Minor League Update, Part 1.

First off, I owe you guys an apology. On our radio show this Monday, Jason Anderson and I started the show by promising to stay positive for the duration of the show…and then we spent the next hour ripping the team from every direction. It wasn’t intentional, I assure you. It’s just that the abyss has become so deep that I simply can’t find an angle that portrays the Royals in a positive fashion. Some people are so ugly that no trick of lighting can flatter them.

This is where we’re at: three months after the Royals were 18-11 – the front office has made sure that none of us will ever forget the 2009 Royals’ record after 29 games – they have the worst record in the American League, and the second-worst record in the major leagues. Call me an unrepentant optimist, but even the most hardened cynic could not have imagined in May – or even a month ago – that we’d be in the running for the Bryce Harper Sweepstakes. I never would have imagined that, come August, I’d be scoreboard watching the Nationals in the hopes that Washington might go on a hot stretch (five in a row, baby! Just five games back!), or rooting for their negotiations with Stephen Strasburg to go fubar.

Instead, if the season ended today the Royals would draft in the top 3 next year – meaning they were one of the three worst teams in baseball this year – for the fifth time in six seasons. They’d draft in the top 2 for the fourth time in six seasons. Three years after we thought we hit bottom, three years after Dayton Moore told us where the parade would be held, we’re once again forced to subsist on nothing but dreams of a Tuesday in June – and hoping that this time we strike gold with a Top-3 pick.

And on that note, and because I’m trying to find that something positive, it’s time to take a long look at the minor leagues. As horrible as the team that Dayton Moore has fashioned is, he wasn’t brought in simply to fix the major league roster – he was brought in to fix the organization. And one of the reasons I was so positive about his hiring for so long was that he seemed to determine to fix the organization the right way – by expending every possible resource towards building the farm system. Over the last three years the Royals have spent all kinds of resources on the minors, not just in terms of money – they spent a major-league record $11 million on their draft picks last season – but in terms of things like having a seventh minor league team, and opening a new academy in the Dominican (granted, something that was in the works before Dayton was hired).

The Royals dug themselves into the hole they’ve been in since 2004 by neglecting the farm system for 15 years. (From 1993 to 2001, the Royals had fifteen first-round picks – and Mike MacDougal has turned out to be the best of them. Mike Macdougal.) It was going to take years of successful drafting and development to reverse that trend, and if you told me in 2006 that the Royals would continue to suck for three or four years before the farm system burst forth with talent? That’s a trade I would have made – if the farm system burst forth.

So that’s ultimately the question: while we’ve all been watching the team in Kansas City burn to the ground, have the Royals been quietly planting the seeds for the team’s renaissance in places like Springdale and Wilmington and Burlington? If so, all the sins of 2009 may be forgiven; if not, well, judgment is nigh.

Unfortunately, the most recent organization-wide assessment of the Royals’ farm system came from Baseball America three weeks ago, and it was less an assessment than an indictment. The Royals were listed as one of three organizations “headed down” based on how their top prospects have fared since the start of the season, including this comment: “Not much has gone right in the minors, from modest seasons by power plants Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas to spotty pitching at upper levels.”

Well, then. If that’s indeed the case – if the Royals have endured as much disappointment in the minor leagues as they have in the majors – then it’s time to turn out the lights. But is that a fair assessment? There’s only one way to find out.

Over the next few posts, I’m going to take a look at how the Royals’ top 30 prospects from before the season – as judged by Baseball America – have fared this year. For each player I will also assign a letter grade based on whether they appear to have a brighter future today than they did in March. I’ll go with a B- curve – a B- grade means the player has essentially the same outlook today as they did before the season. Keep in mind that the grade takes into account the player’s standing – a B- grade for your #1 prospect is a fine grade, because it means that he still projects as a #1 prospect. On the other hand, an A- grade for your #30 prospect means that he might have elevated his stock into the 11-20 range – he’s gone from a long-shot to make the majors to maybe projecting as a bench player, hardly something to get excited about.

Here we go. Each player’s age is as of July 1^st, 2009:

1) Mike Moustakas, 3B, 20. Right from the start, we’ve got a disappointment. Moustakas hit .272/.337/.468 last season and led the Midwest League in homers, the first teenager to do so in over a decade. Promoted to Wilmington this year, he’s hitting just .254/.297/.419, and the reviews of his defense at third base are unflattering enough that it’s likely he’ll have to change his position again before he reaches the majors.

In his defense, we would like to call Frawley Stadium to the stand. The Blue Rocks’ home ballpark is one of the best pitchers’ parks in the minor leagues, and when evaluating Wilmington players, that must be taken into account. At home, Moustakas is hitting .201/.262/.356; on the road he’s hitting .295/.326/.468, which is eerily similar to his numbers from last season.

I’ve said this many times before, but the ballpark effect for the Blue Rocks is so significant that hitters promoted from A-ball to Double-A typically hit better at the higher level. Just this season we have two terrific examples of this, in Jeff Bianchi (.300/.360/.427 in Wilmington, .325/.371/.450 for Northwest Arkansas) and David Lough (.320/.370/.473 vs. .331/.368/.500).

My favorite example of this is Carlos Beltran, who in 1997, at age 20 – the same age as Moustakas right now – hit a puny .229/.311/.363 for the Blue Rocks. The following year, he returned to Wilmington and hit .276/.364/.427, was promoted at mid-season and hit .352/.427/.687 in Double-A. The following year he was the AL Rookie of the Year. Johnny Damon hit .316/.399/.462 for Wilmington when he was 20 – the following year he hit .343/.434/.534 for Wichita and was considered the best prospect in baseball when he was promoted to Kansas City in August.

So it’s way, way, way too early to write off Moustakas as a bust. My concern isn’t with who Moustakas is, it’s with who he’s not. He’s not Rick Porcello, who’s an above-average major-league starter at age 20. He’s not Matt Wieters, who’s enjoying a solid season as the Orioles’ rookie catcher after entering the season as the #1 prospect in baseball. He’s not Jason Heyward, who doesn’t turn 20 until next week and is hitting .422/.505/.722 since being promoted to Double-A last month – with Wieters now in the major leagues, Heyward has taken his spot as the #1 prospect in baseball. Porcello, Wieters, and Heyward were all selected in the top half of the first round in 2007; most observers considered Porcello the second-best player in the draft after David Price, and most considered Wieters third. The Royals decided they couldn’t afford either player – for all the money they’ve spent in the draft the last few years, they chose an awfully inopportune time to save money. And instead of considering Heyward, who BA dubbed the steal of the draft from the moment he dropped to #14 overall, the Royals took Moustakas.

(An underappreciated side effect of the Royals’ disdain for statistics is that they don’t seem to understand the critical importance of age and how it relates to draft picks. The team frequently drafts players who are old for their grade, whether high school senior or college junior. Case in point: Moustakas was born on September 11^th, 1988, meaning he turned 18 just a month after he signed. Heyward and Josh Vitters, who the Royals nearly took instead of Moustakas before changing their mind at the last moment, were both born in August, 1989.

A year of development doesn’t mean much when comparing a 27-year-old to a 28-year-old – but when comparing a 17-year-old to an 18-year-old, it’s critical. It remains to be seen whether the Royals should have taken Vitters or not – after a monster start in low-A ball this year, Vitters has struggled since joining Moustakas in high-A ball. But Heyward, like a couple of other 17-year-old hitters drafted in the first round (Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez), has made a quantum leap in development from age 17 to age 19, and now sits at the doorstep of the major leagues. If the Braves make the playoffs, he could be their version of Andruw Jones, the preternatural rookie who makes a postseason impact before he’s legally eligible to partake in the champagne bath afterwards.

Oh, and Moustakas’ teammate at Chatsworth High, fellow first-rounder Matt Dominguez, was also born in August 1989. Dominguez just got promoted to Double-A as well.)

But getting back to Moustakas…he has been disappointing this year, certainly, but not critically so. It’s not hard at all to envision a scenario in which he goes to Springdale next spring, hits .300 with power, and becomes a trendy Rookie of the Year candidate for 2011. But next year is crucial for him. He’s been passed by enough fellow first-round picks as it is. Grade: C-.

2) Eric Hosmer, 1B, 19. The second of the Royals’ Twin Towers, Hosmer is having an equally disappointing season. Hosmer was sent to Burlington and was expected to exceed Moustakas’ performance there last year, but instead hit just .254/.352/.382, with a puny five homers in 79 games. He struck out in nearly a quarter of his at-bats (68 of 280), and scouts were critical of the fact that he stood too far away from the plate, making him vulnerable to outside pitches. He changed his stance last month, started to hit a little better, and the Royals decided to promote him to Wilmington despite his struggles – in 14 games so far, he’s hitting .208 with just two extra-base hits. He does take walks, but the light-tower power that we were promised has yet to materialize outside of batting practice.

If it’s too early to write off Moustakas, it’s way too early to write off Hosmer…but as I said on draft day last year, if the point of drafting Hosmer is that in three years he’ll be one of the best hitters in the minor leagues, why not draft the college guy who will be one of the best hitters in the minors the day he signs? The Royals passed on Justin Smoak, who fell to the 11^th overall pick, and Smoak is hitting .295/.407/.460 this year and is already in Triple-A.

At the beginning of the year, there was a lot of controversy over which prospect rated higher – BA had Moustakas #1, but BP had Hosmer #1. We’re going to have the same debate this off-season, for all the wrong reasons. Unless Hosmer starts to rake a little for the Blue Rocks this month, he’s had the slightly more disappointing season, and the relative rankings of these two players won’t change. Grade: D+.

3) Danny Cortes, RHP, 22. Yeah, because I really want to relive this again. Cortes was having a truly disappointing season – his walks were way up, his strikeouts down, despite repeating Double-A – before he was traded for Yuniesky Betancourt. (If Alexei Ramirez is the Cuban Missile, can Betancourt just be the Cuban Crisis?) Since the trade he has made four starts with the Mariners, and continues to walk guys (13 in 20 IP), but at least he’s getting the strikeouts (22). It’s easy to forget: he’s just 22, younger than Aaron Crow, and he still has the power stuff, he’s just lost his command. I have this sinking feeling that he’s going to arrive late next year as a shutdown setup man for the Mariners. For metamorphosing into Betancourt, I’m tempted to give him an F- grade, but based on his actual performance, Grade: D.

4) Michael Montgomery, LHP, 20. Like so many other Royals prospect, he was old for his draft class – he actually turned 20 on July 1^st, just a year after he was drafted – but unlike so many others, he’s developing nicely. In 12 starts for Burlington he had a 2.17 ERA, with 52 Ks in 58 innings, before he was promoted to Wilmington – he’s allowed three runs in nine innings so far. When Cortes was traded there was a lot of talk about Danny Duffy being the Royals’ best pitching prospect, but I still think Montgomery is better. His velocity is a tick better – sitting in the low 90s as opposed to touching the low 90s – and his body has a little more projection than Duffy’s does. The Royals have a ton of high-upside arms in their farm system, but Montgomery might have the highest upside of them all. If Moustakas and Hosmer don’t get it going soon, Montgomery’s a legitimate candidate to be rated the #1 prospect in the organization at year’s end. Grade: B+.

5) Tim Melville, RHP, 19. The Royals signed Melville, a Missouri high school product, in the fourth round last year when he fell from his projection as a late first-round pick because of signability concerns. His selection may well represent a tipping point in the history of the Royals’ draft – the moment when the Royals went from being one of the victims of the draft’s economics to one of the aggressors. Before Melville, the last time the Royals got a first-round talent this late in the draft was probably Bo Jackson in 1986.

Melville started the year in extended spring training, but debuted with Burlington in May and has been consistently good, not great, all season. In 15 starts he’s thrown 68 innings, allowed 64 hits, walked 29, struck out 65, and surrendered 6 homers. There’s some hint that he may be improving as the season goes on – in his last six starts he has a K/BB ratio of 35/11 in just 28 innings. The perfect Grade: B- guy – he’s exactly what we thought he was at the beginning of the year. That’s a compliment.

More to come…

Trade Deadline Blowout!

I’m in Boston at the moment for a dermatology conference, with family in tow – which meant a couple of days vacationing on Cape Cod beforehand. So here’s my quick summary of everything that’s happened in the past week; my work is made easier by the fact that other people have done some of the work for me.

- Not even the Red Sox are immune to my home team curse, which dooms the home team to defeat anytime I’m in attendance at the stadium (unless they are playing the Royals, of course.) The White Sox are something like 9-1 against KC in my trips to U.S. Cellular Field, but are 1-5 or so when playing other teams. I made my first trip to Fenway Park on Tuesday night, and for eight innings the Sox handled everything I threw at them – they put up a 5-spot in the third inning and countered every A’s rally with one of their own.

But the ninth inning was something out of the 1999 Royals’ playbook; with two out and a man on third, Jonathan Papelbon gave up a double to Tommy Everidge (Everidge’s first major league hit), then an infield single to Mark Ellis on an 0-2 count; Nick Green threw the ball away, allowing Ellis to take second; Ellis stole third; and Ellis scored the tying run on another infield single. The 11^th inning was just denouement; the A’s put together a two-run rally with two outs and another 0-2 count to Ellis, and while the Sox pushed across a run in the bottom of the inning, Dustin Pedroia’s bid for a two-out walkoff homer came up short of the Green Monster. Needless to say, I felt at home.

(Although in my defense, the person most at fault for the team’s collapse was the guy in my section who got a wave started in the 7^th inning – along with the thousands of people who succeeded in getting the wave to go around the stadium three times. The Wave. At Fenway Park. It’s almost like they want the team to spend another 86 years in the desert.)

- Back to the Royals…Luke Hochevar takes the mound this afternoon, and we’re all anxious to see how he’s going to follow up a start in which he struck out 13 batters – the most by a Royals pitcher since Kevin Appier on August 29, 1996 – while walking no one. My take on this is pretty much what Joe Posnanski wrote here. A 13-K, 0-BB start doesn’t quite meet the standard of signature significance; as I wrote once before, the exact same combination had me believing that Jason Bere was a future star once upon a time. But to have a 13-K, 0-BB start barely a month after throwing a complete game in 80 pitches? The former approaches the standard of signature significance for a power pitcher, the latter for a groundball pitcher. To accomplish both in the same season might be unprecedented – maybe Greg Maddux has done it, I dunno.

I really have no idea what’s going on with Hochevar. In his first nine starts, covering 51 innings, he had 19 walks and 21 strikeouts. In his last three starts, covering 19 innings, he has 1 walk and 27 strikeouts. But in his first nine starts he surrendered 97 groundballs and 78 flyballs; in his last three starts, he has surrendered just 18 groundballs and 32 flyballs. Hochevar’s groundball/flyball ratio has never been as high in the majors as it was in the minor leagues; prior to this season he was just a modest groundball pitcher at most. But in his last three starts he has become an entirely different animal, a power/flyball guy in the mold of a Zack Greinke. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s just…weird.

Hochevar’s career has long been a source of mystery for me. I included him on my list of “23 Reasons I’m Excited To Be A Royals Fan” under the title “The Enigma” – and that was nearly two years ago. So I don’t profess to know where his career is headed next. But I’m more optimistic about his future prospects than I have been in a long time.

And on a tangential note – can we dispense with the whole “the Royals should have drafted Tim Lincecum” meme please? NO ONE thought, on draft day, 2006, that Tim Lincecum was the #1 player in the draft. It turns out that everyone was wrong – but it’s silly to hold the Royals to a higher standard than the other 29 teams out there. Remember, Lincecum didn’t go 2^nd or 3^rd or 5^th – he went tenth in the draft that year. The guy who was the consensus #1 player in the draft was Andrew Miller, who has a 5.50 career ERA and 143 walks in 258 innings. Virtually all baseball people would take Hochevar over Miller in a heartbeat right now. The Royals didn’t screw up by taking Hochevar. On the contrary, they made a bold move, one that appears to be the correct one.

(And while we’re quashing memes, can we also dispense with the idea that Dayton Moore deserves credit for drafting him? Sorry, Dayton, but after telling us for the last three years that you had no input in that draft, you can’t suddenly change course and take credit for Hochevar. That was Deric Ladnier’s work. Hochevar, like roughly two-thirds of the good players on your roster, was someone you inherited, not someone you acquired.)

- While Hochevar seems to be undergoing a transition from groundball pitcher to power/flyball pitcher, Brian Bannister has done the complete opposite. And in his case, we know it’s deliberate, because he’s told us.

I don’t normally urge you all to listen to the radio show after the fact, but if you haven’t listened to the clips of Bannister on last week’s show, please do so. Or just listen to the clips by themselves, which you can also access by that link. We’ve long known that Bannister is one of the smartest guys in baseball, maybe the smartest when it comes to applying sabermetric principles to making him a better player on the field. But I don’t think any of us appreciated just how important sabermetrics has been to his success.

Partly, that’s because until this season, he really hadn’t been all that successful, at least not in what would be considered a sustainable way. In 2007, he rode a fluky performance on balls in play to a 3.87 ERA, but his peripherals were unimpressive – he struck out just 4.2 batters per nine innings, and unless you’re an extreme groundball pitcher you can’t survive at that level. To his credit, Bannister recognized the unsustainability of his performance, and endeavored to get more strikeouts last year. It worked – his K rate jumped to 5.6 per nine innings – but his home run rate nearly doubled, and along with regression in his BABIP performance, his ERA jumped nearly two runs.

Which brings us to 2009, and after a terrible performance in spring training and in his first minor league start, he decided to junk the fastball that got him to the majors, switch to his “no-seam” cut fastball, and begin the transformation to a groundball pitcher. And what amazes me most about the clip above is that everything he talks about his borne out in the numbers. His fastball this year really has lost a tick of velocity, but gained a ton of sink. His groundball ratio really has jumped, from just 37.5% last year to 49.6% this year. And in the process, he has figured out a way to meld the two approaches, keeping his strikeout rate (5.6 per 9) from last year, while keeping his home run rate (0.9 per 9) from 2007.

He is every bit as successful a pitcher this year as he was two years ago, only this time there’s nothing in his numbers to suggest it’s a fluke. Bannister has gone from #7 on the Royals’ depth chart in March to their #2 starter today, and there’s every indication he will continue to be a slightly above-average major league starter for the foreseeable future. (For a more in-depth analysis of Bannister’s comments and how they correspond to his performance this year, I recommend these two articles.)

After Bannister’s rookie season, I wrote of him, “while I’m a little leery of Bannister in the short term, I’m confident that he can make the adjustments to continue being an above-average starting pitcher in the long term.” You have to understand, I make predictions like this all the time, and future events almost always prove me to have been overly optimistic. The fact that I nailed it this one time is testament to Bannister more than me. There’s no Royal that I love more than Zack Greinke, but there’s no Royal that I’m prouder of than Bannister, and there hasn’t been since Dan Quisenberry left.

Naturally, this makes me terrified that he’ll be in another uniform 24 hours from now.

In Bill James, the Royals had a fan living in their own backyard who unlocked the secrets of baseball analysis a generation before they went mainstream. In Joe Posnanski, the Royals had the first nationally-acclaimed sports columnist who had a thorough grounding in sabermetrics working for the local paper. In Brian Bannister, the Royals have on their own roster the first major league player who has used sabermetrics to comprehend, and advance, his own career. The Royals have been blessed, through sheer serendipity, with three trailblazers on the path towards baseball enlightenment. They ignored the first one until he got fed up and decided to help the Red Sox win a title or two, and they’re doing their best to ignore the second one. I have no optimism that they’ll listen to Bannister any more than they listened to the first two, but maybe the fact that he wears cleats and stirrups to work means that they’ll keep an open mind. Or, you know, maybe they’ll just trade him.

- Speaking of the trade deadline: it is tomorrow at 3 PM, and tonight’s radio show is a special two-hour affair devoted to all the possible moves, so be sure to tune in. The Royals are not cooperating, as they appear to be content with holding pat. Maybe this is a good thing, given that the last time the Royals made a trade, they were the ones giving up the prospects. And in fairness, the meltdown of the bullpen has limited their options, as most of the players they have who are not part of the future are also not part of anyone’s present. Still, let’s take a look at what they could – or should – do:

Juan Cruz: You could list the other five middle relievers on the roster here as well, but unless some team wants to improve their draft position for next year, I suspect the demand will be light. Cruz, by virtue of his performance in the NL before signing with the Royals, might – might – draw some interest. Going into the All-Star Break, I thought that with a strong finish to July, that Cruz might be a useful chip for a team that felt he could return to his old form in the inferior league. That, ahem, has not happened. Cruz has appeared in five games since the Break, has given up at least two runs in all of them, and in three innings of work has allowed 11 hits and 14 runs. You almost have to hope that he’s hurt, because that’s one of the worst stretches of relief work I’ve ever seen. At this point, if the Royals can get out from under his contract, they should trade him for a token non-prospect. He’s owed more than $4 million between now and the end of next year, and as noble as it appeared before the season, the Juan Cruz Experiment has not worked out in Kansas City.

(By the way, I love this line from an anonymous Royals official: “It’s like other teams think we’re going to give guys away for nothing.” You think? For the money most of your guys are earning, you ought to be thankful if you can give them away.)

Willie Bloomquist: The Spork has been impressive this year, no question; his .278/.324/.383 line, his speed, his defensive versatility are all assets, and his price tag ($1.5 million per) is not prohibitive. I think it’s interesting that Bloomquist, who was the only hitter Moore has acquired in the last year or two with some idea of the strike zone, is also the only one of them who seems to have worked well with Kevin Seitzer. Bloomquist has value, and the Royals shouldn’t trade him for just a marginal prospect. But if some team is willing to give up a blue-chipper or a guy with intriguing upside, you have to do that deal. The idea of contending in 2010 is looking more and more delusional, so anyone who’s not under contract past 2010 has to be put in the display case.

Brian Bannister: The Brewers supposedly have interest, but Bannister is under contract through 2012, and you don’t give away three-plus years of a quality major league starter without getting some serious coin in exchange. There’s a trade here that could work – Bannister for Alcides Escobar, who’s very young, developing as a hitter, and one of the finest defensive shortstops in the minors. But that would require Moore to acknowledge that the Yuniesky Betancourt trade was a clusterf**k in every way imaginable, and something tells me he isn’t ready to do that.

(On the subject of Betancourt: it’s way too early to evaluate his performance – if he were 15-for-42 instead of 5-for-42, I’d be shouting “SMALL SAMPLE SIZE!” from the rooftops, and it’s not fair to ignore that issue just because he’s sucking at a Penaesque level. But man, even I thought that he would show some short-term improvement just from having a change of scenery. I never thought that the Betancourt acquisition would end well, but if he keeps hitting like this, at least it might end soon.)

Mark Teahen/David DeJesus: Both guys have value, and both guys might be more valuable as a secondary cog on a contender than as middle-of-the-order types for the Royals. Teahen, in particular, has more value at third base than anywhere else, and now that he’s been relegated to right field, he’s almost certainly worth less to the Royals than he would be to some other team. But neither seems to be attracting a ton of interest, and the Royals have no reason to sell them for less than their true worth. It’s not like either player is blocking a prospect from getting into the lineup, and both players are still under contract for two more seasons. If the Royals don’t get what they want for them this year, they can always do this dance again next July. I don’t expect them to get traded, and that’s probably for the best.

Miguel Olivo: Now that Brayan Pena has been working his way up to first-string status, a move I heartily endorse by the way, the Olivo/Buck combination looks even more ridiculous than it did the last two winters. Olivo has had his hot stretches this year, which disguises that his OPS+ is actually lower than Buck’s (89 to 90). Eight walks in half a season will do that to you. Olivo isn’t going to fetch much, but a grade C prospect would be worth it, if only to keep the Royals from the temptation of bringing him back again next year. I’d rather have Buck, if only because the Royals can probably release him this winter and re-sign him at a much better salary (say, $1 million with incentives). A Buck/Pena quasi-platoon would give you slightly below-average production at a fair price. All Olivo does is make the Royals think they have a solution at a position when they really don’t.

Alberto Callaspo: Finally, here’s the bold move I’d love to see the Royals make: trading Callaspo for a comparable young player, preferably a centerfielder. Callaspo has a blend of obvious strengths and weaknesses; he’s a hell of a hitter for a second baseman (.305/.354/.463), but beyond awful defensively. There’s no reason to think his offense is a fluke; if anything, given his 28 doubles in just 348 at-bats, there’s reason to think he’s starting to develop power (a notion bolstered by the fact that after going homerless in the first 400-plus at-bats in his career, he has seven homers this year.) You don’t think the Twins, who are just two games out of first despite the fact that their second basemen have hit a combined .187/.278/.236 (!) this year, would want Callaspo? (Fun fact: the Twins are the only team the Royals have never made a trade with.)

The problem with Callaspo is that his defense, while bad enough on its own, is just one of many sub-par gloves on the Royals. A stronger defensive team could weather one iron glove in their infield; with the Royals, their entire infield is one big sieve, and they need to find a way to repair that if they want to entertain any hope of contending in the near future.

The decision to move Callaspo is made easier by the fact that Jeff Bianchi has been the breakout star of the farm system, and might be ready for an audition as soon as September. I still think Bianchi should be given a shot at shortstop, but until the Royals give up on Betancourt that option appears to be out. (And if Bianchi slides across the keystone, Johnny Giavotella may soon be ready to take over at second.)

And looking long-term, Callaspo’s defense isn’t going to suddenly improve over time. A shortstop that loses range can move to second base or third base; a second baseman who loses range can only move to first base. That’s enough to end the career of many a second baseman – Ruben Gotay, anyone? Callaspo’s bat will keep him in the majors even if he has to move to first, but as what? The new Ross Gload?

So if the Royals want to be bold, if they want to sacrifice some offense in the short-term in exchange for a defensive upgrade at two positions, they really ought to explore the market for Callaspo. I really do think the Twins would make the perfect trade partner. Maybe you take a chance on Carlos Gomez, who hasn’t hit at all, but is just 23 and does play excellent defense in center. Maybe you take a flyer on Delmon Young and move DeJesus back to center. Maybe you settle for a prospect – especially if you can pry someone like Ben Revere away from them.

But in the midst of one of the most dreadful seasons I’ve ever witnessed, the Royals need to do something bold. (And unlike their last “bold” move, something smart.) Trading Callaspo when his trade value will never be higher, when you’ve got replacements in the minors who are almost ready, when he might fetch you a long-term solution at another position, certainly qualifies. The Royals have 24 hours to get cracking.

A Modest Proposal.

Wow, this whole “I’m taking a step back from the Royals” plan is already paying dividends!

I had a good time in Kansas City over the weekend. I had a chance to meet many of you at the ballpark on Saturday night, and had a chance to meet many of my colleagues in the local print and radio media during my stay. I wish I could say that the Royals’ performance on the field made me reconsider my perception of the team, but I can’t. And I wish I could say that all the conversations I had with people over the weekend made me reconsider my perception of the organization. But I can’t.

The highlight of my weekend – hell, it might be the highlight of my career – came on Friday night, when unbeknownst to the Royals (or me), the participant in the between-innings “Match Game” promotion was a devoted reader of this blog. After winning the promotion, our good reader was given the microphone and asked to say a few words. He said only two: “Rany Rules!” The microphone was snatched away by the announcer at that point, but judging from the audience’s reaction, the damage was already done. The revolution may not be televised, but it will be broadcast over the PA system to a sellout crowd at Kauffman Stadium. (To continue with my “V” theme, this reminds me of the moment when Juliet Parrish peels John’s skin to reveal the lizard underneath on national TV. Old-timers can relive that moment here – advance to 7:30 into the clip.)

There’s an old and oft-repeated quote that “Comedy equals Tragedy plus Time,” which I think applies beautifully to the Royals weekend. When Trey Hillman left Joakim Soria in the bullpen Friday night rather than ask him to get four outs, and Juan Cruz gave up the game-winning homer to Evan Longoria…that was tragedy. When Cruz gave up the game-tying and game-winning hits in the eighth inning the next night, that was unfortunate. When Hillman said in his post-game comments that he was willing to use Soria for four outs instead of five, that was farce.*

*: Seriously…four outs but not five? In the history of baseball, has there ever been a situation where a pitcher could get four outs but not five? Especially given that Soria’s so efficient on the mound that the difference between four outs and five outs is approximately three pitches. And if Soria was available for four outs, then WHY DIDN’T HE COME IN FOR FOUR OUTS THE NIGHT BEFORE?

And then, when the Royals blew an eighth-inning lead again on Sunday, and again Soria didn’t pitch while the triumvirate of Jamey Wright, John Bale, and Ramon Colon surrendered two hits, three walks, and committed an error…that was comedy. I mean, what’s the point of being angry? I already wrote that column. And it’s too late in the season to be despondent about it. Really, the only proper reaction is simply to laugh.

So for those of you who enjoyed the last post I wrote – which was actually posted before Sunday’s game – in the spirit it was written, thank you. For those of you who didn’t think it was that funny, I’m sorry you didn’t find it funny. And for those of you who didn’t think humor was the proper response – I’m sorry, but I can’t think of any other response except humor for the predicament the Royals find themselves in. (And for those few of you who thought the news “item” was real – I’m sorry that the Royals have become such a joke that it’s hard to separate satire from truth.)

As hard as it is to believe, I sympathize with Hillman a little bit. His comments after Saturday night’s game were rather ridiculous, both because he could have used Soria for four outs the night before and because he had used Soria for five outs earlier this season (a decision which was instrumental in the Royals winning an extra-inning thriller in Minnesota…one of the games which deluded me into thinking that this season was going to be something special, in fact.) But the sad reality about where baseball is today is that Hillman’s thinking over the weekend doesn’t make him the worst manager in baseball. His thought process is the norm among baseball teams today.

That thought process can be summed up as this:

1) Joakim Soria is my closer.

2) The job of the closer is to earn saves.

3) You can not earn a save unless you finish the game.

4) Therefore, if Soria can only get four outs, they have to be the last four outs of the game.

Once upon a time, closers weren’t called closers; they were called firemen, and the distinction is critical. “Closers” are there to “close” things – they’re there to close out the lights, which means finishing off a victory. Firemen put out fires – they’re there to get out of the stickiest of situations, no matter when those occur. No rational person would argue that the situation Soria could have faced on Sunday – tying run at third, just one out in the eighth – is less critical than the classic closer role of starting the ninth inning with a one-run lead. There’s a margin for error in the ninth; in the eighth, a single will tie the game (and did).

But that’s where the game of baseball is today. The problem with Hillman isn’t that he’s not with the conventional wisdom in this regard – it’s that he’s not willing to go against the conventional wisdom, even though his bullpen is such a unique challenge (one of the top closers in baseball fronted by arguably the worst middle-relief pack in the game) that it begs for unconventional thinking. He’s afraid to think outside-the-box, and the Royals need a manager who thinks outside the box. So instead, we have a manager who used every reliever (as well as starter Bruce Chen) out of his bullpen except Soria and Robinson Tejeda over the weekend, then finally used Soria to pitch an inning with the Royals down by eight runs last night.

As some brilliant commenters pointed out:

1) Last season, the Royals were shutout (okay, no-hit) by Jon Lester, which started a 12-game losing streak. This year, the Royals were shutout by Lester, which started an 8-game (and counting) losing streak.

2) Five of those eight losses have been by three runs or less. Both of Soria’s appearances in the last eight games have been in games decided by six runs or more.

Hillman’s intellectual atherosclerosis may not be treatable, but the woes of the bullpen are. Remember, Hillman didn’t use Soria all that differently last year; only seven times out of 63 appearances did Soria pitch more than an inning (although six of those seven were six-out appearances). The complaints last season were far fewer, though, because he had Ramon Ramirez to pitch the eighth inning. This year, he’s had Juan Cruz and Kyle Farnsworth. Farnsworth’s problems could (and were) predicted, but Cruz’s struggles were not so easily predictable. (And as Sam Mellinger finds out, they’re still mystifying.)

So allow me to make a modest proposal. The bullpen needs to be fixed, but the last thing the Royals ought to do is to trade some of their marketable guys (like DeJesus and Teahen) for some immediate relief help. The correlation between expense and performance is almost non-existent, something Dayton Moore has proven the last two seasons. His no-name set-up men last year, Ramirez and Leo Nunez, were far more effective than the two guys he signed for a combined $7 million a year to do the job this season.

First off, the Royals need to bite the bullet and get rid of some of their relievers. Frankly, none of their jobs should be safe; after Soria, Ron Mahay has the lowest ERA in the bullpen at 4.26. But Roman Colon should be an easy target; he has a 5.03 ERA, has allowed 31 baserunners in under 20 innings, and frankly his minor league track record makes you wonder what it was that Moore saw in him in the first place. (Other than the tomahawk on some of the uniforms he wore.) Tejeda, who has a great arm but also has walked more than a batter an inning, should also be fair game; if the Royals still think they can polish him, then they should take a long hard look at Jamey Wright, who isn’t terrible but also hasn’t really done the one thing the Royals brought him to do: the supposed groundball specialist has allowed 7 homers in 47 innings this year.

In return, they should find a spot on their roster for two guys. One is Carlos Rosa, who the Royals converted to relief this year because of concerns that he would not hold up physically as a starter (concerns about his elbow led the Marlins to nix the deal that would have traded him for Mike Jacobs, forcing the Royals to trade Nunez instead.) Rosa, perhaps still shaking off the rust from last season’s injury, struggled terribly at the start of the season; he had a 7.03 ERA in his first 32 innings, allowing 36 hits and 20 walks in that span. But over his last eight outings the light bulb has gone on; he has allowed just 4 hits and 4 walks in 14 innings, along with 14 strikeouts. If the scouting reports jibe with the sudden improvement in performance, then I think it’s time to throw Rosa into the pool and see if he can swim.

The other guy is Chris Hayes. I’ve had a lot of fun promoting Hayes as a prospect here and here and here and here, but I worry that some people – certainly some people in the organization – really do think that the idea of Disco as a prospect is a lot of fun, as opposed to something serious. At the start of the year, my goal was not to get Hayes immediately promoted to the majors – as well as he pitched last year, I understand that any pitcher whose fastball rarely touches 80 is going to have to prove himself in the high minors a little longer than the average prospect. My goal was simply to raise awareness that the Royals had a submarine prospect in their system, who ought to be taken seriously as a prospect despite his lack of velocity.

Well, that was March. It’s July now, and in the interim Hayes returned to Northwest Arkansas and pitched better than he did last season, with a 0.98 ERA in 37 innings. The Royals grudgingly promoted him to Omaha in mid-June, and he has continued to pitch well. His ERA in Omaha is 3.20, but he really hasn’t pitched much worse than he did in Double-A; he has continued to show tremendous control, strike out a little under one batter every other inning, and keep the ball on the ground (he’s allowed just one homer at each level). It’s just that a few more groundballs have gotten through. His BABIP in Double-A was .260, and in Triple-A it has been .315 – since a typical BABIP is around .300, Hayes was a little lucky in Double-A, and a little unlucky so far in Triple-A.

That’s splitting hairs, though, because there’s nothing to be ashamed about having a 3.20 ERA. For the season, Hayes has a 1.89 ERA, has allowed just 8 walks (two intentional!) in 62 innings, and has allowed just the two homers. If this isn’t the Dan Quisenberry starter kit, I don’t know what it is.

At the start of the year, even the most optimistic Hayes fan (i.e. me) thought it was unlikely he would earn a promotion to the majors before September, but this season has been a perfect storm of factors that have earned him a look. Hayes has continued to pitch well, of course, but beyond that you have a bullpen meltdown of a scale that I don’t think anyone predicted. During this eight game losing streak, here are the combined numbers for all Royals relievers (not counting the two innings Soria threw):

24.1 IP, 29 H, 26 R, 25 ER, 26 BB, 22 K, 4 HR

That’s just sick. Maybe Hayes wouldn’t improve on that hit total, but if all he does is throw strikes and keep the ball down, he’ll represent an enormous improvement on that performance.

It was thirty years ago this month that a much better Royals team – better in every facet of the game – nonetheless gave an opportunity to a submarining right-hander who threw in the upper 70s. Quisenberry was as poorly-regarded then as Hayes is now, despite strong numbers in the minors. In 1977 Quiz threw 74 innings in Double-A, allowed just 61 hits and 11 walks, with a 1.34 ERA; like Hayes, he was forced to repeat Double-A, and in 1978 pitched almost as well, with a 2.39 ERA in 62 innings. He got to Triple-A in 1979, and like Hayes didn’t quite match the success he had in Double-A – he had a 3.60 ERA in 35 innings when he was called up to make his major league debut on July 8^th. He would never return to the minor leagues.

That 1979 team had bullpen issues much like this one does; aside from Quisenberry, five guys made more than 10 relief appearances for the Royals that season, and only one (Al Hrabosky) had an ERA under 4.50. The troubles with the pitching staff are what kept that team, despite scoring a then franchise-record 851 runs, out of the playoffs (the only time the Royals missed the playoffs from 1976 to 1981.) No doubt, Quisenberry got his shot at least partly out of desperation.

But here’s the thing: he got his shot. Whitey Herzog was a baseball man through and through, but he cared about winning more than he cared about conventional wisdom: he would have given a shot to a pitcher who threw with his feet if it would have helped him win. Quiz got his shot, and pitched well enough that year that even after Herzog was fired after the season, Quisenberry entered the next season as the team’s closer, and held the job for the next six seasons.

Maybe Hayes won’t pitch as well as Quisenberry, though from where I sit I see no reason why he can’t. But you know what? He doesn’t have to. Quisenberry had a career 2.76 ERA, including a 2.55 mark with the Royals. If Hayes can put up a 3.76 ERA, he’ll be an asset to this team. If he puts up a 5.76 ERA, he’ll still be better than Robinson Tejeda.

An organization that trades actual prospects for Yuniesky Betancourt is an organization that cares far more about how a player looks than how he performs. In some ways, the Royals are the worst organization for a guy like Disco to pitch for. But the shadow of Quisenberry still carries weight in Kansas City, if not with the organization than at least with their fans.

But I don’t want the Royals to give Hayes a shot because of the memory of a pitcher who threw his last pitch over two decades ago – I want them to give him a shot because he can help the ballclub. The Royals need a guy who can, if nothing else, stop walking the tying run to lead off the 8^th inning – that’s Hayes. They need a guy who can throw two or three innings at a time – that’s Hayes. They need a guy who they can rely on to pitch four or five times a week if need be – that’s Hayes. And not to be crass about it, but they need a guy that they don’t perceive to be so valuable that they can only use him in predetermined situations. Emphatically, that’s Hayes.

This is probably the first column that I’ve written in a month that doesn’t come with a huge dose of anger or bitterness. I’m trying to play this one straight, because I am dead serious when I write this. Chris Hayes is not a freak show anymore. He’s a pitcher who can help the Royals right now. It’s time to bring Disco to Kansas City.

Breaking News About Soria.

(Evidently, the Royals have made it difficult to distinguish between satire and reality. So to set the record straight: the following is fiction. Some of the quotes are real, but the story is not.)

KANSAS CITY (RotR) – In a stunning and unconventional move, the Royals announced today that closer Joakim Soria had been sent home and would not pitch the remainder of the season.

“He’s too rested to pitch,” manager Trey Hillman announced prior to Sunday’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays. “If he’s too rested to pitch today, then obviously we can’t pitch him today. And if he doesn’t pitch today, then he’ll be even more rested tomorrow, so he can’t pitch then either. After sitting down and doing the math, we realized that if you extend this line of reasoning into the future, that Soria will be too rested to pitch for every game the rest of the season. So we felt it was best to send Soria home and have him rest up for next year.”

Hillman indicated that the problem with Soria began on Friday night, when he was available to get three outs, but too rested to get four outs. Then on Saturday, Soria was available to get four outs, but too rested to get five outs. Hillman defended the apparent contradiction, saying, “I’m not going to bang my head against the wall defending things I do or do not do in trying to educate the masses about things that, quite frankly, I can’t educate. There’s just too much.”

By today, with Soria’s rest having extended to seven full days, the Royals acknowledged that even using him for one inning would be dangerous. “I’m not going to push our closer,” Hillman explained. “I have to save that for Gil Meche.”

When asked to clarify, Hillman said, “I’m not going to sell my soul to the devil for a guy who has already had two major arm injuries (in his career). Now, a guy who missed two entire seasons with a shoulder injury, and who has had back problems all year – that’s okay. It’s a scientific fact that high pitch counts are the best treatment for back problems – I got that straight from my medical staff. But you can’t ask a guy who had Tommy John surgery five years ago to get five outs in a game.”

“Well,” Hillman continued, “unless the game is in Minnesota and he hasn’t pitched in ten days and he was just complaining of a sore shoulder a few days before. But this time, Soria said his arm feels great. Obviously, we can’t take any chances with that.”

“I’m as frustrated as any fan that we have,” Hillman added. “We’re all frustrated. The bottom line is somebody has to get the job done in crunch time so our closer doesn’t have to go out there and get five or six outs. Or, really, go out there at all.”

Soria has returned to his native Mexico, where he will rest his arm in anticipation for spring training. “Don’t worry,” general manager Dayton Moore reassured. “We’re going to work day and night over the next seven months on a way out of this paradox, so that we can find a way for Soria to pitch for us next year. I’ve got two sabermetricians on staff working on this right now.”

Hillman ended on a positive note. “I think we’ll hardly miss not having Soria around to pitch the ninth,” he said. “The way our bullpen has been pitching, it’s not like there are going to be any ninth-inning leads to protect anyway.”

Who's Up For Some Royals Baseball Saturday Night?

Enough drama. Who’s up for some baseball?

Thanks to the indefatigable efforts of my producer Blake Uhlenhake, and one particularly understanding employee in the Royals’ ticket office, we have managed to come up with a reasonably simple way to insure that a large group of people who have never met before can all be assured of sitting in the same section of the stadium on Saturday.

(This was a lot easier six years ago, when Rob Neyer and I just told anyone who wanted to watch a game with us to show up outside one of the gates an hour before gametime. With the renovations at the stadium, the risk of a sellout or near-sellout is considerably greater, and I don’t want to risk having 100 people show up at the stadium only to find they can’t all sit in the same section.)

So here’s the plan: if you want to attend a game with me THIS SATURDAY, July 18^th, against Tampa Bay, do the following:

1) Call THIS PHONE NUMBER: (816) 504-4168. This is the direct line to Sarah Trowbridge, our contact in the Royals’ ticket office.

2) Tell Sarah that you are part of the group purchasing tickets in SECTION 246.

3) Purchase as many tickets as you need. The group pricing for this section is $23, and as we are buying as a group, I believe all additional surcharges are waived.

4) Pick up your tickets before game time at Will Call, located at the stadium between gates C and D.

That’s it.

Sarah will be answering the phone today until 5 PM CDT, and from 9 AM to 5 PM on Friday. After 5 PM tomorrow she will be unable to process tickets for this section, so if you don’t buy your tickets by tomorrow, you may 1) not be able to sit in our section and/or 2) be forced to pay surcharges. That doesn’t mean you can’t still join us – if you make a last-minute decision to come out to the game on Saturday, by all means, come to the ballpark and try to buy a ticket in Section 246, or as close to Section 246 as possible.

There are approximately 100 seats available in Section 246; if we somehow manage to sell over 100 seats, additional people can be seated next door in Sections 245 or 247.

If you get Sarah’s voicemail, leave a message and she will call you back. If you want to contact her by email, you can do so at sarah.trowbridge@royals.com. But it’s probably easiest to just call her directly.

I’ve already purchased my ticket, and am looking forward to meeting all of you there. Gametime on Saturday is 6:10 pm, but I’m hoping to get to the park a little early. So if you want to meet up with me before the game, plan to meet up outside Gate D between 4:45 and 5, and plan to enter the stadium right at 5 o’clock. If you can’t make it there by 5, no worries – just find your seat and you should find the rest of us there.

LATE UPDATE: I have just been informed that Zack Greinke is the scheduled starting pitcher on Saturday night. (I picked this date months ago for this very reason – I had a feeling that if Greinke went to the All-Star Game, he’d be starting the second game after the break.) So if you needed another reason to come to the game Saturday night…you just got it.

More (and Moore) on Betancourt.

If there’s one silver lining to the Betancourt trade, it’s the reaction from the local media. I have to think that Dayton Moore was taken aback by just how uniformly angry the response has been – heck, I was – which may have prompted his appearance on The Border Patrol Monday morning to defend the trade.

It’s been said many times before, but a sidebar to the mess that Kansas City baseball has been for the last 20 years is the fact that there probably isn’t a media environment in any major league city that would have been as accommodating and respectful of a front office that embraced sabermetric analysis as there is in Kansas City. I mean, look at Boston. Everyone in New England trusts in the stat guys now – but it’s hard to distrust them after they broke an 86-year streak and won two World Series in four years. (Not that Dan Shaughnessy doesn’t try.)

But do you recall the mocking and the outrage that descended on the Red Sox front office when they tried the bullpen by committee back in 2003? “Bill James” became an epithet for most of that summer. It’s a testament to the quality of the front office – from owner John Henry on down – that they stuck with their analytical approach despite tremendous media pressure to dumb it down.

That media pressure never would have happened in Kansas City. And it certainly wouldn’t happen now. For a quarter century the Royals have obstinately refused to acknowledge the efforts, if not the existence, of statistical analysis – and for a quarter century the team has inexorably slid down from the peak of a world championship to the lowly depths of one of the most embarrassing franchises in American sports. You don’t have to be Pavlov to deduce that the first half of that sentence may have contributed to the second.

And I think that this fact is part of the reason why we – me specifically and the Kansas City media generally – responded as viscerally and vehemently as we did against the Betancourt trade. It’s not just the nuts and bolts of the trade that set us off – it’s what the trade represents.

I do think that there’s something to the idea, as Joe Posnanski put it, that “one of the more frustrating things about being a fan is when you root for a team that so clearly has a different philosophy about sports than you have about sports.” Since the time I picked up Bill James’ final Abstract when I was 13, my philosophy about baseball has been to use statistical analysis as one of the ingredients – not the only ingredient, but one of the most important ones – to build a winning franchise. But my frustration runs deeper than that. Let’s face it: we’d all rather that our favorite teams win with a style we don’t favor than to lose with a style we do. There are a lot of things the New England Patriots do that make their fans uncomfortable…but I’m sure none of them care so long as the team does well. That same style has been imported to Arrowhead Stadium, and as disgusted as I am by the Chiefs’ astonishing arrogance and secrecy*, the cold reality is that if they go to the AFC Championship Game in the next two or three years, I won’t care less what goes on behind the wall.

*: You know how some NFL coaches will talk about preparing their team as if they’re literally going to war? The Chiefs have gone one better: they’re acting like the NFL is MORE important than war. Seriously – our military was more forthcoming with the press during the Iraq war than the Chiefs are today.

So it’s more than just that the Royals aren’t doing things the way I’d do them. For one thing, they’re doing things their way and it’s not working. The Royals have had four different GM’s over the last four years, but just one offensive philosophy: swing away. For over 25 years – really, since Whitey Herzog was fired in 1979 and Darryl Porter joined him in St. Louis a year later – the Royals have deprioritized plate discipline. It took a few years for the results to kick in, but since then they’ve been kicking the team on a consistent basis – usually in the ass.

But it’s not just that the Royals continue to use a different baseball philosophy despite the lack of results; that was the case under Allard Baird as well. The difference is that the current administration gives off a sense of smugness about their approach. It’s not just that they think their method is superior – it’s that they’re so certain that they know what they’re doing that they can’t even be bothered to acknowledge that other approaches exist.

The culmination of this attitude was, as has been widely reported, Moore’s frank acknowledgment during his interview that “The defensive statistics – I still really don’t understand how some of those statistics are evaluated, I really don’t. When you watch baseball games every single day, it’s very apparent who can play defensively and who can’t.”

Look, I really don’t enjoy picking on Dayton Moore. I’m still trying to figure out how everything went so wrong this season – barely two months ago I was groveling at the foot of Dean Taylor on our radio show, and now I’m at the top of the Royals’ most-wanted list. In the middle of Moore’s interview he took an unprovoked shot at some – okay, one – of his critics. “And I know that because of our injuries, some of our medical team has taken some hits on that – and very unfairly…we’ve improved out medical team in waves of waves…and I feel bad that some of them have taken some heat because of that.”

Those words need no translation, particularly since I was slated to come on the show half an hour later: “Rany Jazayerli is a schmuck.”

I used to be one of this administration’s biggest cheerleaders, and I feel like I’ve accidentally become the leader of the resistance movement. You’d think I surreptitiously saw Moore swallow a live rat whole, then on my way out of Kauffman Stadium got into a fight with J.J. Picollo and ripped off his protective skin, exposing the green scales underneath. Maybe I should go by “Mike Donovan” from now on. (Kudos to the seven of you who get the TV reference. For those who don’t: rest assured I’m not saying the front office is made up of a bunch of lizards or snakes. I’m saying they’re a bunch of aliens.)

But really, this quote is just incredible in its hubris. If Moore had said he didn’t agree with the statistics, well, that’s fair – defensive statistics are still not fully mature, although they’ve certainly reached the adolescent stage.

But he didn’t say he didn’t agree with them – he said he didn’t understand them. And then he threw in the usual boilerplate about how you can only evaluate players if you watch baseball games every single day (because, you know, only people who work in the Royals front office watch games every single day.) That’s the team’s attitude in a nutshell: we know how to build a winning baseball team, and we’re so certain in our knowledge that we can’t be bothered to look at opposing points of view, even if only to refute them.

This attitude – of being proudly incurious – sums up what’s wrong with the Royals. It’s not that they can’t learn – they don’t want to learn. It’s not a matter of intelligence – as the poster Devil Fingers at royalsreview.com has pointed out, Moore has a master’s degree, while Billy Beane never went to college. It’s a matter of having a commitment to learning new things. The Royals appear to be afraid of having their horizons broadened. No one’s saying they have to agree with the defensive statistics that unanimously identify Betancourt as a terrible defensive player. But dammit, don’t they have an obligation to at least understand them?

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of baseball fans on the internet who understand not just the general premise of Ultimate Zone Rating, or John Dewan’s plus/minus, or David Pinto’s Probabilistic Model of Range, or Dan Fox’s Simple Fielding Runs, or a half-dozen other advanced fielding metrics – they also understand the nuances that distinguish between each of them. And they do it for no greater incentive than their own desire to better understand the game of baseball. Meanwhile, there are only 30 GM positions in the world – is it really too much to expect all 30 of the guys who hold that position to learn this stuff as part of their job?

The dichotomy between scouts and stats is a false one, because scouting reports and statistical analysis are simply two sides of the same coin. That coin is information. It’s a GM’s job to have the best, most complete information available when making decisions. Not all information is equally valuable – but there’s no way to sift out the nuggets of useful stuff from the chaff of data if you don’t have the data in the first place. Instead of looking at defensive statistics as information – as one piece of the puzzle – the Royals have made a prior decision that nothing of value could possibly be contained therein.

The most brilliant people can make the most terrible decisions – and this is true in all walks of life, from business to politics – when they’re afraid to challenge their preconceived notions, and ignore anything that might sway them from what they want to do. We know for a fact that Moore has pined after Betancourt for years, and it appears to me that, having long ago decided that Betancourt was a player he wanted, he found a way to make the information at hand today justify that decision.

When Moore was hired, his lack of a statistical background didn’t bother me at all. I figured that, he was obviously a brilliant guy (and he is), and would be smart enough to learn the statistical side as part of his job. It’s a lot easier to understand the numbers (or hire someone who does) than it is to learn how to scout, and I’d rather start with a GM who has proven he knows how to scout ballplayers and trust that he’d learn the other stuff. The guy I frequently compared Moore to was Dave Dombrowski, who I’ve long had the greatest respect for even though he’s a scout first and foremost.

The difference is that Dombrowski, as confident as he is in his own abilities (and believe me, he’s a confident guy), has never been too arrogant – or too intimidated – to factor in statistics when the need arises. A great example of this would be this off-season, when the Tigers decided to revamp the defense on their aging roster. The lynchpin of this renovation was to bring in a new everyday shortstop in the form of Adam Everett.

Now, Everett is a terrible hitter; always has been, always will be. He’s hitting .262/.318/.354, which are his best numbers in five years. But Everett has arguably the best defensive statistics of any shortstop this decade – which is to say, since advanced fielding metrics came into existence. He’s long been a cause celebre among stats guys, sort of the anti-Derek Jeter. (John Dewan and Bill James did a fascinating comparison between the two in the first edition of the Fielding Bible.)

Even though he’s lost a step this season, he has still been a huge upgrade for the Tigers in the field. The Tigers’ defensive efficiency has improved significantly since last year – and after giving up the third-most runs in the AL last year, they currently have given up the third-fewest runs in the league this year.

Essentially, Everett’s performance this year is what the Royals expect from Betancourt. The difference is that Adam Everett was signed to a one-year, $1 million contract. (And he didn’t cost anything in the way of prospects.)

As one friend put it to me, “this is worse than the Neifi Perez trade, because this time the GM didn’t have a gun to his head.” It’s hard to argue with that. Ownership gave Allard Baird 36 hours to trade Dye; it was Baird’s fault that he traded for Perez – the Royals would have been better off just releasing Dye – but there were extenuating circumstances. (The story just keeps getting worse. While ownership’s complicity in the Dye trade has long been well-known, I was informed me on the radio on Monday that a few months prior to the Neifi trade, Baird had agreed to trade Dye to the Blue Jays for Vernon Wells. Ownership nixed it.)

But you can’t blame the Glasses for this one. This one is all on Moore.

To respond to some of the criticisms in the comments section from my last post:

1) A few people have felt that my criticism of this deal is hypocritical given that I was advocating that the Royals trade for Jeff Francoeur, who has many of the same weaknesses that Betancourt does.

Sorry, but I don’t see it. I advocated that the Royals take a flyer on Francoeur, because his trade value had dwindled to the point that he could be acquired for almost nothing. (The Mets got him for Ryan Church, who wasn’t hitting all that well and had worn out his welcome in New York for off-the-field reasons – and the Mets are still being killed for giving up too much of the deal.)

I liked the idea of grabbing Francoeur because I thought he could be acquired without giving up a top prospect – if the Royals had traded Cortes for Francoeur, I would have argued that they gave up too much. But even so, I would have been a lot less upset than I am with this trade.

- Francoeur is 25. Betancourt is 27.

- Francoeur has a history of above-average performances at the major-league level. He had an OPS+ of 126 as a 21-year-old rookie, and an OPS+ of 103 just two years ago. Betancourt’s career-high in OPS+ is 93.

- Francoeur walked 42 times in 2007, and 39 times last year. Betancourt has never walked 18 times in a season.

- While Francoeur’s recent defensive numbers aren’t so hot, just two years ago he was 17 runs above-average in right field according to UZR; he’s +35 for his career. By contrast, the defensive numbers have always hated Betancourt. He topped out at 1.1 runs above average as a rookie, and his numbers have declined literally every year since: +1.1, +0.7, -1.1, -12.6, and -8.2 (in half a season this year). His career performance is -20.

- And most importantly by far, Francoeur is only under contract for the rest of this season. He’s making $3.375 million this year, meaning that if the Royals had traded for him, they would only be on the hook for about $1.6 million or so. If they liked what they saw, they could keep him for another season at the same price or less (it’s highly unlikely that he would have earned a raise in arbitration) – but if after an 80-game audition they didn’t like what they saw, they could cut him without repercussions. Betancourt, on the other hand, is guaranteed $7 million by the Royals even if they cut him tomorrow.

I can’t stress this enough: the problem with trading for Betancourt isn’t that the Royals got Betancourt – it’s that they got Betancourt’s contract. Dayton Moore claimed in the radio interview that if Betancourt had been a free agent, and the Royals had signed him to a 2-year, $5 million contract, they would have been applauded for it.

First off, he’s not counting the $2 million buyout of his $6 million option for 2012. The $2 million is a sunk cost, so really this is a $7 million contract with a $4 million option. Secondly: are you freaking kidding me? There isn’t a team in baseball – outside of Kansas City – that would have made that offer.

Forget Moore’s ignorance of statistics for a moment – an equally big problem here seems to be Moore’s ignorance of Betancourt’s reputation. The Mariners were DESPERATE to unload him. While the front office is a little too dignified to be publicly high-fiving themselves, everyone else in Seattle is. It’s not just the fans that are throwing parades – the sportswriters who cover the Mariners have been openly stupefied by how the Mariners were not only able to unload Betancourt, but how they could do so while 1) picking up just a quarter of his contract and 2) getting prospects in return. NO ONE in Seattle thought this was possible, for good reason.

Before Moore pats himself on the back for getting Betancourt signed to such a small contract, he might want to ask himself why, if Betancourt’s contract was so favorable to the Royals, no other team had any interest in acquiring him. And why the Mariners were so willing to oblige him.

2) A lot of commenters have defended this trade using the argument that even if Betancourt isn’t a great player, he is such an upgrade over Tony Pena that there’s no question the trade makes the Royals better, and you can’t fault Moore for a move that improves the team in the here and now.

I hate, hate, hate this line of reasoning, if for no other reason than the core of the argument is that the ROYALS HAVE TONY PENA ON THEIR ROSTER. Tony Pena isn’t just the worst quasi-regular player in the major leagues today – he’s perhaps the worst quasi-regular hitter in the majors in at least a generation. Since the start of last season, over the course of 276 at-bats, Pena is hitting .156/.178/.192. Read that again: .156/.178/.192. His OPS+ is exactly 0.

Since the time my dad bought me my first Baseball Encyclopedia when I was 6 years old, I have been fascinated with Ray Oyler, the shortstop for the 1968 Tigers, who hit a remarkable .135/.213/.186 that season in 215 at-bats. Oyler’s 1968 is generally considered to be the worst season by a hitter in the expansion era – he was so bad that after the Tigers clinched the pennant, manager Mayo Smith decided to bench Oyler in favor of fourth outfielder Mickey Stanley, who had never played shortstop before in the majors. Stanley took over as the starting shortstop the last week of the season, and was the starting shortstop in every game of the World Series – which the Tigers won in seven. Stanley would never start another game at shortstop in his career.

Amazingly, Oyler had a higher OPS in 1968 (399) than Pena has over the last two seasons (370). And that’s not even accounting for league environment – 1968 was the year of the pitcher, when the AL as a whole hit .230/.297/.339.

Tony Pena Jr. has supplanted Ray Oyler as the worst hitter to garner significant playing time in the last 50 years. If the best argument you can make for Betancourt is that he’s better than Pena…well, you’ve just proved my point.

The irony is that this was the same argument that was used when the Royals acquired Pena in the first place. Remember how desperate we were for a shortstop at the end of spring training in 2007? It was clear that Angel Berroa was not about to come out of his seasons-long tailspin, and the Royals needed a better alternative. The Royals stretched the meaning of “better alternative” to the breaking point, trading a decent prospect in Eric Cordier to Atlanta in exchange for Pena, who was out of options and was not a lock for the Braves’ roster.

A lot of Royals fans were just thrilled that the team had upgraded from a no-hit, no-field shortstop to a no-hit, good-field shortstop. The rest of us thought it was rather ridiculous that the Royals felt they had to give up a prospect in order to acquire a player who was about to be released – and who was no better than half-a-dozen other no-hit, good-field shortstops in Triple-A.

Here we are two years later, and the same shortstop that so many fans were thrilled to acquire has become such a piñata that many of the same fans are thrilled that the Royals overpaid for Yuniesky Betancourt – who, again, was in danger of being released at some point, and who is no better than a lot of league-minimum alternatives. The circle of life is complete.

Haven’t we learned from the Mike Jacobs debacle? When I ripped the Royals for trading Leo Nunez for Jacobs, one of the comments I received was, “Mike Jacobs gives us the lefty power bat that we lacked. He’s certainly an upgrade over last year’s starting 1B Ross Gload.” There were many others that delivered the same message: Jacobs > Gload, therefore Jacobs was worth acquiring. Really, guys? Was it really worth acquiring the guy hitting .222/.296/.412 as a DH, at the cost of a good reliever and millions of dollars? Or would it have been worth looking at the many, many other players out there who were better than Ross Gload, and trying to see if one of them was a better fit for the Royals than Jacobs?

Yuniesky Betancourt is better than Tony Pena. If that’s a reason to acquire Betancourt, then it’s also a reason to acquire half the starting shortstops in Triple-A. Hell, it’s a reason to acquire Angel Berroa, who the Mets just claimed on waivers. Does anyone doubt that Berroa can hit better than .156/.178/.192? Would you have been happy if the Royals acquired him?

The way to judge any acquisition is not simply to compare the acquired player to the guy he’s replacing. The way to judge the acquisition is to compare him to all the potential acquisitions out there. Whether it’s patching up the defense with another marginal hitter with a great glove, like Chin-Lung Hu, or trying to reclaim another player that has fallen out of his team’s good graces, like Julio Lugo, or taking a truly creative and ballsy gamble (Mike Moustakas for Alcides Escobar?) – the Royals had a lot of options to consider. All of them were better than sticking with Tony Pena – including just sticking with Willie Bloomquist for the rest of the season, then trying Mike Aviles again next year. (What happens when Aviles is ready to play next April? I’ll tell you what happens – the Royals will bury him, even though he has been a better player than Betancourt. They won’t bench the guy making seven figures for the guy making six figures.)

Trading for Yuniesky Betancourt didn’t have to be such a disaster. I see the Royals’ line of thinking here: Betancourt is a phenomenally talented player who might benefit from a change of scenery, and his price has never been lower. The fundamental mistake the Royals made was that they didn’t appreciate just how low Betancourt’s stock had fallen. If they had traded Saito alone – and made the Mariners pick up $6 million instead of just $3 million – this would have been a perfectly reasonable trade. And judging from the condolences I received after the team from front office types – no, not anyone who used to work at Baseball Prospectus – they still would have had the best offer on the table.

Instead, the Royals gave up Cortes and Saito, and are on the hook for $7 million. This is like buying Citigroup stock at $10 a share, and then when critics have the audacity to point out that the stock is only worth $3 a share today, defending yourself by saying that the stock was worth $50 just two years ago. Yeah, the Royals bought low. But they didn’t buy low enough.

3) Finally, I should address the criticisms that I’m bailing on the team as a fan, criticisms succinctly summed up by one commenter who called me “a pissy little bitch.” Fair enough. But I defy anyone to show me where I have ever expressed such a sentiment before. I didn’t bail on the team when they trade for Neifi, but this time it feels different.

Part of the difference isn’t with the Royals, it’s with me. When they traded for Neifi, I was 26 years old. Now I’m 34 years old and have three young children. It used to be that when the Royals would blow late-inning leads night after night, or make an incomprehensible trade that set the franchise back for years, I’d be in a funk for days, but that was my problem. Now there are innocent bystanders involved. I wasn’t pleasant company for my family to be around on Friday or Saturday, and that wasn’t fair to them. Frankly, I haven’t been great company for most of the last two months.

I gave a lot of thought to this over the weekend, about whether I could ever free myself of being a Royals fan. My old friend Jonah Keri has tried to tempt me, arguing that “It is so liberating not to have a favorite team. Your life will improve immeasurably.” But Jonah’s situation is different – he was a Montreal Expos fan. He didn’t abandon his team, his team abandoned him. Because of that, he never has to worry that one day his team might win without him. The reality is that however remote the odds are that the Royals might win, the notion that they might one day head to the playoffs without me is just too painful to consider.

So no, I can’t imagine rooting for any other team; if that makes me a flip-flopper, so be it. But I realized something else while I was out of town for the weekend – that I didn’t care how the Royals played in Boston, and more than that, the fact that I didn’t care was, as Jonah put it, liberating. Instead of sneaking peeks at my iPhone every few minutes, I could enjoy being with my family and friends all day, and then just check the box score at the end of the night. “The Royals scored nine runs and lost? Miguel Olivo was forced out at home plate by an outfielder? How funny!”

So that’s where I am now. For years, I’ve defended Rob Neyer from people who claim he’s no longer a Royals fan. You don’t have to be optimistic about your team to be a fan. You don’t have to live and die with every game to be a fan. If and when the Royals are in a legitimate pennant race in August, I have no doubt that Rob will be glued to his set. And I will be too. But like Rob, I think I’ll be a lot happier if I don’t show a greater commitment to the Royals than they show to me.

I can’t believe I’m about to paraphrase a line from Fever Pitch, but in all the years I’ve loved the Royals, they’ve never loved me back. And right now, they completely hate me – literally and figuratively. So maybe it’s time I stand up for myself and say, love can’t be a one-way street. We’ll still be friends, we’ll still keep in touch, I’ll call every now and again. But I can’t keep putting myself out there every night and keep getting rejected.

That “About Me” section has listed me as “pathetic Royals fan all the time” for the last two years. Maybe it’s time I stop being a pathetic Royals fan, and just be a Royals fan. When they’re good, I’ll care about them. When they’re not, I won’t. We’ll both be happier this way.

(If you want to tell me in person that I’ve become a fair-weather fan and a bandwagon jumper, make sure to come out to the park this Saturday at 5 PM. I hope to have a formal announcement up sometime tomorrow.)