Royals Today: 7/7/13.

As you know, the bar for what constitutes “memorable moments” for Royals fans is set a little lower than for fans of other franchises. In the last decade, and with the exception of 2003 for the last 19 years, the most memorable moments for the franchise are not memorable moments at all – they’re moments that presage more memorable moments to come in the future. The debut of Johnny Damon…the day Zack Greinke got called to the majors…Alex Gordon getting a standing ovation in his first major league at-bat on Opening Day…Eric Hosmer’s first game: all these rank among the most memorable moments since 1995, even though they collectively meant nothing in the here and now.

I believe I’ve written this before, but the most memorable time for me as a Royals fan in the last ten years was in September of 2011, when the Royals were playing out the string of a 71-91 season. They went 15-10 that month, but more importantly, they were winning games thanks to the vanguard of The Best Farm System Ever. Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas had been called up early in the year, along with Danny Duffy. But in early August Johnny Giavotella arrived, and five days later so did Salvador Perez, who in barely a month had rewritten the narrative on him from “underrated prospect” to “wait, who the hell is this guy?”

On September 23rd I attended this game at US Cellular Park, and honestly it’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a ballpark. Hosmer led off the bottom of the second with a nuclear blast to dead center field; sitting in box seats behind home plate, I described the hit on Twitter as “a near-religious experience”. Two innings later, Perez hit a jaw-dropping three-run home run to the opposite field. “Wait, who the hell is this guy?”

Two batters later, Alcides Escobar connected. Moustakas had four hits. Giavotella had two hits. Lorenzo Cain, just up from the minors because he couldn’t break into the Royals’ outfield, gave Alex Gordon the day off and had two hits. The Royals destroyed the White Sox, 11-1, and the only downside to witnessing the game in person was that I couldn’t hear Hawk Harrelson whine for three hours about where the Royals got all this talent and how the White Sox were in deep trouble.

The future was no longer a deferred dream. It was here. And it was awesome.

Well, it was awesome. The future hit a pothole somewhere along the way, blew out a tire, careened into the guardrail and left a bunch of smoldering wreckage on the highway. It’s the Royals; I was a fool to think otherwise.

But I was reminded of that glorious snapshot in time last week, when the Royals belatedly brought back Giavotella to the major leagues while simultaneously cutting Jeff Francoeur. It was the obvious, really the only, move to make, but I still didn’t think they’d make it. Not cutting Francoeur; I’ve said all along that the Royals were well aware of his deficiencies at the plate, and that if he didn’t bounce back this year he wouldn’t be starting for much longer. And the Royals didn’t fight the inevitable; they moved him into a platoon role by the end of May, and by the time he was cut he was essentially neutered, having been largely replaced by David Lough and Jarrod Dyson.

But Giavotella’s return – that surprised me. I didn’t expect him to be named the Royals’ starting second baseman on Sunday afternoon, given that Thursday evening he was starting for the Omaha Storm Chasers – in left field. The Royals had given up on the idea of Gio as an everyday second baseman even in Triple-A; in his last 34 games in Omaha, he started at second base just four times. He started in left field 11 times – because as you know the Royals have a desperate need for a left fielder – and at third base 17 times. Even though he was absolutely raking after a slow start (from June 8th until his callup, he hit .394/.512/.485, with 16 walks and just 8 strikeouts), it seemed the best to hope for was that the Royals might try him in a Ryan Raburn role.

Instead, the Royals acknowledged reality – that the two guys they had tried at second base, Chris Getz and Elliot Johnson, had both hit under .220, and both had OBPs and slugging averages under .300 – and recognized that while Giavotella hadn’t proven he could hit, that he was the only second baseman in the organization who hadn’t conclusively proven that he couldn’t.

And frankly, it’s far from a given that he will hit. After hits in his first three at-bats last Sunday, he’s gone 0-for-14 since, and today was benched for the second straight game for Miguel Tejada, because it’s the Royals and nothing comes easy for us. His defense has been surprisingly solid for a guy who had barely played the position in the past month, but ultimately he needs to hit, and this is probably his last chance to prove that he can for the Royals.

But for now he’s back, and for now the Royals have a lineup that resembles the one that got me so excited nearly two years ago. Of the ten guys the Royals typically select their lineup card from – counting the three-headed hydra that rotates between center field and right field – eight of them are products of the Royals’ farm system, and the other two (Escobar and Cain) were acquired in the Greinke trade after no more than one season in the majors. Alex Gordon is 29 years old, and – this might surprise some of you – Jarrod Dyson is 28 years old, making him the second-oldest player in the lineup. Everyone else is 27 or less. Giavotella is 25, Moustakas is 24, Hosmer and Perez are 23.

There’s a scar in right field, one where a certain 22-year-old ought to be playing instead of Dyson or Lough, but even so: this is a lineup you can still dream on a little. No one’s old enough to worry about decline yet, and half the lineup’s young enough to reasonably hope for improvement. No one’s leaving for free agency until after the 2015 season. Most nights, there isn’t a single player in the lineup who is just filling space. Escobar needs to prove he can hit again, and Ned Yost needs to take him out of the #2 spot once and for all – but even Escobar has upside and plays good defense and is signed cheaply for years to come. There are no Ross Gloads in the lineup, no Jason Kendalls, no Scott Podsedniks, guys who did nothing to push the team to a championship and were only going to get worse over time.

I still haven’t recovered my previous optimism about the Royals, from back when they still had Wil Myers and when Christian Colon and Bubba Starling weren’t considered busts and when there was still some hope that the Royals could develop a starting pitcher, any starting pitcher, from their own farm system. I’m worried that the Royals will top out as the newer version of the Toronto Blue Jays, consistently good but never great, or even good enough to contend for the playoffs. (From 1998 through 2008, the Blue Jays won between 83 and 88 games eight times in 11 years, but never won 89+ games, and never made the playoffs.)

But for now, in honor of them finally putting the 25 best players in the organization on the 25-man roster, I’m going to dwell on nothing but positives for the rest of this column.

- As I wrote on Twitter, baseball is a much more beautiful game now that Eric Hosmer has his swing back.

From June 6th through July 6th, exactly one calendar month, Hosmer hit .321/.366/.607, with nine walks and just ten strikeouts. He hit eight homers, all of them in his last 21 games, after hitting just one homer in his first 63 games. Actually, going back to last year, Hosmer hit seven homers from June 15th, 2012 through June 12th, 2013 – and then hit more homers in three weeks than he had in the past year.

Just as important as the results are the process that has led to those results – by which I mean his swing, which appears to have finally found 2011 again. Vicious yet controlled. Powerful enough to push what appear to be routine flyballs off the bat into the third row of the bleachers. Hitting bombs to all fields – including the pull field, which is only recently became reacquainted with.

I don’t want to read too much into one month’s worth of efforts, but it’s hard not to. Because in the context of his career, the anomaly isn’t Hosmer’s last month – it’s 2012 and the first two months of 2013.

There just isn’t much precedent for a 21-year-old to come up and exceed league-average performance by as much as Hosmer did, only to go completely bust. I did a search for the list of all players who debuted in the majors at age 21, played in at least 100 games, and had an OPS+ of between 110 and 125 (Hosmer was at 118). It’s only been done seven times prior to Hosmer, which is in itself a mark of quality; it’s rarer than you think.

Two of them played prior to World War II, so you might not be familiar with them, but they had excellent careers. George Burns was a rookie in 1914, and went on to a 16-year career, and actually won the AL MVP award in 1926, when he hit 64 doubles (back then there was a rule that you couldn’t win the MVP award more than once, which might explain why Babe Ruth didn’t run out of mantle space). He then went on to a celebrated career as one of America’s finest comedians. (Sorry, wrong George Burns.)

Ben Chapman hit .316/.371/.474 as a rookie, and played 15 years and collected 1958 hits in the majors with a final line of .302/.383/.440. His career as a hitter ended when World War II broke out, but he came back in 1944 as a pitcher (without much success) and then as the Phillies’ player-manager, where he revealed himself as a world-class racist in leading the charge against Jackie Robinson. But we’re getting off track.

Anyway, since World War II, five other players fit that criteria. They are Richie Ashburn, Rod Carew, Eddie Murray, Carney Lansford, and Delino DeShields. The first three are in the Hall of Fame; the other two played in the majors for a long time and made a lot of money doing so.

This is why, even at his darkest moments, I was never as down on Hosmer as I was on Moustakas. That year of age is a crucial one, and I always bet on youth. Hosmer crushed in the minors during the one-plus seasons he was healthy, his rookie performance suggested greatness, and the scouts loved him even more than the numbers. Even now, at 23, he’s young enough to improve substantially.

The best comparison I can make for Hosmer is this: Carlos Beltran. Beltran came up at 22, a year older than Hosmer, and hit .293/.337/.454, which sounds great until you remember that it was 1999, and the fences were in at Kauffman, and his slash line was actually below average – his OPS+ was 99. Still, he was a great defensive center fielder, he stole 27 bases, and he won Rookie of the Year honors.

The next year, he hit .247/.309/.366, played in just 98 games, and squabbled with the Royals about where to rehab his injury.

And in his third season – this gets forgotten now, when you look at his final line – he continued to struggle for the first half of the year. Through June 24th, he was hitting .249/.294/.372. At the time, I wrote publicly that I was “this close to giving up on Carlos Beltran”.

That would have been an egregious error. From that point on, he hit .355/.420/.636 and stole 24 bases in 25 attempts. He would be Carlos Beltran from that point on. I believe he deserves to go in the Hall of Fame some day, and I believe – if he just has one more All-Star-caliber season after this one – he will.

I learned from Beltran that when it comes to young players who have already shown the ability to excel, you’re better off waiting too long than not long enough. Hosmer won’t continue to slug .600 forever; he’ll have his ups and his downs. But I think the worst is behind us now. I think we have an above-average first baseman for the next four-plus years. And maybe a star.

- The most interesting thing on Hosmer’s stat line is that his defensive metrics are finally in line with his reputation. According to Baseball Info Solutions, he was nine runs below average defensively as a rookie, and five runs below average last year. But this year, he’s seven runs above average, in half a season, which is why according to Baseball-Reference.com, Hosmer already has more WAR (2.1) this year than he had in his entire rookie season (1.6).

Defensive metrics are notoriously unreliable in small samples, and even more so for first baseman, so I don’t really think this means anything. I bring this up only to segue to the defense of the team as a whole, which – according to our best defensive metrics – might just be the best in the major leagues.

According to BIS, the Royals are +7 runs defensively at catcher, +7 at first base, +9 at second base, +3 at third base, +4 at shortstop, +6 in left field, +9 in center field, and +10 in right field. They’re even +2 runs from their pitchers, which means that the Royals have above-average defense from every position on the field. That’s remarkable.

Again, in half a season, metrics at any individual position are shaky; the runs credited to the third baseman might actually belong to the shortstop, or whatever. But on a team-wide level, the sample size is much larger, and the odds that this is all a fluke is much smaller. Overall, the Royals are 57 runs above average defensively, which leads the majors. The Diamondbacks are at +56; no other team is better than +31. The Royals are 32 runs better than every other American League team.

Other metrics aren’t quite as positive about the Royals. Baseball Prospectus uses a stat called Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency (PADE) to grade a team’s overall defense, and by that metric the Royals rank 8th among 30 major league teams. But even that represents a remarkable improvement, given that by the same metric, the Royals ranked 28th last year, 24th in 2011, 30th in 2010, 29th in 2009, 16th in 2008, 21st in 2007, 28th in 2006, 29th in 2005, 29th in 2004, 23rd in 2003, 24th in 2002, 22nd in 2001, 18th in 2000, 18th in 1999, and 22nd in 1998.

You have to go back to 1997 – sixteen years – to find a Royals team that was above-average defensively. Bad defense has been almost as much a staple of Royals teams as low walk rates. The Royals haven’t done anything to solve the latter, but for the first time in ages, they are finally paying more than just lip service to the former.

- The flipside of having a great defense is that the pitching staff isn’t as good as it looks – that league-leading ERA is greatly enhanced by the other eight guys in the field. According to BIS, the Royals defense has saved the pitching staff 0.67 runs per game. Think about that: 0.67 runs a game works out to about 60 points of ERA (after factoring in unearned runs). That’s enough to make a bad pitcher (4.60 ERA) look good (4.00 ERA), a good pitcher look very good (3.40 ERA), and a very good pitcher look great (2.80 ERA).

And that effect plays out on every pitcher on the entire roster. Put it this way: according to Baseball-Reference.com, an average pitching staff with the Royals’ defense behind it should allow 3.87 runs per game. The Royals are allowing 4.01 runs per game. In other words, the Royals, with the best ERA in the league, have a below-average pitching staff once you account for their defense. That’s amazing.

That’s also probably a little hyperbole. Very few teams are 100 runs above average defensively over the course of a season, which is what the Royals are on pace for. There’s some noise in those numbers, some regression due, and at the end of the year the defense won’t look quite this good, meaning the pitchers will look better than this little experiment suggests.

But it’s worth considering, when you look at a rotation that has James Shields and (a rejuvenated) Ervin Santana, but also has Jeremy Guthrie and Wade Davis and Luis Mendoza, that maybe the Royals really don’t have the best pitching staff in the league. Maybe Dave Eiland really isn’t a witch. Maybe they have an average staff overall, maybe slightly better than average, that’s propped up by a terrific defense.

There’s nothing wrong with that. If anything, it bodes well for the future if it means that the Royals can more easily replace Santana this winter, and can more easily transition someone like Yordano Ventura into the rotation next year, knowing that the defense behind him will be stellar. But it’s important to give proper credit where credit is due. Otherwise you might do something foolish like re-sign Santana to a long-term deal, when much of his improvement this year is thanks to the guys behind him.

- Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez made their first All-Star teams, giving the Royals more than a single token representative for the first time in a decade. Both spots are deserved. Gordon has been the best left fielder in the AL since the beginning of 2011, and should have made the All-Star team each of the last two years. Perez is hitting .302 – a career low, mind you – and even with his free-swinging ways and only modest power, when you hit .300 while playing Gold Glove-caliber defense behind the plate, you’re a hell of a player.

Some of you more cynical types – you know who you are – have mocked the Perez pick given that “he’s the third-best catcher in the division”. Even if that’s true, the third-best catcher in the AL Central is probably the third-best catcher in the AL, because there isn’t anyone in the AL West or East that compares. But beyond that, while it’s easy to make the claim that Carlos Santana is a better catcher than Perez because he draws walks and hits home runs, it’s not necessarily accurate. (No one’s disputing Joe Mauer as the best catcher in the league.)

Perez is hitting .302/.326/.420; Santana is hitting .266/.373/.455. But Perez’s edge behind the plate is just as formidable as Santana’s edge at it. Perez has allowed 25 steals, and thrown out 12 runners; Santana has allowed 34 steals and thrown out 5 runners. In 56 games behind the plate, Santana has allowed 34 wild pitches and 5 passed balls; in 71 games behind the plate, Perez has allowed 31 wild pitches and not a single passed ball.

Perez has caught every inning he’s played in the field this year; Santana has started at first base 11 times and DHed 15 times. That’s an enormous positional and defensive advantage for Perez. Add it up, and Baseball Reference rates Santana at 1.9 WAR so far this year – and Perez rates at 2.2 WAR. That difference is within the margin of error, certainly – but it’s just flat-out wrong to snarkily dismiss the notion that Perez is a more worthy All-Star selection than Santana. As we’ve seen this season, defense matters.

(Jason Castro, who also made the team, has 2.4 WAR this season. Given his lack of a track record prior to this year, I’m comfortable placing him behind Perez and Santana for now, but he’s a heck of a player, and might be the best player on the Astros.)

- I don’t necessarily think this rises to the level of a snub, because it’s almost impossible to “snub” a reliever for the All-Star team, given how few innings they pitch. But Greg Holland might be the best reliever in the league. He’s almost certainly one of the three best, and he’s absolutely and unequivocally better than all five relievers that Jim Leyland placed on the Final Vote ballot.

Holland has faced 128 batters this year, and struck out 56 of them, or 43.8%. Not only does that break his own Royals record, not only does it lead all major league pitchers this year, but it’s the fifth-highest strikeout rate of all time among pitchers with 25+ innings:

Year Pitcher           K   BF    K%

2012 Craig Kimbrel   116  231  50.2%

2003 Eric Gagne      137  306  44.8%

2012 Aroldis Chapman 122  276  44.2%

2011 Kenley Jansen    96  218  44.0%

2013 Greg Holland     56  128  43.8%

Holland hasn’t sacrificed his command to miss bats; in 33 innings he’s allowed just 10 UI walks, and has surrendered just two homers. Put it all together, and his xFIP (1.49) is even better than his actual ERA of 1.91. His xFIP is easily the best in baseball for anyone with 25 innings; only two other pitchers have xFIPs under 2. (They’re both Pirates: Jason Grilli and Mark Melancon. And they’re both big reasons why the Pirates are in first place.)

Holland may still wind up on the team once the raft of starting pitchers inevitably jumps ship, and in the grand scheme of things it’s not a big deal if he doesn’t. I’d much rather have a position player than a reliever on the roster, and the Royals have two. But I think it’s worth pointing out that Greg Holland has a case to be made as the best reliever in the game right now. Because while Royals fans might know that, the All-Star roster is a good sign that the rest of baseball doesn’t.

(Don't) Blame The K.

To paraphrase Voltaire, sometimes I feel that if the Royals did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.

As a fan of the franchise, their performance over the last 20 years has been an unending tragedy. But as a fan of baseball, and moreover as someone who has been intimately involved with the rise of analytics in the world of sports, the existence of the Royals has been a constant source of validation. Some team has to play the negative counterpart to the A’s and Rays. Some team has to serve as the control in the hypothesis, “Does sabermetrics work?” I just wish it wasn’t my team.

But that’s what the Royals are. Think about it: if you were to list the teams that come to mind when someone says “small-market franchise”, that list would contain the A’s, the Rays, the Royals, and probably the Pirates. If those teams don’t have the four lowest combined payrolls in the game in the 21st century, they’re very close.

Two of those teams recognized that their financial disadvantages required them to think outside the box, to try new strategies, to win by doing things the bigger teams weren’t doing. Those two teams are the A’s and the Rays.

The A’s went to the playoffs four straight years from 2000 to 2003, again in 2006; from 2000 to 2006 they averaged 95 wins a season. After an extended rebuilding process – they won as few as 74 games, a total exceeded by the Royals just once in the last nine years  – they surprised everyone by winning the AL West last year, and are currently leading the AL West this year.

The Rays went from a 66-96 record in 2007 to the AL pennant in 2008; they’ve gone to the playoffs in three of the last five years, and won 90+ games four times in the last five years.

Two of those teams decided to stay with old-school thinking, and tried to beat the better-funded franchises by playing the same game. Both of those teams ignored the sabermetric revolution early on, and are only cautiously dipping their toes into the movement today. Those two teams are the Royals and the Pirates.

The Pirates have had 20 losing seasons in a row, the longest stretch of consecutive losing seasons in major league history. The Royals have had losing seasons in 17 of the last 18 years, and have actually lost more games since the 1994-95 strike than even the Pirates, or any other major league team.

And as an added piece of evidence, the Devil Rays were an even more inept franchise than the Royals and the Pirates – they lost 91+ games in each of their first 10 years of existence – under an administration that also ignored sabermetrics. Then the owner sold, a new front office was hired that embraced sabermetrics as fiercely as the old front office derided it, and the fortunes of the franchise did a 180.

Honestly, and immodestly, it’s a wonder that there are still people out there – people who work in the industry – who think that sabermetrics is a sham, that it’s a fad, that if it worked then Billy Beane would have a ring, and never mind that Bill James could lend him one and still have one for himself.

But I would like to think that comparatively few of those people are Royals fans. On the contrary, I’d like to think that Royals fans are much more willing to embrace new-school ideas than fans of other baseball teams. I certainly think that’s the case of Royals media. I know I personally take it for granted that I can go on 810 WHB and discuss baseball with any of the radio hosts, and I don’t have to waste time arguing whether an analytical approach to the game has merit. Everyone agrees on that; we’re not arguing about whether the numbers are important, we’re just arguing over what the numbers mean. In print, Joe Posnanski carried the torch for years, and Sam Mellinger picked it up.

It’s easy to take that for granted, until those rare occasions where I listen to talk radio in almost any other sports market…and I remember that the analytical revolution hasn’t reached everyone yet. I can’t think of a prominent member of the KC media that has mocked sabermetrics recently, something that happens in other media markets all the time.

It’s easy to understand why Royals fans, and the journalists who cover the franchise, are more willing to embrace the idea that sabermetrics has value: for the past 20 years, we’ve seen what the opposite approach has wrought. We’ve seen what happens every time the Royals and the A’s get together to make a trade. We’ve seen a franchise in Tampa Bay that seemed more hopeless than the Royals ever were – and are still saddled today with a ballpark monstrosity in an inaccessible location – embrace sabermetrics, and start going to the playoffs almost immediately thereafter.

Maybe I’m just being my usually hopelessly optimistic self, but I believe that Royals Nation is as sabermetrically savvy as any fan base in the game – because while they don’t know if sabermetrics works, they know, through hard experience, that thumbing your nose at sabermetrics doesn’t.

If only the Royals themselves figured that out.

The reason for my mini-diatribe today is Jeff Flanagan’s latest article for Fox Sports Kansas City, in which he gets the Royals front office to acknowledge something that I’ve been writing about for a very long time – that the Royals don’t draw walks. That they haven’t drawn walks in over 30 years. That they’ve finished in the top half of the league in walks drawn just once since 1980 – and that year (1989) they won 92 games, their most in that span.

Flanagan also got the Royals to provide an explanation for their lack of walks: it’s the ballpark. No, really: the culprit is Kauffman Stadium.

It was less than a month ago that hitting coach – ex-hitting coach – Jack Maloof explained to Flanagan that Kauffman Stadium was the reason why the Royals don’t hit any home runs, even though the ballpark doesn’t have that effect on opposing batters. (As an aside – and I mean this without irony whatsoever – kudos to Flanagan, who apparently has the ability to get people in the Royals organization to open up and say some pretty interesting things.)

So evidently Kauffman Stadium is the reason why the Royals don’t hit home runs and the reason why don’t draw walks. Which raises the question: what other crimes has this ballpark committed? What other secrets are hidden at the Truman Sports Complex? Personally, I’d like to know if George Toma has an alibi for the night that Jimmy Hoffa disappeared.

“We have the largest ballpark in terms of square footage of any ballpark in baseball,” Moore says.

This is true, so long as we are talking about fair territory only.

“When pitchers come here, they have the mindset to use that park – put the ball in play, throw strikes, attack the zone.”

Sounds reasonable.

“There isn’t the same fear factor of getting beat deep that you might have elsewhere.”

O-kay…

“I think that plays a huge factor in that walk statistic.”

Alright, this is where you’ve lost me.

It’s true that Kauffman Stadium suppresses home runs quite a bit. Not nearly to the extent that it justifies the Royals’ inability to hit home runs this year, which is why Maloof lost his job. But yes, it’s not an easy place to hit home runs.

But the notion that because a ballpark is tough to hit homers, pitchers are going to pound the strike zone and give up fewer walks as well – well, we can test this theory. We have data. We can look at this data. We can analyze it. That’s what we call – dare I say it? – sabermetrics.

Last year, the Royals drew 202 walks at home. They drew 202 walks on the road. Using complicated mathematics, I can conclude that the ballpark probably didn’t have anything to do with their walk rate last year.

Moreover, since 2007 – since Dayton Moore’s first full year as GM – the Royals have drawn more walks at home than on the road.

Using more sophisticated analysis, like that done at Fangraphs, we can come up with a Park Factor for walks, which computes the impact that a ballpark has on walk rate, looking at the performance of both the Royals and their opponents. Park Factors are scaled so that 100 is a completely neutral park; numbers over 100 mean the ballpark increases that statistic, and numbers under 100 mean the ballpark decreases that statistic.

Looking at the most recent numbers, the Royals’ Park Factor for home runs is 93 – meaning that a player on the Royals will wind up with about 7% fewer home runs in a season than a player on a neutral team. (Kauffman Stadium reduces his home runs by about 14%, but he only plays half his games at home.)

Kauffman Stadium’s Ballpark Factor for walks is…100. No difference whatsoever.

Let’s think through this some more. If Kauffman Stadium encourages pitchers to throw strikes, then we would expect that just as the Royals’ hitters don’t draw walks, their pitchers should give up fewer walks as well. But as Sam Miller tweeted, since Dayton Moore was hired, the Royals’ pitching staff has given up the second-most walks of any AL team at home. If we’re going to excuse the Royals’ hitters for not drawing walks, then the inescapable conclusion is that their pitching staff can’t hit the broad side of a barn.

And if the problem is the ballpark, then why, as Sam Miller also pointed out, do the Royals’ hitters have the second-fewest walks of any AL team on the road since Moore was hired?

And the final nail in the coffin: if Kauffman Stadium’s dimensions make it hard to draw walks, then how do you explain the Coliseum in Oakland? I said that the Royals have the largest dimensions in fair territory of any team, but when you count foul territory, the Coliseum might actually be bigger.

Kauffman Stadium’s Park Factor for homers is 93; Oakland’s Park Factors is 94. And whereas Kauffman increases singles, doubles, and triples – which is why the park is neutral overall – Oakland suppresses every type of hit, because the foul ground leads to many extra foul pop-outs. The A’s certainly take advantage of their ballpark when it comes to their pitchers. For instance, Tom Milone was the fourth guy in the Gio Gonzalez trade, a strike-thrower with marginal stuff. But the A’s have turned him into an above-average major league starter thanks to their ballpark. On the road, Milone has a 4.66 career ERA. At home? 2.91.

And yet the A’s – who rank just ninth in the AL in homers – lead the league in walks drawn. They were fourth last year. They’ve finished in the top half of the AL in walks drawn in 26 of the last 27 years – but haven’t finished in the top five in the league in home runs since 2002.

While Dayton Moore that blames the ballpark. Kevin Seitzer, much to my disappointment, blames the overall lack of power.

“Pitchers mainly fear the long ball,” he says. “If your lineup isn’t hitting home runs, pitchers aren’t pitching around you. They’re going after you. There’s no need not to.”

There’s no question that there’s a correlation between power and walks – the more of a threat you are to hit a homer, the more likely the pitcher is to nibble and try to get you out with stuff off the plate. But it’s far from a perfect correlation.

I’ve used this example before, but it’s a fun one, so I’m going to use it again: the 1987 St. Louis Cardinals finished dead last in the NL in homers. They had one player hit more than 12 homers. But they led the league in walks drawn, and led the league in OBP, and went to the World Series.

That year, Ozzie Smith didn’t hit a single home run. Not only that, but he was a devastating basestealer – he stole 43 steals in 52 attempts. Given his inability to hit the ball over the wall, and given how dangerous he was once he reached base, why would any pitcher ever let him draw a walk?

Smith drew 89 walks that year. That’s more than any Royal has drawn in a season since 1990 – but it wasn’t even enough to lead the Cardinals that year. Jack Clark had 136. Clark, at least, had power. Vince Coleman stole 109 bases that year, and hit three home runs – opposing pitchers had even more incentive to throw him strikes than Ozzie Smith. Coleman drew 70 walks of his own.

So please, stop blaming the ballpark. Stop blaming the weather, or the traffic, or the rabid Kansas City media, or any other extraneous reason that pops into your head. Because what bothers me today isn’t that the Royals don’t draw walks – that faded into the background a long time ago. I literally have no recollection of a Royals organization that valued the base on balls as a weapon. What bothers me is that the Royals aren’t willing to accept responsibility for their shortcomings. They don’t even have to accept full responsibility – the organization’s lack of interest in walks preceded Dayton Moore’s regime by a quarter-century. How hard would it be to say this?

“You’re right, Jeff, while we stress the importance of plate discipline and patience at the plate, as an organization we haven’t seen those results on the field yet. I know that this has been a problem for the organization since even before we got here. I’m confident that our players just need to mature and gain experience at the plate, and the walks will follow. It’s not a coincidence that our most experienced hitters, Alex Gordon and Billy Butler, are the most patient hitters on the team, and I have no doubt that with more experience, guys like Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas will develop the same approach.”

No one’s asking anyone to fall on their sword – we’re just asking someone, anyone, to acknowledge that it’s a problem, and to acknowledge that it can be fixed. By blaming the ballpark, the Royals are claiming that the problem is inherent to the team, that it’s unfixable. And I’m sorry, but that’s a copout. It’s not true.

The problem can be fixed. But to fix the problem, the Royals are going to have emphasize acquiring players who have plate discipline in the first place. You would think that learning to take on the balls and swing at the strikes is something that can be taught, and occasionally you will find a player who does improve as his career goes on. But it’s more rare than you might think. The evidence is that, at least by the time most players start their pro careers, plate discipline is an inherent tool, like arm strength or power.

And Moore, to his credit, acknowledges as much in this column. “Some guys just have that natural discipline, guys like Alex and Billy. It’s not something you can necessarily teach, though we do preach plate discipline throughout the minor leagues.”

That sounds great. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I point out a few problems with that statement:

1) The Royals may be preaching plate discipline throughout the minor leagues, but as Flanagan points out in the column, few of their minor leaguers appear to be listening. The Omaha Storm Chasers are 12th out of 16 PCL teams in walks drawn. The Northwest Arkansas Naturals are 7th out of 8 teams. The Wilmington Blue Rocks are 7th out of 8 teams. The Lexington Legends are 9th out of 16 team. Four full-season minor league teams – none of them are in the top half of their league in walks drawn.

2) The two guys Moore mentions by name as having “natural discipline”, Alex Gordon and Billy Butler, are quite literally the only two players on the roster who were already here when Moore was hired. That should tell you something.

3) If it’s true that plate disciple is not something you can necessary teach, wouldn’t that make it more important to draft and acquire guys that already have it? And yet here’s assistant GM J.J. Picollo:

“When you’re looking at the impact guys in the first couple of rounds,” Picollo says, “you look at the major tools. Can he square up a ball? Can he hit for power? What’s his speed? Can he he hit consistently? All those things.

“You have to have the tools first or it really doesn’t matter. Now, when it gets to later rounds, when the talent gap isn’t that much between players, that area (on-base percentage) has more of a chance to stand out and it may separate one player from another.”

So basically, the Royals focus on everything but plate discipline in the first couple of rounds, but in the later rounds, OBP matters more.

You’ll be shocked to learn that I disagree completely.

First off, if you don’t focus on plate discipline in the first couple of rounds, you might as well not focus on it at all, because the vast majority of major league regulars are picked in the first couple of rounds. I don’t care if your 20th-round draft pick knows the strike zone, because 98% of those guys never make an impact in the majors anyway. It’s the guys taken in the first three rounds that are expected to contribute. Primarily, it’s the guys taken in the first round. Four of the guys in the Royals lineup were drafted in the top 15 picks: Gordon, Butler, Moustakas, and Hosmer. The first two were drafted by Allard Baird, and know the strike zone – they showed the ability to walk even in the minors. Hosmer showed good plate discipline in the minors, and has held his own in the majors. Moustakas was a relatively free swinger in the minors, and is a relatively free swinger in the majors.

The first round is where you expect to get your everyday players, so if you draft a player in the first round who doesn’t know the strike zone, you can’t pretend to be surprised when he never learns the strike zone. “We took guys like Brian McCann and Adam LaRoche and Rafael Furcal – all very good on-base guys. We also took Jeff Francoeur, who had a different approach that worked for him.”

Well, Francoeur – the 23rd overall pick in 2002 – certainly had a different approach. But “worked for him”? Sure – for the first month of his major league career, when he hit .419, slugged .802, and didn’t draw a single walk in 86 at-bats. The rest of his rookie season, he hit .240/.294/.421. From his sophomore season to today, he’s hit .262/.306/.415. Francoeur is pretty much the poster boy for how not having plate discipline can destroy an otherwise promising career.

But I also disagree with Picollo’s other point, which is that you value plate discipline more in the later rounds. Since late-round picks are, by definition, long-shot gambles, I’d much rather bet on athleticism and tools, hoping that out of 10 or 20 players one of them learns how to hit, rather than taking a bunch of hitters who know the strike zone but don’t have the bat speed to take advantage of it.

I’d much rather bet on guys like, say, David Lough (11th round), who was as much a football as a baseball player at Mercyhurst College, or Lorenzo Cain (17th round), who didn’t even start playing baseball until he was a high school junior, or, of course, Jarrod Dyson, drafted in the 50th round because he could run really fast and, um, he could run really fast.

Most of those guys aren’t going to pan out, and many of the guys who would pan out get undermined by their inability to master the strike zone. Lough will probably never have plate discipline, which will likely limit him to fourth outfielder duties. But occasionally you get a tools guy who figures it out, and both Cain and Dyson have acceptable walk rates to go with their other skills.

But anyway, you don’t build rosters with 17th and 50th round picks – you build them around guys at the top of the draft, and if the guys you take at the top of the draft don’t know the strike zone, they’re unlikely to ever learn the strike zone. And if the guys at the top of the draft never learn the strike zone, you wind up with a team that doesn’t draw a lot of walks, year after year after year.

No, it’s not a particularly bold or interesting explanation for the Royals’ perennial lack of walks. But it does have the advantage of being accurate.

The Royals are doing a lot of things right, and I want to give them credit for it. Despite the organization’s inability to develop starting pitching, Dayton Moore has fashioned together a pitching staff with the best ERA in the league without a single starting pitcher who was signed or developed by the organization. That’s fantastic, and the Royals deserve to be lauded for it.

But all their success on the mound won’t matter if they don’t score, and not drawing walks makes it harder to score. It’s a weakness, which I hope the Royals fix, and which I expect them to at least recognize. Instead, they’re blaming the ballpark. The first step to overcoming a problem is to acknowledge it. Until the Royals do that, I’m going to keep hammering them for it.

Bouncing Back, And Embracing The Luck.

I haven’t had anything to say recently, partly because I don’t have time, but partly because the Royals have been in this weird part of the schedule where they could only add to the narrative that their world is falling apart, they couldn’t detract from it. As I tweeted a week ago, playing six home games against the Twins and Astros constituted the easiest week on their entire schedule, and they could easily go 5-1 without definitively proving that they weren’t the same team that just endured a 4-19 stretch. They then went out and went…5-1, and many of you thought I was being an annoying jerk for refusing to get excited.

I’m not trying to be an annoying jerk. But I hope that I’ve learned, after nearly two decades of false promises, not to get too excited about the Royals until they force me to get excited. Five wins in a row against two of the worst teams in baseball does not force me to get excited. Particularly when the same weakness that has plagued the Royals all season is still evident.

I mean, even when winning five straight games against the dregs of the American League, the Royals scored just 24 runs. In the five games before that – the first five games after George Brett was hired as the hitting coach – the Royals scored just 11 runs. They’ve scored five runs just twice in their last 19 games. Counting last night’s victory against the Tigers, the Royals have 38 runs in the 11 games of the George Brett Era, or 3.45 runs per game. So please, let’s stop the talk about how Brett has charged up the offense.

To be an equal-opportunity dream-dasher, let’s also stop the talk about how Ned Yost’s “stat guys” – let's give them a proper introduction, that would be Director of Baseball Analytics Mike Groopman and Assistant Director of Baseball Analytics John Williams – are responsible for the turnaround, even though the Royals are undefeated since the new lineup was unveiled. I love the new lineup, I think batting Hosmer #2 makes excellent sense (although I’d lead him off and bat Gordon #2, but that’s a minor quibble). I think that the difference in the new lineup might be worth 15 runs over a full season, but that still comes out to about a tenth of a run per game. And so far, of course, we haven’t even seen that. That’s not why they’re winning.

They’re winning the way they won earlier in the season – with fantastic pitching day in and day out. They’ve allowed three runs or fewer in their last 9 games in a row. That is the longest streak of three runs or fewer allowed by the Royals pitching staff since 1991, when the Royals set a franchise record with 11 straight games of 3 runs or less. (They gave up just 13 runs, total, in those 11 games.)

If they keep pitching like this, they have a chance to get back into the race. Hell, if they can keep pitching like this for the next 36 hours, they will be 3.5 games out of first place. One week ago, that’s not something I expected to write at any point this season, let alone today.

And let’s be clear: the Royals are pitching as well as they’ve pitched in a very long time. They have allowed the fewest runs in the league. They have the best ERA in the league. (They are second in runs allowed per game, right behind the Yankees.) The bullpen has a 2.79 ERA. James Shields has been fantastic. Ervin Santana has been wonderful.

And yet those two pitchers are 6-11, and in the games they’ve started, the Royals are 10-15. The Royals have the best ERA in the league, and they’re 29-32. Because you see, no matter how many times people try to convince you that pitching is 90% of baseball, or 70% of baseball, or even 50% of baseball, it’s just not true. Run prevention and run creation are equally valuable. There is some evidence that preventing runs may correlate with winning, or winning in the postseason, more than scoring runs – but it’s a very small difference, something along the lines of 52% to 48%. And of course, a good deal of run prevention isn’t pitching at all, but defense. As Joe Posnanski pointed out, according to Baseball Info Solutions the Royals have the best defense in the AL. (Yes, even with Jeff Francoeur.)

However you apportion the credit or the blame, the Royals are as good at preventing runs as anyone in the league – and they’re still a .500 team, more or less (they’ve outscored their opponents by five runs), because their offense sucks. Until their offense operates at a level where scoring five runs isn’t considered a slugfest, and where they don’t stop the game for a set of congratulatory speeches every time someone hits a home run, I’m going to remain skeptical that this team has what it takes to contend.

I’m going to remain skeptical because the Royals are going to have to score more runs just to stay in place, because their pitching isn’t likely to remain this effective. Just one guy on the entire roster has an ERA over 4.37. Santana has a 2.99 ERA, but has allowed more home runs (14) than walks (13). Individually, you can make a case that any one of these guys can continue to be this effective. Collectively, almost everyone is likely to worsen, and only Wade Davis is a good candidate to be considerably better (and that’s largely because he’s been so terrible so far.)

But no one is a greater regression candidate than Jeremy Guthrie, who represents the very best and very worst of the Royals pitching staff so far. Guthrie has a very solid 3.60 ERA, he’s 7-3, and I actually read someone speculate recently that he might be an All-Star candidate.

And I have absolutely no idea how he’s doing this.

Well, I know how he’s doing this – he throws the white ball to the man with the wooden stick, who hits the white ball to other men wearing a leather glove. I just don’t know how he’s been able to sustain this kind of end-result success when the means to that end – dare I say the process – seem so terribly flawed.

Start with Guthrie’s basic numbers: 85 innings, 86 hits, 28 walks, 44 strikeouts, 16 home runs.

Guthrie has always had trouble missing bats, but his strikeout rate this year – just 12.2% of batters faced – is the lowest of his career. (Mind you, he hasn’t been above 15% since 2008.) It’s extremely difficult – not impossible, but extremely difficult – to be a successful pitcher in the major leagues in 2013 with a strikeout rate that low.

One way to survive without striking anyone out is to not walk anyone, but Guthrie’s walk rate (7.8%) is actually the highest of his career. He’s not that far off his career norms, but still – he’s striking out fewer guys and walking more guys than he ever has before.

The other way to survive with a low strikeout rate is to not give up any home runs. Jeremy Guthrie leads the league with 16 home runs allowed.

So…um…what’s going on?

Well, for one, Guthrie long ago sold his soul to the BABIP fairy. For reasons that remain unclear to me – and I’m not being sarcastic, I’m genuinely fascinated by this – Guthrie has had an ability to keep his batting average on balls in play well below average throughout his career. Aside from his disastrous time in Colorado last year, he has never had a BABIP over .287, when the league average usually hovers around .300. Pitchers have very little control over what happens on balls in play – but Guthrie, for whatever reason, has more control over it than virtually every other pitcher in the majors today.

Among the 138 pitchers this century with 1000 or more innings pitched, Guthrie’s career BABIP of .277 is the 8th lowest. The seven guys in front of him are either severe flyball pitchers (Ted Lilly, Jered Weaver, Ryan Franklin, Jarrod Washburn), moderate flyball pitches with a knack for pop-ups (Matt Cain, Barry Zito), or knuckleballers (Tim Wakefield). Guthrie falls into none of those camps.

This year, his BABIP is .263. And here’s the thing: I’m not convinced it’s a fluke. His career BABIP has largely occurred in front of some fairly mediocre Oriole defenses. If the Royals really have the best defense in the league, .263 almost seems sustainable. If that were the sole reason why Guthrie’s ERA is so much better than his peripheral numbers, I’d say carry on.

But it’s not. Look at these numbers:

Bases empty: .257/.336/.515

Men on base: .279/.323/.361

Runners in scoring position: .217/.246/.317

That’s a phenomenal breakdown. With the bases empty, batters are slugging over .500 against Guthrie. He’s given up 16 home runs this year, but the two-run shot he gave up to Miguel Cabrera yesterday was just the second home run that came with a man on base. That’s remarkable. I’m not saying it’s sustainable, but it’s remarkable. Guthrie has basically become the anti-Hochevar.

Moreover, the leadoff man in an inning is batting .157/.195/.373 against Guthrie this year. He’s surrendered five home runs to the leadoff man – but if they’re not hitting the ball out, they’re not getting on base. That’s forcing opponents to begin their rallies with at least one out already, making it hard to sustain a big inning.

Again, his success has been remarkable. But it’s not sustainable. For his career, Guthrie’s splits with the bases empty (.261 AVG, 763 OPS) are essentially the same as with men on base (.266, 765) and with runners in scoring position (.263, 771). This is a stone-cold fluke. I’m not saying it hasn’t been a valuable fluke – but I don’t see how he can sustain this for very long.

Put it this way: Guthrie has allowed 16 homers, and struck out 44 batters. That’s a ratio of just 2.75 strikeouts per home run. If you can’t miss bats and give up lots of big flies, you’re supposed to get pummeled. Which is why in the post-Deadball-II era (i.e. since 1969), not one pitcher has made 12 or more starts in a season, had a K/HR ratio of less than 2.8, and still allowed fewer than 3.9 runs per nine innings.

Well, one pitcher. Counting unearned runs, Guthrie is at 3.81. More power to him; he’s gotten outs when he’s needed them, and he’s winning games that the Royals need him to win. And I’m rooting for him to continue to defy everything we understand about how pitchers achieve success. When the Royals were swirling the drain, I told you to #EmbraceTheSuck, but every time Guthrie takes the mound, I’m going to #EmbraceTheLuck.

But I don’t know how he can continue to do this for much longer. There’s a reckoning coming, for him and for the pitching staff as a whole. If Hosmer doesn’t reacquaint himself with the fly ball to right field, if Moustakas doesn’t reacquaint himself with first base, if Chris Getz doesn’t reacquaint himself with Omaha, I don’t see how the Royals survive in the long run.

But at least they’re making things interesting.

How The Hell Did This Happen?

I have to admit: I didn’t see this coming. I realize this is not the first time I’ve written those words. It’s probably not the second or third time either.

It’s not that I didn’t think the Royals would play this poorly in the first third of the season. If you had told me back in March that the Royals would start the season 21-29 – but only be outscored by seven runs in their first 50 games – I would have said that’s quite plausible. For the season as a whole, they’ve basically played like a .500 team, with some bad luck – they’re 7-12 in one-run games. They’ve played worse than I expected, but not a lot worse. I could have foreseen this.

But I could not have foreseen this. If you had told me that they started 21-29, I would have guessed that the primary culprit was that their starting rotation had not lived up to the hype and the resources put into it. I would have guessed that Ervin Santana would have relived 2012 all over again, and that Jeremy Guthrie’s inability to miss bats would have caught up with him, and maybe even that James Shields had been ineffective and/or hurt.

And here’s the thing: if that had been the culprit in the Royals’ terrible start, that wouldn’t be the end of the world. Sure, it would have been a ton of money thrown down the drain, but Santana’s a free agent at the end of the year. Guthrie’s under contract for two more seasons, but Danny Duffy is almost back, and Felipe Paulino shouldn’t be too far behind. The Royals could chalk this up as bad luck, and start fresh in 2014. Sure, they’d be out Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi, but they could wipe away the mistakes of 2013, start fresh with another rotation makeover, and be confident that their young hitters could rake enough to put them in contention.

Instead, we got this.

Before last night’s bizarre, Matheny-aided, weather-almost-denied victory, the Royals had lost 19 of their last 23 games. That is tied for the worst 23-game stretch since Dayton Moore was hired. Yesterday was also the seventh anniversary of the date Dayton Moore was hired. So SEVEN YEARS AFTER HE TOOK THE JOB, the Royals are playing as badly as they have played since he was hired.

And let’s not overlook this point: the Royals are playing atrocious baseball even though they’ve been healthier than they had any right to expect. Of the 25 guys who broke camp with them, just one – Jarrod Dyson – has been on the DL. And while Dyson’s been missed, particularly since he was just starting to take playing time away from Jeff Francoeur, David Lough has hit .305 in his absence, so you can’t pin this all on him.

The only other absence has been Salvador Perez, who’s been on bereavement leave this week after his grandmother passed. And that’s it. The trainers are doing their job magnificently. The players are not.

Before the year started, I said that I wanted nothing more than to issue an apology to Dayton Moore for criticizing the Shields trade. Yet here we are, two months into the season, Shields is pitching a little better than expected (although Wade Davis has been a disappointment), Wil Myers is hitting a little worse than expected (although coming on strong lately in Triple-A) – and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because of what I did not foresee: a lineup filled with former top prospects, a lineup where no one has yet reached his 30th birthday, a lineup with a pair of 23-year-olds and a 24-year-old, a lineup that every scout loved and every analyst thought was overwhelmingly likely to improve…that lineup has laid a giant goose egg.

Two years ago, with the youngest offense in the major leagues, the Royals finished sixth in the AL in runs scored.

Last year, with an offense that was still the youngest in the majors, the Royals dropped to 12th in the league in runs scored. Eric Hosmer had a terrible season. Salvador Perez missed half the year. Jeff Francoeur was below replacement-level and batted over 600 times. These were all easily fixable problems. We thought.

This year, with a lineup that is still young but has two additional years of experience, the Royals now rank 13th in the AL in runs scored, ahead of only the Mariners and White Sox. The Mariners also can’t develop their hitters to save their life, and their front office is also in mortal danger. The White Sox are finally paying the price for a decade of short-term decisions.

And the Royals are trending downward. They’ve scored 82 runs in their last 24 games. After firing Kevin Seitzer, who is increasingly looking like the Winston Churchill of this organization – the one guy who understood the weightiness of the task before them – because Ned Yost wanted more power, they’ve hit two homers in their last 14 games. Jeff Francoeur’s ninth-inning homer raised that total to three in 15 games, which is still one less homer than the CUBS PITCHERS have hit in that span (thanks, Travis Wood!)

And I hate to say this, but not only am I caught off-guard by what has happened, but I am incredibly pessimistic about what this means for the future of this organization. If the 2013 Royals were in a tailspin because they did a poor job of complimenting their home-grown talent with veterans from outside the organization – again – that would be a problem, but it would be a problem with an expiration date.

Instead, they’ve gone from sole possession of first place to sole possession of last place in 28 days because of their home-grown talent. The one thing that Dayton Moore and his front office was supposed to be good at – the one thing that convinced me to start supporting this front office again after the debacle of 2009 – looks like a fraud.

If you haven’t read it already, here’s Jonah Keri and I over at Grantland last week, talking about what happened to the Best Farm System In The History Of Baseball. The quick recap: two years ago, the Royals had nine Top 100 prospects in their farm system, including three Top 10 hitters, the safest type of prospect. Here’s what the Royals have to show for them:

James Shields – for two years.

Wade Davis.

Two corner infielders hitting .261/.321/.335 and .184/.254/.309.

Danny Duffy, who appears to be hitting on all cylinders 12 months after Tommy John surgery.

John Lamb, who is definitely not hitting on all cylinders 24 months after Tommy John surgery. (In his defense, Lamb’s velocity reportedly ticked up in his last start, and he’s on a run of 14 shutout innings. But as I’ve said many times: never trust a pitcher based on how he’s performing in Wilmington. On the road this year, Lamb has a 5.83 ERA. Unless and until he starts retiring batters at Northwest Arkansas, don’t bother getting excited.)

Chris Dwyer, who might be a #5 starter one day. Might.

Christian Colon, who HAHAHAHAHAHA

So yes, it appears that I need to offer a sincere apology for being wrong. But the apology isn’t for Dayton Moore. It’s for people like Will McDonald, and Matt Klaassen, and Scott McKinney, whose conclusion from his in-depth study on the track record of top prospects was that a farm system, even one as outstanding as the Royals’ farm system appeared in the spring of 2010, was no guarantee of future success.

I tried to parry McKinney’s findings, because I have a blind spot when it comes to the Royals, and in my defense I still think the points that I raised are valid. But I made one fatal mistake, which one should never make when analyzing the Royals: I forgot that I was analyzing the Royals. When it comes to the Royals, Murphy’s Law reigns: if anything can go wrong, it will. And when it comes to prospects, anything can go wrong.

I’m convinced that the theory was sound: great farm systems, more often than not, lead to good teams. I know it can work because I’ve seen it work. I know it can work because I’ve seen it at work all week. Look at the St. Louis Cardinals:

Yadier Molina: drafted by the Cardinals, fourth round in 2000.

Allen Craig: drafted by the Cardinals, eighth round in 2006.

Matt Carpenter: drafted by the Cardinals, 13th round in 2009. Despite never playing second base in the minor leagues, Carpenter has started 34 games there for St. Louis this year. Amazingly enough, the world did not end. Someone should alert the Royals that it’s okay to play a marginal defensive second baseman if he can hit.

Pete Kozma: drafted by the Cardinals, first round (#18 overall) in 2007.

David Freese: acquired from the San Diego Padres for Jim Edmonds – who was released by the Padres after 26 games. Freese was a ninth-round pick who had yet to reach Double-A.

Matt Holliday: acquired for three prospects named Clayton Mortenson, Shane Peterson, and Brett Wallace. Mortensen and Wallace were first-rounders, Peterson was a second-rounder – but none of them would have success in the majors.

Jon Jay: drafted by the Cardinals, second round, 2006.

Daniel Descalso: drafted by the Cardinals, third round in 2007.

Adam Wainwright: drafted by the Braves, first round (#29 overall) in 2000. Acquired by the Cardinals – along with Jason Marquis – for one year of J.D. Drew.

Lance Lynn: drafted by the Cardinals, supplemental first round (#39 overall) in 2008.

Jaime Garcia: drafted by the Cardinals, 22nd round in 2005.

Joe Kelly: drafted by the Cardinals, third round in 2009.

The Cardinals are built around farm system products, or minor leaguers that they shrewdly acquired for veterans, and the one time they traded top prospects for a veteran, they just happened to pick the top prospects who would flop in the majors.

The Royals had the Best Farm System In The History Of Baseball two years ago; this spring the Cardinals just had the Best Farm System Right Now. But in two months, they’ve gotten as much production from their prospects as the Royals have gotten from theirs in two years.

Shelby Miller (#2 prospect, drafted in first round - #19 overall – in 2009) has a 2.02 ERA in ten starts.

Carlos Martinez (#3 prospect, signed from Dominican Republic in 2010) made just four starts in the minors this year before he was promoted to the Cardinals’ bullpen, where he’s allowed four runs in eight innings so far.

Trevor Rosenthal (#4 prospect, 21st round in 2009) throws 100 mph, and in 26 innings in the bullpen, has a 2.08 ERA and 39 strikeouts.

Matt Adams (#7 prospect, 23rd round in 2009) can’t even break into the Cardinals’ lineup because they’re so stacked with hitters, but is hitting .346/.382/.577 in 52 at-bats, mostly off the bench.

Pete Kozma (#13 prospect, first round - #18 overall – in 2007) looked like a rare bust for the Cardinals; his career totals in the minors are .236/.308/.344, and last year he hit .232/.292/.355 in Triple-A. But called up late in the year to fill in for Rafael Furcal, Kozma hit .333/.383/.569 and started at shortstop in the playoffs. This year, he’s hitting a respectable .263/.321/.327.

John Gast (#26 prospect, sixth round in 2010) has made three starts for the Cardinals this year, winning two of them.

And of course, the team’s #6 prospect coming into the season, Michael Wacha, who was drafted with the #19 pick last year and raced to the majors in under a year, debuting last night by retiring the first 13 batters he faced, going seven innings and allowing two hits and no walks. Meanwhile, Kyle Zimmer, like Wacha a college right-hander, drafted #5 overall by the Royals, has a 5.28 ERA. In A-ball. IN WILMINGTON, one of the best pitchers’ parks in America.

And unlike the Royals, the Cardinals didn’t feel it necessary to trade their top prospect, an outfielder considered one of the five best prospects in the game (Oscar Taveras) for a quick fix to their pitching staff. They still have Taveras in the minors, along with fellow Top-100 prospect Kolten Wong, a second baseman who’s hitting .333 with walks and pop in Triple-A. (And unlike the Royals, the Cardinals show no signs of giving up on their second base prospect. But then, the Cardinals don’t have Chris Getz.)

So you see, having a great farm system can pay dividends. It can even pay instant dividends. It just requires an organization that has some ability to convert minor league potential into major league production. The Royals have shown shockingly little ability to do so. EVERY PLAYER they placed on the Top 100 list has seen his career go backwards in the two years since, with the arguable exception of two players – Myers and Odorizzi – who are no longer in the organization.

And suddenly, you look at the Royals roster and realize that Dayton Moore has no clothes. He was hired by the Royals SEVEN YEARS AGO yesterday, and in the seven years since:

- There is NOT A SINGLE PITCHER signed by his administration who has made a start in the major leagues this year.

- Only one position player signed in the last seven years is playing every day in the majors without sucking: Salvador Perez. The only other position players who have reached the majors: Jarrod Dyson, Derrick Robinson, Mike Moustakas, David Lough, Clint Robinson, Eric Hosmer, and Johnny Giavotella.

By the way, Derrick Robinson? The guy the Royals drafted in the fourth round in 2006, paid him $1 million to sign, but never learned to hit and was designated for assignment this winter? He signed with the Reds, made their team out of spring training, and in 46 plate appearances off the bench, has hit .342 with a .444 OBP. It’s probably a fluke. But in seven minor league seasons with the Royals, he rarely showed enough ability to make you think he could muster a .444 OBP in the majors even as a fluke.

The Royals have drafted plenty of relievers, and there’s something to be said for having relievers. But two of the relievers on their team right now were taken in the first round, one with the first overall pick, one with the 12th pick. Turning Luke Hochevar and Aaron Crow into major league relievers isn’t a feather in the cap of the front office; it’s an indictment of them.

Speaking of first round picks…let’s take a closer look at them.

2006: Luke Hochevar (#1)

2007: Mike Moustakas (#2)

2008: Eric Hosmer (#3)

2009: Aaron Crow (#12)

2010: Christian Colon (#4)

2011: Bubba Starling (#5)

2012: Kyle Zimmer (#5)

First off, that’s an utterly breathtaking stretch of horrible play – the Royals had a top-five pick SIX TIMES IN SEVEN YEARS.

And what do the Royals have for those picks? A pitcher with a 5.39 career ERA as a starter, who might find some success out of the bullpen. A pair of corner infielders who have suddenly lost the ability to hit. Another college starter who had to be converted to relief before he even reached the majors. A shortstop-turned-second baseman who’s hitting .246/.297/.341 in Triple-A, and is already 24. A tools-laden outfielder who’s hitting .209/.291/.368 in low-A ball, has struck out in over a third of his at-bats, and turns 21 in August. A starting pitcher who, in his first full pro season, has a 5.28 ERA in a fantastic pitchers’ park in high-A ball.

I’m not going to spend too much time on the 2006 pick, both because no one wants to take credit/blame for it, and because the player that most deemed worthy of that #1 pick, Andrew Miller, is himself a failed starter trying to hold on as a lefty reliever. But in 2007, the Royals chose to go the long route, selecting a high school hitter over the best college player in the draft – and picked Moustakas over Matt Wieters. In 2008, the Royals chose to go the long route, selecting a high school hitter over the best available college player in the draft – and picked Hosmer over Buster Posey.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with selecting a high school hitter over a college hitter – the study I did back in 2006 showed that the advantage college players had enjoyed in the 1970s and 1980s has pretty much disappeared. But you have to get it right. The Royals, to this point, haven’t got either pick right.

In 2009 the Royals took Aaron Crow, and given the options on the board, it wasn’t a bad pick. While the Cardinals got Miller at #19, Crow is probably the best player that was taken between picks 11 and 18. But they then panicked after he had one bad year as a starter in the minors, turned him into a reliever, and now are too dependent on their crutch to ever try him in a more significant role. In 2010 they finally took a college player – only this time it was a compromise pick that was made at least in part because shortstop was, at the time, a position of need. They almost took Chris Sale, but they did not. I wanted Yasmani Grandal, and while it’s not clear how good he’ll be – at least in part because he failed a steroid test and missed the first 50 games of this year – he’s a damn sight better than Christian Colon.

In 2010, easily the deepest first round since Moore was hired, the Royals took Bubba Starling, ignoring the fact that Bubba was nearly 19 years old. Sure, they wanted one of the four pitchers that were taken ahead of him – but that’s a weak excuse when the four players taken after Starling were Anthony Rendon (can’t stay healthy, but hitting .330/.473/.625 in Double-A and has already played in the majors), Archie Bradley (just 20 years old, promoted to Double-A this year, has a 1.01 ERA and 80 Ks in 63 innings), Francisco Lindor (Gold Glove-caliber shortstop hitting .313/.385/.438 in high-A ball, is just 19), and Javier Baez (shortstop – future third baseman – hitting .264/.299/.487 in high-A ball, just 20).

And that doesn’t count #11 pick George Springer (tied for the minor league lead with 16 homers), or #14 pick Jose Fernandez (made the Marlins’ rotation out of spring training at age 20), or any of a dozen other guys taken in the first round that the Royals would gladly trade Starling for straight up – and get turned down in a heartbeat.

I’m not going to pass judgment on Kyle Zimmer yet – Zimmer, at least, has struck out 29% of the batters he’s faced this year. But despite drafting in the top five of the draft SIX TIMES, the Royals haven’t hit on a single player yet. Not one.

Meanwhile, the much-maligned Allard Baird, hampered from his first day to his last by financial constraints that Moore hasn’t had to worry about in the draft, hit on three of his five first-round picks – Zack Greinke, Billy Butler, and Alex Gordon. Only Gordon was a top-five pick (although Baird also whiffed on Chris Lubanski, taken fifth).

There’s still plenty of time for Hosmer and Moustakas to turn things around, Alex Gordon looked like a bust a couple of years ago, yada yada yada. The point is that despite more drafts, despite far more elite picks, despite substantially more financial resources than Allard Baird, Dayton Moore has yet to come close to Baird’s success. And Baird was chased out of town by a pitchfork-wielding mob five years after he got the job.

You know what else Allard Baird had during his five years as the Royals’ GM? A winning season. Sure, it was a stone-cold fluke, and yes, the Royals lost 100 games in each of the other four seasons in which Baird was GM on Opening Day. But still: at least he had a winning season once in his five years.

Dayton Moore doesn’t. And he’s had seven. And this winter, he traded one of the most significant prospect packages this century in order to jump-start the rebuilding process and win in 2013. And the Royals are 22-29. A year after they went 71-91, two years after they went 70-92, they’re on pace to go…70-92.

So I think it’s time we acknowledge the elephant in the room, and stop worrying about who the hitting coach is. Yes, Jack Maloof deserved to get fired – if not for his performance, than for his ridiculous comments to Jeff Flanagan in this column, comments that I said on Twitter ought to end his career, and – shockingly – actually did end his career. (Although in retrospect, given how fast the move was made, I wonder if Maloof already knew he was being let go and decided to go out with a bang.)

And look, I’m thrilled that George Brett is the new hitting coach, if for no other reason than it’s a blast to see him in uniform during the season for the first time since I was 18. And I’m genuinely curious to see whether he can have an effect. It’s a no-lose situation for him; if the hitters hit, he’ll be hailed as a genius, and if they don’t, they were already broken when he got here.

But the problems with this team go deeper than the hitting coach. They go deeper than the manager, which is why I don’t understand why everyone is focusing their frustrations on Ned Yost. Is Yost a great manager? No. But he’s not as terrible as everyone thinks either. Just by way of comparison, did you see how the Royals ended their eight-game losing streak Thursday night? (Well, not the very end – only the crazies stayed up until 3 AM to see that.) Here’s what Cardinals manager Mike Matheny did:

- With a 2-1 lead to protect in the top of the ninth, and closer Edward Mujica unavailable because he had pitched four games in a row, Matheny turned to…Mitchell Boggs. Boggs came into the game with a 10.43 ERA, having allowed 20 hits and 14 walks in 15 innings. He was the worst pitcher in the Cardinals’ bullpen, and maybe in any team’s bullpen.

- After Boggs gave up a game-tying home run to Jeff Francoeur, and walked Alex Gordon, Matheny replaced him with…Victor Marte, who had just been called up from the minors, and had a career 7.09 ERA. Worst of all, Marte was a former Royal. Marte let the next two batters get on base even though both guys were trying to sacrifice themselves – he hit Alcides Escobar with a pitch, and then threw wildly to third base on David Lough’s bunt.

- Matheny ordered an intentional walk to Chris Getz. I don’t care that it worked (four hours later, when Miguel Tejada just wanted to put a pitch in play and get the game over with). He intentionally walked Chris Getz.

Mike Matheny, it should be noted, managed the Cardinals to the playoffs last year. I see no evidence (and not just this game) that Matheny is a better tactical manager than Yost. But he has the horses. Yost doesn’t have the horses.

Yost doesn’t have the horses because his GM hasn’t given them to him. And now fans want Yost fired, just like they wanted the manager that Yost replaced, Trey Hillman, fired. Well, at some point you have to ask yourself if the problem is the manager, or the guy who hired him, and who hired his predecessor, and allowed them both to fail?

I’m not calling for Dayton Moore to be fired quite yet, for a couple of pragmatic reasons:

- The draft begins next Thursday, and as you’ll recall, the only thing worse than having your draft run by a GM no one has any confidence in, is having a draft run by no GM at all.

- On the morning of May 6th, the Royals were 17-10 and in first place. As horrible as this month has been, I’m not sure it’s fair to go from signing a GM’s praises to axing him on the basis of barely three weeks of data.

Having gotten the Royals into this mess, it’s fair to give Moore another couple of weeks to see if he can get them out of it. But if he can’t…it’s time to acknowledge the reality that it’s time to make a change in the GM’s chair. Because it will also be time to acknowledge that it’s time to make a change with the roster, because the roster just isn’t good enough. It will be time to administer Omaha therapy to Moustakas and Hosmer. It will be time to send Crow down with them and tell him he’s a starting pitcher again. It will be time to trade Ervin Santana for the best possible package, and it will be time to, yes, at least entertain offers on James Shields.

It will be time to blow up the entire roster, in other words. It will be time for the Royals to take yet another stop backwards in order to take two steps forward. Dayton Moore can’t take that step, nor should he be expected to – if the Royals are going to take a step backwards, Moore won’t be there when they start moving forward again.

But they need to take a step backwards. And so they need a GM who can focus on the long term without having to worry about his job security in the short term. It’s not fair to anyone, least of all Moore, to ask him to do his job when doing his job right may cause him to lose it.

I hope this doesn’t have to come to pass. If the Royals go 18-9 in June and get back over .500, maybe we’ll look back at this as a bad dream. But right now, with an offense that can’t score and a rotation of guys who are, frankly, pitching over their heads, I think the Royals are more likely to go 9-18 than 18-9.

And if they do, then it’s time. Seven years is long enough. The Best Farm System In The History Of Baseball was a nice fantasy, but it’s looking like that’s all it was: a fantasy. If that’s the case, then the notion that Dayton Moore can ever be a playoff-caliber general manager is a fantasy too. And so it will be time to give someone else a chance to be that guy.