The 2012 Royals And The Illusion of Chemistry.

This may sound incredibly funny in retrospect, but when I was in Arizona to watch the Royals during spring training, the article I wanted to write was about whether the Royals would outperform expectations because of their fantastic chemistry.

Hold your laughter for a moment. As ridiculous as that might sound today, it was essentially accepted as fact then that, in addition to having a roster chock-full of young talent, the Royals had assembled a team full of good personalities. Let’s just take a look at the projected lineup. Keep in mind this is the impression I had of each of these players back in early March, an impression informed by people around the team as well as my own observations:

Catcher: Salvador Perez is one of the most popular players in any clubhouse he’s been in. Pitchers love to throw to him. He has an infectious personality that transcends the language barrier.

First Base: Eric Hosmer is a popular guy, but more germanely to a guy who was thought to be the Royals’ best young player, he has the swagger of being the alpha male in the clubhouse. He was the straw that stirred the Royals’ drink, minus Reggie Jackson’s narcissism and divisiveness. Basically, he was The Man.

Second Base: Johnny Giavotella has tremendous makeup, the kind of grinding mentality that got him named captain of his college team as a sophomore, and turned a 5’8” 185-pounder into a major leaguer.

Shortstop: Perhaps it’s because he’s from Latin America, or perhaps it’s because he came up in a different organization, but I don’t have a feel for Alcides Escobar’s clubhouse presence one way or another. I certainly haven’t heard anything bad about it. For lack of better information, we’ll say he’s neutral.

Third Base: We heard nearly as much about Mike Moustakas’ leadership skills in the minor leagues as we did about his bat. His leadership is more vocal than some of the other guys on this list – whether it’s talking to the media or to his teammates. Obviously, the way he’s made himself into an excellent defense third baseman this year is testament to his work ethic.

A quick story about Moustakas – I was in the clubhouse after a game last year and there was a scrum of reporters around Moustakas, who was lounging in his chair taking questions. Moustakas suddenly noticed a TV crew had showed up and was pointing the camera at his face, and he said, “oh, sorry,” and immediately stood up so the camera could get a better view.

Now, you could take this as a story that Moustakas was image-conscious and wanted to look as good as possible in front of the camera – but that’s not how it looked to me at all. Maybe Moose is just a fabulous actor, but in that moment before he stood up he looked genuinely apologetic. He was, for lack of a better term, trying to be considerate. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal. But I’m guessing Jose Guillen wouldn’t have done the same thing.

Left Field: Alex Gordon’s leadership is very different than Moustakas’ – much more measured and much less vocal. But when it comes to leadership by example, he might be unmatched. Gordon works his ass off – works out like an animal, adheres to a diet that would make you and I cry – and turned himself into a Gold Glove left fielder in his first full year at the position. If anything, what held Gordon back early in his career was that he tried too hard.

Center Field: When the Royals acquired Lorenzo Cain in the Greinke deal, I heard as many comments from insiders about the Painkiller’s personality as his talents. “He’s a GREAT dude,” I heard. You never heard him pout or complain once when he went back to Triple-A last year and spent the whole season there while Melky Cabrera put up a 200-hit season.

Right Field: Helloooo – it’s Jeff Francoeur.

Designated Hitter: Billy Butler is who he is – a simple man with a freakish ability to hit a baseball. He doesn’t have the clubhouse presence of some of the guys above, and early in his career he was an easy mark in the clubhouse for some of the more malignant personalities on the team. But you won’t find anyone who has anything bad to say about Butler.

It’s not just the starting lineup – even the bench players were great in the clubhouse. Brayan Pena is a fantastic guy, a Cuban defector who’s as proud of his American citizenship as any accomplishment on the field, a bilingual chatterbox who helps bridge the gap between Americans and Hispanics. Mitch Maier started twice a month last year without complaint, and was always prepared to come off the bench to pinch-hit or pinch-run or play defense for an inning. Jarrod Dyson runs his mouth as much as his legs, but in a way that’s more endearing to his teammates than annoying.

And then, of course, there’s Yuniesky Betancourt. I was obviously predisposed to thinking he was the fly in the ointment, and there were multiple incidents with Yuni’s lack of effort that precipitated his departure from Seattle. But when I asked around at spring training, I was told that at least in his time with the Royals, Yuni was considered a likeable teammate, and in fact was looked up to by the younger Hispanic players on the team. We’ll get back to him later.

Of 13 hitters on the roster, at least nine had what scouts would call plus makeup, if not plus-plus. Yuni aside, no one was expected to be a negative in the clubhouse.

Moreover, many of these guys came up together in the farm system, and had played together for years. Perez was the first player Hosmer met when he signed and headed to Idaho Falls in 2008. Hosmer, Moustakas, and Giavotella were all big contributors to the 2010 Northwest Arkansas team that was named Baseball America’s Minor League Team of the Year.

The Royals’ front office hadn’t just put together one of the most talented young lineups in the game. They had, whether by luck or by design, put together a roster of position players that was completely bereft of character issues.

For whatever reason, I have much less of a handle on the pitching staff. But the Royals clearly had their share of chemistry guys there too. Bruce Chen was re-signed to be the Jeff Francoeur of the rotation, basically. He obviously has a great sense of humor – they aren’t running the “Bruce Chen Joke of the Day” on the jumbotron for nothing – and he’s bilingual. In fact, I was told during spring training that Chen is the rare pitcher who serves as a liaison between the English and Spanish speakers on the team. That’s a pretty rare role for a starting pitcher, though I suppose it’s not as rare as being a Chinese-Panamanian in the major leagues.

Danny Duffy is my favorite Twitter follow on the roster; granted, the competition isn’t steep. Both on Twitter and in personal interactions, he comes across as a caring and sensitive kid, which gives fuel to the rumors that he briefly walked away from the game at least in part because he didn’t feel comfortable with the ultra-jock culture of the minor leagues. Luke Hochevar may be an enigma on the mound, but off the field he comes across as thoughtful and articulate.

The only warning flag that we saw in spring training was that even then, Jonathan Sanchez gave off the body language of someone who would rather be somewhere – anywhere – else. That’s what we in the business call foreshadowing.

Relievers have their own culture, owing to the hours they spend together in the bullpen every day, and I can only speculate as to the personalities there. Joakim Soria is a gem. Tim Collins has attitude; he didn’t get to the majors as a 5’6” pitcher by being timid. Everett Teaford is very intelligent, and owing to the fact that he was a late bloomer and is already 28*, was a mentor for many of the relievers when they were in the minors together. Louis Coleman went back for his senior season at LSU to win a championship, and was rewarded by being on the mound when they won the College World Series. With one exception, which we’ll get to later, the bullpen seemed to be a bunch of good guys. I don’t think this picture sees the light of day if they weren’t.

*: Teaford is one month older than Jonathan Broxton. Yeah, I was surprised too.

Look, I can only give you the perspective of an informed outsider, and I’m sure my impressions on a few specific players are dead wrong. But taken as a whole, there’s no doubt that going into the season, the clubhouse culture of the Royals was strongly positive. I ran that assessment by a lot of people around the Royals in spring training, and everyone agreed with it.

And so my thinking was this: if chemistry matters, the 2012 Royals would surprise a lot of people.

Chemistry is one of the persistent flashpoints (along with things like “clutch” and “momentum” and “closer’s mentality”) between baseball insiders and statistical analysts. Insiders will tell you that chemistry matters. They’ll tell you that chemistry can help a team play beyond its talent, and vice versa. And whenever a team plays surprisingly well (or surprisingly poorly) someone will drop the C-bomb as an explanation.

The 2007 Colorado Rockies come back from 6.5 games behind on September 15th, and win 22 of their next 23 games (including a 13th-inning tiebreaker with the Padres) to win the NL pennant? Great chemistry. The White Sox won the World Series in 2005 when no one thought they had a chance? Great chemistry. Never mind that the Rockies were under .500 the following year, or that the White Sox were under .500 two years later.

As for the opposite…just look at everything that’s been written about the Red Sox over the last 11 months.

The problem with these explanations are that they are always – almost literally always – ex post facto. They are explanations after the fact. The people who make these arguments have the luxury of knowing which teams have played better or worse than expected before they bestow capital-C Chemistry on them. Which is disingenuous at best and fraudulent at worst. If Chemistry matters, then you should be able to tell me BEFORE THE SEASON which teams will surprise us because of the mix of personalities in their clubhouse.

To be more precise, you should be able to tell me ACCURATELY which teams will surprise. Before the season, you’ll hear pundits talk about chemistry – if you watch team-by-team pre-season previous, you would be led to the inescapable conclusion that 90% of teams have above-average chemistry. And then once the season starts, those proclamations are forgotten.

And that’s the argument us statistical analysts have against the importance of chemistry: the people who argue most vociferously about its importance are the same people who can’t use it to predict which teams will benefit from it. Good chemistry doesn’t lead to winning, we argue: winning leads to good chemistry. The people who talk about the importance of chemistry weren’t the ones who predicted the Phillies would fall apart this year, or that the Nationals would be playoff-bound. We were the ones who did that, and we didn’t make those predictions based on whether guys in the clubhouse got along – we said the Phillies would decline because they’re older than dirt, and the Nationals would break out because they had a fantastic rotation and the most underrated manager of the last 30 years.

But having said all that…I was willing to entertain the notion that chemistry might make a difference. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But if it does make a difference, you have to point it out before the fact.

And IF there was a situation where chemistry would matter AND be discernable beforehand, I thought it would be on a young, promising team that was still widely thought to be a year or two away from making its mark. I thought it would be on a team like the 2012 Kansas City Royals, in other words.

I ultimately decided not to write the article, largely because I felt that to do the article justice would require skills that were more journalistic than analytic. Getting revealing quotes from players and coaches isn’t my core competency, and the article wouldn’t have been taken very seriously without them.

Obviously, I’m glad I decided not to write it, because I’d look like even more of an idiot than I usually do. But part of me wishes I had, because it’s harder to convince people now that the Royals had good chemistry before the season, simply because of their record on the field.

If you believe in the Chemistry argument, you can certainly make the case that the Royals’ chemistry was hurt by personnel changes, albeit some of them self-inflicted. Giavotella’s job was given to Chris Getz. (On the other hand, Getz is also a hard worker and a good chemistry guy in his own right.) Salvador Perez got hurt, and was replaced by Humberto Quintero, a big dropoff in terms of personality as well as talent. Lorenzo Cain missed most of the first half of the season. Danny Duffy blew out his elbow.

But the core players have been there all season. If Chemistry really matters, you would expect an offense that was 6th in the AL in runs scored last year and was the youngest offense in baseball to take a step forward this year. You would at least expect that they wouldn’t take a step backwards.

They didn’t take a step backwards; in the spirit of the Olympics, they took more of a triple jump. The Royals are 11th in the AL in runs scored. They’re 49-65, the exact same record they had after 114 games last year. They’re tied for the worst record in the league. And keep in mind, since Perez and Cain returned to the lineup and the Royals finally put their projected lineup on the field after the All-Star Break, they have a worse winning percentage (.400) than they did (.440) before.

All the positive vibes in the clubhouse haven’t kept Eric Hosmer from a nightmare season. It’s August 13th, and our star first baseman has a .299 OBP. It hasn’t kept Jeff Francoeur from returning to his previous haunts as one of the least valuable position players in baseball. Strong relationships between the hitters haven’t kept the offense from being dysfunctional – the Royals rank 11th in runs scored despite being 9th in OBP and 8th in slugging average. Good chemistry hasn’t kept the rotation from qualifying for emergency federal relief funds. Jonathan Sanchez may or may not have been a bad guy in the clubhouse – but what hurt the Royals wasn’t his clubhouse presence, it was the fact that he had a 7.76 ERA and gave up over two baserunners an inning.

And when it turned out that chemistry couldn’t save the 2012 Royals, a funny – but predictable – thing happened: all the losing started to turn the chemistry sour. First base coach Doug Sisson was fired, for reasons that the team won’t divulge, but given that Rusty Kuntz was summoned from Omaha with such haste that he didn’t even know who he was replacing until he arrived, I’m guessing a specific incident occurred. The next day, the Royals designated Yuniesky Betancourt for assignment. And while I was busy saying Hallelujah that the Royals finally recognized Yuni’s .256 OBP and embarrassing defensive skills were not worth employing, Ned Yost made it clear that other factors triggered the move:

“We have been living in a losing culture here for many, man years,” Yost said. “We cannot get over the hump. In order for us to get over the hump, we have to have 25 guys that are solely invested in one goal, and that’s turning this organization around to become a champion. That’s it. It’s not about, ‘How much do I play?’ It’s not about, ‘Do I have a job?’

“This is about 25 guys with one goal: That we’re going out to try to win this baseball game tonight, and you have that goal night in, night out. Anybody else that’s not on page with that, we will never change our culture. It’s about 25 guys who respect each other, 25 guys that have the same common goal. That’s how we’re going to turn this losing culture into a winning culture.

“And Yuni did a great job for us, but he was a guy that wanted more playing time. He would get upset when he didn’t, but (Chris) Getz was playing good. There were just situations. We’re trying to win the ballgame, and we’re going to put the best team on the field every day.”

It’s hard to know where to begin with this. As I wrote about here when Yuni signed, I was at least as concerned by how he would adapt to being a part-time player as by how well he would play. This paragraph summed up my post:

So as strange as this is to say, I don’t object to the Betancourt signing in terms of his talents as a player. I object to the signing because I think he’s a poor fit with the rest of the roster, I think he’s being paid too much, which will incentivize the Royals to play him more than he should, and I think that there’s a very real chance he will have trouble adjusting to his sudden loss in playing time. Bringing back Yuni was a bad idea.

If I had concerns that Yuni would adjust to being a part-time player, don’t you think the Royals’ front office should have? Well, as Sam Mellinger tweeted when Yuni was let go, maybe they did:

Had this convo w/ a #Royals exec before the season: Me: You told Yuni he'd be a backup, right? Exec: Yes, but I don't know if he believes it

That’s really a phenomenal statement. The Royals KNEW that there was a chance Yuni would upset their carefully-crafted clubhouse culture. They knew that BECAUSE THEY HAD ALREADY EMPLOYED HIM BEFORE. And THEY SIGNED HIM ANYWAY. Never mind that he can’t play defense and can’t get on base – they gave two million dollars to a player to accept a role that they themselves weren’t sure he would adjust to.

For those of you who want to argue that us bloggers can’t possibly make better decisions than a major-league front office – I dare you to defend this. Try. I need a good laugh right now.

Anyway, I don’t think that Yuni single-handedly destroyed the Royals chemistry in the first half of the season, because he was playing almost every day. He missed 27 games on the disabled list in May, but in the 57 games that he was on the active roster before the All-Star Break, he played in 44 of them. After the Break, when it was clear that the Royals weren’t going anywhere and Getz was healthy, Yuni played in just 13 of 23 games before he was cut.

And finally, at the same time the Royals were firing Sisson they put Jose Mijares on waivers – and when the Giants claimed him, they let him go without asking for so much as a nothing prospect in return.

The Royals have suggested that they did this because even though Mijares wasn’t making much money this year, he was likely to earn a couple million in arbitration this winter, and they weren’t going to pay him that kind of money. To be polite, I find that argument ridiculous. Mijares is making all of $925,000 this year, so counting the salary given to his replacement on the roster, letting him go saves the Royals $200,000, max.

Even if the Royals couldn’t trade Mijares this winter – and you figured there’d be a market for a left-handed reliever with his numbers this year – keeping him around for two months is worth a lot more than $200,000. Letting go of a player who is both playing well AND is dirt-cheap, simply because you think he is going to become more expensive in the future, would be a move almost without precedent in baseball history.

No, this was a move to lance the last clubhouse abscess. Mijares does not get stellar marks for comportment – I asked around – and it’s telling that he was claimed by the Giants, meaning every AL contender and at least a few NL contenders passed on him despite his salary.

Even if he is a pain the ass to deal with, the Giants claimed him because they’re in a pennant race, and you’ll put up with a pitcher like that if he gets outs for you. If the Royals were in a pennant race, Mijares would still be here. If you want proof, read this article, which was published literally one week before Mijares was let go.

If the Royals were in a pennant race, Betancourt would probably still be on the team, and Sisson would probably still be the first base coach, and we wouldn’t be hearing a peep about the team’s chemistry issues. Winning begets chemistry, not the other way around, and losing begets bad chemistry. Or at least losing brings bad chemistry out into the open.

I’m trying to still keep an open mind about the importance of chemistry. Maybe it’s true that while good chemistry doesn’t guarantee winning, that bad chemistry is enough to derail it. (Although the counterargument to that has been, and always will be, the 1972-1974 Oakland A’s, who won three straight World Series with a roster that was a hair-trigger away from a clubhouse brawl every night.) Maybe Betancourt and Mijares, by themselves, made the clubhouse miserable enough to counteract all the good done by the other 23 guys.

Or maybe – just maybe – chemistry really doesn’t matter all that much. Maybe what really matters is talent. Maybe employing fantastic human beings like Jeff Francoeur and Bruce Chen makes great sense when Francoeur has 71 extra-base hits, and Chen leads the rotation in wins and ERA – and it makes terrible sense when Francoeur is batting .244/.285/.382, and Chen has the second-worst ERA (5.56) of any AL qualifier.

Maybe giving two-year deals to veteran players with a spotty track record of performance, largely because of their winning personalities, leads to the predicament the Royals are in right now, where they owe $12 million next season to two players who, if they weren’t already under contract, would be lucky to get more than an invite to spring training.

I’m not saying that the Royals made moronic decisions by re-signing them. (Well, except for Yuni. That’s a given.) I had reservations about both Francoeur and Chen, but I didn’t protest too much, in part because I was genuinely curious as to whether having a pair of hard-working, gregarious veteran leaders in the clubhouse would make it more likely that an extremely talented but extremely inexperienced roster would go off.

It didn’t. All it did was saddle the Royals with a pair of expensive paperweights. If the 2012 Royals were an experiment in Chemistry, consider the experiment a failure. That won’t stop former major leaguers sitting behind a desk on television from crediting the C-word for every good team in baseball. There’s no cure for that, unfortunately. But next time, at least you’ll know better than to believe them. I know I will.

The Broxton Trade.

Five years ago, the Royals traded free-agent-to-be Octavio Dotel at the trading deadline. In return, they received Kyle Davies.

Two years ago, the Pirates traded free-agent-to-be Octavio Dotel at the trading deadline. In return, they received James McDonald.

In those two transactions, we can see the agony and the ecstacy of trading a relief rental. If you’re really lucky (and shrewd), you trade Dotel for McDonald (and Andrew Lambo), immediately put McDonald in your rotation, and he gives you a 3.52 ERA in 11 starts the rest of the season. McDonald hasn’t left the Pirates rotation since; after a solid 2011 (4.21 ERA but just 171 innings in 31 starts), he’s taken a step forward this year, with a 3.38 ERA in 131 innings so far, one of the biggest reasons why the Pirates are still in the playoff race. McDonald isn’t even arbitration-eligible yet; he won’t be a free agent until after the 2015 season.

If you’re not lucky, you trade Dotel for a minor leaguer who never reaches the major leagues.

If you’re really unlucky (or just a poor judge of talent), you trade Dotel for Davies, a pitcher who looks good enough to pitch in the majors – and pitches just barely good enough to keep his job for four years. Davies made 99 starts with the Royals, with a  5.34 ERA, and that constitutes the good part of his career. He was actually worth 1.6 bWAR during his time with the Royals, so he was nominally better than a replacement-level pitcher – but given the millions spent on him, the roster spot he occupied, and the opportunities he was granted, you could argue that the Royals would have been better off trading Dotel for shares in Lehman Brothers.

If you want to blast the Royals for their ineffectual trade history at the deadline, you can start here – my friend Soren Petro certainly has. The Pirates traded the exact same player, only two years older, and got a pitcher who was willing to step into their rotation immediately and become a mid-rotation starter in time. The Royals got Kyle Davies.

But to me, lamenting the relatively poor return that the Royals got relative to the Pirates misses the bigger point, which is that it’s crazy that two months of a set-up man should bring back a pitcher with any shot of turning into James McDonald. I mean, Dotel threw a total of 19 innings for the Dodgers, with a 3.38 ERA. His impact was clearly minimal, because the Dodgers fell so far out of the race that they traded Dotel again, in mid-September, to the Rockies (for a non-prospect named Anthony Jackson). And the Dodgers got more value out of Dotel than the Braves did – Dotel threw eight innings for them before he hurt his arm and missed the rest of the season. The Royals may have lost that trade, but the Braves certainly didn’t win it.

Twenty-two years after the Red Sox traded Larry Andersen for Jeff Bagwell, teams certainly have a better handle on the value, or lack thereof, in one or two months of a relief pitcher. But I’d argue that relievers are still overpriced on the trade market. James McDonald proves that, and if he doesn’t, then Josh Reddick does, or Jed Lowrie, or…

So it is in that context that we have to evaluate the Jonathan Broxton trade. The most important thing you need to know is simply that he was traded. The Royals got something for a relief pitcher who might throw 20 innings between now and free agency, a reliever whose strikeout rate is less than half what it was three years ago, a reliever who had allowed a .400 OBP to the first batter he faced, but had weaved his way out of enough jams to fashion a 2.27 ERA at the time of the trade. That the Royals were able to convince another team that Broxton was worth giving up prospects is testament to a lingering market inefficiency: relievers are overvalued. Credit Dayton Moore for exploiting it, even if it was an obvious move to make.

Last week I gave Moore a lot of flak for trying to target a “major-league-ready” starting pitcher, given that the kind of major-league-ready arm he was likely to get for Jonathan Broxton was going to be in the Sean O’Sullivan/Vinny Mazzaro class. To his credit, Moore clearly set his standards higher than that. The arm that the Royals apparently targeted was Justin Grimm, a very good arm that gets overlooked in the stacked Rangers farm system. Grimm combines #3 starter upside with being very close to the majors – he actually made a couple starts for the Rangers earlier this year, and while he allowed 12 runs in 10 innings, he also struck out 10 batters against just three walks. Grimm has a 1.96 ERA between Double-A and Triple-A this year, with 84 strikeouts and 22 walks in 101 innings, and trading Broxton for him would have been a coup. If there was a Jason McDonald to be had, Grimm was probably the guy.

The Rangers were only looking for a reliever because acquiring one would have allowed them to move Alexi Ogando back into the rotation, as starting pitching was their true need. In the end, once the Cubs couldn’t work out a deal for Ryan Dempster with the Dodgers, the Rangers elected to eliminate the middleman and trade for a starter directly. But the Rangers were clearly interested in Broxton, and I’m guessing at least one other team (probably the Giants) were too, which gave Moore the leverage to work the Reds over for some real talent.

The choice of trading partner matters; some teams have a history of overpaying at the deadline, and you’d certainly like to do business with those teams if you can. It’s not a coincidence that the Royals got Kyle Davies from the Braves, who over the past 20 years have done a very good job of identifying which prospects they should keep and which they should trade away. Meanwhile, the Pirates traded with the Dodgers and Ned Colletti, the man who once gave up Casey Blake for Carlos Santana.

Colletti and Brian Sabean are sort of the Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne of GMs. They’ve had a reasonable amount of success – particularly Sabean, who has run the show in San Francisco for 15 (!) years, and has two NL pennants and a world championship to his name – but I’m still convinced they rank close to the bottom among all the general managers in baseball. Certainly they’re among the most generous GMs at the trade deadline, which is why – for all the crap I’ve given him – I have to give Ruben Amaro credit for making deadline deals with both of them, getting a good return on Hunter Pence and an excellent one on Shane Victorino.

The Reds are somewhere in between the Braves and the Dodgers. On the one hand, Walt Jocketty was a master of the trade deadline acquisition during his time with the Cardinals; on the other, Dusty Baker loooooves his veterans, and I imagine must have pushed his bosses hard to get him another proven arm for his bullpen. Which is curious, given that the Reds already had a deep bullpen, while their leadoff hitters this year have combined to hit .199 with a .244 OBP. Anyway, Baker couldn’t care less what I think; the Reds are in first place and have won 21 of their last 24 games.

The dynamics of the Reds’ front office are such that I certainly think it’s possible that they would overpay for a proven veteran, which is important, because when you look at the return the Royals got, it’s so good that it almost makes you wonder if the Reds know something we don’t. They might – but the evidence suggests they just really wanted to add a reliever, and got enticed into a bidding war.

In return, the Royals got J.C. Sulbaran, who as you might have heard was Eric Hosmer’s teammate at American Heritage High School, which won the Florida state championship in their senior year. Sulbaran was a 30th-round pick, but dropped because of signability; he got $500,000 to sign. He skipped short-season ball entirely, impressive for a high school draftee, but has moved very deliberately through the Reds system since; he made it to Double-A this year, and in 19 starts had thrown 105 innings, struck out 111 batters, but allowed 54 walks and 17 home runs.

The first thing that stands out about Sulbaran is that he misses bats – working as a starter his entire career, he has managed to strike out more than a batter an inning every year of his career. The second thing that stands out is that despite his ability to miss bats, he hasn’t been all that effective at missing runs – a career 4.68 ERA, although it’s improved every year of his career (down to 4.04 this season).

Sulbaran was ranked by Baseball America as the Reds’ #12 prospect coming into the season, which isn’t shabby – this was before the Mat Latos trade, and the Reds system was pretty deep. (Todd Frazier, who might be the best rookie in the NL this year, was #9 on the list.) Sulbaran’s fastball ticked up in 2011, sitting in the low 90s and occasionally higher, and his curveball was ranked as the best in the Reds’ minor leagues. The biggest issue for him, bigger than his difficulty in developing a consistent changeup, was consistency on the mound. Some days he looked like a future #3 starter; some days he looked like a future insurance broker. There have been accusations of poor focus on the mound.

From the Royals’ perspective, that lack of consistency makes him more appealing than a strike-thrower who gets the most out of his stuff but might top out as a back-end starter. Sulbaran is a lottery ticket, but if he pays off, he could be a mid-rotation guy. He’s not ready for the majors, but he’s not that far away – he’s made the biggest jump in the minors, from A-ball to Double-A, and hasn’t missed a beat. If the Royals smooth out his mechanics a bit and if he shows improved maturity, he could be ready for the majors by this time next year.

As a prospect, he’s clearly behind the Zimmer/Odorizzi/Ventura class, and probably behind John Lamb and Jason Adam as well. But he’s right there with Mike Montgomery and Chris Dwyer. That might be damning with faint praise, given how lost in the weeds those two are, but Sulbaran is clearly someone to keep an eye on. If things click, he’s an average starting pitcher in the major leagues. For Jonathan Broxton? Yes, please.

Only it turns out Sulbaran wasn’t the only prospect the Royals received. He wasn’t even the best prospect the Royals received. When the details of the trade leaked out on Twitter and Sulbaran’s name was divulged, I was satisfied with the trade – not thrilled, but it was a fair return. And then rumors came out that there was a second piece. And then it was reported that the second piece was Donnie Joseph.

Which meant that Sulbaran was really the second piece. Joseph was a third-round pick out of college in 2009, drafted as a left-handed reliever with closer potential. He has dominated at times in the minors; in his first full season in 2010, he struck out 103 batters in 65 innings and jumped from low-A ball to Double-A. But 2011 was a nightmare; he posted a 6.94 ERA in Double-A, allowing 67 hits and 30 walks in 58 innings. That dropped him from #13 to #27 in the Reds’ system per Baseball America.

Joseph throws in the mid-90s, and his slider is unhittable when he’s on, but he’s been hampered by a combination of iffy command and inconsistent mechanics. But this season, he’s cleaned up both of them, and it shows: just 17 walks in 52 innings, with a 1.72 ERA and 68 strikeouts between Double-A and Triple-A. As Kevin Goldstein said at the time of the trade, “I’m not sure Joseph isn’t a better pitcher than Broxton right now.”

Joseph’s already in Triple-A – he debuted for the Storm Chasers last night – and is a good candidate to get called up in September (since he’ll have to be added to the 40-man roster or be exposed to the Rule 5 draft anyway). While Sulbaran has a higher upside – because a #3 starter is more valuable than all but the most dominant closers – Joseph is a much safer bet, and will probably be a part of the Royals’ bullpen next year.

Joseph, in fact, reminds me of a slightly discounted version of Tim Collins. Compare their minor league careers:

Collins: 223 IP, 141 H, 11 HR, 94 UIBB, 329 K

Joseph: 208 IP, 164 H, 11 HR, 79 UIBB, 279 K

Joseph can’t match Collins’ absurd strikeout rate – few pitchers can. But he also has slightly better command, even including his awful 2011 season. Collins is two years younger and is in his second major-league season; on the other hand, Joseph is 6’3”.

Actually, there is one big difference between them: while Collins relies on a very good curveball and changeup, Joseph’s out pitch is his slider. This is relevant because curveballs and changeups are more effective on opposite-side hitters, and in fact Collins has been significantly more effective against right-handed batters than left-handed batters in his career. But sliders are murder to same-side hitters, and at the time of the trade, left-handed batters were 7-for-54 against Joseph this season.

Which makes Joseph the perfect complement to Collins, and means that the job he ought to be taking in the Royals’ bullpen is the one that belongs to Jose Mijares. Joseph not only becomes the Royals’ best left-handed relief prospect, he gives the team the flexibility to move Mijares this winter. Mijares is under contract through 2014, and should have significant value, whether on his own or as part of the package to bring in an established starting pitcher.

Either pitcher would have been a good return for Broxton. Asking for both of them would just be greedy. Dayton Moore was greedy, and with multiple teams looking for relief help, and with Huston Street off the market, he had the leverage to be greedy. Greed, in this case, is good.

I don’t know if I’d call this a great trade, simply because I’m not sure it was momentous enough to be a great trade. But it was certainly a great return. The Royals turned a $5 bill into a pair of stocks that are each worth $10. It’s hard to imagine how Moore could have done better without getting Ned Colletti involved.

So it was a good trading deadline for the Royals. It wasn’t a great deadline, because Broxton was the only player they moved. Admittedly, I would have been beyond astonished if Francoeur had been dealt. And while I was hoping for a Jose Mijares trade, it appears that the teams looking for bullpen help were focused on right-handed relievers. No left-handed reliever was traded to a contender* at the deadline; the Dodgers got Randy Choate from the Marlins, but he was the fringe benefit in the Hanley Ramirez trade.

*: The Red Sox traded for Craig Breslow, but I’m not certain the Red Sox are a contender, and I’m quite certain that I have no idea what the Red Sox are doing anymore.

My only real disappointment stems from the fact that Yuniesky Betancourt, the bane of my existence, is still a Royal. I had hoped that his contract status – he’s owed about $800,000 and is a free agent in two months – would make him a favorable target for a team in need of a utility infielder type. But the Giants traded for Marco Scutaro, the Nationals elected to hold pat, and we’re stuck with Yuni and his .260 OBP through the end of the season. Meanwhile, Johnny Giavotella continues to rake in Triple-A, and continues to get one day older with each passing day.

So it wasn’t a perfect trade deadline. But it could have been much worse, and honestly, it couldn’t have been a whole lot better. It was just one day in a nightmarish season. But it was a good day.

Royals Today: Trade Deadline Edition.

I’ll be frank with you: I’ve pretty much checked out of 2012. Not in a temper tantrum sort of way, but just in the sense that there’s no joy in continuing to keep tabs on the Royals in what might be their most disappointing season of the century. Yeah, 2009 was disappointing after their 18-11 start, but based on my expectations before the season, it wasn’t nearly that disappointing. It’s just sad that the Royals found a way to waste the most valuable season by a pitcher since Pedro Martinez was in his prime.

But this year? I legitimately thought on Opening Day that they were a .500 team. Instead, they’re on pace to lose 95 games, and gaining steam – they’ve lost 19 of their last 25 games. And it’s not just that they’re a bad team – it’s that they’re so uninteresting to watch.

I don’t know how that’s possible. Last August and September, after the Royals promoted Johnny Giavotella and Salvador Perez to the majors, they were as fun to watch as they’ve been since at least 2003. Most days they fielded a lineup in which Jeff Francoeur, at age 27, was the OLDEST player in the lineup. And they were winning – they were 15-10 in September.

They finished sixth in the league in runs scored, with the youngest offense in baseball. The prospect of watching them take a step forward as one of the best young lineups in the game was, itself, reason enough to watch the Royals this year.

Instead they’ve taken a step into the abyss. The Royals are 11th in the league in runs scored. This is true even though:

- Mike Moustakas has been an above-average hitter (.263/.318/.463), and one of the best defensive third baseman in the league. He doesn’t turn 24 until next month.

- Alcides Escobar is hitting .301 and is on pace to finish with 38 doubles. He’s 25.

- Eric Hosmer is 22, and when he was 21, he was a very good hitter.

- Alex Gordon is 28, and after a rocky start is hitting .351/.423/.492 since May 29th. For the year he’s hitting .292/.375/.428.*

- Billy Butler is having a Billy Butler season. This is the fourth straight year he’s hit between .291 and .318, and the fourth straight year he’s had an OBP between .361 and .388. But his slugging average is a career-high .507, because he’s already hit 20 homers, just one off his career high. He’s only 26.

*: No, he’s not hitting homers, and no, I have no idea how a guy with as much raw power as him has hit one more homer than Escobar. But he leads the league in doubles, plays great defense in LF, is the only guy on the team who takes a walk, and hasn’t missed a game. For the second straight year, Gordon leads the Royals in Wins Above Replacement (according to Baseball-Reference). And yet no one seems to acknowledge just what a fine year he’s having. That contract he signed still looks like a dandy.

The Royals got their starting catcher back on June 22nd, and their centerfielder back on July 13th, so now we can add:

- Lorenzo Cain is hitting .273/.316/.455 on the season, .314/.356/.549 since returning from the DL, and has played very good defense, even though his legs are still about 85%. He’s 26, and this may be all he is, but this is plenty good enough.

- Salvador Perez is 22 – the youngest guy in the lineup – and he’s hitting .326/.351/.543. Put it this way: he has five home runs – and six strikeouts. I don’t expect him to finish with that kind of a ratio, but just to put it in perspective: since 2000, only three players have finished a season with a HR/K ratio of 0.8 or better, with at least five homers: Barry Bonds (three times), Albert Pujols (twice), and…Paul Lo Duca, of all people, in 2001. And, at least at the moment, Salvy.

That’s seven building blocks in the lineup. And yet the Royals still feel like a drag to watch, probably because the other two spots are such a drag on the lineup.

Jeff Francoeur is hitting .238/.276/.368. So to those of you who thought he would regress back to the mean, and return to being the hitter he was in 2010, you were wrong: he’s regressed way past the mean. He’s worse than he was in 2010, or any other year other than 2008, when he hit .239/.294/.359 and was worth 1.9 Wins BELOW Replacement.

And while defensive metrics are notoriously unreliable in the span of a single season, it bears mentioning that his defensive numbers are even worse than his offensive ones. According to Baseball-Reference, Frenchy has been 1.1 Wins Below Replacement as a hitter this year – and a full 2.0 WBR on defense. I’m not sure how that’s possible – while Francoeur’s range has never been great, his arm is worth something. But despite 12 assists in 95 games, BB-Ref says his range has been just that bad.

I feel some degree of responsibility for Francoeur. I mean, I advocated for the Royals to bring him in years ago, and I took a lot of credit when he responded with a year of redemption in 2011: .285/.329/.476, a 20-20 season, 71 extra-base hits. I wasn’t thrilled with the two-year extension he got last August, but I wasn’t angry about it either – my preference was to move Melky Cabrera to right field to make room for Cain, but that was about keeping the switch-hitting bat and getting a draft pick for Francoeur more than because I wasn’t convinced Francoeur’s bat was for real.

Obviously, his bat wasn’t for real; if Francoeur’s 2011 was any more of a mirage, Siegfried and Roy would have been performing there. I admit that I didn’t see this coming, and I was wrong to not foresee the possibility of this level of performance from him. But while I should have known that this amount of regression was possible, I still don’t think that I should have known it was likely.

Because in my defense, I present to you…Melky Cabrera. Like Francoeur, Cabrera had an excellent 2011; like Francoeur, it was completely out of sync with the rest of his career.

From 2008-2010, Jeff Francouer: .256/.301/.389, 83 OPS+

From 2008-2010, Melky Cabrera: .260/.319/.372, 82 OPS+

Cabrera is younger than Francoeur, but only by six months – at this stage of their careers, that difference is negligible. And while it was in the distant past, Francoeur’s performance early in his career (.300/.336/.549 at age 21, .293/.338/.444 in a full season at age 23) dwarfed anything that Cabrera had ever done.

And yet Cabrera has not only proven that 2011 was a true improvement in his performance level, he’s taken a further step forward, leading the NL in hits and batting .359/.400/.530 at the moment. If there was something in their track records that suggested that Cabrera was likely to build on his 2011 and Francoeur was likely to regress, please point it out to me. I don’t mean that in a snarky manner – I genuinely would like to be educated, because obviously, that’s the sort of differentiation that can make or break a team.

The only thing I see that distinguishes them was that even when he was not hitting, Cabrera had a good strikeout-to-walk ratio – from 2008 to 2010 he had 114 walks and 181 Ks. But his K/BB ratio actually worsened in 2011 – he had 94 strikeouts and 35 walks. Even this year, his K/BB ratio is higher than it was in 2009 or 2010. Francoeur, meanwhile, has struck out three times as often as he’s walked throughout his career: 282 Ks vs. 92 walks from 2008 to 2010, then 123 Ks and 37 walks in his breakout season last year. (This year he has 74 Ks and 16 walks.)

Given two players with identical offensive performances, I would lean towards the player with better command of the strike zone. But at least in 2011, Francoeur walked a little more often than Cabrera. He struck out 30% more often – but was that, alone, enough to distinguish between them? I don’t think so, but if there’s a definitive study out there on the predictive value of K/BB ratios, please send it my way.

The Royals obviously couldn’t distinguish between the two outfielders – they offered them identical 2-year, $13.5 million contracts. If Cabrera had been the one to take the Royals up on the deal, that would have been worth literally seven games in the standings. Plus, the Royals would have spent the Jonathan Sanchez money on another pitcher, who almost certainly would have been worth two or three additional wins simply on account of not being Jonathan Sanchez.

The Royals are 41-58 at the moment, 13 games out of first place – and yet I can say without hyperbole that if the decision between Francoeur and Cabrera had played out differently, they would probably be above .500 and in the thick of a pennant race right now. That’s baseball. And that’s the Royals.

Francoeur, of course, has a higher OBP than Yuniesky Betancourt.

I don’t know what else I can write about Yuni. He’s hitting .241/.270/.422. Yes, he has genuinely above-average pop for a middle infielder. And…well, that’s about all I can come up with. He’s not hitting for a high average. He never walks. His defense is the subject of the next installment of the Saw franchise. And he has more plate appearances (212) than Chris Getz and Irving Falu combined.

When the Royals re-signed him, I didn’t like the deal, but I was not apoplectic about it – I figured he would be used in a utility role, which would limit the damage. I was wrong. I should have been apoplectic. Dayton Moore’s inability to see that Betancourt is a below-replacement-level player (I mean that literally – the Royals would be better off with Falu, who is the very definition of a replacement-level player) is Exhibit A in the case that Moore is an excellent scouting director who has been promoted past his competence level.

Johnny Giavotella, meanwhile, went 0-for-4 on Friday night, which is notable because it ended his 21-game hitting streak. Even with the 0-for-4, Giavotella is hitting .333/.422/.513 in Omaha, and .385/.464/.635 in July. He turned 25 two weeks ago. He has spent nearly three seasons and played 314 games in the high minors, and has raked the entire time. He has not taken advantage of his major-league opportunities, but they have been scarce – 67 games overall. Scouts do not feel he is another Kila Ka’aihue – the consensus is that he can be at least an average-hitting second baseman in the majors.

And as for his glove…when you’re playing Yuniesky Betancourt instead, you have forfeited the right to pass judgment on Giavotella’s defense.

It would be nice to see the Royals exhibit a modicum of common sense and let Giavotella play regularly in the majors, but at this point they can’t even find it fit to give the lion’s share of playing time to Chris Getz, who’s hitting .295/.328/.380 for the Royals.

I feel like I’ve written this many times before, probably because I’ve written this many times before. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to stop banging my head against this particular wall.

- While Giavotella has been crushing the ball of late, Wil Myers is in a massive slump that seemed to start after he flew around the country playing in various feature games (the Futures Game in KC, the Triple-A All-Star Game in Buffalo). He’s 6-for-his-last-49; in his last 10 games he has two walks and 19 strikeouts.

He’s still hitting .280/.362/.560 in Triple-A, with 16 homers in 63 games; for the season he’s hitting .302/.381/.621. He’s still a leading candidate to be named the Minor League Player of the Year.

This is what keeps me from giving up hope entirely: the solution is so simple. Replace Betancourt with Giavotella, and replace Francoeur with Myers. Suddenly you can field an offense where all nine hitters are potentially average or above this year, and an offense full of guys still in full ascent. Gordon is 28, and every other hitter in the lineup is 26 or younger.

It seems so simple. But no one makes the simple seem so hard quite like the Royals.

- With the trade deadline approaching, the good news is that the Royals seem to be focusing their efforts on trading four players: Francoeur, Betancourt, Jonathan Broxton, and Jose Mijares.

The bad news is that two of those players have no trade value. Actually, that’s not true. Betancourt might be useful for a team that has a need for a utility infielder – he can play three infield positions, albeit poorly, and he’s got a lot more sock than the typical futility infielder. He’s only under contract for 2012. He’s owed around $800,000 the rest of the season.

Unfortunately, the San Francisco Giants, one of the few teams with a need for such a player and with a GM that has a genuine fetish for mediocre veterans, filled their need Friday night by trading for Marco Scutaro from the Rockies. That doesn’t leave a lot of other options. The Pirates are winning with Clint Barmes and his unprintable .206/.231/.298 line, but Barmes can at least play defense, and I doubt they’d want to take the defensive hit just to get Yuni’s bat in the lineup. The Nationals might have a need, now that Ian Desmond is out for a month, and Davey Johnson uses his bench so masterfully that Betancourt would probably slug .500 for them the rest of the way. But other than those two teams, I don’t see a fit anywhere.

It’s also not true that Francoeur has no trade value. He has substantially negative trade value, and if Moore can find a way to trade Francoeur – even if he eats 80% of his salary – that would be a major win. He won’t, and with $10 million owed to him, and the Royals unwilling to eat a sunk cost, that almost certainly means Frenchy will continue to play every day. Myers’ recent slump only gives the Royals a convenient excuse. At this point, you have to be genuinely concerned that Francoeur will be in the Opening Day lineup next year, sabotaging another season’s playoff hopes before the Royals own up to their mistake.

The other bad news is this tweet from ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick: #Royals want young starting pitching for Broxton. They’d like it as close to MLB-ready as possible. No interest in A-ball types.

If this is true – and I have no reason not to trust Crasnick – this might be the single most depressing thing I’ve read about the Royals all season.

The Royals want MLB-ready starting pitching for Jonathan Broxton? HAVE THEY LEARNED NOTHING FROM THEIR OWN FREAKING HISTORY?! Somewhere, George Santayana is shaking his head sadly.

The Royals wanted “MLB-ready starting pitching” for Alberto Callaspo. They got Sean O’Sullivan. They wanted “MLB-ready starting pitching” for David DeJesus. They got Vinny Mazzaro.

Both of those guys were MLB-ready, in the sense that they were already as good as they were going to be, so they didn’t need any more development time in the minors. O’Sullivan, in 129 innings with the Royals, had a 6.63 ERA; he allowed 24 homers, and had a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 56-to-52. They sold him to the Blue Jays last month. Mazzaro, in 61 innings with Kansas City, has a 7.12 ERA. He’s in Omaha at the moment, I believe; he’s traversed I-29 so many times this year he’s turning into the Royals’ version of Schrodinger’s cat, where we can only state his location in probabilistic terms. (Yes, I make physics jokes too!)

The Royals wanted MLB-ready talent in those deals, and they got it – crappy, no-good, awful MLB talent. WHICH IS WHY THEY STILL NEED MLB-READY STARTING PITCHING IN THE FIRST PLACE.

And beyond that: IT’S JONATHAN BROXTON. We’re talking about a guy whose strikeout rate is less than half of what it was three years ago. Yes, he has a 2.27 ERA – and a WHIP of over 1.4. His save percentage (23 of 27) is below the average for closers. I’m not saying he’s chopped liver, but he’s chopped steak – certainly not filet mignon. AND HE’S A FREE AGENT IN TWO MONTHS. If a team had a MLB-ready starting pitcher worth acquiring, they wouldn’t trade him for Jonathan Freaking Broxton.

Six years ago, Dayton Moore traded his soon-to-be-free-agent closer, and got Kyle Davies for Octavio Dotel. If he’s still insisting on getting a ready-to-go major-league starter for Broxton, then he’s learned absolutely nothing in six years – and he’d be lucky to get another Davies-caliber starter in return. If the Royals are going to get anything of real value for Broxton, it would be precisely if they targeted an A-ball type. Trade for the 19-year-old kid who touches 95 but has no command; maybe you can teach it to him. Or the 19-year-old kid who tops out at 89, but has a projectable arm and might add 3 mph to his fastball in the next two years. The kid probably won’t, but if they do they might actually turn into an impact player, and I’d rather the guy with the 20% chance to be an impact player over the guy with the 90% chance to be on the Omaha shuttle for the next two years.

Or better still: try to find a way to use Broxton – and Mijares if necessary – as a means to get Francoeur off your roster. Offer Broxton to any team, and don’t even ask for a prospect back – just ask them to take Francoeur as well, and you’ll still pay half the money due to him. Hell, throw in Yuni while you’re at it. Getting those two off your roster would do more to help this team win games, both this year and next, than anyone you could actually get for Broxton in return.

We all know this won’t happen. We all know that we’re stuck with Francoeur, and probably Yuni as well. That Giavotella is stuck in Triple-A. And that we’re all stuck on the fast track to 100 losses, something which seemed inconceivable four months ago, and not just in the Vizzini usage of the term.

But of course, we’re the Royals. Nothing is inconceivable on the low end, and it’s my fault for thinking otherwise. So I guess it’s time to look to 2013, when Dayton Moore will either prove he deserves his job, or I – and all of you – will strive to see him fired in earnest. One 2012-caliber disaster is more than enough, thank you very much.

Royals Today: 7/21/12

- Our long national – or at least local – nightmare is over. Jonathan Sanchez has been released back into the wild, and it only took the Royals giving him two additional starts after he had proven to anyone with even a modicum of common sense that he was done, damaged beyond repair and devoid of hope. In those two starts, he threw a total of seven innings and allowed 11 runs; the Royals lost both games.

I want to be fair here; it’s easy for me to say after his June 30th start, as I did here, that Sanchez needed to be released. It’s much harder for Dayton Moore to go to ownership and ask for permission to release Sanchez, eight months after he traded for him, and with Melky Cabrera leading the NL in hits. (His job wasn’t made any easier when Cabrera won All-Star Game MVP honors at Kauffman Stadium.) The Royals eventually came to the right conclusion; compared to the Denial Tour that was Jose Lima’s 2005 season, this time they were downright sensible.

But I just want to make the point that there are times when the Royals – or any front office – make decisions which are not just inexplicable, but indefensible. And just because I or another analyst isn’t privy to inside knowledge doesn’t mean that we aren’t completely justified in ripping that organization a new orifice for making that decision. After 15 years of doing what I do, I’ve recently sensed some pushback from some parts of the analytic community, a sentiment that front offices have access to far greater amounts of information than outsiders like us can possibly have, and therefore they have reasons for making decisions that we can not possibly fathom.

I don’t doubt the validity of that. But just because an organization makes more informed decisions doesn’t mean they make better decisions. Knowing little more than Sanchez’s stat line and the track record of similar pitchers in the past, I knew that Sanchez was toast weeks ago. It’s not like I had an axe to grind with Sanchez – I was generally positive about the decision to trade for him. The Royals undoubtedly had access to the same database that I did, and chose to let him torch a few more games before pulling the plug.

Did they know things about Sanchez that I didn’t? Undoubtedly. Did they also have to deal with complexities that may have clouded their judgment? I think so. I didn’t have to worry about how my owner would react to me admitting to him that this trade was FUBAR. I didn’t have to sit Sanchez down in my office and tell him that we were letting him go. I didn’t have to deal with teammates who might have felt Sanchez was getting a raw deal. (Although my guess is that they didn’t. I mean, they were forced to watch every one of his starts.)

Sure, as an outsider we don’t know all of the variables. But sometimes not knowing all the variables makes for a clearer, cleaner, more sober analysis. Sometimes data is useful, and sometimes it’s just noise. I didn’t need to hear all the office chatter to know that Sanchez should have been cut a while ago. The Royals, for whatever reason, needed a few more data points to convince themselves.

In the end, it might have cost the Royals a win, or it might not have; they scored six runs in Sanchez’s last two starts. Sticking with Sanchez a little too long isn’t close to the worst thing that the Royals have done recently. But it’s a good reminder that there’s value in an outside perspective. If there wasn’t, Warren Buffett wouldn’t be worth billions, Nate Silver wouldn’t be read by politicians on both sides of the aisle, and I would have stopped writing about baseball years ago.

Just since Sanchez was released, Bruce Bochy has gone on record as saying that Hector Sanchez is a better hitter than Brandon Belt – and pinch-hit for Belt with someone named Justin Christian – and the New York Knicks refused to match the Houston Rockets’ offer sheet on Jeremy Lin, a decision so jaw-dropping that it transcends the NBA. Sports organizations worth hundreds of millions of dollars are capable of making decisions of profound stupidity. This shouldn’t be news to anyone; corporations worth billions of dollars do the same thing. (New Coke? Netflix’s plan to create Qwikster? Every investment firm that thought real estate prices would go up forever?)

The Royals’ decision to stick with Sanchez is, relative to the examples in the last paragraph, harmless. But the next time someone tells you to trust the experts – whether those experts run your favorite baseball team, the company you work at, or the country you live in – politely tell them to shove it. No one has a monopoly on the truth. Not even people who have a monopoly on proprietary information.

- Sanchez leaves us with some amazing stats. You may have heard that Sanchez had the third-worst ERA in Royals history (min: 40 IP), behind only Chad Durbin’s 8.21 ERA in 2000 and Blake Stein’s 7.91 ERA in 2002.

But in 2000, the AL ERA as a whole was 4.91; in 2002 it was 4.46. This year, it’s 4.06. And remember, in the late 90s and early 2Ks, the fences at Kauffman Stadium were 10 feet closer than they are now, making the stadium a much better hitters’ park than it is now. Sanchez’s ERA+ is 53, which means that after adjusting for the context of the league and the ballpark, his ERA is nearly double that of the AL as a whole. That’s easily the worst in Royals history. (Second-worst? Sean O’Sullivan, whose 7.25 ERA last year was good for an ERA+ of 57.)

And even without adjusting for league, Sanchez’s WHIP of 2.044 is the worst in Royals history. In 53.1 innings, he allowed 65 hits and 44 walks. Batters hit .302/.425/.512 against him.

- Sanchez’s disastrous start on Monday night forced the Royals to use Everett Teaford in relief for five innings. This led to a mad scramble to find a starter for Tuesday’s game, which led to Ryan Verdugo making his major league debut. I have nothing against Verdugo; I think he might have a future in the majors. But if he does, it will probably be in middle relief. In 88 innings in Omaha, he had allowed 14 homers, and walked 44 batters with just 72 strikeouts. His ERA was a solid 3.58, which hid the fact that he wasn’t pitching all that well.

He then went out and gave up six runs in 1.2 innings, which is to say that he had a worse major league debut than Eduardo Villacis. He still pitched better than Sanchez had the night before, though.

- To the Royals’ credit, they immediately sent Verdugo back down to Omaha, and called up Will Smith, who pitched yesterday on normal rest. The rotation now appears to be, in some order, Luke Hochevar, Bruce Chen, Luis Mendoza, Will Smith, and Everett Teaford.

I approve. That’s a terrible rotation on paper, and probably in reality as well. But those are also the five best starting pitchers the Royals have at the moment, at least until they feel that Jake Odorizzi is ready. None of those pitchers project to be even a #3 starter at any point in the future. But you can make a case for all five of them being solid #4/#5 starter types going forward. At the very least, they all have a chance to keep you in a ballgame.

Smith, in particularly, has made enough progress this season to warrant a long look. His seasonal line in Omaha isn’t great – a 3.61 ERA in 90 innings, and 104 hits allowed. But his high BABIP obscures a fine strikeout-to-walk ratio: 74 Ks, 22 BBs. Moreover, in his last eight minor league starts, Smith had a 2.73 ERA, and in 53 innings had 44 Ks against just 10 walks. He’s left-handed, and he just turned 23. Again, I don’t see a lot of upside here – but I do see a pitcher who might survive in the back end of the Royals’ rotation for a few years. Of course, we said the same thing about Sean O’Sullivan. There’s only one way to find out, and I’d rather see him and Teaford get a chance to sink or swim over the next few months then mess around with retreads like Vinny Mazzaro.

Smith’s line in his return to KC was 6.1 8 4 4 2 5, and I heard some suggest that the performance of Verdugo and Smith makes it understandable that the Royals stuck with Sanchez as long as they did. I couldn’t disagree more. Verdugo was not picked for the quality of his pitching, but for his availability. (Ned Yost himself, when asked: “No. 1, he was available to pitch. No. 2, he’s got pretty good numbers at Triple-A.” The order of those numbers is not an accident.) And while Smith didn’t have a great first start, it’s miles better than what we’d expect from Sanchez. Consider:

- Smith threw 6.1 innings. Sanchez hasn’t gotten an out in the seventh inning of a game since May 28th, 2011 – 21 starts ago.

- Smith walked two batters and struck out five. Sanchez hasn’t had more than twice as many strikeouts as walks in a single start since the same game, 14 months ago.

The wild card here is Odorizzi, who you could easily make a case for being one of the five best starting pitching options in the organization right now. Even if he isn’t, there’s a strong case to be made that allowing him to take his lumps in the majors over the next 2-3 months will make him that much more prepared to pitch well out of the chute next year. My feeling is that he should be in the Royals’ rotation by early August. I’m fine with him being the sixth man for the moment, if only because it’s highly unlikely the rotation as it’s presently constituted will hold up for more than two or three weeks anyway. It’s even less likely that it will hold up with all five starters pitching well enough to keep their jobs. I expect an opportunity for Odorizzi to present itself soon enough.

- And, of course, pretty much everything I wrote above went out the door Friday morning, when the Royals somehow traded Jonathan Sanchez to Colorado in exchange for Jeremy Guthrie.

On initial reflection, this is an absolutely incredible deal, not because it changes the fortunes of the Royals franchise dramatically, but simply because another team was willing to employ Jonathan Sanchez. The Rockies have had an incredibly strange year. I’m not sure they’re the worst-run team in the majors at the moment, but they certainly seem to be the most impetuous team, doing things like going to a four-man rotation on the fly, giving 49-year-old Jamie Moyer a shot in their rotation, and of course, continuing to employ Jim Tracy despite a managerial rap sheet a mile long. Take a pitcher who has averaged over two baserunners an inning, and put him in Coors Field? That’s insane, but for the Rockies of late, that’s par for the course.

Guthrie has hardly been better this year; he might have been worse. Like Sanchez, he was the wrong end of an off-season trade which seemed balanced at the time, but turned into one of the worst trades of the past year – in exchange for Guthrie, the Orioles got Jason Hammel, who has a 3.54 ERA in 18 starts pitching in the AL East, and Matt Lindstrom, who was hurt for six weeks but has a 2.53 ERA in 22 innings for Baltimore. Guthrie, meanwhile, has a 6.35 ERA for the Rockies in 91 innings, and leads the NL with 21 homers allowed.

But here’s the thing: he’s pitching in Coors Field. And after years of behaving like just an ordinary hitters’ park, as opposed to one of the most extreme hitters parks of all time, it’s like they turned the humidor off in Denver this year. From 2005 to 2008, Coors Field increased offense by 5-10% (i.e. the park factors were between 105 and 110). But over the last four years the park factors have steadily increased, and this year it’s back to around 120. That’s not quite as high as it was in its heyday – in 1996 and 2000, Coors Field had a park factor of 129, and that was on top of a historically high level of offense. But it’s clear that Coors Field is back to making mediocre hitters look great, and mediocre pitchers look terrible.

In 42 innings at home this year, Guthrie has a 9.50 ERA – he allowed 67 hits, including 14 home runs. In 49 innings on the road, he has a 3.67 ERA, and has allowed 7 home runs.

I wouldn’t read too much into that ERA – he hasn’t pitched quite that well on the road, with 27 strikeouts and 17 walks. But he’s clearly been better. He’s clearly no Jonathan Sanchez.

There’s definitely some upside here. Guthrie’s a former first-round pick who flopped with Cleveland – but the Orioles picked him up on waivers before the 2007 season, and was one of the great waiver-wire finds of recent times, basically the healthy version of Felipe Paulino. From 2007 through 2011, Guthrie averaged 31 starts and 197 innings a season, with a 4.12 ERA, pitching nearly half his games against the four giants of the AL East. Last winter, I had him on my list of possible acquisition targets for the Royals, albeit at the bottom of my preferences, given his age (33) and the fact that he was under contract for just 2012.

But I didn’t expect him to fall apart like he has, and unlike Sanchez, there is an extenuating circumstance here that at least gives you a little hope he can turn things around. Coors Field – when it’s playing like Coors Field – can turn even star pitchers into mincemeat. Darryl Kile had finished 5th in the Cy Young vote in 1997, having thrown 256 innings for the Houston Astros with a 2.57 ERA. He signed a free-agent contract with the Rockies, and was beyond awful. In 1998, he had a 5.20 ERA and led the NL with 17 losses; in 1999, he was much worse, finishing with a 6.61 ERA and leading the league in earned runs allowed. At the time, his collapse was so profound that it didn’t look like it was simply a Coors Field effect – in 1999, he walked 109 batters and struck out 116, which is untenable.

But the Cardinals correctly surmised that if they could just get him away from that ballpark – and work with Dave Duncan, I’m sure – he would be fine. They traded four nobodies for Kile after the 1999 season; in 2000, he threw 232 innings with a 3.91 ERA, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio improved to 192-to-58 – MORE THAN TRIPLE his ratio the year before. He was even better in 2001, and was pitching well in 2002 when he tragically died of a heart attack.

Jeremy Guthrie is no Darryl Kile. But it’s not unreasonable to think there’s a chance that he can be Jeremy Guthrie again, and Jeremy Guthrie was a solid starting pitcher. Jonathan Sanchez is not.

The only downside here is that the Royals took on a larger salary – Guthrie is making about $2.6 million more than Sanchez this year, and no money changed hands in the deal, so this will cost the Royals about $1.2 million the rest of the way. Presumably, this is why the Rockies agreed to the deal. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were thinking of designating Guthrie for assignment; this way even if they cut Sanchez tomorrow, they’ll save some money. But it’s not a prohibitive amount of money, and the chance that Guthrie rebounds over the next two months is worth a little payroll.

So I do like the trade, though not for the obvious reason. I don’t really care if Guthrie helps the Royals win an extra game or two this season, and he’s a free agent at the end of the year, so he really doesn’t help the franchise directly. But there are two ancillary benefits here:

1) There’s a non-zero chance that Guthrie pitches well enough over his first 5-6 starts with the Royals that a contender expresses an interest in him for the last 6-8 weeks of the season. Remember, with two wild cards per league, the number of potential contenders increases, but because the value of a wild card is cut in half, teams in the wild-card race are unlikely to make a huge sacrifice in blood and prospects for a true impact player. They’re more likely to dabble on the fringes, trading a modest prospect for someone who might help them in the race, but who is unlikely to cause them a great deal of regret if they fall short.

Also remember that while July 31st is the non-waiver trading deadline, teams can still trade after that if the player clears waivers. Guthrie, making $8.2 million this year, will almost certainly clear waivers – and if he doesn’t, the Royals can simply let him go, saddling his new team with his full contract and saving more money than they spent to acquire him. Realistically, Guthrie will be out there if some team suddenly realizes they’re three games out of a wild-card spot on August 15th. He might fetch the Royals an arm, or save them some money, or both. This isn’t a particularly likely scenario, but it’s far from impossible.

2) Trading for Guthrie should – hopefully – dampen the Royals’ enthusiasm for trading for an elite starting pitcher who they would only control through 2013. I’m speaking specifically of Matt Garza, but there are other names (e.g. Paul Maholm, Wandy Rodriguez) that also fit the bill.

The word on the street is that the Royals have suddenly awoken to the fact that as constituted today, their rotation next year will be just as awful as it was this year, and that they need to make some drastic changes or waste 2013 the way they’ve wasted 2012. It’s great that they’ve finally realized that, but trading for Garza is not the solution. Garza is going to be very expensive, precisely because he can impact two pennant races, not one. If you’re the Tigers or the Reds or another team that’s in the race this year, you’ll crack open the piggy bank for Garza, because he’ll help you make the playoffs this year, and then you’ll get a full season out of him next year. But for the Royals, the first part of that equation is out. If the Royals outbid other teams for Garza, it means they value his contribution in 2013 alone more than other teams value his contributions in 2013 and 2012. Which is nuts.

If the Royals want to make an impact trade for a starting pitcher now, they’re better off targeting guys who are at least two or three years away from free agency. They’d still be wasting the first half-season of that guy’s career in a Royals uniform, but at least they’d be getting a higher percentage of his value in seasons where they might actually contend. Buster Olney wrote about this in a recent column, and speculated on names like Jon Lester and Jeremy Hellickson. Those guys would be crazy expensive too, but at least they’d have the chance to impact multiple pennant races for the Royals.

When you think about Dayton Moore’s track record, one thing that really stands out is that when he strikes early, he tends to strike out. Think about the moves he has made within days of the World Series ending: trading Cabrera for Sanchez, trading David DeJesus for Vinny Mazzaro and Justin Marks, trading Leo Nunez for Mike Jacobs. When Moore tries to jump the market instead of waiting to see what the market will bear, he has almost always misjudged things badly.

I’m worried that he would do the same here for a guy like Garza. So if acquiring Guthrie scratches that itch for the time being, and lessens the sense of desperation in the rotation until the winter, that alone makes his acquisition worthwhile.

I’ve heard the argument that the Royals might want to trade for an impact pitcher now because if they don’t, those guys will be traded elsewhere anyway, and they won’t be on the market when the Royals go shopping this winter. That may be true, but at the same time, pitchers who may not be on the market today will be available in the off-season. This time last year, I didn’t think that Trevor Cahill and Gio Gonzalez would be available from the A’s, or that the Padres might be willing to part with their best starting pitcher in Mat Latos. But in the off-season, teams are willing to move integral parts of their rosters because they have the time to rearrange their rosters before playing another game. And if the Royals are going to make a blockbuster deal, it’s that kind of pitcher – a pitcher with three or four years of club control – that they should be targeting, not an 18-month rental like Garza.

Besides which, if they really want to add a starting pitcher, they can always sign one in free agency. Reports suggest they might be willing to do that. I’d rather spend money than prospects.

- Speaking of trading young assets for established starting pitchers, the Royals got another one of those on Wednesday, when they “won” the new competitive balance lottery and got an extra draft pick.

I say “won” because while they got the first pick, almost every eligible team got a draft pick of some sort. Fourteen teams were part of the lottery, and 12 picks were awarded – every team but the Cardinals and Rays got one.

The picks came in two varieties – six of the picks will come between the first and second rounds (Round A), and six of them will come between the second and third rounds (Round B). The Royals got the highest of the 12 picks, which slots at #32 right now (it will probably wind up around #40 overall once compensation picks are awarded this winter). But the important thing is simply being one of the six teams who got a Round A pick (essentially the same as a supplemental first-round pick) instead of a Round B pick (which we might call a supplemental second-round pick). Keep in mind that in Dayton Moore’s entire tenure in Kansas City, the Royals have had just one supplemental first-round pick under the old rules. They used that pick (#36 overall) to select Mike Montgomery. So clearly the pick has some value. (Jeff Zimmerman takes a closer look at the value of the draft pick here.)

This is another reason – certainly not the primary reason – why I felt that all the commotion about how the new CBA was going to hurt teams like the Royals, small-market teams who spent aggressively in the draft, was overblown. The Royals were certainly hurt this year, because they had just one of the first 64 picks, and their draft pool was below-average. But they’re almost certainly going to be a team that qualifies for the competitive balance lottery every single year going forward, which means they’re going to get an extra pick 80-90% of the time. And with that pick comes draft pool money – the 40th pick this year was allotted $1.291 million, which would be added to the Royals’ pool money next summer.

The other interesting thing to note is that for the first time in history, these competitive balance picks – and only these picks – are tradeable. The Royals can trade this pick (and the money allotted to it) to another team. If the Royals are serious about adding an established starting pitcher, this pick could come in handy; it’s not going to get the deal done by itself, or even headline the deal, but as a third or fourth asset in the trade, the Royals might prefer to move the pick instead of another prospect already in the system.

What’s frustrating is that – for no apparent reason whatsoever – these picks can only be traded during the season – either between now and the end of the regular season, or between Opening Day next year and the day of the draft itself. Which is pointless, and means that if the Royals wait until the off-season to make a trade – which they probably should – they won’t be able to use the pick as bait.

- Finally, I can’t end without saying something about Jason Kendall.

Jason Kendall sucks. The End.

Oh, if it were only that easy. Kendall is 38 years old, and hasn’t played this year rehabbing a shoulder injury. When he was 37, he missed the entire season rehabbing a shoulder injury. When he was 36, he hit .256/.318/.297 for the Royals. He hasn’t hit a home run since he was 35. He hasn’t been a remotely good hitter since he was 32. He hasn’t been a great player – and for many years, in his youth, he was a genuinely great player – since he was 30.

And now he’s back. In Double-A, but still: Jason Kendall is back.

Some pundits have argued that Royals fans are making way too much of this, that Kendall is just like any other thirtysomething catcher who doesn’t want to leave the game and still has something to offer, at least in terms of developing young pitchers in the minor leagues. The Royals had Vance Wilson filling the same role a few years ago.

To which I would say: if the Royals had signed anyone, literally anyone, other than Jason Kendall, they might have a point. But they didn’t. They signed Jason Kendall.

For reasons that remain mysterious to me, Kendall holds a svengali-like attraction on the Royals, much the way Yuniesky Betancourt does, or Roman Colon has. It doesn’t make any sense for the Royals to give Kendall a day of service time in the majors this year – but if the Royals were at all rational about Jason Kendall, they wouldn’t have signed him to a two-year, $6 million deal back in 2009. Remember, they cut Miguel Olivo AND John Buck in the span of about 48 hours, all so that they could go with Kendall as their starting catcher – for more guaranteed money than they would have had to give Olivo and Buck COMBINED.

I’ve said this before, but that decision still ranks as the moment I’ve felt the most hopeless as a Royals fan in the Dayton Moore era. This was before the farm system became a fully-operational Death Star, and after follies like Jose Guillen and Yuni and destroying Gil Meche’s arm. At that moment, it appeared the Royals had absolutely no idea how to put together a winning team, and didn’t seem terribly interested in learning how to do so.

Come to think of it, that’s not much different from where they are now. The Royals are 39-53 as I write this, a half-game from having the worst record in the American League. And they’re futzing around with 38-year-old Jason Kendall. And if you think Kendall’s going to be happy just tutoring Mike Montgomery on the finer points of pitching and giving a catching tutorial to Manny Pina, you’re out of your mind. He’s already made statements that he has every intention of getting back to Kauffman Stadium this summer.

And the sad part is, I think the Royals have every intention of giving him that opportunity. The Royals may have information that we don’t have. But they still appear to lack the same trait that’s been missing for most of the last 20 years: common sense.

All-Star Week Recap.

Some brief and belated thoughts on the biggest week of baseball in Kansas City since 1985:

1) With baseball’s spotlight on Kansas City for the first time since 1985…everyone killed it. The team, the ballpark, the fans, the city, the barbeque, everyone. While I couldn’t stay for the All-Star Game itself, I couldn’t miss out on the festivities entirely, so I flew in Saturday morning and stayed until Sunday night.

It was obvious from the time I got off the plane that Kansas City was determined to do this right. There were signs everywhere at KCI referencing the All-Star Game, and while that might seem like a small and simple thing, if this game had taken place at US Cellular Park, you probably could have changed planes in O’Hare and never known the All-Star Game was in town.

That’s the advantage that a smaller market has when it gets to host an event like this: it’s not embarrassed to go all out. From the billboards all around town promoting the game, to the radioactive blue dye they put in the fountains outside FanFest, Kansas City made it clear: this was a BIG DEAL to the city.

2) It was a big deal to the fans as well. I went to FanFest on Saturday, and it was a zoo. Autograph lines snaked around for hours. I went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum – which everyone should go see if you haven’t been there, but you already knew that – for a Baseball Prospectus event on Sunday morning. We held the event across the street at the Gem Theater, and then went over to the museum proper, which was standing room only to hear Dave Winfield interview former Negro Leaguers talk about their experiences.

I then headed over to Kauffman Stadium to prep for the Futures Game. The game started at 4:05, but when I pulled in to the parking lot at 1:30, it was already a quarter full and people were tailgating. Fans were tailgating two-and-a-half hours early to a minor-league exhibition.

As you may have heard, the Futures Game was a sellout. While there were a few empty pockets of seats in the stands, there were only a few – announced attendance was just over 40,000, and that seemed like an accurate count. It was easily the most well-attended Futures Game in history. While I had to leave to catch a flight, I’m told that more people stuck around to watch the Celebrity Softball Game afterwards than attended most previous Futures Games. Wil Myers was serenaded like a conquering hero.

3) And that, of course, was just a prelude to one of the great random moments as a Royals fan of the last quarter-century. I don’t have anything to add to the coverage of the Can0 Affair itself. Robinson Cano was booed like no Home Run Derby participant in the event’s history, and put on the worst performance of any Home Run Derby participant in the event’s history. (While a few others have also been skunked, I doubt anyone else hit three foul balls among his ten swings.) Those two things are not coincidental. Kansas City fans got into his head, and it was a beautiful thing.

The media reaction was, for the most part, understanding if not necessarily supportive. There were, though, a few in the media who thought that the reaction of Royals fans was tasteless, classless, and made the city look small and provincial. With all due respect, I couldn’t disagree more. If that’s what you took away from what happened, then you must actually think that the booing was about Robinson Cano.

It wasn’t, not really. It was about a fan base that, with the eyes of the nation turned on them for the first time in decades, collectively said, “WE LOVE BASEBALL AROUND HERE. NOT EVEN 27 YEARS OF SUCKING CHANGES THAT. GIVE US A WINNER AND YOU’LL SEE.” For the rest of the nation, the Royals have – justifiably – been irrelevant for the past 27 years. This was a chance to remind the nation that while the Royals may have been irrelevant, Royals fans were not. Royals fans got their moment, and they owned it.

Two comments from the media stood out: the first was that some players were so turned off by the display that they would be less likely to come to Kansas City to play in the future. The second was that if Royals fans really wanted to show their displeasure, they should have been booing the Glass family.

Regarding the first: really? Are you telling me that Cole Hamels might be less likely to sign with the Royals this off-season? Hold on while I peel myself off of this fainting couch. Kansas City has never been a premier destination for free agents, and for the Royals to sign a free agent, they usually have to offer something no other market can – namely, more money. That’s how free agency works. And if the Royals offer a free agent more money than anyone else this winter, he’s not going to say, “yeah, but they booed Robinson Cano.” Otherwise no one would sign with the Phillies, who, you know, boo their own players.

Speaking of which: what ballplayer looks at that display of righteous anger at an opposing player for snubbing their own player and thinks, “Man, these fans hate the other team, and they love their own players. I DON’T WANT TO PLAY HERE.” Booing Cano was not an expression of hatred – it was an expression of passion and loyalty. Loyalty to one of the guys who wears our uniform, who we were led to believe would get to take part in a meaningless but enjoyable spectacle, and then was snubbed.

Personally, I don’t think this affects the Royals’ chances to sign Cole Hamels. But you know who it does affect? BILLY BUTLER. It’s way too soon to know whether the Royals will even want to re-sign Butler at the end of his contact, which ends (if they pick up his option) after the 2015 season. He’ll be almost 30 then, and 30-year-old glacier-slow right-handed-hitting DHs don’t typically age well. But if Butler is still an elite hitter and the Royals do want to re-sign him for 2 or 3 years, you don’t think he’ll remember this supreme exhibition of love from his fan base? Butler was beaming from the time he was introduced on Monday until the game was over on Tuesday. Butler’s a Kansas City kind of guy, and as such was really the perfect choice to represent the Royals at the All-Star Game. Long after this incident is forgotten and Cano has gone back to torturing the Royals on the field, Butler will remember how the city embraced him, and defended him to the world.

And regarding the second point: did you notice how David Glass wasn’t introduced to the crowd? I mean, if Royals fans were told that David Glass would be on the field in front of 45,000 fans, and if they were given a week to prepare about it, you don’t think they would have booed him until he fled inside a dugout?

The message that Royals fans sent to major league baseball? It was also a message to the Glass Family: THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU’LL JUST BUILD US A WINNER. What bothers me about the Glass family’s unwillingness to spend on major-league payroll* isn’t that it’s cheap: it’s that it’s poor business. Spending money on player salaries isn’t a cost – it’s an investment. (Unless you spend it on Jose Guillen.)

*: As recently as 2 or 3 years ago, I felt that the Glass family was spending a reasonable amount of money on major-league payroll, particularly given how much they were spending to sign amateur talent. But this season, the Royals’ payroll is roughly $64 million. That’s almost identical to their payroll in 2008, and more than $10 million LESS than their payroll in 2009 and 2010. Given how much industry revenues have increased the last few years, AND given that the Royals are now prohibited from spending as much money in the draft and in Latin America, that’s inexcusable.

If All-Star week didn’t convince the Glass family that there’s an upside to spending the money to build a contender, nothing will.

4) The game itself? Well, it sort of sucked. How appropriate that the American League suffered the worst loss in its history. That would be The Most Royals Moment of the season, except, of course…

5) …Melky Cabrera was named MVP of the All-Star Game. Yeah, hard to top that one.

6) Before this week, I had said that as it had been nearly 40 years since the Royals had hosted an All-Star Game, it would probably be another 40 years before they did again. But really, Kansas City put on a show, and don’t think that The Powers That Be didn’t notice. One of the reasons it’s been so long is that, for the past 20-25 years, virtually every All-Star Game has been awarded to a team that had just built (or renovated) their stadium. Which was 80% of the teams in baseball.

But that ballpark boom is almost over – there’s maybe 5 or 6 teams left to go. At that point, the game will likely be awarded at least partly based on where it’s likely to get the most attention. And at least locally, it’s hard for a game to have received more attention than this one. I don’t think Kansas City will get to host another game in 5 or 10 years, but at some point in the 2020s, it’s a distinct possibility.

Hopefully there will be some other meaningful games at Kauffman Stadium between now and then.

7) And on that note, I wrote about the Royals for Grantland on Tuesday, which you can read here. I can’t say I was very nice, but I can say that I was fair. The Royals are not in a good place right now. That doesn’t mean that things can’t turn around quickly, but the boundless optimism of 18 months ago has largely melted in the face of the fierce heat of reality. The Best Farm System In The History Of Whatever hasn’t lived up to the hype yet, and Dayton Moore hasn’t done enough to compensate. With 2013 shaping up to be a make-or-break year for him, he’s got about eight months to overhaul the rotation and fix his offense. That’s a tall order.