Alright, break’s over.
On October 2nd I got the opportunity to attend Game 2 of the NLDS in Chicago, courtesy of my good friend Affan, a lifelong Cubs fan who had procured four very nice tickets for us and our wives. I had never been to a playoff game before, and my wife had never been to Wrigley Field before, a fact of which she has complained about for years. (Which has been a constant source of amusement for me given that my wife knows nothing about baseball, and cares even less.) You want a game, honey? Here’s a game. I felt a little sheepish about wasting a Cubs playoff ticket on someone who was going just to see and be seen, but what the hell – I figured I knew enough about baseball for the two of us.
We had seats way down the left field line, but right against the wall – my elbow was in fair territory when I rested my arm on the railing. We were about 25 feet farther down the line than where Bartman sat, and before the game I was trying to mentally prepare myself to make quick decisions about whether to go after a ball that was drifting into the first row based on which team was in the field (I’ve grown sort of fond of the Cubbies, and man, I hate the Frank McCourt-era Dodgers. Good for the Phillies.)
For the first 15 minutes, the atmosphere was absolutely electric. This wasn’t a crowd that was there to get drunk and sunburned, this was a crowd of Cub fans. There was a buzz that built to a crescendo with every pitch. And almost immediately after the game started, Affan and I were struck by the fact that everyone was in their seat – the usual crowds of people loitering around the concourse you see at every game, in every stadium, were not there. You know how at Arlington Cemetery, the tombstones line up in such a way that they’re in a straight line no matter what angle you’re looking at them from? That’s what Wrigley Field looked like – from every angle, you could see perfectly arranged lines of people sitting in the stands.
Unfortunately, that metaphor turned out to be a little too appropriate. The Cubs made three errors in the second, and Carlos Zambrano gave up five runs despite giving up just two well-struck balls, and poof! the excitement was gone. The atmosphere turned funereal in the middle innings; fans that just 30 hours before were certain this was their year sat silent and stunned. And by the 6th inning the mood changed again, this time to angry and sarcastic. In the first couple of innings the fans abused Manny Ramirez every time he came out to left field; by the top of the 7th the fans had turned all of their attention to their own Alfonso Soriano, calling him every name in the book.
The fans walked out a little later – those who stayed until the end – bitter, dejected, and down 2 games to none. Forty-eight hours later, their season would be over, but really most of them knew it was over that day. And it struck me how quickly even the best seasons can go bad, how the winningest team in the National League and one of the winning Cub teams of the last century can find its season prematurely over because of a little three-game slump.
I’ve been waiting for the Royals to return to the Promised Land for twenty years, and I can only imagine the elation that I’ll feel when it comes to pass. But if and when it happens, we ought to enjoy every fleeting moment, because it can pass quickly. The last time the Royals made the playoffs, they only let four teams out of 26 into the dance. Now it’s eight out of 30, which means making the playoffs is the easy part. An American League team has a 4/14 (28.6%) chance of making the playoffs, but once in, the odds of winning out is just 1/8 (12.5%). Brewer fans waited 26 years to make the playoffs, then had their dream end in less than a week – and now expect to lose their two best starters to free agency.
Right now, I want to see the playoffs in the worst possible way. But I’m sure that, once the Royals get there, I’ll want them to stay there as long as possible, not just in terms of that October, but for as many Octobers to come as possible. A fluke playoff appearance would be great and all, but what’s really great is to make the playoffs and know that it's not be a fluke.
I can’t express my admiration of the Tampa Bay Rays enough: that’s a team that’s a game away from the 2008 World Series in part because it wasn’t built for 2008 at all. As a general rule of thumb, franchises that try to build a long-term winner will find that success comes in the short term as well, and franchises that are building for short-term success will find that their term is shorter than they thought. (See also Chiefs, Kansas City.)
The Rays remind different people of different teams from years past, but they remind me of no team so much as the 1991 Braves, another team that had suffered through so many losing seasons that they were safely considered the laughingstock of the league; a team that had benefited from all that losing in the form of so many high draft picks; and a team that a few years before had replaced its inept leadership with people who actually knew what the hell they were doing. The 1991 Braves and 2008 Rays also represent probably the two most dramatic defensive makeovers in modern baseball history.
I remember the perception at the time was that the Braves were having one of those miracle seasons out of nowhere, but that few people expected them to have real staying power. But you looked at that team, with three brilliant young starters, a savvy manager, and a farm system that was spitting out talent every year, and you could tell that they weren’t just a great team, they were becoming a great franchise. I don’t think anyone expected 14 straight division titles or anything, but there was no reason to think that they were a flash in the pan either. Same thing with the Rays. It’s easy to look at the last 10 years and think that 2008 is just one of those crazy years where everything goes right for them, and that they’ll be back to looking up at the Red Sox and Yankees in the standings next year. Don’t make that mistake. Just because the transformation in the Rays is sudden doesn’t mean it’s not real.
That’s the transformation I want to see in Kansas City. The 2003 season was great fun, but even when they were winning and in first place it felt like a dream, and the whole season we just waited for the dream to end. Rob Neyer and I were at a Rockies game during the SABR convention just before the All-Star Break, and an acquaintance asked what we thoughts the odds were that the Royals would make the playoffs. (The Royals were 4.5 games up at the time.) Rob answered 15%; I answered 25%. “Really? You’ve got a five-game lead!” he said. “Yeah,”, we both replied, “but they’re the Royals.”
I want the Royals to win, but more than that, I want the Royals to return to being the sort of team that when someone says, “they’re the Royals,” it’s a compliment. The Rays haven’t just won a lot of games this year, they’ve changed how people think when someone mentions their name. The team went so far as to change their name; “Devil Rays” still connotes a sense of incorrigible, LaMar-ian stupidity, but “Rays” makes you think of the little kid on the block that everyone used to beat up on, but who’s suddenly hit puberty and is starting to wail on any and all comers, and while none of the older kids know if he’s been taking boxing lessons or if his parents hired him a personal trainer or if he’s just been lucky, no one wants to be the one to find out. (I’ll take “tortured sports analogies” for $800, Alex.)
The Royals had a good year, but realistically their outlook for 2009 and 2010 hasn’t changed much at all; if anything, the odds that they can sneak up and take the division in 2010 has probably declined a little simply because neither Alex Gordon nor Billy Butler had the true breakout season that the Royals need them to have. Dayton Moore says changes are coming, and I welcome them. But I don’t want him to lose sight of the big picture in the process.
The farm system is improving, and more importantly, the culture of player development is improving. The Royals are spending big money in the draft, they’re active in Latin America, they’ve got more minor league teams than everyone else. But the first changes that Moore planted when he took over will take five years to bear fruit, and right now we’re barely two years in. And I don’t want us to lose sight of the big picture, because for all the ink and electrons wasted on Jose Guillen and Ross Gload this year, the reality is that we all should be talking about Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer and even Danny Duffy and Yowill Espinal, because those are the guys who are the centerpiece of Moore’s core strategy: the strategy to build a long-term winning franchise in Kansas City, whether it comes in 2009 or 2011 or 2013.
If Dayton Moore is penning a new book in the history of the Royals, then Chapter 1 ended when Buddy Bell was let go after the 2007 season. Chapter 2 ended this September. Chapter 3 opens with Moore vowing to separate the guys he needs to keep from the guys he needs to get rid of. It’s been a promising book so far, but we’re still a couple of chapters away from the really juicy stuff. Let’s keep the faith, and keep reading.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Denouement.
So, that’s a wrap. An 18-8 September turned the 2008 season from a failure to a success, relatively speaking. Back in February I projected the Royals to go 73-89; immediately prior to the season I revised that projection up to 75 wins, primarily because Zack Greinke had served notice in the spring that he was healthy and dealing. I don’t think I’ve ever come close to projecting the Royals’ win total before; I’m usually way too optimistic, though in 2003 I was too pessimistic.
Maybe I’m finally getting a handle on this team. Or maybe under Dayton Moore the Royals are a more stable and predictable franchise, less prone to wild mood swings like the ones we saw from 2002 to 2004, when the Royals became just the second team ever to lose 100 games, finish above .500, and lose 100 games again in back-to-back-to-back seasons. The first team to do that was the 1985-86-87 Cleveland Indians. If you thought we were all fooled by the 2003 Royals, just remember that in spring training 1987, Sports Illustrated predicted that the Indians (who had gone 84-78 the year before) would win the World Series. Instead, they had the worst record in baseball. You literally can not be more wrong than that. It was the perfect storm of errors.
The Indians would finally gain some semblance of stability a few years later when John Hart became the GM, Mike Hargrove became the manager, and the Indians started pumping a ridiculous amount of hitting talent out of their farm system (and then signing those guys to long-term deals, which was an unprecedented strategy at the time.) The Royals may not be contenders yet, but with Dayton Moore and Trey Hillman running things, they at least appear to have cured themselves of their schizophrenia. A few more hitters would be nice, though.
September was fun. The Royals finished out of last place for the first time in five years, ahead of a team with more than twice their payroll. They finished just 13 games out of first, which doesn’t mean they deserve a parade or anything, but aside from 2003 that’s the closest they’ve finished to first place since the strike. (You may cry now.) They’ll be drafting 11th next year – actually 12th, since the Nationals get a compensation pick for not signing their first-rounder this year – just the second time they’ll be out of the Top 10 since 1996. Had they lost three more games, they would have moved up to 6th in the draft, but the marginal difference between drafting 6th and drafting 12th is less than the difference between drafting 1st and 2nd – which is what happened when the Royals swept the Tigers to end the 2006 season. (Although it will be years before we know whether the Royals would have been better off with David Price than with Mike Moustakas.)
The Royals didn’t just meet expectations in terms of their record, they met (but did not exceed) expectations in terms of their key players. The three most important players to the franchise at the beginning of the year were Greinke, Alex Gordon, and Billy Butler. Butler had a disappointing but not disastrous season; his final numbers put him just below his 25th percentile PECOTA projection. Gordon was disappointing to you and I, but to the impartial computer hit almost exactly as expected; his .260/.351/.432 line was a few points shy of his 50th percentile PECOTA (.266/.342/.457). And Greinke almost matched his 90th percentile projection for ERA (3.47 vs. 3.22) and his K/BB ratio of 183 to 56 exceeded even the 90th percentile projection of 151 to 50.
After those three guys, we rooted for continued dominance from Joakim Soria, who blew past his 90th percentile projection of a 2.15 ERA, and we rooted for Gil Meche to continue to confound PECOTA, which he did – PECOTA projected a 4.47 ERA for The Epic, and like Greinke, Meche’s K/BB ratio exceeded his best projection.
There were some guys who disappointed, certainly, and one of them was paid $12 million a year. But Jose Guillen didn’t even miss his projection by that much: his final line of .264/.300/.438 was just a few points off his projection of .280/.335/.446. His performance wasn’t a disappointment so much as Moore’s decision to sign him in the first place was.
And one player who didn’t even warrant a PECOTA projection in the first place wound up as arguably the team’s MVP, at least on offense. I know Mike Aviles’ PECOTA for 2009 is the one I’m anticipating the most.
I’ll be honest: a month ago I wasn’t sure I was going to keep this blog going after the season. It’s been a lot of work, and while there have been a lot of rewards, the ultimate reward of getting to cover a winning team seemed to be eternally elusive. If nothing else, September was reinvigorating for me personally. The team still has a long road to travel, and there are still going to be potholes and detours along the way. But at least they’re on the right road.
I plan to check in once or twice a week through the off-season, maybe more as circumstances warrant and my schedule allows. I certainly haven’t run out of topics to discuss – I barely touched on the minors, which I’d like to do at some point, and we need to take an in-depth look at the 40-man roster before the winter meetings approach.
So keep checking in periodically. Before I leave, though, I’d like to extend my congratulations to the Tampa Bay Rays on their first playoff appearance, and the Milwaukee Brewers on their first appearance in 26 years. In particular, I’d like to congratulate their fans, coming from a fellow long-suffering fan of a perennial doormat. And I’d like to ask them to keep the door open for us.
See, I became an uber-fan of the Royals in the summer of 1989, or as much of an uber-fan as I could be when the family was living overseas nine months a year. I moved back to the States for good in the summer of 1991, just in time to witness one of the great World Series of all time, and have had the pleasure of watching almost every team in the majors play in the postseason since. And now that the Rays and Brewers have made it to the dance, here’s a list of the last postseason appearance of every major league team:
Milwaukee, Tampa Bay, Boston, L’Anaheim, Chicago (NL), Chicago (AL), Los Angeles, Philadelphia: 2008
New York (AL), Cleveland, Colorado, Arizona: 2007
Detroit, Oakland, Minnesota, New York (NL), St. Louis, San Diego: 2006
Houston, Atlanta: 2005
San Francisco, Florida: 2003
Seattle: 2001
Texas: 1999
Baltimore: 1997
Cincinnati: 1995
Toronto: 1993
Pittsburgh: 1992
A full two-thirds of all major league teams have made the playoffs in the last four seasons, which is both remarkable and a direct refutation of the notion that the NFL has more parity than MLB. In the last three years, the 24 playoff spots up for grabs have been occupied by 18 different teams.
Of the 30 teams in the major leagues, 28 of them have made the playoffs at least once since 1992, leaving followers of only two teams that have not enjoyed a postseason berth in the last 17 years. Fans of the Montreal Expos had their hope, their faith, and finally their team ripped away from them by Bud Selig and his minions – but at least their suffering is over. That leaves just one team, the one team I could have pledged my undying allegiance to for the past two decades, without once visiting – or even seeing – the promised land.
That team is the Kansas City Royals.
The Royals haven’t just missed the postseason for each of the last 23 years, they haven’t really come close. In 2003, the Royals held first place until August 29th – the latest the team has been in first place since 1985. They were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs with five games left to play – the longest they’ve held out mathematical hope since 1989, and just barely. In 1989, they were within 1.5 games of the A’s on September 1st, and 2.5 games out on September 17th, but then went 2-4 and found themselves 5.5 back with 7 to play. They were 5 games out with 5 left to play, technically not eliminated until the A’s won on Wednesday, but close enough.
The Royals finished just 2 games out in 1987, but that’s deceptive; they had been mathematically eliminated with five games to go, but swept the Twins in the season’s final series while the Twins were resting their regulars. And of course, there was 1994, when the Royals ran off a 14-game winning streak and were nipping at the heels of the Indians and White Sox when the strike ended the season.
I see the Mets collapse and miss the playoffs two years in a row, and it’s not that I don’t feel sympathy, it’s that I don’t feel empathy. Because not only do I not know what it’s like to make the playoffs – I don’t know what it’s like to miss the playoffs. Since winning the World Series 23 years ago, the Royals have never been in contention, no matter how liberally you define the term “contention”, going into the final Thursday of the season. Even the Expos were tied for the wild-card lead as late as September 19th in 1996, and were just a game out with three games to play.
So while I remain optimistic about the future, and reasonably satisfied with what the Royals accomplished this year, make no mistake about it: this was an okay season. Not a great season, not even a really good season. I – and, I suspect, many of you – have no idea what a really good season feels like. But when it comes, it will feel all the better for the time we’ve waited.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Maybe I’m finally getting a handle on this team. Or maybe under Dayton Moore the Royals are a more stable and predictable franchise, less prone to wild mood swings like the ones we saw from 2002 to 2004, when the Royals became just the second team ever to lose 100 games, finish above .500, and lose 100 games again in back-to-back-to-back seasons. The first team to do that was the 1985-86-87 Cleveland Indians. If you thought we were all fooled by the 2003 Royals, just remember that in spring training 1987, Sports Illustrated predicted that the Indians (who had gone 84-78 the year before) would win the World Series. Instead, they had the worst record in baseball. You literally can not be more wrong than that. It was the perfect storm of errors.
The Indians would finally gain some semblance of stability a few years later when John Hart became the GM, Mike Hargrove became the manager, and the Indians started pumping a ridiculous amount of hitting talent out of their farm system (and then signing those guys to long-term deals, which was an unprecedented strategy at the time.) The Royals may not be contenders yet, but with Dayton Moore and Trey Hillman running things, they at least appear to have cured themselves of their schizophrenia. A few more hitters would be nice, though.
September was fun. The Royals finished out of last place for the first time in five years, ahead of a team with more than twice their payroll. They finished just 13 games out of first, which doesn’t mean they deserve a parade or anything, but aside from 2003 that’s the closest they’ve finished to first place since the strike. (You may cry now.) They’ll be drafting 11th next year – actually 12th, since the Nationals get a compensation pick for not signing their first-rounder this year – just the second time they’ll be out of the Top 10 since 1996. Had they lost three more games, they would have moved up to 6th in the draft, but the marginal difference between drafting 6th and drafting 12th is less than the difference between drafting 1st and 2nd – which is what happened when the Royals swept the Tigers to end the 2006 season. (Although it will be years before we know whether the Royals would have been better off with David Price than with Mike Moustakas.)
The Royals didn’t just meet expectations in terms of their record, they met (but did not exceed) expectations in terms of their key players. The three most important players to the franchise at the beginning of the year were Greinke, Alex Gordon, and Billy Butler. Butler had a disappointing but not disastrous season; his final numbers put him just below his 25th percentile PECOTA projection. Gordon was disappointing to you and I, but to the impartial computer hit almost exactly as expected; his .260/.351/.432 line was a few points shy of his 50th percentile PECOTA (.266/.342/.457). And Greinke almost matched his 90th percentile projection for ERA (3.47 vs. 3.22) and his K/BB ratio of 183 to 56 exceeded even the 90th percentile projection of 151 to 50.
After those three guys, we rooted for continued dominance from Joakim Soria, who blew past his 90th percentile projection of a 2.15 ERA, and we rooted for Gil Meche to continue to confound PECOTA, which he did – PECOTA projected a 4.47 ERA for The Epic, and like Greinke, Meche’s K/BB ratio exceeded his best projection.
There were some guys who disappointed, certainly, and one of them was paid $12 million a year. But Jose Guillen didn’t even miss his projection by that much: his final line of .264/.300/.438 was just a few points off his projection of .280/.335/.446. His performance wasn’t a disappointment so much as Moore’s decision to sign him in the first place was.
And one player who didn’t even warrant a PECOTA projection in the first place wound up as arguably the team’s MVP, at least on offense. I know Mike Aviles’ PECOTA for 2009 is the one I’m anticipating the most.
I’ll be honest: a month ago I wasn’t sure I was going to keep this blog going after the season. It’s been a lot of work, and while there have been a lot of rewards, the ultimate reward of getting to cover a winning team seemed to be eternally elusive. If nothing else, September was reinvigorating for me personally. The team still has a long road to travel, and there are still going to be potholes and detours along the way. But at least they’re on the right road.
I plan to check in once or twice a week through the off-season, maybe more as circumstances warrant and my schedule allows. I certainly haven’t run out of topics to discuss – I barely touched on the minors, which I’d like to do at some point, and we need to take an in-depth look at the 40-man roster before the winter meetings approach.
So keep checking in periodically. Before I leave, though, I’d like to extend my congratulations to the Tampa Bay Rays on their first playoff appearance, and the Milwaukee Brewers on their first appearance in 26 years. In particular, I’d like to congratulate their fans, coming from a fellow long-suffering fan of a perennial doormat. And I’d like to ask them to keep the door open for us.
See, I became an uber-fan of the Royals in the summer of 1989, or as much of an uber-fan as I could be when the family was living overseas nine months a year. I moved back to the States for good in the summer of 1991, just in time to witness one of the great World Series of all time, and have had the pleasure of watching almost every team in the majors play in the postseason since. And now that the Rays and Brewers have made it to the dance, here’s a list of the last postseason appearance of every major league team:
Milwaukee, Tampa Bay, Boston, L’Anaheim, Chicago (NL), Chicago (AL), Los Angeles, Philadelphia: 2008
New York (AL), Cleveland, Colorado, Arizona: 2007
Detroit, Oakland, Minnesota, New York (NL), St. Louis, San Diego: 2006
Houston, Atlanta: 2005
San Francisco, Florida: 2003
Seattle: 2001
Texas: 1999
Baltimore: 1997
Cincinnati: 1995
Toronto: 1993
Pittsburgh: 1992
A full two-thirds of all major league teams have made the playoffs in the last four seasons, which is both remarkable and a direct refutation of the notion that the NFL has more parity than MLB. In the last three years, the 24 playoff spots up for grabs have been occupied by 18 different teams.
Of the 30 teams in the major leagues, 28 of them have made the playoffs at least once since 1992, leaving followers of only two teams that have not enjoyed a postseason berth in the last 17 years. Fans of the Montreal Expos had their hope, their faith, and finally their team ripped away from them by Bud Selig and his minions – but at least their suffering is over. That leaves just one team, the one team I could have pledged my undying allegiance to for the past two decades, without once visiting – or even seeing – the promised land.
That team is the Kansas City Royals.
The Royals haven’t just missed the postseason for each of the last 23 years, they haven’t really come close. In 2003, the Royals held first place until August 29th – the latest the team has been in first place since 1985. They were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs with five games left to play – the longest they’ve held out mathematical hope since 1989, and just barely. In 1989, they were within 1.5 games of the A’s on September 1st, and 2.5 games out on September 17th, but then went 2-4 and found themselves 5.5 back with 7 to play. They were 5 games out with 5 left to play, technically not eliminated until the A’s won on Wednesday, but close enough.
The Royals finished just 2 games out in 1987, but that’s deceptive; they had been mathematically eliminated with five games to go, but swept the Twins in the season’s final series while the Twins were resting their regulars. And of course, there was 1994, when the Royals ran off a 14-game winning streak and were nipping at the heels of the Indians and White Sox when the strike ended the season.
I see the Mets collapse and miss the playoffs two years in a row, and it’s not that I don’t feel sympathy, it’s that I don’t feel empathy. Because not only do I not know what it’s like to make the playoffs – I don’t know what it’s like to miss the playoffs. Since winning the World Series 23 years ago, the Royals have never been in contention, no matter how liberally you define the term “contention”, going into the final Thursday of the season. Even the Expos were tied for the wild-card lead as late as September 19th in 1996, and were just a game out with three games to play.
So while I remain optimistic about the future, and reasonably satisfied with what the Royals accomplished this year, make no mistake about it: this was an okay season. Not a great season, not even a really good season. I – and, I suspect, many of you – have no idea what a really good season feels like. But when it comes, it will feel all the better for the time we’ve waited.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Stat Nugget of the Day: Kyle Davies.
Last night, while the Royals’ hitters were busy chewing up Francisco Liriano and spitting him out like they have so many left-handed pitchers this year*, Kyle Davies was brilliant for his third straight start.
*: Perhaps the least discussed aspect of the Royals this year has been their platoon splits. Against left-handed pitchers this year, the team is hitting .288/.343/.435. Against right-handed hitters, they’re hitting just .260/.310/.381. Against LHP, they have the 5th-best OPS in the league; against RHP, they’re 13th, just a rounding error ahead of the Mariners for last place.
That’s not a fluke. While Gordon’s struggles against southpaws are well-documented, he’s the only left-handed hitter with a pronounced platoon split – DeJesus and Teahen have hit almost equally well against either side. Meanwhile, Jose Guillen, Billy Butler, and Mike Aviles have all crushed left-handed pitching, while the first two at least have struggled badly against RHP. Miguel Olivo is a famed lefty-masher. Even Grudzielanek hit .395 against LHP in limited playing time.
As a team, the Royals are 35-24 when a left-hander** starts against them. Against right-handers, they’re 39-62. Bring back C.C. Sabathia!
**: Against left-handers not named “Cliff Lee”, they’re 35-19. Lee’s five wins against the Royals have been discounted by some people, but maybe they shouldn’t be.
Here are Davies’ last three lines, each of them resulting in a win:
9/15: 8 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 8 K
9/20: 7 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 3 K
9/26: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 8 K
How unusual has this stretch been? A lot more unusual than it should be, certainly. Let’s start with a simple search: find the last time a Royal made three straight starts where he threw at least 6 innings, and allowed no more than 4 hits. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
Davies is the first Royal to do so this century. The last Royals with 3 starts of 6 or more IP, and 4 or fewer hits, was Blake Stein in August, 1999.
Stein didn’t win any of his three starts, in part because he walked 12 batters in 21 innings. (Also, that was the year the Royals had arguably the worst bullpen of any team in major league history.) Those were the first three starts Stein made for the Royals after he was acquired from Oakland in the Kevin Appier trade – he wouldn’t have another such start for almost a year.
Davies, on the other hand, hasn’t walked more than two batters in any of his starts. Who was the last Royal with three straight starts with 6 IP, 4 or fewer hits, and 2 or fewer walks?
Appier, who actually had a stretch of four straight starts. In June, 1993. Appier won just two of those four starts, as back then the Royals had the kind of offense you’d expect from a team that thought David Howard was a solid everyday shortstop.
So how about this: when was the last time a Royals pitcher won three consecutive starts (in any number of innings) and allowed no more than 4 hits and 2 walks in each start?
Try never.
Seriously. Never. Kyle Davies is the first pitcher in the 40-year history of the Royals to accomplish what would seem to be a fairly commonplace feat.
I’m not sure how meaningful this is. I mean, the Royals had a pretty fair run of success from 1976 to 1985 without ever having a pitcher accomplish this. (Davies is helped by the fact that starters throw fewer innings today; it’s a lot easier to allow 4 hits in 6 innings than 4 hits in 9 innings.) But I do think that Davies has earned the right to go for four in a row, as a member of the rotation next April.
*: Perhaps the least discussed aspect of the Royals this year has been their platoon splits. Against left-handed pitchers this year, the team is hitting .288/.343/.435. Against right-handed hitters, they’re hitting just .260/.310/.381. Against LHP, they have the 5th-best OPS in the league; against RHP, they’re 13th, just a rounding error ahead of the Mariners for last place.
That’s not a fluke. While Gordon’s struggles against southpaws are well-documented, he’s the only left-handed hitter with a pronounced platoon split – DeJesus and Teahen have hit almost equally well against either side. Meanwhile, Jose Guillen, Billy Butler, and Mike Aviles have all crushed left-handed pitching, while the first two at least have struggled badly against RHP. Miguel Olivo is a famed lefty-masher. Even Grudzielanek hit .395 against LHP in limited playing time.
As a team, the Royals are 35-24 when a left-hander** starts against them. Against right-handers, they’re 39-62. Bring back C.C. Sabathia!
**: Against left-handers not named “Cliff Lee”, they’re 35-19. Lee’s five wins against the Royals have been discounted by some people, but maybe they shouldn’t be.
Here are Davies’ last three lines, each of them resulting in a win:
9/15: 8 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 8 K
9/20: 7 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 3 K
9/26: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 8 K
How unusual has this stretch been? A lot more unusual than it should be, certainly. Let’s start with a simple search: find the last time a Royal made three straight starts where he threw at least 6 innings, and allowed no more than 4 hits. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
Davies is the first Royal to do so this century. The last Royals with 3 starts of 6 or more IP, and 4 or fewer hits, was Blake Stein in August, 1999.
Stein didn’t win any of his three starts, in part because he walked 12 batters in 21 innings. (Also, that was the year the Royals had arguably the worst bullpen of any team in major league history.) Those were the first three starts Stein made for the Royals after he was acquired from Oakland in the Kevin Appier trade – he wouldn’t have another such start for almost a year.
Davies, on the other hand, hasn’t walked more than two batters in any of his starts. Who was the last Royal with three straight starts with 6 IP, 4 or fewer hits, and 2 or fewer walks?
Appier, who actually had a stretch of four straight starts. In June, 1993. Appier won just two of those four starts, as back then the Royals had the kind of offense you’d expect from a team that thought David Howard was a solid everyday shortstop.
So how about this: when was the last time a Royals pitcher won three consecutive starts (in any number of innings) and allowed no more than 4 hits and 2 walks in each start?
Try never.
Seriously. Never. Kyle Davies is the first pitcher in the 40-year history of the Royals to accomplish what would seem to be a fairly commonplace feat.
I’m not sure how meaningful this is. I mean, the Royals had a pretty fair run of success from 1976 to 1985 without ever having a pitcher accomplish this. (Davies is helped by the fact that starters throw fewer innings today; it’s a lot easier to allow 4 hits in 6 innings than 4 hits in 9 innings.) But I do think that Davies has earned the right to go for four in a row, as a member of the rotation next April.
Friday, September 26, 2008
A September To Remember, Part 2
Laissez les bons temps rouler. The Royals were nine games behind the Tigers two weeks ago, and today they’re in fourth place. They’re like the 1964 Phillies in reverse.
They’ll be hard pressed to keep it. After beating up on teams like Detroit and Seattle, who gave up on their season months ago, now they’ve got three games against a Twins team that has everything to play for, that’s coming off a dramatic sweep of the White Sox to take over first place, and that’s playing at home, where – as usual – they’re almost unbeatable, having gone 52-26 so far this year. (For all the reasons we should be glad we’re saying goodbye to the Metrodome in a few years, the biggest may be this: it has given the Twins an unfair homefield advantage for all these years. Whether it’s the crowd noise, the baseball-colored roof, the manipulation of wind currents…who knows? But this is a team that’s won two World Series – and has never won a World Series game on the road.)
If the Royals can take two of three in this series, they not only will put a serious dent in the Twins’ playoff hopes, they’ll put an exclamation point on their September surge. Those odds would be a lot higher if Hillman hadn’t shut down Zack Greinke prematurely. I understand the decision intellectually, but emotionally, I was really looking forward to watching The Baseball Jonah close out the season, and missing a Chiefs game voluntarily for the first time in years. (No worries on the latter front; I’m sure I’ll come up with another excuse soon enough.)
I despise the White Sox more than any other team, but I must admit that I feel for them a little; they have to be pissed that we’re starting Duckworth instead of Greinke on the mound on Sunday. And honestly, I’m pulling for the Sox a little. As much as I dislike the team as a concept, I can’t help but be impressed with what Kenny Williams has done for the second time in four years. And I think the Twins need to be punished severely for stupidly leaving Francisco Liriano in the minors for so long.
Meting out the punishment tonight will be Kyle Davies, who’s trying to make me regret calling him nothing more than an adequate fifth starter a few weeks ago. In his last two starts, he’s thrown 15 innings, allowed just 7 hits, whiffed 11, and – most pertinently – walked just one batter.
Davies has struggled for so long in the majors that it’s easy to forget: he just turned 25, and he was a competent major league pitcher when he was 21. And it’s not like he’s a finesse pitcher; he throws four good pitches, just not with any particular command. Here are his walk rates in the majors:
2005: 5.03 BB/9
2006: 4.69 BB/9
2007: 4.63 BB/9
2008: 4.11 BB/9
The control is coming around this year…especially since that number I listed for 2008 is just through August 23rd. In his last six starts, he’s walked just six batters in 30 innings, bringing his seasonal rate down to 3.45 BB/9, or roughly league-average. If that’s a real improvement, and it probably is, then there may be hope for him yet. I’ll say this much: he was worth 8 innings of Octavio Dotel.
His brilliant outing against Seattle – 8 innings, four hits, no walks, 8 Ks – garnered him a Game Score of 82. That ties him for the fifth-best outing of any Royals pitcher since 1998 (i.e. the post-Appier era). Greinke’s two-hit outing against the White Sox last September ranks higher, but then, the other three games were pitched by Brian Anderson, Pat Rapp, and Jeff Suppan. So I’m not sure how meaningful this is.
Aside from Davies, the players most responsible for the team’s success on the mound in September (the team ERA is 3.71 this month, 50 points better than any other month this year) include the usual suspects: Greinke has a 2.18 ERA, and Meche is at 3.96 with 28 Ks in just 25 innings. Soria recovered from his brief August swoon with 9.1 scoreless innings. Ramon Ramirez has allowed one run in 8.2 innings. But aside from them, some other pitchers have fared unusually well:
- Jimmy Gobble returned from Omaha and has delivered 5.2 scoreless innings, enough to lower his ERA more than two runs – all the way down to 9.20. In his defense, he’s thrown 30.1 innings all year – eliminate his July 21st meltdown against the Tigers, when he gave up 10 runs in an inning, and his ERA would be 6.44. Not much of a defense – “but my ERA would be less than six-and-a-half if you took out my worst outing!”
If there’s a reason for optimism here, it’s that Gobble has done his job well this year, if you define his job strictly as “retire left-handed hitters.” They’re 12-for-61 against him, an overall line of .192/.246/.295. The problem is that RHB have hit .388/.523/.687 – Albert Pujols on a tear, basically – all year, and he’s actually faced more RHB (88) than LHB (65). He’s never shown that pronounced a split before, so I’m not sure what to make of it. LOOGY relievers like Gobble are prone to having seasons with stratospheric ERAs, simply because the nature of the job results in small sample sizes. Here’s Alan Embree’s seasonal ERAs from 2003 to 2007: 4.25, 4.13, 7.62, 3.27, 3.97. Gobble’s had a terrible year, but if the Royals want to give him a mulligan, I won’t protest too much.
- Speaking of mulligans…can John Bale get two in a row? Last year he didn’t debut until July 15th, but pitched pretty well the second half (4.05 ERA in 40 innings), enough that the Royals decided to try him as a starter this year. That went, ahem, poorly, and then he missed most of the year with a series of injuries, the first of which was self-inflicted. A month ago he was as good as gone. Only he returned this month and has thrown 10.1 scoreless innings, allowed just four hits and two walks. His two-year contract that he signed while in Japan expires, but he’s still arbitration eligible. Given how little he’s pitched, it’s unlikely an arbitrator will award him a raise from $2 million a year. My feeling is that you keep either Gobble or Bale, but not both, unless something bad happens to Ron Mahay. But I don’t think the Royals need to spend money on a lefty reliever in the market either.
- Leo Nunez came back from his oblique pull in mid-July and was awful for five weeks, allowed 21 hits and 7 walks in 13 innings through August 19th. Since then he’s righted the ship, allowed three runs and eight hits in 12.2 innings, with 7 Ks and just one walk. Nunez’s repertoire is pretty basic: his fastball has very good velocity and he controls it very well, but it’s very straight. He’s the perfect middle reliever, in other words; I’ve been comparing him to Julian Tavarez since he was a rookie, and I won’t stop now. Nunez’s ERA has improved three straight years, and he just turned 25 (he was born in the second half of 1983, like seemingly half the pitching staff.) I don’t know that he’s going to get any better than he is today, but what he is today is pretty good. Especially since he’s only the third-best right-handed reliever on the team.
- I have to mention Brandon Duckworth because of the perception that he’s pitched well since taking over from Luke Hochevar. But he hasn’t. His ERA is 5.06, and he’s lucky it’s that low; he’s got as many walks (15) as strikeouts, and while he’s 3-2, all three wins have come against the Tigers and Mariners. It’s great if you can stash a guy like Duckworth in Triple-A for emergencies. But if you’re breaking the glass before the season even begins, you’re in trouble.
- Yasuhiko Yabuta has allowed one run in 5.1 innings. That’s the sound of crickets you hear.
- Devon Lowery has allowed homers in his last two outings, and has allowed six baserunners in 3.1 innings. But he’s also struck out six batters. The biggest surprise with Lowery is simply that he made it to the majors at all with the Royals; he was a prospect of some note in 2004, but over the next three years his ERAs in the minors were 6.06, 5.73, and 7.94. I believe he had some injury issues, and he pitched pretty well as a full-time reliever in the minors this season, but the most compelling reason to be optimistic about his future is that the Royals never gave up on him despite many reasons to. He’s a candidate for the 6th or 7th spots in the bullpen next year, along with about a dozen other guys.
“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” Bart Giamatti wrote the truth. The way the Royals have played this month, at least when the games come to a sudden halt on Sunday, we’ll have some pleasant memories – and the hope that September wasn’t an illusion, but a harbinger of things to come – to keep us company through the fall and winter to come.
They’ll be hard pressed to keep it. After beating up on teams like Detroit and Seattle, who gave up on their season months ago, now they’ve got three games against a Twins team that has everything to play for, that’s coming off a dramatic sweep of the White Sox to take over first place, and that’s playing at home, where – as usual – they’re almost unbeatable, having gone 52-26 so far this year. (For all the reasons we should be glad we’re saying goodbye to the Metrodome in a few years, the biggest may be this: it has given the Twins an unfair homefield advantage for all these years. Whether it’s the crowd noise, the baseball-colored roof, the manipulation of wind currents…who knows? But this is a team that’s won two World Series – and has never won a World Series game on the road.)
If the Royals can take two of three in this series, they not only will put a serious dent in the Twins’ playoff hopes, they’ll put an exclamation point on their September surge. Those odds would be a lot higher if Hillman hadn’t shut down Zack Greinke prematurely. I understand the decision intellectually, but emotionally, I was really looking forward to watching The Baseball Jonah close out the season, and missing a Chiefs game voluntarily for the first time in years. (No worries on the latter front; I’m sure I’ll come up with another excuse soon enough.)
I despise the White Sox more than any other team, but I must admit that I feel for them a little; they have to be pissed that we’re starting Duckworth instead of Greinke on the mound on Sunday. And honestly, I’m pulling for the Sox a little. As much as I dislike the team as a concept, I can’t help but be impressed with what Kenny Williams has done for the second time in four years. And I think the Twins need to be punished severely for stupidly leaving Francisco Liriano in the minors for so long.
Meting out the punishment tonight will be Kyle Davies, who’s trying to make me regret calling him nothing more than an adequate fifth starter a few weeks ago. In his last two starts, he’s thrown 15 innings, allowed just 7 hits, whiffed 11, and – most pertinently – walked just one batter.
Davies has struggled for so long in the majors that it’s easy to forget: he just turned 25, and he was a competent major league pitcher when he was 21. And it’s not like he’s a finesse pitcher; he throws four good pitches, just not with any particular command. Here are his walk rates in the majors:
2005: 5.03 BB/9
2006: 4.69 BB/9
2007: 4.63 BB/9
2008: 4.11 BB/9
The control is coming around this year…especially since that number I listed for 2008 is just through August 23rd. In his last six starts, he’s walked just six batters in 30 innings, bringing his seasonal rate down to 3.45 BB/9, or roughly league-average. If that’s a real improvement, and it probably is, then there may be hope for him yet. I’ll say this much: he was worth 8 innings of Octavio Dotel.
His brilliant outing against Seattle – 8 innings, four hits, no walks, 8 Ks – garnered him a Game Score of 82. That ties him for the fifth-best outing of any Royals pitcher since 1998 (i.e. the post-Appier era). Greinke’s two-hit outing against the White Sox last September ranks higher, but then, the other three games were pitched by Brian Anderson, Pat Rapp, and Jeff Suppan. So I’m not sure how meaningful this is.
Aside from Davies, the players most responsible for the team’s success on the mound in September (the team ERA is 3.71 this month, 50 points better than any other month this year) include the usual suspects: Greinke has a 2.18 ERA, and Meche is at 3.96 with 28 Ks in just 25 innings. Soria recovered from his brief August swoon with 9.1 scoreless innings. Ramon Ramirez has allowed one run in 8.2 innings. But aside from them, some other pitchers have fared unusually well:
- Jimmy Gobble returned from Omaha and has delivered 5.2 scoreless innings, enough to lower his ERA more than two runs – all the way down to 9.20. In his defense, he’s thrown 30.1 innings all year – eliminate his July 21st meltdown against the Tigers, when he gave up 10 runs in an inning, and his ERA would be 6.44. Not much of a defense – “but my ERA would be less than six-and-a-half if you took out my worst outing!”
If there’s a reason for optimism here, it’s that Gobble has done his job well this year, if you define his job strictly as “retire left-handed hitters.” They’re 12-for-61 against him, an overall line of .192/.246/.295. The problem is that RHB have hit .388/.523/.687 – Albert Pujols on a tear, basically – all year, and he’s actually faced more RHB (88) than LHB (65). He’s never shown that pronounced a split before, so I’m not sure what to make of it. LOOGY relievers like Gobble are prone to having seasons with stratospheric ERAs, simply because the nature of the job results in small sample sizes. Here’s Alan Embree’s seasonal ERAs from 2003 to 2007: 4.25, 4.13, 7.62, 3.27, 3.97. Gobble’s had a terrible year, but if the Royals want to give him a mulligan, I won’t protest too much.
- Speaking of mulligans…can John Bale get two in a row? Last year he didn’t debut until July 15th, but pitched pretty well the second half (4.05 ERA in 40 innings), enough that the Royals decided to try him as a starter this year. That went, ahem, poorly, and then he missed most of the year with a series of injuries, the first of which was self-inflicted. A month ago he was as good as gone. Only he returned this month and has thrown 10.1 scoreless innings, allowed just four hits and two walks. His two-year contract that he signed while in Japan expires, but he’s still arbitration eligible. Given how little he’s pitched, it’s unlikely an arbitrator will award him a raise from $2 million a year. My feeling is that you keep either Gobble or Bale, but not both, unless something bad happens to Ron Mahay. But I don’t think the Royals need to spend money on a lefty reliever in the market either.
- Leo Nunez came back from his oblique pull in mid-July and was awful for five weeks, allowed 21 hits and 7 walks in 13 innings through August 19th. Since then he’s righted the ship, allowed three runs and eight hits in 12.2 innings, with 7 Ks and just one walk. Nunez’s repertoire is pretty basic: his fastball has very good velocity and he controls it very well, but it’s very straight. He’s the perfect middle reliever, in other words; I’ve been comparing him to Julian Tavarez since he was a rookie, and I won’t stop now. Nunez’s ERA has improved three straight years, and he just turned 25 (he was born in the second half of 1983, like seemingly half the pitching staff.) I don’t know that he’s going to get any better than he is today, but what he is today is pretty good. Especially since he’s only the third-best right-handed reliever on the team.
- I have to mention Brandon Duckworth because of the perception that he’s pitched well since taking over from Luke Hochevar. But he hasn’t. His ERA is 5.06, and he’s lucky it’s that low; he’s got as many walks (15) as strikeouts, and while he’s 3-2, all three wins have come against the Tigers and Mariners. It’s great if you can stash a guy like Duckworth in Triple-A for emergencies. But if you’re breaking the glass before the season even begins, you’re in trouble.
- Yasuhiko Yabuta has allowed one run in 5.1 innings. That’s the sound of crickets you hear.
- Devon Lowery has allowed homers in his last two outings, and has allowed six baserunners in 3.1 innings. But he’s also struck out six batters. The biggest surprise with Lowery is simply that he made it to the majors at all with the Royals; he was a prospect of some note in 2004, but over the next three years his ERAs in the minors were 6.06, 5.73, and 7.94. I believe he had some injury issues, and he pitched pretty well as a full-time reliever in the minors this season, but the most compelling reason to be optimistic about his future is that the Royals never gave up on him despite many reasons to. He’s a candidate for the 6th or 7th spots in the bullpen next year, along with about a dozen other guys.
“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” Bart Giamatti wrote the truth. The way the Royals have played this month, at least when the games come to a sudden halt on Sunday, we’ll have some pleasant memories – and the hope that September wasn’t an illusion, but a harbinger of things to come – to keep us company through the fall and winter to come.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
A September To Remember
The Royals are now 15-7 in the month of September, and you have to be a Royals fan to appreciate the magnitude of that. From 1999 through 2008, a span of 10 years, the Royals have had a grand total of nine winning months (counting March as April and October as September). Here, let’s just run all of them:
May 2000: 14-12
August 2000: 15-14
April 2003: 16-7 (+ 1-0 in March)
June 2003: 15-12
July 2003: 15-11
June 2007: 15-12
July 2007: 13-12
June 2008: 16-11
September 2008: 15-7
When the Royals won 16 games in June, who knew it was for just the second time this decade? With just two wins in their last four games – and Meche and Greinke both get one more start each – the Royals will have won 17 games in a calendar month for the first time since August, 1995. How long ago was that? The Royals got a huge spark that month from the major league debut of Johnny Damon.
So it’s been a good month. Good enough that if they win three of their last four games, they’ll meet my projection of 75 wins for the year. Good enough that the Royals have a real shot of finishing out of last place if they beat the Tigers tomorrow. And good enough that we may need to re-evaluate some of the players who have been key to this hot stretch.
I’ve already discussed Shealy, so let’s take a look at some of the other performances this month (numbers not including today’s game):
- DeJesus has hit .395/.440/.580 this month, and .307/.365/.453 overall. Barring a late collapse he’s almost sure to hit .300 for the first time, which is nice, but overall this doesn’t change the calculus on him too much. He’s a nice player and a valuable asset, but I can’t help but think he’d be more valuable to another team with a gaping hole in centerfield (Jon Heyman reports the Yankees are interested). The trick is that the Royals need to focus on acquiring offense this winter, so unless they can trade DeJesus for a masher in one of the corners (Corey Hart, maybe?) or a catcher (Jon Daniels, please pick up the white courtesy phone), it’s unlikely that trading DeJesus is going to improve the team, at least in the short term. Maybe Moore will surprise us.
- Jose Guillen (.380/.430/.557 in September, .267/.304/.446 overall) is back on the upward slope of the sine curve. You can break Guillen’s season down into four parts:
1) Fat slob out of spring training, 3/31 – 5/5: .165/.198/.306
2) In shape, 5/6 – 6/23: .380/.391/.659
3) Hurt but refuses to come out of the lineup, 6/24 – 8/23: .170/.234/.257
4) In shape, 8/24 – today: .352/.398/.552
That’s a streaky player. And streakiness is, on the whole, a good thing if it means that you can harness the good streaks and minimize the bad ones. We know that Guillen, when healthy and motivated, can still be a force in the middle of the lineup. If the Royals can keep him healthy and motivated for 162 games next season, he’ll have a great year, and Trey Hillman will deserve to be Manager of the Year, because no manager has managed to figure out how to do that yet.
The Royals are stuck with him for next year, so Hillman needs to figure out how to handle his prima donna. If Guillen shows up overweight next spring, we’ll know we’re in for another long season. “So-and-so is in the best shape of his career!” stories abound in February. If so-and-so happens to be Jose Guillen, it might actually mean something.
- Mark Teahen (.329/.354/.532, .256/.314/.405) continues to be a tease. Just when we all wrote him off, now he’s back to tantalize us with dreams of 2006 again. And it happens to coincide with his sort-of-return to third base. I believe it’s coincidence. For one thing, he actually hasn’t hit that well when playing third base; his numbers this year are .254/.280/.423 with three homers in 19 games. (He was playing right field in his two-homer game.) And it’s the rare player who definitively hits better playing one position over another – particularly while playing the more demanding defensive position. (The only example I can think of is Frank Thomas, who typically hit much better when playing first base than when used as a DH.)
Should we be worried about the possibility that Teahen plays third base next year? Absolutely, if only because it means that Alex Gordon might move to first base. (And you all thought I was crazy for suggesting that Gordon’s days at third were numbered.) If Gordon moves to first base next year, then Moore and Hillman deserve to be fired. Preferably from a cannon.
I think (hope?) that Teahen’s play at third base has served two purposes: to convince the Royals that he can play the position if need be, and to convince other teams that he can play the position if need be. Teahen’s combination of defensive versatility, broad (if not deep) offensive skills, and relatively young age still make him a valuable commodity. Few players can handle all four corner positions and hit like Teahen, and Teahen even did a decent job of handling center field a few times last season. If Moore can use this hot stretch to market him as a third baseman, great. If he’s playing third base for the Royals on Opening Day, either Gordon’s hurt or someone in the front office will be.
- Callaspo (.315/.346/.438, .313/.368/.383) has done what he’s done all year, although in fairness if you go back to August 23rd (when he returned from the Drunken List) he’s hit an impressive .337, with just four strikeouts in 101 at-bats. Callaspo needs to hit .300 to have value, because he has no power – he has yet to hit a homer in almost 400 major league at-bats – and while he has tremendous bat control, he doesn’t have great patience at the plate. He’s walked 18 times in 201 at-bats this year, 31 in 387 in his career, a rate that is consistent with his minor league record. If he hits .300 he can muster a .350 OBP and have value; if he hits .270 he’s a utility player who can’t handle shortstop, which is useless.
He’s still just 25, and he’s shown enough this year that the Royals ought to leave well enough alone and let him be the starting second baseman next year. I’d go even further, and lead him off. His lack of power won’t be a problem, it will encourage him to take pitches and get on base, and you can’t hit into a double play leading off an inning. (As a contact hitter with no power and no speed, Callaspo is a huge DP threat.)
- Esteban German (.316/.350/.421, .251/.306/.346). German really hasn’t had much to do with the September surge; I just wanted to point out that his horrendous start to the season obscures the fact that he’s played at a 2006-07 level for the last three months. He was sparingly used for the first three months and started the season 10-for-66 with just four walks. Since June 29th, in a lot more playing time (145 at-bats), he’s hit .297/.354/.421. He may not be the Esteban German that was arguably the best utility player in baseball in 2006, but he still has value. There are a lot of things the Royals can do with him this winter – simply releasing him should not be one of those options.
- Alex Gordon (.296/.367/.566, .257/.350/.427) also homered and singled tonight, giving him hits in all eight games since he’s returned. It’s a small sample size, but I continue to hold fast to my belief that he’s about to take a big step forward, and he’s done nothing to make me question my faith in him this month.
- Kila Ka’aihue (.278/.350/.444) has just 20 plate appearances, which include four singles, two walks, just one strikeout, and one very impressive homer. I’m only mentioning him here so I can link to it. It’s just one swing, and I am not a scout, but man…that’s a beautiful sight. Gavin Floyd is prone to the homer because his fastball is straight, but he has pretty good velocity, and that pitch was high and a little outside – you need some serious bat speed to yank that pitch into the right field bleachers. I feel a man-crush coming on.
Pitchers to follow.
May 2000: 14-12
August 2000: 15-14
April 2003: 16-7 (+ 1-0 in March)
June 2003: 15-12
July 2003: 15-11
June 2007: 15-12
July 2007: 13-12
June 2008: 16-11
September 2008: 15-7
When the Royals won 16 games in June, who knew it was for just the second time this decade? With just two wins in their last four games – and Meche and Greinke both get one more start each – the Royals will have won 17 games in a calendar month for the first time since August, 1995. How long ago was that? The Royals got a huge spark that month from the major league debut of Johnny Damon.
So it’s been a good month. Good enough that if they win three of their last four games, they’ll meet my projection of 75 wins for the year. Good enough that the Royals have a real shot of finishing out of last place if they beat the Tigers tomorrow. And good enough that we may need to re-evaluate some of the players who have been key to this hot stretch.
I’ve already discussed Shealy, so let’s take a look at some of the other performances this month (numbers not including today’s game):
- DeJesus has hit .395/.440/.580 this month, and .307/.365/.453 overall. Barring a late collapse he’s almost sure to hit .300 for the first time, which is nice, but overall this doesn’t change the calculus on him too much. He’s a nice player and a valuable asset, but I can’t help but think he’d be more valuable to another team with a gaping hole in centerfield (Jon Heyman reports the Yankees are interested). The trick is that the Royals need to focus on acquiring offense this winter, so unless they can trade DeJesus for a masher in one of the corners (Corey Hart, maybe?) or a catcher (Jon Daniels, please pick up the white courtesy phone), it’s unlikely that trading DeJesus is going to improve the team, at least in the short term. Maybe Moore will surprise us.
- Jose Guillen (.380/.430/.557 in September, .267/.304/.446 overall) is back on the upward slope of the sine curve. You can break Guillen’s season down into four parts:
1) Fat slob out of spring training, 3/31 – 5/5: .165/.198/.306
2) In shape, 5/6 – 6/23: .380/.391/.659
3) Hurt but refuses to come out of the lineup, 6/24 – 8/23: .170/.234/.257
4) In shape, 8/24 – today: .352/.398/.552
That’s a streaky player. And streakiness is, on the whole, a good thing if it means that you can harness the good streaks and minimize the bad ones. We know that Guillen, when healthy and motivated, can still be a force in the middle of the lineup. If the Royals can keep him healthy and motivated for 162 games next season, he’ll have a great year, and Trey Hillman will deserve to be Manager of the Year, because no manager has managed to figure out how to do that yet.
The Royals are stuck with him for next year, so Hillman needs to figure out how to handle his prima donna. If Guillen shows up overweight next spring, we’ll know we’re in for another long season. “So-and-so is in the best shape of his career!” stories abound in February. If so-and-so happens to be Jose Guillen, it might actually mean something.
- Mark Teahen (.329/.354/.532, .256/.314/.405) continues to be a tease. Just when we all wrote him off, now he’s back to tantalize us with dreams of 2006 again. And it happens to coincide with his sort-of-return to third base. I believe it’s coincidence. For one thing, he actually hasn’t hit that well when playing third base; his numbers this year are .254/.280/.423 with three homers in 19 games. (He was playing right field in his two-homer game.) And it’s the rare player who definitively hits better playing one position over another – particularly while playing the more demanding defensive position. (The only example I can think of is Frank Thomas, who typically hit much better when playing first base than when used as a DH.)
Should we be worried about the possibility that Teahen plays third base next year? Absolutely, if only because it means that Alex Gordon might move to first base. (And you all thought I was crazy for suggesting that Gordon’s days at third were numbered.) If Gordon moves to first base next year, then Moore and Hillman deserve to be fired. Preferably from a cannon.
I think (hope?) that Teahen’s play at third base has served two purposes: to convince the Royals that he can play the position if need be, and to convince other teams that he can play the position if need be. Teahen’s combination of defensive versatility, broad (if not deep) offensive skills, and relatively young age still make him a valuable commodity. Few players can handle all four corner positions and hit like Teahen, and Teahen even did a decent job of handling center field a few times last season. If Moore can use this hot stretch to market him as a third baseman, great. If he’s playing third base for the Royals on Opening Day, either Gordon’s hurt or someone in the front office will be.
- Callaspo (.315/.346/.438, .313/.368/.383) has done what he’s done all year, although in fairness if you go back to August 23rd (when he returned from the Drunken List) he’s hit an impressive .337, with just four strikeouts in 101 at-bats. Callaspo needs to hit .300 to have value, because he has no power – he has yet to hit a homer in almost 400 major league at-bats – and while he has tremendous bat control, he doesn’t have great patience at the plate. He’s walked 18 times in 201 at-bats this year, 31 in 387 in his career, a rate that is consistent with his minor league record. If he hits .300 he can muster a .350 OBP and have value; if he hits .270 he’s a utility player who can’t handle shortstop, which is useless.
He’s still just 25, and he’s shown enough this year that the Royals ought to leave well enough alone and let him be the starting second baseman next year. I’d go even further, and lead him off. His lack of power won’t be a problem, it will encourage him to take pitches and get on base, and you can’t hit into a double play leading off an inning. (As a contact hitter with no power and no speed, Callaspo is a huge DP threat.)
- Esteban German (.316/.350/.421, .251/.306/.346). German really hasn’t had much to do with the September surge; I just wanted to point out that his horrendous start to the season obscures the fact that he’s played at a 2006-07 level for the last three months. He was sparingly used for the first three months and started the season 10-for-66 with just four walks. Since June 29th, in a lot more playing time (145 at-bats), he’s hit .297/.354/.421. He may not be the Esteban German that was arguably the best utility player in baseball in 2006, but he still has value. There are a lot of things the Royals can do with him this winter – simply releasing him should not be one of those options.
- Alex Gordon (.296/.367/.566, .257/.350/.427) also homered and singled tonight, giving him hits in all eight games since he’s returned. It’s a small sample size, but I continue to hold fast to my belief that he’s about to take a big step forward, and he’s done nothing to make me question my faith in him this month.
- Kila Ka’aihue (.278/.350/.444) has just 20 plate appearances, which include four singles, two walks, just one strikeout, and one very impressive homer. I’m only mentioning him here so I can link to it. It’s just one swing, and I am not a scout, but man…that’s a beautiful sight. Gavin Floyd is prone to the homer because his fastball is straight, but he has pretty good velocity, and that pitch was high and a little outside – you need some serious bat speed to yank that pitch into the right field bleachers. I feel a man-crush coming on.
Pitchers to follow.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Royals Today: 9/18/2008.
Well, this was unexpected.
A week ago today, a BP colleague sent me a message, unbidden, just to rail about the Royals' unprofessional approach at the plate.
"17 outs in 18 batters on 53 pitches. That's less than three pitches a batter. I don't care who you're facing...that's a team quitting right in front of you.
Maybe theDayton Moore Kansas City 15, in that span. If this streak happened to start on Opening Day, we’d all be lining up to buy playoff tickets now. It’s probably best that it’s come in the middle of September, when we have the context to put it in the proper perspective.
And let’s not overlook the fact that the last four wins have come against the Mariners, who are hurtling towards 100 losses and a permanent place on the list of Worst Teams For The Money Of All Time. (The Mariners’ payroll on Opening Day clocked in around $117 million.) The Royals’ other hot stretch this season – winning 11 of12 in June – came exclusively against NL teams. So all we’ve learned is that the Royals can beat up on inferior opponents. That’s certainly progress – the Royals couldn’t beat up on anybody the last four years – but it’s just the first step.
No one has been more impactful over the last week than Ryan Shealy, who – I know you guys all knows this – has hit twice as many homers (6) since he was called up two weeks ago as Ross Gload as hit (3) all season. Shealy has hit five homers in the seven-game winning streak, and thanks to him, the aggregate numbers for the team’s first baseman in all games this year - .281/.324/.400 with 13 homers and 63 RBIs – are merely bad instead of execrable. (As a team, the Royals are neck-and-neck with the Rangers’ first basemen (.245/.310/.415) in OPS, and well ahead ofSeattle Oakland
Far be it for me to splash the cold water of reason on the giddy excitement over Shealy’s performance, but I remain skeptical. This is the same guy who hit .221/.286/.308 in nearly 200 plate appearances last year. More to the point – since Shealy was dealing with some injury issues last year – this is the same guy who hit .283/.376/.503 inOmaha
In 155 major league games, Shealy has a career line of .274/.335/.435. That’s a reasonable expectation of what he’ll do over a full season. It’s not awful, but it’s not anything to get excited about.Moore
I have previously argued strenuously that the Royals should be giving Kila Ka’aihue more playing time, and I stand by that argument. But the crux of that argument was that playing Gload over Ka’aihue (or Shealy) was a case of criminal negligence. The Royals know what they have in Gload; they have no idea what they have in Ka’aihue, and they need to find out. But they also need to find out what they have in Shealy, and with even more urgency given his age.
I remain intensely curious to see what Ka’aihue can do with the stick, and his brief appearances this year (4 hits in 11 at-bats, two walks and just one strikeout) only whet my appetite further. But I can see the wisdom of sending him back toOmaha
Maybe that’s why I can’t get all that enthused about Shealy. Not because he’s not playing well, or that he can’t continue to play well, but simply that his performance this month simply reminds us how ridiculous it is that the Royals waited until September to see what he could do. Moore and Hillman simply could not find a place on a 25-man roster for Shealy – they had to wait until rosters expanded to 40, because how could they find a place for a first baseman who can hit for power when they’re carrying Gload and Joey Gathright and Tony Effing Pena?
The Royals started the season 23-37 before they decided that maybe they should find a replacement in the lineup for Pena and his .156 average. Mike Aviles became the starting shortstop on June 6th, and the Royals would win 14 of their next 20 games; overall the Royals are 46-47 sinceAviles
And that’s what all this is about, right? It’s about winning games. It’s not about having the best glove at first base or at shortstop – it’s about scoring more runs than your opponents, and a run created on offense is as valuable as a run saved on defense. If Pena’s glove was really so valuable, the Royals wouldn’t have won more games when he was replaced. If Gload’s glove was so valuable, the Royals wouldn’t have gone on a hot streak the moment he was benched.
Never underestimate the power of common sense. It never ceases to amaze me how much time teams devote to details like “fundamentals”, and how little time they devote to big-picture issues like, say, the fact that you can’t win with a shortstop whose batting average peaked at .200 on Opening Day, and hasn’t been over .182 since, or the fact that you can’t win with a first baseman who hits .270, walks once a week, and hits a home run every other month.
The difference between having Pena and Gload start every day in April, and havingAviles
(I spent 30 minutes trying to get this article to post right, and I've still ended up with an article where the font size and line spacing changes three or four times for no reason. If anyone has any tips on how to use Blogger better - or a suggestion on a better service to use - I'm all ears.)
A week ago today, a BP colleague sent me a message, unbidden, just to rail about the Royals' unprofessional approach at the plate.
"17 outs in 18 batters on 53 pitches. That's less than three pitches a batter. I don't care who you're facing...that's a team quitting right in front of you.
Maybe the
What could I say? No team should make 17 outs in the span of 53 pitches unless the stadium is on fire and they need to evacuate. But the Royals won that game, amusingly enough, beating Francisco Liriano thanks to five shutout innings from the bullpen. They lost the next night, but still managed to score five runs off Cliff Lee, only the fourth time this year that’s happened. They still managed to see just 98 pitches all game, and I wrote then that I hoped “we’ll look on September 12th, 2008 as the day the team’s persistent and criminal neglect of plate discipline finally reached its nadir.”
They haven’t lost since. They’ve won seven games in a row for the first time since Jeremy Affeldt and Runelvys Hernandez shared the mantle of staff ace, since Carlos Beltran manned center field, since Angel Berroa was a budding Rookie of the Year. Today, they completed a sweep of the Mariners with a 12-0 beating, and drew eight – count ‘em, eight – walks.
Yeah, I didn’t see that coming.
In the process, the Royals may have changed the story arc of their season. Suddenly the Royals have matched last season’s win total of 69 with nine games left to go. Before the season I predicted 73 wins, then upped that total to 75 wins after Greinke had a terrific spring training (an adjustment that seems prescient in light of how well he’s pitched.) At 69-84 with nine games left, 73-89 is well within reach; 75-87 is a worthy goal to shoot for. With two more wins, the Royals will have had their first winning September since 1996.
A week ago, we had good reason to worry that Trey Hillman was losing the clubhouse. Today, we can at least hold out hope that whatever damage has been done to his reputation with his players is not irreversible. Teams that have tuned out their manager don’t win seven straight games in September. Hillman didn’t handle his latest spat with Jose Guillen optimally – if he was sick, then say he’s sick, and if he’s not, you still say he’s sick – but at least he handled it better than in his previous attempts, which essentially amounted to holding Guillen to a different standard than the other 24 guys in the locker room.
And let’s not overlook the fact that the last four wins have come against the Mariners, who are hurtling towards 100 losses and a permanent place on the list of Worst Teams For The Money Of All Time. (The Mariners’ payroll on Opening Day clocked in around $117 million.) The Royals’ other hot stretch this season – winning 11 of
No one has been more impactful over the last week than Ryan Shealy, who – I know you guys all knows this – has hit twice as many homers (6) since he was called up two weeks ago as Ross Gload as hit (3) all season. Shealy has hit five homers in the seven-game winning streak, and thanks to him, the aggregate numbers for the team’s first baseman in all games this year - .281/.324/.400 with 13 homers and 63 RBIs – are merely bad instead of execrable. (As a team, the Royals are neck-and-neck with the Rangers’ first basemen (.245/.310/.415) in OPS, and well ahead of
Far be it for me to splash the cold water of reason on the giddy excitement over Shealy’s performance, but I remain skeptical. This is the same guy who hit .221/.286/.308 in nearly 200 plate appearances last year. More to the point – since Shealy was dealing with some injury issues last year – this is the same guy who hit .283/.376/.503 in
In 155 major league games, Shealy has a career line of .274/.335/.435. That’s a reasonable expectation of what he’ll do over a full season. It’s not awful, but it’s not anything to get excited about.
I have previously argued strenuously that the Royals should be giving Kila Ka’aihue more playing time, and I stand by that argument. But the crux of that argument was that playing Gload over Ka’aihue (or Shealy) was a case of criminal negligence. The Royals know what they have in Gload; they have no idea what they have in Ka’aihue, and they need to find out. But they also need to find out what they have in Shealy, and with even more urgency given his age.
I remain intensely curious to see what Ka’aihue can do with the stick, and his brief appearances this year (4 hits in 11 at-bats, two walks and just one strikeout) only whet my appetite further. But I can see the wisdom of sending him back to
Maybe that’s why I can’t get all that enthused about Shealy. Not because he’s not playing well, or that he can’t continue to play well, but simply that his performance this month simply reminds us how ridiculous it is that the Royals waited until September to see what he could do. Moore and Hillman simply could not find a place on a 25-man roster for Shealy – they had to wait until rosters expanded to 40, because how could they find a place for a first baseman who can hit for power when they’re carrying Gload and Joey Gathright and Tony Effing Pena?
The Royals started the season 23-37 before they decided that maybe they should find a replacement in the lineup for Pena and his .156 average. Mike Aviles became the starting shortstop on June 6th, and the Royals would win 14 of their next 20 games; overall the Royals are 46-47 since
And that’s what all this is about, right? It’s about winning games. It’s not about having the best glove at first base or at shortstop – it’s about scoring more runs than your opponents, and a run created on offense is as valuable as a run saved on defense. If Pena’s glove was really so valuable, the Royals wouldn’t have won more games when he was replaced. If Gload’s glove was so valuable, the Royals wouldn’t have gone on a hot streak the moment he was benched.
Never underestimate the power of common sense. It never ceases to amaze me how much time teams devote to details like “fundamentals”, and how little time they devote to big-picture issues like, say, the fact that you can’t win with a shortstop whose batting average peaked at .200 on Opening Day, and hasn’t been over .182 since, or the fact that you can’t win with a first baseman who hits .270, walks once a week, and hits a home run every other month.
The difference between having Pena and Gload start every day in April, and having
(I spent 30 minutes trying to get this article to post right, and I've still ended up with an article where the font size and line spacing changes three or four times for no reason. If anyone has any tips on how to use Blogger better - or a suggestion on a better service to use - I'm all ears.)
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Looking to 2009: The Pitchers, Part 2
I hope that one day, years from now, when the Royals are in a good place and we can all have a good laugh at the 2K Royals, we’ll look on September 12th, 2008 as the day the team’s persistent and criminal neglect of plate discipline finally reached its nadir. Last night, the Royals managed to rap out 11 hits and five runs with the help of a three-run ninth. The team sent 37 hitters to the plate. Yet somehow the Indians threw just 98 pitches in the entire game.
Thirty-seven batters. Ninety-eight pitches. It goes without saying that, for the second straight game, the Royals didn’t draw a walk – but they didn’t even see a three-ball count. They have six walks in their last seven games. And the beat goes on.
(And then there’s this gem from Dick Kaegel’s game recap: “Although Royals manager Trey Hillman was rather satisfied with his batters' approach, Lee found them a bit overanxious.”)
Anyway…we need to figure out who should occupy the last three slots of the rotation for next year. For the #3 and #4 slots, at least, my answers won’t be all that interesting: they’re the same guys who occupied those slots this year.
Brian Bannister has thrown 165.2 innings this year; he threw 165 innings last year, so we can make a pretty easy comparison. Compared to 2007, Bannister has struck out far more batters (106 to 77) and walked a few more batters (54 to 44). Do 29 more strikeouts make up for 10 more walks? I’d say so. Assuming that approximately 30% of balls in play turn into hits, then 29 more strikeouts = 29 fewer balls in play = 8.7 fewer hits. A few of those hits will be doubles and triples, but even if they’re all singles, you’d rather give up 10 walks than 8.7 singles.
It’s obviously not that simple. While Bannister’s altered approach this season has benefited his strikeout-to-walk ratio, it’s come at the expense of way too many fly balls. Bannister gave up 15 homers last season; he’s given up 27 this year, an enormous difference that can’t be chalked up to mere randomness. His groundball/flyball ratio, which was 1.13 last season – roughly league-average – has dropped to 0.95 this year, which is solid flyball territory. For most of the season, Bannister has tried to record more strikeouts by throwing to blow four-seam fastballs up in the zone past hitters. He has succeeded to some degree, but that success has come at too great a cost: four-seam fastballs with average velocity quickly become souvenirs if they aren’t located just right.
As Bannister has become more flyball oriented, not surprisingly, he has become far more dependent on his home park, as Kauffman Stadium is one of the best places for a flyball pitcher to ply his trade. Bannister actually has a lower ERA at home this year (3.55) than last (4.32). But last season, he pitched even better on the road, with a 3.48 ERA and just 7 homers allowed in 88 innings. This year, he has a 9.63 ERA on the road, and away from Kauffman Stadium he has allowed 14 homers in 62 innings.
(P.S. Remember all that talk about how good Bannister was in the daytime? His ERA in day games this year is now higher than at night, 5.89 to 5.76. As a general rule of thumb: when a player has a marked performance split in a small sample size for no obvious reason, the most likely explanation is no explanation at all.)
Bannister knows these splits as well as you and I, and so it’s not a surprise that after his 10-run debacle at Yankee Stadium last month, he decided that the cure was worse than the disease. He has stated he’s going back to using his two-seamer more often, giving up contact in exchange for power. He was doing much better with this approach until his last start, when he got dinked for 10 hits in
Which is, of course, the biggest difference between this year and last. Last year, batters hit .262 on balls in play; this year, they’re hitting .310. There was no way that Bannister could sustain his BABIP from last season, and it would be silly to act surprised that he hasn’t. The upshot of this is that Bannister really hasn’t pitched that much worse than he did last year. He’s given up a lot more homers, but otherwise his performance is the same. Of course, when you strip away the BABIP factor, Bannister didn’t pitch all that well last year to begin with.
Last season, I told anyone who would listen regarding Bannister that it was time to sell high. Now that the market correction has come, it’s time to buy low. I don’t think Bannister will ever be as good a pitcher as he appeared to be last season, a legitimate #2 starter. But I think he can be as good a pitcher as he really was in 2007: a league-average pitcher, a guy who can give you 200 innings with an ERA in the mid-4s.
Bannister learned this season that he can’t be something he’s not, that he can’t be a power pitcher just because he wants to be. But you know what? There are going to be times in the future when he needs a strikeout in a key situation. There are going to be times when he gets ahead 0-2 on a batter and decides to go for the kill instead of subject himself to the vagaries of the batted ball. If Bannister can go back to being the command-and-control finesse pitcher he’s always been, but apply the lessons he’s learned this year to dial it up a notch when he needs to, he’s going to bounce back just fine.
Now is not the time for the Royals to cut bait. If Bannister has another year like
Luke Hochevar is a very different pitcher than Bannister, owing to his excellent sinker, but his performance this year was equally uninspiring. In Hochevar’s case, he definitely deserves another year in the rotation, for a variety of reasons: his age (he turns 25 on Monday), his pedigree, and the fact that even in a rookie season in which he finished with a 5.51 ERA, he surrendered just 12 homers in 129 innings. Opposing batters hit .280/.345/.413 against Cool Hand this year, and those are not numbers which ordinarily lead to a 5.51 ERA.
In his last 13 starts covering 76 innings, Hochevar walked just 15 batters and allowed just 6 homers, but still had a 5.78 ERA in that span. That combination of control and sink is going to be successful in the long run no matter how few batters you strike out – that Chien-Ming Wang territory right there. In the short run, Hochevar did poorly because batters hit .338 against him with runners in scoring position. That number will inevitably drop, and so will his ERA. Give him another year of development – let’s remember, this was just his second full pro season – and some regression to the mean, and that ERA could easily drop a run-and-a-half next year.
The #5 starter could be any one of a number of guys. Kyle Davies hasn’t pitched all that well, but you’ll take a 4.70 ERA from your #5 starter any day. The problem is that Davies has been as lucky with his ERA as Hochevar has been unlucky; batters have hit .297/.366/.454 against Davies, which usually results in an ERA in the mid-5s. There isn’t much in Davies’ statistical profile that augurs for more success, other than his age (he’s six days older than Hochevar). I think Davies would serve well as a long man and spot starter, but I think he’s going to falter if given another rotation spot next year.
In his place, the Royals have a number of reasonably good options, and they also have Brandon Duckworth. (In 112 innings with the Royals over the past three years, Ducky has 59 walks and just 58 strikeouts, but has been reasonably successful because he’s allowed just six homers. He’s always been homer-prone in his career – he allowed 23 homers in just 135 innings for
The reasonable options include signing a veteran starter – preferably not one named Brett Tomko – to a one-year deal; going with a youngster like Carlos Rosa or Daniel Cortes; moving Robinson Tejeda back to the rotation (though I personally think that’s a bad idea); or just holding an open tryout in spring training and hoping that someone emerges who’s capable of giving you five decent innings every fifth day.
Or, you know, you could move Joakim Soria into the rotation, a move which would be bold, have the potential for enormous returns, and have a limited downside, because you can always move him back to the bullpen if he struggles in the rotation. Naturally, this means the Royals won’t do it.
The most important point regarding the rotation is that in addition to having two true studs, the Royals don’t have any enormous holes to fill. They have two pitchers who represent a gamble for different reasons, and they have the usual mélange of somewhat unsavory options that every team has for their #5 starter. But they don’t have to go outside the organization for help. Not only that, but they have a number of young pitchers who are nearly ready to step into a rotation role.
Rosa could be ready as soon as spring training if he’s healthy; including a brief stint with the Royals this year, he whiffed 89 batters in 99 innings and allowed just 19 walks, but missed most of the season’s second half with a forearm strain. Cortes needs another full year in the minors, but he’s just 21 and could be a rotation anchor for much of the 2010s. And behind those two there are a number of second-tier prospects, like Blake Wood and Blake Johnson and Julio Pimental, one of who might elevate his game next season and become a legitimate option for the rotation. Then you get to the low minors, where the Royals have as much pitching as all but a few organizations in baseball.
Ultimately, I think that whatever improvement the Royals will make for next year will come on offense, and since the options for improvement through free agency are limited, the Royals will be best-served by trading some of their pitching prospects for immediate help in the lineup. The Royals have a ton of good pitching prospects, but no great pitching prospects; even Cortes projects as a #2 starter in the minds of most scouts. So the loss of any one or two of these guys is unlikely to be crippling. This doesn’t mean the Royals try to replicate their trade of Eric Cordier for Tony Pena Jr. Rather than trade a less buzzworthy prospect for a bandaid solution, the Royals ought to seriously consider trading Cortes or Rosa, or even someone like Dan Duffy, in order to get a legitimate, long-term solution in centerfield or behind the plate.
And ultimately, I think Dayton Moore is going to do something like that. Since he was hired he has spoken about pitching being the currency of baseball. Well, currency only has value if you spend it. Having diligently saved up for the past few years, it might finally be time to splurge a little.
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