This Stove Gets Hot Quickly.

As I wrote last time, “If the Royals make some significant moves over the winter…I might show up here with some brief commentary.” Well, they made a significant move, so here’s some brief commentary. Okay, maybe not brief. If it was brief, you ought to be concerned that an imposter hacked into my blog. It may be while before I post again, so I figured I'd get all my thoughts down at one time.

Dayton Moore likes to get started early. For the second year in a row, Moore made a trade on the first day of the off-season – or at least the trade leaked the day after the World Series. You can’t talk about the particulars of the deal without discussing the rather bizarre way that the trade unfolded.

Bill Madden of the New York Daily News broke the story just hours after the World Series ended. On Thursday morning, Buster Olney reported that trade talks were “not that far along”. An hour later, the Chicago Sun-Times confirmed the deal, even though both Chris Getz and Mark Teahen had denied that they had heard anything about a deal.

Thursday afternoon, Dick Kaegel reported that neither team had confirmed anything, and Teahen tweeted that night that “After a long day of rumors & questions, I haven't heard anything official. Heading 2 bed comfortable in knowing I'm a Royal 4 another day.”

Just past noon on Friday, the Royals finally issued a press release confirming the trade as initially reported; the only difference being that the Royals were including “cash considerations” (reported to be around $1 million) in the deal. (Many thanks to mlbtraderumors.com for helping with the timeline.)

Now in the grand scheme of things, the fact that a trade that wasn’t confirmed until Friday afternoon leaked Thursday morning isn’t a big deal. What is a big deal is that this continues a very troubling trend for the Royals, which is that despite – or perhaps because – they have instituted an almost-paranoid level of secrecy on all the team’s dealings, their trade talks continue to leak out before all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. Remember, it was just over a year ago when multiple newspapers reported that the Royals and Indians were close to a deal that would send Teahen to Cleveland in exchange for an outfielder, one of Trevor Crowe, Ben Francisco, or Franklin Gutierrez*. Publicly, Dayton Moore denied the rumors vociferously; privately, he went ballistic, going so far as to threaten to obtain cell phone records from employees to discover (and fire) the person responsible for the leak.

*: I don’t like to play what-if scenarios too often…but what if the Royals had traded Teahen for Gutierrez? The Indians wound up trading Gutierrez to Seattle in a 3-team, 11-player deal with the Mets, and Gutierrez hit .283/.339/.425 with 18 homers and 16 steals for the Mariners – and also had the most impressive defensive statistics of any outfielder in baseball. It’s not clear that the Royals were ever close to getting Gutierrez specifically, but if they had, they probably never trade for Coco Crisp, meaning they would have kept Ramon Ramirez, they might not have needed to sign Kyle Farnsworth and/or Juan Cruz…the debacle of last winter might well have been avoided. On the other hand, without Teahen, the Royals would have been caught flat-footed when Alex Gordon went down with his hip injury.

This time, there was fire to go along with the smoke, which led to yet another embarrassing situation for the Royals, as once again one of their players learned he had been traded away from a reporter instead of from the front office.

A few years back I formulated Jazayerli’s Law of Fundamentals, which states that “A team's ability to execute the “fundamentals” is inversely correlated to the time spent discussing the importance of executing them.” In the same vein, here’s a new rule I’ve made – call it Jazayerli’s Law of Public Relations: “The less forthcoming an organization is regarding personnel decisions that are made, the more likely it is that those personnel decisions will come to light in a messy and embarrassing way.”

Information yearns to be free, and it’s madness to think that in today’s 24-hour-news-cycle, mobile-internet, Twitter-and-Facebook world, that you can expect trade negotations to be kept secret indefinitely. The Royals’ attempts to do so of late have been laughably pathetic, but what’s more pathetic is that the Royals actually waste time looking for scapegoats when their private dealings inevitably become public. Moore’s tantrum last winter when the Teahen trade talks leaked is well known. More recently, the Royals berated members of the local media this September for telling prospect Danny Gutierrez that he had been traded to Texas before they had the chance to do so. This was ridiculous on so many levels: 1) it’s not the media’s fault when the Royals drop the ball and let their players hear from someone else that they’ve been traded; 2) Gutierrez had already been tipped off – he had already announced on his Facebook account that he was traded; 3) IT’S THE MEDIA’S JOB TO TALK TO PEOPLE.

The Royals aren’t wasting as much effort try to run down the leak this time, probably because even they can figure out that Bill Madden probably got his information from sources with the White Sox. Regardless, once again they’ve allowed what should be a quick, cut-and-dried trade announcement to turn into a drawn-out, confusing, will-they-or-won’t-they drama. It’s a small thing, but it’s a revealing thing.

Enough about the presentation – let’s talk about the substance of the deal. My initial reaction to the news that the Royals were trading Teahen for Chris Getz and Josh Fields was positive. In blunt terms, the Royals were trading two years of a league-average (and highly-paid) hitter for two players who could be league-average players as soon as 2010, and who are both under contract for five more years. My seven-second reaction was very favorable.

The consensus of the sabermetric community is…well, there is no consensus, really. Keith Law, oftentimes the Royals’ harshest critic, wrote “Love the trade for Kansas City. They will have traded a 45/50, who is close to free agency for two 45's with several more years of control.” (50 being scout-speak for a league-average player.) Over at fangraphs.com, Dave Cameron called this “a fantastic deal” for the Royals. On the other hand, Christina Kahrl’s transaction analysis was not nearly as sanguine, as she wrote, “It might be more appropriate to wonder what the point was, since this doesn't advance the Royals in any particular direction beyond ‘staffed’”. (If you read Kahrl’s analysis regularly, you know how inadequate any single sentence of hers is in conveying her complete thoughts.) Joe Sheehan’s analysis was even more negative, and much more terse, conveyed in a five-word text message Thursday morning: “Your GM is an idiot.”

I love it when a trade is evaluated objectively by two of the most capable analysts I know and they reach completely different opinions. If nothing else, this means that no matter what conclusion we reach about this trade, it’s important to hold that conclusion with all due humility, realizing that smart people are holding the other end of our position.

In Mark Teahen, the Royals gave up a player with a great attitude, who started at six different positions with the team without complaint – even when moving from third base to right field and back on a daily basis – and who was arguably the funniest Royal of his generation. (Teahen might have been the most consistently funny Royal since Dan Quisenberry.) What they didn’t give up was a great hitter. Teahen hit .271/.325/.408 last year, and his career numbers are an almost identical .269/.331/.419. The memory of his 2006 power surge is a distant one now. He’s a league-average hitter, one who just turned 28, and is more likely to stagnate than to take a big step forward.

While he has tremendous versatility, he’s never shown much proficiency at any specific position. According to UZR, he’s about 10 runs below average per season and third base, and while he’s been an average outfielder over his career, his numbers last year were terrible – he was 5 runs below average in right field despite playing just 32 games out there.

Teahen has value, particularly at third base, where the White Sox have wisely indicated will be his full-time position (with phenom Gordon Beckham moving over to second base). It’s quite possible, even likely, that his glove will improve with an off-season to prepare – remember, Teahen spent most of last spring training working at second base. It’s possible that a new organization and a much more favorable home park will be a tonic to Teahen’s homer numbers. But it’s very clear to me that none of that improvement was likely had the Royals kept him. Last Monday I was on radio with Soren Petro, and when Petro asked me what I thought was the most likely move of the Royals’ off-season, my answer was a Mark Teahen trade. As much as I like Mark, he had considerably less value on the Royals’ roster than he did on the trade market. Credit Moore for realizing that the obvious move is usually the right move – otherwise it wouldn’t be so obvious.

The key player the Royals received in return is supposed to be Chris Getz, who as a rookie second baseman last season hit .261/.324/.347. Those numbers are pretty lousy, but they’re mitigated somewhat by his 25 steals in 27 attempts. Most defensive metrics rated his defense as below-average, but he has a good reputation and no metric is ultra-reliable over a sample size of just one season – let’s call his defense average. In 2008, he hit .302/.366/.448 with 11 homers in Triple-A (he’s hit just eight homers in his other four pro seasons combined), and in 2007 he had a .382 in an injury-marred Double-A campaign. So there is some upside here, but by “upside” I mean he could into, I don’t know, Mickey Morandini or someone like that. A second baseman who makes up for a lack of power by being a tough out, stealing the occasional base, and playing a workman-like second base. The kind of guy who makes the opposing starter work hard out of the #8 spot in the lineup.

Even after giving Getz bonus points for coming out of the University of Michigan (I believe he’s the first Wolverine to suit up for the Royals since Hal Morris in 1998), it’s hard to credit him with being more than a utility player at this point. That has value, but not typically enough value to actually trade for. Which is why I think that Josh Fields is the key to the deal, or at least that the Royals hope he’s the key to the deal.

Fields has a lot of the traits of the perfect buy-low trade candidate. He has an excellent pedigree – he was a first-round pick in 2004 out of Oklahoma State, where he was also the starting quarterback (and still holds the university record for touchdowns thrown). By 2006 he was in Triple-A and hit .305/.379/.515; the following year he hit 23 homers as a rookie for the White Sox in just 100 games, slugging .480. No one would have thought that he’d be reduced to being a throw-in in a relatively minor trade two years later.

Even as a rookie Fields had a .308 OBP, and his career mark is just .302, which makes it easy to label this as just another low-OBP grab by clueless Royals management. I think the reality is a little more complicated. Fields’ problem isn’t that he doesn’t draw walks – he actually has 68 career walks in 664 at-bats, and a ratio of more than one walk per 10 at-bats is pretty good. The reason his OBP is so low is pretty obvious – it’s because his lifetime batting average is .229. And the reason his batting average is just .229 is also pretty obvious – it’s because he’s struck out 226 times in those 664 at-bats.

Fields, basically, is a poor man’s Mark Reynolds. Only one guy in the majors can succeed while striking out 200 times a season, and Fields isn’t him. But if Fields can cut his strikeout rate by 20-25% - which still works out to 150 strikeouts a season – he’s a breakout candidate. That’s a tall order for Kevin Seitzer, but after sticking Seitzer with the likes of Mike Jacobs, Miguel Olivo, and Yuniesky Betancourt over the past year, a project like Fields must feel like a remedial assignment. It’s a lot easier to teach a major league hitter to cut his strikeouts than it is to get him to raise his walks. Fields is a project, but one worth taking on. He’s already shown he can hit lefties – he has a career .285/.356/.580 line against southpaws – so the Royals have a base of success with which to build. I’ll predict right now that Fields, not Getz, proves to be the more successful of the pair with Kansas City. (Even though Getz was a rookie last year, he’s already 26 – he’s just eight months younger than Fields.)

You can’t talk about this deal without touching on the finances of it, and certainly that played a big part in the trade. Even with the $1 million the Royals sent to Chicago, they saved millions, given that Teahen will likely command close to $5 million in arbitration this winter, and that both Getz and Fields are pre-arbitration players who will make just over the league minimum of $400,000. Counting the extra roster spot, the Royals save roughly $3.5 million on the deal.

But I think the financial implications of the deal are less important than the service time implications. Teahen will be a free agent after the 2011 season. Both Getz and Fields have between one and two years of service time – neither would be a free agent until after the 2014 season. Getz won’t even be arbitration-eligible next year. The Royals acquired two players who are ready to contribute right away, but whose free agent horizons are well into the future. As Moore said, “Our motivation behind this deal – and any deal that we make this winter – is to acquire as many zero-to-three service-time players as we can. That was certainly what we did here.”

If for no other reason than that quote, this trade makes sense, because in making this trade Moore finally acknowledged something he should have last season: that while the Royals might be ready to contend in the near future, “the near future” does not mean “next year”. The Royals, barring divine intervention, are not going to win anything in 2010. Teams just don’t go from 97 losses one season to the playoffs the next. (Although I’m sure Moore knows all about the 1991 Braves.)

But the Royals can realistically think about contention in 2011, so long as they use 2010 wisely. That means jettisoning league-average guys like Teahen for lottery tickets like Fields, and using 2010 to see which of the new guys can play and which can’t. It might mean a few more losses next year while the Royals sort through their options – but I’d gladly sacrifice a few wins in 2010, when the Royals won’t need them, for a few wins in 2011, when they just might.

Or to put it another way, as Moore said, “The bottom line is it hasn’t worked here. It hasn’t worked. We have to do what we have to do to shake up our team and generate as much competition as we can. We have to put the pressure on (players) to go out and perform.”

It. Hasn’t. Worked. Here.

It. Hasn’t. Worked.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Moore almost sounds contrite. That he’s almost admitting that he’s made mistakes.

So if that’s what this trade is about – admitting that The Process^TM is in need of refinement, and that the Royals need to rethink how they put together a team – then I’m all in favor of it.

I’m just not sure it’s that simple. Taken in isolation, trading Teahen for Getz and Fields makes sense. But this trade can’t be fully evaluated until we see the other moves it triggers, because as it stands Getz and Fields are both without positions to play. Getz’s primary position is second base, where the Royals have Alberto Callaspo. Fields’s primary position is third base, where they have Alex Gordon. Taking playing time away from Callaspo and/or Gordon for the sake of Getz and/or Fields is so dumb that not even the Royals would consider it. Which means more moves are afoot.

The dilemma with Fields is, to my mind, an easy one to fix. Fields’s defensive reputation at third base is pretty lousy, and he has a fair amount of experience in the corner outfield. I could see him moving directly into the Teahen role, rotating between third base and the corner outfield, but my hope is that the Royals see him, in a best-case scenario, as their future right fielder.

Getz is a trickier problem to solve, because like most second basemen, he doesn’t have the skills to be a utility player – he played a little third base and left field in the minors, but he really should only be moved off the keystone in an emergency situation.

Now, I’ve been advocating for months now that the Royals should seriously explore the possibilities of an Alberto Callaspo trade. His bat ought to make him a highly-prized commodity on the trade market, while his glove is likely to be better-tolerated on a team that doesn’t have defensive liabilities at multiple other positions like the Royals have.

But it’s one thing to trade Callaspo if the right offer comes along, and it’s quite another to trade him simply because you can’t stomach his defense and you’ve finally found a decent replacement in Getz. Getz allows the Royals to trade Callaspo. He does not force the Royals to trade Callaspo, particularly since Getz (unlike Fields) actually has an option left, so he can be sent to Omaha to start the year if a suitor for Callaspo has not materialized.

Ultimately, this trade is going to be judged by the moves that it emboldens the Royals to make. I honestly think that Moore didn’t have any grand plan in mind for how to resolve the logjam of talent at third base and second base when he made this move. I think he made this move precisely because he doesn’t know where this off-season will lead, and so by bringing Fields and Getz into the fold, he puts the Royals in a position where they can pull the trigger if the right deal for someone like Callaspo comes along, but they don’t feel obligated to make a deal just for the sake of making one. At least I hope that’s true. When the Royals have made a deal just for the sake of making one, the casualties have been hard to bear.

If Moore decides to give away Gordon for whatever he can get and install Fields at third base, and then makes room for Getz by moving Callaspo to DH (which would be a waste of his talents), we’ll rue the day that Kenny Williams picked up the phone. But if Fields winds up taking playing time away from Jose Guillen in right field, and if the Royals get a bushel of prospects for Callaspo, this trade may be looked back at as the day the Royals started to rebuild the right way. The trade looks good in isolation. But I want to see the next few dominoes before I pronounce judgment.

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We may have gotten a glimpse of the next domino the other day, when Bob Dutton reported ahead of the GM Meetings that “One rumor to watch: A deal sending second baseman Alberto Callaspo to the Los Angeles Dodgers for catcher A.J. Ellis, a 28-year-old rookie who currently projects as a backup to Russell Martin following the anticipated free-agent departure of veteran Brad Ausmus.”

If I were to draw up a list of teams that Moore should be talking to regarding Callaspo, the Dodgers would be very, very high up. The Dodgers are the perfect storm for a potentially lopsided trade:

- Thanks to their scouting director, Logan White, the Dodgers perennially have one of the most bountiful farm systems in baseball. It’s not as strong as it used to be, but there’s still plenty of talent there.

- Thanks to their highly overrated GM, Ned Colletti, the Dodgers have no problem with overpaying in prospects for a player who can help them today.

- As you may have heard, the owners of the Dodgers (Frank and Jamie McCourt) are in the opening stages of a messy, nasty, tabloid-filling divorce. The financial pressures on the team are likely to be as strong as the financial pressures were on the Padres when their owner was getting divorced a few years ago. Given those pressures, an everyday player like Callaspo who makes close to the league minimum (Callaspo figures to miss arbitration by just a few days of service time) ought to be particularly enticing.

Add it all up, and Moore should be putting the full-court press on the Dodgers. Look at some of the talent that LA has given up recently:

- Traded Tony Abreu for one month of Jon Garland

- Traded Josh Bell and Steve Johnson for 2+ years of George Sherrill

- Traded Carlos Santana and Jonathan Meloan for 2 months of Casey Blake (!)

- Traded Willy Aybar and Danys Baez for Wilson Betemit

- Traded Dioner Navarro and other prospects for Toby Hall and Mark Hendrickson

The Santana trade kills me. The Indians turned a mediocre free agent-to-be into Santana, who’s now one of the best catching prospects in baseball. (Say what you want about the Indians, but no team does a better job of trading for prospects. They also turned Eduardo Perez into Asdrubal Cabrera, and Ben Broussard into Shin-Soo Choo. And let’s not even recount the Bartolo Colon trade, or how they turned Einar Diaz into Travis Hafner.)

So absolutely, the Dodgers are a perfect destination for Callaspo. But…A.J. Ellis?

The same A.J. Ellis who slugged .375 last season – in Albuquerque, one of the best hitters’ parks in the game?

The same Ellis who is 28 years old – more than two years older than Callaspo?

I’m sorry, but I can’t take this trade rumor seriously. Maybe Ellis is a throw-in to a larger package of prospects that the Dodgers and Royals are talking about. But there’s no way that even Dayton Moore would consider trading a 26-year-old second baseman who hit .300 with 60 extra-base hits last season, who’s under contract for four more seasons, for a 28-year-old slow, singles-hitting backup catcher wannabe.

There’s no way.

No way.

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If the Royals are interested in Ellis at all, it’s because they’ve decided to overhaul their catching corps. The Royals spent 100 grand on a buyout to Miguel Olivo, despite his 23 homers and .490 slugging average, just to keep him from activating the $3.3 million option on his contract. You could make a persuasive case that the Royals should have kept him at that price – and it will be interesting to see if they can work out a deal to offer him arbitration (and for him to decline)* in order to grab a compensation pick, as Olivo qualified as a Type B free agent – but ultimately it was the right move for two reasons. One, he had a .292 OBP in his career season, and two, he’s probably the worst everyday defensive catcher in baseball.

*: It just occurred to me: is it possible the Royals and Olivo have already worked out a handshake agreement for him to decline arbitration? Olivo was widely expected to forgo his player option, because he’s likely to earn more than $3.3 million on the open market. So why would the Royals pay him $100,000 to go away when they didn’t have to? Is it possible that they gave him a free 100 grand with the understanding that when they offer him arbitration, he’ll decline, netting the Royals a compensation pick? Stay tuned. It’s just a conspiracy theory, but everyone loves a good conspiracy theory.

But I don’t think Ellis is the answer, even if he’s just a throw-in in a Callaspo deal. Ellis is the exact opposite of Olivo offensively, in that he has no power but is an on-base machine, with a .438 OBP this season and a .436 OBP last season. On the surface, that sounds great. But I worry that Ellis’ on-base skills won’t translate to the majors for a couple of reasons.

First, he has no power to speak of – he didn’t hit a home run in all of 2009, and just four in 2008. The ability to draw walks at the major league level depends at least in part on the threat of power – one difference between major and minor league pitchers is that major leaguers can throw strikes when they have to, and without the threat of power, Ellis won’t be able to keep pitchers from just pounding him in the zone. Secondly, his high batting averages the past two years (.321 and .314) are almost certainly a ballpark illusion. Right-handed hitters without power are not going to hit .300 in the majors unless they have speed. Ellis doesn’t. It’s almost impossible to maintain a high OBP in the majors as a right-handed hitter with neither speed nor power.

Ellis’ OBP numbers in the minors look like those of a young Jason Kendall. But the young Kendall had a lot of speed and a fair amount of power, and he had a .402 OBP his first five years in the majors. The old Jason Kendall has neither speed nor power, and also has a .336 OBP the last five years. I fear that Ellis’ numbers in the majors will look a lot like Old Jason Kendall, and that’s not worth playing, let alone trading for.

I worry that the Royals, having finally seen up-close what ignoring OBP can do to your offense, have swung the pendulum clear the other way, and are suddenly interested in players whose OBP represents their only true skill. Ellis’ .438 OBP looks beautiful on paper. I just think he won’t come close to replicating that in the majors.

I particularly don’t see the appeal of Ellis since the Royals still have a better option in-house. I speak of John Buck, whose fan club has dwindled down to...(looks around)...just me, I guess. Take a look at these two lines from 2009:

Player A: .249/.292/.490, 103 OPS+

Player B: .247/.299/.484, 103 OPS+

Player A is the aforementioned Olivo. Player B is Buck. At-bat for at-bat, you could not construct two more similar hitters than these two. But because Olivo got more than twice as many at-bats last season, he has the counting numbers (23 homers, 65 RBIs) that impress people, while Buck doesn’t. But frankly, I’d rather have Buck. He’s two years younger, has a better idea of the strike zone, and while he has a much weaker arm, he’s much more sure-handed at blocking pitches in the dirt than Olivo. He makes a perfect complement to Brayan Pena, given that Pena is a switch-hitter and a contact guy, and he’s already on the roster. There may be better catchers than Buck on the market, but why the Royals would want to replace him with Ellis – who, again, is already 28 years old and has all of 10 at-bats in the majors – is beyond me.

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Finally, I can’t write about the Royals for the first time in two months without mentioning the fact that they completely turned over their training staff.

I take no particular joy in the fact that three men are out of a job. But as you know, I think this was absolutely the right move to make. I confess to being quite surprised at the news; if anything, I was concerned that the snit I had with the Royals this summer would have discouraged the Royals from making a move even if they wanted to, if only to avoid accusations that they were letting the inmates (i.e. the media) run the asylum. I felt like Professor Zarkov in Flash Gordon, in that by speaking out I had insured that the very thing I warned against would come to pass from Dayton Moore/Emperor Ming. (And you guys thought my “V” references were geeky.)

But the Royals made the right move anyway, and they deserve credit for that. Yes, officially Swartz retired, and for his sake I hope the move was voluntary. At the same time, you know the old adage about issuing bad news on a Friday afternoon? The press release announcing Swartz’ retirement entered my mailbox on a Friday at 5:59 PM.

To replace Swartz, the Royals hired Nick Kenney, who was the assistant head trainer for the Indians. (The Royals then cleaned house by letting assistant trainers Frank Kyte and Jeff Stevenson go, and replacing them with Kyle Turner, who was previously the Royals’ Minor League Medical Coordinator.) The Indians’ training staff has an excellent reputation, and in fact two years ago they won Baseball Prospectus’ Dick Martin Award that is given out to the best training staff in the majors. I have nothing but praise for this decision.

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At over 4900 words, this might be my longest column ever. So now that the Royals have a training staff that might be able to keep injury-prone players healthy, I’ll leave you with two final words as the free-agent season gets underway.

Rich Harden.

I'm Done.

So the Royals have improbably swept the Tigers, as the trio of Bruce Chen, Robinson Tejeda, and Lenny DiNardo led the Royals to victory over Rick Porcello, Justin Verlander, and Jarrod Washburn. After eking out a win tonight in Cleveland, the Royals have won five games in a row for the first time since they were, yes, 18-11. Seems like a good time for some positivity.

If that’s what you’re thinking, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you.

I’ve let this column stew in my head for a few days now, in the hope that time would dull the sharp edges a little bit. As harsh as this column might read, trust me, if I had written it two days ago it would have been much, much worse.

On Tuesday the Royals announced their final September callups of the year. Two days after the Royals rushed reinforcements to Kansas City in the arms of Dusty Hughes, Victor Marte, and Carlos Rosa (and the glove – certainly not the bat – of Luis Hernandez), the team brought back Alex Gordon after he had served penance for his sins at the plate, and brought up Lenny DiNardo in order to fill out a rotation that is suddenly down Gil Meche and Brian Bannister.

But it was the player the Royals didn’t call up that has exposed this organization once again as having blinders on to any kind of objective analysis of what the issues are with this team. Much as the acquisition of Yuniesky Betancourt spoke volumes about how clueless the Royals are when it comes to a rational evaluation of a player’s worth, the decision not to promote this player from Triple-A is damning evidence of the same thing.

And no, I’m not talking about Chris Hayes. I think Disco was deserving of a September callup, and could have helped the team down the stretch, but he stumbled down the stretch, allowing a 6.39 ERA after the All-Star Break thanks mostly to ridiculously bad luck in the BABIP category, as Hayes himself documented here. In 25 innings since the Break, Hayes walked just five batters and allowed just one homer, but gave up 42 hits on a BABIP of .410. For a pitcher who is never going to be taken seriously until he starts retiring major league hitters – and maybe not even then – Hayes’ stumble gave the Royals the excuse they were looking for to keep him down on the farm.

I’m obviously disappointed that Hayes won’t get the chance to see the Show this year, but I still think he had a good year overall, and is closer to the majors now than he was in March. For the season, he had a 3.05 ERA, and despite allowing 100 hits in 86 innings, he surrendered just 13 walks and three home runs. That’s positively Quisenberry-esque, as are the 41 strikeouts. (I mean that literally. In 1986, Quiz threw 81 innings, allowed 92 hits, 12 unintentional walks, 2 homers, and had 36 Ks. He had a 2.77 ERA. Not identical, but damn close.) I think Hayes has put himself in a position where, at worst, he’ll start next season in Triple-A, and if his luck evens out he’s in position to put pressure on the Royals to call him up all season long.

(Hayes isn’t exactly hurting in the publicity department either. After he was the subject of Joe Posnanski’s last official column for the Star, he’s been the subject of tweets by Ken Tremendous and Saturday Night Live’s Seth Meyers. I dare say that he’s now the most famous minor league middle reliever with a 78-mph fastball in the country.)

I’m not concerned about Hayes’ long-term future, but I am concerned about his future with the Royals. Hayes becomes Rule 5-eligible this winter if he’s not put on the team’s 40-man roster, and let’s be honest: does anyone here think the Royals believe he’s worthy of a roster spot? So I’ll call it now: the Royals will leave Disco off their 40-man roster, and there’s about a 50/50 chance that another team will take a $50,000 flyer on the kid who throws 78 but still gets people out. The odds would be a lot higher if the A’s didn’t already have Brad Ziegler, or if the Red Sox didn’t have so many resources that they don’t need to take a gamble on the soft-tossing submarine guy.

I’m not referring to Cory Aldridge either, although Aldridge certainly has the right to be upset about not getting called up. Aldridge isn’t a prospect – he turns 30 later this year – but he was Omaha’s Player of the Year after hitting .316/.361/.582 with 22 homers in 98 games. Calling Aldridge up to the majors wouldn’t hurt the team – any outfield that’s playing both Mitch Maier and Josh Anderson regularly needs all the help it can get – and would have been a nice way to honor a career minor leaguer who had the best season of his 13-year pro career. A small-market team like the Royals needs to be aggressive about recruiting minor league free agents, and it’s going to be that much harder to entice them to sign with Kansas City when a guy like Aldridge, who did everything he possibly could to earn a promotion, gets shut out of a month in the major leagues. Not to mention the $50,000 or so he would have made this month, which likely would have doubled his income for the year.

But no, I’m not that upset about those two decisions. It’s the decision to leave Kila Ka’aihue in Omaha that opens a window into the soul of the Royals’ front office. And what we’re seeing is not pretty.

I’ll be the first to admit that Ka’aihue has had a disappointing season. After hitting .314 last season, he hit just .252 this year. His home runs plummeted from 37 to 17, his slugging average dropped nearly 200 points from .628 to .433. But the one part of Ka’aihue’s game that didn’t deteriorate this season was his plate discipline. He drew 104 walks last season, and 102 more this year. Despite his low batting average, Ka’aihue had a .392 OBP.

I’ve said this before, but let me say it again: the single biggest failing of the Royals as a franchise over the last quarter-century hasn’t been their pitching, or their bullpen, or their lack of power or speed or defense. It has been a lack of ability or effort to get on base; specifically, an inability to take a walk. The Royals have ranked in the bottom half of the AL in walks drawn for TWENTY CONSECUTIVE SEASONS, and 28 of the last 29 years. After finishing dead last in walks last season, with one of the lowest walk totals by any team since World War II, they’ve improved all the way to next-to-last this season.

Dayton Moore and Trey Hillman have both paid lip service to the importance of plate discipline and OBP since the day they were hired…and then sabotaged that mission with seemingly every move. After tossing us a bone by hiring Kevin Seitzer as the team’s hitting coach last winter, Moore proceeded to crank up the degree of difficulty on Seitzer’s job, trading for Mike Jacobs (career OBP: .318), and Miguel Olivo (career high in walks: 20) over the winter, and then making Betancourt (career high in walks: 17) the cherry on top this summer.

Meanwhile, down in Triple-A, the Royals have a player who has now drawn over 100 walks in back-to-back seasons. (And remember, minor league seasons run only 140 games.) This player is a left-handed hitting 1B/DH, coincidentally the same role that Jacobs plays on the team. Jacobs has had the season that some of us expected him to, hitting just .235/.301/.417 with no speed or defensive value. As disappointing as Ka’aihue’s season was in Triple-A, it was essentially the equivalent of Jacobs’ season. According to Baseball Prospectus’ Davenport Translations, if you project what Ka’aihue’s numbers would have been had he played against major league competition this year, he would have hit .237 with a .408 slugging average – virtually identical to Jacobs’ performance this year.

Oh, except that thanks to all those walks, Ka’aihue’s OBP would be .368 – more than 60 points higher than Jacobs’.

I won’t mention that if the Royals had picked Ka’aihue over Jacobs last winter, they would still have Leo Nunez, whose 4.11 ERA this season would look awfully good compared to the scrubs that have been coughing up runs in middle relief all season. And I won’t mention that they also would have saved about 3 million dollars. That’s water under the bridge at this point. But just looking to 2010, it’s piercingly clear that Ka’aihue is a better hitter than Jacobs. He can’t possibly be worse defensively; he’s a lot cheaper; and he’s younger (and thus is more likely to improve on his 2009 season, particularly given how he hit in 2008). And did I mention he’s better?

Sure, it’s possible that Ka’aihue could be that mythical AAAA-player, the guy who lights up Triple-A pitching but can’t hit his way out of a paper bag in double-decker stadiums. That’s what September is for: to take advantage of the fact that you’re miles away from a pennant race by giving your young players some at-bats to evaluate them against major league competition.

Or, you know, you could send just send them home and continue to play veterans who have already proven they can’t hit.

Much like the acquisition of Betancourt, the direct damage of keeping Ka’aihue down on the farm pales to the indirect damage of what this decision says about the front office. The trade for Betancourt hurt the team, but it wasn’t a fatal blow – Jose Guillen makes as much in four months as the Royals will pay Betancourt over the life of his contract. But it was the thought process that led to the Betancourt trade that was so damning. Same thing here – while keeping Ka’aihue in the minors denies the team a chance to upgrade their offense and simultaneously cut payroll, what hurts more than Ka’aihue’s absence is that we have a front office that so little values his talents.

I have tried to come up with a plausible explanation for why Ka’aihue was left in the minors. The 40-man roster is full? Not only is that easily remedied – the Royals could easily open up space by putting Jose Guillen or John Bale or Julio Pimentel on the 60-day DL, or they could cut non-prospects like Devon Lowery and Mario Lisson – it’s irrelevant, since Ka’aihue is already on the 40-man roster. Financial considerations? Maybe in the Allard Baird era I would believe this, but I refuse to believe that Moore left Ka’aihue behind in order to save $50,000 – which is about what Gil Meche makes in one day. They don’t want to rush him? Ka’aihue has played 164 games in Triple-A, and 264 more in Double-A – the equivalent of over three full seasons in the high minors.

I have learned, from years of painful experience, to never assume that the Royals will allow common sense to creep into their decision-making process. This is the same organization, after all, that kept Jose Lima in their starting rotation for a full season – earning him incentives of over $1 million – while Lima was fashioning one of the worst seasons by a starting pitcher in major league history.

But I still didn’t see this coming. I still could not have fathomed that the Royals would rather continue to play out the string with a failed acquisition than so much as look at their best hitter in the high minors over the last two years. Even if you think Ka’aihue isn’t a legitimate prospect, even if (as I have heard) the Royals think Ka’aihue has slider bat-speed and won’t catch up to major league heat, what’s the harm in letting him prove it? Maybe Ka’aihue isn’t the answer to your DH hole – but since Jacobs has already proven that he’s not the answer, why not give Ka’aihue the chance to sink or swim?

Because…because…the Royals don’t think that Jacobs has proven to be a failure. And that’s the most frightening fact of all. Against all odds, against all the evidence, all the signs (the decision to leave Ka’aihue in the minors is just the latest one) point to the fact that the Royals want to bring Jacobs back. While the rest of us have watched a one-trick pony who can’t hit for average, can’t work a walk, can’t run, and can’t play defense to save his life, the Royals still see a solution. It’s as if, having acquired Jacobs last winter, the front office has decided that Jacobs is a fine player – they traded for him, after all! – and any evidence to the contrary is simply inaccurate. If the numbers say that Jacobs is actually a pretty useless player, well then, reality must have an anti-Royals bias.

Moore should run for political office one day, because he has already mastered the most important skill of any politician: when confronted with bad news, deny, deny, deny. Moore is still looking for the WMDs in Iraq. He did not have sexual relations with that woman*.

*: If it’s not a rule, it should be: if you insult both political parties back-to-back, no one can claim that you were being political. Fair?

The Royals traded for Jacobs, and while the rest of us see his .235 average and .301 OBP, the Royals see a guy who has given the team the power threat they really needed. And besides, he’s hitting .294 since August 2^nd! Never mind that from May 20^th to August 1^st, Jacobs – who’s a DH, remember – hit .171/.247/.304. Deny, deny, deny.

(The combined totals for the Royals’ cleanup slot this year – which has been mostly manned by Jacobs and Guillen – are .211/.278/.301. More amazing than that: when Jacobs went deep on September 2^nd, it was the first time the Royals’ cleanup hitter had hit a home run since JUNE 10^TH.)

The rest of us see that Roman Colon never did anything in Triple-A to justify a callup in the first place, and that he’s got a 5.31 ERA this year. The Royals see an excellent middle reliever. In fact, Colon has had four scoreless appearances in a row - he’s proven he’s ready for a more important role! Deny, deny, deny.

The rest of us scratched our heads when the Royals gave $9 million to sign a pitcher whose ERAs the previous three years read 4.48, 4.80, and 4.36. The Royals denied that was a problem – Kyle Farnsworth throws 100! We need strikeout pitchers in the bullpen!

Trust us: Sidney Ponson gives the team the veteran presence in the rotation that we’re missing. You can't win without a left-handed starter in your rotation, and never mind if Horacio Ramirez hasn't been a decent starter since 2005.

What’s that? How dare you suggest that the team might have mishandled Coco Crisp’s shoulder issues! (Just this morning I was told that another ex-Royal had privately bashed the team’s training staff as one of the worst in the industry.)

And you, Keith Law: how dare you write an unflattering column about my contract extension! (Here’s what Law wrote in his chat session yesterday: “Someone I know well with KC told me after I wrote that the Royals shouldn't give Dayton an extension that we're not friends any more. The entire organization has gone mad - you are simply not allowed to criticize them.” And while Law didn’t mention it in his chat, I’ve also learned that after publishing his criticism of Dayton Moore’s extension, Law received a phone call…from Dayton Moore.

Yuniesky Betancourt has been a tremendous pickup for us, and we’re thrilled to have him under contract for the next two or three years. Never mind that he’s hitting .222/.263/.361, or that his defensive numbers say that he’s cost the team 8 runs compared to an average defensive shortstop in just 50 games since he joined the team. I really don’t know how some of those statistics are evaluated. Which means they must not mean anything.

(Anyone remember how, in the midst of the firestorm of criticism that accompanied the Betancourt trade, Moore defended the move in part by pointing out how so many people in the media panned the signing of Willie Bloomquist signing? Yeah, he actually used Willie Bloomquist to defend himself. Bloomquist is hitting .257/.300/.345 this year, and the majority of his playing time has come in the outfield. That’s right: an outfielder with a .300 OBP and no power is a feather in Moore’s cap. But hey, at least Bloomquist was totally right about Betancourt! “He could be the best defensive shortstop in the game hands down. And offensively, he can swing it…It makes me smile that we got him. He’s going to help.”)

There’s no way we could have made this trade without including Daniel Cortes. Just because people in the Mariners’ own front office have said they would have done the trade for Derrick Saito alone doesn’t mean anything. Don’t believe everything you’re told by someone who works in a team’s front office. Well, unless it’s our front office.

Besides, it’s not like Cortes is a great prospect. I mean, sure, he was our #1 pitching prospect just six months ago, and he’s only 22 years old, and we sold at the absolute nadir of his trade value. But trust us – Cortes is nothing special. (Ben Badler of Baseball America wrote this in a chat session today: “late in the season [Cortes] was sitting in the low-90s with a plus curve and much better command than he had shown earlier in the year, and the numbers from his last three starts bear that out.” In his last three starts, Cortes whiffed 24 batters in 17 innings.)

Gil Meche’s back is fine. Okay, it’s not fine, but he can pitch through it. There’s nothing wrong with letting him throw 132 pitches in order to finish off a 5-0 game. It’s just a coincidence that he gave up 9 runs in his next start. And it’s another coincidence that he complained of a tired arm two starts after that. And just because he was complaining of a tired arm two days ago, there’s nothing wrong with letting him throw 121 pitches in his next start, working against the heart of the Twins’ lineup in the sixth inning. The fact that he has an 8.01 ERA since that start, and that he’s now out for the season with a tired shoulder? Pure coincidence. We’ve done nothing wrong.

(The best part of the link above is that Posnanski finishes with this line: 'Were [Hillman and Nick Swartz] thinking, “Boy, I hope this works and doctors don’t find out tomorrow that Gil has a serious injury because that would mean both our butts?”' They didn't find out tomorrow - it took two months - but now that Meche's arm has come up lame, I'm sure that Hillman and Swartz are worried about their job security. Oh, who am I kidding?)

Call up some new relievers? Why would we want to do that? Just because we blew 8^th-inning leads in three straight games coming out of the All-Star Break? Just because the bullpen – even including Joakim Soria – has an ERA over six since the Break? Our bullpen is fine. Besides, there isn’t anyone down in Omaha that can help. It doesn’t prove anything that Dusty Hughes, Victor Marte, and Carlos Rosa have thrown 7.2 scoreless innings since they were called up.

And most important of all: never mind the fact that the Royals are 37-74 in their last 111 games. Everyone knows that only the first 29 games of the season matter, and we won 18 of them! Besides, what really ruined the season was injuries, and never mind that many of them were self-inflicted. All that matters is that the team was 18-11 before Alex Gordon got hurt…okay, Gordon actually got hurt a week into the season and had only two hits before he went on the DL…before Mike Aviles got hurt…okay, Aviles hit .183/.208/.250 before he went on the DL…before Coco Crisp got hurt! Yeah, that’s it! If Crisp had just stayed healthy, we would have continued to play .621 ball all season!

Deny, deny, deny.

And then, when someone has the temerity to ask why, if the front office hasn’t made any mistakes this year, the team has the worst record in the American League – by all means, blame your first baseman (who’s the best hitter on your team, and the best young hitter your organization has developed in at least 15 years) for not turning 3-6-3 double plays. No, really, say that.

The Royals under Dayton Moore have been engaging in magical thinking all year long: if they believe something strongly enough, it will come true. Mike Jacobs is a good hitter. Mike Jacobs is a good hitter. Mike Jacobs is a good hitter. If we call up Kila Ka’aihue and give him a chance to play, that would mean Mike Jacobs is not a good hitter. Mike Jacobs is a good hitter. Does not compute.

Maybe if the Royals weren’t so focused on uncovering and stamping out criticism of the organization, they might have uncovered the fact that Luke Hochevar has been tipping his pitches for the last two years. Hochevar just learned that at least half a dozen major league teams have been sitting on his every pitch – and I can tell you that the people who finally let him in on the secret last week weren’t part of the Royals’ organization.

But again: the Royals are far more concerned with keeping information from leaking out of the organization then with bringing new information into the organization. They have all the answers. If only I had known they had all the answers two years ago, I wouldn’t have started this blog in the first place.

But now I know. So now’s the time for me to put this blog on hiatus.

I think it’s pretty clear that I need a break from the Royals. The fact that they’re on a modest little winning streak right now (though, predictably, they’ve done everything they could to screw Greinke out of wins in his last two starts) and all I can think about are all the things they’re doing wrong, suggests that I need to get away for a while. Anger has turned into bitterness, and it’s not healthy for me to write while I’m bitter. I’m sure many of you will be very critical of this column, and that’s your prerogative. The Royals have just won five in a row, and I spend over 4000 words ripping the team for not bringing up a minor leaguer for a few weeks? But that’s just it: I’ve reached the point where seemingly minor decisions are sending me off the deep end. So it’s probably best for everyone – you, me, and the Royals – if I stop writing for a while.

Over the last few days I talked to some close contacts who follow the team, hoping that they might reassure me that things aren’t as bad as they seem, and that they might talk me out of writing this column. The opposite occurred; they agreed that the organization is even more dysfunctional than it appears on the surface.

I started this blog two seasons ago with two main goals in mind: to influence the discourse about the Royals in the hopes that I might influence the team’s decisions in some small fashion, and to have fun. With regards to the first goal, I’ve obviously been a complete failure: judging from their moves, you’d think the Royals were doing the exact opposite of what I’ve preached purely out of spite. (I mean, seriously, I was the only stats guy in the universe that advocated the Royals should trade for Jeff Francoeur, who might be Dayton Moore’s favorite player in the world. They didn’t, and Francoeur was dumped on the Mets. Oh, and since being traded he’s hitting .296/.327/.481. That would look nice in our outfield.)

But up until recently I was having fun. I’ve had a blast establishing a rapport with all of you, building the kind of community that brought things like “The Mexicutioner” to a national audience. That sense of camaraderie has made all the losses tolerable, because at least we were all losing together.

The last three months have been, well, not fun. It’s not the losing; it’s the sense that the Royals’ front office operates in a different reality than the rest of us. Joe Posnanski wrote back in July 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.” As a Royals fan, I don’t know anything else. For 20 years – since the first time I cracked open a Bill James’ Baseball Abstract – my philosophy about baseball has been to use the power of sabermetrics to your advantage. And for 20 years, the Royals have been farther behind the curve when it comes to objective analysis than any team in baseball.

It’s one thing to have a philosophical disagreement with your team. It’s quite another when your team digs in its heels and refuses to change its philosophy…for 20 years...despite one of the losingest stretches in the history of the game. The Pittsburgh Pirates just got a lot of attention for setting a major league record with their 17^th consecutive losing season. Over the last 17 years, the Royals have more losses than the Pirates.

And still, the Royals live in this alternate reality, where night is day, up is down, Yuniesky Betancourt is a good ballplayer and Kila Ka’aihue can’t hold Mike Jacobs’ jock. Where losing is part of The Process. Where there is no such thing as legitimate criticism.

It’s not fun anymore. You know things are bad when the Royals win five in a row, and the two things running through my head are, "great, there goes our draft position" and "yeah, because that 18-8 record last September was such a strong omen." So I’m going to take a few months to recharge and see if the fun returns. I’ll still watch the Royals whenever Greinke starts, I’ll still root for Bam Bam to hit more doubles and for Alex Gordon to revive his career. I’ll still try to fit essay-length commentary into 140 characters on Twitter (@jazayerli). But between now and spring training, don’t expect any posts to show up here. If the Royals make some significant moves over the winter – they sign a free agent, they make a trade, they fire Trey Hillman (a man can dream) – I might show up here with some brief commentary. Other than that, I’m done for 2009.

If, over the winter, Dayton Moore decides to rejoin this plane of existence and acknowledge that The Process – the process that put together the 2009 Royals – is fatally flawed, then I look forward to being back next spring. If the upcoming off-season is a rehash of last off-season, well, I can find other things to occupy my evenings in the spring and summer.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and if the Royals cooperate this winter I hope to meet you all back here next February. Letting Mike Jacobs go over the off-season would be a nice start.

Dayton, More?

To: David Glass, Owner, Kansas City Royals

From: Rany Jazayerli, Fan, Kansas City Royals

Dear Mr. Glass,

Hi. We’ve never met, though I imagine our paths have crossed on more than one occasion. I know who you are, obviously; you might know who I am, but only because of that little stink I caused in your front office earlier this summer when I had the audacity to be critical of certain members of the organization.

So I guess I should start off by making it clear that you were not one of the targets of my criticism, and in fact, you might be the one member of the front office that I have not been at all critical of in the last three years.

I must admit, that wasn’t always the case – certainly not during the Allard Baird era in Kansas City, not after multiple sources laid bare what was happening behind the scenes. If you’re honest with yourself, I think even you’ll admit that you and your son interfered with baseball operations on many an occasion, and with an almost uniformly bad outcome.

Whether it was nixing a trade of Mike Sweeney to the Angels which would have brought the Royals several top prospects; or cutting the draft budget at the last minute, which forced your team to draft a bunch of college seniors and then offer them $1000 to sign; or whether it was famously giving Baird 36 hours to move Jermaine Dye, resulting in the disastrous Neifi Perez trade, just a few months after you vetoed a trade of Dye to the Blue Jays for a rookie named Vernon Wells – let’s be honest, much of the blame of the Allard Baird era can be laid at your feet. (And the three incidents above are just a sampling; there are other, even more egregious examples of meddling that I have multiple sources for.)

But since you hired Dayton Moore over three years ago, you have been, dare I say it, a model owner. You have opened your checkbook repeatedly, not just to sign major league free agents, but to sign high-priced amateur talent, both in the draft and on the international market. You have given Moore the financial flexibility to hire as much front office talent as he felt he needed, a luxury that was on full display when Moore hired the well-respected Mike Arbuckle, who had been in the running to replace Pat Gillick as the GM in Philadelphia, to a job position that didn’t even exist – Arbuckle’s scouting eye was deemed valuable enough that he was worth creating a job for.

And most importantly, you have empowered your GM to run the organization without interference. They say that in business, success has two ingredients: hire the right people, and then stay the hell out of their way. For whatever reason, too many businessmen – and we’re talking about businessmen successful enough to be able to afford a baseball team – seem to forget this simple rule when it comes to building a major league organization. But for the last three years, you have followed this rule to the letter. Two years ago, when I first started this blog, I wrote a positive review of your new approach to ownership. Despite the team’s struggles since, I stand by my conclusion that you have become a net positive force in the owner’s box, and I hold you essentially blameless for the disaster that the 2009 season has become. This isn’t a popular position to take among the fan base, trust me.

So I hope that in reading the following, you keep in mind that this isn’t just another critical screed from a disgruntled fan who’s had it in for you for a long time. I truly – and some might say naively – believe that you are committed to building the Royals into a winning organization again, and that you are as frustrated by what’s happened this season as the rest of us.

Which is why I think it’s important for you to get another fan’s viewpoint to the unexpected news that you have granted Dayton Moore a contract extension. I believe I speak for virtually all Royals fans, and virtually all national baseball writers, whether they are Royals fans or not, when I say: Why?

Why on earth do you feel compelled to give Moore a contract extension in the midst of what has become, if not the worst, then certainly the most disappointing season in the history of the franchise?

Now, let me make it clear: I am not advocating that you fire Dayton Moore. On the contrary, I feel – and once again, I am taking a position that is not popular with Royals fans today – that Moore should be allowed to keep his job for another season.

It’s undeniable that virtually every personnel decision that Moore has made since the end of last season has backfired, and while a few of those decisions looked good on paper, the majority of them were panned at the time, both by myself and by the general baseball establishment. Now, a general manager is going to make controversial moves – and as long as some of those moves work out, you can forgive the ones that don’t. In Moore’s case, every controversial move (I use “controversial” as a euphemism for “other baseball teams were openly mocking him”) has has failed miserably, and in some cases spectacularly. It’s been a bad, bad year for your front office.

Even so, I think Moore has earned the right to keep his job for another season, if only to prove whether or not he can learn from his mistakes this season, and to give him the opportunity to make amends. A year ago, Moore had earned the faith of most of the Royals’ fan base, and the respect of most of the other 29 major league teams, with a few bold and savvy moves (signing Gil Meche to a five-year deal, trading Ambiorix Burgos for Brian Bannister, grabbing Joakim Soria in the Rule 5 draft) that had helped the Royals to a 75-87 record in 2008. He made a few mistakes along the way, like trading J.P. Howell for Joey Gathright, and surrendering actual baseball talent for Tony Pena Jr. But no GM is perfect; as Moore himself said (quoting Arbuckle), “If we’re not making any mistakes, we’re probably not being very aggressive.”

No one would argue that Moore hasn’t been aggressive. And up until about a year ago, his aggressiveness had done more good than bad for the franchise. Now, it so happens that over the past year Moore’s best-laid plans have blown up in his face like they were designed by the Acme corporation, but I submit that no single season – not even a season as bad as this one has been – ought to wipe out the impression that Moore had made in his first two full seasons as GM. I believe he deserves another chance.

But there’s a hell of a difference between “he deserves to keep his job” and “he deserves an extension.” Particularly a four-year extension. There are three more Olympic Games scheduled between now and the end of Moore’s new contract.

I asked the question “why?” above, and that was meant to be a rhetorical question, but maybe it shouldn’t. There must be a legitimate reason why you would decide, in the midst of one of the worst 100-plus-game stretches in team history, that the man who put this team together ought to be rewarded for his efforts. Particularly since, according to Moore himself, you were the one who initiated the contract talks. Here’s what I came up with:

1) You were afraid that if you didn’t extend Moore’s contract, that he would bolt to another team after next season. I refuse to believe that a man smart enough to run one of the world’s largest corporations would actually be worried about this contingency. Once upon a time, Dayton Moore was the most sought-after GM candidate in the country. Now is not that time. Once upon a time, Moore was respected by most of his peers. After the train wreck of the 2009 season, here’s what one front office person had to say about Moore to my colleague Kevin Goldstein:

“It’s not like they were going to suddenly contend, so I have no idea why they rushed him to the big leagues,” commented another team executive, as far as the Royals’ decision making with Gordon’s development. “But I also have no idea why they traded Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez for non-tenders, or why they signed Jose Guillen, Horacio Ramirez, Sidney Ponson, and on and on and on.”

Mind you, Goldstein hadn’t asked about Moore – he had asked about Alex Gordon. The criticisms of the Royals’ front office came unbidden. Three years ago, Moore commanded respect. Today, if this quote is any indication, he commands only derision.

I’m sure you know this, which is why I’m sure you had other reasons to extend Moore’s contract. Like:

2) You felt it was necessary to issue a public vote of confidence for your GM, in order to quell the growing groundswell of sentiment in favor of his firing. You wanted to eliminate any distractions.

This might be part of your motivation, but I don’t really buy it either. Sometimes an organization will need to do this for an embattled manager, to make it clear that the manager has the full support of his superiors, in order to head off a potential mutiny – a mutiny of the players, not a mutiny of the fans.

A manager needs to command the respect of his players above all else, and nothing is more damaging to a manager’s reputation than the sense that he doesn’t have the backing of his bosses. But for a general manager, who doesn’t interact with his players on a day-to-day basis, that respect is much less meaningful. If I’ve got a good relationship with my boss, I don’t really care what my relationship with my boss’s boss is like.

So I don’t really buy this rationale either. Which leaves:

3) You want to make it clear that, by extending Dayton Moore’s contract through 2014, you are committed to building a premier organization in the long term, and you want to make sure that the spectacular failure of the 2009 season does not distract your front office from that long-term goal.

Now we’re getting somewhere. If this is indeed your purpose, it’s a defensible one.

For one, I concede that it would be risky for you to let Moore go into the off-season with just one more season remaining on his contract. Few things are more potentially destructive to a rebuilding franchise than a GM who’s worried about his job security. When your general manager’s interest don’t align with your franchise’s interests, you run the risk that your GM will make bizarre short-term decisions that can hamstring the franchise for years to come.

(The classic example of this – a little history lesson here, if you don’t mind – is Dave Littlefield’s notorious trade-deadline acquisition of Matt Morris. On July 31^st, 2007, the Pirates were 42-62 and 14.5 games out of first place, but Littlefield – whose job was on the line – made the inexplicable last-second decision to trade for Morris, a 32-year-old starting pitcher under contract through the 2008 season (at over $10 million a year). Morris had a 4.35 ERA at the time, but was operating on fumes – opponents were hitting .302 against him at the time. The Giants were just looking for a team that was willing to pick up a portion of his salary, and were as surprised as anyone when Littlefield not only agreed to pick up the entire contract, but gave up two prospects – including Rajai Davis, who’s turning into a fine outfielder for the A’s – for the privilege. [Two prospects for a declining major leaguer that no one else wanted. Sound familiar?] Morris would go 3-8 with a 7.04 ERA for the Pirates before he was released the following April; by that time the man doing the releasing was new GM Neal Huntington, as Littlefield was fired on September 7, 2007, in no small part because just six weeks prior he had made a deal which cost his organization close to $15 million for a below-replacement value pitcher.)

While Dayton Moore has made a ton of mistakes this year, the overriding theme that drove his worst errors was the mistaken assumption that the Royals could contend in 2009. I’m not blaming him for that assumption (I shared it to some extent) so much as the execution of his plan, but the point is that if Moore didn’t have job security past 2010, the temptation would be there for him to operate this winter under the short-term goal of building a contender for 2010. We’ve seen that movie before, and it sucked.

So if you decided to extend Moore’s contract because you wanted to make sure that the front office kept its eye on the prize – the prize being a winning team in 2011 and beyond – then I support the decision. And certainly, as a fan I would much rather that you maintain a strong commitment to someone who has convinced you to spend big money on amateur talent, than to clean house and bring in a new GM who has fresh ideas but who doesn’t have access to your checkbook.

But this is a very qualified endorsement. It’s great that you want to insure continuity and a long-term perspective in your front office. But keeping the same general manager personnel in place only makes sense when your general manager knows what the hell he is doing. Frankly, the evidence of that is still lacking. We know that your general manager can spend your cash; we don’t know that he can spend it wisely. I can’t imagine that you look at the millions of dollars Moore convinced you to give Kyle Farnsworth, or Horacio Ramirez, or especially Jose Guillen, and think that you got your money’s worth. I’m sure that you see those transactions as mistakes that should not be repeated.

Unfortunately, Moore’s public comments have yielded no evidence that he feels that way. To question Moore’s decisions is to doubt The Process, and if someone in the media dares to criticize any of his decisions, he risks getting shut out from the organization completely. (I’m not referring to my own situation with ballclub – I’ve heard from national media members who have had similar experiences with the team.)

In all honesty, what I find more concerning than the mistakes made by the Moore administration this year is the sense of arrogance that has accompanied these decisions – an arrogance clothed in insecurity. Virtually every person who has covered the Royals regularly this season – print, radio, TV, whatever – has been struck by just how ridiculously thin-skinned the front office is. Which is a problem. Not because it makes it harder for the media to do their job (it is, but that’s not a problem for anyone but us), but because a front office that can’t handle criticism is a front office that doesn’t broker dissent. It’s a front office that’s unwilling to admit when it’s made a mistake. It’s certainly a front office that’s incapable of learning from its mistakes.

This should trouble you greatly, because you’ve just promised to pay Dayton Moore a lot of money on the notion that he will learn from the mistakes he’s made this season. And my greatest worry about this extension is that Moore will regard this endorsement from his owner as a validation of The Process. Moore has defended the Royals’ performance this year as the consequence of unexpected injuries and unexpectedly poor performances, rather than as an indictment of whatever Process cooked up the idea of Mike Jacobs as an everyday first baseman or Kyle Farnsworth as a highly-compensated set-up man. Moore’s public defense of his actions is understandable; it’s not easy for a GM to admit when he’s wrong, and it’s even harder to do so without offending some of those very players he acquired. But it’s one thing to say it, and it’s another thing to believe it. I worry that, having been rewarded with a contract extension despite his track record, Moore will start to believe his own words, and assume that he earned a contract extension because of his track record.

As fans, we are not privy to the conversations that you had with Moore before this contract was signed. It’s quite possible that Moore bared his soul to you, that he took full responsibility for the disastrous product he put on display this season. It’s possible that he admitted to you that he hasn’t put enough emphasis on statistical analysis, that he underestimated the importance of plate discipline, that he made a mistake in putting together an expensive bullpen full of hard throwers who don’t actually get anyone out. I can only hope he said those things to you, because he certainly won’t say those things to us. It’s not reassuring at all that in his most recent interview, he once again repeats the canard that “I know things would have been drastically different if we would have stayed healthy.” Unless Coco Crisp is the most valuable player in the history of baseball, this is simply untrue.

It’s telling that, on the day the contract extension was announced, we saw the very best and the very worst of the Dayton Moore administration on display. At the major league level, the Royals lost a howler to the A’s, 8-5, in a game which featured two of the dumbest moments by a Royals player in a decade full of them. Three years after he was hired, the major league team Moore has assembled is not just as bad as any roster Allard Baird assembled, it’s also just as embarrassing.

But that night, in Wilmington, 20-year-old southpaw Mike Montgomery, the Royals’ supplemental first-round pick last season, faced 22 hitters, only one of whom reached base safely, and 12 of whom struck out. It was the finest outing in the pro career of arguably the Royals’ #1 prospect. As promising as Montgomery is, he’s unlikely to make any kind of impact at the major league level until 2011, if not later. Moore has been committed to building the franchise with high school talent, preferring to take the long road to the top. Your decision to let Moore finish what he started, to at least see the fruits of his farm system fully ripen before making a final decision on him, is laudable.

Or at least, it’s laudable so long as you don’t wait until 2014 to make that final decision. If the Royals haven’t made substantial improvement at the major league level within two years – and by “substantial improvement” I mean at least a .500 team – then it won’t matter if Moore’s contract extends to 3014, he needs to go. Sticking with a failing GM out of a false sense of loyalty is nearly as bad as not providing your GM with adequate support from the start.

If you don’t believe me, just look across the Truman Sports Complex, where Lamar Hunt stayed loyal to Jack Steadman even as the Chiefs had just two winning seasons from 1974 to 1988. When Hunt finally let Steadman go and hired Carl Peterson to run his franchise, the team’s fortunes turned around immediately. The Chiefs would make the playoffs seven times in eight seasons from 1990 to 1997, but after 1997 the talent dried up, and after treading .500 for the next nine years the Chiefs cratered in 2007 – but Hunt stuck with Peterson up until the day he passed away, and while his son Clark finally brought in a new GM to clean house, the mess Peterson left behind may take years to clean up.

Sam Mellinger points out that by granting Moore this extension, you have made it clear that this is Moore’s show to run – either into the playoffs or into the ground – and that the results going forward are entirely on your GM. I agree, to a point. If the Royals continue to flail and Moore gets canned in 2011, then you can argue persuasively that you gave Moore every opportunity, and every resource, to get the job done. But if the Royals continue to flail and Moore still gets to keep his job for the next five years, then you must share in the blame for failing to hold your GM to the standard of excellence that you profess to have.

I guess what it boils down to is this: I’m fine with Dayton Moore getting a four-year contract extension…as long as it’s really a one-year extension with three option years. The money is guaranteed either way, but let’s be honest: you could fire Moore tomorrow and you’d only be out about $5 million, or about what you’re paying Farnsworth this year alone.

And that’s the point: the financial commitment to Moore is less important than the commitment you’ve made to let Moore spend far more of your money on other personnel. As long as you understand that the contract only obligates you to pay Moore through 2014, and not actually to employ him, then the downside is limited.

Like so many other Royals moves, if handled correctly this transaction has the potential to be a shrewd gamble, and if handled incorrectly this transaction could be an enormous albatross on the organization. Given the team’s history, sad to say, I know which one I’m betting on. But I also know which one I’m hoping for. For a Royals fan, hope always trumps reason. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be Royals fans.

Thanks for reading,

Rany Jazayerli.

Zack Greinke, Part III: Return of the Jonah.

Alright, let’s talk about something positive for a change. I’m halfway through a piece breaking down the Dayton Moore contract extension rumors, but it’s a lot more fun to talk about Zack Greinke instead.

As everyone knows, Greinke struck out 15 batters last Tuesday, becoming the first pitcher in the 40-year history of the franchise to do so. Most every Royals fan knows about the fact that no one on the team has ever hit more than 36 homers, but the fact that no Royals pitcher had ever struck out 15 batters has long been a nearly equally embarrassing factoid for me. Just as the Royals have never had a truly dominant power hitter, the lack of a 15-K start points to a lack of a truly dominant power pitcher throughout the franchise’s history.

Steve Busby was, briefly, and he probably would have reached the 15-K plateau at some point, but his arm was shredded after just three seasons. Dennis Leonard was perhaps the closest the Royals have come, at least in 1977, when he struck out 244 batters, a franchise record that has never been challenged until this year. That season Leonard struck out 13 twice, 12 once, 11 once, and 10 twice, but never more than that. And in recent years, Kevin Appier certainly had the ability – he once struck out 13 batters in just 5.2 innings – but his propensity for high pitch counts made it difficult for him to stay in long enough to amass 15 strikeouts.

But on one otherwise non-descript Tuesday evening in yet another wasted Royals season, Greinke washed away 40 years of history, and all you need to know about Greinke is that I was neither surprised nor all that impressed by his accomplishment. Okay, I was impressed in the sense that Greinke is always impressive, but there was no sense of astonishment or wonder from my perspective. On the contrary, the way Greinke has thrown since about this time last year, I thought a 15-strikeout start was almost inevitable. I didn’t think he could have a start like this – I thought he would have a start like this, and it was just a matter of time. It just so happened that August 25^th was the date. Greinke has made the extraordinary look absolutely commonplace, and there’s no greater compliment I can pay him than to say that when he set an all-time Royals record, I didn’t even flinch.

But I must say, for him to follow up his 15-strikeout performance with a one-hit shutout…for him to follow up a performance never before duplicated by a Royal with a performance that was last done in 1995...okay, even the Baseball Jonah’s biggest fan is impressed by that. If Greinke makes the extraordinary look commonplace, he also makes the inconceivable look merely impressive.

You may have seen the list of pitchers who have followed up a 15-strikeout performance with a one-hit complete game in their next start. It’s a short list – Greinke is just the fourth pitcher to do so, after Pedro Martinez in 1999, Randy Johnson in 1998, and Vida Blue in 1971. That’s two sure-fire Hall of Famers and Blue, who might be in the Hall of Fame today if he weren’t too good for his own good: that season, Blue went 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA and won the MVP award – and threw 312 innings at the age of 21. He would never pitch that effectively again, and he won only 18 games after his age 32 season. (He’s still the answer to that great trivia question: who’s the last switch-hitter to win the AL MVP award?)

I think it’s telling that Greinke once again shows up on a short list with Pedro Martinez, given that I had compared the two extensively early in the season. As it turns out, Greinke could not keep up with Pedro’s pace from 1999-2000, which is less a failure of Greinke than it is a testament to how otherworldly Martinez was during those two seasons. Martinez’s dominance extends to this comparison as well, because while Greinke followed a 15-strikeout start with a one-hitter, he whiffed just five batters on Sunday afternoon. Martinez struck out 15 batters in eight scoreless innings in Seattle on September 4^th, but the one-hitter he threw in his next start remains one of the most dominant pitching performances of all time; he gave up a solo homer to Chili Davis, but he also struck out 17 that day. His game score was 98; since 1954, that is the highest game score for a pitcher who surrendered a run (and didn’t pitch into extra innings.)

But if Greinke can’t quite match up to peak Pedro, he still stands taller than every other pitcher in baseball today. After a period of time where Greinke looked almost mortal, Sunday’s start extends a stretch where Greinke has almost returned to the unhittable form he showed at the start of the season.

In Part 1 - his first ten starts - Greinke was 8-1 with an 0.84 ERA, and allowed just 54 hits and 12 walks in 75 innings. But from May 31^st – yes, the day I flew to Kansas City to see him in person – through August 8^th, he was positively mortal, with a 3.84 ERA in that span. He was betrayed by his teammates on both ends. Defensively, his ERA was inflated by a defense that could not turn batted balls into outs. In 84 innings, Greinke walked just 21 batters and struck out 86, and allowed only seven homers, but thanks to his defense he gave up a whopping 96 hits in that span. And offensively, the Royals scored just 42 runs in 13 starts (12 of those in one game), saddling Greinke with a 3-6 record.

But much as Greinke pitches better the deeper he works into a ballgame, he’s pitching better as the season enters the home stretch. Part 3 of Greinke's season started on August 14th, and over his last four starts Greinke has allowed just 15 hits in 31 innings, with 35 Ks against just seven walks, and a 1.74 ERA in that span.

He now leads the AL in ERA by 45 points; he has snatched the WHIP crown back from Jarrod Washburn; he leads the league in fewest homers per nine innings; he’s second to Justin Verlander in strikeouts; he’s second to C.C. Sabathia in innings pitched. He had five Ks and just one walk on Sunday, and his K/BB ratio actually went down.

Yes, he’s just 13-8. But I think that those who are writing off his chances of winning the Cy Young Award are doing so prematurely. I don’t simply mean that it’s premature to write Greinke’s chances off because there’s still time for him to win his last six starts and get back into this thing. I mean that even if the season ended today, there’s a very good chance that his weak showing in the historically-decisive win-loss department might get trumped by his across-the-board dominance in every other category.

For one thing, while Greinke has only 13 wins going into September, he’s still just two behind Sabathia, and just one behind Verlander, Josh Beckett, and Scott (!) Feldman. There’s a reasonable chance that no one in the AL will win 20 games. Those who are saying that Greinke’s case is hopeless because starting pitchers can’t win the Cy Young award with just 16 or 17 victories ignore the fact that this is shaping up to be a year where the gap between 16 wins and the league lead just isn’t that great. Brandon Webb won the NL Cy Young in 2006 with just 16 wins…in large part because somehow, 16 wins was enough to lead the league. If Greinke wins 16 games and Sabathia wins 19, there’s a good chance that Greinke’s edge in every other category can overcome Sabathia’s edge in wins. If Sabathia or someone else tips the magic “20” barrier, the psychological impression that will make on some voters will be much harder to overcome.

Second, while Greinke may not have a lot of wins, he has every other counting statistic on his side. He has 190 innings, just two behind Sabathia; no one can accuse him of not being a workhorse. With his performance on Sunday, he now has more complete games (6) and more shutouts (3) than any other pitcher in the major leagues. This isn’t a Chris Carpenter situation, where voters will have to judge the merits of a pitcher who might have been more effective on a per-inning basis but wasn’t able to answer the bell every fifth day. When it comes to Cy Young voting, availability matters almost as much as ability; Greinke has both.

(It's worth noting that according to ESPN's Cy Young Predictor, based on a formula Bill James presented in The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, Greinke has edged back into first place.)

And finally, we have to acknowledge that award voters are, generally speaking, a lot more savvy than they used to be. I have made the mistake of giving BBWAA members too much credit in the past – I still can’t believe Tim Raines has appeared on barely a quarter of Hall of Fame ballots the last two years – but I honestly think that Cy Young voters are more inclined to consider the extenuating circumstances for Greinke than they would in the past.

I’ve pointed this out before, but 16 years ago, Kevin Appier led the AL in ERA by 38 points, won 18 games, finished second in the league in WHIP and hits per nine innings, and by any advanced metric you chose was clearly the best pitcher in the AL. He finished a distant third in Cy Young voting, behind Jack McDowell and Randy Johnson. McDowell had a 3.37 ERA – he wasn’t in the league’s top 10 – but went 22-10, and no other AL starter reached 20 wins. Johnson led the league in strikeouts, but he went 19-8 with a 3.24 ERA, compared to Appier’s 18-8 and 2.46 ERA. Apparently that one extra win trumped more than 75 points of ERA.

(Not only that, but in McDowell’s 34 starts, the White Sox went 23-11 overall. In Appier’s 34 starts, the Royals went…23-11. So Appier didn’t miss out on the Cy Young because his team wasn’t as successful as McDowell’s team was – he missed out on the Cy Young because some of those team wins were awarded to his reliever. He was denied the Cy Young, in other words, because of an accounting decision.)

The reason I point this out is that the most galling aspect of Appier’s disappointing finish in the Cy Young vote is that he received just one first-place vote, from then-Rangers beat writer Phil Rogers. That’s right – neither writer from the KC chapter of the BBWAA gave Appier a first-place vote. Both of them swallowed the conventional wisdom about pitcher wins hook, like, and sinker.

Well, this year I have it on good authority that one of the Cy Young ballots goes to this guy. Times have changed, and I’d like to think for the better. There’s still a lot of baseball to be played, and a memorable September in either direction could render this whole discussion moot. But I think this is going to be a very close Cy Young vote. And my hope is that while Greinke may not win a majority of first-place votes, he may receive a plurality of them, as the anti-Greinke voting bloc gets split up between two or three different candidates (Scott Feldman for Cy Young!)

Ultimately it really doesn’t matter if Greinke wins; awards are fun, but success on the field is what matters. But since we’re not having much of the latter, it would be nice if we could have some of the former to keep this season from being a total loss.

Now that the Joe Mauer-for-MVP train has left the station, it’s time to hop aboard the Zack Greinke-for-Cy Young express. So get out there and remind people that Greinke is, indisputably, the best pitcher in the American League. Remind people that his 13-8 record is the result of having the worst run support of any qualifying major league starter. Remind people that his 2.32 ERA, as impressive as it is, is actually inflated significantly by pitching in front of the defense with the worst defensive efficiency in all of baseball. (This is an underplayed theme, by the way – everyone is harping on his win-loss record, but it’s not hyperbole to suggest that, with an even average defense behind him, Greinke’s ERA could be in the 1’s right now, and it would be almost impossible to deny him the Cy Young vote.)

With five weeks left in the season, it’s far from clear whether Greinke is the AL’s Cy Young pitcher. What is clear is that he is the AL’s best pitcher, and just as clear is that he is the property of the Kansas City Royals for three more seasons after this one. Whatever else you want to say about the 2009 season, if 2009 is also the season when Zack Greinke took his place among the elite players in the game, it wasn’t a total loss.

Minor League Update, Part 3.

I probably should apologize for posting as infrequently as I have; it’s been a struggle to find the motivation to write even once a week. But I won’t. This is what happens when you cover the most disappointing team in the history of the Royals, a bold statement for a franchise that has averaged over 94 losses a season over the past 12 years.

The Royals are 47-76 after today’s debacle, which puts them on pace to lose exactly 100 games this season. Less famously but perhaps more tellingly, if the Royals lose 100 games, they will tie an American League record for the most losses by a single franchise over the span of an intact decade.

The Royals have lost 927 games and counting during the 2000s*. They have blown past the Pirates (903 losses) and the Rays (901) as the losingest franchise of the decade. In the history of baseball, only six teams have lost more than 927 games in a decade, and the Royals are almost certain to pass at least three of them by the end of the year. Here they are:

Philadelphia Phillies, 1920s: 962

St. Louis Browns, 1930s: 951

Philadelphia Phillies, 1940s: 951

Philadelphia Phillies, 1930s: 943

San Diego Padres, 1970s: 942

Boston Red Sox, 1920s: 938

Kansas City Royals, 2000s: 927 and counting

(*: Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the 2000s is this: the decade is now about 96% complete, and there is still no consensus as to what call it. A hundred years ago they called the 1900s the “aughts”, but that’s not going to fly in the 21^st century. I call it the “2Ks”, personally, but that’s hardly a consensus term. I would have thought we’d have a word in place by 2002 or 2003.)

When it comes to major league futility, no team can hold a candle to the Phillies, who from 1918 to 1948 had one winning season – 1932, when they went 78-76. The Royals would need to suck for another 16 or 17 years to match that. But within the confines of the American League, the Royals have a chance to stand alone. If the Royals lose 100 games exactly, they will finish the decade with 951 losses, tying the 1930s Browns as the losingest team of a decade; if they lose 101 games, they will have the AL record all their own. Trust the Process.

(The all-time record for losses over any 10-year stretch is safe; the Phillies lost 1016 games between 1936 and 1945. But the Royals can go for the AL record (the then-Devil Rays lost 972 games from 1998 to 2007) next year.)

This season, the Royals have designed a roster that not only is hurtling towards 100 losses, but a roster with few players that can be expected to improve in the future. The Royals have employed 37 different players on their roster this season. Not only have none of them made their major league debut this season, but just one – Bam Bam Butler – is under the age of 25. Trust the Process.

And to top it off, we have a front office that’s so fearful of the stigma of another 100-loss season that they’re afraid to promote deserving minor leaguers, because God forbid that the Royals should have to endure the inevitable struggles of young players to adjust. Playing poorly for the Royals, evidently, is a prerogative reserved for veterans only. Kila Ka’aihue’s .400 OBP might not adjust well to major league pitching, so best to stick with Mike Jacobs and his .304 OBP, whose bat is so dangerous that Trey Hillman elected not to use him against a right-handed pitcher in the ninth inning on Saturday night with the tying run on base.

The Royals are not only carrying eight relievers – maybe three of whom belong on a major league roster – they’re carrying three catchers. This means that on a night when Jacobs is the DH, the Royals have exactly one – ONE! – bench player who isn’t a catcher. One. On Saturday night, Brayan Pena was the DH – apparently Hillman is going to evaluate Pena’s catching skills from the batters’ box – so the Royals were blessed to have both Jacobs and Willie Bloomquist on the bench. And despite losing in the ninth inning, and despite having Bloomquist to take over at shortstop or right field in case the game went to extra innings, Hillman still elected to keep Jacobs on the bench while Yuniesky Betancourt and Josh Anderson made outs.

So pardon me for being a little apathetic. Judging from the lack of traffic at virtually every Royals website out there, I’m not the only one. A month ago, at least, Royals fans cared enough to write about the Royals, even if everything they wrote was critical. I warned after the Yuniesky Betancourt trade that anger would turn into apathy, and that’s exactly what happened.

I doubt the Royals have gotten the message yet, not when 33,811 came out to see the team play on Saturday night. Never mind that half of them were Twins fans, and that most of the other half were there to see the new ballpark. If the front office thinks that their fan base is willing to start over again next year like 2009 never happened, well, they’re going to be in for a rude shock when season ticket renewals go out this winter. We don’t Trust the Process, Dayton. And we don’t appreciate being talked down to by a GM and a manager who are the architects of the biggest clusterf**k this franchise has ever assembled.

And on that cheerful note…let’s go back to the minor leagues. You know, the place where the Royals can spend $6 million sign Eric Hosmer, but then can’t spend money to have a new pair of prescription glasses delivered overnight. Allard Baird had two really good excuses for the Mickey Mouse operation he was the nominal head of: he had no money to spend, and he had to contend with ownership that liked to meddle in baseball operations. Dayton Moore has neither excuse. Not that it will stop him from coming up with one.

A quick note on Wil Myers and Chris Dwyer first. The one saving grace of this administration has been the willingness to spend big-market dollars on amateur talent (and, equally impressive, getting ownership to share in that willingness.) After a very promising draft in 2008, the Royals have a chance at the same this year, grabbing three potential Top-40 picks despite not having a second-round pick.

I’m a little skeptical of Dwyer; while he was a good grab in the fourth round, he was considered more of a supplemental first round or even second round talent than a true first-rounder, and the money he got ($1.45 million) is a Top 25 bonus. I’m also a little concerned that he’s already 21, partly because there’s not much projection left, and partly because you have to be a little concerned about the teachability of a 21-year-old college freshman.

Myers, though, looks like the real deal. The rumor is that if Aaron Crow had not been available with their first pick, the Royals would have taken Myers then. He’s a legitimate first-round talent, and if he can stay behind the plate, he fills a desperate need for up-the-middle talent in the organization. A lot is riding on Myers; he was the only position player the Royals drafted in the first eight rounds. He may not prove to be worth the gamble, but he’s exactly the kind of gamble the Royals need to be making.

Oh, and regarding Aaron Crow…I expect him to sign by the end of September. We’ve heard word at the radio station that Crow and his agents (the Hendricks brothers) are not on the best of terms. Frankly, Crow should be pissed off at his agents. They turned down $3.5 million last year, and after a year in purgatory, he’ll be lucky to get the same bonus he turned down from the Nationals. The rumor is that the Royals are offering him $3 million, and sticking to it. They absolutely should, and more than that: they should publicly issue a deadline after which the offer gets taken off the table.

Crow and his agents need to realize that the draft game is a game of leverage, and he doesn’t have any. If a high school player doesn’t sign, he can go to college in three years and continue to develop his baseball skills. Even the best high school players will benefit from college competition. But the best college players are almost major league-ready, so for them, the alternative to signing – playing independent ball – does nothing to develop their skills. Crow turns 23 in a few months, and aside from a few starts with the Fort Worth Cats, he hasn’t thrown a pitch in anger in fourteen months. At some point he’s going to realize that the $3.5 million he turned down is gone for good, and he’ll sign. If his agents don’t realize it, well, they might not be his agents for much longer.

13) Henry Barrera, RHP, 23. Barrera is a hard-throwing reliever who was a last-minute addition the Royals’ 40-man roster last winter; after Barrera struck out 78 batters in 58 innings for Wilmington last year, the Royals were worried he might get picked in the Rule 5 draft. This year, Barrera didn’t debut until June 2^nd because of arm problems, made four appearances for Burlington over the span of 10 days…and hasn’t pitched since. You do the math. Grade: D-.

14) Tyler Sample, RHP, 20. Sample was a third-round pick out of a Colorado high school last summer; he had some of the best pure stuff of any prep pitcher, including an excellent knuckle-curve, but was also very raw, which showed when he walked 29 batters in 27 innings in rookie ball. This year, he’s moved up to short-season Burlington (not the same as low-A Burlington), and has held his own; for the season he has 20 walks and 42 Ks in 42 innings, with a 4.10 ERA and just two homers allowed. He’s not that young – he turned 19 just three weeks after he was drafted – so while his performance is nothing to be ashamed of, neither is it something to be all that excited about yet. Grade: C+.

15) David Lough, OF, 23. Finally, an unqualified success story. Lough was an 11^th-round pick out of a tiny college in Pennsylvania in 2007, where he was a multi-sport athlete. He showed a wide array of talents for Burlington last season – 16 homers, 11 triples, 12 steals – but his overall numbers (.268/.329/.455) weren’t that impressive for a 22-year-old in low-A ball. This year, his athleticism has helped him to a breakout season; he hit .320/.370/.473 in 65 games for Wilmington, then after a promotion to Double-A has hit even better (which isn’t unusual, remember): .337/.380/.541.

For the season he’s hitting .327 with 13 homers, 24 doubles, and is 17-for-25 on the basepaths. A lack of walks – just 21 – is a big black mark against him, but it’s worth noting that he’s been a lot more patient since he was moved to the leadoff spot a month ago; he’s drawn 7 walks in 67 at-bats in August. He’s not going to be a star, but he strikes me as someone who can be a decent everyday outfielder, particularly if he can handle centerfield. Comparisons to David DeJesus are in order; like DeJesus, Lough stands just 6’0”, and can handle centerfield but is a plus defender in a corner. The Royals are going to go into the winter looking for a centerfielder again, but rather than overpaying for a short-term solution they really ought to consider giving Lough a shot. Grade: A.

16) Derrick Robinson, CF, 21. Dubbed the team’s centerfielder of the future ever since the Royals gave him $1 million as a fourth-round draft pick in 2006, Robinson is one of the fastest players in organized baseball, which doesn’t change the fact that he’s never learned how to hit. Last season, Robinson hit .245/.316/.322 for Wilmington, which wasn’t good but was something to build on for a 20-year-old in high-A ball, particularly given that he didn’t start switch-hitting until after he signed. The thinking of scouts was that if things started to click for Robinson, they could click fast.

Unfortunately, we haven’t seen any clicking this year, as Robinson is hitting .237/.288/.313 in a repeat engagement at Wilmington. He’s still fast as the wind – after stealing 62 bases last year, he already has 65 this year – but you can’t steal first base. Well, you sort of can if you’re willing to take four pitches outside the strike zone, but after doing so 51 times last season, Robinson only has 35 walks this year.

Robinson’s grade gets boosted a half point because while it’s woefully premature to say so, it’s possible something clicked for him this month. Robinson didn’t hit a single home run in 2008, and had none in 2009 either – until August, as he’s gone deep four times and is slugging .488 this month. It’s probably just random variation, but if you’re the Royals you have to hold onto optimism wherever you can find it. Grade: D+.

17) Jason Taylor, 3B/1B, 21. Taylor was the Royals’ second pick after Luke Hochevar in the 2006 draft, and was suspended for the entire 2007 season by the Royals for undisclosed reasons. He returned last year and while hit just .242 for Burlington, he showed a rare combination of power (17 homers), plate discipline (81 walks) and speed (40 steals). Expected to take a big step forward this season, he instead confirmed the rumors regarding his suspension in 2007 when MLB issued a 50-game suspension to Taylor for violating the substance abuse policy (read: marijuana). Since coming back Taylor has shown only flashes of last year’s promise; he’s hitting .253/.339/.380 in a repeat engagement at Burlington. Even if avoids pot in the future, he’s got a lot of catching up to do to regain even a glimmer of prospect status. Grade: D.

18) Julio Pimentel, RHP, 23. Tore his ulnar collateral ligament during spring training; out until 2010 following Tommy John surgery. This one’s easy. Grade: F.