To Buy Or To SELL! SELL! SELL!

So, here we are.

We’re at the All-Star Break, and the Royals have played 92 games, so we’re well past the point where we can explain away a poor performance with the words “small sample size”. There are fewer games left to play than have already been played. We should have a pretty good idea of what the 2013 Royals are now.

What they are isn’t pretty. The Royals are 43-49, on pace for a 76-86 record. That’s exactly the opposite of what I predicted before the beginning of the year. They are six games under .500 for the first time since early June. They are 8 games out of first place for the first time all season. And after playing better than their record would suggest for so long – they had outscored their opponents almost all season long – the Royals quietly went underwater in that regard as well, as they’ve been outscored by eight runs this year. Maybe they should be 45-47 instead of 43-49, but that’s scant comfort. They have the 11th-best record out of 15 AL teams; they have the 10th-best run differential.

They’re not a good team. They’re not a bad team – they’re on pace for their best record (!) in 10 years – but if they continue on their current pace until year’s end, the only people who will declare 2013 a success will be trying to sell you something.

It appears even my admittedly tepid optimism about this season was, once again, misplaced. The main reasons for that are:

1) A small amount of luck (they should be two games better than they’ve played).

2) Somewhat disappointing, if still valuable, seasons from Alex Gordon, Billy Butler, and Salvador Perez.

3) Alcides Escobar hitting as poorly as he did his rookie season with the Brewers back in 2010. I expected him to decline, but not this much.

4) Mike Moustakas being kind of a train wreck.

5) Jeff Francoeur and the second base rotation being as bad as my worst fears.

6) Wade Davis being worse than my worst-case scenario for his return to the rotation – particularly since I assumed there was a limit to “worst-case” before he got moved to the bullpen.

7) The bullpen being erratic aside from Greg Holland, although still effective overall. (Counting Holland, they are second in the AL in ERA.)

On the plus side, James Shields has been as good as expected, Ervin Santana has been better than expected, and David Lough has – at least to this point – given the Royals more offense than they could have expected from right field in the immediate post-Wil-Myers era. And the defense, on a team-wide level, has been a revelation.

But there’s no way to sugarcoat it: the Royals are a disappointment. Again.

I will, at least for the moment, refrain from turning this column into a long screed advocating for the entire front office, from Dayton Moore on down, to be shown the door. I think you can make a case that we’re not at that point yet. But I think you can also make a case that we are. Moore was hired OVER SEVEN YEARS AGO, and the Royals are 43-49 and eight games out at the Break. That’s not the sad part – the sad part is that THIS ACTUALLY REPRESENTS PROGRESS, because this is the best record – and the closest the Royals have been to first place – at the All-Star Break since Moore was hired.

Moore was hired midway through the 2006 season. Let’s give him a mulligan for that year. Since 2007, EVERY TEAM IN BASEBALL HAS HAD A WINNING RECORD, save the Pirates, who barring an epic collapse will finish with one this year. The Royals are on pace to win 76 games, which would be their best showing under Moore – and yet every other team in baseball has won at least 76 games TWICE since 2007 except the Pirates and Orioles, both of whom should clear 76 games for the second time with ease this year.

I don’t much care how bad a shape the organization was in seven years ago: there’s no excuse for that. And I don’t think it was in nearly as bad a shape as we’ve been told by people who have a vested interest in making the fan base think the new front office was inheriting a toxic waste dump. It doesn’t matter how many times I hear “below expansion-level” – it doesn’t make it true. Expansion teams don’t have an Alex Gordon, a Billy Butler, and a Zack Greinke on their roster.

And even if the Royals that Moore inherited were an expansion team: so what? Of the last four expansion teams, three made the playoffs by their fifth season. The one exception, Tampa Bay, stumbled along for nearly a decade before their front office ran out of excuses, got dumped on the sidewalk – and the new front office got them in the playoffs in their third year. After five years, if you haven’t put your team in position to make the playoffs even once, the problem is no longer the organization you inherited – the problem is what you've done with it.

As Sam Mellinger points out, Pittsburgh has been Kansas City’s sister city for the past 20 years. Neal Huntington was hired as their GM 18 months after Moore was hired. You think Moore inherited a hopeless situation? The summer before Huntington was hired, the Pirates had used the #4 overall pick on Daniel Moskos – who quickly became a middle reliever – instead of the guy who was best player available on 29 other teams’ draft list, Matt Wieters. The year before they had used the #4 overall pick on Brad Lincoln. They had just traded prospects for Matt Morris’ fat contract and withered arm.

The Pirates are 56-37. And their farm system is still loaded – even with 2011’s #1 overall pick, Gerrit Cole, now in their rotation, they still have Jameson Taillon, Luis Heredia, Gregory Polanco, Alen Hanson, Josh Bell, and their two Top-15 picks from this year’s draft (Austin Meadows and Reese McGuire). Of course, it’s easier to have a loaded farm system when you don’t trade two of your top five prospects to acquire two years of a starting pitcher. Instead, they traded for Wandy Rodriguez last summer – they got 2.5 years of Rodriguez – for three Grade C prospects. Rodriguez is no James Shields, but he does have a 3.59 ERA.

So yeah, I’m kind of tired of the excuses. But that’s a discussion for another time. Right now, it’s time for the front office to make a sober and clear-headed assessment of where the team stands going into the second half of the season, and whether it makes more sense to trade prospects for established major league talent in an attempt to go for it, or whether it makes more sense to trade off veteran parts that might help other teams that want to go for it, and get prospects in return.

This assessment should take about 10 seconds. Maybe 15 if in the process they get a sudden urge to sneeze or yawn; there are some things you just can’t help.

Look, the Royals are not going to the playoffs this year. According to Baseball Prospectus, their odds of making the playoffs are 0.7%; their odds of winning the AL Central are 0.4%. ESPN is wildly optimistic by comparison, pinning the Royals’ odds at 4.9%. They’re eight games out. They’re in third place. And the Tigers are underachieving as much as any team in baseball – according to Baseball Prospectus’ third-order standings, which measures what a team’s record “should” be based on the quality of their offense, pitching, and their strength of schedule, the Tigers should be 61-33 instead of 52-42.

So the Tigers, with one hand tied behind their back, are eight games ahead of the Royals. And according to Buster Olney, of the 19 teams within eight games of first place at the All-Star Break, the Royals have the toughest schedule in the second half. It’s time to move on.

Let’s start with Ervin Santana, the best move Dayton Moore made last winter, who has made every start – and until his last start had thrown at least 6 innings in all of them – with an excellent 3.37 ERA. His command is as good as it’s ever been; he’s only walked 5.1% of batters, essentially tied with 2008 as the best performance of his career. Throwing more strikes sets up his excellent slider, and is the difference between being replacement level last year and being a Top-20 starter in the league this year.

His last start – in which he gave up eight runs in five innings – jumped his ERA nearly half a run, and may have given potential trade candidates pause. Santana gets the first start out of the All-Star Break on Friday, and a solid bounceback start from him is of considerable import.

Assuming he does bounce back, he’s one of the most valuable starting pitchers available on the trade market; after Matt Garza, Santana might actually be the most coveted starter left. Virtually every contender has at least one spot in their rotation which would be significantly upgraded by Santana, and he’s a guy who will not just help a contender reach the playoffs, but move forward in them; he has the ability to be a Game 2 or Game 3 starter in each playoff series.

So he should have significant trade value. If he doesn’t, the Royals can of course just hold on to him, make him a qualifying offer this off-season, and – when he almost certainly declines the one-year offer to sign a long-term deal instead – get a supplemental first-round draft pick when Santana signs elsewhere.

But I’m almost certain that Santana will bring back more value than that as a trade. Supplemental first round picks are valuable, but they’re not as valuable as a Top-100 prospect, or even as valuable as a Top-200 prospect. Sure, you might land a Sean Manaea, or you might draft a guy who’s a Top-100 prospect a year later, but the hit rate with a draft pick in the #30-40 range is less than 50/50.

Also, by trading Santana before the trading deadline the Royals would save at least $4 million, and they’d also save a little over $1 million they’d need to sign the compensatory draft pick. If you trade Santana, the prospects you acquire have already received their signing bonus. That’s $5 million that can be spent elsewhere, a not insignificant amount of money. (The Royals could of course agree to pick up most or all of Santana’s salary, which would yield a better haul of prospects in return.)

That draft pick compensation disappears if Santana is traded; his new team can not receive a draft pick. But that won’t stop a contender with a need for pitching from trading a valuable collection of prospects. It didn’t stop the Los Angeles Angels from trading three prospects, including Jean Segura, for Zack Greinke last July. Segura, who barely exhausted his rookie eligibility last season, is hitting .325/.363/.487 for the Brewers, leads the NL in hits, and made the All-Star team. (Segura alone is worth nearly as much as the four guys the Brewers gave up to get Greinke in the first place, but that’s another story.) Santana is not as coveted as Greinke was, but given that both guys were just two-month rentals, he’s not that far behind.

Looking around the majors at contenders in need of pitching, here’s a partial sample of teams that might be good fits:

- The aforementioned Pittsburgh Pirates might be a good fit, given their huge incentive to make the playoffs this year and wipe away the bad taste of 20 losing seasons in a row. Their rotation has had trouble staying healthy behind A.J. Burnett and Jeff Locke, and Santana would give them stability in the second half.

Truthfully, I don’t think they’re a great match, even though they’ve got tons of prospects to deal and an incentive to deal them. The Pirates lead the majors in ERA, and should probably be focusing their efforts to find a right fielder that can hit. They have a wealth of very good prospects, but if anything, their best prospects are too good; I doubt that the Pirates would give up any of them in return for Santana.

- The Nationals are one of the game’s most disappointing teams, and are the reason why the Pirates feel so good about their playoff chances. The Nats are six games out in the NL East and five games behind the Reds for the second wild card spot, close enough that they should be motivated to win but far enough that they should taste some desperation. And while their four returning starters (Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmerman, Gio Gonzalez, and Ross Detwiler) are all pitching well, the Dan Haren experiment has gone rather poorly, with a 5.61 ERA. Santana would be a perfect fit for their rotation, giving them five above-average starting pitchers.

(And for those of you who like to bring up Dan Haren’s struggles as proof that I’m a know-nothing imbecile, I’d just like to point out that while I do my best as an analyst, I am not privy to confidential medical reports on each player. Remember, the Chicago Cubs almost traded Carlos Marmol for Haren, but that trade fell through at the last moment because of issues with Haren’s medicals. The Nationals took a flyer anyway, but clearly the medical issues there were more significant than I had reason to believe. This doesn’t change the fact that I’m a know-nothing imbecile, mind you.)

The problem with trading with the Nationals is that Anthony Rendon is in the majors, Lucas Giolito just came back from Tommy John surgery and they’re not giving him up for a two-month rental, and there isn’t anyone else in the Nationals’ system that is worth acquiring for Santana. Unless I’m missing someone, which is possible.

- The Diamondbacks are reportedly looking for another starter as they attempt to hold off the Dodgers in the NL West. They certainly have prospects to deal. I doubt you’re getting Tyler Skaggs or Adam Eaton or anyone of that ilk for Santana, but the Diamondbacks do things a little differently from everyone else, so it doesn’t hurt to ask. They traded Trevor Bauer for Didi Gregorius (which, in their defense, doesn’t look so bad right now), and they traded Justin Upton for Martin Prado and stuff (which does). Even if their elite prospects are off the table, they have enough depth to make it worth the Royals’ while with two or three mid-range guys. The problem is that I don’t think Santana’s fly ball tendencies would play well in Arizona’s ballpark, so they may look elsewhere for rotation help.

- You don’t trade in your own division if you don’t have to, which is the main reason to be skeptical of a trade with the Indians. Otherwise it makes great sense; the Indians are the mirror image of the Royals, with a great offense and no starting pitching, and are yet another exhibit in how pitching really is NOT more important than hitting.

Francisco Lindor is untouchable, but there are some interesting names here (Dorssys Paulino? Tyler Naquin? Ronny Rodriguez?) that I’d be interested in. The Indians need all the help they can get if they want to keep up with Detroit in the second half, and I think they’re going to make a surprise splash in the next two weeks. But probably not with the Royals.

- And that brings me to the perfect trade partner, and granted I probably write that every year. In my defense, so long as Ned Colletti, the man who once traded Carlos Santana for Casey Blake, is in charge in LA, the Dodgers are a mark.

But beyond their GM’s abilities or lack thereof, the Dodgers make a lot of sense. They’re at .500 despite the highest payroll in the game, and Colletti is on the hot seat – he’s motivated to overpay future talent to win now. More than that, the emergence of Yasiel Puig means the Dodgers have four outfielders who either deserve to play, have enormous contracts, or both – Carl Crawford, Andre Ethier, and Matt Kemp are all signed for the next four years.

So given their situation, wouldn’t you think that if the Dodgers had a top prospect who also played the outfield, that said prospect might be a little less untouchable than he would ordinarily be?

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Joc Pederson.

Pederson was an 11th-round pick out of high school in 2010, although he got $600,000 to sign. The next year he hit .353/.429/.568 in rookie ball to get people’s attention, and then last year he hit .313/.396/.516 in high-A ball at the age of 20, which really got people’s attention: he ranked #85 on MLB.com’s top prospect list, although didn’t crack Baseball America’s Top 100. This year, as a 21-year-old in Double-A, he’s hitting .296/.386/.516. He has good plate discipline (42 walks in 304 AB), power (14 homers, 19 doubles), and speed (26 steals in 29 attempts). He’s played the majority of his games in center field, but has played all three outfield positions.

He’s not Wil Myers, but he’d be one hell of a consolation prize.

The Dodgers have already traded for Ricky Nolasco, so the window might have closed. But behind a front four of Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Hyun-jin Ryu and Nolasco, their fifth starter choices are slim. It would be nice if they were a little more desperate, though. But again, Ned Colletti traded Carlos Santana for Casey Blake. Joc Pederson seems like a steep price to pay for a half-season of Ervin Santana, but you’ll never know until you ask.

Anyway, these are all just thought bubbles. There are other teams that may be interested, other prospects who might be available, and the point isn’t the specifics of the trade; it’s that some trade should be on the table soon.

Trading Santana is the easy part. Deciding who else to trade off this roster isn’t. As much as I’d like to say the Royals should trade James Shields, I really can’t, and not just because Dayton Moore might as well be signing his own pink slip if he does that.

Last Friday I wrote an article for Grantland on the Toronto Blue Jays, and the difficult predicament they are in. Like the Royals, the Blue Jays went for it this winter, to an even larger degree: they traded four of their top five prospects, but acquired Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle, and R.A. Dickey, among others. But the Jays are 45-49, 11.5 games out in the AL East, and they have to decide what to do.

My conclusion with the Jays is that they are a team that’s built to win now, and with the exception of Josh Johnson, they return all their starters next year, so their window exists for one more season. So while it makes sense for them to trade Johnson if the right offer comes around, it doesn’t make sense to trade guys, like Colby Rasmus, who become free agents after 2014.

I think the same rationale applies to the Royals. Trading Santana, who’s going to walk in three months, makes sense. But Santana is the only player of any note who is going to be a free agent this winter. After next season, things get dicey, because Shields is a free agent after 2014, and both Gordon and Butler can leave after 2015. But at this point, I think the Royals can still dream about contending in 2014, if they get all their young hitters on track and someone steps up to replace Santana. (While whoever replaces Santana isn’t likely to be as good, whoever replaces Wade Davis isn’t likely to be as bad.)

It helps that the AL Central may be even less competitive next year. The Tigers are probably on a downward trend overall; Miguel Cabrera can’t really get any better than he is now, Prince Fielder turns 30, their stars won’t all stay healthy year after year, and aside from Nick Castellanos, there isn’t anyone in the farm system likely to help. The Twins could be a juggernaut in three years but won’t be there in 2014, the White Sox might be the worst team in baseball, and the Indians will probably be in the same 85-win range they are now.

This is an admittedly rosy assessment, but if you’re the Royals you sort of have to deal in rosy assessments at this point. If a new GM got hired tomorrow, I think you’d see him field calls on James Shields. But I think it’s defensible for Moore, having bet the farm on two seasons of Shields, to stick with his plan for next year.

The Royals don’t have a lot more assets to trade, because they don’t have a lot more assets that are close to free agency. The only other free agents this year are Miguel Tejada – who might get dealt very soon, now that the Royals have claimed Pedro Ciriaco on waivers – and Bruce Chen. (And after throwing six shutout innings, allowing just one hit, in his first start since transitioning from the pen, don’t be surprised if Chen gets moved for a prospect of modest means.) The only other free agents for next year are Luke Hochevar, who won’t get traded because he’s Luke Hochevar, and Felipe Paulino, who won’t get traded because he’ll get hurt on the plane ride over.

But there is one other asset the Royals should be trying to trade. Greg Holland might be, inning for inning, the best pitcher in baseball right now. By the most simple of assessments – the percentage of batters that he strikes out – he is without peer in 2013. Since the beginning of the 2011 season, Holland has a 2.28 ERA in 162 innings, having struck out 225 batters and allowed just seven home runs. He won’t be arbitration-eligible until next season, and won’t be a free agent until after the 2016 season. He’s only 27 years old.

Which makes this the perfect time to trade him. Here’s why:

1) Closers are fickle. This should be obvious, given that the guy Holland replaced as closer, Joakim Soria, was even better (2.01 ERA) for even longer (four years), and then was just average in 2011, and then blew out his elbow in 2012, and then got expensive and signed with the Texas Rangers in 2013. (Where he’s pitched extremely well since returning to the mound, by the way.)

Of all the missed opportunities by this administration, the failure to cash in Soria at his peak ranks highly. There is no more useless luxury in baseball than a closer on a last-place team, and yet the Royals were convinced that if they traded Soria, it would cause a psychic disruption that would turn the other 24 guys into quivering bowls of jelly, unable to carry on without their security blanket in the ninth inning.

And at the time I could hardly blame them, because after the nightmare that was the Royals bullpen from 1999 through 2006, I was a quivering bowl of jelly myself. But I’d like to think I’m capable of learning from my mistakes. If the Royals treat Greg Holland the same way they treated Joakim Soria – as an untouchable – then it’s proof that they haven’t learned from theirs.

Jayson Stark put it best: of the 18 closers with the most saves in 2011 – just two years ago – just three of those guys are closing for the same team today. The turnover among even the best closers is frightening. There’s a reason why Mariano Rivera stands apart, why he is perhaps the most respected player in the game today. It’s not simply that he’s the best reliever in the game – it’s that he’s been one of the best, almost without interruption, for the last 17 years. That’s not normal. Joe Nathan is the second-most-tenured closer in baseball, and he has roughly half as many relief innings (and less than half as many saves) as Rivera.

Holland may be the best reliever in baseball right now. He probably won’t be the best reliever in baseball next year. He might not even be an above-average reliever by 2015. But at the same time, he’s so dominant in the present that he’s one guy teams will pay a premium for.

2) The Royals have relievers. They have relievers coming out of their ears. Tim Collins has been awful for the past 2-3 weeks, which doesn’t change the fact that he’s been a very valuable pitcher for the past 2-3 years. Aaron Crow has a 3.17 career ERA, and while ERA isn’t a great way to evaluate relievers, and while he’s allowed a lot of inherited runners to score this year, I think he’s been criticized so much that he might actually be underrated at this point.

Luke Hochevar has a 2.08 ERA, and has allowed fewer than one baserunner per inning, and with men on base this year, batters are hitting .119/.196/.167. That’s right: LUKE HOCHEVAR IS UNHITTABLE WITH MEN ON BASE. Hochevar isn’t just the latest exhibit in how common it is for the lousiest starting pitchers to become top-shelf relievers; he’s also the greatest.

Kelvin Herrera was terrible for the Royals this year, but he had a 2.35 ERA and threw 84 innings as a rookie last year. The stuff is still there; in 17 minor league innings this year, he’s allowed seven hits and whiffed 25. He’s still just 23 years old.

Louis Coleman, who couldn’t even find a spot on the Royals roster for most of this year, came into the season with a 3.25 ERA in 111 career innings. Think about that for a moment – the Royals had a reliever with a 3.25 ERA that they had to send to the minors for lack of space. After his latest callup, he struck out the first seven batters he faced.

After getting called up as a reliever, Will Smith threw 12 innings, allowed 3 runs, walked none and struck out 10; that earned him a trip back to Omaha. Donnie Joseph got called up, having struck out 59 batters in 38 innings in Omaha, but was returned to Nebraska after a couple of days.

The Royals simply have more relievers than they have roster spots. It’s a great problem to have. But it is a problem, because it means they’re letting talented ballplayers waste away in the minors. They should have traded one this winter – think how much more value Kelvin Herrera had four months ago – and they should trade one now. The problem is that most relievers aren’t going to bring back a ton of value unless they’re pitching at an elite level, and right now the only guy pitching at an elite level is Holland.

If the Royals trade Holland, they may not know who his replacement will be right away – but they should have confidence that they do have his replacement, even if it might take a few months to figure out who it is. Maybe you give Crow the ninth-inning role by default. Maybe you take a chance that Hochevar really has figured everything out. Maybe you go back to the guy with the best stuff in Herrera. The point is that one of these guys should be able to seize the job the way Holland did, and if you blow a few games this year trying to figure out who that guy is, so be it. The goal is 2014, and by 2014 you should have this all straightened out.

3) Closers can still fetch a lot of talent. Think about what the A’s got for Andrew Bailey, or the Astros for Mark Melancon, or what the Nationals got for Matt Capps. And keep in mind: Holland right now is better than any of those guys were at the time, and is farther from free agency than any of them were. We could go back in time further, to the Marlins getting Brad Penny for Matt Mantei, or Ugueth Urbina getting traded for Placido Polanco and Adrian Gonzalez in separate deals, or the (gulp) Pirates getting Jon Lieber for Stan Belinda. (And I’m not even bringing up Larry Andersen’s name…oops.)

Better still, combine Holland and Santana and see what teams are willing to give up for a high-end closer AND a #2 starter. Put them in the same deal, and maybe Joc Pederson is in play. Kolten Wong, the second baseman that Johnny Giavotella was supposed to be, is in play. How much would the Diamondbacks, who are trying to contend with Heath Bell as their closer, give up for Holland and the starter they’re looking for? Maybe Tyler Skaggs is in play.

The Royals of course won’t do any of this, because Greg Holland is untouchable in their mind, because you can’t trade a top-tier closer, even though the fact that the Royals quickly found a top-tier closer to replace their last top-tier closer – a 10th-round pick replacing a Rule 5 pick – should offer a clue that closers aren’t as hard to find as you might think. The Royals won’t trade Holland because they don’t think of their players as commodities; they think of them as a family, that they all need to get along, that they need to support each other, that they need to have faith in each other.

It’s sweet and endearing, it really is, and I don’t mean that sarcastically or flippantly. The Royals have put together a roster of likable players who really do seem to get along. They’ve also put together a roster that, like every other roster they’ve put together, will lose more games than it wins. If your goal is to end that streak and put together a contending team for 2014 or 2015, now is the perfect time to see if you can trade high on Greg Holland. But if your goal is to make the 25 men in your clubhouse feel good about each other, then I guess Holland stays. We’ll see which goal the Royals emphasize.

Dayton Moore gambled his team’s future last winter in order to win in 2013 and 2014, and right now one of his two scratch-off tickets looks like a loser. If he accepts that fact and throws in the towel on this season in an attempt to make that second ticket pay off, he may yet rescue his bet. But if he’s more concerned with the aesthetics of a .500 record this year than the payoff of a playoff spot next year, that will be one more piece of evidence – and maybe the decisive piece of evidence – that he’s not the man to lead the Royals to the playoffs at all. And if he’s not that man, then it’s fair to ask whether he should still be employed in the first place.

I’m not calling for his job yet. But I will be monitoring the moves that he makes – or doesn’t make – over the next two weeks with great interest.

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.