Bullpen Redux.

First off, I want to address the main criticism I’ve heard about my last article. As reader Dan wrote in the comment section:

“I’m really surprised that Rany missed Craig’s point, which many have already pointed out. The best use of the best reliever in your bullpen is not necessarily as a closer. Bring him in anytime in the last three innings when the scoring threat is greatest (men are on base, middle of the order, etc). Let him get out of that jam, and whether he gets three outs or stay[s] in for six, he got you out of the jam and you still have the lead. Worry about keeping a lead in the ninth when there is actually a lead in the ninth to worry about.”

I’ve seen a lot of comments like these, saying that it’s okay for Soria to come in to pitch the 7th inning in a key situation, because he doesn’t necessarily have to finish the game – once the crisis has passed, someone else can pitch the ninth.

I get this point, I really do. And I agree with it to some extent – in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have “closers”, we’d have “stoppers”, who are brought in to stop an opponent’s rally cold.

But the whole point of my article was that the way teams use their bullpens has evolved so drastically over the last 30 years that it’s a foolish utopian dream to argue that Trey Hillman should immediately jump back into the Dan Quisenberry model. Before we turn Joakim Soria into Quisenberry, I argued, let’s first turn him into Jeff Montgomery. Once the Royals see that Soria can handle that kind of role without the world ending, then we can talk about extending things further.

But to idea that the Royals should bring Soria in to pitch in the 7th and then come out of the game, letting someone else to pitch the 9th (and earn the save), is even more of a pipe dream than having him go 7 or 8 outs for the save. It’s simply never been done before. Never mind that the fans and media will absolutely revolt the first time Robinson Tejeda or Josh Rupe blows the 2-run lead in the 9th that Soria hands off to him. (This to me is actually a minor concern, because – for reasons I may get into in a future post – the media and fan base in Kansas City is probably more willing to accept sabermetric and other “unconventional” baseball ideas than anywhere else in America.)

Here’s a rough description of the four ways a team can use its closer, from the least efficient to the most efficient:

1) The Eckersley model: 9th-inning save situations only.

2) The Montgomery model: pitch the 9th, and sometimes the 8th, usually save situations but also in tie games.

3) The Quisenberry model: come in whenever the game is on the line, from the 6th inning on, and stay in to close out the game.

4) The Utopian model: come in to put out fires at any point in the game, then exit the game and let a lesser reliever pitch once the fire is out.

Currently, pretty much every team in baseball follows the first method; a few teams (including the Royals) will dabble with the second method. In my last article I argued for the Royals to whole-heartedly adopt Method #2, and worry about Method #3 later. The response has been “what about Method #4?” To which I can only say, “let’s get the Royals to embrace Method #2 first.” Sure, I’d love to see the Royals adopt Method #4 – but I’d also love to see them embrace the 4-man rotation, and carry just 10 pitchers, and build a platoon at a couple of positions, and clone George Brett. But step by step, guys.

Otto Von Bismarck once said, “Politics is the art of the possible.” I am trying to be political here, because I want to see the Royals (and every other team) use their best reliever more efficiently, and I’d rather push for a small change that’s possible than a large change that isn’t. I’m not saying that the people pushing for the Royals to use Soria in the Utopian model are wrong. They’re not. I’m not even saying that they’re wasting their time, because they’re not. As I’ve learned from reading Nate Silver, if nothing else, suggesting the Utopian model may help move the Overton Window, which may make a less extreme but still radical idea like using Soria for 6 outs become more palatable.

So by all means, let’s keep reminding the Royals that there’s a better way to use Soria. But let’s also temper our expectations. It took 30 years for teams to make a complete mess of the way they use their closers. It’s going to take time – and a lot of intermediate steps – to reverse the damage.

- Last night, Hillman brought Soria in to pitch the 9th in a tie game. This isn’t that notable – once the game goes into the 9th inning tied, it becomes impossible for the home team to have a save situation, so you have no choice but to use your closer in a tie game. Still, there are a lot of managers who would have waited at least until extra innings before bringing in their closer. Then, after Soria worked a rather efficient 9th inning with just 12 pitches, Hillman let him throw the 10th as well. If Yuniesky Betancourt had ever bothered to learn that you don’t actually have to swing at every pitch, Hillman might have been rewarded for his willingness to defy conventional wisdom with a victory. (In the bottom of the 10th, with the winning run on third and one out, Betancourt saw four pitches. None of them were in the strike zone, yet he swung at three of them, and struck out.)

The bullpen remains a cluster**** of the highest order, but I stand by my position that Hillman is mostly an innocent bystander in all this. It’s hard for any manager to look smart when he has exactly one reliable reliever. Hillman deserves better than to be scapegoated because his GM has made such a mess of things.

- Speaking of Dayton Moore and his mess, Moore turned the impressive trick of dumping Luis Mendoza without actually improving the bullpen. Mendoza was replaced with Bruce Chen, and while Chen pitched poorly for the Royals last season, his career ERA (4.71) is barely half that of Mendoza (8.43). Moreover, in three starts for Omaha he had allowed just 13 hits in 21 innings, with 20 strikeouts against just 5 walks. Chen is one of those Quadruple-A guys who always dominates in Triple-A but struggles in the majors, so I’m not expecting much from him, but he’s better than Mendoza.

Unfortunately, Moore also released Juan Cruz and replaced him with Brad Thompson. This is mystifying. I understand that Cruz has been an unbridled failure with the Royals, and it’s impressive that Moore was willing to accept the sunk cost of his contract (and that David Glass let him). But at least Cruz has a history of success, something Thompson really doesn’t. Cruz went on the DL late last year, and based on the results I suspect he was pitching hurt for most of the season. After striking out 33% of the batters he faced in 2007-2008, he struck out just 17% of opposing batters last year.

This year, he was ridiculously ineffective with men on base (he allowed all 6 runners he inherited to score), but he also struck out 7 of the 28 batters he faced. There was at least a glimmer of hope there. I don’t see how, in just 5.1 innings of work, he showed the Royals enough to release him – particularly when they’re keeping Kyle Farnsworth, who’s been almost exactly as ineffective. (Farnsworth has thrown 5.2 innings. Both pitchers have allowed 9 hits. Cruz walked four; Farnsworth has walked only two, but also hit two batters, and he’s given up a homer. And Farnsworth has only three strikeouts.)

In his place, the Royals have brought up Thompson, who had a 4.84 ERA for the Cardinals last year, and is an extreme finesse pitcher who struck out just 34 batters in 80 innings. Given how bad the team’s defense still is – as put on vivid display each of the last few nights – I’m not sure a pitcher who’s primary skill is pitching to contact is going to be any better than Cruz.

The Royals have a wealth of relief options in the minors, from the just-waiting-for-his-turn Carlos Rosa to the nearly-ready Blake Wood to the always-forgotten Chris Hayes to some intriguing Double-A options like Blaine Hardy and Federico Castaneda. None of these guys are sure things; they’re all still better than recycling yet another failed major league pitcher.

- Just to make it clear how much the bullpen has hurt the Royals, consider this: if games ended after six innings, the Royals would be 8-6 with 3 ties. Instead, they’re 6-11. Get this: the Royals have a losing record when leading after six innings. In the eight games they’ve led after six, they’re 3-5.

The 7th inning is the culprit. Thanks to Soria, the Royals have won all 5 games they’ve had a lead going into the 9th. And they’ve only lost 1 game where they had a lead entering the 8th. But between the beginning and the end of the 7th, the Royals go from 8-6 with 3 ties to 6-10 with 1 tie.

- What is most amazing to me about the pitching staff this season is that, despite a middle relief corps that is historically inept, no one has even suggested that one possible solution might be to let the starting pitchers work a little deeper into the game.

The Royals have played 17 games so far, and not once has their starter thrown even 110 pitches. Only six times has the starter thrown 100 pitches. Neither Kyle Davies nor Brian Bannister has thrown 100 pitches yet.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, necessarily – the usage of starting pitchers today is much more sane than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I’m just saying that if you had told me back in 1998, when I first invented Pitcher Abuse Points because Jim Leyland was letting Jesus Sanchez throw 146 pitches and Livan Hernandez throw 153 pitches and Tony Muser was grinding Jose Rosado’s arm into dust, that a scant 12 years later a team would rather lose game after game in the 7th inning than let its starting pitchers (none of whom are younger than 26, mind you) throw even 110 pitches…well, let’s just say I would have been surprised.

The starting pitchers have averaged 5.82 innings per start this year; even if you take Gil Meche out of the equation, it’s 6.17 innings per start. The Royals’ starter has completed the 7th inning just twice all season. The Royals could easily let their starters get another out or two – allowing them to complete the 7th more regularly – without letting them exceed 115 or 120 pitches. For pitchers with mature arms (i.e. older than 25), I don’t really get concerned with their pitch counts until they approach 120.

It’s clear the Royals don’t have a reliever capable of protecting leads in the 7th. Maybe the solution is to see if their starters are capable of protecting leads in the 7th.

Hillman and the Bullpen.

Jason Kendall is hitting .352, Yuniesky Betancourt is hitting .309…and the Royals are still 6-9. Apparently not even Lucifer can guarantee the Royals victory. If Joe Hardy played for Kansas City, “Damn Yankees” would end with the Royals losing their 100th game of the season.

The Royals incessant failures have allowed another meme to crop up, a meme that is explained well by Craig Brown here:

‘Asked by the traveling reporters if he considered bringing closer Joakim Soria into Tuesday’s seventh inning, Hillman offered this:

“There’s a thought there but, No. 1, it’s a very unusual time for Joakim Soria to pitch in a ballgame. No. 2, you’ve still got those same bats coming up in the ninth in a higher-leverage situation — because it is the ninth, even if there are no runners on base.”

I added the emphasis because Hillman’s use of term “high leverage” is impressive. It would be more impressive if he knew what the hell he was talking about.

Following his logic, the higher the inning number, the higher the leverage. Sometimes, it actually works that way. Other times, like Tuesday, not so much.’

I’m going to do something a little unexpected here: I’m going to defend Trey Hillman – to a point. I don’t mean to pick on Craig specifically – he’s a great guy and one of the best Royals bloggers in the business. He wasn’t the first person to criticize Hillman for this quote; he just had the misfortune of being the last, or at least the one whose article I was reading (after Rob Neyer linked to it) when I decided to respond.

I’ve written many times (it’s not original; Bill James wrote this a quarter-century ago) that bad teams inevitably focus on their failures on their best players. (Just witness the manner in which the Royals have treated Alex Gordon this season; as Bob Dutton wrote last night, Gordon’s “time in the big leagues might hinge on his production while Chris Getz recovers from a strained right oblique”. I like Chris Getz, but the notion that Gordon might lose his job to Getz is nutz.)

But I think that we can add a Fan’s Corollary to The Rule of Bad Teams, that goes something like this:

A fan base that has endured too much losing for too long inevitably focuses on minor or secondary causes for their team’s failures, because the primary cause of those failures are too basic to warrant mentioning.

In the Royals’ case, the root cause of the team’s failure so far this season is pretty simple: the bullpen can’t pitch worth a damn. But that’s too easy and definitive an explanation. It’s hard to admit that the problem is that we have exactly one good reliever, because that’s a problem that no amount of massaging can fix. So instead it’s tempting to say that the real problem is that Trey Hillman is doing a lousy job of using his one good reliever. It’s tempting to say that the problem would be solved by simply using Joakim Soria in the seventh inning.

It was Voltaire who originally said, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” We could use a little Voltaire right now, and not just because he probably had a better slider than Roman Colon.

Look, I would love to see Soria come in when the Royals are in a jam in the 7th inning, work his way out of it, then close out the game in the 8th and 9th, just like my grandpappy told me Dan Quisenberry did it in the good ol’ days. I fervently believe that the reliever usage patterns of the 1970s and early 1980s were significantly better than those of today. But to think that the Royals, or any team, is going to turn the clock back 30 years in one jump is ridiculous, and holding on to that kind of hope will only lead to frustration.

I’m going to define a “Long Save” as a save in which the pitcher recorded 7 or more outs, i.e. he entered the game in the 7th inning or earlier, but stayed in to close out the game. By that definition, here’s a brief history of the Long Save:

Prior to 1960, the most Long Saves in a season was 9, by Hoyt Wilhelm in 1953.

From 1960 to 1969, a pitcher recorded 9 or more Long Saves in a season 11 times (three times by Wilhelm again); the record was 13, by Bob Lee in 1964.

In the 1970s, eighteen pitchers recorded 9 or more Long Saves in a season, and a 5 Long Save season was accomplished no fewer than 119 times. In 1979, Jim Kern broke Lee’s record with 16 Long Saves.

The Long Save was still prominent in the 1980s; 16 pitchers reached the 9-Long Save mark, and 117 pitchers had at least 5 Long Saves in a season. In 1982, Dan Quisenberry recorded 17 Long Saves, still the all-time record. He had 13 in 1983, and 15 (third-most all-time) in 1984.

But during this decade the counter-revolution began. In the first half of the 80s (1980-1984), there were eleven 9 Long Save seasons, and 68 seasons with 5 Long Saves. From 1985 to 1989, there were just 5 and 49, respectively.

In 1989 and 1990, the Oakland A’s had probably the best bullpen in major league history of a 2-year span. This was partly due to the way Tony La Russa handled Dennis Eckersley, protecting the broken-down starter by using him in one-inning roles almost exclusively. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, the Long Save disappeared from the game almost overnight.

In 1990, Duane Ward had 7 Long Saves for the Blue Jays. The following year six different pitchers had 5 Long Saves. Since 1992, only two pitchers – Derek Lowe and Scott Williamson, both in 1999 – have had 5 Long Saves in a season. Since 2000, the only pitcher with more than 5 Long Saves FOR THE DECADE is Tim Wakefield, with 6. That should be a clue that, in virtually every case, the rare Long Save that occurs in today’s game goes to pitchers who are long relievers, not closers, who happened to come into the game in the 6th inning of a 10-2 game, and went ahead and completed the game, thus earning a save by the rule that any pitcher who throws 3 innings to close out a victory gets one.

While it’s possible I’ve missed someone, as best as I can tell there has not been a single instance of a closer pitching more than 2 innings for a save this century. Williamson had a 7-out save for the Reds on May 5th, 2000, but he was sort of the co-closer with Danny Graves at the time. The closest I can find is Salomon Torres, who had a 3-inning save on April 4, 2008, and saved 28 games that year – but his next save wasn’t until May 24th, so it’s pretty clear he wasn’t in the closer’s role yet.

So yes, it would be perfect if Soria became the first closer in over two decades to enter a game in the 7th inning. But it’s not going to happen, and it won’t happen until we first see closers being regularly used in the 8th inning.

And in that category, Hillman is actually ahead of the curve. Let’s call a save of at least 4 outs a Medium Save. Like the Long Save, the Medium Save has become more and more rare over the years, but is still occasionally seen in the wild. In 1983, Quisenberry had 35 (!) Medium Saves – meaning only 10 of his then-record 45 saves were of the 9th-inning variety. In 1993, Jeff Montgomery had 18 Medium Saves – John Wetteland had 19 – and no one has had that many in a season since. But as recently as 2004, John Smoltz had 16 Medium Saves, the most of any pitcher in the last 17 seasons.

Here’s a list of the pitchers with the most Medium Saves in 2009:

8: Brian Wilson

7: Joakim Soria

7: Mariano Rivera

7: Ryan Franklin

7: Andrew Bailey

Now yes, it’s true that Hillman only started stretching Soria out after it was clear he had no choice – he recorded his first one on July 7th, and the second one on July 25th, after the memorable meltdown against Tampa Bay when the Royals lost three straight games in the 8th inning. But at least he did adapt. That’s more than I can say for other members of the organization.

If you want to argue that Hillman is not using Soria correctly, you’ll have to talk to someone else – I agree with you. But I have to point out that Hillman’s usage of his closer is no worse, and in many cases is better, than the way that 29 other managers use theirs. You could respond, as Rob Neyer frequently does, that when you’re the Royals, being “no worse” than other teams isn’t enough – given the inherent disadvantages to your market, you have to do things better than the competition.

I would agree to that as well. But Hillman doesn’t have to use Soria in the 7th inning to accomplish that. He simply needs to use him in the 8th more regularly.

Hillman has shown a willingness to do that. Twice this season, Soria has come in for the save with two outs in the 8th. Not impressed? Consider that he is the only pitcher in baseball with 2 Medium Saves this year.

Really, my only beef with Hillman’s usage of Soria is his bizarre delineation between the four-out save and the six-out save. Hillman has said on multiple occasions that he feels there’s a big difference between the two, which I find curious. To me, the bigger difference would be between the three-out and the four-out save – in the latter case, you come in to pitch, then sit down for 15 minutes, then get up again. Being forced to warm up twice instead of once would seem to me to be a bigger difference than throwing an extra 10 pitches in the 8th.

The refusal to use Soria for more than 4 outs nearly cost them the game yesterday, and did cost Greinke the victory. Yesterday was the perfect day to stretch Soria out a little – he hadn’t pitched since the 18th, and today is an off-day. With a one-run lead on the road, it was madness to start the inning with anyone else – and yet Hillman did just that, bringing in the guy who was in Triple-A ten days ago to start the inning. The Blue Jays predictably tied the game up.

Our story has a happy ending, because in the 9th Robinson Tejeda threw one of the most overpowering innings I have ever witnessed*, and then Alex Gordon had one of the most important hits of his career, a two-out, extra-inning home run off a left-handed pitcher after he had gone 0-for-3 with 2 Ks and a throwing error in the game. Soria got his 3-out save opportunity, and everyone went home happy. But they almost didn’t.

*: Tejeda threw 8 pitches in the inning, all strikes, and all (I believe) fastballs. He struck out Vernon Wells on 3 pitches, got Lyle Overbay to hit a lazy flyball on an 0-1 count, then struck out Jose Bautista on 3 pitches. It was a ridiculous display of power pitching, and proof that if he can just throw strikes, Tejeda can be that bridge to Soria the Royals so desperately need.

What makes Hillman’s refusal to use Soria to start the 8th so maddening is that he finally broke down and gave in to the impulse last season, and it worked beautifully. After the bullpen collapse against Tampa Bay, Soria came in to start the 8th six times the rest of the season. In one of those games, he came in with a 5-4 lead, gave up three runs in the 8th and was pulled after getting just two outs. In the other five games, he pitched two scoreless innings for the save. In another game Hillman brought him in to pitch the bottom of the ninth in a tie game at Detroit; the Royals scored in the 10th and Soria finished out the game to earn the win.

Soria earned 5 saves of the 6-out variety in 2009. No other pitcher in baseball had more than 2. The last pitcher with 5 such saves was Aquilino Lopez in 2003.

The Twins are frequently held up as the smartest team in the division; Joe Posnanski thinks that Ron Gardenhire is the best manager in the game. You know how many times Joe Nathan has gone 6 outs for the save in his career? Once – on June 15th, 2006.

Let’s go around the division. How many 6-out saves does Bobby Jenks have in his career? One – against the Royals, in September of 2005. The last Indians closer to go 6 outs for a save was Steve Karsay, in 2000. The last Tigers closer to go 6 outs was Matt Anderson, in 2001.

So is the difference between the Royals and the other teams in the division really the way that Trey Hillman uses his closer? Or is the difference that the other teams in the division actually have someone to pitch the 8th inning? Which is a bigger mistake – that Hillman didn’t go to Soria in the 8th yesterday, or that he did go to Josh Rupe – and that aside from Soria, Josh Rupe was probably the best option?

If Tejeda had pitched the 8th, and pitched it as well as he would end up pitching the 9th, this is all an academic exercise. And going forward, on a team that’s so starved for middle relief that literally one good outing can move you right behind Soria in the pecking order, we might well see Tejeda in that spot the next time the Royals need a bridge to their closer.

If the Royals continue to struggle this season, Hillman is probably going to get the axe, and I can’t say that I’ll be particularly sad to see him go. But his usage of Soria wouldn’t make my top ten list of reasons why he should be fired. Yes, I would argue that Hillman should use Soria for two innings instead of one, that he should use him in tie games rather than to protect three-run leads, and all that.

But look around baseball. On Saturday night, Jerry Manuel used every other reliever in his bullpen to pitch in a scoreless game in extra innings, before he finally got around to using his closer, Francisco Rodriguez, in the 19th inning. And Manuel out-managed Tony La Russa, who double-switched Matt Holliday out of the game, putting the pitcher in the lineup right behind Albert Pujols; inexplicably hit-and-ran with Pujols at the plate in the 19th inning, costing the Cardinals the game; and made a half-dozen other ridiculous decisions. Managers – even good managers – make sub-optimal decisions all the time. Hillman’s track record in this regard is hardly unusual.

Two years ago, Soria saved 42 games, yet only twice did he pitch more than 3 outs for the save. Yet no one was complaining too loudly about Hillman’s use of his bullpen, because the Royals had Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez to pitch the 8th. That the Royals no longer have Ramirez and Nunez to pitch the 8th is regrettable, but don’t pin the blame for that on Hillman.

The Royals have a bullpen of horrors for the second straight season, but the root cause for that is not a failure to manage their personnel. It’s a failure to select their personnel. And the fault for that does not reside primarily with Hillman. If you’re looking to blame someone for that, you have to aim higher.

Having Soria pitch in a tight situation in the 7th or even 6th inning would be perfect, but simply having Soria start the 8th inning to protect a one-run lead would be good. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Let’s concentrate our efforts on convincing Hillman to send Soria out there for six outs instead of four. I still hold out hope that one day baseball teams will go back to the way bullpens were run in 1977. But we have to get back to 1993 first.

Another Post About The Training Staff.

Put down the pitchforks, guys – I swear I come in peace this time!

If you haven’t read Bob Dutton’s article about Jose Guillen from the other day, I suggest that you read it now. The take-home story from the article is this: it’s a minor miracle that Guillen is playing at all right now, let alone ranking second in the league with 5 homers and an .861 slugging average.

If Guillen really spent three weeks in a hospital with blood clots in both legs, that certainly explains the Royals’ outfielder buying spree this offseason. All winter I said that the Royals were acting as if the rules were going to be changed to allow a 26-man (or larger) roster. Guillen played the outfield last year as if he was in a wheelchair – but he really was in a wheelchair over the winter, and I can’t imagine that the Royals thought he’d be an active member of the roster on Opening Day.

But he was not only active, he’s been crushing the ball from day one. On Opening Day I noticed – as many of you did – that his bat speed seemed a lot quicker; he was actually turning on fastballs instead of topping grounders to the second baseman. Tonight he has a chance to tie Mike Sweeney’s team record by homering in five straight games.

There’s a lot to this story that doesn’t really add up – in particular, the fact that Guillen kept suffering leg injury after leg injury, seemingly for more and more trivial reasons (like the torn MCL suffered while putting on his shoes). If I understand the story correctly, he then had ankle surgery after the season, and then developed blood clots (a.k.a. deep venous thrombosis, a possible complication after surgery) in both legs, which is a little unusual unless he had surgery on both legs, which - although the details aren't clear - doesn’t seem to be the case.

But if there’s one thing I take from this story, it’s that Guillen – ahem – wasn’t well served by the team’s training and medical staff last year. Guillen’s legs looked awful all season, both defensively – last year he might have been the slowest outfielder I’ve ever seen – and offensively, where he admits now he didn’t have the strength in his legs to drive the ball. And remember, that’s before he ended up in the hospital for three weeks. Now, we have no idea if he shouldn't have been playing because playing made his injuries worse. But we have a very good idea that he shouldn't have been playing because he wasn't able to play.

And yet here he is, seemingly healthy, and undoubtedly crushing the ball. On Wednesday, BEFORE this article came out, I mentioned to my radio co-host Jason Anderson (Rany on the Radio returns soon!) that Guillen looks like a completely different player this year, and what looks on the surface to be a hitting success may in fact be a trainer success. As you know, the Royals have a completely new training staff with Athletic Trainer Nick Kenney and Assistant Athletic Trainer Kyle Turner. Is it a coincidence that Jose Guillen, coming off a potentially career-ending series of health woes, is on perhaps the hottest stretch of his Royals career?

Trying to evaluate a trainer based one on month of data is ridiculous; it’s like evaluating a farm system based on one day’s worth of box scores. And the health of a roster is dependent on so many factors, from the players’ work habits to the age of the roster to sheer luck, that sussing out the trainer’s role in all this is inordinately difficult. On that note, I understand the team’s reaction to my takedown of Nick Swartz last year. But my frustration with Swartz was the culmination of literally 20 years of bad results, from Benito Santiago’s broken hand in 2003 to Jose Rosado’s shoulder in 2000 to Jim Pittsley’s elbow in 1994. There’s a point where even with trainers, sample sizes become meaningful.

With the new training staff, the sample size isn’t even measurable, let alone meaningful. But let’s try anyway, and look at all the injuries that the Royals have suffered since spring training started:

- Alex Gordon broke his thumb trying to slide. A purely traumatic, unavoidable injury for which only Gordon deserves blame for sliding head-first. His thumb has healed on schedule, and if he were, say, Ryan Zimmerman he might well have been in the lineup on Opening Day. Instead, he’s Alex Gordon, who the Royals have become so frustrated with that seem to be treating him punitively – he’s rehabbing all the way down in A-ball.

- Rick Ankiel twisted his ankle somehow, and what seemed like a minor injury became somewhat worrisome when he ended up missing more than a week with it. But once Ankiel returned to the lineup, he hasn’t had any issued with his ankle, and has hit well so far this year.

- Alberto Callaspo tweaked his oblique muscle. A fully strained oblique muscle is a 4-6 week injury at the minimum, so this was taken very seriously, as he was held out of the Opening Day lineup to give it a couple of extra days to heal, even though his public pronoucements made it sound like he was ready to play. He’s been in the lineup since the second game, and has had no further issues with it.

- Gil Meche developed shoulder stiffness in mid-March, and we all feared the worst from a pitcher who hasn’t been right since he threw too many pitches in a series of starts in late June and early July. He was brought back slowly, and worked in some minor league games late in spring training, before he made his first start on April 11th. He wasn’t effective, but he did strike out 4 batters in 3.1 innings and was timed at 95 on the radar gun. I’m skeptical that he’ll hold up all season, but I’m impressed that he came back as quickly as he did in the first place.

- Mike Aviles came back at least 6 weeks ahead of schedule, and hit over .400 in spring training.

- John Parrish, who had torn his shoulder up and missed all of last season, not only was the biggest surprise to make the roster, but has been the most (only) effective middle reliever on the team so far.

On the minor league side, Dan Duffy had a sore elbow before he went AWOL, and Mike Moustakas strained his oblique muscle enough that he probably won’t be playing in Double-A for another two weeks. But looking at the track record so far, I can’t help but be impressed by the results. Players who suffered minor injuries were allowed to heal completely, and have yet to suffer any setbacks. A player who suffered a major injury returned to the field well ahead of schedule, and showed no lingering effects. Another player came back from a potential career-ending injury and is pitching as well as he ever has. A player who hasn’t looked right in two years looks like he was run through the Juvenation Machine this spring.

It’s way too early to have any kind of hard-formed opinion on the new training staff. But the results I’ve seen so far are truly impressive. Teams that underestimate the importance of health on a roster do so at their own peril. The Royals no longer are one of those teams, and it seems to me that their change in heart is already paying dividends.

You Can't Make A Bullpen Out Of Bull****.

Eight games into the season, we should be talking about how impressive the offense looks. The Royals have scored 38 runs in eight games, ranking fifth in the league; they’re hitting .290/.348/.438 as a team. Jose Guillen has four homers and is slugging .781. Rick Ankiel had hits in 8 straight at-bats at one point. Jason Kendall has started all eight games (no surprise) and has an 8-game hitting streak (big surprise). Scott Podsednik is hitting .452 and is on pace for 121 steals.

And yet the Royals are 3-5, because they’ve allowed the second-most runs in the league. They’ve done so even though their rotation has a perfectly respectable 4.21 ERA. The bullpen, on the other hand, has a 7.96 ERA, and has allowed more than two baserunners per inning.

Karl Marx once wrote that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Marx never delineated the third step, which is unfortunate, as we entered the farce stage sometime last summer. And speaking of Communism, when your poor beleaguered beat reporter suggests that the best way to deal with your bullpen is “lining them all up like the Romanovs” – you might have a problem. (A more recent version of that article has softened the opening line a bit. Bob Dutton has watched damn near every Royals game this century; I wouldn’t blame him one bit if he finally snapped.)

That the Royals have a massive bullpen problem should not be a surprise to anyone. They finished last season with a massive leaking hole between their starters and Joakim Soria, and then over the offseason, while they were signing hitters like they were a kid in an outfielder store, they didn’t make a single move to address their bullpen. Every single member of their bullpen today was in their bullpen at the end of last season, with two exceptions: Luis Mendoza, who was picked up right before the season after he couldn’t make the Rangers staff, because the Royals felt that one Roman Colon just wasn’t enough; and John Parrish, a left-hander who missed all of 2009 with arm surgery.

It’s telling that Parrish has been the only middle reliever who’s been even remotely effective. Parrish has retired all 10 batters he’s faced, including a host of tough left-handed hitters he was brought in specifically to face: he made four one-batter appearances before being left in to pitch two perfect innings in his last outing.

It’s also telling that Soria has also faced only 10 batters all season – along with Parrish, the fewest of any reliever on the roster. Colon has faced 14 of them. Robinson Tejeda has faced 21 batters (and walked only 6!). LUIS MENDOZA has faced 18. But the best reliever on the squad by a factor of about 100, one of the three best relievers in the history of the franchise, has faced only ten. If he doesn’t pitch again soon, the Royals may need to shut him down for the rest of the season to keep him healthy.

So the problems with the bullpen should not be a surprise. Nor should it be a surprise that finding solutions to this problem are awfully difficult in mid-April. Trading for middle relief is almost always a fool’s enterprise, and while there are a few decent free agents still looking for a home, I’m not aware of any quality relievers who are still on the open market. (If there were, Ed Wade would have signed them already.)

Nevertheless, there a few simple things that can be done:

Stop carrying eight relievers. This might be the funniest sub-plot of the Royals’ bullpen – that the Royals think that quantity can somehow substitute for quality. It brings to mind the old woman’s complaint to a restaurant that “the food is terrible, and the portions are so small.” Maybe we don’t have any good relievers – but at least we have lots of bad ones!

It’s not like the Royals have a rotation that needs coddling. With the exception of Meche’s disaster start, the team’s starter has gone at least 5.2 innings in every start. The idea that any team needs eight relievers to get the last ten outs of each ballgame is laughable. The idea that a team needs an eighth reliever more than a fourth bench player is repugnant.

The solution here is obvious. Luis Mendoza has a career 8.32 ERA in the majors. He has a career 4.67 ERA IN TRIPLE-A. He has a career 5.06 ERA IN DOUBLE-A. I could pull out a host of more advanced statistics, but really, does anything more need to be said? He sucks. The Royals have nothing invested in him. Designate him for assignment, and if by some miracle another team claims him – count your blessings.

In his place, bring up a hitter. I know that Kendall’s hitting .310 at the moment, but between him and Betancourt, there are going to be a lot of opportunities for opposing teams to use a tough right-handed pitcher on two of the weakest hitters in baseball. In six games in Omaha, Kila Ka’aihue already has three homers and eight walks. He would give opposing pitchers fits as a lefty Three True Outcomes hitter off the bench, occasional fill-in at first base at DH, and give the Royals an opportunity to evaluate him as a potential everyday player next year.

Replacing Mendoza with Ka’aihue is an astonishingly common-sense move to make. Which is why I don’t expect it will happen.

Release Roman Colon. I’ve already called Roman Colon “the Yuniesky Betancourt of the bullpen”, and frankly that might not be fair to Yuni. Betancourt, at least, was at one time a reasonably useful player whose skills have simply regressed over the past 3 years. Colon, on the other hand, has never been a usable major-league pitcher. In 2004, he had a 3.38 ERA in all of 19 innings for the Braves, and that was his high-water mark. The following year he had a 5.58 ERA; in 2006, he had a 4.89 ERA; and he spent all of 2007 and 2008 in the minors. (Where he was basically kicked out of the Tigers’ organization after breaking a teammate’s jaw in a fight, remember. Classy.)

While in the minors he was no better – he had a 4.43 ERA in 2007, and a 4.74 ERA in 2008. He was better in 2009, with a 2.84 ERA for Omaha, but only pitched 25 innings before the Royals hustled him to the majors.

Colon has not remotely approached a major-league caliber pitcher in at least six years – but the Royals have treated him like God’s Gift to Pitching since the moment they acquired him, overlooking both his off-field incident and the fact that he doesn’t get anyone out. This spring, the Royals raved about his new slider and boasted that it would take him to a new level.

Well, that slider has been so intimidating that of those 14 batters he’s faced, he’s struck out exactly one of them. He’s walked two, hit a batter, and allowed 5 hits. The Royals are right: he’s not the same pitcher he was last year. He’s worse.

The same scouting eye that tells the Royals that Yuniesky Betancourt’s lateral range is just fine must be the same eye that tells the Royals that Roman Colon’s stuff is good enough to get hitters out. The difference is that the Royals haven’t guaranteed millions of dollars to Colon. Ship him out, and bring in someone who has actually proven he can retire major-league – or at least minor-league – hitters.

Bring up Carlos Rosa. The Royals have many intriguing minor-league relievers, but Rosa is probably the only one who is ready for the majors.

Blake Wood has seen his stuff improve significantly since moving to the pen this spring, but he has all of eight relief appearances in his career.

Chris Hayes would be the third- or fourth-best reliever on the roster immediately, but he has not pitched at all this season. One source has told me that he’s on the minor-league DL. Another source, though, swears that Disco isn’t hurt at all, and that the Royals are playing shenanigans with the DL because they don’t have enough Triple-A roster spots and they deemed Hayes to be expendable. The Royals have gone out of their way to avoid giving Hayes an opportunity, so this wouldn’t surprise me at all.

The idea of giving Aaron Crow and Mike Montgomery an apprenticeship in the bullpen before graduating to the rotation is an inspired one. But both are still a few months away from being ready for that sort of promotion, and I’d worry that success in that role would only tempt the Royals into keeping them in a relief role for the long term.

I don’t trust Victor Marte one bit, and Greg Holland needs more seasoning. Louis Coleman and Brandon Sisk are very intriguing but not quite ready. That leaves only Rosa.

Rosa made the move from the rotation to the bullpen last season, and was terrible at first; through the end of June he gave up 21 walks and 5 homers in 38 innings. But from July onward he was much better, allowing just 11 walks and one homer in 34 innings, while striking out 39. This year he has thrown four scoreless innings, though he blew the save in his last outing by allowing inherited runners to score. He has a very live fastball in the mid-90s, but his secondary stuff needs work. He’s not going to be a savior, or even a primary set-up man at first, but at least he can come in with a 5-1 run lead in the seventh inning and get some outs, unlikely the guy he would be replacing.

Pray. Maybe Juan Cruz will start to pitch like he did prior to becoming a Royal. Maybe Kyle Farnsworth will pitch as well with the game on the line as he does in garbage time. Maybe Robinson Tejeda will throw strike one. Maybe Joakim Soria can throw 150 innings this year. At this point, all we can do is put our faith in God that things will get better. Because we can no longer put faith in our front office.

Royals Today: 4/9/2010

The similarities between this season and last continue to impress. Like last year, the Royals lost on Opening Day when their bullpen blew a late-inning lead, which caused a fanbase that long expected the worst (including yours truly) to overreact to one game. Then, like last year, the Royals got two more dominant starting pitching performances in their next two games.

The difference is that last year, the Royals got good work from their non-Farnsworth relievers in Games Two and Three, and won both games. (It’s easy to forget this, but through May 17^th of last year, Juan Cruz had a 1.45 ERA and had allowed just 7 hits in 19 innings.) The bullpen implosion would come later.

There’s no need for patience this year. You’ve probably seen this graphic, but to reiterate:

Starters: 19.2 innings, 2 ER, 0.92 ERA

Relievers: 9.1 innings, 14 ER, 13.50 ERA

Yeah.

But I don’t want to ignore the contribution that the starting pitchers have made. That the bullpen has blown saves in all three games so far is testament to their decrepitude, but it’s also a testament to a rotation that has allowed the Royals to hold a lead after six innings in each game*, despite an offense that has only scored 10 runs in 3 games.

*: Back in 1999, the year the Royals had The Worst Bullpen of All Time, the team had a 73-68 record after six innings. As Joe Posnanski put it in a column the following spring, “the Royals would have been if they were playing slow-pitch softball.” But they weren’t, and they finished 64-97. This year, the Royals are 3-0 after six innings…and 1-2 overall. That 1999 team’s record seems impossible to break, and this year’s Royals at least have Soria. But as Buddy Bell said…

Zack Greinke, in fact, has had the worst performance by a starter so far. Yesterday Brian Bannister did what he always does when he’s healthy – do more with less than any Royals pitcher since at least Paul Byrd, and before him probably Dan Quisenberry. Bannister didn’t show us anything we didn’t already know so much as he reminded us that he’s still one of the most underrated pitchers around.

But what Luke Hochevar did on Wednesday night…that was something different. I’m not referring to the results, which were spectacular – 7.2 shutout innings, and 16 groundball outs vs. just 4 in the air. As outstanding as he pitched, he pitched that well or better three times last year – that’s what makes him, and his 6.55 ERA last season, so maddening. Plus, the weather was miserable – cold and rainy – which may have had something to do with the results.

What was different was his stuff. Or more specifically, his velocity. I knew something was up when the radar gun had his fastball consistently at 96 mph in the first inning. As I tweeted at the time, it was probably just a FOX gun hiccup – I haven’t taken the FOX gun seriously since the time it recorded Carlos Silva (Carlos Silva!) at 98. But Nate Bukaty, who tracks the game in the FOX truck when he’s not co-hosting his morning radio show on 810 WHB, tweeted back his assurances that the gun was accurate. And none of the other pitchers in the game were getting the same kind of tailwind – Max Scherzer, the opposing starter, was consistently 92-94 as you’d expect him to be.

There was only way to settle this – with Pitch F/X data, which isn’t perfect but is pretty damn close to it. I wasn’t the only one who had noticed Hochevar’s velocity – yesterday, Dave Allen of Fangraphs wrote this column analyzing the data. His conclusion: Hochevar is definitely throwing faster than he was last season; his fastball is as much as 2.5 mph faster than in 2009.

I’m skeptical that his fastball has jumped quite that much; while the velocities of other pitchers were more or less unchanged, Joakim Soria hit 92 and even 93 a couple of times, and his fastball is so consistent you could set a metronome to it – 90 on a slow day, 91 on a fast day. We’ll definitely want to see more data. But there’s no question that he was throwing harder than he ever had in the majors. Bob McClure worked on his delivery this spring, and Hochevar threw harder before he was drafted than after he signed, so this isn’t completely out of the blue. But it is a very, very welcome development. Before the season I said on Bukaty’s show that I felt this would be Hochevar’s breakout season. And I think Hochevar is the single most pivotal player on the roster this season. He won’t always be this good, but he can’t possibly be as bad as he was last year. If he’s closer to the former than the latter, the Royals just found themselves another quality starter.

That’s the good news. The bad news is…everything else.

- Well, okay, Soria’s performance wasn’t exactly bad news. Yes, he blew the save and cost Hochevar a victory with one strike to go. But there’s no way you can watch that at-bat and come to the conclusion that Soria was at fault. The only conclusion you can come to is that Miguel Cabrera is a very bad, bad mofo. That was a rather ridiculous piece of hitting – both fouling off everything Soria had to throw at him, and flicking an outside fastball off the right-field fair pole. Cabrera is a remarkably talented hitter who apparently has sobered up after possibly costing the Tigers a playoff spot with his drunken antics last season. If early results mean anything, he could be positively scary this season.

(While I’m on the subject of the Tigers – is Joel Zumaya’s shoulder made out of adamantium? The guy has had enough shoulder injuries to destroy most pitchers’ careers – and here he is, in his first outing after another shoulder injury, pumping 102 mph. I don’t get it.)

- More brilliant baserunning by the Royals in Game 2, when Jason Kendall made the third out of the inning trying to go from first-to-third on Getz’ RBI single. And then, on Rick Ankiel’s walk-off double, Willie Bloomquist – who had just pinch-run for Billy Butler – rounded third base hard, then held up at the last moment at Dave Owen’s orders, but Ankiel was already halfway between second and third. The Royals were saved when Scott Sizemore booted the relay throw, and the game ended. But if Sizemore had handled it cleanly, either the Royals would have had two men at third base, or Bloomquist was a dead duck at the plate. It was a terrible piece of coaching in a crucial situation that should have cost the Royals dearly.

It’s still the first week of the season, but it’s not too early to say this given his history: it’s time to tear down the Windmill. Dave Owen is costing the Royals runs with his decisions at third base, and eventually those runs will turn into wins.

- I’ve been impressed with Jose Guillen’s bat speed; he seems to be turning on fastballs as well as he did in 2008. Of course, in 2008 he was still a below-average hitter because he swung at everything, and I don’t see any reason to think that will change this year.

Case in point: in Game 2, after Cabrera had tied the game in the top of the 9^th, Ankiel led off the bottom of the inning with a single. Lefty specialist Phil Coke stayed in to face Guillen, fell behind 3-1, and then threw a fastball low and away which would have put two men on with none out. Instead, Guillen didn’t just swing at the fastball, he tried to pull it, resulting in an easy 6-4-3 double play to kill the rally.

- I don’t care what anyone else says: no one can protect a four-run deficit in the ninth inning better than Kyle Farnsworth. No one.

Tie games in the 11^th inning, on the other hand…in the span of five pitches, Farnsworth had managed to give up three singles and give the Tigers the lead. To his credit, he stopped the rally there, sandwiching two popouts around a savvy pickoff of Cabrera trying to commit to a double-steal too soon. He came away with the win, further debasing the uselessness of pitcher wins as a stat, but he still has no business pitching in a key situation.

- That is, unless the alternative is Luis Mendoza. You have to love the thought process here: yesterday afternoon, with the Royals clinging to a 2-1 lead in the top of the 8^th inning and with Soria likely unavailable, Dusty Hughes walked Johnny Damon to lead off the 8^th. (The Royals must lead the league in opposing rallies started by leadoff walks. Unfortunately, they have yet to learn the use of this weapon in their own arsenal.)

Four of the next five hitters bat right-handed, prompting a switch. It is at this point that Trey Hillman makes the genius move, not to bring in Juan Cruz, or Robinson Tejeda, or Roman Colon or even Farnsworth, but instead to bring in Mendoza.

Luis Mendoza was making his Royals debut. Mendoza, in 80 career innings, had a 7.73 ERA. Last season, he pitched only one inning for the Rangers, and gave up four runs. He spent the rest of the season toiling in Triple-A, where he managed a sparkling 4.53 ERA. His career ERA in the minors is 4.58. He’s like Roman Colon’s little brother: he’s shown no aptitude at retiring hitters in the majors or even in the minors, yet the Royals not only were thrilled to get him, they immediately used him in a one-run game, in the eighth inning, with a man on base, and with Magglio Ordonez and Miguel Freaking Cabrera due up next.

- Miguel Cabrera then hits a groundball to shortstop, where Yuniesky Betancourt immediately boots it. This was an obvious, clear, no-doubt-about-it error, and was scored as such at first, before the official scorer inexplicably decided to change it to a base hit. (There are conflicting reports as to the model of shotgun that Dayton Moore had wedged between the scorer’s shoulder blades at the time.) This set up Cabrera to hit another opposite-field homer, this time on an 0-2 count.

This wouldn’t end the Luis Mendoza show; Mendoza would give up a pair of doubles and a walk in the ninth, and then Colon would use his new magical slider to give up a single, a walk, and hit a batter before finally getting the last out in the ninth. Mendoza is currently tied for the league lead with 5 earned runs allowed this year. His career ERA is now 8.13.

- Betancourt’s error-turned-hit merely underscores that the Royals are incomplete denial about how bad his defense is. Twice on Opening Day, he had to lunge to pick up groundballs that weren’t more than ten feet to his left. He managed to get to both of them, but his lack of range was shocking – all the more so because we were told that his lateral movement had improved this spring.

His defense is a joke at this point. The Royals can call him Ozzie Smith for all I care; he is not a major-league caliber shortstop.

- Oh, and in regards to his plate discipline after his Opening Day home run? Yesterday, the Royals mounted a rally in the bottom of the eighth, scoring a run and putting the tying run on third base with one out for Betancourt. He immediately swung at the first pitch and hit a routine grounder to the shortstop, forcing the runner to stay at third. The Royals helped hide his failure by giving up three more runs in the 9^th, but the fact remains that his offensive game remains as unrefined – and seemingly uninterested in improving – as his defense.

Fortunately, his replacement is on the roster. In three games so far, Mike Aviles has one base-running appearance and zero at-bats. But he’s doing better than Mitch Maier, who hasn’t played at all.

I don’t mean to sound too down. The Royals are 1-2, and their bullpen is a shambles as expected. But tonight they send Kyle Davies to the mound, who is certainly erratic but compares favorably with almost any #5 starter in baseball. The day after Gil Meche and his rapidly-improving shoulder debuts, and then the rotation turns back to Greinke. (Correction: Greinke goes tomorrow, and Meche on Sunday. Always good to get the reigning Cy Young winner the opportunity to pitch as often as possible.)

Every day the Royals send a starter to the mound who has the ability to turn over a lead to the bullpen. Now they just need a bullpen capable of holding onto it.

Royals Today: Opening Day Edition.

So, what to write about Opening Day that hasn’t been written before – like, say, last year? What did we see from the Royals yesterday (with one big exception) that we didn’t see a hundred times last season? Yes, it’s just one game, and yes, maybe fans take Opening Day a little too seriously. But there’s a reason why so many Royals fans are putting so much meaning into one game. We’ve seen this movie before, way too many times. I think most of us have accepted that the Royals will suck again this season – but is it too much to ask that they suck creatively? Can’t they suck in a different way than they did last year? Evidently not.

- All those new veteran players brought in to impart a winning attitude to the team, all that time spent on fundamentals again this spring, and the Royals can’t get through the top of the first inning of the season without making a play that belongs on the team’s end-of-season blooper reel.

I don’t know who’s at fault for letting Carlos Guillen’s infield pop-up drop, and I don’t care. All I know is that six men looked up into the sky and swirling wind, and not one of them took charge to make the play. Greinke is exempt from criticism, both because he’s Zack Greinke and because pitchers never have responsibility on infield pop-ups. But the reality is that when he’s on the mound, he’s easily the best defensive player on the infield. At some point, he ought to just say f**k it, and make every play he can himself.

- It’s somehow appropriate that the first run Greinke gives up this season should be an unearned run. He gave up nine unearned runs each of the last two seasons, even though his pitching style should lead to very few unearned runs (as I documented here two years ago). Yesterday was a perfect example of this: with two men on, Greinke induces a pop-up, a ball in play which should almost never lead to an error – unless you’re asking the Royals to catch it.

- I’m not going to rag on Willie Bloomquist too much for taking the error, because that really was a team effort, and he did make a fine play later in the game that might have saved Greinke a run.

Besides, it’s not Bloomquist’s fault that he was the Opening Day third baseman. Yes, it took a perfect storm of injuries for that to happen, with Alex Gordon’s broken thumb and Alberto Callaspo’s tweaked oblique. (Tweaked Oblique sounds like a good name for a band, if anyone’s looking for ideas…) But it still doesn’t explain why Bloomquist started over Mike Aviles.

Actually, I do know why – because Trey Hillman doesn’t feel that Aviles is ready to play third base yet. This is perfectly reasonable – as quickly as he returned from his injury, and as well as he played this spring, we can’t forget that Aviles had Tommy John surgery less than 10 months ago, his arm strength still isn’t 100%, and it may still be a few weeks before Aviles can be safely trusted to play full-out.

I just have one question to ask, if I may: if Aviles isn’t yet ready to start at third base, WHY THE HELL IS HE ON THE ROSTER?

Aviles was a revelation in 2008, not just offensively but defensively, as he played an above-average shortstop while hitting .325 as a rookie. Last year was a lost season, obviously, and after not playing in a game in 10 months, Aviles has a lot to prove. But he certainly has the ability to upgrade the Royals considerably at shortstop, where the Royals have a starter who – as you may know – leaves a lot to be desired in both facets of his game.

So the obvious solution here is to send Aviles to Omaha on a rehab assignment, which allows him to get reps at the plate every day, and allows him to progress defensively from second base to third base to shortstop as his arm strength returns. A month or six weeks from now, Aviles ought to be ready to step in at any position the Royals might need him. In particular, should Yuniesky Betancourt struggle as he did after the trade last season, the Royals will have a viable option to replace him.

Instead, the Royals were so impressed with Aviles’ performance that they brought him north with the team…only to stash him on the bench, where he won’t get the chance to continue his hot hitting, where he won’t be able to work on his arm strength in game situations, and where he’s evidently so fragile that the Royals don’t feel confident that they can use him at all.

Yesterday, the Spork went 0-for-3 with 2 strikeouts in his first three times up. In the bottom of the eighth, Bloomquist was due up again with two outs, nobody on, and the 100 mph-throwing Ryan Perry on the mound. Seems like a good chance to get Aviles up in a low-pressure situation, then let him take the field for the last inning. Instead, Bloomquist batted, and struck out again.

If you’re not going to use Aviles off the bench in a tailor-made situation, then why have him on the bench to begin with? Two months from now, if not sooner, Aviles might be the best shortstop the Royals have. If the Royals were actively trying to prevent Aviles from regaining his previous form, they couldn’t have made a better decision than the one they have.

- Speaking of Betancourt, props to him for one of the most impressive plate appearances I’ve ever seen from him. Granted, that’s damning with faint praise. Still, I should point out that as stunning as it was to see him drive a Justin Verlander fastball 380-plus feet to left-center field, the most impressive part of the at-bat was that his home run came on a full-count. In particular, the pitch immediately before the homer was a 2-2 fastball about three inches off the outside corner, and Betancourt spit on it.

It was one at-bat. And if the 2-2 pitch had been a slider, Betancourt probably would have swung no matter where it was placed. But I have to give credit where credit’s due, and I plan to watch Yuni’s pitch selection a little more closely in the coming weeks.

- I should apologize for suggesting that the Royals lost this game the same way they lost last season.

On Opening Day last season, the Royals’ starter departed the game with a lead, and in their first inning of work, the bullpen gave up three runs and lost the game. On Opening Day this season, the Royals’ starter departed the game with a lead, and in their first inning of work, the bullpen gave up six runs and lost the game. Also, they lost the game in the 8th inning last season, the 7th inning this year. Big difference.

- There’s not much to say about the bullpen’s seventh-inning meltdown. Roman Colon, Robinson Tejeda, and Juan Cruz faced 10 batters in the inning. Three struck out, one walked, and the other six all got hits. There was some degree of bad luck – the Tigers were 6-for-6 on balls-in-play – but if luck is the residue of design, then bad luck is the residue of a lack of design.

Roman Colon is really the Yuniesky Betancourt of the pitching staff – the Royals promoted him last season, and continue to use him in tight spots, even though he’s never done anything remotely positive at the major league level. But he unveiled a new slider this spring that everyone has raved about, and a new pitch is sometimes all it takes for a pitcher to take a dramatic step forward.

The slider I saw yesterday was hardly new; it was a wide sweeping thing that any hitter could recognize about 30 feet from the plate. (Colon said so as much afterwards: “The slider didn’t work today.”) He lit the fire.

Tejeda, who was terrific last season, is nonetheless the kind of guy I’d feel much more comfortable with to start an inning – he needs some space to clean up his own messes, and coming in with two men on base eliminated that margin for error. He threw the worst pitch in the entire sequence, a 1-2 fastball to Miguel Cabrera that was right down the middle, and hit back up the middle for an RBI single.

Juan Cruz almost looked decent, at least after he iced the game by giving up a two-run double to Brandon Inge – he struck out three of the next four hitters. I still hold out hope that he’ll regain his pre-2009 form. I would just rather he prove that in non-clutch situations first.

Colon, Tejeda, Cruz…if I had just described a game from last July, would any of you know the difference? If you had told me that Greinke pitched a brilliant game despite defensive lapses behind him, but then Colon and Cruz came in and blew the game before Soria could get in, I’d say you were describing this game here that I attended last season. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

If insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, expecting the same result, what level of schizophrenia have the Royals descended to?

- I don’t care what anyone else says: no one can protect a four-run deficit in the ninth inning better than Kyle Farnsworth. No one.

- And finally, what would a Royals’ game be without a dose of insane baserunning?

In the fifth inning, recall, Chris Getz got the Royals rolling with a two-out single off Verlander. He stole second, David DeJesus hit a grounder up the middle that Adam Everett could only keep on the infield, and then Scott Podsednik worked a walk. This set up the perfect situation: Billy Butler at the plate, with the bases loaded in a tie game. Butler has owned Verlander in his career, and while I don’t put much stock in hitter-pitcher matchups (all the statistical evidence says that what a batter has done against a specific pitcher is almost meaningless), the fact is that Butler can catch up to a fastball like few others in the game, even one as fast as Verlander’s. Butler poked a single to right field, plating two baserunners.

Two innings later, after the Tigers had put up their six-spot to take an 8-4 lead, the Royals’ offense once again stirred. Jason Kendall beat out an infield single. Getz singled to left as Kendall pulled up at second. And with one out, Podsednik blooped a single into short center field, giving Billy Butler another chance to bat with the bases loaded, representing the tying run, likely against Ryan Perry, another cooks-with-gas right-hander who provides all the energy Butler needs to go deep if he runs into one…

…WHAT THE HELL?!

Yep, that’s the Royals’ catcher churning around third base, with one out, the Royals’ best hitter about to come to the plate, down four runs in the seventh inning. That’s the Royals’ catcher being thrown out at the plate, with the Royals’ best hitter about to come to the plate, down four runs in the seventh inning.

Yes, it was a terrific throw, and a bang-bang play. But so what? When you’re down four runs in the seventh inning, and you’re about to bring up the tying run at the plate in the form of your #3 hitter, the only excuse to have a runner thrown out trying to score is if he slips and falls down halfway to home, then gets back up only to step on a landmine. Otherwise, it’s a fireable offense.

Dave Owen, the Royals’ third-base coach, was not fired over the winter.

In his defense, though, Kendall’s not going to have the speed he once had before that severe ankle injury in 1999.

- Momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher. After the hissy fit we all threw on Opening Day last year, the Royals won their next two games against the White Sox, and suddenly they were 2-1 with three dominant starting pitcher performances under their belt, and they were well on their way to 18-11. So let’s not get too riled up this time around.

I do feel compelled to point out that last year, tomorrow’s starting pitcher was Zack Greinke. This year, tomorrow’s starting pitcher is…Luke Hochevar.

Hope still springs eternal. But spring better show up quick.

Prospect Rundown, Part 7.

Let’s finish up with a few quick comments on prospects that have so far escaped the reach of my keyboard. This isn’t necessarily a list of the best prospects that I haven’t covered yet, just the prospects that I think warrant mentioning because they’re relatively close to being major-league ready.

Jeff Bianchi: Well, this one’s easy – Bianchi’s out for the year with a torn UCL necessitating Tommy John surgery. His entire career has been an exhibit in promising talent limited by injury. He hit over .400 in rookie ball in both 2005 and 2006, but a torn labrum in his shoulder in 2006 ended his season after 12 games, and he was awful in 2007 and only slightly better in 2008. Last season, he showed the talent that made him a 2^nd round pick in 2005: he hit .300 in Wilmington and .315 at Northwest Arkansas, with a little pop (9 homers, 29 doubles) and some speed (22 steals). His plate discipline isn’t great (39 walks against 95 Ks) but acceptable for a shortstop.

When he was drafted, the upside comparison I heard was Michael Young. After last season’s resurgence, he projects as a poor man’s Michael Young – a line-drive hitter whose solid fundamentals allow him to play shortstop despite below-average range. That’s not a great player, honestly, maybe a league-average shortstop at his best, or a very good utility player. Still, he projected as better than Yuniesky Betancourt, which would have made his injury a big blow to the Royals – if Mike Aviles wasn’t the surprise of camp. If Aviles is healthy, the Royals won’t miss Bianchi this season.

We’ll see if he can come back next season and make good on his promise. It won’t take much for him to be a success by recent Royals standards. For as much attention as the Royals have received for the failure of their high first-round picks, they’ve gotten a pass for their 2^nd round picks, which have been terrible. Here’s a list of every 2^nd rounder drafted in the last 15 years:

1996: Taylor Myers

1997: Dane Sardinha (did not sign)

1998: Robbie Morrison

1999: Wes Obermueller & Brian Sanches

2000: Mike Tonis

2001: Roscoe Crosby

2002: Adam Donachie

2003: Shane Costa

2004: Billy Buckner and Eric Cordier

2005: Jeff Bianchi

2006: Jason Taylor

2007: Sam Runion

2008: Johnny Giavotella

You don’t expect to hit on all your 2^nd round picks, but oh my God, that’s awful. No wonder the Royals gave up their 2^nd round pick last season when they signed Juan Cruz.

Obermueller pitched briefly, and not successfully, in the majors; Sanches made it to the majors as a middle reliever when he was 27, and actually had a good year for the Phillies last season at age 30. Tonis got six at-bats in the majors. Costa was Shane Costa. Buckner has a 5.74 ERA in the majors.

And those are the success stories. No one else on that list reached the majors. (Eric Cordier was throwing 95 this spring and has a lot of people excited again about his future. Of course, he’s the guy the Royals gave up for Tony Pena Jr.) The two guys drafted after Bianchi, Jason Taylor and Sam Runion, are at the moment two of the biggest busts in the organization.

Jarrod Dyson: During my brief stay at the Winter Meetings the Royals held a press conference for Trey Hillman, and at the end of the presser I got in a question, asking Hillman what prospects he was looking forward to bringing up to the major league roster this season. He immediately brought up Dyson, which was…curious, given that Dyson wasn’t even listed when Baseball America ranked the team’s top 30 prospects.

It would be all too easy to mock the Royals for thinking so highly of Dyson, who is 25 years old and still hasn’t demonstrated the ability to, you know, hit. In four minor league seasons, he has a .270 lifetime average, and his next homer will be his first as a pro.

But Dyson has one undeniable tool – speed – and to his credit has developed that tool into two identifiable skills: baserunning prowess and defensive range. The kid can fly, and he’s a stolen base threat every time he reaches base – which is far too rare. (In his career he has reached base of his own accord 308 times, and has 107 steals – an incredible ratio.) But he’s also a defensive whiz in centerfield. Those two skills don’t make a ballplayer, but they do make for a handy fifth or sixth outfielder – if teams had the space for five or six outfielders, which they don’t.

I’ve seen people compare him to Joey Gathright, which is silly for two reasons. One is that Gathright actually hit: in his first full season, Gathright hit .331 in the minor leagues, then hit .334 the following season between Double-A and Triple-A, and was in the majors by the time he was 23. But the other is that Gathright, despite his amazing speed, was never a particularly good outfielder, which is why he has been unable to stick in the majors as a backup (he was just released by the Blue Jays the other day.) The better comparison for Dyson, I think, would be to a poor man’s Endy Chavez, who was briefly with the Royals as a Rule 5 pick many years ago.

Chavez has never hit well enough to play every day in the majors, but he could always run, and if he were an everyday player people would recognize him as one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball. His running over-the-wall ice cream-scoop catch of Scott Rolen’s home run ball in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS would rank as one of the three most important defensive plays in playoff history had the Mets not lost the game anyway on Yadier Molina’s ninth-inning home run.

I doubt that Dyson will ever develop enough to be a regular, or even semi-regular, outfielder in the majors. But if nothing else, he has tremendous value as a September callup, because when you have unlimited rosters, a guy who can pinch-run and play great defense off the bench will always have value. If anything, Dyson might be more valuable to a better team – a team that’s in the hunt in September could use a guy like Dyson that might steal them a game with his legs or glove. A team like the Royals needs September to look at guys who might be regulars for them in the future. Barring a radical improvement in his offensive game, Dyson won’t be that guy. If Hillman really thinks Dyson can help the Royals as an everyday player, he’s only fooling himself.

Kila Ka’aihue: The Royals keep trying to bury him, and he keeps making himself difficult to ignore. The power he showed in 2008 was unsustainable – Ka’aihue hit 37 homers but just 15 doubles, and that’s not a ratio that even the most hulking behemoth of a slugger can maintain for long. Sure enough, his homers dropped to 17 last season even as his doubles jumped to 27. But the drop in his batting average was more concerning; after hitting .315 in 2008, he hit just .252 for Omaha last year.

Fortunately, his plate discipline, his greatest skill, remained unharmed. He drew 102 walks last season after drawing 104 the year before. Remember, no Royal has walked 100 times at the major league level since Kevin Seitzer two decades ago. And while some guys draw lots of walks because they watch a lot of close pitches, including a lot of called strike threes, Ka’aihue has never struck out 100 times in a season.

He’s not as good as he looked in 2008, but he’s not as bad as he looked in 2009 – and in 2009, his performance still translated to have been a big improvement on Mike Jacobs. Jacobs is gone now, and while Jose Guillen has the DH spot for now, I have this suspicion that the odds Guillen loses the job to injury, non-performance, or simply a refusal to adapt to the position are quite high. Ka’aihue has had a monster spring, punctuated with a two-game stretch last week when he ended one game with a walk-off, bases-loaded walk, and hit the go-ahead homer in the eighth inning of the next game.

The Royals have pinned him with that awful label, “slider-bat speed”, a label that’s harder to get rid of than herpes. I’m not sure it’s true, and I’m not sure it’s relevant. Jacobs could hit a good fastball, but the problem was that he swung at a lot of bad fastballs as well. Ka’aihue may not be able to catch up to a perfectly-placed fastball, but few hitters can. And the good sense to lay off fastballs outside the strike zone mitigates that weakness.

Honestly, I wish some more of the Royals had slider-bat speed. If Guillen had slider-bat speed, maybe he’d actually hit some of those sliders he swings at. Somehow, the fact that Miguel Olivo had “fastball-bat speed” was okay. It’s okay if you swing over every off-speed pitch in the book, but God forbid you can’t hit a really good fastball.

Ka’aihue is one of the five best hitters in the organization right now, no matter what speed his bat is. If the Royals ever give him the chance to perform, they might be surprised at the results. Even if the rest of us won’t.

David Lough: When I spoke with J.J. Picollo a few weeks ago, I asked him for a sleeper from among the pitching and hitting ranks. His pitching sleeper was John Lamb, who we’ve already covered, and Lough was his hitting sleeper. His point wasn’t that Lough was an unknown – he ranks as the Royals’ #10 prospect by Baseball America, and reached Double-A last season, hitting .331/.371/.517 – but that this spring he looked even better than the Royals thought he was. They farmed him out early, but not before he made a big impression in camp.

It’s almost too easy to compare Lough to David DeJesus, but sometimes the easy comparison is easy for a reason. Like DeJesus, Lough projects as a tweener, a guy whose bat can play in center field, and whose glove looks good in a corner spot, but who might not fit at any specific position. And like DeJesus, Lough’s biggest strength is a lack of weaknesses. He hits for a good average, modest power (14 homers last year, 16 homers the year before), steals bases (19 last year, 12 in 2008), rarely strikes out, runs well, and has the range to hang in center or shine in a corner. The comparison even extends to his arm: like DeJesus, Lough doesn’t have great arm strength, but is very accurate with his throws. The biggest difference is that Lough doesn’t walk a lot – just 24 walks last season – and he’ll need to work on that if he’s ever going to have an acceptable OBP.

DeJesus has had a much better career than many expected, and it’s not because he developed any surprising skills like start to hit for power, it’s just that he was maybe 5% or 10% better across the board than he was expected to be, and at his level of performance, that’s the difference between fringe-average and average-plus, as the scouts say. DeJesus started his career in center field, where his glove was average but his bat was a little above-average, and then last year he moved to left field, where his bat was average but he was one of the best defensive left fielders in the game.

Coming into spring training, I was worried that Lough would be a true tweener, a guy who maybe was a good fourth outfielder but just wouldn’t hit enough to play every day. But as with DeJesus, a little improvement goes a long way when you’ve got a broad base of skills like Lough does. If Lough really does take his game to another level this season, he might be ready to take over if and when Rick Ankiel or Scott Podsednik break down, and may play well enough to hold onto the job all season. Lough’s a very athletic guy who was recruited to a Division II college to play football, and is still young in baseball terms, which means that even at age 24, continued development is not unlikely. If the Royals were seeing something real in spring training, he could soon be starting for them for a long time.

Johnny Giavotella: Johnny G is my sleeper, and not just because his name makes him sound like an extra in “Goodfellas”. Giavotella is a true sleeper, in that his first full pro season was widely considered a bit of a disappointment: he went to high-A Wilmington and hit just .258 with 6 homers. He’s also not considered to be a particularly good second baseman defensively.

But look deeper. He was just 20 when he signed – he was unusually young for a college junior – and played most of last season at age 21. Almost on cue, he hit better after he turned 22 in July; he hit .292/.355/.423 in the second half of the season. And he played for the Blue Rocks, where the ballpark is a notoriously tough place to hit, but particularly so for right-handed hitters. He has tremendous bat control; he walked 66 times against just 54 strikeouts last season. He has good speed, with 26 steals. Moving to a much-better hitters’ park in Double-A this year, I think Giavotella may surprise everyone with a breakout season offensively.

When he was drafted, I tried to find major league players that he would compare to, and finally settled on “Chuck Knoblauch without the speed”. So I was quite pleased when I opened this year’s edition of Baseball Prospectus, and under Giavotella’s projection, his most comparable player was…Chuck Knoblauch. (And yes, yes, I’m quite aware that the elves have invaded the PECOTA system this spring, and if you check online I’m sure Giavotella’s closest comp will be Ichiro Suzuki, or maybe Dan Quisenberry. I’ll stick with Knobby.) His glove will continue to be an issue, but you can do worse than a second baseman with a .370 OBP and speed, even if his defense is subpar. The Royals certainly have.