Complete Analysis of the Myers-Shields Trade.

This sucks.

For Want Of A Pitcher: R.A. Dickey.

I’d like to set the stage for this post with a brief review of the history of Dayton Moore at the Winter Meetings over the years, his successes (Joakim Soria, Gil Meche), his failures (pretty much everything else), and take my usual sweet time getting to the point.

But you know what? We don’t have time for that. The meetings are underway, the Royals could make a franchise-altering transaction – good or bad – at any moment, and I need to get this out there right now.

Four days ago, Jon Heyman reported that in addition to Jon Lester and James Shields, the Royals were looking at one other top starting pitcher in a trade – R.A. Dickey. Specifically, he wrote that “Kansas City has no interest in trading young catcher Salvador Perez and isn’t looking to trade top outfield prospect Wil Myers. The Royals would prefer to send the Mets a package of younger prospects in any Dickey deal.”

Dickey is only under contract for one more season, albeit at the bargain price of $5 million. He has reportedly been asking the Mets for an extension, and would settle for a two-year deal, but the two sides have been unable to agree on his asking price.

I want to make this clear to everyone: if the Royals are able to trade prospects (within reason) for Dickey, without surrendering Myers, and if they were able to work out a two-year extension for Dickey as part of the trade, it would be an absolutely effing coup. It would rank as one of the finest moves of Moore’s career, and one of the finest transactions any team will make this winter.

It would be such an astonishingly good move that I can’t believe there’s actually a chance – however slim – that it could happen.

Let’s review the reasons why:

1) R.A. Dickey is a #1 starter.

Dickey doesn’t fit the classic mold of a #1 starter, because he doesn’t fit the classic mold of any starter – he’s a knuckleball pitcher. But for God’s sake, he won the Cy Young Award this year. Maybe he wasn’t the best pitcher in the National League – Clayton Kershaw was probably a hair better – but (along with Johnny Cueto) he was clearly in the top three. That’s an ace.

I appreciate a good scouting discussion of what constitutes a true “ace” pitcher as much as anyone, but it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. Dickey’s fastball averaged 83 mph on the rare occasions he threw it. He’s 38 years old, and when he turned 35 years old he had 22 career wins and a 5.43 ERA in 443 innings as a conventional pitcher. And all of that is irrelevant, because he throws a knuckleball now, and (as I’ll get to later) even by the unique standards of that pitch, Dickey throws it in a way that’s unprecedented.

And the results are fantastic. He made 33 starts and threw 234 innings this year, struck out 230 batters (all three figures led the NL), allowed just 192 hits and 54 walks. He was a little homer-prone, with 24 homers allowed, an issue that goes with the territory of throwing a knuckleball. But Dickey finished with a 2.73 ERA in a league-leading number of innings. He combines quantity with tremendous quality. At his peak this summer, he was doing things no pitcher has done since, I dunno, Pedro Martinez at his very best. From May 22nd to June 18th, a span of six starts, Dickey threw 48.2 innings (over 8 innings a start), allowed 21 hits and 5 walks, allowed two runs (one unearned), and struck out 63 batters.

While Dickey has never been this good before, this wasn’t completely out of the blue; this wasn’t Esteban Loaiza’s 2003 season or something. In 2010, Dickey threw 174 innings for the Mets with a 2.84 ERA, and in 2011 he threw 209 innings with a  3.28 ERA. The biggest difference in 2012 was that his strikeout rate skyrocketed – he averaged 5.4 K/9 in 2010, 5.8 K/9 in 2011, and 8.9 K/9 in 2012. As a result, his hit rate dropped significantly – but his walk and home run rates were basically unchanged.

His BABIP the last three years goes .280, .285, and .280. Given that we know knuckleball pitcher historically are better than average in this regard, there’s nothing about his statistical record that screams fluke. Or even whispers it.

2) R.A. Dickey is a knuckleball pitcher.

This may seem obvious, but it has very important implications. The primary criticism I’ve heard about Dickey going forward is “he’s 38 years old!”, as if that means something.

My response to that is, “YES! EXACTLY! HE’S 38 YEARS OLD! THAT’S PERFECT!”

Honestly, sometimes I wonder if there’s some sort of force field that fogs people’s minds and causes them to downplay knuckleball pitchers. (Sort of like the force field that does the same thing with Salvador Perez, at least outside of Kansas City.) I’m not just referring to fans and analysts, but to people in the industry itself. The Mets, who just committed to David Wright for the next seven years, are apparently inclined to trade Dickey because they’re building for the future.

I’d like to tell them that they are apparently ignorant about the 100-year history of knuckleball pitchers in the major leagues, but if I did that they might change their minds, so I’ll just tell you instead.

Most knuckleball pitchers PEAK in their late 30s. The most successful knuckleball pitcher of the last 25 years was Tim Wakefield. Wakefield had his best season when he was 28, his first season with the Red Sox, when he had a 2.95 ERA in 195 innings – he accumulated 4.7 bWAR. His second-best season? In 2005…when he was 38 years old.

From ages 33 to 37, Wakefield was worth 10.5 bWAR. From ages 38 to 42, Wakefield was worth 12.4 bWAR. He was better at ages 41-42 than he was at ages 32-33.

Tom Candiotti is the other prominent knuckleball pitcher of the last quarter-century, but he wasn’t a strict knuckler, as he also threw a curveball a decent amount of the time. Candiotti had a pretty broad peak from ages 28 to 35, going over 4 bWAR six times in eight years, but was still effective until age 40, when he threw 201 innings with a 4.84 ERA in the height of the Juiced Era.

If we go back to the 1970s and 1980s, we see a lot more knuckleballers, and we see a lot more guys pitch well into their 40s. From age 38 to age 41, Phil Niekro led the NL in losses four years in a row.

That doesn’t sound good – until you realize he led the league in starts all four years, innings and complete games three times, and one year led the league in wins and losses. In 1978, age 39, Niekro went 19-18 with a 2.88 ERA in 334 innings. In 1979, he went 21-20 with a 3.39 ERA in 342 innings. It was a different era, of course, but even then his insane durability (averaging 43 starts and 335 innings a year from 1977 to 1979) stood out. In 1978, he was worth 8.6 bWAR, and in 1979 he was worth 9.6 bWAR.

Niekro would remain effective into his mid-40s. In 1985, he went 16-12 with a 4.09 ERA in 220 innings for the Yankees. He was 46 that year.

His younger brother Joe was never as good a pitcher as Phil, but Joe also was effective into his 40s. Joe had the best season of his career in 1982 (2.47 ERA in 270 innings, 6.5 bWAR), when he was 37, and from 1983 to 1985 averaged 37 starts, 246 innings, and a 3.44 ERA. In 1986, at age 41, he started to lose it.

Charlie Hough was a reliever for the first decade of his career, and didn’t start regularly until 1982, when he was 34. From 1982 through 1988, when he turned 40, Hough threw at least 228 innings with an ERA under 4 every year – pitching in Texas, no less. He was worth at least 2.6 bWAR every year. He began a slow decline in 1989, at age 41, but as late as 1993 he was the Marlins’ first-ever starting pitcher, and at age 45 threw 204 innings with a 4.27 ERA.

With the exception of Candiotti, who wasn’t a pure knuckleball pitcher, every one of these guys was a well-above-average starting pitcher at least through his age 40 season. (And Dickey, keep in mind, just had his best season at 37 – Candiotti was already in decline at that point.) Dickey wants a two-year extension that would cover him from ages 38 to 40? That’s perfect.

3) The price tag on Dickey is affordable.

Admittedly, the evidence for this point is not quite as rock-solid as the first two, because we don’t know exactly what it will take to get Dickey, both in terms of prospects in trade, and in terms of dollars in an extension.

But the mere fact that Dickey could be in play without having trade Wil Myers, and without having to trade any established player already on the Royals’ roster, means that his price tag is less than that of Lester or Shields. There’s good reason for that – he’s only under contract for one year, not two. But on the other hand, if he comes close to replicating his 2012 performance, Dickey would provide nearly as much value in one season as the other two might provide in two seasons.

Shields, 2011-2012: 6.9 bWAR

Dickey, 2012 only: 5.6 bWAR

Lester, 2011-2012: 4.5 bWAR

Dickey probably won’t pitch quite as well next year as he did this year, but the point is that he’s a better pitcher right now than the other two. Factor in that he only makes $5 million, and it’s a very legitimate question as to whether Lester at 2/$24 million or Shields at 2/$21 million should be worth any more on the trade market than Dickey at 1/$5 million.

But they do, for one simple reason: Dickey throws a knuckleball. As much progress as the industry has made over the last 10 years, it still has a blind spot when it comes to pitchers who throw unconventionally, and none more so than knuckleballers.

Furthermore, Dickey appears inclined to sign an extension, which makes sense for a pitcher who is 38 years old and has never had a huge payday in his career. (Even his signing bonus as a first-round pick was slashed after a pre-signing physical revealed he was born without an ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow.)

I’ve done my best to research what kind of money Dickey is looking for in an extension. On the high end, I’ve read that he would be willing to sign for “slightly less” than Jake Peavy’s contract (2 years, $29 million). On the low end, I’ve read suggestions he would settle for $10 million a year for the additional two years.

Let’s split the difference and say Dickey would sign for 2 years, $25 million. This is on top of the one-year, $5 million he’s already under contract for, making this a 3-year, $30 million contract that would be paid $5 million/$11 million/$14 million.

Look familiar? That’s the exact structure of Jeremy Guthrie’s contract, except with a $5 million higher payout in 2015. I’ve already made the case that Guthrie’s contract, while a little overpriced towards the end, is a reasonable deal for the Royals. If Guthrie’s deal is a C+ contract, what grade would you give to signing the defending NL Cy Young winner for about 20% more?

Dickey’s contract in 2013 is so affordable that it wouldn’t even preclude the Royals from signing another pitcher in free agency. If it’s true (as Danny Knobler reports) that the Royals are actually willing to make a competitive offer for Anibal Sanchez, then how about instead trading for Dickey and signing Shaun Marcum as well? Suddenly, you have a rotation of Dickey, Marcum, Guthrie, Santana, and Bruce Chen or Luis Mendoza. That would be an absolutely phenomenal revamping of the Royals’ rotation in a single off-season. Though tragically, it would mean that they’d have to let Luke Hochevar go.

(I don’t want to spend too much time on Luke, but just to reiterate what I’ve been saying all year: bringing him back is a mistake. Bringing him back at $4.4 million, or whatever he’ll get in arbitration, is a huge mistake. The Royals not only brought him back, but judging from their most recent comments, still have yet to acknowledge the essence of his flaw: that he can’t pitch with men on base. “I’ve never really had a player,” [Ned Yost] said, “who I couldn’t figure out why he hasn’t been successful. Again, you can, generally, identify one thing for why a player isn’t successful. With Hoch, I can’t.”

Luke Hochevar, bases empty: .252/.313/.425

Luke Hochevar, men on base: .304/.372/.480

Luke Hochevar, runners in scoring position: .315/.388/.504

Any questions?)

Acquiring R.A. Dickey while simultaneously signing him to an extension would be an absolutely franchise-changing move for the Royals. It would dramatically impact their chances of contending in 2013, and still leave them with an above-average starting pitcher signed to a favorable contract in 2014 and 2015.

Is there risk with Dickey? Of course; he’s a pitcher. He might get hurt, although knuckleball pitchers are almost immune to the sorts of injuries that befell pitchers. (And Dickey doesn’t have an ulnar collateral ligament, so he can’t tear it! No Tommy John for him!) Also, Dickey’s knuckleball is quite possibly unique in the annals of major league baseball. Rob Neyer wrote an absolutely fantastic piece on Dickey in June, making a very strong case that Dickey throws his knuckleball harder than any previous knuckleball pitcher ever. It’s possible that, since his knuckleball relies on velocity more than Wakefield’s or Niekro’s, that Dickey might lose his effectiveness more quickly with age.

On the other hand, the fact that Dickey’s knuckleball is different than theirs would explain why it’s also better than theirs. Inning for inning, Dickey was as effective in 2012 as any knuckleballer in history. (Niekro had better seasons, but that’s because he was throwing more than 300 innings a year.) Also, Dickey threw the knuckleball harder in 2012 than he had in 2011 or 2010, which might also explain why he was better this year than ever before. (His knuckler averaged 77.2 mph this year, compared to 76.0 and 75.8 the last two years.) If that’s the case, than it’s possible that he unlocked the key to a pitching talisman this season, and that 2012 might represent just the first year of a long, extended run as one of the best pitchers in the game.

Also, trading for Dickey would mean that either Salvador Perez has to learn to catch the knuckleball, or the Royals will need a devoted catcher for him. Given that Perez tore his knee last spring training reaching for an errant pitch, I vote for the latter – which would also give Perez the benefit of only having to catch about 130 games, keeping Yost from the temptation of running his star catcher into the ground.

But really, these are nitpicks. Dickey is one of the best starting pitchers in baseball, and the fact that he’s not perceived to be that way creates an enormous market inefficiency that the Royals should do their damndest to exploit.

The Mets are reportedly looking for catching and outfield help, preferably close at hand. The problem is that, if Myers isn’t on the table, there’s not a great fit here. The Royals ain’t trading Salvador Perez, and they don’t have any top catching prospects in the organization. In the outfield, after Myers their best prospect is Jorge Bonifacio, who will probably start the year in high-A and is at least 18 months away from the majors.

If that’s not a dealbreaker, I’d be willing to offer Bonifacio, Yordano Ventura, and the requisite minor league relief prospect in exchange for Dickey. That would give the Mets two of the top eight prospects from a deep farm system for one year of Dickey. From the Royals’ standpoint, losing both players hurts, but Ventura might end up in the bullpen one day, and Bonifacio probably wouldn’t join the team until 2016 anyway.

If the Mets can’t wait that long for an outfielder, then I’d be willing to float the idea of trading Lorenzo Cain. Cain is under contract for five more years, and is a league-average centerfielder right now – what he lacks in upside, he gains in certainty. If Cain’s in the deal, you probably wouldn’t have to give up a Ventura-level second prospect. Let’s say Cain, Kyle Smith, and a minor league reliever. A major-league ready centerfielder and a potential #3 starter is a nice return for Dickey, but one the Royals could absorb. The dropoff from Cain to Jarrod Dyson in center is manageable, although the Royals would have to get a platoon partner for him in free agency.

But this is a deal that absolutely needs to get done. The amazing thing is that, unlike just about every bold move that I propose for the Royals, there’s actually a chance that it might. The Royals are talking to the Mets, and appear to be one of the front-runners to get Dickey – if the Mets decide to trade him.

This is doubly astonishing because trading for a knuckleball pitcher represents pretty much the antithesis of the Royals’ approach for the last 25 years. The knuckleball is the victory of results over form, of statistics over scouting. The knuckleball is almost impossible to scout – scouts themselves will tell you that the only way they can tell the quality of a knuckleball is by how awkward the swings are from the batters. The knuckleball thumbs its nose at everything a baseball organization is taught to value in a pitcher – velocity, command, predictable movement. The only thing a knuckleball does is get results.

Through three GMs and countless managers, the one thread that has tied together the failure of the Royals to win over the last 25 years has been their unwillingness to accept that style doesn’t equate to substance. Big athletic guys that swing at pitches in the dirt will lose to smaller, slower hitters who know the strike zone. The Dayton Moore front office has been no more willing to embrace unconventional baseball paradigms than its predecessors. Acquiring R.A. Dickey would go against pretty much everything they stand for. Which is why it’s especially intriguing that they’re considering it anyway.

Back when the Royals were winning, back in the 1980s, they had a pitcher who, like Dickey, threw his fastball in the low 80s. He didn’t throw a knuckleball, but he threw from a submarine position, and he threw with insane precision, and he got people out, and so the Royals kept letting Dan Quisenberry pitch, and he was one of the greatest relief pitchers of all time. The organization lost its way around the time they stopped seeing guys like Quisenberry for what they were and started caring about what they looked like.

Dickey looks like a batting practice pitcher on the mound – and Cy Young in the box score. His pitches look like meatballs for 58 feet – and then perform magic for the last two. So I’m excited that the Royals, in their desperation for starting pitching, are willing to overlook what Dickey doesn’t do in favor of what he does.

But not nearly as excited as I’ll be if they actually acquire him. 

Rumors And Repercussions.

Stop me if you’ve heard me say this before: the more I try to give Dayton Moore and the Royals the benefit of the doubt, the more they try to make me look like an idiot for doing so.

There are valid reasons to be skeptical about the additions of Ervin Santana and Jeremy Guthrie – while both have a track record of success, they both have red flags as well. They’re both coming off poor seasons, albeit with excuses. But I decided not to be critical of either addition, in large part because neither pitcher cost the Royals to dip into their farm system (Brandon Sisk notwithstanding). If adding Santana and Guthrie kept Moore from being tempted to trade a part of his core lineup to improve his rotation, that was a significant fringe benefit.

And now we read this.

There’s a season’s worth of epic fail just in the first paragraph. “Is outfield prospect Wil Myers worth a veteran pitcher who would instantly go to the front of the Royals’ rotation, such as Tampa Bay’s James Shields or Boston’s Jon Lester? If so, how will the club clear sufficient payroll space to stay within its soft $70 million ceiling?”

The answers to those two questions are “HELL NO!” and “wait, soft WHAT?!”

Later in the column, Bob Dutton writes, “is either worth considering from the Royals’ perspective. In effect, are two years of Shields or Lester worth six of Myers?”

No. No. No.

(I want to make something clear: I’m not shooting the messenger here, just the message. Dutton does the job of beat writer so well that it can be hard to tell where the Royals’ opinions stop and where his starts.)

First off, you’re not trading six years of Wil Myers – if you’re smart, you’re trading about 6.9 years. Having made it this far without promoting him to the majors, you have every incentive to start him in Omaha, bring him up in late April, and then delay his free agency until after the 2019 season. Believe me, if he gets traded to Tampa Bay, that’s exactly how they’ll play it out. (Actually, if he gets traded to Tampa Bay, the odds are at least 50/50 that they’ll take my advice and sign him to an Evan Longoria deal. After all, they’re the ones who signed Evan Longoria to an Evan Longoria deal.)

So you trade 6.9 years of Wil Myers for two years of Jon Lester. Two expensive years of Jon Lester. Lester makes $11.625 million next year, with a club option for 2014 at $13 million. In 2014, that would make Lester the most expensive player in Royals history.

That’s fine if you’re getting a quality starter, and for most of his career, he’s been exactly that. Lester became a full-time starter for the Red Sox in 2008, threw a no-hitter against the Royals early in the season, and finished with a 3.21 ERA in 210 innings. His ERAs from 2008 through 2011 read 3.21, 3.41, 3.25, and 3.47, making at least 31 starts each year, pitching in the AL East. He wasn’t an ace, but he was the next-best thing, a top-of-the-line #2 starter. And if the Royals could acquire last year’s Lester, with three years of club control, I wouldn’t be losing my mind about the possibility of trading Myers for him.

But in 2012 he not only used up a year of club control, he had his worst season in the majors, with his ERA jumping to 4.82, and his strikeout rate dropping to 18.9%, from 22.8% the year before and 26.4% from 2009-2010. He might well rebound – the Red Sox were Dysfunction Central in 2012, and Lester was at the center of that. He still took the ball every fifth day. But his velocity has slowly crept downwards, from 93.5 mph in 2009 and 2010 to 92.0 in 2012.

I think Lester is a good candidate to bounce back, and in fact think he would be a fine buy-low candidate. But this isn’t buying low. This is paying steak prices for mystery meat, and hoping it turns out to be filet mignon.

It’s not even clear that trading Myers for Lester would help the Royals in 2013. If Myers goes, then you can expect Jeff Francoeur to get 600 plate appearances come hell or high OBP. The upgrade from Francoeur to even a league-average performance from Myers would be at least four wins. If Lester only bounces back halfway to his previous form, giving the Royals 200 innings but an ERA around 4, that’s only worth about four wins. That’s a wash, while adding $11 million to the payroll.

Oh, and if by some chance Lester has the best season of his career, puts up an ERA in the mid-2s and wins 18 games and finishes first or second in the Cy Young vote? Per a clause in his contract, his 2014 option would be voided, and he’d be a free agent after just one season.

(I feel compelled to suggest a deeply Machiavellian counter-response. If Lester is tearing up the league at mid-season, and the Royals – or Red Sox, if he’s not traded – are not in contention, there’s a simple way to ensure that he won’t be able to opt out of his 2014 contract: trade him to an NL team. His split-league performance will keep him from doing well in either Cy Young vote – look at C.C. Sabathia’s 2008 performance as an example – and keep him under contract for another season with his new team, which will therefore be willing to pay in prospects accordingly.)

Moore wants to add at least one more impact arm and would prefer to do so by trading prospects from the club’s farm system rather than deal someone off the major-league roster.

What really puts the folly of trading for Lester into focus is this: if Moore really wants to add one more impact arm, and has the ability to add Lester’s contract to the payroll, HE DOESN’T HAVE TO TRADE FOR A PITCHER. He can simply sign another one as a free agent.

Jon Lester is owed $24.625 million over the next two years. I’m going on record now as predicting that Shaun Marcum, when he signs in the next few weeks, will not be paid as much over the next two years. I’m confident about this because the Brewers declined to make Marcum a qualifying offer. They could have offered Marcum a 1-year, $13.3 million contract, knowing that if he turned it down, they would have received a supplemental draft pick in compensation. That they did not do so strongly suggests that they were concerned Marcum would accept their offer – and they weren’t willing to commit that much money, even for one year.

I expect Marcum to sign for something like $20 million for two years. Maybe he’ll get a three-year deal for less money, for similar to what Jeremy Guthrie got. But basically, if the Royals can afford to take on Jon Lester’s contract, they can afford to make the best offer to Marcum.

Gun to my head, I’d rather have Lester over Marcum over the next two years, simply because Lester has shown more durability. But it’s awfully close. The difference between Lester and Marcum might be, what, one win a season? And for that one win, you’d trade one of the five best prospects in all of baseball? Are you insane?

James Shields is a more valuable commodity than Lester. He’s thrown 477 innings over the last two years with a 3.15 ERA. (Although keep in mind that he had a 5.18 ERA in 2010.) His strikeout rate continues to tick up, this past year reaching 23.6%, and his command has always been excellent. Like Lester, he’s signed for 2013 with a  2014 option, but there’s no voiding option, and he’s cheaper - $9 million in 2013, $12 million in 2014.

But he pitches for the Rays, in one of the best pitchers’ parks in the game, in front of one of the defenses in the game, for one of the best managers in the game. If you take him out of that organization, he doesn’t bring all of those advantages with him. He would give the Royals a ton of innings and a solid ERA in the mid-3s. But he’s not an ace, and it would be crazy to trade Wil Myers for two years of a #2 starter.

My God, has everyone forgotten what happened last winter? The New York Yankees traded Jesus Montero for Michael Pineda. Pineda, like Lester and Shields, was an established #2 starter in the majors. He had a 3.74 ERA as a rookie, struck out over a man an inning, and made the All-Star team. For Montero, they didn’t get two years of Pineda – they got FIVE years of Pineda.

The similarities between Montero last year and Myers today are almost frightening. Montero was the #6 prospect in the game by Baseball America; Myers will, I predict, rank #4 on their list, behind only Jurickson Profar, Dylan Bundy, and Oscar Taveras. Both Montero and Myers were bat-first prospects who started their careers at catcher. Myers is more athletic, and is expected to have more defensive value in the long run as an outfielder; Montero still catches occasionally, but is expected to give that up eventually and wind up as a 1B/DH.

Myers’ career line in the minors is .303/.395/.522. Montero’s career line in the minors is .308/.366/.501.

As a 21-year-old in Triple-A, Montero hit .288/.348/.467 – but hit .328/.406/.590 in an 18-game callup in September. As a 21-year-old in Triple-A, Myers hit .304/.378/.554 (and hit .343/.414/.731 in Double-A for a month first). You can make a case for either player, but basically, Wil Myers today has almost exactly the same value as Jesus Montero had a year ago.

For Jesus Montero, the Yankees got five years of an established major-league starter, who was still two years away from being arbitration-eligible. And they also got a promising second prospect, Jose Campos, who allowed less than a baserunner an inning as an 18-year-old pitching in the Northwest League. (The Yankees tossed Hector Noesi into the deal; Noesi had a 5.82 ERA for the Mariners this year, and is a non-entity at this point.)

The people arguing that the Royals should trade Wil Myers for a starting pitcher make the case that even the best prospects aren’t a sure thing, and that Myers might wind up being a big disappointment in 2013. They’re right. He could end up doing what Jesus Montero did this year – Montero hit .260/.298/.386 while playing every day for the Mariners.

And guess what? THEY’D STILL MAKE THE TRADE AGAIN. They traded a 22-year-old starter with five years of service time, and a quality second arm, for Montero, watched as Montero stunk up the joint, and at least right now, they’ve clearly won the trade. Because Pineda, of course, tore up his rotator cuff in spring training, missed the entire season, and no one knows what his stuff will be like when he returns.

And now you’re telling me the Royals are even thinking of trading Wil Myers for two expensive seasons from a #2 starting pitcher? Are you insane?

Or just look at what the Royals got for Zack Greinke. They got Alcides Escobar, the #12 prospect in baseball a year before, but whose stock had dropped considerably after hitting .235 as a rookie. They got Jake Odorizzi, who was ranked the #69 prospect in baseball after the trade. They got Lorenzo Cain and Jeremy Jeffress, neither of whom were Top 100 prospects. I’ll take liberties here and call Cain and Escobar “prospects” even though they had exhausted their rookie status, and say that the Royals traded Greinke into a Top 50 prospect, a 51-100 prospect, a 101-150 prospect, and a 151-200 prospect.

Any retrospective analysis of prospect lists will lead you to the conclusion that you’d rather have a single Top 10 prospect – particularly a hitting prospect – than the four guys above. Wil Myers alone is worth more than the four guys that they got for Zack Greinke.

And by the way, Jon Lester and James Shields are not Zack Greinke. Greinke was a year removed from the most dominant season by any starting pitcher since Pedro Martinez in 2000. In his down year in 2010, he had just a 4.17 ERA – better than Lester this season – and 181 Ks against just 55 walks, while pitching the second half of the season like he’d rather be digging ditches than on the mound at Kauffman Stadium. He was still worth 3.2 Wins Above Replacement. By comparison, in 2012, Shields was only worth 2.2 WAR, and Lester was at 0.4.

If anything, the Brewers were willing to overpay for Greinke, because the way their roster was set up – with Prince Fielder set to be a free agent in two years – they felt that their best chance to win was immediately. That’s one of the reasons I was so optimistic about the trade initially – because the Brewers seemed to have an incentive to overpay in future talent in order to acquire talent in the here and now.

So to recap: two years ago, the Brewers – who were pushing to win right away – overpaid to acquire Zack Greinke. They still gave up less talent to acquire a better pitcher than the Royals would give up to acquire Jon Lester or James Shields.

Are the Royals insane?

Maybe there’s nothing to this. As a friend pointed out, virtually every significant move the Royals have made under Dayton Moore was not leaked beforehand. If you’re an optimist, you might even convince yourself that the fact we’re talking about Lester and Shields means the Royals won’t trade for either player. But it’s clear they want to add another starter, and it’s clear that they’re willing to do so by any means necessary.

And it worries me that for the first time, we have a case of moral hazard on our hands. Moral hazard refers to what happens when an individual takes risks knowing that they won’t suffer the downside if their gamble goes sour. (c.f. Every bank in America during the housing bubble.) In this case, Dayton Moore knows that if the Royals don’t start winning in 2013, he’s probably out of a job. So the risk that Wil Myers becomes a superstar in 2015 is, to him, less concerning than the risk that the Royals will win 79 games in 2013 instead of 83.

This isn’t something unique to Moore – every GM or manager approaching the end of their contract will have their interests focused on the short term more than the organization as a whole should. And until now, Moore has done a good job – maybe too good a job – of focusing on the long term, by concentrating on high school talent in the draft, spending millions on 16-year-olds in Latin America, etc.

But if he trades Wil Myers for a two-year pitcher, he’s sacrificing the organization’s ability to contend from 2015 through 2019 for a short-term gain. That would be fine if the Royals are where the Brewers were two years ago – but they’re not. This is a team that should continue to improve for the next 3-4 years, at least until Alex Gordon and Billy Butler are eligible for free agency, if not until Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas do the same.

I have advocated that the Royals make a play for 2013, because I think they have a chance to contend next year if they play their cards right. But not at the expensive of sacrificing their long-term future. Trading Jorge Bonifacio or Jason Adam is one thing. Trading Wil Myers is quite another. If you can’t get an ace (David Price), or at least a cost-controlled pitcher with years of service time (Jeremy Hellickson, although even he’s not enough), then you don’t do it. It’s as simple as that.

And after all that, it’s time to talk about the really depressing part of Dutton’s column, the part about the “soft $70 million ceiling”. There have been signs that the Royals’ payroll has been capped at that point for over a year, but I’ve tried my best to ignore it, because I’ve stubbornly believed that ownership could not possibly be so dumb as to claim that they can’t afford to spend more than $70 million in payroll. They couldn’t possibly be so dumb as to think that the fans would buy it.

Last month I finally came down on the Royals for crying poverty, and now, finally, the artillery is coming out everywhere. To recap:

- The Royals had a payroll in excess of $70 million in 2009, and again in 2010.

- Revenue is going up throughout the sport at a breakneck pace.

- National TV revenue goes up by about $26 million starting in 2014.

- The Royals are limited from spending as much on amateur talent acquisition as they used to by the new CBA.

Given those four facts, in what universe are the Royals limited to a $70 million payroll?

Here’s a real quick accounting of revenue:

- Starting in 2014, every team in MLB will earn a total of $50 million from the national TV contract.

- The Royals, even saddled with a long-term local TV deal that was signed before the money explosion, still earn $20 million annually from their deal.

That’s $70 million right there, which would cover payroll. True, the Royals have non-payroll expenses, employees, draft picks, minor leagues, etc. But then consider:

- If we conservatively assume attendance of 1.6 million, and conservatively assume an average of $30 spent per attendee on tickets, concessions, parking, etc – that’s $48 million.

And THEN we have to remember that the Royals are one of the prime beneficiaries of MLB’s revenue sharing, which brings in tens of millions of dollars to the organization. That enormous $250 million a year TV contract the Dodgers are signing? 34% of that goes to a central fund. If that’s distributed evenly to all 30 teams, that means the Royals will earn $3 million just from the Dodgers’ TV deal. And I’m pretty sure it’s not distributed evenly – the lower-revenue teams get more of the central fund money.

Put it together, and Forbes estimates that the Royals had $161 million in revenue in 2011. Throw in the new TV contract and the rise in ticket prices, and we’re talking about over $200 million in revenue in 2014.

And they have a $70 million ceiling. But hey, it’s “soft”, so it’s all good.

It’s time to take the gloves off. Sam Mellinger did a fine job in today’s paper, but honestly, he could have been even harder on the Glass family, and not just because the Star prohibits the use of profanity. Saying the Royals could “extend the payroll to at least $75 million and as much as $80 million” is entirely too kind – based on the publicly available numbers, the Royals can go to $85 million easy. And it’s not because “Glass and the Royals have saved more than enough he last few years” – it’s because even at $85 million, the Glass family should do no worse than break even, and probably still turn a tidy profit.

The game is swimming in cash, and a rising tide lifts all boats, even the little dinghy that the Royals live on. If David Glass thinks he can’t afford to spend more than $70 million in payroll, then he’s incredibly cheap. If he thinks that the fans will believe that he can’t afford to spend more than $70 million in payroll, then he’s incredibly cynical.

I’d like to believe he’s neither, because I’m a charitable sort. But in the coming days, we’re going to find out if he actually cares about winning, or if he’s just Jeffrey Loria without the tacky taste in home run sculptures.

If the Royals extend the payroll to even $80 million, they still have plenty of space to work with. I’ve finally done a complete analysis of their payroll obligations, and right now their 2013 payroll looks to be around $67 million. (There’s some disagreement over exactly how Jeff Francoeur’s contract breaks down, and I can only guess at what Aaron Crow will make, given that he’s not arbitration-eligible but signed a major-league contract out of the draft.)

But comments like these: “The truth of the matter,” Moore said, “is if we add another pitcher…there wouldn’t be room to add that individual unless we got rid of somebody else.” – make it sound like $80 million is out of the question. Which is utterly, completely indefensible.

Even at $70 million, the Royals can add another player, since “somebody else” can easily be Luke Hochevar and his $4.4 million obligation. But the margin for error is tiny, and it leads to desperate ideas like possibly cutting Felipe Paulino and his $2.7 million contract.

Which circles us back to where we started: if you’re really limited to a $70 million payroll, then there is NOTHING more valuable to you than a star prospect who’s ready to step onto your roster, and be paid the major league minimum for the next three years. If, instead, you prefer to commit almost $25 million over the next two years to a starting pitcher coming off a bad season, then you understand nothing about economics, or even basic math.

This could be a tempest in a teapot. But this could also be the prelude to a franchise-altering mistake. The Royals have the resources to add one more starting pitcher using the same method they added their last starting pitcher, through free agency. If, through stinginess or short-sightedness, they trade their best prospect instead, it’s going to be open season on the organization, and I have my shotgun at the ready.

For Want Of A Pitcher: Jeremy Guthrie.

Before we talk about what the Royals gave up to re-sign Jeremy Guthrie, let’s talk about what they did not give up: talent. They gave up money, lots of money, probably too much money. But they did not surrender any players. Given that it’s the rare day that goes by without a rumor breaking that the Royals are trying to trade for pitching, this is significant. Given that most of those rumors involve the Royals trading established major league hitters – or Wil Myers, who’s almost the same thing – for pitching, it’s even more significant.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating again: before the Royals dip into their impressive pool of talent to acquire starting pitching, they should dip into their financial reserves, which are impressive in their own right, even though no one in the organization wants to admit it. You don’t get bonus points for winning on a $60 million payroll, and I’d rather the Royals go to war at $80 million than sacrifice young talent to keep that payroll at a Raysian level.

We can argue over whether Dayton Moore spent this money wisely, but at least he had money to spend. Given his comments from a few weeks ago, it wasn’t entirely clear that that was the case.

I already performed a (somewhat superficial) analysis of Guthrie in September, and I’d like to lean on that analysis a little, because coming before we knew if the Royals would re-sign him or not, it should probably be taken more seriously than any analysis I’d do today. At the time, I estimated that Guthrie’s 4.12 ERA from 2007 to 2011 was probably inflated by around 20 points because 1) he pitched for the one patsy in the toughest division in baseball and 2) his home ballpark was poorly suited for his talents. Combine that with the league-wide drop in ERA over the last two years, and I estimated that his true talent level, in today’s terms, was around a 3.70 ERA.

I also suggested that the Royals sign him for 2 years and $15 million. Obviously, that’s not what happened. Essentially, we can break his contract into two parts. He signed a heavily backloaded two-year deal ($5 million in 2013, $11 million in 2014), which given the backloading is almost exactly what I suggested. He also got a guaranteed third year at $9 million.

If Guthrie had signed a two-year, backloaded, $16 million deal with a club option for $9 million in 2015, I’d be pretty happy at the moment. The difference is that the option is guaranteed. That’s not a trivial difference, obviously, and it’s why I’m essentially neutral on the signing overall. But I’ll admit to being a little surprised by just how much vitriol this contract is getting from certain quarters – most notably Royals Review, where they believe the Royals have just shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and they’re advocating revolution.

Here are the marks against Guthrie:

1) He turns 34 in April, and will be 36 in the final, guaranteed year of his contract.

2) He doesn’t strike anyone out – a career ratio of just 5.4 Ks per 9 innings, and just 5.0 per 9 innings in 2012.

3) He’s not that good a pitcher – a career ERA of 4.28 is basically average, and since he’s getting older, he’s not likely to be even average going forward.

4) He had a 4.76 ERA in 2012.

My rebuttal to these points would start with one thing: the fact that Jeremy Guthrie sucked donkey balls for one half-season in the worst pitchers’ park in major league history should not be held against him. Take out his time with the Rockies, and Guthrie’s career ERA drops to 4.11; his ERA in 2012 (3.16) would be a career high. It’s not just his ERA – the drop in Guthrie’s strikeout rate in 2012 was entirely an artifact of his time in Colorado. After joining the Royals, Guthrie struck out 15.7% of the batters he faced, which would (narrowly) be a career-high for him.

The last time the Royals signed a potential free agent to an extension on the basis of a fine (but small sample size) performance in a Royals uniform, it was Jeff Francoeur. I was ambivalent at the time about giving him a two-year, $13.5 million contract, and obviously I was dead wrong – I should have been adamantly against it. The core of my mistake (and the Royals) was that I simply weighed his most recent performance, the 2011 season, too strongly. I thought that his improvement was so broad – higher batting average, more doubles, more homers – that some of it was probably real. It was not. I was wrong.

Many of the people who are ripping the Royals for giving $25 million to a #4 starter were equally upset about the Francoeur signing. They were right. But if the central error in the Francoeur signing was weighing recent evidence too heavily, I think that calling Jeremy Guthrie a below-average starter evokes the same mistake. In contrast to Francoeur, the anomaly in Guthrie's performance was the sample size in which he sucked. And in Guthrie’s case, it wasn’t even a full season – it was a half-season, in a terrible ballpark (even with the Rockies, he had a 3.67 ERA on the road), and he’s already regressed to his previous performance level.

Incidentally, if you think that Guthrie’s performance with the Orioles – to say nothing of his time in Kansas City – made him “a #4 starter”, your frame of reference must be the 2011 Phillies rotation. For five years, Guthrie averaged 197 innings with a 107 ERA+ in the AL East. Maybe he’ll be a #4 starter going forward, but he’s been considerably more than that in his career.

The first two points above are more on point: Guthrie is getting older, and older pitchers tend to stop missing bats, and Guthrie wasn’t missing bats in the first place. That has to be the most frightening scenario for the Royals, that Guthrie suddenly turns into Aaron Cook or Livan Hernandez or something.

I find it somewhat mysterious that Guthrie has such a low strikeout rate in the first place, because he’s not a soft-tosser by any means. His fastball has averaged over 92 mph every year of his career. If he relied on a sinker, I could see how he might have a low strikeout rate because he aimed to get groundballs, but he’s actually a mildly flyball-oriented pitcher. Cook, by comparison, hasn’t averaged even 90 mph on his fastball since 2008, back when he was still good. No one knows how hard Hernandez throws because his fastball doesn’t set off the radar gun. (He averaged 84.0 mph this year. Livan hasn’t averaged more than 85 mph in the last seven years. He’s basically Jamie Moyer, only right-handed.)

That doesn’t change the fact that Guthrie’s strikeout rate is concerning. And admittedly, things like Pitch f/x data and fastball velocity are not my forte; when I say things like “given two pitchers with low strikeout rates, bet on the guy who throws harder”, I’m just guessing. But in Guthrie’s defense, his strikeout rate has held steady for the last four years, more or less, and perhaps more importantly, so has his fastball velocity. He averaged 92.6 mph this year, the same as he did in 2010 and higher than his average velocity in 2009 and 2011.

It’s hard to be successful as a pitcher in the modern era while striking out less than six men per nine innings. Guthrie has made a career out of it, in large part because his career BABIP is .278. His .298 BABIP this season was the highest of his career, and that was entirely because he had to pitch at Coors Field – after joining the Royals, it was .271. That’s roughly 20 points better than average, in a sample size that’s large enough to suggest it’s real. Combine that with above-average control (2.7 walks per 9 innings for his career, just 2.4 walks per 9 since 2010 not counting his Coors experience), and he’s been able to parlay a below-average strikeout rate into slightly above-average results.

I want to go on a tangent for a second…one of the criticisms I’ve seen of Guthrie is that based on fWAR – the Wins Above Replacement formula used by Fangraphs – he’s not a very good pitcher. He’s averaged barely 2 fWAR over the last six years, and has never been worth more than 2.6 fWAR in his career. Here’s the problem with that:

Jeremy Guthrie, 2008-2012: 9.5 fWAR

Luke Hochevar, 2008-2012: 8.9 fWAR

If you believe in fWAR as the end-all and be-all of player evaluation, then you have to believe that Luke Hochevar has been worth 1.8 fWAR per season – which is to say that he’s been a roughly league-average pitcher. According to Fangraphs, Hochevar has been worth at least $6.7 million in each of the last five years, so the Royals would be crazy not to bring him back for 2013 at less than $5 million.

Needless to say, that’s ridiculous.

The Fangraphs’ version of WAR defers from Baseball-Reference’s version in that Fangraphs seeks to strip out the noise from a pitcher’s performance. Instead of using runs allowed, Fangraphs looks at the component measures of a pitcher’s performance (walks, strikeouts, homers) to estimate his true value. There’s nothing wrong with this – I do this a lot when I mention a pitcher’s xFIP instead of his ERA. For a pitcher without a long track record in the majors, using these component measures usually leads to a better estimate of future performance.

But in the case of a pitcher who has over- or under-performed his components, year after year after year, at some point you throw up your hands and say that he is what he is, and not what he should be. In Hochevar’s case, he has a 4.28 xFIP for his career, but a 5.39 ERA, because he turns into jelly when there are men on base. Three years ago, when Hochevar had a 6.55 ERA despite a good strikeout-to-walk ratio and groundball tendencies, I had hope that his ERA was a fluke and he was primed to improve. Three years later, that hope is gone.

In Guthrie’s case, he has a 4.63 career xFIP but a 4.28 ERA, because he has consistently been above-average in preventing hits on balls in play. In a sample size of over 1200 innings, there’s a good chance that this isn’t a fluke, and there’s something about the way he pitches that leads to a slightly better-than-average BABIP. According to Baseball Reference, which measures value by runs allowed, Guthrie has been worth 12.4 bWAR over the last six years – 30% more than Fangraphs’ method.

But you know what’s funny? Even if you use Fangraphs’ method, and even accounting for Guthrie’s epic fail in Colorado, they estimate his worth over the last three years at $23.8 million. And yet a backloaded $25 million over the next three years, in an inflationary era, has some people grabbing pitchforks.

Another tangent: can we all please stop lumping in Player X with Players A, B, and C to make the argument that Player X is overpaid? Saying that signing Guthrie is stupid because the Royals are now paying $17 million for Guthrie, Jeff Francoeur, and Bruce Chen in 2013 makes as much since as saying that signing Guthrie is brilliant because they’re paying him, Salvador Perez, and Alcides Escobar $9 million in 2013. Billy Butler and Rany Jazayerli combined to hit .313 this season. It’s a non sequitur. Please stop it.

Let me turn to another impartial assessment of Guthrie’s skills. ESPN’s Keith Law put together his list of the Top 50 Free Agents on this year’s market, and ranked Jeremy Guthrie #26 on his list. Three spots higher, at #23, was Shaun Marcum. I was actually doing a write-up of Marcum before Guthrie was signed, and I struggled with the decision of which pitcher I’d rather have. On the one hand, Marcum is three years younger and has the better career numbers (3.76 ERA). On the other hand, Marcum has an extensive injury history – including missing two months in 2012 with recurrent elbow problems – and his fastball averaged just 86.5 mph this past season.

I ultimately came to the conclusion that Marcum was better, but very marginally so – which corresponds to Law’s assessment, which is that they were the 10th and 11th-best starters on the free agent market. Given that, it will be interesting to see what Marcum gets in free agency. He might not get a three-year deal given his injury history, but I expect him to get more money per season, maybe something along the lines of 2 years and $20 million. If Marcum’s fair value is 2/$20, then Guthrie at $3/25 is only a slight overpay.

At the beginning of the off-season I made the statement that this was the off-season where it actually made sense to strike early on the free agent market, given that I expect we’re going to see significant inflation with all the new TV money sloshing around. I’m going to own that statement. If I’m wrong about salary inflation, then I’m wrong to not condemn this contract. We’ll know the answer to both in the next 4-6 weeks.

I’m not complimenting the Royals on this signing. I have serious reservations about the guaranteed third year; there’s a significant chance that in 2015, Guthrie will contribute virtually nothing for his $9 million. But I’m not condemning it either. The Royals improved their rotation for 2013. They structured the contract in such a way that they might still have room to add one more starter in free agency – like, say, Shaun Marcum – that would obviate the need to trade prospects or established young hitters to improve their rotation. They cut Chris Volstad, making this column completely invalid. (Thankfully.)

I acknowledge that my opinion, while shared by many in the mainstream media, is not shared by analysts. Joe Sheehan texted me Guthrie is “fungible talent without upside, and locking up money for a team that’s cheap.” Dave Cameron was not complimentary of the deal either. Cameron made what I thought was an excellent comparison to Bronson Arroyo, who two winters ago signed a three-year extension with the Reds. Arroyo was the same age then as Guthrie is now, and essentially the same pitcher – very durable, but striking out barely 5 batters per 9 innings, making him barely above league-average overall despite good command.

From 2005 to 2010, Arroyo amassed 17.8 bWAR. From 2007 to 2012, Guthrie amassed 16.1 bWAR – but in the superior league. Very comparable.

Arroyo couldn’t have pitched much worse in the first year of his contract, leading the NL in homers and earned runs allowed. But he bounced back strongly in 2012, throwing 202 innings with a 3.74 ERA, and throwing seven one-hit innings in his sole playoff start.

I don’t know whether Guthrie will perform better or worse than Arroyo has. But I know this: when Arroyo signed, Reds fans weren’t threatening to revolt. And Arroyo got $36 million for three years.

Or take Mark Buehrle, who’s the same age as Guthrie, and like Guthrie survives without striking batters out. Buehrle is obviously superior – he’s left-handed, he’s amazingly durable, and he’s pitched at a slightly higher level than Guthrie. But Buehrle is going make $48 million over the next three years. The Blue Jays gave up talent to land his contract – admittedly, with a lot of other contracts attached – and were lauded for it.

Guthrie isn’t the pitcher Mark Buehrle is. But is he half the pitcher Buehrle is? I think he is. (Buehrle has 25.4 bWAR over the last six years.) If you think that the Blue Jays – who, like the Royals, are aggressively trying to overhaul their rotation to contend in 2013 – made a good move to land Buehrle, I’m not sure why you’d be up in arms over Guthrie’s contract.

I think it’s an overpay because of that third year. But I think it’s a reasonable overpay if it gives the Royals a true chance to contend in 2013. Which is the main reason why I’m not putting my foot down on either side of the scale yet. As it stands, the Royals need to add one more starting pitcher – preferably better than the Santana/Guthrie class – to be taken seriously as a possible contender next season. If the Royals don’t add another pitcher, or if they rip out the heart of their offense to do so, then they’ll open 2013 on the fringe again. If that happens, the main benefit of Guthrie’s contract – the low payroll cost for his service in 2013 – will be wasted, while the main downside of his contract will hamstring the team’s payroll in 2015.

As the Royals’ roster is currently constructed, their payroll for next year is around $70 or 71 million – which means, if you lop off Hochevar, it’s around $66 million. Again, that’s less than their payroll three years ago. There is PLENTY of room to add another starting pitcher, and they don’t have to give up Wil Myers or Eric Hosmer in order to acquire a young, cheap pitcher like Jeremy Hellickson. They can sign Marcum, or gamble on Dan Haren, or trade lesser prospects for a more expensive pitcher like James Shields or Matt Garza.

If they do so, and their Opening Day rotation goes (as an example) Shields, Santana, Guthrie, Chen, and Mendoza, with Jake Odorizzi ready to step in at a moment’s notice, and Danny Duffy and Felipe Paulino returning by mid-season, and Kyle Zimmer and Yordano Ventura and John Lamb on the fast track…you can win with that in 2013, if your offense takes a step forward and your bullpen replicates what it did last year.

If their rotation is Santana, Guthrie, Chen, Hochevar, and Mendoza, now you’re going to need a miracle. Or Hochevar suddenly pitching up to his ability, which is even less likely.

So I’m not willing to sign off on this deal yet. The Royals needed three quality pitchers for 2013, and they only have two of them so far. But they landed both of them without surrendering any real talent, and they now have an entire winter to find that one final piece.

2013 Top Prospects: #6 - #10

The Royals’ top five prospects are all American-born; four were drafted by the team, while Jake Odorizzi was acquired in trade. Despite that, I think it can be argued that the Dayton Moore Royals have actually done a more impressive job mining talent in Latin America than stateside. A topic for another column, perhaps. You’ll see five exhibits for that argument below.

#6: Yordano Ventura

Pos-T: RHSP

H-W: 5’11”, 140 lbs (listed – he’s probably closer to 170 now)

DOB: 06/03/1991 (Age 21)

Signed: Latin American Free Agent, 2009, signed for $28,000

Overall Rank in Baseball: #75-150

Organizational Rank by KC Star: #6

Stats:

2010: 64 IP, 58 H, 18 BB, 71 K, 3 HR, 3.08 ERA in DSL and Complex league

2011: 84 IP, 82 H, 24 BB, 88 K, 8 HR, 4.27 ERA in low-A ball

2012: 109 IP, 92 H, 42 BB, 130 K, 8 HR, 3.62 ERA in high-A and AA

Ventura has the highest upside of any pitcher in the organization, if you define “upside” as “the absolute craziest best-case scenario that could possibly happen”. Ventura throws harder than any other pitcher in the farm system, legitimately upper 90s, touching 100 (as he did at the Futures Game this summer). He also has a curveball with tremendous break; when he throws it for strikes, it can be unhittable.

Right now, his third pitch is a changeup that is still well below-average. If he were to turn that into an above-average pitch, and tighten up his control, and if his slender physique holds up – he’s a bonafide #1 starter in the majors.

That’s a lot of ifs.

A year ago it was assumed that Ventura was a future reliever. He had the stuff to be an elite closer, but neither his body nor his delivery would hold up for seven innings at a time. To his credit, it’s no longer taken as an article of faith that he’s bullpen-bound. The Royals say that he has tightened up his delivery and has become much more consistent with it over the past year. They still see him as a future starter in the majors, and while that’s not an industry consensus, that’s not a laughable proposition either.

He’s definitely a future major leaguer, and probably a successful one. But there’s a huge difference between an above-average reliever and an above-average starter. The Royals have a half-dozen of the former; they have none of the latter. You can say this about a lot of prospects, but 2013 is a pretty critical year for him. If he continues to progress as a starter, he might be in the Royals’ rotation by August – the Royals feel he is slightly closer to being major-league-ready than Kyle Zimmer or John Lamb. But he could also go out and put up a Mike Montgomery stat line and be in the bullpen by year’s end.

Trade Suitability: Medium to High. I’m not sure the Royals would agree; they see him as a potential ace if everything goes right. But simply knowing the actuarial risk involved with pitching prospects, if I’m Dayton Moore, I’d see what I can get if I sell Ventura high. His numbers in 2012 were embellished by spending most of it at Wilmington; if he goes out and puts up a 5+ ERA in Double-A next year, his trade value plummets.

Yeah, there’s a risk that you trade him away and he turns into Johnny Cueto or something and you look like a fool in three years. But he probably won’t. If he turns into a souped-up version of Kelvin Herrera, you can stand the hit. I’d see about making him the centerpiece of a deal for someone like Jon Lester. Would I trade him straight up for one season of Josh Johnson? Uh…I guess it doesn’t matter now. Man, the Marlins are an effing disgrace.

#7: Adalberto Mondesi

Pos-B: SS-B

H-W: 6’1”, 165 lb

DOB: 07/27/1995 (Age 17)

Signed: Latin American Free Agent, 2011, signed for $2 million

Overall Rank in Baseball: #101-200

Organizational Rank by KC Star: #7

Stats:

2012: .290/.346/.386, 11/13 in SB, in 50 G in Advanced Rookie league

Three years ago, the Texas Rangers signed Jurickson Profar for a $1.5 million bonus during the July signing period for 16-year-old in Latin America. The signing surprised a lot of teams. Profar was considered a fine prospect, and a very polished one – he led his Curacao team to the Little League World Series in 2004 and 2005, winning the championship the first time and losing in the championship game the second time. But he wasn’t considered one of the elite players available during signing season, and most teams saw him as a future pitcher – the Rangers wanted him as a shortstop.

The following year, Profar made his pro debut, and despite being only 17, the Rangers aggressively placed him in the Northwest League, where most teams send their college draft picks, while keeping their high school picks and Latin American kids in complex ball. Profar more than held his own against guys four and five years older than him, hitting .250/.323/.373 and playing an impressive shortstop. After the season Baseball America ranked him the #74 prospect in the game.

In 2011, he spent the whole year in low-A ball, and hit .286/.390/.493 with 12 homers, 8 triples, 37 doubles, 23 steals, more walks (65) than strikeouts (63), all while being considered an elite defensive shortstop. He was 18 years old the entire season. He jumped all the way to #7 in BA’s prospect rankings before this season.

This year, he skipped a level and went to Double-A, and hit .281/.368/.452 – just 19 years old, remember. He got a September call-up and went 3-for-17, but all three hits were for extra bases. He was on the Rangers’ roster for the Wild Card Game and had a pinch-hit single in the ninth inning. When BA puts out its Top 100 Prospect list next spring, it will be stunning if Profar isn’t the #1 prospect in all the land.

You see where I’m going with this.

Last summer, the Royals signed Adalberto Mondesi out of Latin America to a $2 million bonus. While Mondesi was well-regarded and considered a relatively polished player – he’s the son of Raul Mondesi – most teams considered that kind of bonus money to be a stretch.

This year, the Royals send Mondesi straight to Idaho Falls, skipping over the Arizona Rookie League team, letting Mondesi face more advanced competition. As you can see from the numbers above, Mondesi did just fine.

Unlike Profar, Mondesi wasn’t 17 in his first pro season. He was, at least until July 27^th, 16 years old. (The Royals didn’t actually sign Mondesi until a few weeks after the July 2nd opening of signing season in Latin America – because he was still 15.)

And much like Profar, the impression people have of Mondesi has gone from “nice little player, but not worth the money he got” to “holy sh*t, how did we miss this?” in under a year. He’s 17 years old, people. While not guaranteeing anything, the Royals are hoping that they’ll be able to place him in full-season low-A ball to start next year. To the best of my knowledge, that would make him the youngest player in Royals history to play in a full-season league. (Oh, and unlike most Dominican players, we can trust his birthdate. His dad is Raul Mondesi. Adalberto was actually born in Los Angeles.)

Like Profar, he’s a switch-hitter who’s comfortable from either side. Like Profar, he’s considered a well-above-average defender at shortstop.

All these things were on my mind when I asked J.J. Picollo about Mondesi a few weeks ago. I swear to you, his first words were, “Well, I don’t want to compare him to Jurickson Profar, but…” Unfortunately, I didn’t hear what Picollo said after that, as I couldn’t hear him over the sound of my own cackling.

Look, I’m not saying Adalberto Mondesi is the new Jurickson Profar. But dammit if he doesn’t have a chance. Put it this way: he’s roughly three years younger than Bubba Starling, and performed nearly as well against comparable competition, while playing the toughest position on the field. You know my obsession with age in prospects – but do you have any idea how rare it is for a 16-year-old to play in an advanced rookie league, let alone play well?

And it’s not like I’m looking at the numbers in a vacuum – scouts who see him play think he has a chance to be an elite-level shortstop in the majors. (Picollo told me that offensively, he’s as good as Profar at the same age, and defensively “he’s fantastic.”) It’s possible Mondesi will outgrow the position – he’s already added two inches to his listed height since signing – but right now he has the actions and quickness to be well above-average at the position.

I thought I was going to make a statement with this selection, placing Mondesi as high as I have – until Bob Dutton came out with his rankings and placed Mondesi 7th as well. So either I’m not nearly as bold as I think I am, or Mondesi’s reputation is growing by the day.

A lot could go wrong, of course. He might not continue to improve with the bat even as he moves up the chain. He might not be the #1 prospect in the game in two years. But the fact that we’re even talking about the possibility makes it impossible for me to rank him any lower than this. Frankly, I’m more worried that I have him too low. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s the #1 prospect in the system a year from now.

When he’ll be 18.

I know this: between Starling and Mondesi, the Kane County Cougars are going to be packed with prospect goodness next season. Since I drive by the ballpark every day on my way to work, I can’t wait to drop in and see them play every week – what’s that? They moved their low-A team where? Kentucky?

Lovely.

Trade Suitability: Over My Dead Body.

#8: Jorge Bonifacio

Pos-B: RF-R

H-W: 6’1”, 192 lb

DOB: 06/04/1993 (Age 19)

Signed: Latin American Free Agent, 2009, signed for $135,000

Overall Rank in Baseball: #101-200

Organizational Rank by KC Star: #8

Stats:

2010: .296/.381/.433, 14/21 SB in 69 G in DSL and Complex league

2011: .284/.333/.492, 5/11 SB in 62 G in Advanced Rookie ball

2012: .282/.336/.432, 6/9 SB in 105 G in low-A ball

Speaking of Latin American position players debuting in full-season ball at a very early age, Bonifacio took the field for the Kane County Cougars this April at the age of 18. As best as I can tell, he was the youngest hitter on a Royals’ full-season squad since Andres Blanco nearly a decade ago.

Blanco got promoted because he was a defensive wizard, not because he could hit. Bonifacio, the younger brother of the Marlins’ Emilio Bonifacio, can hit; he more than held his own as one of the youngest players in the Midwest League. He profiles as a prototypical right fielder with above-average power. He hit 10 homers (and six triples) in 105 games this year, in a league where it’s tough to hit the ball out.

He’s still a few years away, and he still has some things to work on. His trendline in 2012 certainly wasn’t inspiring:

April: .340/.415/.468

May: .302/.347/.457

June: .270/.330/.404

July: .226/.261/.452

August: .207/.258/.241 (eight games)

His season ended a few weeks early with a bruised thumb, but he’s fine; he’s been on the bench for Tigres del Licey in the Dominican Winter League.

I don’t have a lot to say about Bonifacio, not because he’s not a very good prospect, but because there’s not anything particularly unique about him. He’s a very good hitter at a very young age, and in a farm system that didn’t have Wil Myers, he’d be a lot more important to the Royals’ future.

Trade Suitability: Medium to High, because the Royals do have Wil Myers. Bonifacio is the highest-rated position player prospect in the system that the Royals could actually part with, and as such, would make sense as the #2 prospect in almost any trade the Royals make for an elite starting pitcher, or as the main prospect they trade for a lesser or temporary solution.

#9: Orlando Calixte

Pos-B: SS-R

H-W: 5’11”, 160 lb

DOB: 02/03/1992 (Age 20)

Signed: Latin American Free Agent, 2008, signed for $1 million

Overall Rank in Baseball: #101-200

Organizational Rank by KC Star: #15

Stats:

2010: .227/.350/.318, 3/4 SB in 20 G in Complex league

2011: .208/.256/.263, 11/15 SB in 81 G in low-A ball

2012: .262/.315/.444, 10/18 SB in 125 G in low-A and high-A ball

(Calixte is currently hitting .297/.333/.378 in 10 Arizona Fall League games.)

If you want yet another reminder why I consider prospect age so important, take a look at Calixte. In 2011, at age 19, he played for Kane County and hit .208, with nine extra-base hits in 81 games. Even given his youth, even given the seven-figure signing bonus the Royals gave him three years earlier, I was skeptical that he was going to ever turn into a premium prospect.

A year later, Calixte roped 27 extra-base hits in just 62 games for Kane County, before getting promoted to Wilmington, and continued to hit there. He hit .281/.326/.426 for the Blue Rocks, with 17 doubles in 256 at-bats, and his numbers there are especially impressive because Wilmington’s ballpark is death for right-handed hitters. On the road, Calixte hit .321/.374/.521 after his promotion to high-A ball.

Mind you, this is from a 20-year-old shortstop.

Calixte’s probably not going to play shortstop in the majors; his defense there is considered rough, and while errors are a terrible way to evaluate defensive ability in a prospect, when a prospect makes 56 of them, as Calixte did this year, that gets your attention. I’ve heard more than one report compare him to a young Alfonso Soriano, with a slight physique hiding a surprising amount of power when it uncoils. But at least statistically, Calixte reminds me of another player. A shortstop with suspect defense, who can hit .280 with good power for a shortstop but little plate discipline…that kind of reminds me of Yuniesky Betancourt.

Before you advocate that the Royals release him immediately, let me point out that that’s a compliment. Once upon a time, Betancourt was a valuable and inexpensive player with the promise of more to come. In 2006, he hit .289/.310/.403 for the Mariners; in 2007 he hit .289/.308/.418, and made barely more than the MLB minimum each year. (His legs weren’t yet chained to the ground either.) One major league GM liked Betancourt so much that he offered to trade Billy Butler for him straight up; another major league GM liked Betancourt so much that he refused the offer. (Only one of them still has his job.)

Anyway, the point is that Betancourt had the skills to become a better player than he was more than anything else. It’s not a perfect comparison – Betancourt almost never struck out, even when he was sucking ass for the Royals, while Calixte whiffed 109 times last year. On the other hand, given his youth and the ballparks involved, Calixte has a chance to hit for far more power than Betancourt ever did.

Calixte will be 21 this year, and most likely will begin the season for Double-A Northwest Arkansas, the most favorable ballpark for a hitter that he’s played in yet. The chance is certainly there that he’ll slug .500 for the first half of the season, and no matter what position he winds up at, that will move him up the prospect map very quickly.

Trade Suitability: Medium now, but High next July. Like Bonifacio, the Royals have no need for Calixte in the short or even medium term. They have Alcides Escobar at shortstop, and Mike Moustakas at third. He’s probably not going to bring back a starting pitcher right now, because his prospect profile is dampened a little by the ballparks he was hitting in this year. But if the Royals are in the race in July, and Calixte is putting up gaudy numbers in Double-A, he would be the perfect prospect to cash in to fill whatever holes the Royals have for the stretch run.

#10: Cheslor Cuthbert

Pos-B: 3B-R

H-W: 6’1”, 190 lb

DOB: 11/16/1992 (Age 19)

Signed: Latin American Free Agent, 2009, signed for $1.35 million

Overall Rank in Baseball: #101-200

Organizational Rank by KC Star: #10

Stats:

2010: .250/.314/.422, 2/3 SB in 32 G in Complex and Advanced Rookie ball

2011: .267/.345/.397, 2/2 SB in 81 G in low-A ball

2012: .240/.296/.322, 6/9 SB in 124 G in high-A ball

Cheslor Cuthbert is 19 years old.

A year ago, while Wil Myers was suffering through a horribly disappointing season after coming into the season with huge expectations, I tried to console myself with the reminder that he was just 21 years old and in Double-A; there was still plenty of time for him to right the ship.

And then I looked up his numbers and realized: he was actually just 20 years old and in Double-A. He was the same age as most college sophomores, and was holding his own in Double-A. There was plenty of time for him to right the ship. And he did, of course, when he was 21.

Cheslor Cuthbert is 19 years old.

Cuthbert, like Myers a year before, came into the 2012 season with significant expectations – but he earned those expectations by holding his own in low-A ball when he was 18 years old. Like Myers, he fell flat on his face. Like Myers, he is an excellent bounceback candidate simply because of his age.

That’s not to sugarcoat his 2012 season, because he was pretty terrible. He didn’t hit for average, he didn’t hit for power, and he didn’t play with much energy at times, according to many observers. The same people who thought he was a beast in spring training were left scratching their heads, wondering what happened to him. He's not a bad guy; he's just very laid-back, and didn't approach the need to make adjustments this season with enough urgency.

Cuthbert can’t even blame it on Wilmington, not really. He hit six of his seven homers on the road, and (strangely) walked 25 times on the road, just 12 times at home. But his road numbers (.238/.310/.353) won’t get anyone excited. The Royals will admit that 2013 is a bit of a make-or-break year for him.

But he’s just 19 years old. He turns 20 on Saturday.

Cuthbert's two years younger than Myers. He’s nine months younger than Calixte. He’s three months younger than Bubba Starling. (Pro tip: if you want to emphasize a prospect’s youth, just compare them to Bubba. Works every time.) He’ll go back to Wilmington in the spring, he’ll still be 20, and with even modest progress he’ll be in line for a mid-season promotion. I don’t expect him to bounce back the way Myers did, because he was never in Myers’ class as a prospect to begin with. But he still projects as a league-average third baseman in two or three years, with potential for more if he shows a little more #want on the field. Even in a deep farm system, that’s a top ten prospect.

Trade Suitability: Low now, medium in the summer. Sort of like Calixte, given that his position is filled at the major league level, he’s going to have more value as a trade chip than as a future member of the Royals’ lineup. But it makes no sense to trade him at the nadir of his value. If he bounces back in 2013, he could be on the move.

The GOP And Me.

(WARNING: This post has nothing to do with baseball. On Election Day, I have decided to grab on to both third rails - religion AND politics - at the same time. If you don't want to read any further, you have my permission to click away now. I have no intention of revisiting these subjects any time soon, and maybe ever. But if you come here with an open mind, I'd be honored if you read this column. Just be warned - it's a long one. No, I mean, REALLY long. Pack a picnic basket for this one.)

Almost before I knew that I was an American, and almost before I knew that I was a Muslim, I knew that I was a Republican. I knew this because my father told me so. My father finished his cardiology fellowship just weeks after I was born, and moved the family from Michigan, where we had relatives and a large Muslim community, to Wichita, Kansas.

Kansas, then as now, was a Republican state, and those political sensibilities suited my dad just fine. These were the 1970s, when the income tax rate on the highest earners was 70%, a rate that people of all political persuasions would agree today can only be described as confiscatory. My dad had just left behind Syria, where the government had literally confiscated his family’s wealth, and he would be damned if he was going to let the American government take more than two-thirds of his marginal income.

So a political party whose platform rested on tax cuts and placed small business owners on a pedestal – well, they didn’t have to ask my father twice. The early years in Wichita were the Jimmy Carter years, and while my parents admired Carter and what he accomplished with the Camp David accords – bringing the first measure of peace to the Arab-Israeli conflict – they were swept up by the Reagan Revolution.

“Government is not a solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

My parents had settled in America to get away from an authoritarian regime in their homeland, and here came a man running for President on the platform that the best way to govern was to leave the public alone. All my parents wanted was to be left alone, to work and raise their children and own a house with a finished basement and a white picket fence. My dad, who had just obtained his American citizenship in 1978, became a reliable supporter of the Republican Party, both with his ballot and occasionally with his checkbook. He wasn’t alone. Most immigrant Muslims to America – once they obtained their citizenship – joined the Reagan Revolution.

Most of the men who had come to America were self-made men, men who had only made it to America by dint of hard work. Many, like my dad, were doctors who had to outperform millions of their classmates on high school exams to get into medical school in their home countries, and saw a career in medicine as their ticket to America. Others had come to America to attend college, braving a new land and a new culture and a new language in order to forge a career as an engineer or an architect or some other credentialed profession. And others had come to America with little formal education and no intent to further it, but with the entrepreneurial spirit needed to buy and sell and trade their way to the top. They opened grocery stores and drove taxicabs and manned gas stations to forge a living for themselves and their families, and to send money to their relatives back home.

It was hard work and it involved long hours. The Muslims who immigrated to America in the 1970s, like the ones who immigrate to America today, were not lazy. Lazy people don’t leave their homeland 5,000 miles behind to move to a foreign country where they speak a foreign language. For these Muslims, the Republican message of self-reliance and entrepreneurship, the exaltation of small business owners, the emphasis on cutting taxes to encourage industriousness, was catnip. So too was the vilification of people sucking from the public teat and asking for handouts. There were no Muslim welfare queens, and Muslims joined the Republican stampede against them.

The immigrant Muslim community remained a reliable pillar of support for the Republican Party throughout the 1980s and 1990s, even as the party underwent a gradual but very significant change. Ronald Reagan’s platform when he ran for president in 1980 was largely an economic one; social issues were only an ancillary part of his message. Twenty years later, when George W. Bush ran for president, his platform revolved around social issues: his pro-life and anti-gay marriage positions were front and center. His platform reflected the massive influence that Christian organizations had had on the Republican Party over the previous two decades, intertwining Christian religious beliefs with politics, and co-opting the Republican message on issues of great concern to devout Christians.

Believe it or not, Muslim support for the Republican Party did not waver in the face of its gradual Christianization. On the contrary, Muslims saw common ground with Christians on most social issues. While the topic of abortion is not nearly as cut-and-dried for Muslims as it is for many Christians, the Muslim community certainly agreed with the goal of limiting them as much as possible – and more to the point, in limiting unwanted pregnancies in the first place by stigmatizing casual sexual encounters. Muslims shared with their Christian neighbors their belief in the sanctity of the nuclear family, and their belief that a household headed by a married mother and father was the best household in which to raise children.

By 2000, the Muslim community in America was several decades old, and had started to mature as a political entity. Muslim organizations almost unanimously endorsed George W. Bush. I voted for Bush that year. I would have voted for Bob Dole in 1996 if I weren’t so busy with medical school that I forgot to vote; I would have voted for Bush Sr. in 1992 if I weren’t still 17 years old.

In the 2000 election, approximately 70% of Muslims in America voted for Bush; among non-African-American Muslims, the ratio was over 80%.

Four years later, Bush’s share of the vote among Muslims was 4%.

What happened? Well, a lot.

It would be easy to say everything changed on 9/11 – because everything did change on 9/11. But 9/11 was a chance for America to show off the better angels of its nature, and as a nation, by and large, we did. A week after the World Trade Center came crashing down, President Bush spoke before both houses of Congress in one of the defining moments of his presidency. He did not disappoint, and while he outlined the need to attack Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, he was scrupulous not to point the finger at Muslims in general. “The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics, a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam,” he said. And later, “I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself.”

In the chaos and hysteria that accompanied the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush’s speech was deeply reassuring to American Muslims that whatever the fallout of the attacks would be on our community, the federal government was on our side.

But words were not followed with actions. Quite the contrary; a month later, when the PATRIOT Act was signed into law, Muslims were taken aback by the far-reaching implications. Citizens could have their phones or computers tapped with neither their knowledge nor any recourse. Muslims in Indiana found themselves on the No-Fly List because they had the misfortune of sharing the same name with a terrorist suspect in India - and there was essentially no way to clear their name from the list. Thousands of Muslims, many of whom had lived and worked in America for decades, were arrested on flimsy immigration violations and deported back to their countries of birth.

An illustrative example: In May, 2004, a gentleman named Brandon Mayfield, who was an attorney living in Oregon, was arrested on suspicion that he had been involved in a terrorist attack that occurred in Spain that March. It was, on the surface, an absurd accusation – apparently his fingerprint had turned up at the crime scene. Mayfield had never been to Spain; he hadn’t traveled outside of America in over a decade. But he was arrested and held without charges for over two weeks. Mayfield would later learn that prior to his arrest, the FBI had covertly searched his house, wiretapped his phones, and bugged several rooms in his home.

After two weeks, Mayfield was released, after the Spanish authorities insisted that Mayfield’s fingerprint was not a perfect match, and in fact that they had matched the fingerprint found at the scene to an Algerian national. Actually, the Spanish authorities informed the FBI of the mismatch before Mayfield was ever arrested; the government withheld this information from Mayfield’s lawyers. He was released only after the European press broke the story that Mayfield’s fingerprint had been cleared weeks earlier.

Mayfield sued the government, and won a judgment of $2 million, along with a formal apology. The District Court Judge who presided over the case, Ann Aiken, stated in her decision that the evidence that Mayfield’s fingerprint was a perfect match to the one found at the crime scene was “fabricated and concocted by the FBI and DOJ.” Aiken also ruled that two provisions in the PATRIOT Act were unconstitutional, as they violated the Fourth Amendment. The government appealed this ruling, and these provisions were restored in December, 2009.

Why was this troubling to the Muslim community? Because in the 1980s, Brandon Mayfield had converted to Islam. What's that, Paul Harvey? “And now you know…”

Individually, each of these incidents was upsetting but tolerable. But they were part of a pattern; while officially the Bush Administration was careful to say that the American Muslim community was not under suspicion, their actions spoke otherwise. Most egregious was the way the government handled the case of the Holy Land Foundation.

The Holy Land Foundation was a charity founded in the late 1980s, ostensibly to provide humanitarian relief to the people of the Palestinian territories. In December, 2001, the federal government formally accused the Foundation of siphoning some of their funds to support Hamas, which had been designated a terrorist group by the United States in 1993. While some thought this was a witch hunt against a pro-Palestinian organization, most Muslims - myself included - were mortified that a respected charity had deceived the American Muslim community as to where their donations were going. The case finally proceeded to trial in 2007, and every count against the Foundation ended in either acquittal or a mistrial, in what the New York Times called “a stunning setback for the government.” Undaunted, the Feds pursued a retrial the following year and obtained convictions on many counts.

But it’s not the way the Bush administration handled the Holy Land Foundation that rankled the Muslim community. It’s the way they smeared virtually every Muslim organization in America in the process. As part of the indictment against the Holy Land Foundation, the government submitted a list of “unindicted co-conspirators”. This was a list of individuals and organizations who the government had not a shred of evidence implicating them in supporting terrorism, but decided to smear them with the accusation anyway.

It’s hard to overstate just how distraught and disappointed this made the Muslim community. The list of “unindicted co-conspirators” ran over 300 members long, and included the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest umbrella organization of Muslims in America; the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the premier civil-rights organization working for Muslims; and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which as holder of the deed of hundreds of mosques, is the largest Muslim endowment in America. Basically, if you were a Muslim organization and weren’t on the list, you probably weren’t that important.

Now try to parse the term “unindicted co-conspirator”. The layman sees the word “conspirator” and naturally assumes these people were guilty of something – and if it was a conspiracy, well, it must be something awfully sinister. But the key word is “unindicted”. These people weren’t arrested and found guilty. They weren’t arrested. They weren’t even indicted. Given the maxim that a good district attorney can indict a ham sandwich, what does it say about these Muslims that they weren’t even indicted? (Maybe that’s their secret: Muslims don’t eat pork.)

It’s bad enough that the concept of an “unindicted co-conspirator” turns the bedrock principle of American law on its head, and makes everyone on that list guilty until proven innocent. But it’s much worse than that, because they’re guilty with no recourse to prove they’re innocent. How can you defend yourself against an indictment that doesn’t exist? For the last decade, the most prominent Muslim organizations in the country have carried this “unindicted co-conspirator” tag around with them like it was herpes.

Without charging these organizations with any crime, the Bush administration succeeded in tarnishing their reputation. Any time someone wanted to cast suspicion on the American Muslim community, all they had to do was bring up the leadership of ISNA, which included some of the most respected Muslim scholars in the country, and remind their audience that ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator. CAIR filed a lawsuit against a corporation for firing a Muslim woman because she refused to take off her head scarf at work? Unindicted co-conspirator. A Muslim community somewhere in America wanted to borrow money from NAIT to build a mosque? Now they’re doing business dealings with an unindicted co-conspirator.

After these organizations sought legal redress from the government for years, in October, 2010, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis issued a ruling that stated the government should never have publicly released the names of the “unindicted co-conspirators”, and that the government had violated their Fifth Amendment due process rights by doing so. Fat lot of good that’s done. The list is out there, and you can’t squeeze toothpaste back in the tube.

And then, of course, there was the Iraq War, which was deeply unpopular among the Muslim community. I was actually among the minority of Muslims who grudgingly supported the war, on the theory that the Arab world was so shackled by tyranny that it would be almost impossible to make things worse. I was wrong. The invasion was a cakewalk, as expected. But the breathtaking lack of post-invasion planning; the absence of any weapons of mass destruction; the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib – somehow we did the impossible: we made the Iraqi people pine for the days of Saddam Hussein.

---

But as frustrated as the Muslim community was with President Bush, we had to grudgingly admit that he at least respected our constitutional right to practice our religion. He never suggested that Islam was somehow un-American, or that Muslims as a whole were a threat to our nation. Perhaps we didn’t realize how good we had it with Bush until his term expired, because when he retired to his ranch in Texas, that’s when the crazies came out.

I got a taste of this during the 2008 presidential campaign, when my friend Mazen Asbahi, who had gone to work for the Obama campaign, found himself smeared as a terrorist sympathizer. I won’t rehash that here; I wrote about it at the time, and talked about it on an episode of NPR’s This American Life. ("Unindicted co-conspirators" feature prominently.)

After Obama was elected, things started to get crazy. Let’s take a tour of what some of our duly-elected congressmen and congresswomen have said about Muslims:

Let’s start with a press conference held on October 14, 2009, by four Republican members of the House: Paul Broun (GA-10), Trent Franks (AZ-02), Sue Myrick (NC-09), and John Shadegg (AZ-03). This press conference was called to expose shocking allegations about CAIR. (The press release sent out by Rep. Myrick’s office stated that “CAIR was named as a co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism case”. Somehow the word “unindicted” was left out. I’m sure it was an oversight.)

Rep. Myrick said, “It’s frightening to think that an organization with clear-cut ties to terrorism could have a hand in influencing policy – especially national security policy – within our government.” Rep. Broun said, “I believe allegations that CAIR has targeted members of Congress on security related committees must not go uninvestigated.”

Rep. Franks, care to comment? “This Congress must be deliberate in taking a strong stance against those groups and organizations that align themselves with terrorists, and standing with organizations that are standing against Islamic extremism and terrorism.” Rep. Shadegg, you have the floor. “Muslim Mafia is just one of many books that highlight the infiltration of radical Islamists into our society and the dangers that this poses.”

So what’s this all about? The press conference was held in part to announce the release of the book “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America.” (Personally, I think the title is a little understated.) The book was written by a guy named Paul Gaubatz, after his son Chris Gaubatz, posing as a new convert to Islam, managed to work as an intern at CAIR for six months before anyone smelled a rat.

Six months was long enough for Chris to learn the inner workings of the organization, and to obtain internal documents that might cast the organization in a bad light. One of those documents, outlining CAIR’s long-term strategy, was the centerpiece of the accusations in the book. It was the smoking gun that brought four members of Congress together to denounce CAIR as an organization with “clear-cut ties to terrorism”.

What did the document say? “We will impact local congressional districts with each chapter influencing at least two legislators through strong grass roots responses. We will focus on influencing congressmen responsible for policy that directly impacts the American Muslim community. (For example congressmen on the judiciary, intelligence, and homeland security committees.) We will develop national initiatives such as a lobby day and placing Muslim interns in Congressional offices. We will work to add at least 30,000 new voter registrations.”

The horror. “Grass roots responses”? “Influencing congressmen”? “A lobby day”? “Muslim interns in Congressional offices”? Worst of all, “new voter registrations”? My God, it’s worse than I thought. This document didn’t prove CAIR were aspiring terrorists. It proved they were aspiring – gulp! – lobbyists.

Call me naïve, but if someone with an axe to grind with CAIR spent six months working undercover, and the most damning document they could come up with expressed a plan to help Muslim interns be placed in Congressional offices – that strikes me as pretty persuasive evidence that CAIR was not a nefarious organization, or at least no more nefarious than the rest of the political outfits that work in DC. Instead, four Republican members of Congress thought that the threat from CAIR was so pressing that they held a press conference, and afterwards they pressed the House of Representatives to research whether CAIR was, in fact, a security threat.

Fortunately, many Democrats in the House denounced the press conference as the ridiculous Kabuki Theater that it was, and eventually the matter died down. But not before the Republican Party made it crystal clear to the Muslim community that we were all under suspicion.

Any residual doubts were dispelled during the grand summer of 2010, when a group of Muslims made the mistake of trying to build a Muslim community center in their neighborhood. It would have included a small prayer area for Muslims, but it also would have held an auditorium, a theater, a fitness center, a swimming pool, a culinary school, and a performing arts center. It just so happened that their neighborhood was lower Manhattan, and the proposed building would have been a few blocks away from where the World Trade Center stood, and oh my God you would have thought they had proposed a statue of the 9/11 hijackers.

Rudy Giuliani called it a “desecration”, and said, “Nobody would allow something like that at Pearl Harbor.” Never mind that there are, in fact, many Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines near Pearl Harbor. And never mind that Muslims have conducted prayer services inside the chapel at the Pentagon – which also had a Boeing slam into it on 9/11 – for many years.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House: “It's not about religion, and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.” Speaking with regard to the original proposed name for the building, the “Cordoba House”, Gingrich said, “’Cordoba House’ is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain–the capital of Muslim conquerors, who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex... every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest.”

With all due respect to Gingrich…he’s a moron. Muslims recognize Cordoba as a symbol of the most enlightened era in Islamic history, as a nation where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together peacefully for centuries. Maimonides, perhaps the most respected rabbinical scholar in Jewish history, was born and raised in Muslim Spain. Decades after the Muslim conquest of Spain, the Muslim leader purchased a small church from the local Christians, and over decades it was converted into the largest mosque in the country. It wasn’t a symbol of victory, and anyone who says otherwise is historically illiterate. Or just politically opportunistic.

The National Republican Trust Political Action Committee produced this television ad that included this voiceover: “On September 11th, they declared war against us. And to celebrate that murder of 3,000 Americans, they want to build a monstrous 13-story mosque at Ground Zero.” Yep, you caught us. American Muslims – dozens of whom were killed along with their fellow countrymen by the 9/11 terrorists – want to celebrate the darkest day in our history by building a monument to tolerance and interfaith dialogue. Man, we can’t slip anything past you guys.

Ilario Pantano, a Republican candidate for Congress in the 2010 elections, wrote in an op-ed piece that “This is not about reconciliation or understanding. It is about marking religious, ideological, and territorial conquest. The mosque is a Martyr-Marker, and it must be stopped.”

Okay then.

Not all elected Republicans opposed the mosque. Notably, Senator Orrin Hatch and Congressman Ron Paul, who despite his party affiliation is really a libertarian, both supported the Muslim community’s right to build the community center on the basis of an obscure clause in a federal document that guarantees freedom of religion. But it was not lost on the Muslim community that, with very few exceptions (most notably Senator Harry Reid), every politician who was publicly opposed to the project was Republican. In contrast, prominent Democrats (President Obama, former President Bill Clinton, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois) and Independents (New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg) all came out in support of the fundamental right of Americans – all Americans – to build houses of worship as they see fit.

To the Muslim community around America, the implications of this tempest in a teapot was far more troubling than the simple matter of whether the Park51 Project (as it was formally known) would get built. I live in suburban Chicago; ultimately it doesn’t affect my life one way or the other if this project comes to fruition. And certainly, I understand how raw our nation’s emotions are, even a decade later, about what happened on 9/11. If one of the developers had asked me for my opinion before the project was announced, I might have suggested a slightly different site than the one that was picked.

But the controversy over the Park51 Project quickly veered away from a discussion over whether it was insensitive, and became a discussion over whether Muslims are trying to take over America. Which is not just ridiculous, it is deeply frightening. If Faisal Abdul Rauf, the original spiritual force behind the project, was guilty of anything, it was naïveté. Instead, he was portrayed by the Republican Party as some sort of extremist Muslim radical trying to plant the flag of Islam in Manhattan like he was an astronaut on the moon. Abdul Rauf is such an extremist that when journalist Daniel Pearl was murdered by true Muslim extremists in Pakistan, Pearl’s widow asked Abdul Rauf to speak at a memorial service for him.

At the service, here is what Rauf said.

“We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one, Mr. Pearl. And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different.”

Clearly, those are the words of a man bent on world domination.

I and most American Muslims were deeply ambivalent about the project when we first heard about it, because we understood the emotions involved. When Sarah Palin tweeted, as only she can, “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.” I understood her concerns. I disagreed with them, because like most Muslims, I saw the building of a community center run by Muslims who were dedicated to a moderate, tolerant version of Islam blocks from Ground Zero to be a giant middle finger to Al-Qaeda. But I respected her right to feel slighted by it.

But it’s one thing to claim the project was insensitive, and quite another to claim the project celebrates the murder of thousands of Americans, or that it was a symbol of Islamic conquest. This attempt to lump moderate American Muslim leaders with the murderous thugs of Al-Qaeda was a clear message from the Republican Party to their Muslim constituents: all you Muslims are the same. Believe me, we got the message.

In August of 2010, when the Park51 Project controversy was at its peak, I happened to be exiting my local mosque in suburban Chicago after evening prayers. I ran into my friend Eiman, who pointed to a car in the parking lot and grinned widely. “You think that guy is here for prayers?”

He was pointing to a large pickup truck that was stopped in the driving lane between parking spaces, loudly blaring a Toby Keith song. We shared a laugh. The mosque shares the parking lot with a bank and several other businesses, so I didn’t think much of having a truck blaring music right outside our mosque.

Until I noticed that the truck wasn’t playing just any Toby Keith song. It was playing “Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue.”

Now this nation that I love

Has fallen under attack

A mighty sucker-punch came flyin’ in

From somewhere in the back

Soon as we could see clearly

Through our big black eye

Man, we lit up your world

Like the Fourth of July

Hey Uncle Sam 
Put your name at the top of his list 
And the Statue of Liberty 
Started shakin' her fist 
And the eagle will fly 
Man, it's gonna be hell 
When you hear Mother Freedom 
Start ringin' her bell 
And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you 
Brought to you courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue 

Justice will be served 
And the battle will rage 
This big dog will fight 
When you rattle his cage 
And you'll be sorry that you messed with 
The U.S. of A. 
'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass 
It's the American way 

“Huh,” I thought, “that’s interesting.” The car wasn’t parked, but it wasn’t moving either. I turned to Eiman and said, “I wonder if this guy is trying to send us a message.” Finally, the song came to an end.

And immediately, the same song started playing from the beginning.

Well, at this point we had heard enough. Eiman and I slowly walked over to the pickup truck, to see whether we could give directions to the driver, who was clearly lost and thought he was outside the caves of Tora Bora. At that moment, a big SUV pulled up behind us and the driver jumped out – it was the landlord of the property, who had clearly figured out the same thing we had. At which point the pickup truck hauled ass and drove away.

I’m not sure what the driver was trying to accomplish, honestly, other than to intimidate us with a crappy country song. (No offense, Toby. I love “Beer for My Horses.”) But it was deeply unsettling. Our congregation had been worshipping in that same building for the past eight years, and someone decided that this was the moment to make us feel unwelcome.

On the other hand, the mosque is located barely 800 miles from Ground Zero. Maybe he just thought our location was insensitive.

But just in case the message from the GOP wasn’t clear enough, some Republican officials have decided to eliminate any pretense of differentiating between the massive moderate Muslim majority and the tiny wing of violent extremists. Herman Cain ran for the GOP nomination for President in today’s election. When asked whether he would consider appointing a Muslim to his cabinet or as a judge, he replied, “No, I will not. And here’s why: there’s this creeping attempt – there’s this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government.” Cain also argued that a community in Tennessee had the right to ban the building of a mosque there, and claimed that the majority of Muslims in America "share the extremist views". This is where we’re at in 2011: a presidential candidate openly – and proudly – proclaims that all American citizens of a specific religion would not be welcome in his administration, or really, in America. And not one prominent member of his political party has stood up against his statements.

Newt Gingrich, who also ran for President, introduced an angle that I – and presumably every American of sound mind – had never considered before. Speaking at a Texas church in March, 2011, Gingrich brought up his grandchildren to the audience, and then said, “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

I’ll admit: I had never considered the threat of secular, atheist, radical Islamists before. But then, that’s why Newt Gingrich was running for president and I wasn’t. He sees things the rest of us don’t. He even has the ability to see things that don’t actually exist.

(Mitt Romney, perhaps because he is a member of a religious minority himself, has not said anything nearly as inflammatory about Muslims. On the other hand, he once said, in response to a question about whether a Muslim might serve in his Cabinet, “based on the numbers of American Muslims in our population, I cannot see that a Cabinet position would be justified.” I’m waiting for him to say the same thing about Episcopalians, or Jews - or Mormons.)

The inevitable end result of the GOP’s demonization of Muslims were the congressional hearings called in March, 2011 by Peter King, Republican congressman from Long Island and chair of the Committee on Homeland Security. The hearings were called on “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.” Congressman King, who was fond of saying – without a shred of evidence – that “over 80 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by radical Imams,” wanted to put the American Muslim community on the spot as to whether they supported terrorists. (In fairness, if anyone in Congress knows about supporting terrorists, it’s Peter King – who was a zealous supporter of the IRA and once compared Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to George Washington.)

The hearings wound up being more political theater than hard-hitting investigation. The highlight of the hearings came when Leroy Baca, Sheriff of Los Angeles County, testified. Baca’s testimony – that the Muslim groups that he had worked with, specifically CAIR, had cooperated with the authorities to combat extremism in the local community – didn’t exactly fit in with the hearing’s agenda. Chip Craavack, Republican Congressman from Minnesota, challenged him on his testimony. Speaking about CAIR, Craavack said, “You’re dealing with a terrorist organization,” and “they might be using you, sir.” (After all, they’re unindicted co-conspirators!)

To which Baca replied, “If the FBI has something to charge CAIR with, bring those charges forth and charge them in court.” After the gasps died down, he continued, “We don’t play around with criminals in my world. If CAIR is an organization that’s a quote, ‘criminal organization’, prosecute them.”

In the end, the hearings accomplished little other than to allow politicians on both sides of the aisle do some political posturing. And CAIR never was prosecuted.

But the ugliest episode of Republican-instigated attacks on the American Muslim community – at least so far – occurred when a Muslim organization known as the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) held a fundraiser in Orange County in March of 2011. The fundraiser was being held to raise money for Hamas and Hezbollah…no, wait, they were raising money for homeless and women’s shelters in the area. It’s so easy to get those confused. But ICNA made the terrible mistake of inviting a well-known Muslim leader to speak at the event, a gentleman named Siraj Wahhaj, who is – you guessed it – an unindicted co-conspirator. (Man, those guys are everywhere.)

The fundraiser, then, attracted a crowd of protestors that lined up outside the banquet hall to give those who attended a piece of their mind. They held signs that read “ICNA supports Hamas and Hezbollah.” (Hamas, homeless shelters…they do sort of sound alike.) They also held signs that called the Prophet Muhammad “a pervert” and “a child molester.” The chant “GO BACK HOME!” was a continuous drumbeat as attendees filed in. (Go home to where? Anaheim?) A Muslim man who had the audacity to film the protestors was greeted with calls of “You beat your women and rape your children!” Other catcalls included “One Nation Under God, Not Allah!” and “Never forget 9/11!” and “Your hands are bloody!”

The protestors were a motley crew of locals, egged on by well-known Islamophobes like Pamela Geller. (Geller, one of the leaders behind the opposition to the Park51 Project, runs an organization knows as “Stop the Islamization of America”, an organization that’s been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 mostly-teenage Norwegians in July, 2011 for the crime of being “multiculturalists” who were allowing Muslims to take over Europe, cited Geller in his manifesto.)

It also included three elected Republican officials, two of whom were congressmen. All three officials addressed the gathering mob outside.

Congressman Ed Royce told the crowd, "A big part of the problem we face today is our children have been taught in schools that every idea is right, that no one should criticize others' positions no matter how odious. That’s…and…what do we call that? They call it multiculturalism, and it has paralyzed too many of our fellow citizens to make the critical judgments we need to make to prosper as a society."

He was followed by Congressman Gary Miller, who kept his comments brief. “The only reason I’m here today – is to give you a flag, and to say ‘I am proud of you, I am proud of what you’re doing, and I’m proud of this country and what we believe in, and let’s not let people who disagree with us destroy it.”

Just in case the intent of their comments wasn’t explicit enough, though, Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly also spoke at the podium. “Let me tell you – what’s going on over there right now,” she said, as she pointed to the banquet hall, “make no bones about it. That is pure, unadulterated evil.” She continued, “And I don't care. ... I don't even care if you think I'm crazy anymore. I have a beautiful daughter. I have a wonderful 19-year-old son who is a United States Marine. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few Marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise."

Nice people. (And if you think I’m exaggerating, you can get more details and watch video here and here.)

It hasn’t been much different here in the Chicago suburbs where I live. My own mosque, that started congregating out of converted space in an office park a decade ago, spent over two years attempting to win zoning approval to build a formal house of worship on land that we purchased next to a Greek Orthodox church and a Buddhist temple. The resistance that we got from the Republican-controlled county zoning board was so intense that it was covered by the New York Times, and eventually the Chicago Tribune had to publish an editorial defending our right to build a mosque.

Perhaps it’s just as well that we haven’t built it yet, given the threats to existing mosques. Last year on Halloween morning, a mosque on the west side of Wichita was set ablaze. While no one was ever arrested, authorities determined that it was, in fact, arson. It just so happens to be the mosque that I attended with my family in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

This year, in the pre-dawn hours of August 6th, the mosque in Joplin, Missouri burned to the ground. Again, it was ruled arson. Again, no one has been arrested. I don’t know about you guys, but this isn’t my idea of a Border War.

The day before the Joplin mosque was incinerated, a former army veteran with ties to white supremacists named Wade Michael Page walked into a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee and opened fire, killing six people before turning the gun on himself.

The Sikh massacre was on a Sunday, the mosque burning was on Monday. On Wednesday Congressman Joe Walsh – a Republican who represents a district here in suburban Chicago – spoke at a town hall meeting about the threat of radical Muslims. “One thing I’m sure of is that there are people in this country – there is a radical strain of Islam in this country – it’s not just over there – trying to kill Americans every week. It is a real threat, and it is a threat that is much more at home now than it was after 9/11.”

Accuse me of political correctness if you must, but when there was a terrorist attack on American soil just three days ago, and the victims of that attack were a religious group frequently confused with Muslims, now might not be the best time to accuse Muslims of being potential terrorists. Granted, Walsh was speaking in generalities, and just saying that somewhere in America lurked extremist Musl- “It’s in Elk Grove, it’s in Addison, it’s in Elgin. It’s here.”

Wait, what? Did a member of congress just claim that there were terrorist threats lurking in specific, small towns – both Elk Grove and Addison have fewer than 40,000 residents? There are probably not more than a few hundred Muslims living in both towns combined. That’s a pretty extraordinary accusation to make.

Walsh made his comments on a Wednesday. On Friday, shots were fired at a mosque in Morton Grove, a suburb not far from where Walsh spoke. A nearby resident named David Conrad was arrested. On Sunday, a homemade acid bomb was thrown at a Muslim school in the suburb of Lombard, while worshippers were praying inside. No one was arrested for that one.

Congressman Walsh stood by his comments. Meanwhile, my local mosque had to hire private security to watch our back for the remainder of the month of Ramadan.

This is where we are today. Barely a decade ago, the American Muslim community was safely in the womb of the Republican Party. Today, prominent Republican leaders have made it clear that they view all Muslims with suspicion; they accuse prominent Muslim organizations of trying to infiltrate the U.S. government because they dare to support placing Muslim interns on Capitol Hill; they label a Muslim community center open to all faiths as a “victory mosque” for Al-Qaeda; and they publicly declare that Muslims are evil. No, wait, not evil – pure, unadulterated evil. In case there was any doubt as to which kind of evil they were.

They have the chutzpah to play up the threat of homegrown Muslim terrorists causing another 9/11 at the same moment that Muslims and Sikhs are ducking for cover from genuine terrorists.

Oh, and many of them believe that President Obama is a secret Muslim sent here by Terrorist Command Headquarters to destroy our nation. A full 30% of Republicans believe that Obama is a Muslim. If any of you are among that 30%, I don’t know what to say to you, except to say that PRESIDENT OBAMA IS NOT A MUSLIM. If he is, believe me, no one would be more surprised than the Muslim community. Yes, his father was born a Muslim – but his father was openly atheist as an adult, and abandoned his family when Barack Jr. was a toddler. President Obama’s mother and the grandparents who helped raise him were Christian. He attended church his entire adult life. He’s never been seen praying like a Muslim, or fasting like a Muslim, or doing anything like a Muslim.

But as offensive as it is that so many people believe he’s a Muslim, even more offensive is the implication that there would be something terribly wrong with that. I’ll let a once-respected national figure explain:

“I’m also troubled by…what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as ‘Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well the correct answer is ‘He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian.’ But the really right answer is ‘What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?’ The answer is ‘No. That’s not America.’ Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”

The man who said these words was Colin Powell, a Republican. Powell, himself a minority, was likely drawn to the Republican Party for the same reasons my family and I were many years ago. It’s probably not a coincidence that Powell’s own prominence within the GOP coincided with my allegiance to it. And it’s probably not a coincidence that Powell is today a marginalized and forgotten figure. Powell said those words on Meet the Press, on the eve of the last election, in the process of explaining why he was endorsing Barack Obama for the presidency. And his words eloquently summed up why, in 2008, I did too.

It was with some reservation that I voted for Obama today. I have found his presidency to be a disappointment in many ways. He wasn’t nearly aggressive enough about addressing the financial crisis he inherited, nor did he press for a public airing of what caused the crisis in the first place. His sustained use of drones to fight the War on Terror has been both utterly immoral – an inordinate number of innocent victims, including children, have been killed – and completely counterproductive, because the obvious immorality of these attacks has ignited more terrorists than it has killed. Obama’s weak and unfocused response to the horrors being committed every day by the Syrian government is appalling.

But - third parties aside - the alternative was Mitt Romney, and I could not vote for Mitt Romney. There is simply no way that I can justify voting for a party that denies the very legitimacy of my identity as an American. And there is no way that I can justify voting for any member of that party that does not, in the strongest possible terms, denounce that view. Nor can most other members of the American Muslim community, who just happen to be clustered in swing states like Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. If Nate Silver is right, not only will Romney lose the election, but it can be safely said that if the Muslim community had voted the same way they had in 2000, he would have won.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Muslim community still shares many core values with Republicans, the same core issues that attracted most Muslims to the Republican Party in the first place. Muslims haven’t changed their views on limited government, or the superiority of the traditional nuclear family, or the importance of encouraging entrepreneurship. A Republican Party that focused on its core principles rather than on demonizing a minority as a way to score cheap political points would find support among the American Muslim community again.

Look, I don’t want to be a party-line voter. It does Muslims no good to be identified with a single political party – we run the risk of being taken advantage of by the Democratic Party, while having our needs completely ignored by the Republicans. And I look forward to the day, hopefully in the near future, when I once again vote for a Republican candidate. If Chris Christie - who unlike Romney has forcefully denounced "the crazies" (his term, not mine) - runs for President, I'll give him full consideration.

But first, the Republicans have to stop insinuating that I’m alien to this nation. They have to stop implying that I support terrorists. They have to stop accusing me of being anti-American. And they need to denounce anyone in their ranks who does those things. That, I’m afraid, is not negotiable.

(Please note: given that the risk of a flame war in the comments section approaches 100% when the subject of the article involves Muslims, I am turning the comments for this post off. You can hit me up on Twitter if you like.)