2014 Royals Top Prospects, Part 5.

#2: Yordano Ventura

Pos-T: SP-R

H-W: 5’11”, 180 lbs

DOB: 6/3/1991 (22 years old)

Signed: NDFA ($28,000 bonus), Dominican Republic, 2008

Stats:

2013: 150 IP, 132 H, 59 BB, 166 K, 10 HR, 3.18 ERA in Double-A (58 IP), Triple-A (77 IP), and MLB (15 IP)

2012: 109 IP, 92 H, 42 BB, 130 K, 8 HR, 3.62 ERA in Complex (4 IP), High-A (76 IP), and Double-A (29 IP)

The Royals have a well-deserved reputation for failure when it comes to converting minor league pitching prospects into major league starting pitchers. When Danny Duffy’s your biggest success story in the eight years since you’ve been hired…you have a problem.

Duffy’s not just the biggest success story, he’s the only success story. Since the 2007 season, 41 pitchers have started a game for the Royals. Duffy was literally the only one of those pitchers who was signed as an amateur by the Royals after Dayton Moore was hired following the 2006 draft.

Ventura is the second, and if he develops into a quality major league starter, it will go a long way towards restoring the reputation of the organization. It’s not simply that they developed a starting pitcher, but how they did it. Ventura was not a highly-sought after teenager in the Dominican; he got a piddling bonus, and didn’t even sign until 2008 even though he was eligible to be signed in 2007. He threw in the mid-80s when he was signed.

Even after he added 10 mph to his fastball, his short stature and command issues had everyone thinking he was a reliever. Two years ago, when he first started getting taken seriously as a prospect, most people in baseball thought he was a future reliever. Even a year ago, there was about a 50/50 divide between observers who thought he would stick in a rotation and those who saw him as a closer.

But after working his way to the majors without any degradation in his performance – his walk rate ticked up in 2012 but held steady last year, and his strikeout rates of 28% the last two years are the best of his career – the industry has come around to the idea that despite his stature, Ventura might be the rare short right-hander to thrive in a major league rotation.

And don’t wave away how rare that is. Since 1980, just eight pitchers listed at 5’11” or shorter have struck out 100 batters (with at least 10 starts) in a season at age 23 – Ventura’s age this year – or younger:

Johnny Cueto (twice)

Tom Gordon (three times)

Tim Lincecum

Mike Hampton (twice)

Mike Leake

Pedro Martinez (twice)

Jesus Sanchez

Fernando Valenzuela (four times)

Sanchez never matched his rookie success and disappeared from the majors quickly, but then, in the fourth start of his career he threw 147 pitches, and was one of the reasons why I developed the PAP system for measuring pitcher abuse back in 1998. Teams are a little more sensible about this stuff now. Okay, a lot more sensible.

But the other guys on that list all turned out pretty well, I’d say. Gordon couldn’t hack it as a starter, but turned into a very good closer for many years. Hampton threw 1261 innings with a 3.44 ERA through his age 27 season before making the fatal mistake of signing a long-term contract with the Rockies. Lincecum won back-to-back Cy Youngs and went to four straight All-Star games before his stuff went south, and he’s still taking the ball every fifth day. Pedro was, well, Pedro. Fernando was Fernando, and might well have been a lot more than even that had the Dodgers not let him average 266 innings a year for six years, from ages 21 to 26.

Cueto missed much of last season with a strained lat muscle, but his arm was fine, and he finished fourth in the Cy Young vote in 2012. Even Mike Leake, who’s both short and a finesse guy, has developed into a good #3 starter and is coming off his best season.

So it appears that the hard part for short pitchers is getting to the majors and sticking for a full season in the first place. If Ventura can get through his rookie year intact and without losing the strike zone, there’s no evidence that his height makes him a risk going forward. Or at least any more of a risk than any other young pitcher.

#1: Raul Adalberto Mondesi

Pos-B: SS-B

H-W: 6’1”, 165 lbs

DOB: 7/27/1995 (18 years old)

Signed: NDFA ($2 million signing bonus), Dominican Republic, 2011

Stats:

2013: .261/.311/.361, 24-10 SB-CS in Low-A (125 G)

2012: .290/.346/.386, 11-2 SB-CS in Rookie (50 G)

I fully realize that I’m going against conventional wisdom here – every Top 100 Prospect list I’ve seen has Mondesi behind either Zimmer, Ventura, or in most cases both. And from the perspective of where the Royals are at right now, I can see the argument that Zimmer and Ventura are more valuable prospects to them – they need young pitching and they need it now, a lot more than they need a shortstop who might be a superstar but won’t be playing for them until 2016.

Maybe Mondesi isn’t the top prospect for the Royals. But if you were starting a baseball team from scratch and could have one of the Royals’ prospects, I think Mondesi is the easy choice.

He’s 18 years old. Again: he’s 18 years old. He’s already played a full season in full-season ball, and was essentially a league-average hitter while playing a stellar shortstop. He has tremendous baseball instincts. He has bloodlines. He switch-hits. He plays the most important defensive position. And – in stark contrast to Zimmer and Ventura – he’s not perpetually one pitch away from losing it all.

But mostly, he’s 18 years old. He was the youngest player (to my knowledge) in Royals history to play in low-A ball, and this year he’ll be the youngest player (to my knowledge) to play in high-A ball, with the exception of Andres Blanco, who played in five games for the Blue Rocks in 2002 at the age of 18, after the Royals jumped him all the way from rookie ball for some reason at the end of the year. Blanco was a defensive whiz and a legitimate prospect, but this was also the Allard Baird era, when prospects could get called up to the majors because they had two good weeks in Double-A; no one saw Blanco as that kind of a prospect. That same year, actually, Zack Greinke pitched in one game for the Blue Rocks at age 18. Greinke probably deserved to be there, but still: Allard Baird, everyone!

Mondesi could well earn a promotion to Double-A at some point during this season, and he’ll be barely 19 when the season ends. Greinke and Billy Butler both played in Double-A at 19, as did Clint Hurdle (who had a monster season – he hit .328/.449/.529 in 1977, and was on the cover of SI the following spring). Bret Saberhagen was promoted to Double-A at age 19 in 1983. But Mondesi would be younger than any of them if he reaches Double-A at any point this year.

Just one player in Royals history has played for them before turning 20: Saberhagen, who was a week shy of his birthday when he debuted in April 1984. The second-youngest was…Blanco, who was 20 years and 6 days old when he debuted in April 2004. Seriously, Allard, what the hell? The difference between Saberhagen and Blanco is the difference between 1984 and 2004. Anyway, Hurdle was third-youngest (20 years, 50 days), and George Brett was fourth-youngest (20 years, 79 days).

At this point, Mondesi has a better than a 50/50 chance at joining the top five; if he debuts with the Royals at any point in 2015, he’ll be on that list. If he debuts before the All-Star Break, he’ll be the youngest player in franchise history.

Blanco wasn’t there on merit. Hurdle had a potentially great career derailed by back injuries. Saberhagen is in the Royals’ Hall of Fame, and Brett is in Cooperstown. Age matters. Youth is a vital asset, and Mondesi has it in spades.

More than just his youth, the breadth of his skill set makes it more likely that he’ll succeed. He’s consider a potential plus defender at shortstop in the majors. He’s not a burner but has enough speed to steal 20-30 bases in the majors. He doesn’t have a ton of power but enough to hit 10-15 homers at his peak. He’s not an extreme contact hitter but isn’t a free swinger either, and could hit .300 at his peak. Even if he doesn’t develop all of his skills, so long as a couple of these skills reach their potential, he’ll be an above-average shortstop in the majors. If all of his skills reach their potential, he’s a perennial All-Star.

And while ordinarily, projecting the rosiest upside for a player is fools’ good, that’s the thing about his age: Mondesi has so much time to develop that it’s actually not to envision a scenario in which he does, in fact, reach his potential in all facets of his game. And possibly even exceed them in some ways. He doesn’t project to hit .320 right now, or hit 25 homers, but he’s so young that he might develop in ways that scouts can’t even foresee.

Put it another way: Mondesi is ten years from reaching the traditional peak age of 27 for a position player. He’s five years from being a 22-year-old. In 2019 he’ll be as old as Mike Moustakas and Alcides Escobar were as rookies. That’s kind of nuts.

The Royals have quite literally never developed a quality shortstop from their own farm system. The best shortstop in team history, Freddie Patek, was acquired from the Pirates when he was 26. Patek is the only shortstop in team history to amass even 10 bWAR in his career with the Royals. (The second-best shortstop in Royals history, according to bWAR, is…Rey Sanchez. No, really.) Escobar is already tied for fifth, and could easily move into second place this year if he has a good season. Jay Bell is eighth, and he played in Kansas City for exactly one year.

As sad as that is, none of those guys were developed by the Royals. Here’s a list of the four best shortstops developed by the Royals:

1. UL Washington

2. Shane Halter

3. Mike Aviles

4. David Howard

I wish I were kidding. Shane Halter is the second-best shortstop the Royals have ever produced. David Howard is the fourth-best.

And I’m being lenient in defining “shortstop” here as anyone who played shortstop in at least 40% of their career games. Both Aviles and Halter would be off the list if I upped the requirement to 50%.

(I should point out that while I’ve tried to track down all the players that the Royals traded away before they debuted in the majors, it’s possible I missed someone. If you know of a shortstop the Royals had in their farm system who went on to success elsewhere, please leave it in the comments.)

Suffice it to say, there’s not only a possibility but a probability that Mondesi will be the greatest shortstop ever developed by the Royals. I’ll get into why that is in my next column. But for now, his ability to display a broad skill set at an age when most baseball players are still in high school makes him the best prospect in the system. If he develops as expected, a year from now he might be one of the best prospects in any system.

He’ll still be just 19.

2014 Royals Top Prospects, Part 4.

#4: Sean Manaea

Pos-T: SP-L

H-W: 6’5”, 235 lbs

DOB: 2/1/1992 (22 years old)

Signed: Supplemental 1st Round (#34), $3.55 million bonus, 2013, Indiana State U.

Stats: None

This is the first spot on the list where I differ from the consensus opinion – every other Top 10 list I’ve seen has placed Manaea behind either Bonifacio, Almonte, or both. And I certainly understand the concern – Manaea had surgery essentially immediately after he was drafted, and while it was both expected and routine, he has yet to throw a professional pitch.

But I’d still rather have him than either Bonifacio or Almonte, for this simple reason: one year ago today, before Manaea’s hip issues surfaced, he was probably the favorite to be selected with the #1 overall pick in the draft. He was the talk of the Cape Cod League in the summer of 2012; left-handed pitchers who throw 98 with an above-average slider tend to get the scouts abuzzing. (He struck out 85 batters in 52 innings on the Cape, the most strikeouts by any pitcher in that league since at least 2000.)

The Royals only had a shot at Manaea because he had a torn labrum in his left…hip, possibly the result of pitching through an injured right ankle. His velocity was down for most of the season, generally pitching in the low 90s – and yet, in a credit to his talents as a pitcher, he still had a 1.47 ERA and was third in the NCAA in strikeouts per nine innings (11.4).

You’ll recall that for about two hours last June, we thought the Royals had lost their minds, selecting Hunter Dozier – who no one saw as better than about the 15th-best player in the draft – with the #8 overall pick. But the Royals had a plan, and when Manaea was still there at #34 – by luck or by shrewd planning, and I’m betting the latter – it fell into place perfectly. Manaea got the bonus money that was awarded for Dozier’s slot and a little more; his bonus is the second-highest in history for a draft pick after the first round.

It’s possible that his velocity won’t pick up even now that he’s had surgery and fully recovered. If that’s the case, his prospect status takes a hit, although being left-handed I’d still imagine he’d project as a major league starter. But if his velocity is back…you’re looking at a pitcher with quite possibly the best stuff of any left-hander in the minor leagues. (Well, until Carlos Rodon signs.) It was a very shrewd gamble by the Royals, and frankly I don’t know why so many other teams elected not to take the gamble.

Remember, this was the second straight year that a pitcher who had the potential to be a #1 overall pick showed injury concerns before the draft. In 2012, it was Lucas Giolito who fell to the #16 overall pick because he sprained his ulnar collateral ligament three months before the draft. He had a real shot at being the first right-handed high school pitcher ever to go #1; instead the Nationals signed him for $2.925 million, and a few months later he underwent Tommy John surgery. He returned last July and made 11 starts in rookie ball, and showed such devastating stuff that he ranked #21 on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect list. (Jason Parks of Baseball Prospectus was even more effusive; his scouting report on Giolito is borderline pornographic. If Giolito reaches the upside Parks projects for him, he might be the best pitcher in baseball.)

Manaea’s recovery might not go as perfectly as Giolito’s has, but if it does, he’s a Top 25 Prospect in the game by mid-summer. I could see him starting in Wilmington, and moving to Northwest Arkansas by June or July – and if everything goes right, he could be ready for a major league audition by September. If the Royals are in a playoff race, adding Manaea’s arm – even out of the bullpen – would be a huge boost to the team when it needs it.

If he’s fully recovered. Which we don’t know yet. But we ought to know soon – spring training is in session and the minor leaguers arrive shortly. I know this much – when they do report, how Manaea looks, and what the radar gun says, is the one piece of information I’m looking forward to getting the most.

#3: Kyle Zimmer

Pos-T: SP-R

H-W: 6’3”, 215 lbs

DOB: 9/13/1991 (22 years old)

Signed: 1st Round (#5), $3 million bonus, 2012, U. of San Francisco

Stats:

2013: 108 IP, 91 H, 36 BB, 140 K, 11 HR, 4.32 ERA in High-A (90 IP) and Double-A (19 IP)

2012: 40 IP, 39 H, 8 BB, 42 K, 1 HR, 2.04 ERA in Complex (10 IP) and Low-A (30 IP)

The decision on whether to place Kyle Zimmer or Yordano Ventura higher was probably the most difficult ranking decision on this list for me. When I started this list, I actually had Zimmer ahead of Ventura. The Top Prospect lists are mixed; some (Baseball Prospectus) have Ventura higher, some (Keith Law at ESPN) have Zimmer higher, some have them almost equal (Baseball America has Zimmer #23, Ventura #26.)

But I’ve decided that Ventura should rank higher, for a pretty simple reason. The #1 concern we have with any young pitcher, no matter how good the stuff, is whether he will stay healthy or not. These concerns are a little more acute for both Ventura and Zimmer, but for different reasons.

In Ventura’s case, the reason is simple: he’s 5’11”. Short pitchers are not expected to be as durable as tall pitchers, and short pitchers who somehow break triple digits are expected to break down more often than pitchers whose long levers present a simpler biomechanical explanation for their velocity.

In Zimmer’s case, the reason is also simple: we’re concerned about whether he will stay healthy because he hasn’t stayed healthy in the past. A minor procedure to remove bone chips in his elbow ended his first pro season prematurely; some mild tightness in his throwing shoulder ended his second pro season prematurely. And now, some mild tendinitis in his biceps will delay his third pro season temporarily.

On their own, none of these injuries are too worrisome. Bone chips happen all the time; pitchers have come back from surgery within six weeks to pitch good as new. The Royals insist that Zimmer was shut down last year out of an abundance of caution, and they insist that they’re taking it slow with him this year because they want him to be able to pitch into September – and if need be, October. That’s a new priority for the Royals, and it’s hard to criticize them for thinking optimistically.

We still know a lot less about how to prevent injuries than we’d like to, and we’re still less able to predict injuries than we’d like to. But the variable that predicts future injury risk the most – by far – is simple: a previous injury history. The concerns about Ventura are purely theoretical; with Zimmer, they’re practical.

And beyond that, I hate to say this, but when it comes to pitchers coming back from arm problems, no matter how mild, the Royals have cost themselves some credibility in my eyes by the way they handled John Lamb.

I’m not blaming the Royals for the fact that Lamb’s career has been all but ruined by Tommy John surgery, a surgery that pitchers return to full health from 90% of the time. I’m not saying it’s not their fault – certainly there ought to be some soul-searching going on in the organization over that – but it’s quite possible that Lamb didn’t take his rehab nearly as seriously as he should have. I don’t know who to blame, or even if there’s any blame to place at all.

But I am blaming the Royals for consistently downplaying concerns about Lamb’s rehab – the decline in velocity when he first returned, the longer-than-usual time it took until he returned in the first place – when it was obvious to anyone that Lamb’s recovery from Tommy John surgery was not proceeding normally. We were told that everything was fine right up until he took the mound last April – 22 months after surgery – and put up a 5.63 ERA in Wilmington, with a fastball that wouldn’t get out of the mid-80s. Maybe it's not fair to blame the Royals for not coming out publicly and saying, "yeah, we're really worried about him", but if that's the case, it doesn't make sense to take anything the Royals say about Zimmer - or any other pitcher with injury concerns - at face value.

So I think it’s reasonable to be concerned about Zimmer until he proves that he’s healthy and proves that the adjustments he made in the middle of last season – from June 29th on, Zimmer threw 44 innings, allowed 25 hits and eight walks, and struck out 63 – were for real. If he does and he does, he could be the ace of the staff when James Shields departs at the end of the year. But at this point I’m a little more convinced that Ventura will fill that role than Zimmer.

2014 Royals Top Prospects, Part 3.

#6: Miguel Almonte

Pos-T: SP-R

H-W: 6’2”, 180 lbs

DOB: 4/4/1993 (20 years old)

Signed: NDFA ($25,000 signing bonus), Dominican Republic, 2010

Stats:

2013: 131 IP, 115 H, 36 BB, 132 K, 6 HR, 3.10 ERA in Low-A

2012: 77 IP, 56 H, 13 BB, 74 K, 2 HR, 1.75 ERA in Dominican (50 IP) and Complex (27 IP)

Almonte had pitched all of 27 innings on the mainland at the end of the 2012 season, but that was enough for Jason Parks, the lead prospect analyst at Baseball Prospectus, to rave about Almonte after seeing him pitch in instructional league – naming him a Top 10 prospect in the system right then and there and even comparing him to a poor man’s Julio Teheran.

While the consensus opinion on Almonte is not quite as optimistic as Parks – who actually ranked Almonte the #46 prospect in all of baseball on his Top 100 list this year – Parks clearly was on to something. Almonte jumped to full-season ball last year and was quietly excellent. He had a 5.40 ERA in April, but from May 1st on he had a 2.69 ERA and had nearly as many strikeouts (119) as hits and walks combined (123). He pairs a low-90s fastball with a changeup that’s already above-average and has the potential to be an out pitch. He needs to settle on a breaking ball and get consistent with it, but he doesn’t turn 21 until around Opening Day, and a good breaking ball is really the only thing he’s missing at this point.

I have him ranked a little lower than most others, because he’s a pitcher who hasn’t gotten out of A-ball yet, and you can't just ignore the attrition rate for pitchers who are four levels from the majors. Also, if it were that easy to throw a good breaking ball, everyone would be doing so. But Almonte is a very, very good prospect, and if he develops without any hiccups – something precious few pitchers in the Royals system have done recently – he should be a #3 starter at the very least. He’ll probably start this year in Wilmington; far less talented pitchers have put up excellent numbers there, so try to temper your excitement if he has a 0.86 ERA into mid-May or something.

#5: Jorge Bonifacio

Pos-B: CF-R

H-W: 6’1, 192 lbs

DOB: 6/4/1993 (20 years old)

Signed: NDFA ($135,000 signing bonus), Dominican Republic, 2009

Stats:

2013: .298/.372/.429 in Complex (9 G), High-A (54 G), and Double-A (25 G)

2012: .282/.336/.432 in Low-A (105 G)

With Wil Myers having been traded, and with Norichika Aoki being a free agent at the end of this season, Bonifacio is the Royals’ right fielder of the future, and they’re hoping that future begins in 2015. It doesn’t seem like an unreasonable hope to me.

Bonifacio has been very young for his levels; he started in full-season ball in 2012 when he was still 18 years old, and he’ll start this season at age 20 – he’s two months younger than Almonte – even though he’s already reached Double-A and hit well in a short stint there. He has a compact swing that many project will add power over time.

That time may not be this year, however. Bonifacio was hitting .325/.404/.452 for Wilmington on May 12th when he got hit by a pitch and broke his hamate bone. He returned six weeks later; after a ten-day rehab in Arizona he returned to Wilmington, and while he only hit .250/.307/.338 in 20 games there, he impressed the Royals enough that he was sent to Northwest Arkansas for the final month of the season, and hit .301/.371/.441.

Hamate bone injuries are notorious for taking a long time to recover completely from; in particular, hitters frequently see their power sapped for a year or even more afterwards. So don’t panic if Bonifacio fails to reach even his career high of 10 homers this season. Given his youth, swing, and the injury, he could easily be the kind of player who goes from hitting eight homers in the minors in 2014 to 15-20 homers in the majors in 2015.

Projecting forward, everything about Bonifacio suggests that he’ll be a league-average right fielder. He projects to hit .270-.280, he projects to hit 15-20 homers, he projects to have average plate discipline, he projects to be an average defender. That might sound like I’m damning with faint praise, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. A league-average player making the league minimum is a huge asset, and if he’s capable of being a league-average guy when he’s 23 or 24 years old, he might be a borderline All-Star when he’s 26 or 27. He’s already reached the high minors, he’s still very young for his level, and he has a job opening waiting for him next year. There are sexier prospects in the system, but there may be none safer.

2014 Royals Top Prospects, Part 2.

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#8: Bubba Starling

Pos-B: CF-R

H-W: 6’4”, 180 lbs

DOB: 8/3/1992 (21 years old)

Signed: 1st Round (#5 overall), 2011, Kansas (Gardner-Edgerton) HS

Stats:

2013: .241/.329/.398, 22-3 SB-CS in Low-A

2012: .275/.371/.485, 10-1 SB-CS in High-Rookie

After receiving the largest amateur bonus in the history of the franchise in 2011, and after being kept in rookie ball for all of 2012, it was hard to overstate just how crucial 2013 was for Bubba Starling to prove that he wasn’t a bust. He refused to answer the question, though, as his performance was just good enough to maintain hope that he might turn out to be more than yet another top-ten pick wasted on a high school athlete with immense tools but no baseball skill.

Which is far from saying that he actually lived up to the hype. A line of .241/.329/.398 is nothing to be particularly proud of, not in the South Atlantic League, not when you turned 21 years old during the season. And not when your success, limited though it was, is largely owed to your home park: Starling hit .270/.341/.496 at home, including 12 of his 13 homers, but just .211/.317/.292 on the road. Starling still has a steep uphill road to climb.

But at least he’s walking. The most vital ingredient for Starling’s future success is to get the repetitions he needs to improve. We knew he was raw when he was drafted; perhaps not quite this raw, and while a Mike Trout- or Byron Buxton-level learning curve was unrealistic, we assumed his athleticism would allow him to improve quicker than most players. The absolutely worst thing that could have happened to Starling was that injuries kept him off the field, which is what has happened to Donavan Tate. Tate, who was the #3 overall draft pick in 2009, is basically Starling’s worst-case scenario – he had terrific tools but less baseball sense than the Padres had thought, and thanks to injuries (and a 50-game suspension for a drug of abuse), he’s played 40 games in a season just once since he was drafted. He’s hit .238/.355/.320 with three home runs in his pro career, has yet to get out of A-ball, and is 23 years old.

Starling has avoided this worst-case scenario in large part because he’s stayed healthy – he’s played in nearly as many games (178) the last two years as Tate has in the last four years (194), and that doesn’t count all the simulated games Starling played in while he was in extended spring training in 2012. The only time he missed last year was for a very good reason – after starting the season hitting .213/.286/.354, he took a week off in mid-May to have LASIK surgery, and hit .253/.346/.416 after returning. His plate discipline improved significantly after getting his eyesight fixed; Starling had 41 strikeouts and nine walks with blurry vision, and 87 strikeouts vs. 43 walks with 20/20 eyesight. And the Department of Selective Endpoints would like to point out that from July 17th through the end of the season – 41 games – Starling hit .309/.394/.511.

It’s hard to overstate just how crucial 2014 is for Bubba Starling, because with a really good season he could re-establish himself as a Top 100 Prospect, and with a really bad season he could be written off completely, and his skill set is weird enough that I have no idea which way he’ll go. He’s not a spring chicken anymore, and most observers think his swing is just too long to ever tap into his raw power. But on the other hand, for a kid who played amateur ball in Kansas and was almost 20 before he played his first pro game, his performance doesn’t give off the vibe of someone who’s totally overmatched. His strikeout-to-walk ratio is perfectly acceptable; he strikes out a lot but no more than your typical young power-hitting prospect, and he walks at a better clip than your average prospect (to say nothing of your average Royals prospect). And he’s been a terrific percentage basestealer so far, 32 of 36 in his career, which doesn’t sound like a big deal, but even prospects with blazing speed will get nailed a lot if they have no baseball instincts to speak of.

And then there’s the matter of his defense, which is already major league-caliber. If he’s a league-average hitter in the majors, he’ll be a 3-4 win player just by virtue of his speed and glove.

So 2014 is a crucial year…and unfortunately, he’s headed to Wilmington, where hitters get crushed, and right-handed hitters get crushed more. I can’t emphasize this enough: if Starling just replicates his 2013 numbers in 2014, but spends the whole year in Wilmington, I would consider that a success. I’ve written this before, but in his first crack at Wilmington, at age 20, Carlos Beltran hit .229/.311/.363. Beltran returned to Wilmington at age 21 and hit .276/.364/.427 before getting promoted to Double-A, where he hit .352/.427/.687, and the next year he was the AL Rookie of the Year. It’s hard to hit in Wilmington, where the fences are far away and the batters’ eye isn’t very good. So I’m worried that Wilmington might get into Starling’s head, and while no one really thought he had NFL potential as a quarterback coming out of high school, the worst thing that could happen for the Royals is that Starling hits .200 the first half of the season, and his mind starts to drift towards what it would be like at the University of Nebraska.

It’s in the Royals’ best interest to give Starling as many tangible signs of progress as possible, and Wilmington stands as a big roadblock. But I’m not sure what else the Royals can do. You can’t return him to Lexington without giving him the stigma that comes with repeating a level, and while Northwest Arkansas is a good place to hit, it would be very risky to jump him all the way to Double-A. The dream scenario is that Starling looks so good in spring training that the Royals are justified in doing just that; even if he struggles and has to be sent to high-A, they could justify it by saying that he had skipped a level in the first place.

It’s not an easy spot the Royals are in. They want Starling to be the best player he can be in the long run, but to keep him fully engaged, they need to put him in position to succeed in the short run.

I’m probably a little more confident than I was a year ago that Starling won’t be a total bust; I think that if he sticks with it, he’s likely to reach the majors, even if it’s in a fourth outfielder role. But I’m also a little more confident that his upside is a Drew Stubbs-like career, as a guy whose defense and pop make him a viable everyday player, but who doesn’t hit enough to be a star. Which is a shame, given both the money he was given and the options the Royals had in the draft. It’s true that the Royals wanted a pitcher, and would have taken any of the four guys picked ahead of him (two of whom – Danny Hultzen and Trevor Bauer – have been big disappointments themselves so far).

But look at the four guys taken directly after Starling: #6 Anthony Rendon, #7 Archie Bradley, #8 Francisco Lindor, and #9 Javier Baez. Rendon was the obvious alternate to Starling on Draft Day – the best college hitter in America whose only knock was an inability to stay healthy. Rendon hit .265/.329/.396 as a 23-year-old rookie for the Nationals last year, and man would he look good at second base right now (with the $8 million a year the Royals are paying Omar Infante spent elsewhere instead). The next three guys are all among the ten best prospects in baseball right now. The Royals took Christian Colon and Starling with back-to-back top-five picks, and that, as much as anything, is why there’s so much pressure on the team to win in 2014. While the farm system is deep, the prospects who were supposed to headline the farm system haven’t.

The Royals had seven top-five draft picks in eight years. Three of them were Alex Gordon, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Moustakas. But three of them were Luke Hochevar, Colon, and Starling. (Kyle Zimmer’s the seventh.) As much talent as the Royals have produced, they could have done even better. A lot better.

#7: Hunter Dozier

Pos-B: 3B-R

H-W: 6’4”, 220 lbs

DOB: 8/22/1991 (22 years old)

Signed: 1st Round (#8 overall), 2013, Stephen F. Austin State University (Texas)

Stats:

2013: .308/.397/.495 in High-Rookie (54 games) and Low-A (15 games)

Look, Hunter Dozier was a college junior – an old college junior who turned 22 just two months after he was drafted – playing in rookie ball. As a top-ten pick, he was supposed to mash. That he did so doesn’t make him an elite prospect. He’s two weeks younger than Mike Trout, and granted that it’s unfair to use Trout as your comparison when talking about a prospect’s age, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Dozier’s performance last year means nothing at all.

That’s not to say he was a bad pick, because drafting him – at a below-slot price of $2.2 million, lower than anyone else who signed in the top 16 picks – set up the Royals’ pick of Sean Manaea, who we’ll get to later. The Royals had a strategy, and they executed it perfectly. Flip their two picks around, make Dozier the supplemental pick, and he’s a good value. I do like the combination of strike zone command (38 walks, 37 strikeouts) and doubles (30 doubles in 273 at-bats) he showed in his first pro season – but again, he was a man hitting against boys for most of the season.

Dozier turns 23 in August; if he wants to really be taken seriously as a prospect this year, he needs to hit his way to Double-A by season’s end. I like the Jeff Kent comp as a best-case scenario for Dozier; when Kent was 22, he hit .277/.360/.465 in high-A ball, at age 23 he hit .256/.379/.418 in Double-A, and he finally reached the majors at age 24, which is pretty late for a guy who played in 2298 major league games and has a viable Hall of Fame case. The vast majority of guys who reach the majors when they turn 24 don’t turn out like Kent, but Dozier needs to double-time it if he wants to even match that timetable.

2014 Royals Top Prospects, Part 1.

So with the Royals presumably done with their off-season machinations, and spring training just two weeks away, my plan is to analyze each player individually between now and Opening Day, and then finish by previewing the team as a whole. We’ll start with my list of the organization’s top 10 prospects.

#10: Christian Binford

Pos-T: SP-R

H-W: 6’6”, 217 lbs

DOB: 12/20/1992 (21 years old)

Signed: 30th Round, 2011, Pennsylvania HS

Stats:

2013: 135 IP, 129 H, 25 BB, 130 K, 7 HR, 2.67 ERA in Low-A

2012: 40 IP, 40 H, 4 BB, 31 K, 1 HR, 2.02 ERA in High-Rookie

I seriously contemplated just making this the organization’s Top 9 prospects, because damned if I could tell you who is #10 in this system. The various prospect experts are pretty much in agreement about nine guys – the nine players to follow all rank in the top 10s from Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law, Fangraphs, and John Sickels at SB Nation, except Sickels has Jason Adam at #11. But after that it’s a free-for-all. I consider Orlando Calixte here, but I’m worried about his defense and can’t get a Yuniesky Betancourt comp out of my head.

I also thought about Elier Hernandez, who got a higher signing bonus ($3 million) than any player the Royals have ever signed out of Latin America, and hit .301/.350/.439 in rookie ball at age 18. Flip a coin; I went with Binford, who was a late-round find in the 2011 draft.

Well, he was a late-round pick, but he wasn’t really a find. The 2011 draft was the last draft before the signing bonus cap was instituted via the last CBA, so it was the last chance teams had to just throw money at draft picks until they caved and signed on the dotted line. The Royals gave Bubba Starling $7.5 million, but they also gave third-rounder Brian Brickhouse $1.5 million, fourth-rounder Kyle Smith $695,000, fifth-rounder Patrick Leonard $600,000, and then liberally sprinkled in big bonuses to guys who dropped for signability reasons. Jack Lopez, taken in the 16th round, got $750,000 to sign; 29th-rounder Jake Junis got $675,000, and Binford, taken in the 30th round, got $575,000.

Counting second-rounder Cameron Gallagher, who got $750,000, the Royals gave $575,000 or more to eight different players. It remains one of the most expensive drafts in MLB history, and thanks to the new draft rules it will probably stay that way for a while.

It was one of the most expensive drafts ever, but it was far from the best. We’ll get to Bubba later. Gallagher remains a prospect, but it’s unlikely he’ll be more than a backup catcher in the majors. Brickhouse has good stuff but is coming off Tommy John surgery. You know how I feel about Smith, who was traded for Justin Maxwell, but realistically being a #3 starter is his ceiling. Leonard was the throw-in in the James Shields trade and is a long-shot to amount to anything. Lopez has a nifty glove but hit .230/.297/.301 last year; he was just 20 and in Wilmington, and I could see him topping out as a utility infielder. Junis had an ERA over 7 in rookie ball last year.

That’s not to say the Royals wasted their money, because they really only have to hit on one guy in the later rounds to recoup their entire investment and then some. Aside from Bubba and Brickhouse, the Royals basically spent third- and fourth-round money on the other six guys, and how often do third- and fourth-rounders pan out usually? Smith got them a nice bench player in Maxwell, and if Binford becomes even a #4 starter, the money was well spent.

He could be more than that. Binford is an enormous, storky dude; look at his height and weight listings; and note that he may have grown since the draft, as Baseball America now lists him at 6’7”. He doesn’t throw that hard – mostly 90-92 – but the height gives him a nice downward angle and a lot of sink on his fastball, and he has impeccable command. He had Tommy John surgery in high school but hasn’t had any health issues since. The issue is that none of his secondary pitches are above-average yet, and while commanding your fastball is the #1 key to success for every pitcher, he’s going to have to come up with something that wiggles as he moves up the chain.

I’m a sucker for guys with strikeout-to-walk ratios of better than 5 to 1, but he still has a lot of work to do. He’ll start the year in Wilmington, where the ballpark will make him look like a stud even if he’s not, so temper your enthusiasm if he has a 1.50 ERA at the end of May.

#9: Jason Adam

Pos-T: SP-R

H-W: 6’4”, 219 lbs

DOB: 8/4/1991 (22 years old)

Signed: 5th Round, 2010, Kansas (Blue Valley NW) HS

Stats:

2013: 144 IP, 153 H, 53 BB, 126 K, 12 HR, 5.19 ERA in Double-A

2012: 158 IP, 148 H, 36 BB, 123 K, 18 HR, 3.53 ERA in High-A

2011: 104 IP, 94 H, 25 BB, 76 K, 9 HR, 4.23 ERA in Low-A

Adam didn’t look like a stud at Wilmington, and I was down on him at the start of last season, figuring the move to the hitter-friendly environs of Northwest Arkansas would knock him down. He nearly suffered a first-round TKO; in his first four starts of last season, he allowed 27 runs in 15 innings. Yeah, 27 runs in 15 innings.

But from that point on, he was actually pretty good: 132 innings, 122 hits, 45 walks, 110 strikeouts, 9 homers, and a 3.81 ERA, against better competition and in a tougher park than in 2012. He made some changes to his delivery, and started leaning less on a curveball and more on a slider. Adam is a big-bodied kid with a reputation for durability, and he’s thrown over 300 innings the last two years, something few minor-league – or even major-league – pitchers can say.

What will make or break Adam, I think, is his fastball. You might recall that in instructional league in 2010, shortly after he was signed, Adam was the talk of camp, showing a fastball in the mid-90s; Keith Law, who’s not prone to hyperbole, saw him and said he might have gone in the first round had he showed that kind of stuff before the draft. But in his first pro season his velocity was down all year; I saw him at Kane County in August – admittedly, he might have been tired – and he was throwing 86-88 in the sixth inning. His fastball was a little more consistent in 2012, but rarely broke 91-92. Per Baseball America, though, his fastball gained a tick last season.

The dreams of Adam being a front-of-the-rotation starter are probably gone for good, but I think he’s got a good chance of being a #4 starter, with aspirations of being the 200-inning league-average guy that the Royals haven’t been able to develop, forcing them to give millions to first Jeremy Guthrie and then Jason Vargas. Adam is ready for Triple-A and he’s got a stellar health record, so there’s not much of an excuse for the Royals to blow it with him. If they do succeed, and Adam is ready to be in the back of the Royals’ rotation to start 2015, it will again raise the question of why they really needed to commit to Vargas for three more years after this one.

C'mon.

The Royals, they always me keep me guessing.

I didn’t think the Royals were going to add another pitcher this late in the off-season, and if they were, I didn’t think it was going to be Bruce Chen. Ervin Santana, maybe, although 1) I thought those chances were overrated by fans who wanted their security blanket back, and 2) I didn’t think it made sense to bring him back at the price he wanted, or even at the (much-lower) price it looks like he’ll get.

But Chen? I love the guy, but what did the Royals need with another innings-eating #4 starter/swingman type? The Royals already have plenty of mediocre security in the rotation, and they have more relievers than they can possibly put on the roster. I have no idea how Chen fits on the roster.

And yet you know what? I love this deal. One guaranteed year? $4.25 guaranteed million, including his option for 2015? This is pocket change in today’s game. Chen can make an additional $1.25 million if he makes 25 starts, and the Royals could bring him back in 2015 for an extra $4.5 million, although the “mutual” part of the option renders it essentially meaningless.

I really don’t get this pitching market. I still think Phil Hughes’ three years and $24 million could be the bargain of the winter. Maybe Matt Garza’s arm is really in such bad shape that four years and $50 million is all he could get, but it’s clear that neither Santana nor Ubaldo Jimenez, both durable #3 starters at the very least, are going to get close to the five-year deals and $15 million annual salaries they were expecting to get. But then there’s Masahiro Tanaka getting $155 million from the Yankees, plus the $20 million posting fee, plus an opt-out after four years. Scott Feldman got three years and $30 million from the Astros to be a really good #4 starter.

And then there’s the Royals, once again jumping the gun on the free agent market back in November, signing Jason Vargas for four years and $32 million, and once again looking like they would have been far better off keeping their powder dry.

Because the very reasons that I love this deal for the Royals make the Vargas signing look even sillier and more unwarranted. I made this very comparison at the time, but to repeat myself:

Over the last 5 years (when Chen joined the Royals), Chen has a 4.32 ERA.

Over the last 5 years, Jason Vargas – pitching in the two best pitchers’ parks in the AL – has a 4.07 ERA.

“Wait,” you say, “Kauffman Stadium is a great place to pitch as well.” Well, not exactly. It’s a great place to not give up homers, but a pretty terrible place to not give up singles, doubles, or triples. Over the past five years, Kauffman Stadium has been essentially neutral in terms of its effect on overall run scoring, and if it leans in any direction, it’s in favor of the hitter. In 2013, for whatever reason, Kauffman Stadium increased scoring by about 5%, but from 2009-2012 the K increased scoring by less than 1% overall.

Now, Bruce Chen is a flyball pitcher, and he’s probably benefited from Kauffman’s dimensions more than most pitchers would. And it’s true: over the last five years, Chen’s ERA at home is 4.00, but his road ERA is 4.66. That’s a slightly bigger home/road disparity than most pitchers have.

Except here’s the thing: over the last five years, Vargas’ ERA at home is 3.37, and his road ERA is 4.83.

Over the last five years, Bruce Chen has a better ERA on the road than Vargas. The Royals signed one of them for 4 years and $32 million guaranteed, and the other for one year and $4.25 million guaranteed. This does not compute.

Sure, Chen’s road ERA benefits from the fact that he gets to make occasional road starts in Seattle and Anaheim, while Vargas doesn’t, but at the very least they’re essentially equal pitchers on the road. And while Chen is an extreme flyball pitcher, Vargas is pretty neutral in that regard, so Chen fits Kauffman’s blueprints much better. True, Vargas has averaged more innings (190 to 152) over the last four years than Chen, but Chen’s innings count is diminished by the fact that he worked out of the bullpen in parts of 2010 and 2013. And Vargas was the only one who was on the DL last year. Just two years ago, Chen led the American League with 34 starts.

Yes, Chen is six years older than Vargas, and for any other type of player that would make this comparison moot. But lefty finesse types, once they’ve learned to survive in the majors, tend to age very well. The aging process robs pitchers of velocity over time, but if you’ve already learned to succeed in the majors without it, you’re basically immune. Chen turns 37 in June; Jamie Moyer’s four best seasons came at ages 35, 36, 39, and 40.

If you put a gun to my head, and forced me to choose only one pitcher for 2014…you might wind up pulling the trigger before I could decide. Vargas is likely to throw more innings; Chen is likely to pitch better inning-for-inning. It’s essentially a tie.

And honestly: I’d probably wind up picking Chen, because if everything goes according to plan for the 2014 Royals, at least one and maybe two minor league starting pitchers will be ready for a rotation spot at some point in the season, and Chen has proven the ability to go back and forth between the rotation and the bullpen without difficulty. Vargas does not. So there you go: I think Chen is a better fit for the 2014 Royals than Vargas, at half the salary, and without the messy commitment for 2015, 2016, and 2017.

I know it’s gauche to complain about Vargas again when the Royals just made a nice move to re-sign Chen, much the same way it’s considered poor manners to complain about the Valentine’s Day gift your spouse got you while opening your birthday present. But I’m sorry: the contrast is just so jarring. The Royals signed two remarkably similar players, and one of them got twice the annual salary and four times the contract length of the other.

Insomuch as what’s past is prologue, and Vargas was already under contract, I still like the re-signing of Chen, particularly since he is at least tentatively slotted to start the year in the rotation. The scenario I outlined above – where Chen can move to the bullpen once Yordano Ventura or Kyle Zimmer is ready to go – seems to be the plan; it’s not a coincidence that the bonuses in Chen’s contract kick in if he makes more than 15 starts, as I’m sure in an ideal world the Royals would plan to have him in the bullpen before he gets to his 16th start. This does mean the Royals plan to start the year with a rotation of James Shields, Jason Vargas, Jeremy Guthrie, and Bruce Chen – basically, a good #2 starter and then three #4 starters. The fifth spot ought to go to Danny Duffy, and if re-signing Chen relegates Duffy to a lesser role, his return will be costly in more than just dollars.

I suspect – because I’m generally a nice guy who wants to believe the best in everyone – that the Royals want Duffy to be the #5 starter and will give him every opportunity to win the job, but feel that giving him legitimate competition for his job will spur him to work harder and excel. That’s what I suspect drove the acquisition of Danny Valencia, to spur Mike Moustakas, and Moustakas showed up to FanFest noticeably thinner than last year. (He also sported a Mohawk, but nobody’s perfect.)

That means there’s no spot in the rotation for Ventura, at least not to start the year, and that’s not the worst thing in the world. He’s made just 14 starts in Triple-A, and another month in Omaha would delay free agency by a year, and he could still work to tighten his command a little. In an ideal world, Ventura returns to Omaha, makes Triple-A hitters cry for a month or two, then gets promoted to Kansas City when a rotation spot inevitably opens.

And in a less-than-perfect world where one of the Royals’ projected five starters gets hurt in spring training, or where Duffy can’t find the strike zone, then Ventura can slide right into the rotation. The Royals have six major league-caliber starters on their roster right now, which is something a team with playoff aspiration has to have. Ideally three of them wouldn’t be innings-eating veteran finesse pitchers, but we’ll take what we can get. If the defense and bullpen are as elite as they were last year, the Royals should still be one of the best teams in the league at run prevention.

So I was completely prepared to give a thumbs-up to this move, and even compliment ownership for spending the money they saved by reworking Jeremy Guthrie’s contract. And then the other shoe dropped: to make room for Chen – on the payroll more than the roster – the Royals designated Emilio Bonifacio for assignment.

Bonifacio had agreed to a contract for $3.5 million for 2014, but it wasn’t guaranteed; by DFA’ing him now, I believe the Royals aren’t on the hook for a penny. (Update: I've had it confirmed that the Royals are still on the hook for one-sixth of Bonifacio's salary, assuming he isn't claimed on waivers - so this move saves them about $2.9 million.) So the Royals have basically replaced Bonifacio’s salary with Chen’s. And in so doing, they are sending a pretty strong signal that their payroll is tapped out at – pending the resolution of Greg Holland’s arbitration case – a little under $89 million.

And I’m sorry, but that’s not acceptable. Last year’s Opening Day payroll was roughly $81 million; it wound up a tick north of that, largely thanks to the Royals’ shrewd claim of Bonifacio on waivers in August. The Royals, as we’ve been noting for the past 18 months since the contracts were signed, are due roughly an extra $25 million annually from their national TV deals. It’s actually about $27 million a year, but I’m figuring some of that will go to expenses. The Royals – and every other MLB team – would like you to think that it’s all going to expenses. Here’s an article featuring a rare breakdown by an owner (Rockies owner Dick Monfort) of where that money is allegedly going.

Of the $27 million, Monfort claims $8 million goes to baseball’s central fund – which sounds like an expense, but of course that money belongs to MLB, and if they spend it in other ways, that’s money they would have spent regardless of the new TV deal. Monfort also plans to pay $5.5 million back to the MLB credit line to pay for a previous loan – again, that loan would have to be repaid regardless, and it’s a matter of convenience to claim that the money to repay the loan comes from the new TV deal. Monfort claims the Rockies can only add about $11 million to the payroll, but the very numbers he presents make it clear that the Rockies could increase payroll by $16.5 million and still be revenue-neutral, and that’s not counting MLB’s central fund.

The Royals haven’t raised their payroll by $16.5 million, or even $11 million. They’ve raised their payroll by about $8 million. They would have raised their payroll by about $11 million – and saved me the trouble of criticizing them – had they not just let Bonifacio go. But they did.

You could argue that Bonifacio is overpaid as a utility player, and you might be right. But I’d argue that the one thing that seems to separate the 2014 Royals from the 2013 Royals, or any other Royals squad in the last 20 years, is their depth. With the exception of St. Salvador, the Royals were perfectly positioned to weather an injury to anyone in their starting lineup; with the addition of Chen, they could weather an injury to a starting pitcher, and they’d probably have to lose three or four relievers to an outbreak of dysentery before they’d felt the pinch.

Bonifacio was the critical cog in that depth; he’s capable of playing second base every day, but he has the ability to play every non-battery position in the field. He’s not someone you want playing shortstop a lot, but he started 61 games there for the Marlins in 2011 and was at least adequate. He’s started at least 20 games at all three outfield positions and all three skill positions on the infield; he’s never played first base, but presumably because he hasn’t needed to. He has the ability to get on base, and he’s a terrific baserunner, which means on the days when he’s not in the starting lineup he’s a very good bench player.

In a best-case scenario, Bonifacio wouldn’t be in the starting lineup much, but would still have value off the bench. In a worst-case scenario, Bonifacio would be forced into the starting lineup for a month or two, and save the Royals from a big scar in their lineup.

I’ve seen the argument made that Bonifacio was not prepared to be a utility guy at this point in his career, and the Royals let him go to avoid the clubhouse discord that he might have provoked. We’ll set aside that since we’re all just speculating here, it’s possible that Bonifacio’s presence in spring training might have been a boon to his younger brother Jorge, who happens to be one of the best prospects in the system and the probable starting right fielder in 2015. We’ll also set aside the fact that worries about how an everyday player might adjust to a utility role didn’t keep the Royals from re-signing Yuniesky Betancourt two years ago.

We’ll just make the case that if the Royals really did let Bonifacio go for his own good, they sure picked a curious time to do so, cutting him from the payroll just as they were about to add Chen to it.

Frankly, if I had to choose between the two, I’d probably prefer Bonifacio. The Royals, as I’ve detailed a few times, have a roster crunch. They need to make room for Danny Valencia if they only plan to keep 13 hitters; cutting Bonifacio does that, except of course that leaves the Royals without a backup middle infielder, which is impossible. I assume Pedro Ciriaco will take Bonifacio’s spot, and the Royals still don’t have room for Valencia.

Meanwhile, Chen just makes a roster squeeze on the pitching side of things more acute. Even if Ventura opens in the minors, here are the pitchers the Royals have on their 40-man roster:

James Shields

Jeremy Guthrie

Jason Vargas

Bruce Chen

Danny Duffy

Louis Coleman

Tim Collins

Aaron Crow

Wade Davis

Kelvin Herrera

Luke Hochevar

Greg Holland

Barring a trade – any day now, guys – the Royals have seven relievers they have to carry, unless they really want to send Louis Coleman and his 0.61 ERA back to Omaha. There’s no room for Donnie Joseph, to say nothing of Chris Dwyer or Francisley Bueno, and when Chen moves to the bullpen they’ll have to make another move.

But hey, pitchers get hurt; these things have a way of sorting themselves out. The roster isn’t the issue, because this really isn’t about Bonifacio at all. Maybe the Royals don’t need him; maybe they’ll get comparable production from Ciriaco, who has a career line in the majors of .277/.307/.385 – but he has less than a season’s worth of playing time in the majors, and his career line in Triple-A, in nearly three times as much playing time, is .267/.285/.368. Or maybe none of their infielders will get hurt and they won’t need Bonifacio, although keep in mind that Omar Infante missed a month last season and has never played 150 games in a season.

But the Royals didn’t let Bonifacio go because of talent; they let him go because of money, or at least it seems that way. So my criticisms here have nothing to do with Dayton Moore and the front office, and everything to do with ownership. If the Royals surprise us and acquire another player, and the payroll closes in on $95 million, then I will withdraw my criticisms. But right now, it appears for all the world like the Royals are tapped out, precisely when the roster is close enough to being playoff-caliber that a few million judiciously-applied dollars could be the difference between breaking a 29-year playoff drought, and extending it.

Royals Today: 1/27/14.

I keep waiting for the Royals to do something noteworthy enough to justify writing a column about it, and they keep not obliging. After six weeks, I finally blinked. So let’s find some things to talk about.

- The biggest transaction the Royals have made in the last six weeks was trading David Lough for Danny Valencia. On a pure talent-for-talent basis, the Royals lost the trade. But as the Royals have now moved out of the “acquire talent” stage of franchise construction, and into the “arrange that talent into the framework of a winning team” stage, it’s a defensible move.

By making the trade, the Royals have made it clear that they don’t entirely buy into Lough’s performance in 2013, either offensively or defensively. On the whole, I agree with them. Lough hit .286 as a rookie; this is good. He walked 10 times in 335 plate appearances; this is bad. He was 27 years old; this is terrible, at least from the standpoint of whether you expect Lough to improve or even maintain his performance going forward.

Defensively, Lough was worth 15 runs above average defensively in not even a half-season in the field; this is good. Defensive numbers are notoriously unreliable, and Lough wasn’t reputed to be the second coming of Garry Maddox in the outfield; this is bad.

The last two paragraphs explain how Lough can 1) lead all AL rookies – yes, even Saint Wil – in Wins Above Replacement according to baseball-reference.com, and 2) still be worth trading for a platoon third baseman.

In the expansion era (since 1961), only eight 27-year-old rookies had as many bWAR than Lough, and one of them was Ichiro Suzuki. Here are the other seven, and you’ll laugh when you see who’s number one:

Player            Year  bWAR

Mike Aviles       2008   4.7

Lew Ford          2004   4.4

Randy Milligan    1989   3.7

Scott Podsednik   2003   3.6

Freddy Sanchez    2005   3.3

Ron Theobald      1971   2.9

David Lough       2013   2.7

Andy Stankiewicz  1992   2.7

Aviles, like Lough, came out of nowhere to have a remarkable rookie season that was elevated by 1) a very good batting average despite poor plate discipline and 2) terrific defensive numbers that were completely unexpected. (Aviles was +14 runs at shortstop as a rookie per Baseball Info Solutions.) He’s been a useful utility guy, but hasn’t had a season with even half as many bWAR since.

Ford hit .299/.381/.446 as a rookie, after hitting .329/.402/.575 in a 34-game cup of coffee the year before. In his sophomore year he hit .264/.338/.377; the following year he hit .226/.287/.312 and was out of baseball before long. Podsednik hit .314/.379/.443 for the Brewers in 2003, slumped to .244/.313/.364 in 2004 (but led the NL in steals) and was traded to the White Sox, where he hit a respectable .290/.351/.349, and then, after not hitting a homer all season, hit two in the playoffs as the White Sox won the World Series. He would be a useful player for years to come, but never had an above-average OPS+ after his rookie year.

Randy Milligan hit .268/.394/.458 for the 1989 Orioles, a big part of their turnaround from a 54-107 record the year before to within two games of the AL East title. He hit .265/.408/.492 in 1990 and was a useful player through 1993, when he hit .299/.423/.434, but age hit him with a right hook; he batted 98 times in 1994, at age 32, and never played again. Milligan was a Ken Phelps All-Star through and through, a guy who never should have had to wait until he was 27 to stick in the majors, but came up in an era when no one cared what your OBP was. He had a career .408 OBP in the minors. In 1987, at age 25, he hit .326/.438/.595 with 29 homers and 103 RBIs in Triple-A. That got him two at-bats in September and a trade to Pittsburgh; a year later the Pirates traded him to the Orioles for Pete Blohm, a graduate of Johns Hopkins and the pitching coach for the college team during the off-season when I tried out for the squad my sophomore year in 1992, which is why I went on this tangent and this paragraph is so damn long.

Freddy Sanchez is the one old rookie who really built on his success; after hitting .291/.336/.400 as a rookie, he led the NL in batting average (.344) and doubles (53) the following year, and played regularly for five more years before getting hurt in 2011 and he hasn’t played since. It’s worth noting that even as a rookie, Sanchez had tremendous contact skills – he struck out just 36 times in 492 plate appearances – which boded well for his ability to continue to hit for average.

Ron Theobold hit .276/.342/.325 as a rookie, hit .220/.342/.256 as a sophomore and never played in the majors again. Andy Stankiewicz hit .268/.338/.348 as a rookie, which so impressed the Yankees that he got 9 at-bats the following year; he never got more than 150 at-bats in a season again, hitting .216/.291/.286 after his rookie year.

Milligan and Sanchez went on to productive careers, but both players had given reason to believe in them after their rookie years – Sanchez because of his very low strikeout rate, Milligan because he had mashed in the minors. None of the other guys on this list ever had a single 2.5 bWAR season again.

So while I think Lough might be a useful fourth outfielder and may end up with 2000 at-bats in the major leagues, I think it’s unlikely the Royals will truly miss him. With Gordon, Cain, and Aoki the starters, the Royals had to move one of Lough, Jarrod Dyson, and Justin Maxwell. They had to keep Dyson for Cain insurance, and because his speed was such a weapon off the bench, and they had to keep Maxwell because he crushes lefties. Lough doesn’t really do any one thing that well, so it was hard to see a reason for him to get much playing time barring injury.

Valencia, on the other hand, does one thing well and only one thing well: hit lefties. Last year he hit .304/.335/.553 in 170 plate appearances overall, which sounds great, but breaks down to .371/.392/.639 vs. LHP, .203/.250/.422 vs. RHP. That’s par for the course for Valencia; his career numbers are .329/.367/.513 vs. LHP, .229/.269/.360 vs. RHP. He’s a third baseman but not a particularly good one, and mostly DH’ed last year, although in fairness it’s not like he was going to play over Manny Machado.

So it would appear that the Royals traded an outfielder they had no room on the roster for, in exchange for a third baseman who will platoon with Mike Moustakas and make the 2014 team a few runs better. This makes perfect sense, but it’s not that simple, because I don’t think the Royals are prepared to make Moustakas a platoon player at this point in his career.

And I’m not sure they should. As bad as Moose was in 2013, a year ago he was coming off a season where he hit .242/.296/.412 and played out of his mind at third base, and was worth 3.2 bWAR. That’s not great, but that’s something you can build on for a 24-year-old third baseman. Yes, he declined both offensively and defensively last year, but I think writing him off as an everyday player, or even a future star, is premature. According to Baseball-Reference, his list of 10 most similar players through age 24 includes Ken McMullen (1583 career games, 34 bWAR), Don Money (four-time All-Star), Howard Johnson (three times finished in top 10 of MVP vote), Gary Gaetti (2507 career games, 42 bWAR), and yes, Alex Gordon. More than half of his comps went on to have really good careers.

A guy who doesn’t show up on his comps list, but who I’ve used as a comparison, is Pedro Alvarez. Alvarez, like Moustakas, was the #2 overall pick in the draft (although Pedro was drafted out of college), reputed to have tremendous power but not a great hitter for average. Like Moose, Alvarez hit well at age 23 (.256/.326/.461), but at age 24 was even worse than Moustakas (.191/.272/.289), to the point where the Pirates had to send him back to the minors. But they didn’t give up on him, and the last two years Alvarez has hit .244/.317/.467 with 30 homers, and .233/.296/.473 with a league-leading 36 homers. He’s still a flawed player, but on the balance a pretty good one.

So I don’t think the Royals can give up on Moustakas yet. The problem is, it would be a crime to keep Valencia on the bench against lefties, but there’s nowhere else he’s going to play. You’re not benching Butler against lefties; you’re not playing Valencia over Hosmer at first base. In left field, Gordon just had a historically good season for a left-handed hitter against left-handed pitching, and in right field, if Aoki is going to platoon with anyone, it’s Maxwell.

So I don’t know where Valencia fits right now, other than to give the Royals enough of a threat hanging over Moustakas that it lights a fire in his ass and gets him to report to camp in tremendous physical and mental shape. I’m not discounting that; Sam Mellinger just tweeted that Moustakas is in Arizona and he hears that Moose is in great physical shape. Remember, two years ago he showed up in great shape after working out at Boras’ institute all winter, and had his best year; last year he didn’t and he didn’t. If Valencia’s presence spurs Moustakas to get back on the Gary Gaetti track, the trade is worth it. But better still if he can step in against left-handers every once in a while.

With Maxwell, Dyson, the backup catcher, and Emilio Bonifacio, I don’t even see where Valencia fits on the roster unless the Royals go to an 11-man pitching staff. I would support such a move – the Royals don’t need seven relievers – but of course, they have so many good relievers that it will be hard for them to get down to seven, let alone six. So I expect another move at some point, possibly late in spring training after Moustakas has already earned himself back in the Royals good graces. I expect Valencia or Maxwell to be on the move. But I’ll confess that the Royals rarely do what I expect.

- It’s the end of January and Brett Hayes is still the Royals’ backup catcher, and I guess it’s time to acknowledge that yes, he really is going to be the Royals’ backup catcher.

I’ve given the Royals a lot of grief over letting George Kottaras go, and I stand by the fact that he was a cheap and ideal complement to Salvador Perez’s skill set. But I have to be fair here: when the Royals got Kottaras in the first place, they did so because he was waived by the Oakland A’s. I didn’t excoriate the A’s for waiving him even as I was praising the Royals for claiming him, even after the A’s had replaced Kottaras with a slightly better version of himself – John Jaso – surrendering a very nice prospect named A.J. Cole for the privilege.

And the A’s had just acquired him at the trading deadline in 2012 from the Brewers for a marginal prospect. I guess what I’m saying is that when three different teams have given up a player with very useful skills for next-to-nothing in the span of 16 months, it’s possible that the problem isn’t with the teams, but with the player. Now, I don’t know what that problem might be. Maybe Kottaras is such a bad game-caller that pitchers simply don’t want to throw to him. Maybe he’s a clubhouse lawyer. Maybe he’s Patient Zero in some heretofore undisclosed Ebola virus epidemic in major league clubhouses. Maybe he’s Wiccan. But there’s something about him which makes him look like a much better player from a distance than up close.

I think he’s a great acquisition for the Cubs, who have the luxury of taking a gamble on a guy who could run into 20 bombs and walk 80 times if he had to play everyday. But I do wonder if the Royals might know something we don’t here.

None of this excuses the decision to go to war with Brett Hayes, a career .220/.266/.374 hitter in the majors. The Royals will tell you it doesn’t matter because Perez is going to catch 140 times anyway, and they might be right. But I’ll tell you that if anything happens to Perez, you can kiss the Royals’ playoff hopes goodbye. Perez may or may not be as valuable to the Royals as he was last year. But he’s definitely more irreplaceable this year.

- Payroll update: thanks to Jeremy Guthrie kindly agreeing to move some of his 2014 salary into a buyout of his new 2016 option, the Royals’ payroll is at a tick above $89 million pending the resolution of arbitration cases for Greg Holland and Aaron Crow.

That’s not a terrible payroll – it would be the highest in team history – but it’s only slightly higher than last year’s. And this year, the Royals get an additional $25 million* in TV revenue. Given where the Royals are on the win curve, in a place where a few additional wins could be the difference between making the playoffs and not – there’s really no defense for not upping the payroll another $10 million or so. I’d say the Royals should re-sign Ervin Santana, but 1) I’m skeptical that Santana will be able to replicate his 2013 season, and 2) if the Royals wanted to add another starter, they could have afforded Matt Garza’s new contract, with the upshot that they’d still get the extra draft pick when Santana signed elsewhere.

*: I’ve seen it reported that the $25 million is only about $15 million after taxes. This is ridiculous, ownership propaganda. Yes, owners pay taxes on their profit – but expenses are taken out before taxes. Put another way, payroll spent on players is tax-deductible. It’s important to be economically literate, because if you’re not, you’ll be taken advantage of by rich people with an agenda.

I know there are still a bunch of fans hoping and expecting that the apparent collapse of the starting pitching market – as illustrated by Garza only getting 4 years and $50 million – gives the Royals a real shot at Santana. I don’t see it. Garza may well be an aberration; his contract is so small that it makes me wonder if his medical reports are terrible, as it’s the only thing that explains the deal. (Keith Law certainly subscribes to that theory, and he would know better than I.) Also, there’s this notion that unlike every other team, the Royals wouldn’t have to give up a draft pick to sign him.

Which is silly, because of course they’d have to give up a draft pick – they’d give up the draft pick they’re expecting to get when he signs elsewhere. That will be a supplemental first rounder, maybe around pick #35 or so. That’s a less valuable pick to lose than a true first rounder, which some teams would have to give up – but it’s more valuable a pick than the second-round pick the Blue Jays – whose first-round picks are protected – or the Yankees – who have already surrendered their first-round pick – would give up.

So let it go. Santana will sign elsewhere, the Royals will get a nice draft pick for their troubles, and they’ll have money to spend elsewhere.

That is, if David Glass will spend it. What bothers me the most about ownership spending this winter is that if they don’t spend the savings they got from Guthrie’s reworking of his deal (or if they’ve, in essence, already spent it), then his restructured deal benefits neither the team nor the fans, but only Glass’s pocketbook. Because in two years, the Royals will count the $3.2 million that they now owe Guthrie in 2016 as part of the team’s payroll, and factor it in when they say they can’t spend any more money. But today, when they’re reaping the savings from the restructured deal, they’re keeping quiet.

I think David Glass wants to win. But I think he wants to make money more. Which is kind of sad, because he has plenty of the latter and precious little of the former.

- Luke Hochevar settled before his arbitration hearing. That’s not newsworthy. What’s newsworthy is that his $5.21 million contract contains an additional $400,000 in possible incentives based on games finished…and games started. If Hochevar is starting games for the Royals this season, the extra money they’ll be paying him will be the least of their costs.

- It’s late January, which means it’s Top 100 Prospect time. MLB.com’s list went up last Thursday, and Baseball Prospectus’ list went up today; Baseball America’s and Keith Law’s list go up later this week.

MLB.com has only four Royals in their Top 100, but three of them (Kyle Zimmer, Yordano Ventura, and Raul Adalberto Mondesi*) are in their top 40; by “prospect points” they have the Royals with the 6th-best farm system in the game. BP’s list is even more favorable to the Royals; they have seven Royals in their top 100, with Ventura all the way up at #12 (and Jason Parks’ pick for 2014 AL Rookie of the Year), and Miguel Almonte in the top 50.

*: We need a definitive name for Raul, son of Raul, younger brother of Raul, now that he wants to be known as Raul. RAM? RMIII?

I’ll have more to say about each prospect later, but the Royals pretty clearly still have a very deep farm system. For all my criticisms of the front office, as long as they keep churning out talent, the era of 90-loss seasons should be over for the foreseeable future. But it takes more than just good player development to begin an era of 90-win seasons.

- Speaking of wins and losses, it’s also projection season. Clay Davenport, my long-time colleague and co-founder of Baseball Prospectus, raised some hackles over the weekend with his projections, that have the Royals at 77-85 and in fourth place – behind the White Sox, which would be astonishing if true. Needless to say, that would be disappointing. Frankly, for some people it would be employment-terminating.

On the other hand, if you look at the Royals’ Fangraphs page, you will see projected WAR totals for all 30 teams on the right-hand side, and by this measurement the Royals rank as the 7th-best team in baseball, and would win the second Wild Card spot in the AL. They have the Royals so high in part because, while the Royals don’t have any superstars in their lineup (no position is expected to exceed 4.0 WAR), by signing Infante and Aoki they’ve also eliminated any holes. Shortstop is projected at 1.5 WAR; every other position is between 2 and 4. That’s not sexy, but it’s enough to get a team to 85 wins.

The problem is that 85 wins sounds great in pre-season projections, because projections by their nature compress teams around the mean. Clay’s projections, for instance, have no team winning more than 91 games. But of course some team will, and most likely at least 5 teams in the AL will win more than the 85 games that Fangraphs’ numbers would suggest for the Royals.

If the Royals want to be one of those five teams, some players are going to have exceed their projections, perhaps wildly. Someone from the Duffy/Ventura/Zimmer triumvirate will have to step up, and someone among Gordon, Butler, Hosmer, and Moustakas is going to have to post a 900 OPS and garner some MVP votes.

Which could happen. If it doesn’t, 77-85 is closer than you’d think. There’s a whole range of outcomes that are possible for the Royals. That’s not new. What’s new is that there’s a whole passel of consequences that come with them.