Banned!

Whew.

As those of you who follow me on twitter (@jazayerli) know, the Royals are PISSED OFF at me right now. Let’s just say you won’t hear anyone from the front office on my radio show anytime soon.

I confess to being surprised that after years of being critical of the Royals when criticism was warranted – which, as their win-loss record shows, is most of the time – my last post should have set them off like that. I must have overlooked the rules of decorum that go with evaluating the record of Supreme Court Justice Nick Swartz. Criticize a player, liken the manager’s intelligence with that of a farm animal, call for the GM’s head: these are all acceptable things. But suggest that the trainer might need to be upgraded after 19 years – well, that’s beyond the pale.

I empathize with the team’s frustration at the fact that I’m not present at the stadium to be held accountable for what I write. I’m as surprised as anyone that 13 years after I started writing professionally, and six years after I settled in Chicago with my family, I’ve suddenly become an established part of the Kansas City sports media scene. I’d be more than happy to show my face at the stadium regularly if it were at all practical – believe me, I have no intention of becoming the (Jay) Mariotti on the Missouri. (Fortunately, I’ve got a long way to go on that front. By now Mariotti – from the comfort of his home – would have accused Bob Dutton of being spineless for not asking the tough questions in the clubhouse.)

But just because I’m not at Kauffman Stadium is no reason to take your frustrations out on other people – in front of half the local media, no less. If you’ve got a problem with something I wrote, by all means, contact me – I’m not hard to get ahold of. I’m a big boy; I can handle it.

I was, in fact, planning to show my face at the ballpark in two weeks. We had been working behind the scenes for the past several weeks to put together a Baseball Prospectus night at Kauffman Stadium – an event that we have held with much success at a number of major league parks around the country. We even had the date tentatively set for July 17^th, we were lining up guests from Kansas City and around the country, and I was just a few days away from announcing the details to all of you fine readers. Unfortunately, that event is now on indefinite hiatus. I guess the Royals have no interest in selling 100+ tickets to their Hall of Fame Suites at $80 a pop.

Having already cleared the weekend on my schedule, I’m still planning to come to town that weekend, so maybe I’ll get the chance to face the heat. Or maybe not: I was just informed last night that I’ve been blacklisted by the team. That’s right: I’ve been banned by the Royals! The way this team is playing, I’m not sure if the Royals are trying to punish me or reward me.

(EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION: Just to be clear here, since I think everyone's taking my words a little too literally: I don't think I've been "banned" in the sense that they're going to have security guards outside the stadium making sure that I don't buy a ticket. It does mean that the Royals have cut off any access I may have from the team for my radio show, and - this is critical - have intimated that any other radio show which has me on as a guest faces the same penalty.

I see this as the equivalent of having my media credentials taken away, except of course that I don't have media credentials, and the Royals have made it clear they don't give media credentials to bloggers.)

But enough about me. That’s one of the regrettable things about all this: that I’ve become part of the story, which is something I never wanted. The sad reality, though, is that there was no way to avoid becoming part of this story without reporting on the story in the first place. And I wouldn’t have been doing my job if I didn’t comment on an issue that was on the minds of Royals fans everywhere.

The post – and the Royals’ reaction to it – has earned me a ton of feedback from people who are much closer to the situation than I am. That feedback has been pretty unanimous: the training/medical staff, as a whole, is an embarrassment, and a significant detriment to the Royals when compared to that of other teams. There has been considerably less unanimity on the subject of Nick Swartz: some people feel he is the problem, some people feel he is merely the face of a much larger problem. No one, I should stress, feels he is part of the solution.

If there’s one thing I wish I had done differently with my last column, it’s that I wish I had taken out a shotgun instead of a laser-guided sniper rifle. It seemed to me – and still seems to me – that when 1) the medical care of your players has been substandard for close to two decades and 2) you’ve had the same trainer for those same two decades, that you ought to replace the trainer. But I was wrong when I said that “EVERY SINGLE person involved with baseball operations has been replaced in that span – why should Swartz be the exception?” It turns out that there is one other exception. I’m hesitant to even mention this, so here – I’ll just quote directly from the Royals’ website:

“Dr. Steve Joyce begins his 31st year as a Team Physician and 23rd as the Head Team Physician for the Royals. Dr. Joyce is an orthopedic surgeon at Dickson-Dively Midwest Orthopedic Clinic and Kansas City Orthopedic Institute, which was established in 1999. He was the President of the Major League Baseball Physicians Association in 1994 and 1995.”

Yeah, it’s probably best that I leave it at that.

Contrary to what the Royals might think, I don’t have a vendetta against Swartz. I don’t have an agenda here – unless you count “I want to see the Royals win” as an agenda. But sports is the ultimate results-based industry. In the short run, excuses are fine. In the long run, well, it doesn’t matter how good your reasons are for missing the playoffs year after year – all that matters is that you miss the playoffs year after year. If you’re not successful, you lose your job and someone else gets the opportunity to see if they can be successful. If they’re not, the wheel turns yet again. Such is life.

In the short run, maybe no one’s to blame for the fact that Coco Crisp tried to play through an injury that ultimately ended his season. In the long run, when there are stories like Coco Crisp’s year after year after 19 freaking years – someone needs to be held accountable. It is astonishing to me that not only do the Royals not see that, but that they would take offense at anyone who might dare to suggest that the same rules that apply to players and coaches and managers should also apply to trainers.

Look, if the Royals want me to concede that I’m not completely sure that Swartz is the problem: fine, I’ll happily concede that. Without access to medical records - which I will not and should not have access to - I can't be completely sure. Just as I wasn’t completely sure that Buddy Bell was a bad hire, or that Tony Pena couldn’t hit, or that spending $1.8 million on Horacio Ramirez was a waste of money.

But I am certain – as certain as I’ve been of anything related to the Royals since the day they traded Jermaine Dye for Neifi Perez – that THERE IS A PROBLEM. If the Royals don’t think that Swartz is the problem, then by all means, keep him – but figure out what the problem is.

If it means firing Swartz, then fire Swartz. If it means keeping Swartz but firing the rest of your training staff, or finding new team doctors, or conducting full-body MRIs of every player on a weekly basis – then do it. The only thing the Royals can’t do is deny reality. They can’t hide from the fact that, for a time period that stretches well into the last century, the team has lost way too many players to injuries that, if not preventable, were at least manageable.

There have been too many Crisps, too many Affeldts, too many Rosados, too many Jim Pittsleys. (Even more than Rosado, Pittsley – one of the best pitching prospects the team ever had before he hurt his elbow – was poorly-served by the team’s medical staff.) There’s just too much damn evidence. It’s time to fix the problem, but the Royals can’t fix the problem if they don’t identify the problem. And they can’t identify the problem if they won’t admit there’s a problem.

Or, hey, they can just circle the wagons and ban some blogger in Chicago for having the temerity to write on-the-record what everyone in the KC media has been saying off-the-record for years. (A blogger, mind you, who is notorious for being stupidly optimistic about the Royals. I mean, I wrote this less than two months ago.)

Better still, they can have the chutzpah to do that the day after Trey Hillman goes out of his way during his pre-game comments to complement “Nick and his crew” for the work they’ve been doing – and then THE VERY NEXT DAY announce that another everyday player who was allowed to play after being diagnosed with an injury is now out for the season. (By the way, gotta love this quote from Mike Aviles yesterday (emphasis mine): “It’s definitely disappointing,” Aviles said, “but I know something’s wrong there because it wasn’t getting any better. When I got a second opinion, that’s when we found the tear.”)

It’s your choice, guys. Just know that the hallmark of good organizations is that they don’t shoot the messenger.

That’s what has upset me most about all this. Ever since Dayton Moore was hired, I have largely taken the position that the Royals – while not yet a good team – were a good organization. That is very much in question now. Good organizations don’t make excuses for injuries at the same time that they’re using those injuries as an excuse. Good organizations don’t whine about the media in one of the smallest and most accommodating media markets in the country. Good organizations realize that when they’ve won 15 of their last 48 games, they have more important things to worry about than what the media is saying. Good organizations don’t use Luis Hernandez as a pinch-hitter. And God Almighty, good organizations don’t treat one of their most valuable players the way the Royals treated Gil Meche yesterday.

You’re better than this, guys. Stop trying to match the arrogance and the secrecy of the Pioli family across the street. (Trust me: you can’t. No one can. It’s not possible.) Stop worrying about the criticism that you’re getting from people like me – what, are you guys going to ban Posnanski now too? – and start looking at your organization with a critical eye yourselves. The defining hallmark of good organizations is that they are more critical of themselves than any outsider would be. And God knows there’s an awful lot to be critical about.

Release The Hounds.

Among the many things that have made the Royals’ long and almost uninterrupted stretch of futility even more exasperating is that it has occurred under the watch of so many different people. Since 1995, when the Royals began their stretch of 13 losing seasons in 14 years (soon to be 14 in 15), the Royals have operated under three different general managers; five different full-time managers; and more hitting and (especially) pitching coaches than I can count. Heck, they’ve even had two owners in that stretch, if you count the leaderless Kauffman Trust as an “owner”.

The losing might be more understandable if it happened on the watch of a single, woefully incompetent front office, like the Detroit Lions under Matt Millen. It’s more mystifying, and harder to accept, when the losing transcends administrations. The stench of the Royals is so overpowering that it immediately infects whoever is so unfortunate to get hired to work at the Truman Sports Complex.

But what if I told you that there is, in fact, one person who has been with the Royals for the last 15 years? What if I told you that he occupied a position of considerable importance; that by all appearances he was as bad at his job as anyone in the organization; and that, despite this, he enjoys unparalleled job security? Wouldn’t that trouble you a little?

It certainly troubles me. It especially troubles me that, even though this person is having probably their worst year ever in 2009, no one – not the team, not the media, not even the fans – seems to be pointing fingers in his direction.

So let me be the one to crash the party here and say what needs to be said: Nick Swartz needs to be fired. Immediately.

I have long hesitated to wade into a discussion about the team’s medical staff, because as a physician myself I’m paranoid that someone might use my credentials inappropriately in this discussion. So let me be clear: in advocating for Swartz’s dismissal, I am not speaking as some sort of expert witness. I do not have access to any of the players’ medical records, and am not basing my opinion on some sort of medical expertise. I am arguing as a fan, and using the evidence that is available to all fans – the results on the field.

Swartz has been the Head Athletic Trainer for the Royals since 1991, replacing a legend in Mickey Cobb. Despite the fact that he has been the team’s trainer for nearly two decades, Swartz is in no danger of becoming a legend himself. Far from it: his reputation around baseball is not stellar. Over at Baseball Prospectus, our injury guru Will Carroll created the Dick Martin Award in 2003 to honor the best training staff in the majors each season. In the six seasons that he’s been handing out the award, the Royals have been conspicuous in their absence from even consideration for the award.

If there was an award for worst training staff in the majors, the Royals would be the runaway leaders at this point in the season. Let’s document some of the medical decisions that have been made:

1) While warming up in the bullpen as Zack Greinke finished off a shutout in Texas on April 18^th, Joakim Soria felt a twinge in his shoulder. The Royals decided to keep things quiet, even though Soria did not pitch in a game where he was obviously needed on April 19^th. Soria would wobble through a save situation on April 22^nd, after which Trey Hillman finally came clean and admitted that Soria was hurting. The Royals shut him down for a few days but did not put him on the DL, and he was back in action on May 2^nd – and pitched again the very next day. When he took the mound again on May 7^th, Soria suffered through his worst outing of the season – and then finally went on the DL, and did not return until June 3^rd.

2) Mike Aviles, after hitting .325 as a rookie last year, hits just .194 with one homer in his first 32 games this season, before finally coming clean on May 14^th and admitting that his forearm was bothering him. Instead of putting him on the DL, the Royals give him a few days off, then put him back in the lineup on May 20^th. Aviles goes 1-for-12 over the next four days, then finally goes on the DL, and his injury turned out to be serious enough that he eventually was evaluated by Tommy John surgery guru Dr. Lewis Yocum. While he hasn’t undergone surgery – yet – his return is still unclear.

And, of course, the coup de grace:

3) Coco Crisp got off to a great start for the Royals, and as late as May 20^th was hitting .245/.360/.429. On May 21^st Crisp sat out with a sore shoulder, which was the first sign that he had any kind of an injury. The Royals downplayed the seriousness of it. “His shoulder is tender. Occasionally it’s going to get that way,” Hillman said.

Crisp was back in the lineup the next day, and played in five consecutive games, but was just 2-for-16 in that span. On May 26^th Crisp was pulled from the game after four innings after he had difficulty swinging the bat from the left side. At that point we learned that Crisp’s shoulder problem was not a new one. “Although Crisp has been bothered by a sore shoulder periodically since Spring Training, he’d played in 44 of the Royals’ 46 games.” Hillman also let us know that the soreness worsened in late April. “It got a little worse three weeks to a month into the season,” Hillman said. “There was some soreness, but not as much as there has been recently.” Through April 25^th, Crisp was hitting .262/.384/.525. From that point until May 26^th, he hit just .216/.329/.324.

Crisp was kept out of the lineup for the next four days, and then went on the bereavement list for three more when his great-grandmother passed away. He returned on June 4^th and went straight back into the lineup. He was 0-for-7 over the next two days, then once again was rested for three days – two games along with an off-day. He returned to the lineup on June 9^th, then sat on the 10^th because the Royals didn’t feel he was 100% batting left-handed. Even at this point, the Royals were downplaying his injury:

“I think there's still some discomfort in there [batting] left-handed so I thought it’d be a good opportunity to move Willie [Bloomquist] around and get T.J. [Tony Pena Jr.] back in the middle of the diamond and see how we roll there,” Hillman said…

Hillman said that holding out Crisp did not indicate more problems with the shoulder.

“No setbacks,” he said.

Crisp was back in the lineup the next day. The day after that, June 12^th, Crisp was pinch-hit for by Mitch Maier in the bottom of the seventh. He did not play the following day. On the 14^th, he was finally put on the DL.

“We've tried it three [days], we’ve tried it four, we've tried it six and it wasn’t enough rest to let the irritation and the inflammation settle down in that right shoulder,” Hillman said. “Through compensating for it and trying to fight through it, we’ve got to give it the rest that it needs.”

On June 19^th, Crisp headed to see Dr. James Andrews after the team feared that what they thought was a strained rotator cuff was in fact a torn labrum. “I don’t know what it is yet,” general manager Dayton Moore cautioned. “We’re going to get a second opinion, but he’s been battling this for about five weeks now. He tried to play through it before we made the decision to put him on the disabled list.

Yesterday, Andrews confirmed the worst; Crisp underwent surgery today and is out for the year. He may not even be ready for the start of next season - it is quite possible that his time in a Royals uniform is over.

I don’t know about you, but to me, the handling of Coco Crisp’s shoulder injury is by itself a fireable offense. Crisp was playing – terribly, mind you – with a bum shoulder FOR FIVE WEEKS, and even after his shoulder pain became severe enough that he could no longer play, the Royals kept shuffling him in and out of the lineup for three weeks, putting him back out there as soon as the pain became tolerable again.

But the pain didn’t go away. It only got worse, and presumably his shoulder only got worse. The question that no one can answer is whether, five weeks ago, Crisp already had a torn labrum, or whether the injury occurred while trying to play through the inflammation. We can’t answer it, but we sure as hell can speculate. As far as I’m concerned, the Royals’ ham-fisted approach to Coco Crisp’s shoulder turned an injury which might have healed with a few weeks of rest into a season-ender.

The ham-fisted approach to Soria’s shoulder turned a quick 15-day DL stint into a six-week drama. We don’t know the nature of Aviles’ prognosis yet, but the fact that the Royals commandeered him into playing again even after he came clean with the injury certainly could not have helped.

This is a trend, people. When the Royals downplay the extent of an injury, then give the player a few days off before sticking him back out there, and only later realize the injury was worse than expected THREE TIMES in the span of less than three months, this is not bad luck. This is incompetence, plain and simple. And while Hillman and Moore are the ones quoted above, they’re making those decisions based on the medical information they’ve been given. And the point man for all that information is Nick Swartz.

Oh, and I didn’t even mention the decision to let Gil Meche pitch through his back injury. Meche has been amazingly durable since joining the Royals; he tied for the league lead with 34 starts in both 2007 and 2008, and leads the league outright this year with 15 so far. But the fact is that on April 28^th, Meche gave up five runs before coming out of the game in the fourth inning with back stiffness. Despite this, Meche did not miss a start, and over his next five starts he threw just 24.1 innings and allowed 19 runs. Meche, at least, didn’t seem to aggravate his back problems by continuing to pitch every fifth day, but neither was he helping his team out.

It’s not like 2009 is such an outlier either – it seems like every year some Royals player has an injury that lingers beyond any reasonable timeframe, or an injury that we’re told for weeks is minor turns out to be season-ending.

The first time I heard concerns voiced about Nick Swartz was back in 2004, so that season I decided to monitor the team’s injury status carefully. Sure enough, Benito Santiago was hit by a pitch on June 18^th and broke a bone in his hand; the original report was that he would be out 6-8 weeks. Now understand, broken bones are about the most predictable injury there is. The bone needs a certain amount of time to heal, and generally that’s all it takes – the timeframe is pretty stable. On August 3^rd, Swartz was quoted as saying that Santiago should start swinging a bat by the end of the week. Instead, Santiago was done for the year. A 6-8 week injury took well over 3 months to heal.

(I must pause here to give a shout-out to Rotowire, whose excellent and completely archived list of daily player updates made much of this column possible.)

That’s a clear-cut case; there are a lot more injuries that have circumstantial evidence attached to them. Mike Sweeney signed a five-year contract after the 2002 season and then missed at least 40 games in each of them, but I think what bothered Royals fans the most was that when he was injured, he always seemed to be a week away from returning. Then that week would pass and he was still another week away; a two-week DL stint would turn into two months. By the end Sweeney earned the reputation of being a malingerer, but I wonder how much of that blame can be placed at the feet of the training staff.

Jeremy Affeldt’s blister problems came and went for the better part of two seasons – coming at a time when Affeldt looked like he could become a frontline starter if he could stay healthy – to the point where I started emailing Bob Dutton in frustration with medical advice that I hoped he would forward onto the team. (I know I said I wouldn’t bring my medical background into this, but this particular problem was right up a dermatologist’s alley.) It got to the point where I committed a terrible breach of journalistic ethics by approaching Affeldt in the Royals clubhouse in Chicago in late 2003 and introducing myself as a doctor who was writing about blister injuries in pitchers. My plan was to gently suggest the proper approach to his problem – something called a partial nail avulsion – but fortunately, by this point the Royals had finally figured out the solution on their own and Affeldt told me he was scheduled to have the surgery after the season. (To the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t had a blister since.)

But by far, the most egregious lapse in medical judgment by the Royals during Swartz’ time with the team, worse even than their mistakes with Crisp, is how they destroyed Jose Rosado’s arm. I can’t blame Swartz for what happened to Rosado in 1999, when he threw 120+ pitches seven times in the span of eight starts. But the following season, Rosado struggled in his first four starts and was noticeably laboring. He finally complained of a tired arm, and the Royals skipped his turn in the rotation one time. But they elected not to get an MRI, and on April 30^th Rosado returned to the mound one more time. He gutted through 5.2 innings and even got the win, but afterwards his arm wasn’t tired; it was dead. Only then did the Royals get the MRI, and all you need to know about the results was that Rosado never pitched in the majors again. Rosado is probably the best left-handed starter the Royals have developed in the last 25 years – and his career was over at age 25.

You might be asking yourselves why I’m bringing up an injury that occurred nearly a decade ago. What does an injury that occurred in 2000 have to do with the Royals in 2009?

Nothing, if you’re Dayton Moore, or Trey Hillman, or Bob McClure, or anyone else that wasn’t a part of the organization nine years ago. The thread that connects Jose Rosado’s shoulder to Coco Crisp’s is a thin one…and it’s got Nick Swartz’s name all over it.

I’m not naïve enough to think that all of the Royals’ injury woes are the fault of Swartz, or that after firing him the team’s DL will magically empty. I’m sure that you can find some reason to absolve Swartz for every individual incident I’ve mentioned above. Maybe he gave good advice and it was ignored by the team. Maybe a player wouldn’t come clean with an injury. Maybe he did everything right and some unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstance destroyed his best-laid plans as a trainer.

If a batter goes 1-for-10, it doesn’t mean he’s a bad hitter. If he goes 10-for-100, it’s time to find a replacement. Swartz is like the batter who goes 50-for-500. The sample size is just too large. There are too many injuries that take longer than expected to heal. There are too many rehab snafus that deprive the Royals of their starting centerfielder, or destroy the career of a 25-year-old southpaw. There’s simply no way to wave off his track record as a stretch of bad luck, or to blame it on someone else. There isn’t anyone else.

Besides, the burden of proof shouldn’t be on me to prove that Swartz deserves to go; it should be on Swartz and the Royals to prove he should stay. Swartz has been the trainer for the Royals FOR NINETEEN SEASONS, the last 15 of which represent one of the worst 15-year stretches by a baseball team in major league history. EVERY SINGLE person involved with baseball operations has been replaced in that span – why should Swartz be the exception? This isn’t a court of law, it’s a sports team – when you’ve been involved with a team that’s this bad for so long, frankly, you’re guilty until proven innocent.

I doubt that Moore is going to do anything rash in mid-season; it’s not his style, as we saw with Mike Barnett last season. And my brain says that the best time to make a move is in the off-season, when the Royals can overhaul their training staff with full deliberation and due diligence. But after what’s happened to Crisp, my heart wants to see blood.

The trendy rumor du jour for the Royals is that they’ve been decimated by injuries. News flash, guys: if what’s holding you back are all the injuries, then maybe the solution is to axe the guy who’s responsible for preventing them. Nick Swartz has been that guy for far too long. It’s time to sharpen the knife.

Worst. Five Game Stretch. Ever.

It just keeps getting darker.

Maybe Disgruntled Reds Fan Caller was right. After bashing Cincinnati in three straight, and after Gil Meche threw a brilliant shutout (along with 132 pitches in sultry conditions) against Arizona on Tuesday night, the Royals looked like they were once again using NL competition as a springboard that would rebound their record towards .500.

Then they lost, 12-5, on Wednesday. Then again, 12-5, on Thursday. Then 10-5 on Friday; 7-1 on Saturday; and 12-5 yet again today.

The standard nomenclature in baseball deems a “blowout” to be a game decided by five runs or more. By that standard, the Royals have been blown out in five consecutive games.

These being the Royals, of course, you’d expect that this has happened to them before in the recent past. You would be wrong. The Royals had never lost five consecutive games by five or more runs. Hell, the Kansas City Athletics never did so.

The Royals are just the ninth team in the Retrosheet era – since 1954 – to lose five consecutive blowouts. With many thanks, as always, to the great Bil Burke at Baseball Prospectus, here’s the Hall of Shame:

Year Tm Dates Scores

1956 WAS 6/12-17 3-9, 4-13, 2-7, 0-7, 2-20

1957 WAS 5/02-06 1-6, 6-11, 2-8, 2-7, 2-8

1981 CHN 5/13-19* 3-8, 1-6, 0-5, 1-6, 1-6, 0-5

1983 STL 6/24-28 2-8, 3-10, 0-5, 1-6, 1-10

1994 FLA 6/18-24 3-11, 1-6, 2-7, 3-9, 0-9

1996 DET 5/16-21 3-8, 6-11, 4-16, 3-14, 1-7

2000 DET 4/18-24* 0-7, 0-10, 2-7, 6-14, 4-9, 4-10

2002 FLA 7/13–17 2-9, 3-10, 3-8, 5-10, 0-10

2009 KC 6/17–21 5-12, 5-12, 5-10, 1-7, 5-12

*: 6-game streak

Amazingly, three of these teams – the 1983 Cardinals, the 2000 Tigers, and 2002 Marlins – all finished the year a respectable 79-83. Then again, the 1996 Tigers lost 109 games, and the 1981 Cubs went 38-65 in the strike-shortened year (they started the year 5-27.) The Senators were 59-95 and 55-99 in 1956-57. I think it’s a nice touch that two teams on this list (the 1956 Senators and 1996 Tigers) played an extra-inning game during their streak. Think about it.

And just one other team – the 1983 Cardinals – managed to lose five consecutive blowouts while playing all five games at home. The Royals won’t get the chance to make it six straight at home, but they do have a chance to tie the overall record with six straight blowout losses on Tuesday in Houston.

Way to go, boys. In six weeks, you’ve gone from leading the division by three games to plumbing depths of incompetence that none of your famous forebears ever managed to reach. If this is progress, I’m the King of England.

Around The World In Eighty Pitches.

With Luke Hochevar set to take the mound tonight, it’s a good time to ask, just how significant was his performance last Friday?

It was significant, obviously, in the sense that it was the best start of his career by far – his first complete game, and his game score of 79 was 12 points higher than his previous career high (last July 11^th against Seattle.) This was the Hochevar in the catalog – not an overpowering strikeout guy, but a pitcher who throws strikes, gets groundballs, and gets quick outs.

Only Hochevar wasn’t getting quick outs – he was getting QUICK outs. Four-pitch innings in the first and ninth bookended the 72 pitches he need to get through the seven innings in the middle. Checking the box score on my iPhone that evening, I remarked to my wife (who was holding on to every word, believe me), “I think the Royals set a record tonight.” And to the best of our knowledge, they did. We only have pitch count data back to 1988, when a fledgling STATS Inc. decided to start tracking pitches – so it’s quite possible that Larry Gura or Paul Splittorff twirled a 79-pitch gem at some point. But at least in the last 22 seasons, no Royal had ever thrown a complete game in 80 pitches. No one had come particularly close. Here’s a list of the fewest pitches thrown in a nine-inning performance by a Royal:

Pitches Date Pitcher

80 6/12/09 Luke Hochevar

88 8/19/97 Ricky Bones

89 8/6/95 Mark Gubicza

90 9/2/96 Tim Belcher

91 8/12/90 Tom Gordon

Ricky Bones actually went into the ninth inning having thrown just 75 pitches, one fewer than Hochevar, but struggled in his final inning, facing six batters (but throwing just 13 more pitches.)

Honorable mention goes to Kevin Appier, who on July 23^rd, 1992, threw 92 pitches – in ten innings. Appier was notorious for racking up high pitch counts, but on this day he threw just 80 pitches in the first nine innings, then 12 more in the tenth. I remember watching this game on TV, and while I was surprised to see Appier come back out for the tenth inning, there was a perception that he hadn’t been worked all that hard. I say “perception” because pitch counts simply were not available at the time – I had no way of knowing whether Appier had thrown 92 or 192 pitches, and I’m not sure the Royals did either. If they had known that he was still under 100 pitches, I wonder if they would have let him pitch the 11^th inning as well. (Which would have been awfully cool; no pitcher has gone more than 10 innings since Dave Stewart threw an 11-inning shutout on August 1^st, 1990.)

By any measure, Hochevar’s performance was historic. The question I have is whether it’s meaningful, by which I mean, is his performance a strong indicator that Hochevar is a quality major league pitcher.

Those of you who, like me, were weaned on the Bill James Historical Abstracts may remember a column James wrote in the 1985 edition. The column discussed what James called “signature significance”, which is a performance so dominant and rare that, even though it occurs in a small sample size, it presages a degree of quality in that player. It is the “signature” of a great player, and only a great player, to have such a performance.

If it’s Game 7 of the World Series and you have the choice of throwing a shutout or striking out 15 batters, you would of course take the shutout – while 15 strikeouts is not typically associated with bad performances, you’d want to take the sure thing. But if the question is whether, knowing nothing else about a pitcher except his performance in one game, you’d rather have the guy who threw shutout or the guy who struck out 15 batters – you’d take the guy with 15 Ks every time.

Shutouts have inherent value, but they do not have any particular predictive value. Bad pitchers can throw shutouts. (And, against the Royals, they usually do.) Good pitchers certainly throw more of them – but the fact that a pitcher throws a shutout is not singular evidence that he is a good pitcher.

On the other hand…there have been 27 occasions this century in which a pitcher struck out 15 or more batters in one game. Here’s a list of those pitchers:

Randy Johnson (9 times)

Pedro Martinez (4 times)

Mike Mussina (2 times)

Jake Peavy (2 times)

Mark Prior (2 times)

Erik Bedard

Cole Hamels

Johan Santana

Curt Schilling

Jason Schmidt

Ben Sheets

John Smoltz

Ron Villone

There are 11 outstanding pitchers on that list – and, yes, Ron Villone, who struck out 16 batters on the final Friday of the 2000 season against a Cardinals team that had already clinched a playoff spot. Late September performances always come with a discount.

The point is, if you told me that a young, previously unheralded pitcher is going to strike out 15 batters tonight, I’ll tell you without even knowing his identity that he’s going to be a star. There’s always a possibility things go wrong – he hurts his arm or develops Steve Blass Disease or whatnot – but the odds are exceedingly high that he’s going to become a star. Shutouts can be a fluke; 15-strikeout performances almost never are. A 15-strikeout performance has signature significance.

So getting back to Hochevar, the question I have is this: does an 80-pitch complete game constitute signature significance? Is this one start evidence, all by itself, that Hochevar is going to become a star?

Going back to the list above, given that Ricky Bones once threw an 88-pitch complete game, I’m going to say that an 88-pitch complete game does not have signature significance. But there’s a big difference between 88 pitches and 80. If we extended our study of strikeout pitchers to include pitchers with 14 strikeouts, we’d find guys like John Maine and Wade Miller, good pitchers having the games of their lives rather than great pitchers. It’s possible that 88 pitches is at the inner edge of what an extreme finesse pitcher, even a marginal one like Bones, can do when everything is working – but that 80 pitches is beyond that range.

So what I’ve done is come up with a list of every pitcher since 1993 who has thrown 85 or fewer pitches in a game. But a word of caution: pitch count data is notoriously unreliable, as many times different sources will differ on their pitch counts by two or three pitches. Just by way of example, that Appier game above, Baseball Reference lists his pitch count at 92 – but in the same file, if you count up the pitches to each batter individually, you end up with 95! I think the problem is that in the bottom of the second, Mark Whiten was caught stealing on a 1-2 pitch to Glenallen Hill – and since Hill started over to lead off the third, the three pitches he saw in the second inning were not counted. This sort of stuff happens all the time – some sources don’t count the pitches thrown in intentional walks, for instance – so this data can’t be considered completely reliable. But we’ll do our best.

Since 1993, a pitcher has thrown 85 pitches or less in a complete game 25 times. (I’m defining “complete game” as “9 or more innings”, to eliminate complete games of the 8-innings-in-a-loss variety.) Here’s a list of those 25 in chronological order. An asterisk denotes a start of 80 pitches or less.

1993 – 1998

Jim Abbott

John Smiley

Tom Glavine*

Orel Hershiser

Darryl Kile

Billy Swift

Bobby Munoz*

Greg Maddux

Chad Ogea

Bob Wolcott*

Jim Bullinger

Greg Maddux

Greg Maddux*

Joey Hamilton

Mike Grace

Andy Ashby*

2001

Jon Lieber*

Steve Sparks

Roy Halladay

2005 – 2009

Carlos Silva*

Rich Harden

Carlos Silva

Aaron Cook*

Aaron Cook*

Luke Hochevar*

An interesting mélange of talents here, to say the least. These pitchers share certain general characteristics. They’re not power pitchers, which makes sense, since strikeouts take a lot of pitches. Also, they’re almost all groundball pitchers. This also makes a ton of sense when you think about it. Aside from hits, there are two major impediments to a low pitch count: balls, and foul balls. And while I’ve never seen a study that’s looked at this issue, I’m willing to bet that groundballs are much less likely to go foul than flyballs – and therefore groundball pitchers give up fewer foul balls than flyball pitchers. It’s easier to keep your pitch counts low when the batter isn’t fouling off pitches right and left.

In terms of quality, though, there is no firm consensus. There are 21 different pitchers on this list. Thirteen of them have made at least 180 starts in their careers, and three more – Carlos Silva (159), Aaron Cook (153), and Rich Harden (110) – are likely to get there as well (although the clock is ticking on Silva). Making 180 starts is the equivalent of being a full-time starter for six seasons – that seems to be a pretty good indication of quality. Not a star, maybe, but a valuable starting pitcher.

But then you have the other five guys, who are in italics above – Bob Wolcott, Bobby Munoz, Mike Grace, Jim Bullinger, and Chad Ogea – none of whom reached 100 career starts. And as you can see, even if we tighten the requirements to exclude the guys who threw 85 or 84 pitches, that doesn’t help Hochevar – both Wolcott and Munoz threw 80 pitches on the dot. So based on the percentages, that means that Hochevar has about a 76% chance (16 of 21) to develop into a quality starter.

If you want to spin the numbers a little, you can point out that all five non-quality starters pitched between 1994 and 1997, and the feat has become more rare since. (There were 16 low-pitch starts made between 1993 and 1998, but just nine in the decade since.) It’s possible that the feat has become rarer because it’s become harder – teams have wizened up to the importance of plate discipline over the last ten years. If that’s true, than Hochevar’s performance is more impressive – every other pitcher who has done so in the last decade has been a quality starter.

But for now, I would argue that a single 80-pitch complete game, as impressive as it was, does not constitute signature significance that Hochevar is going to have a long and successful career. It is certainly suggestive, but not an ironclad guarantee.

Keep in mind, only three pitchers have done this twice – Silva, Cook, and (3 times) Greg Maddux. So if Hochevar does this again – then we have a winner.

Are The Royals In The Wrong League?

If you haven’t listened to this week’s show, please do so. Will Leitch stayed out of the range of bicycles only long enough to join us for 20 minutes, but we covered more material than you’d expect to hear in an hour-long show. Leitch is, apparently, one of the few men in American who talks faster than I do.

We also had our first disgruntled caller of the year, as a Cincinnati Reds fan took exception to the manner in which Jason Anderson and I discounted the Royals’ performance over the weekend by pointing out that it came against the inferior competition of the National League. I completely empathize with someone who wants to stand up for his hometown team, but anyone who wants to argue that the Reds are a better team than the Royals just because they have a better win-loss record is going to have to find a way to deal with those pesky facts.

The fact is that with tonight’s convincing win against the Diamondbacks, the Royals are now 47-32 against NL teams since the start of the 2005 season, a .595 winning percentage, while playing just 244-388 (.386) against AL teams in that span. The odds that a team with a “true” winning percentage of .386 would actually win 47 out of 79 games is .00014, or about one in seven thousand. And while the Royals are probably the most dramatic example of AL teams beating up on NL competition, they are far from the only ones.

This of course gets back to the Royals’ decision, over a decade ago, to stay in the American League when they had the opportunity to jump ship. Despite the obvious difference between the leagues today, I think it’s far from clear that the Royals made a mistake in choosing to stay.

For one thing, the AL didn’t emerge with a clear superiority until about 2005. Interleague play began in 1997, and the NL won the season series four times in the first eight seasons. But in 2005 the AL went 136-116, then 154-98 (!) the following year, then 137-115, and 149-103 last season.

Most estimates about the degree of difference between the leagues come in between eight and ten wins, so let’s split the difference and say it’s nine – an AL team moving to the NL would win roughly ten more games against intraleague competition, but they’d lose about one game in interleague play because they would now be playing the AL in those affairs.

So give the Royals a bump of nine wins each year starting in 2005, and put them in the NL Central instead of the Milwaukee Brewers, and you have…a team that still doesn’t so much as sniff a postseason berth. Last year the Royals would have gone 84-78 instead of 75-87…which would have left them in fourth place in the division, 13 games behind the Cubs and five games out of a wild-card spot. The Royals would still have finished under .500 from 2005 to 2007; the only saving grace is that they might have avoided any 100-loss seasons in that span.

Looking to the future, while it’s possible and maybe even likely that the AL will maintain its dominance, from the Royals’ standpoint the question of which league is superior is a lesser concern than which division is superior. While a wild-card entry to the postseason is certainly nice – and a more likely outcome in the Yankee and Red Sox-free National League – the Royals’ best hope for a playoff spot is to win their division. Aside from the fact that the NL Central is the only division in baseball with six teams, there’s an even more compelling reason to think that going forward, the Royals will be better off staying in the AL Central.

There are 11 teams in the two Central divisions, and those 11 teams represent some of the smallest markets in baseball, from Kansas City to Milwaukee to Pittsburgh to Cincinnati to Minneapolis-St. Paul. The favorable geography that lumps most of the small-market teams in the same division, raising the odds that one of them will make the playoffs, is an underrated contributor to increasing parity in baseball.

Of those 11 teams, only one can boast of a combination of market size, economic strength, and fan passion strong enough to upset the balance in the division. The teams listed in the last paragraph don’t have the market size; neither do the Cardinals, despite a passionate fan base. The Tigers and Indians play in the heart of the Rust Belt. The Astros have a large population to draw on, but play in a state where the #1 sport is football and the #2 sport is spring football. The White Sox play second fiddle in their own city.

The one team that has the market muscle to simply blow the other teams in their division out of the water is the Chicago Cubs. The fact that the Cubs have not taken advantage of their, well, advantages to this point is much to their discredit – but those who think that the Cubs will continue to underplay their hand do so at their own peril. The Cubs’ biggest handicap to success for the last few decades has been their ownership. We have decades of evidence that strongly suggests that corporations and baseball teams are a bad mix, dating to the days when CBS owned the New York Yankees, and the experience of the Tribune Corporation with the Cubs is no different. The bottom line is that corporations tend to place profits over winning – in fact, they have a fiduciary responsibility to do so. It’s no surprise that the Cubs, despite immense financial resources, have never leveraged those resources into building a juggernaut.

That may change, and soon, because the Tribune Corporation is about to hand off the Cubs to a new owner – the Ricketts family. It’s possible the deal may fall through, but realistically the Cubs will be under new – and probably private – ownership soon. You only need to look at the Boston Red Sox to see what can happen when a rudderless organization that has squandered natural resources for ages is purchased by a small entity of savvy owners looking to win.

So going forward, if you were to ask me which division I want the Royals to be in, the simple answer would be, “whichever division the Cubs are not in.” The AL may be the superior league. But I’d rather go up against a division full of above-average teams than try to wrest the division away from one single dominant franchise.

The Five Stages of Being a Royals Fan, Using Only Blog Quotes.

Stage 1: Denial

“Let’s take a deep breath, everyone. Good teams lose six games in a row. The difference is they also win six games in a row.”

“So don’t panic. This is the AL Central, where the Royals can lose six games in a row in mid-May and still hold on to a share of first place.”

Stage 2: Anger

“I realize that pride goeth before a fall, but this is ridiculous.”

“Momentum means NOTHING.”

Stage 3: Bargaining

“So if the Royals get a favorable outcome today, they would need only a three-game sweep of the Tigers at home – with Meche, Greinke, and Davies starting – to be back atop the division by Wednesday night. That’s not likely, mind you. But the mere fact that it’s possible is testament to how silly it is to be giving up on the season already.”

“Yes, the Royals have the same record after 43 games that they had last year. But to argue that this means they’ve made no progress is as silly as arguing that they’re going win more than 102 games because – as Martin Manley points out – they have a better record after 43 games than the 1977 Royals did.”

Stage 4: Depression

“I have no idea if the Royals are going to turn things around, whether they’ll get back to .500 this year, whether they’ll contend again in 2009. On paper, there’s no obvious reason why the Royals can’t reverse course. But I know that the Royals aren’t going to win a damn thing so long as they’ve got a GM who isn’t willing to cut losses on a contract that was a mistake the moment it was signed, and a manager who doesn’t understand that just because you have a pitcher on your roster doesn’t mean you have to use him in tight situations.”

Stage 5: Acceptance

“I think the Royals should trade for Jeff Francoeur.”

This Crow Doesn't Taste So Bad.

As those of you who follow me on Twitter (@jazayerli) know, my initial reaction to the Aaron Crow was, shall we say, less than enthusiastic. This wasn’t a reflection on Crow so much as it was a reflection on Grant Green, who thanks to the Pirates’ late decision to go cheap yet again and select Boston College catcher Tony Sanchez – probably the 20^th-best player in the draft – at #4, the tumblers fell into place for Green to be available at #12.

The Royals selected Crow instead, and as MLB Network cut to commercial they gave us a look-in at the A’s war room, and it seemed like every person in that room had a big sh*t-eating grin on his face. Knowing exactly why those jerks looked so smug – and sure enough, the A’s took Green with the #13 pick – only made me more upset.

But then I started getting feedback from people in the industry who know a lot more about this stuff than I do, and started to warm up to the pick. Keith Law, ESPN’s draft guru, wrote me, “I don’t see how you can complain about that one!” Law uses exclamation points even more rarely than he praises the Royals, so that was something. Law had Crow as the 5^th-best player in the draft, and Green at just #13. Law isn’t afraid to voice scouting opinions that differ from the consensus – last year, he was maybe the only prospect maven in the world who thought that Pedro Alvarez was overrated, and that sentiment looks pretty smart at the moment. But Law isn’t the only draft expert who ranked Crow more highly than Green; Baseball America’s last draft ranking had Crow 7^th and Green 13^th. And While Kevin Goldstein had Green ranked higher, it was hardly a slam-dunk - #5 vs. #7.

Green’s strengths are obvious: he’s a polished college hitter who will be in the majors soon, and he gives you a good bat at a premium defensive position – a position the Royals have a particularly strong need to fill. But he’s not perfect. He hit just four home runs this season, and nine last year – while he hit for power in the wood-bat Cape Cod League, it’s not clear how much power he’ll have in the majors. A guy who hits .280 with 20 homers is a star at shortstop; a guy who hits .280 with 12 homers is just a good player.

Secondly, and maybe more importantly, there is a legitimate difference of opinions from scouts on how well he can play shortstop. Some feel he’ll be an average defensive player with no issues; some think he’ll be below average but playable; some think he’ll have to move off the position entirely. This is not a trivial concern for the Royals. If Green can handle shortstop, he fills a huge need. If he can’t, then he’s a third baseman or a second baseman, two positions where the Royals already have more than enough options as it is. If the Royals fall into the camp of people who think that he can’t play shortstop, then it would be hard for them to justify taking Green.

Still, I think that all things equal, the Royals should take the player at a position of need. But clearly the Royals did not feel that all things were equal between Green and Crow, and took the pitcher even though they had bigger needs elsewhere.

I can respect that. It’s easier to respect that decision when you consider that aside from Green, Crow was the best player on the board when the Royals picked. Looking at the three draft lists (BA, Law, Goldstein), the only players ranked higher than Crow who were still available were Tanner Scheppers (on two lists), Alex White (on one), and Kyle Gibson (on one). Gibson’s stress fracture manifested itself after he showed up 4^th on BA’s list, and Scheppers is coming off a shoulder injury and Will Carroll is scared to death of him. BA had White 6^th and Crow 7^th, but Goldstein had White 14^th and Law had him 10^th. If you were to put together a Wisdom of Crowds-style draft list, then Crow was absolutely the right pick.

Beyond the pure talent considerations, there’s a lot to like with this pick. Crow has been off the radar this year because, having failed to sign with the Nationals last year as the #9 pick, he didn’t pitch for anyone this year until starting his season with the Fort Worth Cats a month ago. A year ago, he was the best right-handed pitcher in college, with a 43-inning scoreless streak for Mizzou (yes, yes, not Missou, I get it, thanks everyone.) He didn’t sign with the Nationals, but this is one of those rare cases where you can blame the team as much as the player – the final negotiations had Crow wanting $4 million, the Nationals offering $3.5 million, but the lack of dialogue between the two sides until the last moment sank the negotiations. Aaron Crow has maintained the Hendricks brothers as his adviser. The Nationals, you might have noticed, have declined to maintain the services of Jim Bowden. I wouldn’t hold Crow’s decision to sit out a year against him that much. (Maybe he was worried that Bowden was going to skim some of his bonus.)

The comparisons between Crow and Luke Hochevar are too easy to make; both pitchers didn’t sign as college juniors, went the indy ball route and signed with Fort Worth, and then got drafted by the Royals. That comparison seems to bother some people, but frankly, I don’t see what the problem is. The disappointment with Hochevar doesn’t stem from his performance, but from the fact that he was the #1 overall pick. If the Royals had drafted Hochevar 12^th, no one would be complaining about his career path to this point. The Royals just had the misfortune of drafting #1 overall in a year when there was no clear #1 overall pick. The year before, they would have taken Justin Upton; the year after, they would have taken David Price. Instead, they had to pick from the best of many options, and given the turmoil in the front office at the time – Dayton Moore had just been hired but could not give his input in the draft – it’s not surprising that they chose a compromise pick in Hochevar.

The thing is, on pure stuff Crow might actually have a slight edge on Hochevar. Hochevar had better sink on his pitches, but Crow’s velocity is a tick better. Both rely on sliders as out pitches; it will be interesting to see whether the Royals force Crow to emphasize his curveball during his development as they did with Cool Hand.

Also, the fact that Crow went to college in Missouri and high school in Kansas gets back to the idea of knowing your backyard better than anyone else. Presumably the Royals have a better feel for Crow - his family, his work ethic, his health record - than most teams do. If they don't, they're doing something wrong.

Also keep in mind that if you’re still a believer in Project 2010 – and given the way the Royals are playing, I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t – then Crow has the ability to be ready for a rotation spot as soon as this time next year. He’ll be the best pitching prospect in the organization the minute he signs. He’s not young – he’ll be 23 in the fall, which makes him older than, say, Dan Cortes – but then again, he’s a better pitcher than Cortes is right now.

I know it appears that the Royals have five quality starters already in their rotation, but even if they all maintain their effectiveness, the odds that all five starters will be off the DL a year from now is probably 50/50 at best. You can never have too much pitching.

What I like best about this pick is that the Royals drafted a signable player without skimping on quality at all. Crow was only available because so many teams ahead of the Royals drafted inferior talents to save money - the Pirates at #4, the Orioles at #5, the Braves at #7, and the Nationals at #10. The Rockies are getting all kinds of credit for drafting Tyler Matzek at #11, and the Cardinals for drafting Shelby Miller at #19. Both are great prospects, but both also have fairly ridiculous bonus demands. In Crow, the Royals got a pitcher who compares favorably to where guys like Matzek and Jacob Turner and Miller might be in three or four years, without worrying about some ridiculous $7 million demand. Crow would have taken $4 million last year, and probably will settle for somewhere in the $3-3.5 million this year. That’s not slot money, but it also doesn’t break the budget.

This is important, because what elevated the first day of the draft from good to very good was the decision to take North Carolina high school catcher Wil Myers in the 3^rd round. Myers was on my pre-draft list of guys the Royals were thinking of taking with their first pick – and while that would have been a reach, getting him in the third round is a steal. He’s a very athletic player who could play the outfield if he can’t handle things behind the plate. His bonus demands contributed to him falling to the third round, but given that the Royals kicked the tires on him in the first round, I’m sure they have a very good idea of what it will take to sign him, and they wouldn’t have taken him if they didn’t think they could afford him. Much like Tim Melville’s pick last year, Myers signals that the Royals are done playing chumps in the draft – they’ll take the best talent available and let other teams’ fear of spending money in the draft work to their advantage for a change.

And remember, last year the Royals spent $6 million on Eric Hosmer alone. If Crow gets $3.5 million and Myers gets, say, $1.5 million, they’ve still spent less on both of them than they did on Hosmer. Not to mention the money spent on their supplemental first-rounder and second-rounder last year; there should still be plenty of money left over for the international signing season.

The Royals started the second day of the draft by taking Chris Dwyer, a left-handed pitcher out of Clemson who turned 21 in April, making him the first draft-eligible freshman from a four-year college in draft history. That’s an interesting draft note, but what matters is that Baseball America ranked Dwyer as the #55 player available in this draft. With their first three picks, drafting #12, #91, and #122, the Royals nabbed BA’s #7, #31, and #55 best players. That’s strong work.

As Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper wrote this morning, “if Kansas City can sign both Myers and Dwyer they will have landed a pair of supplemental first/second-round talents despite lacking a second-round pick.”

The draft won’t finish up until tomorrow; as I write this they’re in the 12^th round, and the Royals draft has become remarkable for its reliance on pitching, and not the high school arms you’d expect to see. Of the Royals’ first 11 picks, two were catchers, one was a high school first baseman – and the other eight were all college pitchers. That’s just bizarre, but in a draft which everyone says is very weak in hitters, you have to admire the Royals’ decision to draft the guys they like best and figure out where to put them all later.

Ultimately, I’d give this draft a B at this point, which is an awfully strong grade given the lack of a second-round pick. Maybe the Royals didn’t select the guy I wanted them to pick. But they selected the guy that they wanted to pick, not the guy they settled for in order to save money, and ultimately that’s all you can ask for.