Draft Preview.

I meant to continue with an update on the minors today, but events of the last 24 hours forced me to push my pre-draft preview up a little.

At the end of last season, once the Royals were locked into the #4 overall pick in this year’s draft, I said to a friend, “Just you wait – there are going to be three players that stand out from the pack, and there’s going to be a huge drop to whoever the fourth-best player is.” I said this without any real knowledge of the draft pool; I’ve become something of a Royals draft fatalist over the years, after multiple drafts where this exact scenario played out.

Three years ago, you may recall, Vanderbilt lefty David Price was the consensus #1 player in the land. No one had a firm grasp on who was #2. (Well, Matt Wieters was pretty close to a consensus, but no one was certain of his signability.) The Royals, courtesy of an improbable three-game sweep of the Tigers to end the season, finished one game ahead of the Rays, and let Price slip out of their hands. (I wrote about that in more detail at Baseball Prospectus. The direct link is dead, but there’s a synopsis here.)

The following year, the Royals had the #3 pick, and even before the college baseball season began it was clear that for the second straight season, the best collegiate player in the country went to Vanderbilt. Pedro Alvarez would be picked #2 overall, right behind high school shortstop Tim Beckham. If the Royals (who would have liked to draft Alvarez) had lost one more game in 2008, they would have picked #2 – but instead they picked #3, and once again there was no consensus as to who the third-best player in the draft was.

And four years ago, when the Royals did have the #1 pick in the country, there was no clear phenom, no preternatural high school hitter like Alex Rodriguez or Ken Griffey Jr., no major-league ready starting pitcher like Mark Prior or Stephen Strasburg available. The Royals wound taking a college pitcher who 1) was taken in the supplemental first-round just the year before and 2) was a surprise #1 overall selection.

So nothing about this season’s draft dynamics surprise me. The Royals lost 97 games last season. The Orioles lost 98 games; if the Royals had lost one more game, they would have been tied with the Orioles for the third-worst record in baseball, and they would have “won” the tie-breaker (as they would in the scenarios above) by virtue of having the worse record the year before. Instead, they draft fourth.

And sure enough, there’s a industry-wide consensus that three players are on a different tier from everyone else. Well, one player is in his own tier – Bryce Harper, the Greatest Draft Prospect In History (or at least the Greatest Draft Prospect since Stephen Strasburg last year.) If you don’t know the Bryce Harper Story, here it is in a nutshell: left-handed catcher with perhaps the greatest power bat anyone has ever seen in the draft. On the cover of Sports Illustrated at 16, took his GED after his sophomore year of high school to go straight to junior college and earn his draft eligibility a year early. Played at the College of Southern Nevada, against high-caliber JuCo competition using only wood bats, and hit .442/.524/.986, with 29 homers in 62 games. (The college’s previous record for homers was 12, I believe.) He’s 17. Potential 80 arm as a catcher, but might move to the outfield as a pro. Widely considered to be a jerk.

(That last issue erupted into a point of national contention after Kevin Goldstein discussed it in an article a month ago. The inevitable pushback came from a variety of people who all have some vested interest in Harper – his agent, his coaches, etc. But within the game it’s a widely accepted fact. A month ago I was speaking with a reporter when Harper’s name came up, and he said, “yeah, the kid’s a jerk.” “Oh, you read Goldstein’s article?” I asked him. “Goldstein wrote about him? No, I’ve spoken with two different scouts who both said terrible things about his makeup.”)

I’m not here to bury the kid – he is, after all, 17, and God only knows how any of us would act if we had been anointed as “Baseball’s Lebron” before we got our driver’s license. Plenty of people who were world-class jackasses at 17 became upright outstanding citizens by their early 20s. He’s not a criminal or a thug; he just has an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.

I only bring it up to point out that even when dealing with one of the most exciting hitting prospects in draft history, there’s already a red flag. I’d love to have him, but when the Nationals call his name on Monday I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. Let them glory in his potential, and let them stress over the headache.

The other two top-tier prospects are a pair of high schoolers. Manny Machado is sort of Alex Rodriguez Lite, a do-everything shortstop from Miami. He’s nowhere in A-Rod’s class as a prospect, but he doesn’t need to be to still be a potential All-Star shortstop down the road who hits for a good average, good if not light-tower power, and play good defense. The main concern is with his defense; it’s not that he doesn’t have the skills to play shortstop in the majors, but he’s so big now (6’3”, 190) that if he grows any bigger he may have to move off the position. In general I’m skeptical about this whole “too big to play shortstop” meme; ever since Cal Ripken proved he could play shortstop not just well, but at a Gold Glove caliber, I’ve felt that “he’s too big to play shortstop” is just code for “he’s too bulky and slow to play shortstop”. Size by itself is no impediment, and in fact is an asset if it allows you to hit with more power. But it does mean that Machado needs to take care of his body as he matures as a pro.

The third player – some would argue he’s better than Machado – is Jameson Taillon, one of the hardest-throwing right-handers to come out of a state (Texas) famous for its hard-throwing right-handers. He’s a monster at 6’7”, 230, and MLB.com’s scouting report puts his fastball at 94-99. A legitimate upper 90s fastball is highly unusual for a high schooler, let alone one who can also spin a nasty breaking pitch. The concern I have with him is that some reports are that his fastball is a little straight. Any time I hear about a Texas high school right-hander who throws really hard but somewhat straight, I think of Todd Van Poppel. (I would also think of Colt Griffin, but fortunately I’ve managed to repress most of those memories.) Van Poppel is just one data point – Griffin really shouldn’t count because he came out of nowhere suddenly, and disappeared almost as fast – and a lot of people compare Taillon to Josh Beckett.

Anyway, it’s a moot point, because not only are these three clearly the best players in the draft, but for the first time in ages, none of the first three teams are planning to select a lesser player for “signability” reasons. (Good for baseball. Bad for the Royals. Dammit.)

I know the Royals love Taillon, and while they’ve been coy about such things, I’m pretty certain they would take Machado if he fell to them. Harper has been linked to the Nationals since they wrapped up the worst record in baseball last season, and the Orioles lasered in on Taillon long ago. The intrigue was that the Pirates might not take Machado, instead preferring to save some money and draft Ole Miss left-hander Drew Pomeranz. That rumor has long faded away. The newest rumor was that the Pirates might pass on Machado (yay!) – to take Taillon instead (boo!) despite his higher price tag, in which case the Orioles will take Machado instead and screw the Royals either way.

So here the Royals sit, drafting fourth in a draft where there’s little difference between the fourth-best and the 20th-best player in the draft, a draft where the guy many people think is the #4 player available (Chris Sale, left-handed pitcher out of Florida Gulf Coast University) ranks #47 on Keith Law’s list.

I find myself surprisingly philosophic about this unfortunate situation the Royals find themselves in. Largely, that’s because no matter how clear a separation there is between prospects on Draft Day, inevitably players in that top tier will disappoint, and players in that second tier will rise up. The Royals can’t control who goes ahead of their pick. But no matter who they miss out on, if the player they select at #4 turns out to be the best player selected after the top three, they will have a hell of a player.

Remember my examples above? Three years ago the Royals changed their mind at the last moment; after planning to take high school third baseman Josh Vitters, the morning before the draft they decided to take Mike Moustakas instead. I’d probably still rather have Price (who does, after all, lead the AL with a 2.29 ERA at the moment), but Moustakas has played so well this year that a final judgment is still years away.

The following year, when the Royals missed out on Pedro Alvarez? They also missed out on Tim Beckham, who went #1 overall and as a high school shortstop would have filled a position of need. Instead, they took Eric Hosmer. While Hosmer is raking this year, Alvarez is hitting .267/.356/.515 in Triple-A – nothing to be ashamed of, but given that the college third baseman is likely to end up at first base in the majors, it’s not clear that he’s going to be any better than Hosmer, who’s three years younger than him. And Beckham? He’s hitting .206/.293/.375 in the Florida State League and has scouts questioning how he could have ever been the #1 pick in all the land.

And four years ago, when the Royals took a surprise player with the #1 overall pick? The reason it was a surprise was because everyone thought the best pitcher in the country was UNC lefty Andrew Miller, and the Royals took Luke Hochevar. Hochevar is still maddening, but he’s making undeniable progress. Miller, meanwhile, has a 5.50 ERA in the majors and is now trying to work his way back from arm troubles; he’s getting lit up in Double-A and may be done.

Meanwhile, the one year the top of the draft fell the Royals way was 2005, when they drafted second, and there were two players who were clearly ahead of the pack. The Diamondbacks took Justin Upton, and the Royals took…Alex Gordon, who was almost universally considered the superior of fellow college third basemen Ryan Zimmerman and Ryan Braun at the time.

Sometimes the clear-cut choice fails, and sometimes the unconventional pick works out. The best pick isn’t the one that looks like a no-brainer on Draft Day. It’s the one that proves to be the right choice many years and second-guessers later. The Royals know both sides of that equation now, and I’d like to think that they look at their predicament not as a curse, but as an opportunity.

And that’s what it is. Precisely because there is no consensus #4 pick, precisely because the Royals could take any one of about 20 different players without having anyone seriously question their decision, the Royals are liberated to make their selection without giving the slightest consideration to who fans or their peers think they should pick. (That may sound silly, but remember that when the Royals selected Gordon, at least two members of the front office thought that Zimmerman might be the better player. But there was simply no way they could have selected Zimmerman. If they took Gordon and were proven wrong, everyone would understand – if they took Zimmerman and were proven wrong, they’d be hounded mercilessly.)

No, all the Royals have to do is simple: pick the best player. If they’re as good at scouting talent as they think they are – and as recent developments in the minors suggest they might be – this should be easy. Pick the best player, and given time, everything else will work itself out.

xxx

Just because I wrote all that, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have an opinion one way or the other on who the Royals should select.

On the contrary, the fact that the Royals have been linked to Sale for the last two weeks was a little concerning and more than a little mystifying. It’s mystifying because while I think it’s crazy for a team to have any draft philosophy other than “take the best available player”, if any draft situation called for a different plan, it was this one. I asked J.J. Picollo on this very point last week – if it’s your pick and there’s no clear consensus as to who you should select, do you take into account your specific context? Do you favor a player at a position of need, or a player who might get to the majors more quickly? And his answer, stripped down to one word, was “yes.” As it should be.

Yet there are few teams who need Chris Sale less than the Royals do. Sale is a left-handed pitcher, and as I documented even before the season, the Royals are deeper in left-handed pitching in the minors than they have in their history, and probably deeper than any other organization in the majors. Even with Noel Arguelles unlikely to pitch this season, Danny Duffy’s return along with Michael Montgomery, John Lamb, and Chris Dwyer gives the Royals four blue-chip left-handed starters, and the rapid rise of Blaine Hardy gives them at least one high-quality left-handed relief prospect. Maybe there really is no such thing as having too many left-handed pitchers – but if the Royals take Sale, they’ll probably find out.

On top of that, I share many of Law’s concerns about Sale. As he pointed out on the radio show this week, Sale throws from a low three-quarters delivery, which makes him project more as a reliever than as a starter; but while he has a good fastball and excellent changeup, his breaking stuff isn’t great, and it’s hard to excel in relief as a lefty without a breaking ball. So what is he, exactly? Law suggested that he might need a complete overhaul of his mechanics as a pro, and while that could work, that’s not something you really want to do with the guy you just selected with the fourth overall pick. Also, the fact that his long stringy body made MLB.com compare him to Andrew Miller physically doesn’t give me confidence about his ability to stay healthy.

The other options the Royals have include Drew Pomeranz, who is a lefty with a better body (6’5”, 230) and a more traditional over-the-top delivery. I’d probably be fine with Pomeranz, who has good power stuff, and whose mid-season hiccup was likely caused by a strained pectoral muscle that is no long-term concern. The biggest issue with him is command, and again, the Royals don’t need another lefty.

Taking the big picture approach, it’s important to note that the long-time advantage of college players vs. high school players has disappeared, and in fact the research suggests that of the four types of players to select – high school vs. college, pitcher vs. hitter – college pitchers are the least likely of the four to pan out. Hitters are always safer than pitchers, and high schoolers have become safer picks than their college counterparts, in part because major league organizations have an incentive to protect their investment, while college coaches have incentives to let their Friday starter throw 160 pitches and then relieve on Sunday.

But if not Sale or Pomeranz – who rank #4 and #5 on Baseball America’s list of top draft prospects – who? The Royals are focusing on college talent, and if you accept the theory of trying to time your talent to reach the majors at the same time, then getting a college player who might be in the majors by 2012 to go along with all the high school picks from years past makes a lot of sense.

There are a number of college hitters worth considering, including Zack Cox and Christian Colon. Cox doesn’t really work – he’s a third baseman at best, and a first baseman in the end, and the Royals are overloaded at both spots. Colon would be an excellent option; he’s a shortstop who can hit and can probably stay at the position. Colon went to high school with Grant Green, who was the college shortstop I wanted the Royals to take last year; Colon would give them the chance to make amends.

But the name that really stuck out for me was Yasmani Grandal, the catcher at the University of Miami. Rumors briefly had the Royals connected to him about six weeks ago, but then faded away in a flurry of denials by both sides. But he seemed to make a ton of sense. Grandal was well-regarded out of high school but was committed to college, and after struggling to hit his first two years*, has flourished as a junior, hitting .418/.546/.746 at the moment. (The U is battling in the regionals, and is a good bet to go on to the College World Series.) His defense has been considered an asset going back to high school. He’s a switch-hitter with power from both sides, though he’s considered a better hitter from the left side.

*: I read reports saying that he “failed to hit .300 as a freshman and sophomore”, implying that he only started to hit last year. Well, as a sophomore he didn’t hit .300 – he hit .299, with a .410 OBP and a .599 SLG. So it’s not fair to say he only started to shine with the bat this year.

You put his assets together – a switch-hitting catcher whose power is average to a tick above, who has taken a ton of walks throughout his college career, whose arm is slightly above-average and very accurate, who has been calling games behind the plate his entire career – and he sounds to me like a player who, at worst, projects as a major-league average catcher, a guy who can hit .270 with 15-18 homers, 50-70 walks, and good defense.

And there are the little things. He’s a little young for a college junior – he’s still just 20 – and I feel that draft age is a very underrated part of a draft pick’s profile. (He emigrated from Cuba, so it’s always possible he’s older than stated. He was just 11 at the time, though.) His Cuban background means he’s perfectly bilingual, which is a nice asset in a catcher. A guy like that should go in the top half of the first-round in a good draft – in a draft like this, he’s Top 10 material for sure.

Two years ago the Giants took Buster Posey #6 overall, and last year the Pirates used the #4 pick on Tony Sanchez, a deal they worked out to save money that could be used on players later in the draft. Posey has a career .333/.427/.542 line in the minors, and since getting called up last week by the Giants is 11-for-23. Sanchez, whose bat isn’t anything like Posey but whose defense was considered excellent, is nonetheless hitting .318/.423/.460 in high-A ball at the moment.

Grandal has a better glove than Posey and 90% of his bat, and a better bat than Sanchez and 90% of his glove. Given the early success each of those two have had, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the team that drafts Grandal now might be starting him behind the plate in the majors by April 2012.

Yet strangely, he was considered a late first-round talent as recently as six weeks ago. But as he’s continued to hit, and as the talent level in this draft continued to look sub-par, he’s moved up the rankings considerably. Baseball America has him at #13 in their final pre-draft rankings; Law has him at #9.

But for the Royals, I think he could be #4. The Royals have a premium prospect at pretty much every position with the exception of shortstop and catcher. Or more accurately, if Wil Myers can’t make it as a catcher – and he’s hitting so well that frankly the Royals might be tempted to move him to the outfield just to get that bat to the majors more quickly – then the Royals have a need there. Grandal may not project as an All-Star, but he projects as a quality major league regular. For a team that has at least one prospect that by 2012 projects to be starting in the majors almost everywhere else on the diamond, Grandal fits perfectly.

So the news late last night from both Law and Frankie Piliere of MLB Fanhouse that the Royals had a deal with Grandal almost in place came as the surprise news I was hoping for. I think the Royals’ obsession with secrecy is a little bit ridiculous at times, but when it comes to the draft it may actually have a place. If that’s the case, and if the Royals’ rumored interest in Sale and Pomeranz was just a smokescreen to get things done with Grandal, then I salute them. Getting Grandal to agree to terms early (unofficially, mind you – he’s still playing college ball) just means he’ll start his pro career that much earlier, and might arrive a little faster. 2012 is Greinke’s last year under contract, and a year where it’s reasonable to expect all of the Royals’ top prospects other than Myers to already be in the majors. Grandal, at catcher, would be the piece de resistance.

In an uninspiring draft, I think this is an inspired move. Grandal might not be the best player available when the Royals pick (although he just might.) But he might be the best player available for them. Really, that’s all you can ask for. Good for them for making the right call.

A Minor Miracle.

I have to confess: no matter how many times it happens, it never gets old. I write a column arguing that maybe Dayton Moore isn’t the worst GM in baseball, and I get labeled a sellout by many of my commenters. You guys are the best. Never let go of that passion, fellas.

Maybe I am getting soft. Or maybe my eyes have been opened a little by the events of the last two months. Let me ask a very simple question: have the Royals had a good 2010 so far?

A casual fan, I suspect, would say no, 2010 hasn’t been a good year. The Royals started 11-23, they fired their manager, Zack Greinke is mortal, Gil Meche is toast, Alex Gordon is in Triple-A, and on June 1st the Royals are 10.5 games out of first place.

I would agree. 2010 hasn’t been a good year so far. It’s been a very good year. Maybe even a great year.

It all depends on your perspective. And my perspective all season has been focused on one thing: the minor leagues. The results at the major-league level have been aggravating, but they’ve also been a sideshow to the main event. The business of the Royals this season was the development of what we were told before the season was the best collection of minor-league talent the Royals have had in 15 years.

As you may know if you’ve followed the farm system this season, business has been very good.

It didn’t start that way. In spring training, left-hander Danny Duffy, ranked by both Baseball Prospectus as the team’s #6 prospect and by Baseball America at #8, retired. The Royals’ system is deep, but no system is so deep that they can simply cross off a guy in the middle of their Top 10 list and not feel it. (The Royals are understandably reluctant to talk about Duffy’s situation. However, my gestalt from exploring the situation is that Duffy’s retirement is almost certainly temporary. I am reasonably confident he’ll be back before the end of the season, and would not be surprised if he reports to camp by the All-Star break, if not sooner.)

That happened right after Jeff Bianchi, a Top 10 Prospect and the only prospect in the high minors with the potential to move Yuniesky Betancourt off of shortstop, tore his UCL and was lost for the season with Tommy John surgery. And to top things off, Mike Moustakas, who was facing a pivotal first season in Double-A, pulled an oblique muscle and was expected to miss the first month of the season. I can’t say I was feeling particularly optimistic as the season began.

A lot has changed in the last two months, and I hope to recount the highlights here. I was fortunate to speak with Royals’ Assistant GM J.J. Picollo last Friday, and it’s testament to how many Royals prospects are worth following that despite talking for close to an hour, we weren’t able to cover all of them. I can’t give you verbatim quotes, because my hand simply can’t write fast enough to keep up with everything he told me, but I’ll do my best to give you the main points that I learned from talking with Picollo.

Light broke through the clouds early, thanks to the consensus pre-season #1 prospect in the system, Michael Montgomery. Montgomery entered the season with an exciting combination of future projection and present performance; last year he had a 2.21 ERA split between low-A and high-A ball, and he was didn’t turn 20 until the middle of the season.

Six years ago, some of you remember, some idiot was so excited about a young pitching phenom that he wrote in the pages of Baseball Prospectus 2004, “With apologies to Jon Landau, I have seen the future of pitching, and his name is Zack Greinke.” Okay, I was that idiot. Needless to say, no one has been so stupid as to co-opt that classic quote about Bruce Springsteen to describe a baseball prospect since.

Until this.

“I’ve seen rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

After watching a Springsteen live show in 1974, Rolling Stone rock critic Jon Landau set off a massive amount of hype with that one sentence. At the time, Springsteen had two poorly selling records. Not long after Landau's comments, Springsteen released “Born To Run”, was on the cover of Time and Newsweek magazines at the same time and made the leap from unknown singer to rock and roll superstar.

I'm not nearly as talented as Landau, and I'm not a scout with a trained eye, but after watching Royals lefthander Mike Montgomery throw against the Kinston Indians, it was hard not to want to yell something equally audacious. You could watch minor league games every day year after year and never see a better outing. Some of the scouts at Tuesday's game were debating if they had ever seen a minor leaguer pitch any better.

Cooper was referring to this start, when Montgomery faced 23 batters, allowing just two to reach base (a scratch single and an RBI double), and struck out 13 of them. Despite striking out 13 batters in 7 innings, he only threw 84 pitches. Those of you who listened to my first radio show of the year heard Cooper himself describe what he saw that night. The big take-away point was that Montgomery used three different pitches – his fastball, his curveball, and his change-up – to record strikeouts at least three times each. Most guys are happy with a single out-pitch; that night, Montgomery had three of them.

Montgomery hasn’t pitched quite that well since, but still plenty good. After four starts for Wilmington – he struck out 33 batters in 25 innings, allowing just 14 hits and 4 walks – he was promoted to Double-A. He’s slowed down a little, but just a little; in 25 innings he’s allowed 22 hits and 9 walks, whiffed 22, and even allowed his first homer of the season. For the year he’s got a 1.98 ERA, allowed 36 hits and 13 walks in 50 innings, and struck out 55. Those are studly numbers, and he’s still just 20.

Picollo on Montgomery’s improvement: was throwing 90-93 last year, touching 95…now working 92-95 and touching 97…more efficient with his pitches, saving his fastball for when he needs it…his curveball continues to make strides, as he used to throw a palm curveball his dad taught him, but now throws a traditional curve most of the time.

Picollo on Montgomery’s last start, when he was pulled after 3 innings after his velocity dropped: his fastball ranged from 86-96, was throwing a lot of changeups, admitted to some mild soreness in back of his elbow and taken out. Had similar elbow soreness at end of spring training ’09, recovered fine…probably will miss one start…not particularly concerned.

The first 2-3 weeks of the season were Montgomery’s time to shine. Then the spotlight moved east, to Wilmington, where Eric Hosmer looked nothing like the hitter he was last season, and everything like the hitter he was expected to be when he was drafted with the #3 overall pick.

Hosmer was one of the biggest enigmas in all the minor leagues last season, a can’t-miss hitter who, was doing a lot more missing than hitting – he hit .241/.334/.361 between Burlington and Wilmington. There was the vision issue, and the broken pinky finger issue, but even so most observers were concerned. BP ranked Hosmer as just the #8 prospect in the system (behind Bianchi), while BA had him at #5. Keith Law, alone among the mainstream prospect analysts, maintained that Hosmer’s struggles were entirely health-related, ranking him as the #34 prospect in baseball.

Law won this round, as by the end of April even his ranking looked a little conservative. That’s what happens when you hit an almost unfathomable .421, as Hosmer did in April, in one of the toughest hitters’ parks in the minors. As recently as May 19th he was still hitting .388, but a recent slump (he’s 9-for-42 in his last 10 games) has his overall numbers at .349/.416/.508.

It’s interesting how the narrative of a player is shaped by the sequence of his performance. If Hosmer had started 9-for-42, but then heated and up and then hit .421 in May, he’d be the talk of baseball. But because he hit .421/.500/.618 in April and then “only” .301/.355/.434 in May, some people are starting to get concerned. He’s 20 years old, people! And he’s putting up numbers that compete with the best I’ve ever seen from someone who played half their games at Frawley Stadium. (Hosmer is hitting .325 at home, and .368 on the road.)

The Royals have been affiliated with the Blue Rocks since 1993, I believe – there was a two-year exile to High Desert that thankfully was reversed quickly. I took a few minutes to look up the best seasons by any Blue Rock (including their time as a Red Sox affiliate) hitter with 50+ games and age 22 or younger. Here’s that list:

Michael Tucker, 1993: .305/.391/.456 (age 22)

Johnny Damon, 1994: .316/.399/.462 (age 20)

Mike Sweeney, 1995: .310/.424/.548 (age 21)

Dee Brown, 1999: .308/.431/.568 (age 21)

David DeJesus, 2002: .296/.400/.434 (age 22)

Eric Hosmer, 2009: .349/.416/.508 (age 20)

Dee Brown is a massive cautionary tale for any prospect. He has the highest OPS of anyone on that list, and while he only played 61 games for Wilmington that year, that’s because he was promoted to Double-A and hit even better (.353/.440/.591) there. BA ranked him the #11 prospect in all of baseball the following spring. He never hit remotely that well again, and finished his major league career with 814 at-bats and a .233/.280/.333 line.

If he can avoid what happened to Brown – and I still haven’t heard a good explanation for what happened to Brown – Hosmer should have a very good career ahead of him. DeJesus has had a fine career, and Tucker had a long if not particularly distinguished one. Neither had numbers that matched Hosmer’s, and both were two years older. If he maintains these numbers, I feel comfortable ranking Hosmer with Mike Sweeney and Johnny Damon as the best three prospect-seasons by a Wilmington Blue Rock. Sweeney is arguably the second-best hitter the Royals have ever developed, and Damon is at least a 50/50 shot to make the Hall of Fame.

The other concern I’ve heard boils down to something like this: “sure he’s hitting for average, but where are all the homers we were promised?” I understand this complaint – Hosmer has just two homers this year and eight in his career. I just happen to think it’s ridiculous.

For one, Hosmer is hitting for power. He’s got 16 doubles and 4 triples in just 189 at-bats. Very few 20-year-olds – even 20-year-olds who project to be power hitters in the majors – hit a lot of homers in the minors. But they do tend to hit doubles. Miguel Cabrera hit just 9 homers in a full season of high-A ball in 2002. But he hit 43 doubles, and he was just 19 years old. The following year, after slugging over .600 in Double-A he was called up to the majors and hit 12 homers in 87 games, then 4 more homers in the postseason. The year after that he hit 33 homers.

We know Hosmer has power – he regularly puts on a show in batting practice, and did so even when he was struggling last year. When he was drafted, the book on him was that he had as much power as anyone in the draft, but what separated him from the pack – and why the Royals drafted him over someone like Justin Smoak – was that he was a great pure hitter who happened to have power.

And that, frankly, is what we’re seeing. Hosmer isn’t a power hitter – he’s a pure hitter with power, and I love guys like that. It’s a lot easier for a pure hitter to learn to elevate the ball and drive it out then for a slugger to learn to hit for average. Alberto Callaspo didn’t hit a single homer in his first three seasons and 399 at-bats in the majors. Last year, he hit 11, and he already has 7 in 51 games this year. Callaspo didn’t learn to hit for power until he was 26 years old – we’re supposed to be worried because Hosmer isn’t hitting for home run power (but doing everything else) when he’s 20?

I haven’t seen this comparison, but I think it’s instructive to compare Hosmer to Adrian Gonzalez, another top pick who was considered a terrific pure hitter with power as opposed to the other way around. Gonzalez showed more power at age 20, but when he was 21 he hit just five homers in 120 games. His lack of power led two different organizations to trade him. He finally landed in San Diego in 2006, when he was 24, put in the lineup everyday, and his homer totals since read 24, 30, 36, and 40.

Hosmer’s success this year, along with Kila Ka’aihue’s resurgence, presents a happy dilemma for the Royals: with Billy Butler entrenched at first base (or DH), the Royals may have to find a place for all three of them by 2012. There is an intriguing albeit messy solution: move Hosmer to right field. Hosmer is a good athlete for a first baseman (which, yes, is like saying someone is fast for a catcher.) He’s already swiped 7 bases this season – and hasn’t been caught – and has an arm that is frankly wasted at first base. Could he play right field?

If he could, you could imagine this in the middle of the Royals’ lineup in two years:

2) Gordon, LF

3) Butler, 1B

4) Ka’aihue, DH

5) Moustakas, 3B

6) Hosmer, RF

It’s not the greatest defensive alignment in the world, but…damn. That looks like all kinds of fun.

So I asked. Picollo on the idea of moving Hosmer to the outfield: it has been talked about…he’s the most athletic of the three [Butler, Ka’aihue] and the only one who could handle the move…he will sometimes take fly balls during batting practice…it’s too early to think about now, but after Hosmer’s Double-A season, if everything aligns it’s something we will consider.

One guy who did hit for power at 20 – and even at 19 – was Mike Moustakas. The problem was that he wasn’t doing a whole lot else – Moose hit .272/.337/.468 in the Midwest League in 2008, and just .250/.297/.421 at Wilmington last year. Just as Hosmer had extenuating factors, so did Moustakas – namely the ballpark – but it was hard not to be concerned about the performance from the former #2 overall pick. BP ranked him the #3 prospect in the organization and #79 overall, BA #4 and #80. He wasn’t written off by any means, but he wasn’t living up to expectations either.

But just as Hosmer started to cool down, Moustakas started to heat up, and I mean “heat up” the way you might say “the space shuttle heats up upon its return to the atmosphere.” He recovered from his oblique muscle strain in time to make his season debut on April 22nd. In his first at-bat, he homered. In his second at-bat, he homered. He walked his third time up, and his fourth time up he crushed a double off the wall. Two games later he homered again.

And then he got really hot. In 8 April games Moustakas hit .324/.378/.735 with three homers and 9 RBIs. In May, he hit .393/.486/.775 with 9 homers and 32 RBIs in just 25 games. His month came to a premature end last week when he banged up his knee chasing after a foul ball. The injury wasn’t deemed serious – I don’t think he even needed X-rays – but he’s missed a few games waiting for the swelling to dissipate. For the season, he’s at .374/.459/.764. He leads the Texas League in all three rate categories, and despite missing nearly 40% of the games on the schedule, he’s second in the league in homers, fifth in doubles, and first in RBIs.

And keep in mind, even with all his struggles last year, scouts still marveled at his bat speed. His performance this season might be a surprise, but I don’t know anyone who thinks it’s a fluke.

As impressive as the power has been, the improvement in his strikeout-to-walk ratio may be more significant. Last year Moustakas struck out 90 times against just 32 walks; this year his ratio is a much more balanced 20-to-17. The improvement is mostly in his walk rate, and some of that is illusory. Six of his 17 walks this season are intentional, and I’m sure some of the other 11 are of the unintentional intentional variety.

That’s not entirely a bad thing – there’s a clear connection between walks and power, as pitchers are more likely to work around a hitter if they’re afraid he might hit the ball 400 feet. Moustakas’ walk rate is still not where you’d like it to be – but it’s no longer so low that I think it might inhibit his ability to develop as a hitter.

It’s hard to overstate how much Moustakas has improved his future projection in just 32 games. Six weeks ago he looked like a fine player but destined to be known as the guy the Royals drafted instead of Matt Wieters or Rick Porcello or a half-dozen other better players the Royals could have taken in the first round. Now? Hold the phone.

Between Montgomery, Hosmer, and Moustakas, the Royals have a trio of prospects that are rivaled by only a few organizations in the game. Both Hosmer and Moustakas made Law’s revised Top 25 Prospect list from two weeks ago. Montgomery didn’t make the list only because, as we all know, Law hates the Royals. (If you want to know the real reason why, listen to this week’s radio show, as I plan to ask him.)

If those three were the only prospects worth following, the Royals would still be in decent shape. But what makes this season so exciting is that there’s more where that came from. I’ll review the rest of the system next time.

In Defense Of Dayton.

The genesis of this story began nearly three months ago, when I read this fine column by Tim Marchman at SI.com. Marchman is a fantastic writer, one of the best of the new breed of baseball writers (I loosely define “new breed” as “anyone younger than me”) who combine traditional command of the English language with an understanding of statistical analysis that comes with growing up in a post-Jamesian era.

(Speaking of Bill James, for those of you who missed it, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing him on my radio show last Thursday for nearly half an hour. You can check out the podcast here, under “Additional Programming” at the bottom.)

I will admit to a visceral thrill when I came to Marchman’s conclusion, that Dayton Moore ranked dead last among the game’s 30 general managers. It felt good to see Moore bring up the rear of an objective analysis of GMs published in a national news source.

But after the thrill wore off, I had to admit that something didn’t sit right with me. I looked at that list again, and there at #29, one slot above Dayton Moore, was Astros’ GM Ed Wade.

This is the same Ed Wade who never met a middle reliever he didn’t like or wouldn’t overpay for, a fetish most eloquently expressed by the time he once traded Placido Polanco straight up for Ugueth Urbina. (Polanco, mind you, was the only player of any worth that Wade got for trading Scott Rolen (who was just 27 at the time) to the Cardinals.) The same Ed Wade who, despite being handed players like Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard by his farm system, couldn’t make the playoffs once in his eight years with the Phillies before he was fired after the 2005 season.

And the same Ed Wade who was hired by the Astros at the end of the 2007 season, and for the last two-and-a-half seasons has been either unwilling or unable to convince ownership that a once-proud Astros franchise needs to be completely torn apart and rebuilt, with the result that the Astros right now have the worst record in the National League and one of the shallowest farm systems in baseball.

Moore probably cinched his place at the bottom of the list this off-season when he signed Jason Kendall to a two-year contract for more guaranteed money than his two incumbent catchers, Miguel Olivo and John Buck, combined to receive. The Kendall signing was widely regarded as the second-worst free-agent contract handed out this off-season. The worst? Wade’s inexplicable decision to guarantee Brandon Lyon a 3-year, $15 million contract.

Yet somehow, Moore was ranked behind Wade. I don’t think Marchman’s opinion was in the minority, either – most baseball analysts I know would likely have ranked them in that order prior to the season.

It was at that point that I began to wonder if maybe the perception of Dayton Moore had crossed a tipping point, and that precisely because so many baseball analysts cover the Royals, and because the mistakes he has made have been so well-publicized, Moore was getting a raw deal. I mean, it’s not just Ed Wade who in my estimation is a worse GM than Moore.

Looking at the other names at the bottom of the list, Brian Sabean (#28) drives me completely nuts as a baseball writer, and the fact that Tim Lincecum fell into his lap with the 10th pick in the draft a few days ago does not make up for the horrible decisions he’s made. Moore signed Jose Guillen? Sabean will cover, and raise with Barry Zito. Don’t like the way the Royals have handled Kila Ka’aihue? The Giants brought Buster Posey up in September last season and gave him all of 17 at-bats, then re-signed Bengie Molina so they could send Posey back to Triple-A another year. Posey was finally, grudgingly called up yesterday, and so far is 6-for-9.

Ned Colletti (#27)? The smartest thing Colletti seems to have done as GM of the Dodgers is to take credit for all the great players scouting director Logan White has given him – that is, when he’s not trading them for marginal veterans. Dayton Moore in his entire career has never done anything as stupid as trading Carlos Santana for two months of Casey Blake’s career.

Omar Minaya (#26)? Do I even have to make a case? One thing you can’t deny about Moore – he has made the Royals a much more professional organization. The Mets are a circus. I’d say more, but I’m afraid Tony Bernazard might take off his shirt and challenge me to a fight.

Granted, if you go up the list from there, the case for Moore becomes harder and harder to make. I’m comfortable ranking Moore no lower than #26, then, but that’s hardly cause for celebration. Still, I try to be as fair as possible when critiquing the Royals, and I think that the argument that Moore is the worst GM in the game is completely unsupported by the evidence.

If that were the end of my argument – Moore’s not the worst GM in baseball, he’s only the fifth-worst GM! – this would be a rather pointless article. But it’s not. Moore may rank only #26 at the moment, but I strongly feel that it is simply too soon to properly rank him. And I feel that his upside on this list is considerably more than his downside.

What finally spurred me to write this article is the recent attention given to Moore’s statement about how long it takes to rebuild a franchise. Here’s the story:

On the day after changing managers, Moore ignited a minor cloud burst in a comment on the Royals’ flagship radio station in Kansas City that was “an 8-to-10 process to get an organization turned around and on the winning track.”

Apparently, listeners grumbled that it seemed like a long time to wait. Moore's rejoinder to them and the media: Do your research.

“Look what Colorado did, look what Minnesota did, look what the New York Yankees did,” Moore said. “It took the Yankees seven years. They committed to it in ‘89, and finally in ‘96 they won with homegrown guys. I’m not talking about getting to .500, I'm talking about winning the World Series when I say eight to 10 years.

“To get your team in the playoffs, that’s how long it takes. Terry Ryan and the Minnesota Twins had a well-built farm system, and they started in ‘94 when Terry took over, and for seven straight years they had 87 to 97 losses. In year eight, they were above .500, and in year nine they were in the playoffs. That’s all I said. It just amazes me that guys don't do their own research.”

In a city where Carl Peterson’s five-year plan became famous, I can understand why Dayton Moore’s comments about an eight-to-ten-year process might became infamous, something they are well on their way to doing.

Having said that, I’m going to do something I don’t do very often: I’m going to cut Moore some slack.

For one thing, what Moore said is technically accurate, if perhaps phrased awkwardly. I’m not prepared to comment on whether the Yankees or Twins needed seven years to truly rebuild their organizations without doing a ton of research. (Don’t put it past me at some point.) But think of it this way: if a new GM focuses on drafting high school talent – which Moore generally does – then he’s generally drafting guys who are 18 years old. Players typically peak between the ages of 26 and 28. That’s eight-to-ten years after they were drafted.

So yes, in a strictly technical sense what Moore is trying to accomplish will take eight to ten years to reach full maturity. That doesn’t mean it will take eight to ten years to be able to adequately judge his performance as a GM, mind you. But it’s true that if Moore was hired with the express purpose of rebuilding the Royals’ organization – not just the major league team, but the pipeline of talent which extends from the draft and the Dominican to the majors – that’s a process that simply can’t be done in three or four or even six years.

Moore was hired four years ago today, and in terms of major league performance, the Royals’ improvement can only be measured with calipers and a micrometer. The Royals went 118-156 (.431) from the day Moore was hired through the end of the 2007 season. From Opening Day 2008 until today, they are 161-214 (.429). This is not progress. This is why Royals’ fans have a legitimate beef with Moore: THE TEAM IS NOT GETTING BETTER.

Meanwhile, in Seattle Jack Zduriencik is hired as the GM after the 2008 season, and in the span of one winter improves his team so dramatically that the Mariners, losers of 101 games in 2008, improved by 24 wins to an 85-77 record in 2009.

What Jack Z did with the Mariners last year, immediately upgrading his team by pruning the dead weight and making shrewd trades for players like Franklin Gutierrez, we’ll call the “Seattle Way”. Moore has shown no ability to build a team the Seattle Way. But just because he has been a complete failure at the Seattle Way, it does not necessarily follow that he will be a failure at building a team the Minnesota Way, or what I prefer to call the Tampa Bay Way.

Tampa Bay has the best record in baseball at 34-17, and virtually their entire roster consists of players who were either drafted by the team, or who were traded for before they had established themselves in the majors. Their only contributors who were signed as free agents were Carlos Pena (who was nearly 29 and had passed through four other organizations before the Rays signed him); the recently-released Pat Burrell; and bullpen reclamation sensation Joaquin Benoit. Four of their five starters and six of their nine hitters most days have never played for another major-league team.

But here’s the thing about the Rays – they had to suck for a long time to get to where they are now. They had to suck for a long time because their previous GM, Chuck LaMar, was only adequate at drafting talent and was a disaster at every other component of his job, which is why he was fired by new ownership after the 2005 season – after eight seasons on the job. The Rays drafted a fair amount of talent under his tenure, though nothing impressive given their perennially-high draft positions: Aubrey Huff in the 5th round in 1998, Carl Crawford in the 2nd round in 1999, James Shields in the 16th round in 2000, B.J. Upton with the #2 pick in 2002. In 2004 the Rays’ first three picks were Jeff Niemann, Reid Brignac, and Wade Davis. And he made arguably the most lopsided trade of the decade when he turned Victor Zambrano into Scott Kazmir.

But it took a new GM in Andrew Friedman to shape that talent into a winning team. He did that in part by trading some of the talent that Lamar left him in a stunning series of shrewd moves: Huff for a minor-leaguer named Ben Zobrist; Seth McClung for Grant Balfour; and the celebrated trade of former #1 overall pick Delmon Young, along with Brendan Harris and Jason Pridie, to Minnesota in exchange for Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett. (And yes, Royals fans, he also traded Joey Gathright for J.P. Howell.)

And then Friedman also struck gold in his first few drafts. His very first draft pick was Evan Longoria, taken with the #3 overall pick in 2006; in 2007, with the first pick in the draft, the Rays selected David Price.

My point – which I think I’m doing a poor job of conveying here – is that the Rays didn’t go from being the laughingstock of baseball to a World Series appearance overnight, even though a glance at their win-loss records would have you think exactly that. The Rays were building towards their 2008 AL pennant for a decade, in fits and starts. There were more fits than starts under LaMar, which is why he was fired, but he left at least the framework for the player development machine that Friedman and friends perfected. Today, the Rays don’t just have the best record in baseball. More importantly, in my estimation they have wrested from the Minnesota Twins the title once proudly claimed by the Royals 30 years ago: the title of Baseball’s Model Franchise.

The Tampa Bay Way, by its very nature, takes much, much longer to see to fruition than the Seattle Way. It is a much more ambitious goal. But if a GM of a small-market team has to commit to only one path, the choice is clear. The Tampa Bay Way is the road less-travelled. That is the path Dayton Moore is on, and while I have no idea if he’ll get there, I can’t overstate how happy I am with his choice. The Seattle Way got us the 2003 season. I’m looking for something a little more substantial and long-lasting than that.

After all, while the Mariners went 85-77 last season, as I write this they have a worse record (19-30) in 2010 than the Royals (21-30) do. They have a worse record despite a payroll that is $26 million higher than the Royals’. And most importantly of all, they have a farm system in much worse shape than the Royals do.

None of this is to disparage the job done by Zduriencik, who has been on the job barely 18 months. But that’s just the point: rebuilding an organization for the long haul takes time. And at this moment in time, if the Royals and Mariners had the opportunity to swap all the talent in their organization – every player, in the majors and in the minors, with their existing contract situation – only one GM would jump at that chance. And it wouldn’t be Dayton Moore.

The rebuttal to this is that while it’s great that Moore is going the Tampa Bay route and trying to build a team through his farm system, there’s no law that precludes him from doing both – there’s no reason why he can’t do what Zduriencik has done while waiting for his draft picks to finish cooking. And this is absolutely true. Moore’s attempt at stopgap measures has led to a whole lot of Jose Guillens and Jason Kendalls and even Horacio Ramirezes.

My point is simply that we can not define Moore’s tenure solely by his free agent mistakes. His trading record is actually better than you might think; while he has given up Howell, Leo Nunez, and Ramon Ramirez for almost nothing, those three trades combined are neutralized by swapping Billy Buckner for Alberto Callaspo. Kyle Davies is maddening, but he sure beats having Octavio Dotel for another eight innings. Toss in the Ambiorix Burgos-for-Brian Bannister trade, and I’d argue that Moore’s trading ledger, on the whole, is in the black. The Yuniesky Betancourt trade drives me nuts as much for what it represents as for what it did to the team, but while the trade cost the Royals plenty in money and opportunity, with Dan Cortes struggling to a 4.82 ERA in Double-A this year, it may not have cost them much in the way of prospects.

So I’m going to take the somewhat unpopular stance of defending Dayton Moore, and arguing that he deserves to keep his job at least through the end of next season. Four years after he was hired, the major league team may not have improved one bit – but the minor league system has improved dramatically. The last two months, in particular, have been the most exciting two months I’ve ever had covering the Royals’ farm system.

Moore strikes me as the general managerial equivalent of one of the tools-laden prospects he is so enamored with drafting: he has one top-of-the-line tool in his ability to evaluate amateur talent and build a farm system, but a couple of gaping weaknesses in the guise of an outdated understanding of the mechanics of building an offense, and a fetish for veteran dependability over actual talent.

So here are the unanswerable questions: will he be able to convert those tools into skills, and will he be able to minimize the holes in his game over time? In other words, is he the GM equivalent of Derrick Robinson, or of Yuniesky Betancourt? With prospects, the biggest determinant of their ability to improve is their age, but there’s no substitute for an aptitude to learn. The same with general managers. Moore is still young enough in GM years to improve, but first he has to show a willingness to do so. He's done a much better job at developing prospects than LaMar did at the same stage in his tenure. But if he doesn't show an ability to learn from his mistakes, then he'll meet the same fate.

So here’s the deal I’ll cut with Moore: I’ll continue to defend him as a GM despite the millions he’s spent on useless free agents, and despite his panic trade for Betancourt, and despite – the worst move of his career, even if he was not directly responsible – letting his manager ruin the arm of his second-best (and most-expensive) pitcher in Gil Meche. I’ll continue to make the point that all the free agent signings and trades are just window dressing for his real job, which is to draft and develop players better than his peers, get those players to the majors, and start to kick ass.

But in return Moore has to promise me this: if you want to tell us fans to “trust the process”, then dammit, you need to TRUST THE PROCESS. David Glass didn’t hire you to slap a $3 million-a-year band-aid named Jason Kendall behind the plate and call it progress. He hired you to develop more home-grown talent than anyone else, and then put that talent on the field.

The talent you’ve drafted since you were hired has not arrived yet, and that’s completely understandable. We knew when Mike Moustakas was drafted in 2007 that it would take at least three years before he would be ready. It’s been almost three years, and he’s almost ready.

But where Moore has deviated the most from The Process of building from within is that he doesn’t seem willing to win with talent drafted by the Royals – only with talent acquired by him. Players he inherited from Allard Baird might as well have been wearing Indians uniforms. I’m not talking about the blue-chip first-rounders like Zack Greinke and Billy Butler, although Alex Gordon certainly has been handled poorly. But if you’re a second-tier holdover from the Baird years – good luck.

Leo Nunez was one of Baird’s shrewdest acquistions – pilfered from the Pirates for the last six games of Benito Santiago’s career. He was traded to the Marlins to get Mike Jacobs. Kila Ka’aihue is now enjoying his third year in Omaha. Mike Aviles needed a historic performance by Tony Pena Jr. to get a chance to play – and after hitting .325 as a rookie, underwent Tommy John surgery and came back only to find his job taken by Betancourt. John Buck hit a quietly impressive .247/.299/.487 last season, but was let go because the Royals wanted to give the job to Kendall. Buck signed with the Blue Jays for less money than Kendall got, and is hitting .267/.315/.533 so far.

Maybe it’s just coincidence that almost every young player that wasn’t acquired by Moore has had to play twice as well to get an opportunity. It’s rapidly becoming a moot point, because if and when Ka’aihue gets a chance to play, with Carlos Rosa exiled to Arizona the only legitimate prospect I can think of that predates Moore in the organization is Jeff Bianchi.

What Moore needs to realize is that Royals fans aren’t stupid, and we’re not nearly as impatient as he thinks. We understand that young players are going to take their lumps, and some of them might even be busts, but it’s worth playing them anyway because it’s the only chance we've got to win. Moore thinks Royals fans want to watch Rick Ankiel because he’s a big name, when the reality is that we’d much rather watch Mitch Maier – incidentally, a Baird signing – who if nothing else is cheap, has a very patient approach at the plate, and gives 100% effort all the time. We’d like Maier even if he wasn’t hitting .272/.357/.376, but since he is, we love him, and we’re all dreading the day that he has to go back to riding the pine because it’s time to show off your one-trick pony again.

The Royals may be 21-30 right now, but the saddest part of their record is who’ve they achieved it with. Just nine of the 25 players on the roster are home-grown: four hitters (Butler, DeJesus, Maier, Aviles) and five pitchers (Greinke, Hochevar, Soria, Dusty Hughes, Blake Wood). (I’m not counting Victor Marte, whose stay with the Royals is likely to be brief and unhelpful.) If you include players who were acquired very early in their major-league careers, you can add Callaspo and Bannister to make 11. That’s still too few.

In the same article I linked to above, Moore says, “Our goal by 2013, 2014 is to have the majority of our 25-man roster be homegrown players.” I’ll go further than that: there’s no reason why a majority of our 25-man roster can’t be homegrown players by next year. Dayton, you’re sitting on as much minor league talent as I’ve ever seen in the organization, and you deserve a tremendous amount of credit for it. (And I can’t wait to write about it in my next column.) But if you go out next winter and sign this year’s version of Scott Podsednik because you’re afraid Derrick Robinson isn’t ready or you don’t think a David Lough/Jordan Parraz platoon will work or you just think the Royals need another infusion of buzzwords like experience and veteran presence, I’m going to have an aneurysm.

You might be right, and it might take eight to ten years to build a perennial World Series contender. But we’re not asking you to build a contender. We’re just asking you to play the kids. Stop putting up roadblocks for your young players, Dayton, and Trust The Process. And then maybe we’ll trust you.

Ned.

Six days into the Ned Yost era, and I’m convinced that he is the managerial equivalent of a Rorschach Blot. What you see in him says less about him than it does about you. So I’ll do my best to break down his track record as dispassionately as possible.

The Case For Ned

Ned Yost was hired by the Milwaukee Brewers after the 2002 season. The Brewers went 56-106 in 2002, the worst of 10 consecutive losing seasons. (By comparison, the Royals went 59-109 in the last 168 games of Trey Hillman’s career, and last year was their 14th losing season in the last 15 years.)

The Brewers lost 94 games in each of his first two seasons – then reached .500 in 2005. By 2007, they were over .500 again at 83-79. They would win 90 games in his final season, and went to the playoffs for the first time in 26 years.

Yost won 83 games twice in his career before he was hired by the Royals. Not one manager the Royals have employed since Dick Howser – Mike Ferraro, Billy Gardner, John Wathan, Hal McRae, Bob Boone, Tony Muser, Tony Pena, Buddy Bell, and Trey Hillman (phew!) – had ever won 83 games as a manager even once prior to joining the Royals.

The Case Against Ned

While the Brewers won 90 games in his final season, Yost wasn’t their manager in the playoffs. At the end of August, the Brewers were 80-56, which was the second-best record in the National League; they had a 5.5 game lead on the wild card. They then lost 11 of their next 14 games, a streak which was punctuated by a four-game sweep by the Phillies. They went into that series with a 4-game lead on Philly, and came out of it tied. Yost was fired the next day. It was an almost unprecedented move in baseball history: a manager being fired, in September, with his team in the midst of a pennant race.

This was the second straight year that the Brewers had faded from the pennant race down the stretch. In 2007, the Brewers went into the All-Star Break 49-39, leading the NL Central by 4.5 games. As late as September 18th, they were tied with the Cubs for first place. But they stumbled over the final two weeks, finishing 5-7 and losing the division by two games.

Yost was replaced by his third-base coach, Dale Sveum. After losing four of his first five games, Sveum skippered Milwaukee to five straight wins. After losing the penultimate game of the season, the Brewers found themselves tied with the Mets with one game to go. The Brewers turned to their ace, C.C. Sabathia, who on three days’ rest threw a complete game and won, 3-1. The Mets lost at home to Florida, 4-2, and Milwaukee was in the playoffs. But without Sabathia available to start twice in the NLDS, they were dispatched by the Phillies in four games.

The Case For Ned

As manager of the Brewers, Yost presided over an impressive resurgence of the team’s farm system – a farm system directed by Jack Zduriencik, now the GM of the Seattle Mariners – and to his credit, Yost was quite successful at turning young hitting prospects into good major-league hitters. They include:

- Scott Podsednik, who was picked up off waivers from the Mariners after the 2002 season. Pods, at that point, was a Triple-A journeyman who had all of 26 major-league at-bats and had hit just .279/.347/.425 in Triple-A, at the age of 26. Yost broke him in slowly in 2003, using him off the bench for the first month of the season before installing him at the top of the lineup in mid-May. Podsednik would hit .314/.379/.443 and score 100 runs, finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting. The following year he hit just .244, but smacked 12 homers and led the league with 70 steals. He was traded after the season to the White Sox, and was the leadoff hitter for the World Champions.

- Rickie Weeks, the #2 overall pick in the 2003 draft, came up as a 22-year-old rookie in 2005. Weeks, like another college hitter drafted #2 overall, has yet to reach the promise of his draft position; he developed considerable patience to go along with good power for a second baseman, but his defense has never been stellar and he has battled injuries and a chronically-low batting average. He’s still a good player.

- Bill Hall, who was a minor league player of little note when Yost arrived – in 2002, Hall hit .228 with 4 homers in Triple-A, and in 2003 he improved to .282 but still with only 5 homers. He came up late in 2003 and hit 5 more homers in just 52 games, batting .261/.298/.458 overall. As a utility infielder in 2004, he hit .238/.276/.374 with 9 homers; in 2005, he continued to play all over the infield, and hit .291/.342/.495 with 17 homers.

In 2006, Yost installed Hall as his everyday shortstop, and Hall hit .270/.345/.553 with 35 home runs. He fell off quickly after that; by 2008, Yost’s last season in Milwaukee, Hall hit .225/.293/.396. But for two seasons he was one of the best-hitting middle infielders in the National League, not bad for a guy who projected as a bench guy at best.

- Despite his terrific 2006 season as a shortstop, Hall was moved to center field for the 2007 season to make way for J.J. Hardy, who unlike Hall was considered a top prospect in the minors. Hardy actually hit .246/.319/.388 in 159 games for the Brewers in 2005-06, but was lost for the season with an injury on May 16th, when Hall took over. Healthy in 2007, at age 24 Hardy hit .277/.323/.463 with 26 homers, and hit .283/.343/.478 with 24 homers in 2008, with excellent defense both years.

Coincidentally or not, after Yost was fired Hardy struggled. Battling injuries last season, he hit just .229/.302/.357, and he was traded to Minnesota after the season for Carlos Gomez.

- Corey Hart was a well-regarded minor-leaguer but not a top prospect; he cracked the bottom of Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect list at #91 before the 2003 season. That year he hit .302/.340/.467 as a 21-year-old in Double-A, and fell off the list the next year. He spent all of 2004 and 2005 in Triple-A, hitting .281/.342/.485 and .308/.377/.536. In 2006 he hit .320/.391/.560 in 26 games in Nashville, finally earning a call up. He hit .283/.328/.468 in 87 games as a rookie.

In 2007, he became a full-time starter and hit .295/.353/.539; in 2008 he regressed to .268/.300/.459, but made his first All-Star team. He was a 20-20 player both seasons.

- Prince Fielder, selected #7 overall in the 2002 draft (one pick after Zack Greinke; rumor has it the Royals were deliberating between both players), was a monster in the minor leagues – he ranked among Baseball America’s #15 prospects three straight seasons. In 2005, he hit .291/.388/.569 in Triple-A at age 21, hitting 28 homers in just 103 games.

Like another big left-handed hitting first baseman, Fielder languished on the bench for much of that season, getting just 59 at-bats despite sending the better part of two months on the major-league roster. The next season he was installed as the Brewers’ everyday first baseman, and hit .271/.347/.483 with 28 homers. It was a stacked year for rookies, and he got just two third-place votes in Rookie of the Year voting. But as a sophomore he was even better, leading the NL with a Brewers-record 50 homers. He’s been one of the best hitters in baseball ever since.

- Fielder, though, isn’t even the best hitter on his team, because of Ryan Braun, the #5 pick in the 2005 draft (two picks after Alex Gordon). Braun crushed the ball in the minors, hitting .313/.375/.572 in 199 minor league games, and was called up to the majors on May 25th, 2007, less than 2 years after he was drafted (and just six weeks after Gordon debuted).

Braun doubled in his first game, homered in his second, and he was off: he hit .324/.370/.634 as a rookie, won Rookie of the Year honors despite playing in just 113 games, and led the league in slugging, which is even more remarkable when you consider he fell slightly short of the 502 plate appearances required to be eligible. Braun was a miserable defensive third baseman, though, so – sound familiar? – he was moved to left field the next season, where his glove is still bad but not nearly as costly. He hit .288/.335/.553 in a solid sophomore season, and has been even better since.

That’s an impressive group of talent. In 2008, Yost’s final year with the team, six of his eight lineup spots were filled with home-grown players that he had personally developed – the guys above minus Podsednik, who had been traded for Carlos Lee. The only veterans in the lineup that year were Jason Kendall (surprise!) and shrewd free-agent signing Mike Cameron.

Yost proved he could work with different kinds of hitters; the pure take-and-rake approach of Fielder, the rake-and-rake-some-more stylings of Braun and Hart; the waterbug leadoff hitter approach of Podsednik. The only player of the seven that you could argue didn’t reach his potential with Yost was Weeks, who continues to tantalize and frustrate the Brewers long after Yost left. Meanwhile, there doesn’t appear to be any outright failures among Brewers prospects to develop. The biggest miss was Nelson Cruz, who got all of five at-bats with Milwaukee before he was packaged with Carlos Lee to Texas in 2005, where three years later he blossomed into one of the game’s most underrated hitters.

But that’s hard to pin on Yost. He was asked to turn seven players – six prospects from the farm system and one minor league veteran – into major leaguers, and he succeeded seven times.

Yost also turned Keith Ginter, who had been acquired in a deadline dump for Mark Loretta in 2002, into a useful player for two seasons. Ginter was then traded to Oakland for Nelson Cruz, and 51 games later was out of the majors. After Yost’s first season, the Brewers traded Richie Sexson to Arizona for a package of talent, including his successor, Lyle Overbay, who had played just 87 games as a rookie. Yost made him his everyday first baseman and Overbay hit .301, leading the league with 53 doubles. Overbay was traded to Toronto two years later to make room for Prince Fielder; the hitter acquired in the deal, Gabe Gross, had the best year of his career for Yost in 2006.

Really, about the only blemish I can find on Yost’s record with developing hitters is that he had Russ Branyan on his team – twice! – and like every other manager before him, didn’t see fit to give him an everyday job. On the other hand, with Overbay playing first base in Branyan’s first go-round with the team, and Prince Fielder entrenched there the second time, it’s not clear where Branyan could have played every day.

Yost’s track record for developing hitters is truly impressive, and much better than I thought it would be when I started this analysis. For a team that is down to its last chance with Alex Gordon, a team that is just starting to realize that Kila Ka’aihue is one of the four best hitters in the organization right now, a team that has Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer and Derrick Robinson coming down the pike between now and the end of next season – as a Royals fan, I don’t have the slightest hesitation in trusting Yost with the future of our offense.

The Case Against Ned

That’s great that he developed all those hitters, but how much credit does he really deserve? He was the beneficiary of a ridiculous amount of hitting talent that the Brewers drafted and developed – it’s no surprise that the guy who was really responsible for landing all those guys got hired as the GM of the Seattle Mariners.

And if you didn’t see any pitchers on the list above, that’s not an oversight. Under Yost, the Brewers produced almost no starting pitchers of any note. Ben Sheets had already established himself in the rotation before Yost got there.

In Yost’s six seasons as manager of the Brewers, the only starting pitcher developed by the franchise to last even a full season in a rotation is Yovani Gallardo.

The Case For Ned

You can’t wave away all the hitters that Yost developed as a product of the farm system, and then blame him for all the pitchers that the farm system didn’t develop. During his time with the Brewers, the top pitching prospects on the farm were Mike Jones and Mark Rogers, who both blew their arms out before they ever touched foot on a major-league mound. Former top prospect Nick Neugebauer, who was one of the hardest throwers in baseball and who made 12 starts for the Brewers in 2002 at the age of 21, had already blown out his arm before Yost arrived and was never heard from again. Other top prospects like Jose Capellan profiled best as relievers.

Meanwhile, Yost did the best he could with the players he was given. Doug Davis was a 27-year-old southpaw who had washed out of the Rangers and Blue Jays organizations when the Brewers claimed him off waivers in 2003. He made 118 starts with Milwaukee over the next three-plus years, with an impressive 107 ERA+. A year later, the Brewers promoted Chris Capuano, a Grade B prospect who had been obtained in the Richie Sexson deal. Capuano gave the Brewers three-plus seasons of league-average pitching before his arm gave out. Yost also got two decent seasons as a starter out of Victor Santos, when no other team could get even one.

The only top starting prospect to reach the majors under Yost who didn’t pan out was Jorge de la Rosa, who only made 8 starts with Milwaukee before he was traded to the Royals for Tony Graffanino – and it took de la Rosa 3 more years and another organization before he finally started to fulfill his promise last season with the Rockies.

It’s true that the Brewers under Yost didn’t develop very many starting pitchers. But 1) that’s a reflection of the farm system more than the manager, and 2) Yost had enough success with recycled pitchers from other teams to win anyway.

The Case Against Ned

If there’s one complaint that both Yost’s critics and defenders agree upon, it’s that he did a terrible job of running a bullpen. He was very by-the-numbers with his relievers, assigning specific roles to his pitchers and then not deviating from those roles even when the need called for it. In particular, he used his closers seemingly to generate saves more than to win games.

In his first season, his closer went 2 innings for a save twice; Mike DeJean did it on July 29th, and Danny Kolb did it on July 19th. But as you can see, the Brewers were sort of transitioning between closers at the time, so neither one of them was the undisputed #1 guy at the time. In the five years after that, not once did Yost allow his closer to pitch 2 full innings for a save, and only nine times did his closer get a save of more than 3 outs.

His inability to work matchups is most brilliantly – and painfully – illustrated in Joe Sheehan’s column here. In the midst of the Brewers’ September collapse that got Yost fired, in the middle of being swept by the Phillies, the Brewers found themselves in a 3-3 tie in the 8th inning. Jayson Werth led off with a single, and Yost replaced Guillermo Mota with lefty specialist Brian Shouse to face Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. Utley sacrificed Werth to second…whereupon Yost ordered Shouse to intentionally walk Ryan Howard. To face Pat Burrell. And left Shouse in.

Royals fans fondly remember the time John Gibbons, then the manager of the Blue Jays, intentionally walked Tony Pena Jr. There really is nothing more to say, except that once Gibbons was hired as the Royals’ bench coach, fans were immediately worried that he would one day take over as manager when Trey Hillman was fired.

Yost’s decision to intentionally walk Ryan Howard, who has one of the most pronounced platoon splits in baseball, in order to pitch to Pat Burrell, who crushes lefties, WITH A LEFTY SPECIALIST ON THE MOUND, is orders of magnitude dumber than walking Pena to set up a double play. This was in September, in a pennant race, in the 8th inning of a tie game. Burrell hit a tie-breaking single, Shane Victoring hit a game-breaking single, the Brewers were swept in a doubleheader, and Yost was fired the next day.

The Case For Ned

One decision – admittedly, one horrible, indefensible decision – should not undo all the good work that Yost did in six years as the Brewers’ manager. Besides, at least in one regard Yost was a revolutionary thinker when it came to his bullpen. I am speaking of The Brooks Kieschnick Experiment, which Yost presided over.

Kieschnick, a star two-way player in college who had stuck to hitting – with meager success – as a pro, took up pitching again as a way to help his team on both sides of the game. Kieschnick actually resumed his pitching career with the White Sox in 2002, at the age of 30, but then joined the Brewers organization in 2003, Yost’s first season. He quickly earned the 25th spot on the roster, and over two seasons, he performed with admirable mediocrity as both a pitcher and a hitter. In 96 innings, he posted a 4.59 ERA; in 133 at-bats, he hit .286/.340/.496. In 2003, he played the outfield 3 times and DH’ed 4 more times, but in 2004 he didn’t play the field at all. But he was used as a pinch-hitter 71 times over those two seasons.

He was released the following spring, and never appeared in the majors again. But for two seasons, Kieschnick was the most perfect 25th roster man I’ve ever seen. The man who gave him that opportunity was Ned Yost.

The Case Against Ned

He was aloof and standoffish with the media in his time with Milwaukee, and his reaction to the Brewers’ second-half fades in 2007 and 2008 were so hyperanimated that within the clubhouse he earned the moniker “Nervous Ned”.

The Case For Ned

It’s possible – perhaps even probable – that Yost learned from his mistakes in Milwaukee. Many years ago, in his Guide to Baseball Managers, Bill James studied the performance record of managers based on whether it was their first job as a manager, second, third, etc. If I recall correctly, what James found was that there was a small but real trend towards managers doing their best in their second and third jobs. This makes sense – a first-time manager has a lot to learn, while a fourth-time manager is either old enough that he’s starting to slip, or was never that good in the first place, otherwise he wouldn’t have been fired three times.

This is Yost’s second job as a manager. He’s only 55. If he continues the good things he did in Milwaukee, and shows a willingness to learn from the mistakes that he made, he could be very successful in Kansas City.

The Case Against Ned

Since he was hired by the Royals, he has already made it clear that the one truly bold idea that Hillman had – to use Joakim Soria for more than three outs – is going to be put back on the shelf.

“I don’t think I would hesitate to use Soria in a four-out situation,” Yost said, “but I don’t generally like to do it. I think a closer is at his best when he comes in, gets his work done and goes into the locker room. I don’t like to see a closer come in, have to get an out, go sit down and then have to go back out and get three more outs.”

And later: “I like my closers to get every save that they can get.” Like I said: save-generating machines.

The Case For Ned

Whereas his predecessor had fallen so deeply under the spell of Little Ball that he was sacrifice bunting in the first inning, Yost seems to have a more enlightened view. In his first game, the Royals were mounting a rally with two singles to start the seventh inning, bringing Jose Guillen to the plate.

“We had first and second with nobody out and I thought about bunting for about half a second and I thought, ‘You know we’ve been struggling to score runs, let’s try to put a big one on the board,’ ” Yost said. “And we did.”

And later:

“I don’t like to play for one run,” he said, “unless it means we’re going to win the game. So early in the game, very seldom will you see me playing for one run.

“It doesn’t mean we’re going to bomb home runs to win ballgames, (but) we can drive the gaps and hit little bloop singles and put a big number on the board.”

The Case Against Ned

Yost managed Jason Kendall in 2008, when Kendall started a ridiculous 149 games behind the plate – no catcher has started more games in a season since Gary Carter in 1982.

Judging from his comments that Brayan Pena might get a start “every two weeks or so”, we’re in for more of the same.

The Case For Ned

He didn’t even wait 24 hours before he fired Dave Owen as his third-base coach. Some managers might have decided to evaluate things with their own eyes before making any big moves. Yost, this one time, understood that this was not the time for patience.

The Case Against Ned

On Tuesday, after Blake Wood had coughed up a win for Zack Greinke as he is contractually obligated to do, the Royals went into extra innings. In the bottom of the tenth, in a tie game, rather than reach for Soria to pitch an inning in the hopes of getting the game into the 11th, or any of the other options in his bullpen that were not making their season debut, Yost called on Brian Bullington.

Brian Bullington had just been called up from the minors. Bullington had all of 39 major league innings (and a 5.08 ERA) to his ledger. A single, a walk, a missed-first-base-error, and a drive over a drawn-in outfield later, the game was over.

The Case For Ned

In Gil Meche’s first start with Yost, Meche had thrown exactly 100 pitches after six innings. Coming back to the dugout, Meche held up one finger to his manager across the dugout, asking for one more inning. Yost simply shook his head, and that was that. The days of Meche actually being able to convince his manager to stay in the game even when it’s counterproductive seem to be over.

The Case Against Ned

Yesterday, Meche had grinded through 109 pitches in just 5 innings, yet Yost inexplicably let him start the sixth with a one-run lead. Two batters and two baserunners later, Meche was out having thrown 122 pitches, and the Indians were able to tie the game.

The Case For Ned

Yost’s comments after Ka’aihue was sent down were probably the biggest vote of confidence I’ve ever seen from the Royals regarding Kila.

“It just kills me to see Kila sitting on the bench and not playing,” said Yost, who replaced Trey Hillman as Royals manager following Thursday’s win against Cleveland. “I think he’s a huge part of our future, and for me I’d much rather have him down there right now, getting his at-bats, playing first base and if something happened he could come back here.”

“(Kila) is getting close to not having to go through this anymore, you know the up-and-down swing where you (get called) up and you (get sent) down,” Yost said. “He’s getting real close to becoming a major-league fixture.”

From an organization that went out of its way to pretend that Ka’aihue didn’t even exist last season, this is a welcome sign.

The Case Against Ned

He let Kila Ka’aihue get sent down. Words are good; actions are better.

The Case For Ned

He seems to understand, in a way that his general manager sometimes doesn’t, that the Royals aren’t really playing for 2010, and that sometimes you have to make decisions which may cause short-term pain for long-term gain. In Luke Hochevar’s first outing under Yost, he blew a 4-1 lead in the seventh inning, and Yost left him out there even as Hochevar gave up five hits and a walk to the first seven batters. Hochevar’s pitch count wasn’t high, but the Royals lost the game by a run, and a quicker hook might well have saved the game. Afterwards, Yost said:

“I told him, `Look, in those types of situations,’” Yost said, “`I’m going to let you pitch yourself out of trouble. You need to learn how. When you get yourself into those situations when you’re rolling, you need to learn how to get yourself out of those situations.’”

A pitcher like Hochevar, who has been underperforming to his talents for years now, needs some tough love, but he also needs the confidence of his manager. With one quote, Yost gave him both.

(If I ever stop writing this blog, it might be because the Royals finally suck away my will to go on. Or, it might be because of columns like this from Joe Posnanski. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. In one column, Poz sums up everything I’ve spent the better part of 15 years trying to get teams like the Royals to do.)

Conclusion

I tried to present the case for and against Ned as impartially as possible. But in the end, I have to say: the case for Ned Yost is a lot stronger than I thought, and the case against him isn’t.

The biggest problem I had with his hiring was that it was so predictable. I don’t mean predictable in the sense that he was hired as an adviser to the GM this off-season, and that as a former major-league manager he would make a perfect interim manager choice if and when Hillman was fired. I mean predictable in that some Royals fans successfully predicted that Yost would be our next manager the day he was fired by the Brewers, almost two years ago.

Yost, of course, was a coach for the Braves for over a decade before he was hired by the Brewers, and we know how much Dayton like his ex-Braves. So in that sense, the hiring was disappointing, because it seems to me that Yost was hired not for what he’s done, but simply for who he’s worked for in the past.

But maybe it’s both, because the deeper I looked into Yost’s time with the Brewers, the more I was impressed. His .477 winning percentage with the Brewers isn’t anything to write home about, until you remember that in the decade before he was hired, they had a .444 winning percentage. He took a team that had just lost 106 games to .500 in three years, and to the brink of the playoffs three years after that. The man who ultimately replaced him, Ken Macha, is already on the hot seat barely more than a season into his tenure.

As fans we focus so much on a manager’s tactical moves, simply because those are the decisions he makes that are most accessible to us. But there are thousands of smaller decisions that are made on a daily basis – do I give a pep talk to this struggling young player here, do I show confidence in this young pitcher by letting him work through this jam, how do I light a fire under this young player who’s not getting the most out of his talents. And we’re simply not privy to these conversations. All we can see are the results, which play out not in a game, or in a week or a month or even a season, but over multiple seasons.

Yost’s tactical mistakes are easy to see. His strategic victories are not. But it’s those victories – the ability to develop Fielder and Braun and Hardy and Weeks and Hart and Hall into quality ballplayers with relatively few bumps along the road – that made Yost’s tenure in Milwaukee the most successful of any manager since arguably Harvey Kuenn.

And that, in the end, is why he’s been hired by the Royals. Not because of his adeptness with his bullpen, but because the Royals can still salvage Alex Gordon and Ka’aihue, and Mike Moustakas is almost ready, and Derrick Robinson and Eric Hosmer and Johnny Giavotella are on their way. And while Yost wasn’t nearly as successful with his starting pitchers, that really seems to be more a reflection of the talent he had to work with. What works for young hitters may work for young pitchers as well, in which case Yost is the right man to bring along Mike Montgomery and Aaron Crow and John Lamb and half a dozen other promising arms.

I found this remarkably prescient piece written by a Brewers fan immediately after Yost was fired. Money quote: "I do think Yost deserves another chance at manager. He has many positive qualities as a patient developer of talent and preserver of starting arms. A team like Kansas City with an established closer and a lot of young talent that needs patience and structure could do a lot worse than hiring Yost if they get tired of Trey Hillman. Moving over to the AL would probably cover up a lot of his tactical and bench construction weaknesses as well. That's the type of situation where Yost is likely to maximize his value to a franchise at present."

Yost still needs to work to eliminate the “interim” label off his title, but at this point I think the job is his to lose, not his to win. We can only hope that along the way he learns to manage his bullpen a little better. I whined on Twitter after Yost brought in Bullington to pitch the tenth the other day. Joe Sheehan replied, “Just wait for 2013, when Yost is doing that with a potential postseason team.”

Well you know what? If the Royals are a potential postseason team under Yost in 2013, he’ll be the first manager since Dick Howser who could make that claim. I certainly hope that one day I’m not writing 5000-word screeds about how Yost’s bullpen shenanigans cost the Royals a game with a playoff spot on the line. But it sure beats the alternative. I know – I’ve been living the alternative for the last 25 years.

xxx

Joe Sheehan has been my colleague at Baseball Prospectus since we started in 1996, and my friend since 1993. Watching as the words that were sent to me by email in the early 90s became sharper, and more incisive, and just plain better over the years until he had become one of the very best baseball writers on the planet, is one of the great fringe benefits of my writing career.

Joe left Baseball Prospectus this winter to strike out on his own. While his work appears in a variety of places, from SI.com to Rotowire, he hasn't had a forum to write the long, unfiltered columns that he became famous for at BP. Now, though, he's announced his new project here. It's no exaggeration for me to say that after Bill James, I've learned more about baseball, and more about baseball writing, from Joe Sheehan than from anyone else.

So if you can spare the $20, I can't recommend his newsletter highly enough.