with the Royals’ training staff to the forefront. The team’s amazing health record this season is all the justification I needed.

In the aftermath of L’Affaire Swartz, I hoped I wouldn’t have to write about the Royals’ training staff ever again. I couldn’t be happier to be wrong. A major weakness has turned into an undeniable strength. Let’s hope that what has happened with the training staff presages what happens with the organization as a whole.

Royals Report Card 2011: Part One.

Unlike the last several off-seasons, the Royals are unlikely to have a lot of transactions this winter. The transactions they do make might be particularly significant, like the Cabrera-Sanchez trade, but they’re also likely to be rare. This is a testament to the job Dayton Moore & Co. have done over the last few years; they’ve built a roster that, with the exception of the rotation, doesn’t have a lot of holes to fill.

With the trade of Cabrera, the Royals’ starting lineup is completely set, and if there is any intrigue at all – who starts at second base, who are the backup outfielder(s) – the intrigue is going to come from internal battles. I suppose the Royals could sign a utility infielder, but they might be better off just going with Yamaico Navarro. And alas, Willie Bloomquist has already signed elsewhere.

The bullpen is stacked; if there’s a transaction involving a reliever, it’s more likely to involve one departing than arriving. Really, the only need the Royals have this winter is for another starting pitcher, which is why I spent the better part of a month writing about it. (Come on, Dayton. Give Roy Oswalt what he wants.)

So there may not be much of a need to write about Royals personnel moves over the next three months. Which gives me the chance to clear up a backlog of other columns, starting with the annual report cards for each player that I should have started six weeks ago. I apologize if these seem dated. Just think of it as my way of keeping Royals talk alive during these cold, sunless months we refer to as the off-season.

As usual, I’ll be grading every player who played a substantial amount for the Royals in 2011, a number of top prospects, and a bunch of off-field personnel. Grades are given out on a B- curve; a player who met his pre-season expectations exactly, but did not exceed them, gets a B-.

I’ll start today with the catchers:

Brayan Pena: C-

As you probably know, I’m particularly fond of Pena, perhaps more than is warranted. I love the strategic advantage of having a switch-hitting catcher, and I’m partial to having an offense-first backup, and I enjoy his Cuban refugee backstory and his infectious attitude.

That said, it wasn’t a particularly good year for him. He’s an extreme-contact player, putting the ball in play in over 80% of his plate appearances, which makes him particularly susceptible to the vagaries of batting average. When he hits .273, as he did in his first year with the Royals, he’s valuable; when he hits .248, like he did this year, he’s not. While he has good raw power, he hit just three homers all season.

His defense was marked by two astonishingly bad plays at the plate, which obscures the fact that he actually had a pretty good year with the glove. On May 29th, with the score tied and two outs in the ninth, Elvis Andrus singled to right field with Mike Napoli on first base. Napoli was sent around third base as Pena set up to catch the throw a few feet up the first base line, and should have been out by about 20 feet. Out of surprise or just lack of preparation, Pena sauntered back to the plate in geologic time, and seemed equally surprised when the umpire called Napoli safe with the walkoff run.

Pena got deservedly reamed for that play, and for the next three months he blocked the plate like it was his newborn child – he was tagging out baserunners, umpires, members of the grounds crew, and in one unfortunate incident he decked Ned Yost when his manager got too close to the plate on his way to a mound meeting. And then all his good work was forgotten when in early August, Pena – perhaps spooked after Matt Treanor had just gone on the DL with a concussion following a plate collision – once again exhibited poor technique on a play at the plate, tagging the runner high and allowing the runner’s foot to touch the plate first.

These two egregious mistakes aside, Pena wasn’t bad. He threw out an impressive 36% of attempted basestealers – the AL average was 28%. He’s worked his ass off to get better, and those two plays notwithstanding, he has.

In three seasons with the Royals, Pena has 597 plate appearances – basically a full season worth of playing time. In that span he’s hit .257/.302/.369. He’ll be 30 next year. He’s unlikely to make seven figures in arbitration, and anyway the Royals have made it clear that they would probably release a bench player before they’d pay one over a million dollars.

If he’s willing to come back for a modest raise from his $660,000 salary in 2011, I’d keep him. Particularly after the Cabrera trade, the Royals now have six right-handed hitters in their everyday lineup, and they need as many bench guys as possible who swing from the left side. Pena can give Salvador Perez a rare day off against the Jered Weavers of the world, the right-handed starters who throw from three-quarters or below. He can pinch-hit for Alcides Escobar against right-handed closers in key situations, assuming Ned Yost doesn’t continue to value “development” over winning games in the here and now. As backup catchers go, Pena is still better than most.

Salvador Perez: B+ (minors), A (majors)

I’ve written this before, but now that the season is done I can give you the definitive list:

Highest Batting Average By Catcher, min: 100 PA, Age 21 or Less

1. Salvador Perez, 2011, .331

2. Jiggs Donahue, 1901, .318

3. Al Lopez, 1930, .309

4. Joe Mauer, 2004, .308

5. Ted Simmons, 1971, .304

Think batting average is kind of gimmicky?

Highest OPS By Catcher, min: 100 PA, Age 21 or Less

1. Joe Mauer, 2004, .939

2. Johnny Bench, 1969, .840

3. Salvador Perez, 2011, .834

4. Jiggs Donahue, 1901, .826

5. Darrell Porter, 1973, .820

Yes, yes, these lists are based on just a sample size of just 39 games, and Perez’s .331 average is unsustainable (although his line drive rate with the Royals was 29%, which is fantastic) and all that. But still. A 21-year-old catcher with a fearsome defensive reputation hit .331 and slugged .473. You have to be at least a little excited by that.

At the beginning of the season, Perez was something like the 18th-best prospect in the Royals system. Today, the only player on that prospect list I’d rather have is Eric Hosmer. I think Perez has vaulted past even Mike Moustakas and Wil Myers. His batting average could drop 80 points and he’d still have value because of his defense.

A year ago, when I was hyping Perez as one of the biggest sleepers in the system, I threw out names like Sandy Alomar Jr. and Yadier Molina as possible best-case-scenario comps. If anything, he may have left those comps behind. Alomar wasn’t an everyday player in the majors until he was almost 24. Molina was a late-season call-up when he was 21, but hit just .267/.329/.356.

Perez isn’t a .331 hitter. But he hit .290 in the minors in 2010, and .290 in the minors in 2011. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call him a true .270 hitter, with a decent amount of pop, very good defense, and with all the future development you’d expect of a 21-year-old player. He’s not a star, but he’s almost certainly a championship-level starting catcher. Molina, after all, has two rings.

Manny Pina: B (minors)

Two years ago, as a 22-year-old catcher in Double-A, Manny Pina walked 19 times and struck out 58 times. This season, as a 24-year-old catcher in Triple-A, Pina drew 36 walks and struck out 40 times. His strikeout-to-walk ratio, which was greater than three in 2009, was almost 1-to-1 in 2011.

Pina is Brayan Pena’s primary competition for the backup catcher’s job next season. I’d still say the job is Pena’s to lose; Pina has options, and despite the improvement in his plate discipline he only hit .239 this season (but slugged .372). Pina was a catch-and-throw guy when the Royals acquired him for million-dollar-arm/ten-cent-head Danny Gutierrez, and he still has good defensive skills. He threw out 27% of basestealers this season, down from 42% the year before.

Pina would be well-served by another year in Triple-A, to see if he can consolidate his offensive skills. He’s probably never going to be an everyday catcher in the major leagues, but there’s no reason he can’t carve out a ten-year career as a backup, in the mold of…

Matt Treanor: B+

…who didn’t even reach the majors until he was 28, but will be starting his ninth year in the majors next season after agreeing to a 1-year, $1 million contract with the Dodgers. (Treanor was originally drafted by the Royals in 1994, traded to the Marlins for Matt Whisenant in 1997…and spent the next seven years in the Marlins’ farm system before finally getting his shot.)

Treanor was acquired at the end of spring training for the price of his contract, which paid him $850,000 this season. For their money, the Royals got the player they thought they were getting when they signed Jason Kendall for twice the time and seven times the money the year before. Like Kendall, Treanor couldn’t actually hit, but he drew 33 walks in 186 at-bats (his previous career high was 22), leading to a strange and strangely effective .226/.351/.306 line for the Royals. He gave the Royals on-base ability, leadership in the clubhouse, mentorship for the Royals’ other catchers, and a toughness that manifested itself when he suffered a concussion at the plate that ended his Royals career – but he held onto the ball.

For his troubles, Treanor was sold back to the Rangers before the roster deadline at the end of August, although he didn’t appear in any postseason games this year. He was a perfectly, and surprisingly, tolerable stopgap for the Royals until Salvador Perez was ready. He’s not going to be immortalized in the pantheon of Royals’ greats, but he gave the Royals everything that they brought him in for.

Jason Kendall: Incomplete

I’m not going to kick a man when he’s down; I hope Kendall’s second shoulder surgery is successful and that it doesn’t give him any issues in his post-baseball life. It’s not his fault that the Royals wildly, laughably overpaid him two winters ago.

I only bring up Kendall because in retrospect his signing, coming less than five months after the trade for Yuniesky Betancourt, looks like the absolute nadir of Dayton Moore’s tenure. I’m not going to rehash the whole thing, but declining Miguel Olivo’s option and flat-out releasing John Buck in order to sign Kendall to twice the guaranteed money is one of the most baffling things Moore has ever done.

Kendall was signed on December 11th; a few days later the Royals signed Noel Arguelles to a five-year contract (which, granted, had been rumored before the Kendall signing). While Arguelles has been a disappointment so far, the signing of a premium amateur talent started the ball rolling on one of the most fantastic years of player development that any organization has ever had. If Dayton Moore was a stock, the moment after he signed Jason Kendall was the time to buy.

For Want Of A Pitcher: Jonathan Sanchez.

Naturally. After five articles and nearly 23,000 words to discuss dozens of pitchers that the Royals might acquire this off-season, Dayton Moore goes out and trades for a guy I didn’t mention even once.

It’s not that Jonathan Sanchez was completely off the radar screen. In my last section, when I discussed teams with an excess of pitching, the Giants were the next team on my list. I decided to draw the line in front of them because any team that’s relying on Barry Zito in their rotation can’t, by definition, be assumed to have “too much pitching”. But in retrospect, I should have made an allowance for the fact that Brian Sabean is the GM in San Francisco.

Anyway, over the weekend it became public news that the Giants were willing to trade Sanchez, and I expected to spend today writing an addendum article talking about what the Royals should be willing to give up to trade for him. Instead I get to kill two birds with one stone.

If you don’t follow me on Twitter and don't know my reaction to the trade, I’ll spare you the suspense: I like it a lot. It’s not a rip-off, and I can see this trade working out for the Giants as well, but I like it for the Royals both in the sense that I think it improves the team in 2012, and I like what the trade says about the big picture.

Let’s start with who Sanchez is – a left-hander who misses bats and the strike zone with equal regularity. This season, he struck out 102 batters in 101 innings, the third straight season he has recorded more strikeouts than innings pitched. For his career, he has 9.4 Ks per 9 innings. Over the last four seasons, only Tim Lincecum and Clayton Kershaw have a higher strikeout rate among starting pitchers than Sanchez. That’s good.

In 2010, which was Sanchez’s best season, he led the NL in walks with 96 allowed in 193 innings. This season, his walk rate increased significantly; after walking 4.5 batters per 9 in 2010, he walked 66 batters in 101 innings, or 5.9 per 9, in 2011. That’s bad.

When Sanchez is good, he can be very, very good. In 2010 2009, he threw a no-hitter – the first no-hitter by a Giants pitcher in 35 years – in which he didn’t walk a batter (an error kept the game from being perfect) and struck out 11. In his last seven starts in 2010, with the Giants trying to catch the Padres for the NL West crown, he allowed just 23 hits in 44 innings with a 1.03 ERA, capped off with five shutout innings to beat San Diego on the season’s final day; he then threw 7.1 brilliant innings, allowing just two hits and one walk while striking out 11, in his first playoff start against Atlanta.

When he’s bad, he walks the ballpark. Eight times in the last three years, Sanchez has walked 6 or more batters in a game. No other pitcher in baseball has more than five such starts in the last three years. And the last three years are the best three years of Sanchez’s career.

He’s a boom or bust guy, as much as any starter in the game right now. When you average out the booms and busts, though, what you’re left with is…an average pitcher. Sanchez has a 4.26 career ERA (3% worse than league average), but over the past three seasons his ERA is 3.75 (6% better than average). Dayton Moore described him yesterday as “a #3 starter on a championship club”, and I think that’s a fair assessment, if not slightly generous. He’s a league-average starting pitcher.

But for a league-average guy, he certainly has an unusual amount of upside. Yes, he turns 29 in a few weeks, and you don’t normally expect pitchers in their late 20s to suddenly break out…unless they have elite strikeout rates. The flip side is that a starter with command problems as severe as Sanchez’s has the potential to lose the strike zone completely and wash out of the majors.

Put it this way: as Dan McLaughlin noted, Sanchez is just the third starter in history to have more than strikeout per inning in his career through the age of 28, and yet have an ERA no more than 10% above average. The other two starters were also left-handers with massive control issues. One of them was Oliver Perez. The other was Randy Johnson.

That’s the kind of range Sanchez has going forward. If he suddenly learns how to cut his walks in half, he could become a Cy Young contender overnight. If he loses even a little of his stuff and is forced to nibble even more, he could lose his rotation spot by June. There’s certainly some risk to this trade. But with risk comes upside.

Sanchez dealt with some serious injuries for the first time in his career this season. After never going on the DL for more than three weeks before, he missed five weeks in the middle of the season with biceps tendinitis, and then after returning for just three starts, he missed the last six weeks of the season with a severe ankle sprain. The upside is that he should be healthy to start 2012. Also, in the last five starts before he went on the DL for the first time, he walked 25 batters in 26 innings. If you assume he was pitching at less than 100%, and remove that stretch from consideration, his walk rate this year was 4.9 per 9 innings, roughly in line with his previous seasons.

Sanchez will be a free agent at the end of 2012, so this is strictly a one-year rental for now. As such, I’d put his trade value somewhere south of Ryan Dempster/Anibal Sanchez territory, the sort of player the Royals should surrender no more than a Grade B prospect or a pair of Grade C prospects for.

Of course, the Royals didn’t give up a prospect at all. They gave up Melky Cabrera.

The only hitter on the major-league roster I had suggested the Royals might trade for pitching was Billy Butler, as he seemed to be the only player the Royals might part with that would make sense for a team that was rebuilding. And among the contenders that had excess pitching to deal, the only team that needed an outfielder badly was the Braves, who for obvious reasons wouldn’t be interested in trading for Melky a year after they released him. But the Giants are a natural fit, as a team that’s still in contending mode, but a team that, with Carlos Beltran now a free agent, didn’t have a single quality outfielder on their roster. (I consider Brandon Belt to be a first baseman, for what it’s worth.)

I understand this deal from the Giants’ perspective. While it’s absolutely true that they’re buying high and selling low, it’s also true that Cabrera was a lot better in 2011 than Sanchez. Depending on the metrics you use, Sanchez was worth about half a win above replacement this season, while Melky was worth 3 to 4 wins above replacement. If Cabrera and Sanchez come even close to replicating their 2011 seasons, the Giants win.

The Royals are betting that won’t be the case, and I agree with them. Cabrera had a season that was literally twice as good as any previous season, while Sanchez had his worst season since becoming a full-time starter in 2008. A brain-dead-simple way to estimate what a player will do in the upcoming season is to average his performance over the last three years, only you give triple weight to the most recent season, double weight to the season two years ago, and single weight to the season three years prior. By this measure, Cabrera would be expected to be worth about 1.6 WAR in 2012, and Sanchez about 1.4. That’s close enough that we can call it a wash, with the Giants throwing in a prospect to even things out.

If you were starting a team from scratch and were drafting players for 2012, you could make a case for selecting either player first. But the Royals aren’t starting from scratch; they’re starting with a roster that includes a complete lineup, another centerfielder waiting in the wings, and a big hole in their rotation. I’ve talked about this before, but when it comes to the process of building a contender, the Royals have already passed through Phase One: amassing as much talent as possible. They’ve moved on to Phase Two, which is to distribute that talent around the field in the shape of a contender.

It did the Royals no good to have Melky Cabrera, Lorenzo Cain, and three starting pitchers. Now, they have Cain and four starting pitchers. The roster they have today will, in all likelihood, win more games in 2012 than the roster on Sunday would have. And since neither Cabrera nor Sanchez are under contract after 2012, that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?

Whether the second sentence in the last paragraph is a better outcome than the first depends on what you think of The Painkiller. (Yes, I’m sticking with that nickname for LorenzoCaine. No, you can’t make me stop.) After he was stashed in Omaha all season, it was easy to forget that Cain was having an excellent year down there, hitting .312/.380/.497 with 16 homers and 16 steals. That translates to a line of roughly .270/.320/.420 in the major leagues. (That’s approximate – with Clay Davenport having left Baseball Prospectus, I can’t find Major League Equivalencies of minor league stats anywhere online.) Would that line be a downgrade from Cabrera’s performance this year? No question. Will that be a downgrade from Cabrera’s performance if the Royals had kept him next year? If it is, it’s a small one.

Then consider the ancillary advantages. Even while he was having a career year at the plate, Cabrera cost the Royals somewhere around 15 runs defensively relative to an average centerfielder. Cain has a good defensive reputation, so let’s tentatively say he’s worth about 5 runs above average. Swapping in Cain will probably save close to 20 runs on defense – or about as many runs saved by adding Sanchez! The additions of Sanchez and Cain might be worth 35 runs defensively. Even if the offensive downgrade is on the order of 15 runs, that’s a net improvement of 20 runs, or about two wins. That not an insignificant improvement.

And the most obvious point: the Royals did this without giving up a single prospect. (They added one, actually, who we’ll get to later.) The best part of this deal is that it doesn’t preclude the Royals from making another move to bring in another starting pitcher. In fact, I would wager that, when the off-season is over, Sanchez will not be the best starting pitcher the Royals will have acquired.

Sanchez has his warts, and if he’s the best the Royals can do, than they really haven’t upgraded their rotation enough to contend in 2012. But precisely because he’s only under contract for 2012, his acquisition signals to me that Moore is putting together next season’s roster with the idea of contention in mind. He’s not necessarily going all-in for 2012 – he wouldn’t be so reluctant to trade top prospects if he was – but he’s prioritizing short-term solutions for the rotation over long-term ones.

Which is why Sanchez makes perfect sense. Sanchez is cheaper than some of the other options on the market because he’s only under contract for one more year, but from the Royals’ perspective, they only need a starter for 2012. On Opening Day next April, Mike Montgomery will likely be in Triple-A, Jake Odorizzi will be in Double-A, and John Lamb will be on the DL. By Opening Day 2013, all three pitchers might be in the Royals’ rotation. Trading for, say, Jair Jurrjens gives you a pitcher under contract for 2013, but given their internal options, the second year of club control matters a lot less to the Royals than the first.

Then there’s the prospect the Royals got in the deal, Ryan Verdugo, who if you squint really hard kind of looks like a poor man’s Sanchez. He’s left-handed, old for a prospect (he spent all of this season in Double-A at age 24), but has struck out 300 batters in 243 innings in his career. He spent his entire career in the bullpen until the Giants converted him to the rotation this season; despite the more difficult role and the jump to Double-A, he acquitted himself well with 133 strikeouts in 130 innings. Realistically, he profiles as a reliever, and Moore has already made comments that suggest the Royals will move him back into that role.

He’s not an elite prospect by any means, but he gives the Royals another left-handed arm to add to the pile. Should the Royals find themselves in contention in 2012 at the deadline, and should they want to add talent via a trade, they are very well-positioned to throw a couple of arms into a deal without feeling the loss in the slightest.

Also, Verdugo is Spanish for – seriously – “Executioner”. That alone makes him a worthwhile acquisition.

The other added benefit of the trade is that the Francoeur extension makes a lot more sense now. One of my biggest concerns with re-signing Francoeur is that Francoeur seemed to be the obvious odd man out. Gordon is entrenched in left field, and slotting Cain into centerfield was the most obvious way the Royals could upgrade their subpar defense. The solution seemed to be to let Francoeur go and move Cabrera to right field. Keeping Francoeur made it likely that the Royals would either sell low on Cabrera, or worse, trade Cain and live with bad centerfield defense for at least another year.

But in the end, Moore made the right call and kept Cain, while still trading Cabrera for good value. I’m still a little concerned that the lineup leans too far to the right – six of the nine projected hitters in next year’s lineup are right-handed – but if you’re only going to have three lefties in your lineup, you could do a lot worse than Gordon, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Moustakas.

Sanchez wasn’t the best starting pitcher the Royals could have acquired this winter. But he was one of the best starters the Royals could acquire without either spending free-agent dollars or trading prospects. Sanchez alone isn’t enough, and I consider the Royals’ need for starting pitching to still be unfulfilled. But that’s why I like this trade: the Royals acquired a starting pitcher without surrendering a single asset that could be used to acquire another starter.

Maybe I’m naïve, and maybe I’m unrealistically optimistic. (Check that: there’s no “maybe” on the second one.) But I don’t think the Royals are done. It might mean ponying up big dollars for a free-agent starter, or cashing in Wil Myers to trade for an elite one, or playing it safe and taking on a second-tier starter with contract issues – like the recent rumors the Royals might be interested in Carlos Zambrano. But I don’t think Sanchez is the final piece of the rotation puzzle.

If it turns out that he is – if the Royals don’t add another starter between now and spring training – it will be a missed opportunity of sorts. But everything I wrote about the Royals’ starting pitching options over the last month remains valid today. The Royals have the same assets – and the same reasons – to trade for a second starting pitcher that they had for the first. Don’t stop here, Dayton. A 2012 playoff spot is there for the taking.

For Want Of A Pitcher, Part 5.

The final group of starting pitching targets consists of pitchers on the few major league teams that can reasonably consider themselves as having more quality starters than they need.

Team: Philadelphia Phillies

Projected Starters: Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Vance Worley, Joe Blanton

Likely available: Joe Blanton

I’m kind of cheating by listing the Phillies here, as obviously four of the five starters above are not available in any way, shape, or form. (I suppose Worley might be, but the cost would be prohibitive.)

Right now Joe Blanton is the Phillies’ #5 starter, so he’s not technically “excess”, but between the presence of Kyle Kendrick and the possibility they re-sign Roy Oswalt, I’d have to think he’s available. Blanton missed much of the 2011 season with an elbow problem, but was activated in September and pitched well in relief, striking out 11 batters without giving up a walk in seven innings.

Nonetheless, Blanton is not a particularly good starting pitcher; he hasn’t had an ERA under 4 since 2007. Prior to 2011, he was at least good for 30 starts a season, but obviously even that is a question mark at this point. He’s under contract for just one more season at $8.5 million, and the Phillies may well be willing to pick up a chunk of his salary and take a token prospect in return. In that case – and only in that case – I might give him some weak consideration. He’s a reliable strike-thrower whose tendency to give up home runs may be alleviated by Kauffman Stadium; he resembles Bronson Arroyo in that regard.

Blanton’s listed here for the sake of completeness; if he’s actually in a Royals uniform next April, something probably went wrong.

Team: Atlanta Braves

Projected Starters: Tim Hudson, Jair Jurrjens, Brandon Beachy, Tommy Hanson, Mike Minor, Julio Teheran, Randall Delgado, Arodys Vizcaino…

Likely available: Derek Lowe, Jurrjens, maybe Beachy or Minor

You know it’s going to come down to this, right? The Royals need a starting pitcher; the Braves have more starters than they know what to do with. Dayton Moore loves trading with his old organization. We might as well pencil “Ex-Brave starter to be determined later” into the rotation’s #3 spot.

The Braves blew off some of their excess pitching on Monday, getting the Indians to bite on one-third of Lowe’s $15 million contract for 2012 in exchange for token prospect Chris Jones, who might grow up to be a lefty specialist if he’s lucky. I was dismissive of the trade on Twitter, but on full reflection Lowe has a chance to be a decent innings-eater for Cleveland. He had a 5.05 ERA this season, but his xFIP was just 3.65 – I believe he had the biggest discrepancy between ERA and xFIP of any starter in the majors. He’s still a fantastic groundball pitcher (59% last season) who misses bats (6.6 Ks per 9 innings).

But while Lowe might have been better than he looked in 2011, I’m skeptical he’ll bounce back in a big way in 2012. He turns 39 in June, and he’s moving to the better league. Between Lowe, Justin Masterson, Fausto Carmona, and Ubaldo Jimenez, the Indians have put together one of the most extreme groundball-oriented rotations I’ve ever seen. It’s a fascinating strategy, only it seems to be missing the magic ingredient: a stellar infield defense. An infield of Matt LaPorta, Jason Kipnis, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Lonnie Chisenhall will create runs, but it’s a below-average unit defensively. Unless the Indians are planning to replace Grady Sizemore with a fifth infielder, I don’t get it.

Anyway, even after dumping Lowe, the Braves are in a position where they can move one of their other starters for a more useful package. Tim Hudson isn’t going anywhere. Tommy Hanson is probably the most desirable of the Braves’ starters; he has a career 3.28 ERA, sterling peripherals, is just 25 years old, and is under control for four more seasons. Of course, that makes him the most expensive of their pitchers, and given that he didn’t pitch after August 6th because of a strained shoulder, his risk profile probably doesn’t justify his cost.

That leaves a few other options. Let me dispense with one name first. If the Royals take nothing else from this entire five-part series, I hope they at least read the following sentence: DO NOT TRADE FOR JAIR JURRJENS.

Superficially, Jurrjens has been a fantastic pitcher for the Braves. In 115 career starts, he has a 3.40 ERA, and a 50-33 record. While he had a subpar 2010, with a 4.64 ERA, that season is sandwiched between a fantastic 2009 (2.60 ERA in 215 innings) and a pretty damn good 2011 (2.96 ERA in 152 innings). Jurrjens is one of only seven pitchers who have had an ERA under 3, with at least 125 innings pitched, in two of the last three seasons. Clayton Kershaw and Roy Halladay have done it each of the last three years; the other four pitchers are Adam Wainwright, Tim Lincecum, Felix Hernandez, and Matt Cain.

That’s pretty impressive company. Jurrjens belongs in their company the way Kim Kardashian belongs in a “Diamonds Are Forever” commercial.

I don’t know how Jurrjens does it. He doesn’t strike out a bunch of guys, and his control is good but not great. He’s not a groundball pitcher. It seems he owes his success more to luck than anything else, except you’d think that after four seasons his luck would have run out by now. It’s as if he had Brian Bannister’s rookie season four years in a row.

In 702 career innings, he’s struck out 480 batters, or 6.2 per nine innings; he’s never struck out 7 per 9 in a season, which these days is the baseline for most pitchers. He’s allowed 222 unintentional walks, or 2.8 per nine innings, which is good but not that good. When you strip out the intentionals, Jurrjens’ career strikeout-to-walk ratio is 2.16; by comparison, the NL average in 2011 was 2.60. Jurrjens has also given up just 57 homers in 702 innings, despite a groundball rate no higher than average.

Jurrjens’ career BABIP is just .280, which is unsustainably low. Just 7.4% of flyballs hit against him have cleared the fence, which is also unsustainably low (the league average is around 10-11%). For his career, batters have hit .254/.306/.400 with no one on base, but with runners in scoring position, they’ve hit just .234/.334/.355. The higher OBP is not surprising, since all of his intentional walks have been give out with runners in scoring position; it is surprising that batters have hit 20 points less and slugged 45 points less in situations where a hit will drive in a run.

In isolation, it’s possible – unlikely, but possible – that any of these three characteristics are for real. Some pitchers may be able to induce a lower batting average on balls in play. Some pitchers (or at least Matt Cain) might be able to keep flyballs in the ballpark. Some pitchers might be able to get consistently better results with runners in scoring position.

I refuse to believe that Jair Jurrjens has the ability to do all three. Betting on him to regress is the easiest money in baseball. It’s even easier when you consider that Jurrjens’ fastball, which was a pedestrian 91-92 mph at its best, dropped to an average of 89.1 mph last year, with a concomitant drop in his strikeout rate to 5.3 per 9. He missed the start of the 2010 season with shoulder problems, and he missed all of September this season with knee inflammation, so you can’t even rely on him to be durable: he’s made 43 starts in the last two seasons combined.

If someone can come up with a plausible reason why I should expect Jurrjens' success to continue - perhaps he's secretly a witch - I would love to hear about it. But all I see in his future is regression and pain.

Please, Dayton. Stay away.

(No joke: I was putting the finishing touches on this column, when this article at MLB.com was posted. In fairness to the Royals, this article is written from the Braves’ perspective. The Braves have interest in a trade of Jair Jurrjens for Wil Myers? I’m sure they do. I’m sure they also have interest in trading Brooks Conrad for Eric Hosmer.

If the Royals traded Lorenzo Cain for Jurrjens, I could stomach that. I wouldn’t do it myself – trade six years of an average everyday player for two years of an average starting pitcher – but it wouldn’t be an egregious mistake. If Moore gave up Wil Myers and all he got back was Jurrjens…I’ve already written that article. I’d rather not go there again.)

Assuming that top prospects Randall Delgado, Arodys Vizcaino, and – especially – Julio Teheran are off the table (the Braves wouldn’t give them up, and the Royals want established major-league ready guys anyway), that leaves two options: Brandon Beachy and Mike Minor.

Beachy and Minor are polar opposites in many ways. Beachy is a right-hander who wasn’t drafted out of college; Minor is a left-hander taken with the #7 overall pick, which shocked an industry that thought he was a late-first-round talent. I like them both an awful lot.

When you think of a pitcher signed as an undrafted free agent who nonetheless makes it to the majors, you’re probably thinking of someone who relies on deception or a trick pitch – think Dan Quisenberry. Most of these guys are relievers; you might find the rare starting pitcher who doesn’t throw all that hard but throws strikes and changes speeds. Adam Bernero was signed by the Tigers as a NDFA in 1999 and was starting in the majors in 2000. Of course, Bernero finished his career with a 5.91 ERA and an 11-27 record (and, naturally, a brief stint with the Royals).

Beachy doesn’t fit that profile at all. He wasn’t overlooked in the draft because he didn’t throw all that hard, but because he barely pitched at all; he played third base in college. A Braves scout saw him pitch a few innings in relief, and saw enough to take a flyer on him in 2008. He broke out in the minors in 2010 and made it to Atlanta in September, then surprised everyone by winning a rotation spot this spring training. He missed about six weeks in the middle of the season with a strained oblique muscle, but otherwise his rookie season couldn’t have gone better: in 142 innings he had a 3.68 ERA and struck out 169 batters. He had the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher in the majors with 100+ innings.

So forget that whole “non-drafted free agent” business. Anyone who can miss bats that often is a potentially elite starting pitcher.

Minor was also a nice bit of scouting by the Braves; most people thought he was a stretch at #7 overall because, while he was exceptionally polished and had terrific command in college, he topped out in the upper-80s. But Minor added velocity soon after he signed. I don’t know if the Braves identified him beforehand as someone who could add velocity, or if they just lucked out. But either way, Minor has an above-average fastball for a left-hander now, averaging 91.2 mph last season (Beachy averaged 92.0 mph, right around average for a RHP.)

The combination of pinpoint command and a little extra zip helped Minor breeze through the, uh, minors. In 235 career minor-league innings he walked just 73 and struck out 262. In 23 starts for the Braves over the past two years, he has a 4.74 ERA, but has 120 strikeouts against 36 walks in 123 innings. Like Beachy he’s a flyball pitcher, but Kauffman Stadium plays right into a flyball pitcher’s hands.

I’d rather have Beachy simply because strikeout rates in the double digits don’t grow on trees; on the other hand, you’d have Minor for six years, but Beachy for only five. Either pitcher would immediately be the Royals’ best starting pitcher on paper. Either one would of course require a substantial outlay in return. The Braves could use a long-term solution in left field – I’m assuming they’re not crazy enough to actually give up on Jason Heyward in right – and I’d like to think that Wil Myers would appeal to them. (Late edit: see above. He does.) It’s possible the Braves would trade Minor for Myers straight up, but I suspect the Royals would need to give up at least a little something extra, a second-tier prospect or one of their many relievers, in a deal for Minor or especially Beachy.

I’m certainly not eager to trade Myers, who’s raking in the AFL again after a disappointing season in Double-A. But you have to give up talent to get talent, and with a young and stable lineup in place, it makes logical sense that the Royals would trade a hitter for a pitcher. Myers for Beachy or Minor would be one of the biggest trades of this off-season, and it would make sense for both sides.

Team: Tampa Bay

Projected Starters: David Price, James Shields, Jeremy Hellickson, Wade Davis, Jeff Niemann, Matt Moore

Likely available: Shields, Davis, Niemann

The Tampa Bay Rays made the playoffs for the third time in four years thanks to their very young and very durable rotation. Young? For starting pitchers, Tropicana Field is the real-life Logan’s Run, where life ends at 30. The last time Tampa Bay started a pitcher who had already celebrated his 30th birthday, they were still the Devil Rays. That’s four consecutive seasons without ever starting a 30-year-old pitcher, a stretch that may be unprecedented in modern major-league history.

As for durable, the Rays have used only eight different starting pitchers in the last two years combined. The six pitchers listed above – and Moore made only one start, at least until Game One of the ALDS – along with Matt Garza, who was traded last winter, and Andy Sonnanstine. Of all the 2% edges that the Rays have built on the industry, keeping young pitchers healthy may be their most unsung.

James Shields turns 30 next month, so he’s in line to get traded (or vaporized) next. More to the point, he’s starting to get expensive. Like a lot of Rays players (COUGHlongoriaCOUGH), Shields signed a team-friendly contract extension a few years ago with plenty of team options. He’s in line to earn $7 million in 2012, $9 million in 2013, and $12 million in 2014 – but all three years are option years, so if he gets hurt or suddenly loses his effectiveness, he can be cut fairly painlessly.

Shields is coming off a career year, when he threw 249 innings with a 2.82 ERA. He had 11 complete games, the most by an pitcher in the 21st century. He was legitimately great. He also hasn’t missed a start in the last four years.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t some room for concern. As great as he was in 2011, he was lousy in 2010, with a 5.18 ERA; he led the league in hits allowed, runs allowed, and homers allowed. The difference is almost entirely attributable to luck. In 2010, his BABIP was .344; in 2011, it was .260.

Here’s the crazy thing about the Rays: their BABIP as a team was .265 this year. Their defensive efficiency was .735, which is the highest mark by any team since the 2001 Mariners had an insane mark of .740. (That was the year the Mariners won 116 games.) The Rays were able to turn so many batted balls into outs for a couple of reasons. Offense was down around baseball, but on top of that they play in a very strong pitchers’ park. They have a legitimately excellent defense. And manager Joe Maddon is as aggressive as any manager in the game at putting on defensive shifts – putting his shortstop behind he second base bag, shading the outfielders this way and that based on the hitter’s spray chart. The results are undeniable; there is no team better at turning balls in play into outs.

So the good news is that Shields doesn’t owe much of his success in 2011 to good luck. The bad news is that he owes much of it to his ballpark, his teammates, and his manager, none of whom will be coming with him in a trade to Kansas City. The time to trade for Shields was last year, when he was legitimately unlucky.

That’s not to say I don’t want him – I do. I just fear that the price will be too steep. Last year the Rays traded Matt Garza – a comparable pitcher with a less favorable contract status – into a bonanza of prospects, headlined by Chris Archer and Hak-Ju Lee. The equivalent trade here would be for the Royals to give up Jake Odorizzi and Cheslor Cuthbert and some lower-upside guys like Clint Robinson and David Lough.

I wouldn’t trade two of the Royals’ top five prospects to get Shields. But I’d certainly want to know if that’s really what his price tag is.

Jeff Niemann would be cheaper, and he’s definitely a guy I would consider. Niemann finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting in 2009, with a 3.94 ERA in 181 innings, and impressively, he has improved his strikeout and his walk rates in each of the two seasons since. In 2011, he threw 135 innings, allowed 37 walks and struck out 105. He’ll turn 29 in spring training. He’s arbitration-eligible for the first time, and won’t be a free agent until after 2014.

I worry about Niemann because, like virtually every top pitching prospect out of Rice University, his arm was abused, and he had major shoulder surgery in 2005. He hasn’t had any major shoulder issues recently – in the last four years, he only went on the DL once with shoulder problems, in 2010, and only for three weeks. (He missed six weeks this season with a back strain.) The Rays have been very careful with him, and have succeeded in keeping him healthy. But shoulder injuries make me leery. Maybe in ten years Bartolo Colon Stem Cell Therapy will be as familiar to baseball fans as Tommy John Surgery is, but today, we just don’t know. It’s probably not a coincidence that Niemann, unlike Shields and Wade Davis, hasn’t been signed to a long-term deal.

Speaking of Davis, he’s guaranteed $9.3 million over the next three seasons, and then the Rays have three more option years at $7 million, $8 million, and $10 million. He’s very affordable; he’s just not very good. Pitching in a very favorable environment, he has a 4.22 career ERA, and a strikeout-to-walk ratio less than two. He’s just 26, so there might be room for improvement, but right now he’s a #4 starter who’s likely priced as a #2 or #3 starter because of his favorable contract. If the Royals are going to make a big trade for a pitcher, I’d rather it be for a guy who can start the first or second game of a playoff series.

Before I move on to the next team, I do want to point out that a trade with Tampa Bay opens up the possibility that the Royals trade Billy Butler in lieu of prospects. The Rays need a big bat, and they won in 2011 despite relatively little production at first base and DH. Their primary first baseman was Casey Kotchman, who had a good year, but 1) he still hit all of 10 homers all season and 2) he was picked up off the scrap heap before the season. Their primary DH was Johnny Damon.

Butler is a Florida native, and he’s signed for the next three years with an option, giving the Rays the financial certainty that they like. The Rays are so financially strapped that even $8 million a year is a big chunk of their budget, but if they believe Butler is going to hit for more power, he would be worth his contract and then some.

Billy Butler gets brought up a lot by Royals fans as a potential trade chit, but I have refrained from mentioning him much because as difficult as it would be for the Royals to part with him, it’s equally difficult to find a team that would value him as much as the Royals. Tampa Bay is one of the few teams that would, which opens up some additional trade possibilities with them.

Team: Oakland

Projected Starters: Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez, Brandon McCarthy, Brett Anderson, Guillermo Moscoso, Dallas Braden, maybe Josh Outman

Likely available: Cahill and Gonzalez

I imagine all of Oakland’s starters are available – Billy Beane likes to deal, after all. Realistically, McCarthy had a great season but missed all of 2010 with shoulder issues, Moscoso came out of nowhere, Braden had shoulder surgery this April, and Outman is still working his way back after Tommy John surgery. That leaves the other three.

Anderson is the best of the A’s starters, sort of a high school version of Mike Minor only better – he was an extremely polished kid who went in the second round because his velocity was only so-so, only he added velocity after signing and voila! – instant ace. But Anderson had Tommy John surgery himself this July, so he won’t be back until mid-season.

That leaves Trevor Cahill and Gio Gonzalez. Cahill was an All-Star in 2010, finishing 18-8 with a 2.97 ERA and getting Tim Hudson comps, which hid the fact that he was the beneficiary of some massive BABIP luck – his BABIP was .237, the lowest in baseball. In 2011, his BABIP regressed all the way to .306, and he finished with a 4.16 ERA.

In some ways he was actually better this season, though; his strikeout rate jumped a full point, to 6.4 Ks per 9 innings. That’s still a little below average, but it’s plenty good given that Cahill is such an extreme groundball pitcher – he’s had a groundball rate of 56% the last two years. His xFIP was a tick better in 2011 (3.90) than in 2010 (3.99). Basically, he’s the opposite of James Shields – he’s coming off a superficially bad year that masks some real improvement. Cahill also doesn’t turn 24 until March, and he’s under contract for three more seasons.

I’m certain that Beane knows everything I just wrote about Cahill and more, which is why he won’t come cheap – I imagine Cahill’s price tag is comparable to Shields. It’s a tough call who I’d rather have; Shields is the safer bet, but if Cahill’s strikeout rate keeps climbing, he could be that most valuable of commodities – the extreme groundball pitcher who also misses bats. Think Kevin Brown, or Brandon Webb. I’d pay a pretty penny for a pitcher with that kind of upside.

The other option is Gio Gonzalez, who is Cahill’s opposite in many ways: he’s left-handed, and instead of relying on groundballs, he misses bats with a big-breaking curveball. Like Cahill, he could stand to throw more strikes – he led the AL with 91 walks in 202 innings – but it’s worth putting up with his command issues because the rest of the package is so good.

Gonzalez has a few weeks’ less service time than Cahill, so you’d get his services for four years instead of three. His fastball velocity has actually increased each year he’s been in the majors, averaging 92.5 mph this season. I’d happily take whichever one can be had for the smaller package of prospects.

If the Royals want a #2 starter, between Shields, Cahill, and Gonzalez, they can get one. The question is, do you want to pay the price? I imagine it will take a three-player package headlined by a four-star prospect for sure, someone like Myers or Mike Montgomery, followed by a three-star prospect like Yordano Ventura, and then a solid third player, either a reliever (Louis Coleman or Kelvin Herrera) or a teenaged lottery ticket like Jorge Bonifacio. That doesn’t gut the farm system, but the Royals will certainly feel the loss. If you think you can contend in 2012, you make the deal. I’m not sure the Royals think they can.

Which brings up the final, and boldest option: trade for an elite ace. I’m thinking of one specific ace, actually: Felix Hernandez.

I’ll wait here while you finish laughing. No, really, I’m fine. Take your time.

Felix Hernandez is, unquestionably, the most accomplished young pitcher since Dwight Gooden. I remember hearing whispers about this 17-year-old kid down in the Northwest League; one guy whose opinion I greatly respect brought up his name during a discussion of the best pitching prospect in baseball. He was right. Hernandez was called up to Seattle in mid-2005, at the age of 19, posted a 2.67 ERA in 12 starts and earned the nickname “King Felix”. After a disappointing sophomore season, he steadily improved until 2009, when he finished second behind Zack Greinke in the Cy Young vote, then won the award in 2010.

Hernandez had a 2.49 ERA in 2009, and a 2.27 ERA in 2010. Since they redefined the strike zone in 1969, only one other AL pitcher has had a sub-2.50 ERA in back-to-back seasons. (That was Pedro Martinez, who – naturally – did it twice.) After a disappointing 2011 – if you can count a 3.47 ERA and 222 Ks in 234 innings “disappointing” – Hernandez has 1388 career innings, 1264 strikeouts, and 85 wins. He’s still just 25; no pitcher since Gooden can match Hernandez in any of those three categories through age 25.

And yet I still think he’s attainable. Expensive as all get out, yes. But attainable.

Hernandez is signed for three more seasons, at $58 million. The Mariners have lost 196 games the last two years, in the same division as the back-to-back AL champion Texas Rangers, and they can’t harbor realistic fantasies of contention until the final year of Hernandez’s contract, if that. And while Hernandez is one of the best starters in the game, his salary reflects that. Between the prospects that he would fetch and the money a trade would free up, the Mariners would have to seriously consider a serious offer.

What do I mean by a serious offer? Use the Greinke trade as a standard. The Royals got Alcides Escobar (disappointing rookie season, but Top-20 prospect one year prior), Jake Odorizzi (Top-100 prospect), Jeremy Jeffress (borderline Top-100 prospect), and Lorenzo Cain (rookie eligibility exhausted; not a Top-100 guy but not that far off the list). Greinke was only under contract for two more years, but also was only getting paid $27 million – King Felix has one additional year at $31 million. The Mariners have more leverage, as it doesn’t appear Hernandez is forcing his way out of town.

So I think the Royals would have to give up three of their top five prospects – by way of example, Wil Myers, Mike Montgomery, and Cheslor Cuthbert. They might be able to substitute two lesser guys for one of the three – say, Myers, Montgomery, Ventura, and Jason Adam. Maybe you can replace Adam with Greg Holland if the Mariners have a reliever fetish. It would gut the farm system.

But you’d have one of the best pitchers in baseball under contract for three more seasons. You’d be a better team for certain in 2012 and 2013, and probably in 2014. By the time the bill comes due in 2015, guys like Hosmer and Moustakas will be in their primes, and they’ll have been joined by Bubba Starling and next year’s #5 overall pick and the Latin American talent the Royals have amassed down in the low minors.

Would I make the deal? I’d certainly give it a lot of thought. I don’t think I’d trade all three guys that I mentioned above. But if I could get away with trading just two of Myers/Montgomery/Cuthbert/Odorizzi/John Lamb, and flesh out the deal with some B-prospects, I think I would. I would miss having an elite farm system. But not nearly as much as I’d enjoy a team that could go into Opening Day – next year! – as legitimate contenders in the AL Central.

(I was going to suggest that the Royals make an even stronger play for Clayton Kershaw, who is even younger than Hernandez, and owing to his elite strikeout capabilities would be even more desirable. Kershaw is basically what Randy Johnson would have been if he had learned to throw strikes at the age of 23 instead of at the age of 30 – he’s scary good. But with the recent news that Frank McCourt has finally thrown in the towel and is willing to sell the Dodgers, it looks like the Dodgers’ financial crisis may soon be over, and they may be able to weather the storm without having to make any panic moves. But anything I’d be willing to offer for Hernandez, I’d do the same for Kershaw in a heartbeat. And hey, Ned Colletti is still the GM in Los Angeles, so who knows?)

---

After five articles and 15,000-plus words, I’ve listed dozens of options for the Royals to consider, but haven’t really thrown my support behind any of them, and you might be confused as to what I really think the Royals should do.

First off, I think the Royals should do something. There is a strain of thought that says the Royals are still a year from contending, and that next year’s free agent class will be better (although next year’s class always looks better until some of those guys start signing extensions before they get to market), and that they’re better off waiting rather than mortgaging their future by trading away top prospects.

I disagree, but I want to make it clear that I don’t disagree with the philosophy so much as I disagree with the assumption that is implicit there: the assumption that the Royals can not realistically contend in 2012. I think they can, and I realize that many of you think I am crazy to think that.

I’ll save a detailed explanation of why I feel that way until next spring – hopefully for Grantland, so that I can expose a national audience to my delusions – but for now, I’ll make this simple point:

The Royals won 71 games this season, and the Tigers won 95. But based purely on their run differentials – which have been shown time and time again to better predict a team’s win total the following year – the Royals should have won 78 games this season, and the Tigers 89. What looks like a 24-game difference in the standings shrinks to just 11 games with just one tiny tweak.

It’s rare for a team that finished 24 games out of first place to finish in first place the very next year. It happens – the Diamondbacks were 27 games behind the Giants in 2010, and won the NL West this season by 8 games – but it’s rare. An 11-game gap? That’s cake. The Tigers finished 13 games behind Minnesota last year, the Brewers finished 14 games behind the Reds. It would be the rare season when some team didn’t win the division after finishing 11 or more games back the year before.

With an 11-game gap to make up, a starter that’s even 2 or 3 wins above replacement might increase the Royals’ playoff odds by 15 or 20%. That’s worth trading some prospects for. So yes, I think the Royals should be aggressive in looking to add a starting pitcher – or two – this winter.

So here’s my Royals Starting Pitcher Checklist for this winter:

1) Have serious organizational discussion regarding whether they should make a competitive offer for Felix Hernandez and/or Clayton Kershaw. If the price is right, pounce. Go all in for 2012.

2) Offer Edwin Jackson a pre-emptive 4-year, $50 million contract. Like, this week.

3) Find out what the price is on James Shields, Gio Gonzalez, and Trevor Cahill. If any of them can be had without surrendering more than one Grade A* and one Grade B** prospect, do it. (Lesser prospects and/or relievers can be seasoned to taste.)

*: By Grade A, I mean one of the Royals’ top six prospects, in no particular order: Myers, Montgomery, Lamb, Odorizzi, Starling, and Cuthbert.

**: By Grade B, I mean one of the prospects in the second tier: Colon, Dwyer, Ventura, Adam, Eibner, Herrera, Bonifacio.

4) Offer Roy Oswalt a 2-year, $22 million contract with a vesting option for a third year if he throws 350 innings in Years 1 and 2. Try to coax Javier Vazquez out of retiring with the same offer.

5) Offer Wil Myers to the Braves for either Brandon Beachy or Mike Minor. Politely decline when they offer Jair Jurrjens. Stay firm when they offer Jurrjens again. Raise your voice when they offer him a third time. Tell Frank Wren FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I DON’T WANT JAIR JURRJENS. But tell him you might be willing to toss in a minor prospect with Myers to get Beachy.

6) Get in on the Yu Darvish sweepstakes. Offer $40 million for the posting fee, and if you win the auction, offer the same amount to Darvish for a six-year deal. That’s 80% of Matsuzaka’s contract, for a better pitcher.

7) Move on to the next level of trade targets: Jeff Niemann, Matt Garza, and Bud Norris. Offer a Grade A prospect (other than Myers or Cuthbert) and a couple Grade C’s (any prospect not listed above), or two Grade B’s.

8) Next targets: Chad Billingsley and Gavin Floyd. A Grade A prospect straight-up, or a Grade B and a couple of Grade C’s.

9) Ricky Nolasco, Anibal Sanchez, Ryan Dempster, Wandy Rodriguez, Francisco Liriano. A Grade B and some window dressing, or their choice of three prospects from Column C.

10) “’Sup, Bruce. Was just wondering if you’d be willing to come back for another year at the same terms. You’ve got a two-year offer on the table? C’mon Chen, you know we can’t match that!”

10) Find out if Eric Bedard and/or Rich Harden might be willing to sign a one-year deal with incentives.

11) See if the Dodgers will pick up a small portion of Ted Lilly’s contract and accept a Grade B prospect in return.

12) Find out if the Cubs will pick up half of the money Carlos Zambrano is owed, or if the Yankees will pick up more than half of A.J. Burnett’s contract. Offer a couple of Grade C prospects.

13) Make it clear to Aaron Crow and Everett Teaford that they need to show up to camp prepared to be starters this season.

14) Call Frank Wren back just to vent. “Seriously, Frank. JAIR JURRJENS?! After all we’ve been through together?”

There you go. Rany’s Foolproof And Unnecessarily Wordy Plan For Acquiring A Starting Pitcher.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to start working on my I-Can’t-Believe-Dayton-Traded-Wil-Myers-For-Jair-Freaking-Jurrjens screed.

For Want Of A Pitcher, Part 4.

Moving on to a list of more classic trade targets – established starting pitchers on teams who are (or should be) rebuilding:

Pitcher: Jeremy Guthrie, BAL

Contract Status: Final year of arbitration, eligible for free agency after 2012. Made $5.75 million in 2011

Likely cost (in terms of prospects): Low to moderate

Guthrie led the American League with 17 losses in 2009, and repeated his accomplishment this season. Those losses obscure the fact that he’s been a perfectly fine pitcher since joining the Orioles as a waiver-wire pickup in 2007. Over the last five years, Guthrie has averaged 31 starts and 196 innings a season, with a 4.12 ERA and a 106 ERA+, meaning his ERA, after adjusting for his home ballpark, has been about 6% better than the league average over that time. He’s a good pitcher toiling for a lousy team, in the toughest division in baseball.

He has shown no signs of decline. While his ERA last season was 4.33, his peripherals were virtually unchanged. Guthrie is a little homer-prone, but throws strikes and controls the running game well. He’s a better version of Bronson Arroyo, who I discussed last time – Guthrie gives up fewer homers and has proven himself against much tougher competition.

Guthrie’s only under contract for one more year, the Orioles aren’t going anywhere, and a move to the AL Central might do him some good. I can’t imagine that the price tag would be that high – he’s Jeremy Freaking Guthrie. As a low-cost, short-term solution, the Royals could do a lot worse.

Pitcher: Mike Pelfrey, NYM

Contract Status: Two years of arbitration remaining, eligible for free agency after 2013. Made $3.925 million in 2011

Likely cost: Moderate

Over the last four years, Mike Pelfrey has been a .500 pitcher – literally, with a 45-45 record and a respectable 4.27 ERA. That’s a hell of an accomplishment for a starter who throws essentially one pitch, and unlike his teammate R.A. Dickey, we’re not talking about a knuckleball.

Pelfrey throws a terrific sinking fastball, a pitch that won him acclaim going back to his high school days in Wichita, and made him a first-round pick out of Wichita State. The problem is, he can’t throw anything else. In 2008, his first full year in the Mets’ rotation, he threw his fastball 81% of the time. He got that down to 64% of the time last season, as he keeps trying to find secondary pitches. According to Fangraphs, he started throwing a splitter in 2010, and even dabbled with a cutter last year. But none of his secondary pitches grade out as even average. His sinker keeps the ball on the ground – his career groundball rate is 49%, and he has allowed 70 homers in 877 innings, an excellent ratio. But lacking an out pitch, he has averaged only 5.1 strikeouts per nine innings, and he has a lackluster 4.40 career ERA.

I haven’t heard his name mentioned as being on the market and I don’t get the sense that the Mets are actively shopping him. But he’ll be just 28 next season, and if a pitching coach can work with him to develop a good second pitch, there’s some real upside here. Given his local ties, he might appeal to the Royals more than most teams. He’s a long shot, but it’s worth exploring just how willing the Mets are to move him.

Pitcher: Ricky Nolasco, FLA

Contract Status: Signed for $9 million in 2012, $12.5 million in 2013

Likely cost: Moderate

Nolasco, like his 2011 teammate Javier Vazquez, is a pitcher who ought to be significantly better than he is. Since becoming a full-time starter in 2008, Nolasco has had exceptional strikeout-to-walk ratios for four years running. This season, he struck out 148 batters, and walked 36 batters unintentionally, a ratio of better than 4 to 1 – and that was his worst strikeout-to-walk ratio in the last four years.

And yet, over the last four seasons Nolasco has a below-average 4.41 ERA. This past season, he led the NL with 244 hits allowed, in just 206 innings.

I don’t know why that is. Nolasco has a career BABIP of .313, which is high, and his BABIP has actually been higher than his career mark in all but one season. If he’s just unlucky, he’s been unlucky over a long period of time. And for his career, he’s pitched much better out of the windup (.259/.295/.432 with no one on base) than from the stretch (.287/.338/.448). When you cluster your baserunners together, it leads to more runs allowed than you’d expect.

Is any of this fixable? I don’t know. Even if he doesn’t improve, Nolasco has been fairly durable over the last four years, he’s only 29, and his contract won’t break the bank. It’s worth checking in with the Marlins, if only for the possibility that Nolasco might have lost favor with them. The Marlins have a proven track record of tossing talented ballplayers aside when they don’t believe in them; last year they traded then-23-year-old Cameron Maybin to San Diego for a couple of middle relievers, and Maybin had a very promising season as the Padres’ centerfielder.

Nolasco may be destined to forever remain a tease. But forgive me for being willing to be seduced; I’d be more than happy to see whether the Royals can unlock some of his potential.

Pitcher: Anibal Sanchez, FLA

Contract Status: 1 year of arbitration eligibility; free agent after 2012. Made $3.7 million in 2011

Likely cost: Moderate

The availability of Sanchez, like Nolasco, is entirely dependent on whether the Marlins consider themselves in a rebuilding mode. With the Phillies still at their 100-win peak and the Braves in good shape in the short-term, you might think the Marlins would be looking to the future – but the opening of their new ballpark next season complicates things significantly.

If they are willing to trade present value, Sanchez might make more sense than Nolasco. He’s only under contract for one more season, and he’s coming off back-to-back seasons with an ERA in the mid-3s and good peripherals. Last season he quietly struck out 202 batters in 196 innings; his strikeout rate of 9.26 per 9 innings was the fourth-highest of any starter in baseball, behind only Zack Greinke, Brandon Morrow, and Clayton Kershaw.

If the Marlins want to at least make a show about trying to contend in their first year in their new ballpark, then neither pitcher is likely to be available. But the Marlins definitely move to the beat of their own drummer. It’s worth a phone call to hear what music they’re playing this time around.

Pitcher: Charlie Morton, PIT

Contract Status: Eligible for arbitration for the first time in 2012; eligible for free agency after 2014

Likely cost: Moderate

Future generations of baseball fans will look at the Pirates’ 72-90 record in 2011 and have no idea what a weird season it was for them. The Pirates woke up on the morning of July 26th with a 53-47 record, tied for first place. That night they lost in excruciating fashion, 4-3 to the Braves in 19 innings after umpire Jerry Meals made a terrible call at home plate that cost them the game. From that point on, they went 19-43.

Even when they were playing well it looked like a mirage, and perhaps no Pirates’ success appeared more illusory than that of Morton’s. Morton famously overhauled his delivery before the season to emulate Roy Halladay’s mechanics as much as possible. On some level, this was a success; he finished with a 3.83 ERA in 29 starts. But his peripherals were lousy. He struck out a respectable 110 batters, but his control was lousy – he walked 77 batters – and he allowed 186 hits.

So how he did pitch so well? Because in 172 innings, he allowed just 6 home runs. That’s historic. Morton’s rate of 0.31 homers per nine innings is the lowest by any starting pitcher in the 21st century.

That kind of success simply isn’t sustainable. Consider that the next three pitchers behind him on that list were Chris Carpenter in 2009, Josh Johnson in 2010, and Pedro Martinez in 2003. All three led their league in ERA, and all three were legitimately great pitchers. Morton isn’t, and he’s not going to go an entire season and give up just six homers again.

On the other hand, his ability to prevent homers was very real. His new delivery imitated Halladay’s in one important respect – he had tremendous sink on his fastball. Prior to this season, Morton’s groundball rate was around 48%, which is very good. But in 2011, his ratio was 58.5%, which is exceptionally high. Only three pitchers this century have a career rate above even 56%: Brandon Webb, Derek Lowe, and Tim Hudson. Morton’s xFIP last season was 4.08, not that far off his actual ERA. If his revamped delivery is for real, his ability to keep the ball down could make him a reliable #3 starter going forward.

The Pirates don’t have a ton of incentive to trade him, as he’s under club control for three more seasons. But as they are well behind the Royals in their rebuilding process, they certainly ought to be amenable to trading some of their present talent. If the Royals think they can coax some improvement in Morton’s command, he becomes even more interesting. If not, there’s a far more available Pirates pitcher in…

Pitcher: Paul Maholm, PIT

Contract Status: Free agent after Pirates decline 2012 option

Likely cost: None

When I started this series a month ago, it was unclear whether Pittsburgh would pick up Maholm’s $9.75 million option for 2012. All news reports now indicate the Pirates do not intend to pick up that option, although I’m not sure if he’s officially a free agent or not.

Maholm has been essentially a league-average starter since he debuted in 2005; he’s your prototypical finesse lefty who throws strikes and gets groundballs (career groundball rate of 52%) making up for an inability to miss bats. His season ended early in August due to a shoulder strain, which certainly complicates things.

Maholm has limited upside and his injury makes him a risk, but if he’s been added to an incredibly weak free agent pool, I have to mention him. Which is a far cry from saying I have interest in him.

Pitcher: Bud Norris, HOU

Contract Status: Not arbitration-eligible until 2013; a free agent after the 2015 season

Likely cost: Moderate to high

Norris kind of snuck up on everyone. He ranked as the Astros’ #2 prospect before the 2009 season – the #2 prospect in a terrible farm system, mind you – but even then his size (he’s 6’0”) and lack of a solid third pitch made a lot of observers think his future was in the bullpen.

But he was called up to be in the Astros’ rotation that August and has been there ever since, and he’s struck out roughly a batter per inning throughout his career. Last year, he cut his walk rate by 30%, and his ERA dropped to 3.77. He has a surprising amount in common with his old Astros’ teammate, Felipe Paulino.

But unlike Paulino, the Astros know what they have in Norris, and he’s under contract for four more seasons. I think he’s available, in that the Astros are more clearly in rebuilding mode than pretty much any other team in baseball. But that doesn’t mean he’s inexpensive. He’d cost the Royals two top 10 prospects, I’d imagine, and maybe a solid third guy. The Royals can meet that price, and if they think Norris has room to improve, maybe they should.

Pitcher: Matt Garza, CHC

Contract Status: 2 years of arbitration eligibility, free agent after 2013. Made $5.95 million in 2011

Likely cost: High

One year ago, the Cubs traded five young players, most notably prospects Chris Archer and Hak-Ju Lee, to Tampa Bay in exchange for Garza. It was a bad trade. It wasn’t necessarily bad because of the talent they gave up, although Lee emerged as one of the best shortstops in the minors this year (Archer regressed a little), and The Legend of Sam Fuld took hold in Tampa for a time.

It was a bad trade because GM Jim Hendry mistakenly thought the Cubs were close enough to contention to make a trade for Garza worthwhile. They clearly weren’t. They went 71-91 this year, the same record as the Royals had with more than three times the payroll. And Theo Epstein is now running the show in Chicago.

Garza himself pitched exactly as well as the Cubs could have expected, if not better. He had a career-best 3.32 ERA, struck out 197 batters in 198 innings, allowed 58 unintentional walks and 14 homers. He was an absolutely legitimate #2 starter.

He’s one year closer to free agency, and unless Epstein thinks he can turn the Cubs around by 2013, he’s better off trading Garza now. He’s unlikely to get as much talent coming as going, but Garza will still fetch a pretty penny. Given his track record, I’d expect Garza to be a little more expensive than Norris even though he’s under contract for only half as long.

If Dayton Moore wants to make a bold move for 2012 without tearing apart the farm system for an ace, Garza might be his best option. There are better pitchers out there, and there are more available pitchers out there. But there might not be another pitcher in baseball with a more formidable combination of ability and availability.

Pitcher: Chad Billingsley

Contract Status: Under contract for $9 million in 2012, $11 million in 2013, and $12 million in 2014, with a $14 million option/$3 million buyout in 2015

Likely cost: Moderate to high

My friend Soren Petro has been throwing Billingsley’s name out there as a potential trade target for the Royals for about as long as I’ve been doing the same with Carlos Zambrano. It’s not hard to see why: Billingsley has been a consistently above-average starter for the past five years, he’s only 27 years old, and he’s under contract for three more years. Also, he’s a Dodger, and the ongoing drama of the McCourt divorce and Frank McCourt’s money issues make the Dodgers more willing to divest themselves of Billingsley’s contract obligations than they otherwise would be.

There are some red flags here. Billingsley’s strikeout rate has steadily dropped since 2008, and last year he struck out just 152 batters in 188 innings – 7.3 Ks per 9, which is right around the NL average. His walk rate also was a career high, with 80 walks in 188 innings, and he’s never had great control.

Also, Dodger Stadium and playing in the NL West is so favorable to pitchers that it has propped up Billingsley’s performance. He has a 3.94 ERA the last three years, which sounds great, but it’s actually 2% worse than league-average after you factor in the ballpark.

Billingsley made it to the majors fairly young, and a decade or two ago I’d be worried that he was simply overworked in his formative years. But Billingsley has never throw more than 201 innings in a season, and he’s never thrown more than 125 pitches in a game in his career. The Dodgers have slowly increased his pitch limit over the years; back in 2007 he threw 114 pitches on his 23rd birthday, and that was a career-high to that point. He’s very solidly built at 6’1”, 240 pounds. His average fastball velocity this year was 91.5 mph, the same as it was in 2008.

I don’t see any reason to think that he’s losing his stuff, and at his age, he’s a reasonable bounce-back candidate. The third guaranteed year on his contract gives you pause, but it’s mitigated some by the fact that there’s an option for a fourth year if he takes a step forward. I wouldn’t pay Garza-level prices for him, but I’d be willing to give up a fair amount of talent for him.

Pitcher: Gavin Floyd, CHW

Contract Status: Signed for $7 million for 2012, with club option of $9.5 million for 2013

Likely cost: Moderate to high

I have avoided any AL Central pitchers up until now, because of the added difficulty in trading in-division. But the White Sox are in a very awkward position right now, perhaps the worst position for a team to be in – they’re not good enough to contend right now, but have too many financial obligations to rebuild. If you can guess which way Kenny Williams is going to go, you’re a smarter man than I.

But if Williams finally decides it’s time to throw in the towel and rebuild, Floyd would be a person of interest. Floyd’s curveball got him picked #4 overall out of high school in 2001, but he had so little success with it that the Phillies tossed him into a deal for Freddy Garcia five years later. Don Cooper worked his pitching coach magic with Floyd for a year, and since 2008 Floyd has been an above-average starter.

His ERA this season was the highest it’s been in the past four years – a still respectable 4.37 – but even that’s misleading, as his peripherals were as good as ever. He set a career best with just 1.99 walks per nine innings while maintaining a strikeout rate right around 7 per 9. He has also allowed exactly one homer per nine innings the last four seasons despite being based at U.S. Cellular Field, one of the best home run parks in the game.

I think Floyd is still a little underrated as a pitcher; his contract is certainly a little underpriced. The Royals like pitchers with impressive curveballs, so I have to think they’d have interest. I don’t think Williams is ready to burn things down on the south side just yet, and frankly as Royals fans we’re probably better off if he keeps operating in denial. But if and when Williams is willing to deal, Dayton Moore needs to make it clear that he’ll accept all charges on the phone call.

Pitcher: Carl Pavano, MIN

Contract Status: Under contract for $8.5 million in 2012, with some minor performance bonuses

Likely cost: Low

While Kenny Williams may not be ready to rebuild, Bill Smith almost certainly is thinking about retrenching, at least in the short term, after the most disastrous season in Minnesota since the bottom fell out of the organization in the mid-90s. Pavano, who’s only under contract for one more season, should be fairly easy to pry away from them.

Pavano joined the Twins as a free agent two years ago, but you’d be forgiven for thinking they developed him in their minors, because he’s the quintessential Twins starter: average stuff at best, exceptional control. Since escaping from Yankees hell – I’m not sure who escaped who – in 2009, Pavano has been remarkably healthy and consistent. Over the last three years he’s averaged 33 starts, 214 innings, and just 38 walks a season. He doesn’t strike out anyone – just 122 strikeouts a year – but when you throw that many strikes, you can survive giving up a lot of hits. Pavano led the AL with 262 hits allowed last year, and still had a respectable 4.30 ERA.

Pavano has sort of become this generation’s Rick Mahler. Mahler led the NL in hits allowed four times in five seasons from 1985 to 1989, but threw enough strikes that he was still a viable starting pitcher. He signed with the Reds as a free agent in 1989, when he was 35, and was effective enough to hang around into 1990, when the Reds won the World Series. (They were smart enough not to start him in the playoffs; he threw a total of 1.2 innings in the postseason.)

I’m more than a little leery of Pavano, whose strikeout rate, modest as it is, keeps dropping – he struck out just 4.1 batters per nine innings last year, and he’s approaching the point of unsustainability no matter how few walks he surrenders. But he’s under contract for just one more year, at a reasonable salary, and the Twins are not going to get an elite prospect for him from anyone. He’s a backup plan, and he wouldn’t even be my choice as a backup plan, but if Moore acquired him for a token prospect or two I’d understand.

Pitcher: Francisco Liriano, MIN

Contract Status: 1 year of arbitration eligibility; free agent after 2012. Made $4.3 million in 2011

Likely cost: Who knows?

Liriano is Pavano’s opposite in every meaningful way. Pavano is a finesse right-hander; Liriano is a power lefty. Pavano will be 36 years old; Liriano is 28. Pavano is very consistent and very boring; with Liriano, you have absolutely no idea what you’re going to get. And that’s part of the appeal.

As a 22-year-old rookie in 2006, Liriano was a sensation. He started the year in middle relief and dominated; he moved into the rotation in mid-May, and in 16 starts, he went 11-3 with a 1.92 ERA. In 99 innings as a starter, he allowed 62 hits and 28 walks, and struck out 112.

On September 13th, he returned to the rotation after missing a month with elbow soreness, and felt something pop. Hello, Tommy John. He missed all of 2007.

He returned in 2008, but after three terrible starts he was optioned to Triple-A, and for some reason the Twins left him there for over three months even after he started to dominate, because God forbid they should pull Livan Hernandez from the rotation. Liriano returned in early August, and in 11 starts had a 2.74 ERA. The Twins lost the AL Central to the White Sox in a tiebreaker game, but hey, Livan Hernandez throws strikes.

In 2009, everyone expected a fully healthy Liriano to dominate, but instead he sucked pretty much all year: 5.80 ERA, 147 hits and 65 walks in just 137 innings. His fastball velocity had never fully come back after Tommy John – he averaged 94.7 mph in 2006, but he was down to 91.7 mph in 2009. After the season, reports came back from winter ball that his fastball had suddenly regained its zip. In 2010, his fastball averaged 93.7 mph on the gun, and it showed in his performance. He made 31 starts, struck out 201 batters in 192 innings, and had a 3.62 ERA.

This spring, he was hampered early in spring training with shoulder inflammation. For the season, his velocity dropped back down to 91.7, and his ERA rose back to 5.09. Twice he went on the DL for a few weeks with soreness in his shoulder.

The Twins, understandably, are a little fed up with his lack of reliability. When he’s on, he looks like the second coming of Johan Santana, but he’s rarely on. The Twins emphasize throwing strikes with their starters above all, and Liriano is sort of hit-or-miss with his command as well. He’s also a free agent at the end of the season, so the Twins might be inclined to cash him in now while they can.

Liriano is a big risk, but he might have the highest upside of any pitcher the Royals could acquire without giving up a big haul of prospects. He might be damaged goods, but he also might be the ace of the Royals’ staff. Put it this way: getting the press release that the Royals had acquired Liriano – before I could click on it to find out who the Royals gave up in return – would probably excite me more than that of any other pitcher on this list.

Ranking the pitchers above in terms of value (factoring in both performance and contract status), I’d go like this:

1) Garza

2) Norris

3t) Billingsley

3t) Floyd

5) Nolasco

6) Sanchez

7) Liriano

(big gap)

8) Pelfrey

9) Morton

10) Guthrie

11) Pavano

12) Maholm

When you factor in the price the Royals would have to pay in terms of prospects – which, granted, is purely a guess on my part – Liriano strikes me as a potential bargain. But every one of these pitchers, at the right price, is worth acquiring, and yet I could see every one of them slapped with a price tag from their current team that wasn’t worth paying.

The Royals won’t know which way each pitcher is leaning until they try, so we can only hope that they put a lot of lines in the water. Moore has a history of striking early in the off-season; given his options here, I hope he takes the time to do his due diligence first.

Next time, I’ll finish up with a look at starting pitchers on those rare pitching-rich teams – including one that Moore is intimately familiar with – that might part with one of their prized starters for the right price.