The Pen Is Mightier.

As I write this, as Saturday afternoon’s ballgame gets underway, the Royals rank 5th in the American League in runs allowed.

That may be somewhat deceptive. The Royals have allowed 263 runs, just two fewer than the Rangers and seven fewer than the White Sox. (The Rays have allowed 262 runs; if I had written this yesterday, the Royals would have ranked 4th in the league in runs allowed.) All three teams have played 64 or 65 games, while the Royals have played only 62 – if we lined teams up by runs allowed per game, the Royals would rank 7th.

But the point here isn’t whether the Royals rank 4th or 5th or 7th. The point here is that the Kansas City Royals, who were widely assumed to have one of the worst rotations in the league before the season – and whose rotation has played to form and then some – are better than average when it comes to run prevention.

Before the season, I said that while I didn’t expect the Royals to contend, that I also didn’t think their rotation automatically disqualified them from consideration. If the Royals could just get mediocre production from their starting five, the rest of the team was good enough to vault the Royals into contention. Basically, the rotation was to the Royals what Matt Cassel is to the Chiefs.

As I saw it, the Royals looked like they had an above-average offense, an above-average defense, and a well-above-average bullpen. With starting pitchers throwing fewer and fewer innings every year throughout baseball, their relevance was also declining with each season, and the Royals were strong enough in other areas to compensate.

As it turns out, the offense hasn’t been above-average or anywhere close, an issue which I hope to address later. But the rest of that argument has held up well.

The Royals’ starters have combined for a 4.87 ERA, which is next-to-last in the AL. They are in no danger of falling to dead last – the Twins have a remarkable 6.09 ERA from their rotation. It’s almost as if putting a bunch of finesse pitchers in front of a bad defense isn’t a good idea. But still, the Royals are 13th in the league, which is about where we’d expect them to be.

The Royals’ bullpen has a 2.87 ERA, the fourth-best in the AL.

So far, so good. But here’s the thing: as Sam Mellinger pointed out a few days ago, the bullpen isn’t only effective – it’s also prolific. The Royals are on pace to get more innings from relief pitchers than any other team in baseball history.

Royals starters have thrown 316 innings in 62 games. That’s 5.10 innings per start. Think about that for a moment. We’re in the middle of June, and the Royals are getting basically five innings from their starter every single day. (Late update: after Bruce Chen got knocked out in the second inning, the Royals are now averaging 5.04 innings a start.) The Twins have 329 innings from their rotation, while EVERY OTHER TEAM IN THE LEAGUE has at least 366.

To compensate, the bullpen has thrown 239 innings in 62 games. Let’s compare the Royals to the Oakland A’s, who rank just ahead of the Royals with a 2.80 ERA from their bullpen:

Oakland: 196.1 innings, 61 earned runs, 2.80 ERA.

Kansas City: 238.2 innings, 76 earned runs, 2.87 ERA.

The Royals’ pen is slightly worse on a per-inning basis – but they’ve thrown 22% more innings. If you subtract out the A’s numbers from the Royals, you get:

42.1 innings, 15 earned runs, 3.19 ERA.

Kansas City’s bullpen has basically matched what the A’s have done – and then thrown another 42 innings with a well-above-average league ERA.

If you do this with the Yankees, who rank second in the league with a 2.71 ERA – but in only 170 innings – here’s what you get:

69 innings, 25 earned runs, 3.26 ERA.

The Royals can’t touch the Orioles, whose bullpen not only has a 2.38 ERA, but thanks to a ton of extra-inning games, have thrown 219 innings as well. But a strong case can be made that given the extra work that’s been asked out of them, the Royals have the second-best bullpen in the league.

Another way to look at it is this: the Royals essentially have three types of pitchers on their roster. They have starting pitchers, they have relievers, and they have “shadow starters”, pitchers who are trained to be starters but who are stashed away in the pen, waiting for the inevitable call in the third inning. Some of these guys have made starts of their own. Nate Adcock. Everett Teaford. Vinny Mazzaro. Luis Mendoza.

Those four pitchers have made 13 starts, in which they’ve thrown 61 innings. But they’ve also made 13 relief appearances, in which they’ve thrown 44.1 innings. In essence, those are the extra innings that the Royals have gotten from their bullpen. In those 44.1 innings, they’ve allowed 17 earned runs.

So here’s a way to break down the performance of the Royals’ pitching staff:

Starters: 316 innings, 4.87 ERA

Shadow starters: 44 innings, 3.45 ERA

Relievers: 194 innings, 2.74 ERA

(To go on a tangent here, you can drop that ERA nine points if you take out Roman Colon’s appearance last night. I’m trying to stay positive here, but…I think Dayton Moore’s attachment to Roman Colon has now leapfrogged past Jeff Francoeur and even Yuniesky Betancourt as the most bizarre fetish of his career.

You may recall Colon as the reliever the Royals acquired from the Tigers shortly after he had been suspended from his Triple-A team after punching a teammate in the face. In 2007, he had a 4.43 ERA in the minors. In 2008, he had a 4.74 ERA in the minors. But in 2009, he pitched reasonably well in 13 relief appearances, and got promoted to Kansas City, where he fashioned a 4.83 ERA in 50 innngs, with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of just 29 to 21.

But the next spring Colon reportedly had developed a new nuclear slider which was supposed to change the world, so he made the team out of spring training. In five appearances, he allowed 8 of 14 batters to reach base, and was sent packing with an 18.00 ERA. He was soon sold to a team in Korea, and even in Korea he didn’t pitch all that well.

In 2011, he was back stateside with the Albuquerque Isotopes in the Dodgers’ organization, where he fashioned a 4.85 ERA. This winter the Royals re-signed him, sent him to Omaha, and he was modestly effective. In 30 innings he had a 3.34 ERA, but he also had walked 14 batters and allowed 27 hits.

And Friday, they called him up. They did so despite the fact that Colon has never been effective at the major-league level, he’s never been dominant at the minor-league level, and he’s 32 years old. They did so even though it meant burning a spot on the 40-man roster. They did so even though they had sent down Louis Coleman THE DAY BEFORE. Coleman’s numbers IN THE MAJORS (20 innings, 3.15 ERA) were better than Colon’s numbers in the minors. They sent Coleman down so that they could keep Clint Robinson in the majors – and then sent Robinson down one day later. So in order to keep Clint Robinson on the roster FOR ONE MORE DAY, they replaced Coleman with Roman Freaking Colon. Who, naturally, coughed up two runs in two-thirds of an inning last night. If the rest of the staff hadn’t thrown 8.1 innings of shutout ball, this would have cost the Royals the game.

The Royals front office has a lot of smart guys and they’ve done a lot of smart things. But the blinders they have towards certain players are more than just aggravating – they are potentially destructive. End of rant.)

I don’t know if the bullpen can continue to maintain this level of excellence going forward. Some regression to the mean is likely even if you don’t think that they’re going to burn out from all the times they’ve been called on.

To the Royals credit, they’ve spread out all those innings as much as possible. Not only have they carried eight relievers most of the season, but they’ve worn out I-29 shuttling pitchers back and forth – Adcock, Mazzaro, Coleman, Teaford, and Tommy Hottovy have all gone back and forth. They essentially have had a nine-man bullpen, with the ninth man resting his arm for a few days in Omaha.

Here are the relievers on pace to throw the most innings for the Royals this year:

Kelvin Herrera: 88.2

Tim Collins: 81.0

Aaron Crow: 75.0

Jose Mijares: 68.0

Jonathan Broxton: 64.1

That’s not a particularly heavy workload  – only two pitchers are on pace to throw 80 innings, and none are on pace to throw 90. But here’s a list of the relievers on pace to appear in the most games this year:

Jose Mijares: 84

Aaron Crow: 81

Tim Collins: 76

Kelvin Herrera: 76

Jonathan Broxton: 65

There’s some cause for concern there. The interaction between innings and appearances for relievers is complicated and not well-understood. But my belief is that it is risker to let a reliever throw 80 innings in 70 games than to throw 100 innings in 50 games. We never see the latter anymore; relievers rarely cross even 90 innings anymore, and yet they continue to get hurt, whereas someone like Goose Gossage could throw over 130 innings in a season three times in his career without a problem (but only once in his career did he pitch in more than 65 games).

I start to worry about a pitcher who makes 75 appearances in a season, and the Royals might wind up with four guys who fit that profile. The depth in the bullpen makes it tempting for Ned Yost to call on three or four different guys a night to throw an inning apiece, but my suspicion is that it would be better to ask guys like Herrera and Crow – who were both starters in the minors – to throw two innings at a time, but only use them twice a week.

It will be interesting to see if the bullpen can keep up this pace all season. It will also be interesting to see if the Royals learn from the mistakes of the past, recognize that even elite relievers are one pitch away from the DL, and sell high on some of these guys – not just the obvious pitcher in Broxton, but one or two of their young, club-controlled commodities like Crow or Herrera. That’s a topic for a later time.

But one thing is clear: a bullpen this strong and this deep can absolutely cover for a rotation this bad. The Royals are 27-34 with the lowest-scoring offense in the league. With even an average offense, they would be over .500 and fighting for first place in the AL Central even with a rotation of Bruce Chen, Luke Hochevar, Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and Eduardo Villacis.

Which makes it that much more frustrating that, for lack of an offense, they’re not doing just that.

Draft Recap 2012.

I said before the draft that I would find it almost impossible to rip the Royals, no matter who their first-round pick turned out to be. And when the Royals took Kyle Zimmer, I accepted their choice with good cheer, even though I had my reservations. But with each passing day, I’ve warmed up to the pick more and more. On Monday, I thought that Zimmer was the safe pick. Today, I think he might have been the best pick as well.

On my pre-draft board, I had Zimmer ranked 8th, which of course means that he was not the top guy left on my list when the Royals picked. But let’s look at the guys that were still there:

At #7, I had Albert Almora, the Florida high school outfielder. Honestly, I didn’t have a strong feeling one way or another as to who to rank higher – I originally had Zimmer #7 and Almora #8. When it’s this close between two players, I have no problem drafting for need and taking the college pitcher over the high school hitter. And I wouldn’t question the Royals at all if they felt it was not close.

At #4, I had Lucas Giolito, the high-school right-hander who might have gone #1 overall before he strained his elbow. I still think he’s the one pitcher in this draft with #1 upside, and if the Nationals can get him signed at #16, that’s a massive steal for them. But I get the decision not to take him. Given the concerns about his arm, given the concerns about his signability, given that he might have to sit out a year at some point if and when his elbow gives out, I appreciate that there were a lot of risks involved. Obviously, the Royals weren’t the only team to pass on Giolito’s upside. They might have been wrong to do so, but if so, they have a lot of company.

And that leaves Mark Appel, whose slide to the #8 spot in the draft was the biggest surprise of the first round.

Everything else equal, I’d rather have drafted Appel, and as stunning as it was that he was available when the Royals picked at #5, it was completely unsurprising when the Royals passed on him. It’s just like the Royals to look a gift horse in the mouth, and then send it back.

The question is, why? Why did he fall so far, and why did the Royals pass on him in favor of another college pitcher? The easy answer is that he’s a Scott Boras client, and he was going to be a tough sign and blah blah blah. We’ve heard it all before, like when the Royals passed on J.D. Drew and took Jeff Austin again.

Only that’s too easy. That was 14 years ago; Drew’s retired, for God’s sake. Dayton Moore’s Royals didn’t let Mike Moustakas or Eric Hosmer or Bubba Starling pass by because of their Boras-ness. (Nor did they let Luke Hochevar or Christian Colon pass by, though maybe they should have.) The new draft rules complicate things, but if anything, they should reduce the leverage of Boras clients, not enhance it.

That leaves only one other possibility, which is that the Royals honestly believe that Kyle Zimmer is the better prospect. And I will say, in the days since the first round was consummated, that I have heard from some people in the industry who share that assessment. It’s a minority opinion – but not a tiny minority. There is a segment of baseball people who really like Kyle Zimmer. Appel has more consistent stuff and a much longer track record; the general consensus is that he’s the safer pick. But a lot of people feel that Zimmer has the higher upside.

Remember, the one nick on Appel before the draft was that the whole didn’t always add up to the sum of the parts – that he should have dominated college hitters even more than he did, given his stuff. That may mean nothing; a similar complaint was lodged against Justin Verlander in college. But you can forgive the Royals for seeing this as a giant red flag, given that they have the poster child for this at the major-league level in Hochevar. I don’t know if their experience with Hochevar factored into the decision to pass on Appel. But I wouldn’t blame them if it did.

I’m not sure I agree with the decision to take Zimmer instead of Appel. But based on what I know now, I’m fairly confident that the decision was made based on a pure baseball evaluation, not simply on the finances involved and the difficulty in signing each player. All I can ask is for the Royals to take the player they think is the best available, and I think they did that here.

And I’ll say this: I’m not sure they’re wrong. Zimmer is really growing on me.

What worried me before the draft – the reason I placed him behind Appel and Gausman – were two things: 1) he sort of came out of nowhere, in the sense that two years ago he wasn’t pitching, and before this college season he was seen as a mid-to-late first-round pick; 2) after dominating early in the season, his stuff was down at the end, presumably (but not assuredly) because of a hamstring injury.

I haven’t encountered anyone who is genuinely worried about his velocity drop; it seems to be a consensus that it was, in fact, just a product of a tight hamstring, and that when he returns to the mound later this month or in July, his fastball will be back to sitting 95 and touching 99 again. And while he did have a meteoric rise from high school third baseman to college ace, he’s shown enough stuff for enough time that the odds it was all a mirage are close to nil.

Two years ago, Cubs’ GM Jim Hendry shocked the industry by using their first-round pick on a kid named Hayden Simpson, a Division II pitcher who had added velocity leading up to the draft. Almost from the moment he signed, Simpson’s new-found velocity disappeared – he had a nasty case of mono, and his fastball never came back. He currently has a 7.32 ERA in A-ball, with 29 walks and 14 strikeouts, and Hendry is no longer the GM of the Cubs.

Maybe that was in the back of my mind when I evaluated Zimmer before the draft. Or maybe it was Colt Griffin, who threw in the upper 90s for roughly three months in his entire life – it just happened to be the three months before the Royals took him in the 2001 draft. There are a lot of pitchers who show elite velocity for a short period of time, and you don’t want to be the team drafting them in the first round.

But that shortchanges Zimmer. Gaining velocity quickly is not a red flag in itself. Stephen Strasburg went from throwing 89 to 99 in less than a year, going from undrafted out of high school to a guy who, after his freshman season, was already being talked about as a potential #1 pick after his junior year. You just want to see a pitcher maintain his new-found velocity for more than a month or two. Zimmer only threw in the upper 90s for a couple of months, but he’s thrown in the low-to-mid 90s for the better part of two years. He outdueled Gerrit Cole when Cole was pitching at UCLA last season. That’s real.

Beyond that, Zimmer’s not defined by his velocity. His curveball is a fantastic pitch, and he has terrific command of both pitches. Actually, that might be the most interesting thing about Zimmer: that for a guy who didn’t start pitching until two years ago, he has tremendous polish.

Then there’s the age factor. Zimmer is still just 20 years old; he doesn’t turn 21 until August. (He’s just 11 months older than Bubba Starling, who was drafted out of high school.) My original study on the impact of age was limited to high school hitters, but I expanded on that study for a chapter I wrote in Baseball Prospectus’ book Extra Innings, which came out this spring. What I found was that younger draft picks tended to outperform older draft picks among college pitchers as well – although the effect was muted, roughly half as significant as the effect on high school hitters.

Still, that’s a good sign. The combination of youth, inexperience, stuff, and polish is really quite rare, and I struggle to think of another pitcher who fits that mold. I mean, in Royals history, the last example I can think of would be Bret Saberhagen, who wasn’t even drafted as a pitcher – he was a 16th-round pick as a shortstop – but was in the majors within two years, became the youngest Royals player ever, and as a rookie walked 32 batters in 158 innings.

I’m not comparing Zimmer to Saberhagen. I’m just saying that just because an 18-year-old position player magically turns into a 20-year-old phenom on the mound isn’t a bad thing.

(As long as we’re talking about converted third basemen turned into elite pitchers, Brandon Beachy was a third baseman in college, barely pitched at all, the Braves took a flyer on him as an undrafted free agent…and he was in the majors in barely two years. Last year, as a rookie, he led all major leaguers with 100+ innings in strikeouts per nine innings. This year, he leads the majors in ERA.)

As a former position player and multi-sport athlete in high school, Zimmer also does the things you’d expect from athletic pitchers, like field his position well, repeat his delivery, etc. And the other benefit from his lack of experience on the mound is this: he only threw 88 innings this year. Unlike pitchers at some college programs, Zimmer wasn’t abused at all by his coach, who never allowed him throw more than 120 pitches in a game. The Royals are getting a fresh arm; if he gets hurt, it’s not because he was mishandled before they ever got their hands on him.

And finally, yes, there’s the signability issue. Again, in some ways the new rules make it easier to sign elite players, because teams have the leverage that they have to stick to their slots or face punitive penalties. But in some ways the new rules make it harder to sign elite players, or at least more painful, because every dollar you give that player is a dollar you can’t give someone else. No one knows if Appel signs with the Pirates; while they would appear to have the upper hand, I’ll declare defeat for Scott Boras only after the game is over. But even if they do sign him, it will probably take more money than the $2.9 million that pick is slotted for, meaning they’ll have to take that money from other slots.

By getting Zimmer to agree to a deal quickly, the Royals not only signed him within days of the draft – becoming the first top pick to sign that fast since Billy Butler in 2004 – but worked out a $3 million deal, $500,000 less than the slot money assigned to that pick.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that Zimmer’s a bargain. Major league baseball was actually quite generous in their allotment for some of the slots at the top of the first round. While it took $5 million for the Diamondbacks to sign Archie Bradley, the #7 pick last year, Bradley is the only #7 pick in history to receive a signing bonus of more than $2.5 million. (And Bradley was a special case; that pick was a compensation pick for the Diamondbacks after they didn’t sign Barret Loux the year before. The pick was not protected, meaning if they hadn’t signed Bradley, the Diamondbacks would not have received a compensation pick the next year. So Bradley had more leverage than usual.)

Nonetheless, Zimmer signed for less than slot, and quickly, allowing the Royals to move that money elsewhere. I’m not sure whether I’d rather have Zimmer over Appel. But I’m pretty sure I’d rather take Zimmer, save on drama as well as money, and use the money saved to draft and sign better players elsewhere in the draft. That’s exactly what the Royals did, and it’s hard to fault them for that.

My fear, going into the draft, was that the Royals would take a college pitcher over Carlos Correa, who as you know I really, really, really like. As it turned out, that possibility was eliminated the moment the draft started. The fact that I might be partially responsible for the fact that Correa wasn’t available when the Royals picked – The Economist weighs in here – is, ahem, uncomfortable. (Particularly since Sam Mellinger hints here that the Royals probably would have taken Correa if he was available.) But given that he wasn’t, there wasn’t anyone else on the board who was clearly a better use of the #5 pick than Zimmer.

In the second round, the Royals took Sam Selman, another college pitcher, this time a left-hander from Vanderbilt. Sort of a boring pick, Selman ranked #146 on Baseball America’s draft rankings. He vaguely resembles Zimmer in that he’s a college pitcher who has a relatively fresh arm; whereas Zimmer steadily improved his draft stock over the past two years, Selman really only came on in the last half of this season. I’m a big fan of Vanderbilt players in general, which may reveal my own bias towards a school that melds academic and athletic success (at least in baseball) as well as any college in the country. If I had a son who was worthy of a Division I scholarship, Vanderbilt would be on my short list of schools I’d want him to go to. But I don’t know if that makes Selman a better prospect or not.

Third-rounder Colin Rodgers has already signed, albeit for $700,000, about 50% more than the $476,500 slot for his pick. BA had Rodgers ranked #207 overall, but the Royals clearly differ in their opinion. He’s a left-hander out of high school with good stuff when he’s on, but he’s not always on, and at 6’ even and 185 pounds, there’s not a lot of projection there.

My favorite pick in the draft after Zimmer – one of my favorite mid-round picks the Royals have made in recent years, in fact – is fourth-rounder Kenny Diekroeger, a shortstop out of Stanford. Diekroeger turned down $2 million from the Rays out of high school; after he hit .356/.391/.491 as a freshman, there was talk that he might be the #1 overall pick in this draft. Even after a disappointing sophomore season (.293/.356/.364), he was still looked at as a probable first-round selection.

Last September, Baseball America released their preliminary Top 50 for this year’s draft. Diekroeger ranked #18 on the list. One spot below him, at #19, was…Kyle Zimmer. At #20 was...Carlos Correa.

Of course, Diekroeger had an even more disappointing junior year; as I write this (Stanford is still playing) he’s got a .271/.339/.372 line this season. His swing is a mess, and most scouts think he’ll have to move to second base as a pro.

But…Diekroeger plays at Stanford. The Cardinal have a fantastic track record in college baseball, but they are notorious for having a hitting approach that doesn’t fit every player, emphasizing hitting the other way over power. While some players have taken to it very well, both in college and in the pros (e.g. Carlos Quentin), other players who were top high school prospects were completely fouled up by it. Most famously, Michael Taylor, who was a very well-regarded prospect out of high school (he attended school with Zack Greinke, two years behind) fell all the way to the fifth round in the 2007 draft after a poor Stanford career. By the end of the 2009 season he was one of the 30 best prospects in baseball, after hitting .346/.412/.557 and .320/.395/.549 in back-to-back years. He was then a key part of the Roy Halladay trade, and while he is still struggling to break through in Oakland, he was definitely a worthwhile use of a fifth-round pick.

Of course, there’s only one Michael Taylor, and there are plenty of Stanford picks that simply never panned out in the pros. But it’s a fourth-round pick. In a weak draft. He doesn’t pan out? Neither do 90% of other guys taken in that round. But I think it's worth a fourth-round flyer to draft a kid who, nine months ago, ranked ahead of two of the top five picks in the draft. (Keith Law, incidentally, had Diekroeger #49 overall on his draft sheet, largely on the theory that there might be a ballplayer waiting to break out once his Stanford Swing is fixed.)

The Royals will probably need to pay Diekroeger more than slot money to sign, which is why it’s nice they saved some money on Zimmer. This leads to a discussion of the Royals’ philosophy in this draft, in light of the new draft rules. Many teams decided to use their draft pool to go after premium players early, and then subvert the system by drafting college seniors – who generally aren’t as talented and definitely have no leverage – from rounds 6 to 10, thereby moving their draft pool money to the top guys. (Remember Allard Baird’s Glass-family-mandated “take it or leave it” $1000 offers to college seniors? Turns out the Royals were just a decade ahead of their time.)

The Blue Jays, for instance, took a bunch of tough-to-sign top prospects in the first three rounds – where they had seven picks – and then, from the fourth through the tenth rounds, they took a college senior with every pick, and not one of them was listed among Baseball America’s Top 500. These guys are getting $5,000 to sign, and the Jays will presumably be able to afford the elite guys they drafted. They’re like ringers in reverse.

It’s a shrewd philosophy, with one drawback: it means you’re wasting mid-round picks on guys with essentially no chance to develop into prospects. The Royals went the other route: perhaps because they knew that Zimmer would sign for less than slot money, they didn’t take a single college senior in the first ten rounds. Presumably, they took the best player on their board in each round; if even one of those later picks develop, they’ll be ahead of the vast number of teams in those rounds.

I say “presumably” because many of the players the Royals selected in those rounds were not high on Baseball America’s list either. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong; the Royals have earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to identifying amateur talent. But it’s worth watching. Last year, remember, the Royals gave bonuses of at least $575,000 to eight different players, some of whom were not ranked highly before the draft either. I can’t tell you how those decisions have worked out, because not one of those eight players (not even Bubba Starling) has played a game this year – they’re all in extended spring training waiting for the short-season leagues to start.

One undeniable benefit – at least to the Royals – of the new rules is that players are signing much, much faster. Of the Royals’ first ten picks, everyone except Selman and Diekroeger has already signed. Between them and last year’s holdovers, we’ll find out a lot in the next three months about whether the Royals can keep their draft touch going. But in a draft this weak, and with just one selection in the top 65, Kyle Zimmer’s success or lack thereof will make or break this draft for Kansas City. I’m optimistic, but then, I usually am.

Draft Preview 2012.

The first rule of the draft is: I don’t know anything about the draft.

The beauty of baseball is how so much of it is accessible to the informed outsider. I love football, but I couldn’t tell you 90% of what goes on in any given play. The teams themselves don’t know half of what’s going on, at least not in the moment, which is why they watch so much tape afterwards and guard the overhead 11-on-11 videos from the public like they’re state secrets.

The easy quantification of baseball makes it possible for someone like me to know what is going on. Maybe I don’t know how or why, but I know what. It allows me to opine on the abilities of players and the sensibilities of tactics without coming off as a complete moron. (A partial moron, sure.)

But the draft is still a black box. Yes, we have stats. But high school stats are essentially meaningless; college stats aren’t much better. It’s the most important aspect of baseball that is impervious to statistical analysis. So my opinions here are even more speculative than my other ones.

I can’t talk about the draft without mentioning the elephant in the room, which is that the new CBA completely changes the draft, even if no one knows exactly how. In essence, the Royals have a draft cap, and their cap is different from that of every other team. Signability is no longer an excuse to keep from spending money – it’s a very real issue. (Even if the reason that the draft cap was put in place was to keep teams from spending money.)

My opinions on the new draft rules are complex, and require a column of their own, whether it’s here or at Grantland. The short analysis is this: I disagree with the conventional wisdom that states that the new draft rules hurt small-market teams that spend in the draft, i.e. the Royals. The CW is based on the assumption that if the old draft rules had stayed in place, that the Royals and Pirates could have kept outspending higher-revenue teams in the draft ad infinitum.

Which is kind of ridiculous. I’m fairly certain that other teams subscribe to Baseball America, and are aware that the Royals built The Best Farm System Ever largely by being willing to spend big dollars in the draft. That would have encouraged other teams to spend more, and it did – last year teams spent more money than they ever have in the draft. The dollars would have spiraled to the point where eventually even the Royals wouldn’t have been able to keep up.

I don’t think the new draft rules are fair, in the sense that I think it’s fair to dictate to a player not just where is he going to play for the next decade, but for how much money, take it or leave it. But I don’t think the new draft rules are tilted against small-market teams.

But it definitely introduces a new wrinkle.

The Royals draft fifth overall this year, which is probably as good a place to draft as any. It’s been a long time since the very top of the draft was as scrambled as it is this year. There have been years where there was no clear choice for the Royals, as it was two years ago, when they didn’t commit to Christian Colon until about half an hour before the draft started. (The rumor, of course, was that until then they were planning to take…Chris Sale. Forget the we-should-have-drafted-Tim-Lincecum revisionist history – Chris Sale may prove to be The One Who Got Away.) But that year, the top three players were clear – Bryce Harper, Jameson Taillon, and Manny Machado, the last two players in either order. It’s just that the Royals were drafting fourth.

This year, no one knows yet who the Astros will take #1, and no one knows who the Astros should take #1. There are seven or eight players who seem to stand out from the pack, but all of them are flawed in some way. If it weren’t for the new draft rules – which allow the Astros to spend twice as much money at #1 as the Royals can at #5 – you’d almost rather pick fifth. But the Astros can work out a deal for that #1 pick and use the extra draft cap space later in the draft.

The final thing to remember is that this year’s draft is, to be kind, below-average. It’s not quite 2000-level bad (Adam Johnson! Luis Montanez! Mike Stodolka! Justin Wayne! Believe it or not, those are the players selected #2, #3, #4, and #5 overall – and the Royals only picked one of them!), but it’s a huge dropoff from last season. The first eight players selected last year would all have a chance to go #1 this year. The #5 pick this year is roughly as valuable as a mid-first-rounder was last year.

But the middle of last year’s first round included some gems; Jose Fernandez, who the Marlins selected #14 overall, is one of the best prospects in the game now. There’s talent there; it’s just not clear where it is. Given the Royals’ track record, given the lack of a clear can’t-miss type in this draft, and given the new wrinkle of the draft cap, I would find it almost impossible to rip the Royals for their first-round pick, no matter who it is. At least not right away.

Presenting the candidates:

The Guys That Won’t Be There

There are two guys who are 98% certain to be taken before the Royals pick. That I’m not 100% certain they’ll be gone is why I need to list them:

Mark Appel, a right-hander out of Stanford, is generally considered the best college starting pitcher in this draft. The full package is there: upper 90s fastball, a very good slider, and a solid changeup. The knock on him is that his numbers have never quite matched his stuff; last year, he gave up over a hit an inning and struck out just 86 batters in 110 innings for the Cardinal. This year, though, he’s got a 2.27 ERA in 119 innings, with 92 hits allowed and a K/BB ratio of 127 to 26. That’s not Strasburgian, but it’s very good. He reminds me of a slightly toned-down version of Gerrit Cole, the #1 pick in last year’s draft, and Appel is currently the favorite to go #1 to the Astros this year.

Byron Buxton, a quintessential five-tool outfielder out of a Georgia high school, is the Bubba Starling of this draft, if Starling had a touch less power, a touch more speed and a slightly better hit tool, and was black. The more common comparison is to one of the Upton brothers. Like the Uptons, Buxton is unlikely to fall past the #2 pick overall, but the final-hour chatter around this draft is so up-in-the-air that I could see a scenario where he drops to #5.

The Guys That Might Be There

Kevin Gausman, a right-hander from LSU, might be the best college pitcher in the country on the right day. He doesn’t throw quite as hard as Appel, but hard enough, and he has an excellent changeup. Neither his curveball nor slider have distinguished themselves yet, but even so, he’s an easy Top 10 pick. His numbers at LSU this year are almost indistinguishable from Appel’s (2.72 ERA, 116 IP, 100 H, 27 BB, 128 K). He’s a draft-eligible sophomore, but don’t let that fool you – he’s actually six months older than Appel, who’s a junior.

Gausman would be a fine pick for a team with a need for close-to-the-majors pitching, and indeed he was the player most linked to Kansas City as recently as a week ago. Recent developments suggest he may go to Baltimore at #4, which would be the third year in a row that the Orioles, drafting one slot ahead of the Royals, took the guy they wanted. (Two years ago, it was Machado, which was a no-brainer. Last year, it was Dylan Bundy, who Nate Bukaty has reported had a deal already worked out with the Royals if he had made it to #5. That hurts.)

If Gausman isn’t there, there’s a good chance that the Royals will take…

Kyle Zimmer, a right-hander from the University of San Francisco, who might be the best college pitcher in the country on the right day. Zimmer didn’t even start pitching until college, but over the past year has elevated his draft stock as much as anyone in the country. Unlike Gausman, he has a fantastic curveball, but his changeup needs work. He doesn’t turn 21 until September, and the combination of relative youth and relative inexperience on the mound suggests there’s more to come. For a guy with so little experience pitching, he has uncanny polish – he has excellent command, fields his position well, all that good stuff.

The problem is that he’s had a mild hamstring injury which has limited him down the stretch – he’s only thrown 88 innings this year, with 104 Ks against 17 walks – and his velocity was also down late in the year, around 91 mph instead of his usual 94-95. It’s possible – even likely – that the two are related, and that his velocity will bounce back once he’s fully healed. But it’s enough of a concern that after being talked about as a probable #3 or #4 pick, he’s likely to be there when the Royals pick, and may drop further than that – Dayton Moore was in attendance for Zimmer’s final start of the year, and he got rocked.

If the Royals are convinced that Zimmer’s struggles are transient, he could be a steal at the #5 spot – not just for his talent, but that as a college pitcher with a lot of polish, he could fill the Royals’ needs perfectly and be in their rotation quickly. But it’s also possible that he’s already peaked, that his velocity won’t return – particularly when he’s throwing every five days instead of once a week – and the Royals will quickly find that they took a #4 starter with the #5 pick. I’ll give the Royals the benefit of the doubt on the gamble, but it’s a gamble.

This leads me to the most – maybe only – important point I want to make: the Royals can not draft for need. Let me repeat that: don’t draft for need. It’s such a basic point, and yet here we are, with the Royals trying to win with a patchwork rotation, and people are screaming “THEY HAVE TO TAKE A PITCHER!”

No. They. Don’t.

I don’t mean to be patronizing, but this isn’t the NFL, guys. Whoever the Royals take isn’t going to magically be ready to help the major league team right away. In the history of the draft, you can probably count the guys who could contribute at the major-league level on Draft Day on your fingers. Bob Horner. Dave Winfield. Pete Incaviglia, maybe. Stephen Strasburg, if they had let him.

So you’re not going to draft anyone who can solve the Royals’ rotation problems today, or at any point in 2012. Okay, you say, but how about 2013? The Royals could win in 2013 if they can just improve their rotation, and a college pitcher might do just that.

To which I say: if there’s a pitcher in this draft who could be in a major-league rotation this time next year, he shouldn’t fall to #5. There might be one or two of those guys in a typical draft, and this isn’t even a typical draft. Strasburg was in the majors a year after he was picked. Tim Lincecum was as well, and he went #10 overall, and if there’s a Tim Lincecum in this draft who falls to #5, then Hallelujah. But you can’t plan on that.

NONE of these guys – not Zimmer, not Gausman, not even Appel – can be expected to be major-league ready until late in the 2013 season, if not 2014. Danny Duffy is likely to be starting in the majors again before any of them. For that matter, Jake Odorizzi and John Lamb would probably beat them to the majors as well. (I’ve stopped making any kind of projections about Mike Montgomery. He’s like the Luke Hochevar of the farm system.)

Okay, you say, but the Royals are still going to need starting pitching in 2014, and it’s better that the Royals draft a guy who could be in their rotation in 2014 then a player who might not contribute in 2015 or 2016. To which I say: if you’re looking for an impact starting pitcher in the summer of 2014, the safest way to do that is to trade some excess prospects for an established starter in the winter of 2014.

And the best way to have excess prospects is TO DRAFT THE BEST PLAYERS AVAILABLE.

Four years ago, the Cincinnati Reds used the #7 overall pick on Yonder Alonso, a college first baseman. They did this even though they already had Joey Votto, who was a rookie on his way to finishing 2nd in the Rookie of the Year vote. This would be like the Royals drafting a college first baseman this year.

Two years later, the Reds used the #12 overall pick on Yasmani Grandal, a college catcher. They did this even though Devin Mesoraco – a high school catcher they had taken with their first-round pick in 2007 – was in the midst of a breakout season in the minors. (Mesoraco hit .302/.377/.587 between A-ball and Double-A.)

In both cases, the Reds drafted the best player available. And when they needed a pitcher, this past off-season, they simply packaged both players – along with veteran retread Edinson Volquez and minor-league reliever Brad Boxberger – to the Padres in exchange for an established, young, club-controlled starter in Mat Latos.

You might quibble over the details; there were legitimate concerns about Latos moving from the spacious confines of Petco Park to the bandbox that is the Great American Ballpark, and indeed Latos has a 4.91 ERA as I write this. But the principle is sound: draft for talent, and you can trade the talent to fill a need. Draft for need, and you might end up drafting Matt Stark because you really need a catcher, even though the guy at the top of your draft board is Roger Clemens. (Which actually happened.)

If Gausman or Zimmer is at the top of the Royals’ draft board when it’s their turn to pick, so be it. But if they’re not, drafting them just because they play a position of need on your current roster is madness. Much better to select…

Carlos Correa, a high school shortstop from Puerto Rico, who might just be the best player in this draft. Roughly comparable to Francisco Lindor in last year’s draft, or Machado the year before, Correa is a do-everything shortstop who might outgrow the position and move to third, but should have the bat for either position.

I have an obvious bias here, which is that Correa is just 17 years old, not turning 18 until September, and I wrote this last year. If I had researched and written that before last year’s draft, I would have strongly agitated for the Royals to take Lindor instead of Starling, who is 15 months older than him. And I’m quite certain that Lindor has surpassed Starling in the minds of almost everyone in the industry, given that Lindor is holding his own in the Midwest League at the age of 18, hitting .280/.329/.411 at the moment, while Starling is headed to short-season ball and has yet to swing a bat in anger as professional. Also, he’s older than Bryce Harper, and turns 20 in two months.

Kevin Goldstein has reported that my study has been the talk of more than a few front offices. It so happens that Correa, who was on the fringes of Top 10 consideration at the start of the season, is less than a 50/50 shot to even be on the board when the Royals pick. I’m not sure how much the former has to do with the latter; Correa has performed magnificently this year. I apologize if opening my big mouth means that Correa won’t be there when the Royals pick. On the other hand, if he’s already taken, at least it means there won’t be any second-guessing when the Royals pass on him.

The Royals’ draft preferences have become increasingly inscrutable as the draft has approached, and while I don’t think the Royals will take Correa, there have been at least some rumblings that if the board breaks right, they will take him. I hope they do. Maybe he doesn’t fill a need at a position, but he fills the one need every team has: potential star talent.

Mike Zunino is clearly the best college position player this year, largely because the crop of college hitters is, in the estimation of some scouts, the worst in 20 years. He’s a catcher at the University of Florida, and so might lead to a natural comp with Buster Posey, who was drafted out of Florida State. That’s too ambitious a comparison; the comp that’s thrown out there the most is that Zunino resembles a right-handed Jason Varitek: he’s not going to hit for average, but he’ll give you 20 homers, good plate discipline, and run a pitching staff. Not a star, but an above-average regular, and in this draft, that’s a heck of a player.

Originally thought to be a Top-3 pick, Zunino really struggled to hit once the SEC turned to conference play (although his numbers are still a robust .316/.388/.658), and he might fall as far as #8 now. He doesn’t have elite upside and the Royals already have a catcher signed from now until the apocalypse, but if he’s the best player on the board, he’s the best player on the board. There’s certainly nothing wrong with him at #5.

The Wild Cards

When you talk about wild cards in this draft, the discussion begins and mostly ends with Lucas Giolito. Three months ago, Giolito was the favorite to be the #1 overall pick. This would have been historic; he would have been the first high school right-hander in the history of the draft to be selected with the first pick.

For good reason: more than anyone else in this draft, he has the true ability to be a #1 starter in the majors. His fastball and curveball are elite; his changeup is well above-average; he’s 6-foot-6 and has a great work ethic. He’s not Dylan Bundy, but he was being talked about as just a tick below Bundy in terms of having a combination of tremendous upside and relatively little risk for a high school starter. I’ve also heard Josh Beckett comps, Beckett being the last high school right-hander to go #2 overall.

And then he sprained the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow in March. Let’s not beat around the bush: the UCL is the ligament you tear in Tommy John surgery. As my friend Will Carroll repeats incessantly, “A sprain is a tear,” which is to say, Giolito has a partial tear in his UCL.

He’s been rehabbing from the injury, and is back to throwing on flat ground, although he hasn’t thrown from a mound, and naturally that makes him an enormous risk. Also, there’s the matter of signability; his father is a Hollywood producer and they don’t need the money, so if he doesn’t get what he thinks he’s worth, he’ll go to UCLA and try again in three years.

Despite the risk, I’d rather have him than any other pitcher in this draft with the possible exception of Appel. We know all about UCLs and Tommy John surgery in Kansas City – more than we want to know. We know that Danny Duffy was pitching with a partial tear in his UCL for years before it gave out. We know that Giolito might be a Tommy John waiting to happen – he might need Tommy John right now. But you know what? So what. Give me the #1 starter, and I’ll wait the extra year for him to recover. Strasburg is doing just fine.

Other possibilities, in capsule form:

Max Fried is the second best high-school pitcher (and best left-hander) in the draft. He’s also just the second best pitcher at his high school – he’s Giolito’s teammate and fellow UCLA commit. He has polish and good secondary pitches, but his fastball ranges from the upper 80s to the low 90s. He’s projectable, and if the velocity comes, he could be great. This means nothing, but the last time the draft was this unsettled at the top, in 2006 when the Royals took Luke Hochevar, there was some talk that a high-school left-hander should be in the discussion for the #1 overall pick. If the Royals had taken Clayton Kershaw, I wouldn’t have to curse at my iPhone every fifth day.

I wasn’t even planning to mention Albert Almora, but just a few minutes ago Frankie Piliere of Scout.com tweeted that the Royals are suddenly taking a close look at him. Almora is a high school outfielder from Florida who is about as low-risk as a high school player can be: he has tons of experience playing on USA National teams, so he’s faced top-flight competition, and all of his tools grade out as average or better – and he projects to stay in center field. He doesn’t have Buxton’s tools, but is a better bet to actualize them. If Buxton has a 25% chance to be a superstar, Almora has a 50% chance to be a star. Given that the Royals already have Starling in their system, Almora would diversify their portfolio in the outfield nicely.

Hopefully this is the last time I mention Michael Wacha, who seems to be the consolation prize if the top three college pitchers are all gone. Wacha is a right-hander at Texas A&M; there’s nothing inherently wrong with him, but he’s a mid-round talent, not a #5 overall pick. There was chatter that the Royals were looking at him as a backup plan earlier, but that chatter thankfully seems to have died down.

Lance McCullers has been on draft radars for a few years now, which is unusual for a high school player, though not so unusual when you consider his dad pitched in the majors. McCullers throws as hard as anyone in this draft, but until this season had future reliever written all over him – he was even used as a reliever in high school. But this year he has started and has made some scouts change their minds as to his upside. His slider is almost as impressive as his fastball; despite being a two-pitch pitcher at this point, there are some who think he could make it as a starter, and potentially as an elite one. He’s more of a mid-round talent overall, but the Royals have been linked to him.

In a previous draft, selecting someone like McCullers would have been upsetting. But with the new rules in place, if the Royals take McCullers with the agreement that he’ll sign for, say, $2.5 million, then use that extra $1 million on later picks, that’s a perfectly acceptable use of their resources. If he is the pick, you have to assume the Royals think he can start. High risk, but potentially very high reward.

Marcus Stroman is a very interesting pitcher – a college pitcher out of Duke, he has fantastic stuff and fantastic results, both at Duke and for Team USA last summer. But he’s 5-foot-9, which has most teams projecting him as a reliever, albeit an impact guy along the lines of Tom Gordon, and someone who could be in the majors by September. Like McCullers, if the Royals are convinced he can start, and work out a deal, he could save them some money without compromising on talent. Unlike McCullers, he could also be as quick to the major leagues as anyone in this draft.

Who would I take? With the usual caveat that I Am Not A Scout, here’s how I’d line them up:

1) Carlos Correa. A 17-year-old shortstop who can hit? His career could develop in so many ways, almost all of them good.

2) Mark Appel. The combination of upside and relative safety is hard to resist.

3) Byron Buxton. Buxton and Starling would be the toolsiest outfield in the minor leagues.

4) Lucas Giolito. Unless the medicals are worse than we’re told, the potential for a #1 starter is worth the risk.

GAP

5) Mike Zunino. Not sexy, but safe, and two-way catchers are gold on the trade market.

6) Kevin Gausman. He won’t be an ace, but there’s nothing wrong with a #2 starter – if he gets there.

7) Albert Almora. Not sexy, but safe, and centerfielders with average or better tools across the board are gold on the trade market.

8) Kyle Zimmer. He won’t be an ace, but there’s nothing wrong with a #2 starter – if he gets there.

9) Max Fried. Apparently, the Royals still need left-handed pitching, and he could be a good one.

10) Marcus Stroman or Lance McCullers. If you believe either one can start, and can work out a favorable deal before the draft, this is a legitimate option.

Who do I think the Royals will take? Even the experts don’t have confidence in their pick, though they were leaning to Zimmer before the weekend. Kevin Goldstein had the Royals taking Zimmer Friday morning, then switched to Fried Friday night. Keith Law has Zimmer there, but also mentions Gausman, Fried, and even McCullers. Jim Callis at Baseball America has the Royals with Zimmer as well.

Of course, things may have changed over the weekend. I think all three guys will have an updated mock draft out sometime Monday, but I get the sense that Zimmer is hardly a lock. Here’s how I’d handicap it:

Kyle Zimmer: 24%

Kevin Gausman: 20%

Carlos Correa: 13%

Mike Zunino: 12%

Max Fried: 9%

Albert Almora: 7%

Lucas Giolito: 6%

Byron Buxton: 3%

Mark Appel: 1%

The Field: 5%

The only thing I’m certain of is that, when the draft begins at 6 PM CST, I’ll be riveted to every pick.

Time In.

Time to make the donuts…

Well, I guess I’m back. I was hoping to make a more dramatic reappearance, like after the Royals rattled off 12 wins in a row or clinched a playoff spot or hired me as their VP of Common Sense, but none of those things are likely to happen anytime soon. But in my absence, the Royals did their best impression of a competent major league franchise. Since bottoming out at 3-14 after their 12th loss in a row, they’ve won 19 of 33 games. They were 15-13 in May, their first winning record in that month since 2000. They’re 16-11 on the road, which quite remarkably is the fourth-best road record in all of baseball.

At 22-28 overall, they’re not great, or even good. But they’re not the laughingstock of baseball, and really, that’s all I was asking them to be. Narrative is shaped by chronology – if the Royals had, say, started the season 22-16 before losing 12 in a row, the story would have been about how the Royals looked like their youth movement was bearing fruit even faster than expected, how they could be the surprise contenders of 2012, before they flew too close to the sun and their wings melted.

The last time the Royals lost 12 in a row, all the way back in…[cries]…2008, they were 21-22 when they got off the plate in Boston on May 19th. Then Jon Lester no-hit them, and on the morning of May 31st they were 21-34. The Royals have a better record today than they did then, but the narrative is entirely different.

The narrative may be different, but narratives are simply stories we tell ourselves to make sense of what has happened. So the narrative I now choose to believe is this: that 12-game losing streak wasn’t representative of who the Royals are; that it was a fluky two weeks that just happened to occur at a time when we were still forming our opinions on the 2012 Royals.

Good teams don’t lose 12 games in a row, but mediocre teams do. It’s long been forgotten in Royals history, but in 1974, the Royals lost 15 of 16 games, and came within a whisker of losing 16 in a row – their one win in that stretch was a 1-0 victory against the Twins. (The Twins left fourteen men on base. The Royals stranded two.) It’s forgotten because when the streak began, the Royals were 69-60 and 4.5 games out of first place. They wound up 77-85, a disappointing record to be sure, but at least the fans were treated to a pennant race for four months first.

We got treated to a pennant race for about four days this year, but that doesn’t mean the Royals can’t aspire to mediocrity. So the narrative I see is that the Royals are essentially a .500 team, maybe a little worse, with a strange mix of a solid offense, a very good defense, a fantastic bullpen, and a joke of a rotation. And that the 12-game losing streak was the Royals finally hitting rock bottom one final time.

Of course, there’s no such thing as rock bottom. There’s no hole the Royals can’t dig a little deeper. No less an authority than Buddy Bell himself said, “I never say it can’t get worse.” But if, at some point, the Royals are going to contend…if they’re going to put together a mini-dynasty in the AL Central…it first has to start with them hitting rock bottom. Maybe it’s darkest before the dawn, but you’ll never know when things are at their darkest – only that it’s darker than it’s ever been before.

Some of you kids may refuse to believe this, but one of the many points of pride I had as a Royals fan well into adulthood was that the Royals had never finished in last place – I believe they were the only franchise that could make that claim. They were 69-93 and 65-97 their first two seasons, which were actually good enough for fourth place in the AL West each year.

They started the 1971 season 6-9; at that point the franchise was 140-199, 59 games under .500. That would be Death Valley for the Royals for over 30 years.

The Royals would rebound to finish the season 85-76, and they hugged .500 for the next three years. And then the fun began. On July 17th, 1976, the Royals ran their record to 55-32, moving the franchise to .500 overall at 606-606. The next day, they won again to move to one over .500, and they stayed over .500 as a franchise until the end of August. The Royals finished the season 12-22, which knocked them back under .500, but didn’t keep them from making the playoffs for the first time.

They were back at .500 after winning on the 4th of July, 1977. They wouldn’t fall under .500 again for a quarter-century. From August 17th until September 25th, the Royals went 35-4, making .500 a speck in their rear-view mirror. (The power of narrative again: no one remembers 35-4, but everyone remembers 35-5, because the 1984 Tigers began the season with that record.) By late 1980, the Royals were 100 games over .500 as a franchise.

On September 15th, 1982, the Royals won their fifth game in a row to move to 84-61, two games ahead of the Angels, who would steal the division away from them. They also moved to 1151-1032 as a franchise, a winning percentage of .5273. Not counting the first month of the 1969 season, that is the franchise’s peak in terms of winning percentage.

In terms of games over .500, we have to move to September 13th, 1989, when the Royals won to improve their record to 85-60, and their franchise record to 1739-1577, 162 games over .500.

While they would never reach quite that height again, the Royals treaded around .500 for the next five years. When the strike ended the 1994 season, the Royals were still 151 games over .500 as a whole.

It would take less than eight years to wipe out that balance. In 1996 the Royals lost 86 games and finished in last place for the first time in their history. They would finish last again in 1997, this time with 94 losses. In 1999 they tied their franchise record with 97 losses. They would tie the record again in 2001.

On June 20th, 2002, the Royals fell to 25-44, and the franchise was back to .500 overall, at 2638-2638. They would fall under .500 the next day. A hot stretch in July got them back over .500 temporarily, but on August 1st they would fall under .500 again, never to return. The Royals lost 100 games for the first time that season.

Still, in 2003 the Royals started 9-0 and 17-4, and I remember having an email discussion with Bob Dutton as to how close the Royals were to getting back over .500 as a franchise. (When they were 17-4, they were just four games under .500.) They regressed to an 83-79 finish, and then the bottom fell out.

Three consecutive 100-loss seasons has a way of destroying your franchise record. On May 11th, 2007, the Royals fell 163 games under .500 – the depth of the trench they had dug was now greater than the height of the greatest peak they had reached.

The pace at which the Royals are digging that hole may have slowed down some, but they’re still digging. They crossed 200 games under .500 in 2009, and 250 games under .500 early in 2011. On September 9th of last year, the Royals lost to the Mariners, 7-3, and fell to 271 games under. But they then won seven in a row, finished the year 265 games under .500, and I had a reasonable hope that one day, many years in the future, we might look back on that lifeless game in Seattle last September as the date when the Royals finally, at long lost, put their shovels down and started climbing instead.

And then they started this season 3-14 and gave me an aneurysm.

Right now, Rock Bottom was April 24th, 2012, when Mike Moustakas was inexplicable held at third base on Mitch Maier’s double with two outs in the eighth, and the Royals lost by one run in Cleveland. The Royals fell to 276 games under .500 as a franchise that day.

They’re at 271 games under as I write this. It’s exceedingly unlikely that the Royals will get back to sea level in my lifetime or yours. In order to get back to .500, the Royals would need to average 90 wins a season for the next fifteen years. If you want to get ambitious, they would only need to average 96 wins a season for the next nine years.

I’m neither expecting nor asking the Royals to reestablish themselves among the Winning Franchises in the major leagues, the way they were throughout my childhood and well into my adult life. But I would like to be able to say, years from now, that when the Royals lost 12 games in a row early in the 2012 season, when it looked like The Process was a fraud and even their most faithful fans lost faith – that it was at that moment when things were truly at their darkest. That it was at that moment when the Royals finally started groping towards the light.

I think there’s a chance I might be able to say that some day. The Royals are now 19-14 since losing 12 in a row, after Felipe Paulino started June off by pitching the way he did for all of May. The Royals have a fantastic opportunity to follow up their winning May with an even better June, because their schedule for the next four weeks is just delicious. Look at this breakdown:

Oakland (3 games)

Minnesota (6 games)

Pittsburgh (3 games)

Houston (3 games)

St. Louis (6 games)

Milwaukee (3 games)

Tampa Bay (3 games)

The Royals play three games all month against an AL club that has won even 44% of their games. The rest of the games feature:

- A team (Oakland) with a historically bad offense – the A’s came into Friday’s game with a .210 team batting average. Which went down after Paulino was finished with them.

- The worst team in the American League (Minnesota).

- Speaking of historically bad offenses…by scoring eight runs on Friday, the Pittsburgh Pirates have finally managed to average over three runs per game. They’ve scored 155 runs in 51 games, or 3.04 per. That would be the lowest-scoring offense by any team in at least 40 years.

- The Astros were the consensus pick before the season to be the worst team in baseball. They’re not, but they’re 22-30 and falling fast, having lost seven in a row. They have a starting outfield of J.D. Martinez, Jordan Schafer, and Brian Bogusevic. They play in the National League.

- The Cardinals, granted, have the best run differential in the NL, although they’re only 27-25. Still: National League. Even though the Royals went 5-13 against the NL last year and lost 2 of 3 to the Diamondbacks last month, they’re still the best evidence of just how much better the talent level is in the AL. Since the start of the 2005 season, the Royals are 64-65 against NL teams, with a +17 run differential. The 2005 and 2006 Royals both lost 100 games, and had a winning record over the NL over the two years. The gap may have closed a bit, but just a bit.

- The Brewers, who even after sweeping the Dodgers this week are still 23-29 and the sharks are circling around Shaun Marcum and Zack Greinke.

Meanwhile, the Royals think Salvador Perez might be back by the middle of the month. By the end of the month, once the Super Two deadline has likely passed, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised to see Wil Myers patrolling centerfield; if he’s not, Lorenzo Cain might be back by then. Between the schedule and the reinforcements on their way, everything is aligned for the Royals to go something like 17-10 this month.

If they go 17-10 this month, they’ll be at .500, and then things get really interesting.

Of course, if they lose their next six games, they’ll have struck Rock Bottom yet again. Nothing is certain with this franchise, and I’ve learned to prepare for the worst. But at least I’m not expecting the worst any more. That’s progress, and that’s why I’m back. I’m not going to make any promises that I’ll be writing often, but I’ll write when I can.

I’ve been writing about the Royals in a semi-regular capacity for nearly two decades. I wrote about the Royals on rec.sport.baseball in 1993. I wrote about them when we wrote the first Baseball Prospectus in 1996. I blogged about them with Rob Neyer in 1998. I started blogging about them here in 2008. And I’ve tried to write about them with the same passion all along, trying to ignore the reality that when I began, I was an 18-year-old in college with no responsibilites beyond myself, and now I’m nearly 37, with a 15-year-marriage, a mortgage, a practice, eight employees and four kids, and it’s time I finally get my priorities in order.

So I thank the Royals for giving me an excuse to get away. I never did turn on my Xbox, and I’m not even halfway through “The Hunger Games”. But I did catch up with the rest of my life. I’m going to try to do that more often going forward, and if this blog suffers, so be it. I’ll write when I can, but I reserve the right to step away for long periods of time without throwing a temper tantrum first.

And that’s it for today. I need to get you a draft preview by Monday morning. Blogging, she’s a demanding mistress.

Time Out.

“You love the Red Sox, but have they ever loved you back?”

The New York Yankees had a 10-game losing streak once. It was in 1913.

The Los Angeles Dodgers had a 10-game losing streak in 1992. That’s their only double-digit losing streak since they moved into Dodger Stadium – in 1962, 50 years ago.

The San Francisco Giants have had two 10-game losing streaks in the last 60 years – one in 1985, the other in 1996.

The Chicago White Sox – hardly a juggernaut franchise – have not lost 10 games in a row since 1976.

Hell, THE CHICAGO CUBS haven’t had a 10-game losing streak since they started the 1997 season 0-14.

The Kansas City Royals didn’t lose 10 games in a row in their first 17 years of existence. They didn’t lose even nine consecutive games until 1986, when they went on an 11-game losing streak. They started the 1992 season 0-9 after losing the last game of the 1991 season. They lost 11 in a row in 1997, a stretch during which Bob Boone got fired, ushering in the glorious Tony Muser Era in Kansas City.

That’s three double-digit losing streaks from 1969 through 2004, and one of them comes with an asterisk. Since 2005, the Royals have now lost 10 games in a row six times – six times in less than eight seasons.

The Royals lost 19 in a row in 2005, then endured 11 and 13 game losing streaks by the end of May 2006, which got Allard Baird axed in favor of Dayton Moore. Jon Lester’s no-hitter precipitated a 12-gamer in May of 2008, and a 10-game losing streak in July 2009 washed away whatever goodwill remained over the team’s 18-11 start.

Still, those were the expected growing pains that come with trying to rebuild a franchise from scratch. Even three years after Moore was hired, an extended losing streak was defensible.

This one isn’t.

Nearly six years after Dayton Moore was hired, in a year when the Royals were themselves so certain that they were going to take a step forward that they boldly unveiled the “OUR TIME” motto, the team has dumped a steaming pile of crap on the curb. Ten straight losses, and even worse, nine of them have come at home. The Royals have the worst record in baseball. Playoff dreams have been extinguished, and it’s still April.

And I’ll confess: I’m this close to losing it.

It’s one thing to play poorly. We’re used to that; you might say we’ve been inoculated against it. The losing streak shines a spotlight on the team’s incompetence, but the reality is that in 15 games, the Royals have been outscored by 21 runs. That’s not the worst run differential in baseball, and it’s not the run differential of a 3-12 team. The Royals should be 5-10 right now, which is to say they’ve played badly, but not so bad that you can’t chalk it up to a mediocre team being in a collective slump. I predicted the Royals to go .500, and .500 teams go 5-10 all the time. They even go 3-12 sometimes.

It’s not the losing streak that makes me want to snap. It’s that the Royals apparently have learned nothing from an entire generation of losing. For 25 years, the Royals have been the most anti-sabermetric team in all of baseball – while the Godfather of sabermetrics lived down the road in Lawrence – and over the last 25 years the Royals have the most losses in the major leagues.

And their current front office, like the front office before them and the front office before them, thinks that this is a coincidence. They keep arguing that the problem with the Royals is that they’re not doing the little things right. That may be true, but only because they’re not doing ANYTHING right. As Jazayerli’s Law of Fundamentals states:

A team’s ability to execute the “fundamentals” is inversely correlated to the time spent discussing the importance of executing them.

In the face of a losing streak that seems like it will never end, the Royals’ solution so far has been to double down on their kamikaze style of baserunning. Before yesterday’s game, the Royals already led the league in caught stealing. But none of those stolen base attempts were remotely as stupid as the one we witnessed yesterday.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Jason Bourgeois led off and reached base on an error by Brett Lawrie. This was a tremendous gift for the Royals, who were losing, 5-2, with six outs to go. Another baserunner would bring the tying run to the plate.

There were a lot of different ways the inning could have broken down from that point, but there was one thing that clearly wasn’t going to happen: the Royals were not going to attempt to steal. That would be ludicrous. Risk an out in order to get a runner in scoring position, when you’ve got the heart of your lineup coming up? When that runner doesn’t represent the tying run, or even the next-to-tying run? In the eighth inning? That would be madness. No one would be that stupid.

The Royals are that stupid.

Not only are the Royals that stupid, but the Blue Jays knew the Royals would be that stupid. Bourgeois wasn’t thrown out by the catcher – he was picked off by the pitcher, who threw to first base as Bourgeois lit out for second.

Not only did the Blue Jays know the Royals would be that stupid, they already told the Royals that we know you’re that stupid. With Alex Gordon at the plate and an 0-1 count, the Blue Jays pitched out. They pitched out with a three-run lead in the 8th inning, and the tying run on deck. They were so confident that the Royals would try an incomprehensively bad percentage move that they deliberately gave a ball to a patient hitter who, if he reached base, would bring the tying run to the plate, with Billy Butler and Eric Hosmer due next. After Gordon flied out, the Blue Jays were still so confident that Bourgeois would run that they threw to first – and nailed him trying to steal.

So this is what The Process has wrought, six years later. A 10-game losing streak. A team that’s so hell-bent on being “aggressive” on the basepaths and “making things happen” that even in a situation which every junior varsity player knows is a time to run conservatively, and EVEN AFTER THE OTHER TEAM SIGNALLED THAT WE KNOW YOU WANT TO RUN, they ran anyway. And got thrown out.

After the game, Ned Yost indicated that Bourgeois was not given the sign to steal, implicating Bourgeois for running on his own. That doesn’t make me feel much better. For one thing, in that situation it’s not enough to not order a stolen base attempt – you need to actively give the runner a red light. Secondly, THE BLUE JAYS HAD ALREADY PITCHED OUT – if that doesn’t remind you to make it clear to your runner to stay put, nothing will.

And finally, why was Bourgeois playing for the Royals? Because they had traded for him in spring training. They also traded for Humberto Quintero, who had his own brain lock in the top of the inning. With two outs and runners on first-and-third, J.P. Arencibia took off for second, trying to draw the throw to start the double steal – and Quintero threw to second base. Brett Lawrie then lit out from third base, and while Yuniesky Betancourt moved in front of the bag at second to cut off the throw, his throw was too late to get the runner at the plate, and the Blue Jays scored a cheap run.

I’ve seen the Royals try the double-steal dozens of times – when Bob Boone was the manager it seemed to happen every week – and I can probably count the number of times it worked on one hand. There’s a reason for that – most major league teams are skilled enough to defense the play. Usually they just hold the ball and concede second base, which is what Quintero should have done. The Blue Jays announcers were surprised that Quintero threw to second on the play. So there you go: the double steal can work. It just can’t work for the Royals, because in order for it to work, they’d have to be playing themselves.

Bourgeois and Quintero, by the way, cost the Royals a legitimate left-handed relief prospect in Kevin Chapman, and another prospect who has yet to be named, but is most likely either D’Andre Toney or Terrence Gore, both young outfielders with the tools to be interesting if they figure it all out someday.

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I’ve been writing this throughout the day, and I’m putting the finishing touches on this column tonight, after the Royals lost their 11th game in a row, their franchise-record 10th home loss in a row. And perhaps more than any other game in this streak, they lost tonight because their manager decided that the missing ingredient was a strategy that sabermetrics proved was a terrible idea 30 years ago.

It’s not simply that Ned Yost ordered the Royals to bunt. It’s not simply that he ordered them to bunt twice. It’s that HE ORDERED THEM TO BUNT THE RUNNER FROM SECOND TO THIRD. TWICE. In the third inning, Alcides Escobar led off with a double, and then Chris Getz – who was apparently tonight’s winner of “Leadoff Man Lotto” that they play in the clubhouse before every game – bunted Escobar to third base.

With the heart of the order coming up, Yost decided that it was worth giving up an out to move a runner 90 feet. You can’t even argue that he was trying to stay out of the double play. Yost had enough faith in Getz to put him in the leadoff spot – and then had so little faith in him that he ordered Getz to deliberately make an out just to move Escobar from one scoring position to another.

The Royals did not score.

In the fifth inning, Brayan Pena led off with a double, and this time Mitch Maier got the order. Perhaps Maier was being a conscientious objector, because the bunt didn’t work, as Pena was nailed at third base. Naturally, Escobar singled, moving Maier to third base with one out, which was the point of the bunt in the first place. And naturally, the Royals did not score again.

Both of these bunts came because the Royals were trying to score the go-ahead run in a tie game. In the top of the sixth, the Blue Jays showed them a more traditional method: Kelly Johnson walked, and Jose Bautista went boom-boom. And that was the ballgame.

You’d think the Royals might be aware of what power can do, given that their only run in the game came on an Eric Hosmer home run. Somehow, despite four doubles, four singles, and a walk in the game, the Royals did not score another run.

I don’t blame Ned Yost for the fact that the Royals were 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position. I absolutely blame Yost for once again thinking that the solution to an anemic offense is to order up the same tactic that has been hamstringing offenses for 100 years. There’s absolutely no way to justify bunting runners from second base to third, not that Lee Judge won’t try.

So now we’re at 11 losses and counting, the fifth 11-game losing streak in just over seven years. The other 29 teams in the majors have combined for 14 losing streaks of that length since 2005. The Cleveland Indians – THE CLEVELAND INDIANS, who were so bad for so long that they made the movie “Major League” about them – didn’t have an 11-game losing streak for over 70 years, from 1931 to 2009. The St. Louis Cardinals, our big brother down the street, lost 11 games in a row in 1978. That’s their only 11-game streak since at least World War I.

I can put up with the losing. I can put up with the delayed gratification, even if that delay now amounts to most of my lifetime. But I can’t put up with stupidity. I can’t put up with a team that has only one solution for every problem that develops: keep doing what we’re doing, only do it more. We keep getting thrown out on the bases? Just keep running, and eventually it will work. Making too many outs with runners in scoring position? Make them deliberately!

The other team walks more than our team does? Clearly the problem is with our pitchers, because whether a batter walks or not is completely up to the pitcher’s control, and never mind the fact that Bill James disproved that 35 years ago. God forbid we should encourage our hitters to be more patient at the plate. Yesterday Danny Duffy needed 113 pitches to face 24 batters; Ricky Romero needed only 104 to face 30. The Royals have drawn a below-average number of walks 22 years in a row, and not only is that unlikely to change in 2012, the Royals don’t even think that needs to change.

Anyway, I’m bitter and angry and probably incomprehensible at this point, so I’m going to take a time out. I’m tired of being a dupe. I’ve tried to blend realism and optimism since I started covering the Royals 16 years ago, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to argue that those two traits are reconcilable. Apparently, I was a sucker to suggest that the Royals might be a .500 team this year.

I’d like to think that when it comes to the other 29 teams in baseball, I know what the hell I’m talking about, even – or especially – when I take unpopular or unconventional positions. I’m proud of this column on the Phillies from last year. I’m proud of this column on the Nationals from last month. I’m wrong sometimes, but I’ll stack my track record up against almost anyone.

But when it comes to the Royals, I’ve been a raging buffoon for my entire career. A trained parrot – one that’s trained to squawk “ROYALS SUCK!” on command – would have done a far better job of predicting the team’s performance every season. (Except 2003. I’ll always have 2003. Even if that was one of the years I didn’t think they’d be any good.)

And now it’s 2012, one year after the Royals were acclaimed as having The Best Farm System Ever, the first year in ages that rational analysts (i.e. analysts other than myself) actually predicted the Royals to finish .500 or even above. And it’s clear now: no matter how far you think the Royals have come, no matter how fast you think they’re going, an 11-game losing streak is always trailing a step behind, ready to pounce like the demonic monkeys in Temple Run.

So I’m angry, but unlike back in 2009, I’m not really angry with the Royals. They are who they are. They’re trying to get better, even if they don’t really know how, and they might even figure it out one day. No, I’m angry with myself. I’ve spent literally thousands of hours writing about this team over the last four years, to say nothing about the time spent watching them, reading about them, thinking about them, perusing box scores of their complex league team…it’s not an exaggeration to say that the Royals have simply overwhelmed the free time in my life.

I’m not saying that there haven’t been benefits to this, if being arguably the world’s most famous Royals fan can be construed as a “benefit”. But the costs have been considerable. And with four children at home now, I’m thinking this would be a good time for me to take advantage of the Royals’ generous offer to take most of this summer off. Maybe read some good books. Maybe play Skyrim – or go back and play Oblivion, which I couldn’t find the time to play when it came out five years ago. Take my wife to the movies. Something.

I’m not dropping the mic; I’m just saying it will be healthier for me to be a little less hard-core about the Royals. I’ll still tweet about them and talk about them on the radio, and if they play respectable baseball for a few weeks I’m sure I’ll have something to blog about.

But if they continue to suck the life out of their fans, I’ll find something else to do with my time. Love is a two-way street, and when I’ve been reduced to starting a column by quoting Drew Barrymore in Fever Pitch, it’s time to take a breather.

This blog is something I’ve done purely out of my love for the team – I’ve deliberately kept this blog spartan and ad-free, because I never wanted this to feel like a job, like something I was obligated to do. But it has become one, in large part because I’ve been afraid to cut back on covering this team out of some misplaced fear that someone might question my credentials as a fan.

Well, screw that. I think I’ve earned lifetime credentials at this point, the same way the BBWAA lets guys vote for the Hall of Fame even after they’ve retired and haven’t watched a baseball game in 10 years. I don’t need to let the Royals consume my life in order to be a fan. So I’m going to dial it back a little.

I’m still rooting for them to win every night (at least until late September and draft position is on the line), and I hope they rip off a 20-10 stretch to get back to .500 and I go back to writing about them like nothing happened. I’m still optimistic that they will be contenders in 2013. Even in the wreckage of a 3-13 start, there are still things to be happy about:

- Mike Moustakas is hitting .286/.333/.518 and playing a genuinely above-average third base.

- Alcides Escobar is hitting .310 (!) and slugging .483 (!!)

- Danny Duffy really could be legit. His fastball has averaged 95.0 mph this season. The only starting pitcher in the majors who’s thrown harder? Stephen Strasburg. The radar gun at the K may be juiced, but that would affect his reading by no more than 1 mph. The only other starter who’s averaging more than 94.0 mph this year is Jeff Samardzija.

- Felipe Paulino can’t be blamed for this mess at all. A month ago the Royals looked ready to bury him in the bullpen; at this point, once he’s ready to go they’ll greet him in the rotation with open arms.

- The longer Bruce Chen continues to finesse his way past opposing batters, the more you have to consider the possibility that he’s the new Jamie Moyer. Not in the sense that he’ll still be pitching 15 years from now, but simply in the sense that he can make up for throwing 87 mph by being left-handed, changing speeds and arm angles on every pitch, etc. Chen is 34; when Moyer was 34 he came into his own as a starter for the Mariners, beginning a seven-year stretch when he averaged 209 innings with a 3.75 ERA in the heart of the Juiced Era. Chen won’t be that good, but he might just be good enough to justify his contract.

- Eric Hosmer’s numbers bear no resemblance whatsoever to the charge he’s putting into balls at the plate.

- Luis Mendoza can’t hurt us much longer.

Yes, even now, even after this, I still can find reason to be optimistic. I simply can no longer justify being obsessive. Not right now. I’ve got too much going right for me in life to let the Royals bring me down anymore. When they’re ready to lift me up, I’ll be here waiting for them.