Royals Today: 5/28/11

Never a boring moment with this franchise, and yes, I know I say that a lot. Let’s catch up.

- I don’t know if he just gets bored while he’s on the job, but Dayton Moore can’t go more than a month or two without making a WTF? transaction. I’m not necessarily saying the moves are terrible, just that they seem to come out of left field, and a member of the roster who appeared to have rock-solid job security gets cashiered with no warning.

On Thursday night, the Royals made the decision to claim Felipe Paulino on waivers – more on him in a moment – and designate Robinson Tejeda for assignment. This was clearly a mistake on the Royals’ part – it’s just not clear whether the mistake was made now or over the off-season.

The Royals claimed Tejeda off of waivers in June of 2008, and he immediately settled in as a solid middle-innings option for the Royals, adding to the sentiment that the team had built their best bullpen in ages – behind the transcendent Joakim Soria, the Royals had Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez, and Ron Mahay was arguably the best left-handed set-up man in baseball at the end of July before his arm started to hurt.

But in 2009, Ramirez and Nunez were gone and Mahay was ineffective, and Tejeda quickly established himself as the second-best reliever on the roster. He had a 4.07 ERA in the bullpen, and moved to the rotation for a September trial, he had a 2.84 ERA in six starts and allowed just 15 hits in 32 innings.

The Royals were so impressed by this that they moved him back to the bullpen last year. He again served as the bridge to Soria, although he was technically only the third-best reliever on the roster, thanks to Kyle Farnsworth’s unlikely resurgence. In three seasons with the Royals, Tejeda’s highest ERA was 3.54.

And now, after 7.1 innings pitched this season, he’s been waived.

If the Royals had so little faith in Tejeda that they were willing to cut him after just seven innings, why didn’t they trade him this off-season? Or just release him over the winter? They had enough faith in him to tender him a $1.55 million contract – and now they’re willing to eat that contract – the ninth-highest salary on the roster – after just seven innings?

Absolutely, Tejeda didn’t look like himself when the season started; his velocity was down about 5 mph from previous years, and he couldn’t strike anyone out. That’s not the mark of a pitcher who needs to be cut; that’s the mark of a pitcher who needs to be disabled. Tejeda was, and he got a cortisone shot in his arm, and he rehabbed back, and his velocity upon his return was better – not all the way back, but better. He had pitched all of two innings up on his return.

So on the basis of two innings’ worth of data from a healthy pitcher, the Royals decided to cut their second-best reliever from 2008 to 2010. I find this disturbing.

It’s not as if the Royals lacked for other options if they wanted Paulino that bad. They could have sent Blake Wood or Greg Holland back to Omaha; while both have their uses, it’s not clear that either one is going to be more effective going forward than even a diminished Tejeda. And while the 40-man roster is becoming increasingly crowded (more on this next week), they could have cut Jesse Chavez or Kevin Pucetas without raising an eyebrow.

Instead, they cut Tejeda, who even with his struggles this season leaves the Royals with a 3.57 ERA in 181 career innings. In Royals history, 84 pitches have thrown 180+ innings; only Soria has struck out more batters per nine innings (9.64) than Tejeda (9.23). And only Soria has allowed a lower opponents’ batting average (.202) than Tejeda (.203).

I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. The decision to cut Tejeda is so inexplicable that I wondered whether, like the decision to cut Juan Cruz last April, there were off-field issues that precipitated the move. But I’ve checked with sources, and this appears to be a purely baseball move. That doesn’t make it an astute one.

The Royals may well be thinking that if another team claims Tejeda, they’ll be able to save somewhere around $800,000, and if they don’t, than Tejeda would rather report to Omaha than forfeit the money himself. (I believe – but am not certain – that because Tejeda was DFA’ed instead of released, that he is not entitled to the rest of his salary if he opts out of his deal. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.) If that’s the case, then there may be some modest upside to the move.

But regardless, if the Royals aren’t making a mistake now – if Tejeda has simply lost it and his stuff isn’t coming back – then they definitely made a mistake in the off-season by not trading Tejeda for whatever they could get. Relievers are such unpredictable commodities – just look at Soria right now – that you’ll almost never go wrong by trading them when they’re at their peak.

Dayton Moore knows this – we know he knows this because he traded Ramirez and Nunez when he had the chance. The problem is that he traded Ramirez for Coco Crisp – a sensible trade which didn’t work out – and Nunez for Mike Jacobs – a trade that was a mistake from the moment he signed off on it. I don’t know if Moore got gun-shy after that, but regardless, he elected not to move Tejeda when his value was high and his salary was only starting to escalate, and now he’s going to get nothing for him.

I’ve heard from some people that, in Moore’s defense, before the season the Royals had no way of knowing that their bullpen would be so good that Tejeda would be expendable. To which I can only say, don’t they read their own press clippings? The Royals have built perhaps the deepest bullpen in their history*, and with the exception of Aaron Crow and maybe Blake Wood, are any of these guys pitching better than we expected over the winter?

*: In fairness, it’s easy to have the “deepest” bullpen in history when you’re carrying eight relievers. The last time the Royals were good, they typically carried five or six.

I mean, if anyone ought to know how good the Royals’ farm system was, it’s the Royals. If we all knew that with guys like Tim Collins and Louis Coleman and Jeremy Jeffress, that the bullpen was where the first wave of the farm system would wash ashore, shouldn’t the front office have known? And above all, we knew that with Soria already on hand, that the Royals already had the most important job in the bullpen locked up. One of the great fringe advantages of having an elite closer is simply that you’re not tempted to overpay for a proven commodity in that role. (Otherwise you end up doing dumb stuff like trading Johnny Damon to get Roberto Hernandez.) This winter, the Royals knew that they had a terrific stable of rookie relievers just about ready to go, and they knew that even if some of those guys struggled, that they’d be protected by one of the best closers in baseball.

But they kept Tejeda anyway. That’s a defensible decision if you actually believe in Tejeda – but given the way the Royals dropped him like a hot potato at the first opportunity, and given that the Royals refused to consider him for the rotation last year after he was lights out the previous September, you have to wonder how much faith they ever had in the guy. If they didn’t have faith in him, they should have traded him to someone who did.

We all assume that the Royals wouldn’t be dumb enough to turn down a fair offer for Wilson Betemit because they’re not sure if Mike Moustakas is ready, or to turn down an offer for Melky Cabrera because they’re afraid of entrusting center field to Lorenzo Cain. But essentially, that’s what the Royals did here. One of the added advantages of having an elite farm system is that it gives you the flexibility to trade your existing players when their value is at its apex. Or, you know, you can just cut them when their value is at its nadir.

- Then again, Dayton Moore traded David DeJesus when his value was presumably at its peak, and look how well that worked out.

Vinny Mazzaro threw six good innings for Omaha last night, allowing just one run, which is a good thing, because he’ll probably be pitching for Omaha for the foreseeable future. When you fashion the worst relief appearance in major-league history and get demoted to the minors before the beat reporters even have a chance to finish their stories, you’re probably not coming back any time soon.

When the Royals made the trade, I was critical of it, but in all honesty, I wasn’t critical enough. Maybe I was blinded by all the successes of the farm system last season, but I assumed that the Royals had to know something about Mazzaro that we didn’t – that they had reason to believe the best was yet to come. I mean, they wouldn’t have traded DeJesus for a pitcher with a 4.72 ERA and a terrible strikeout-to-walk ratio unless they thought he was going to get better, would they?

Apparently they would. Forget the numbers; I have yet to talk to a scout who thought that Mazzaro would ever be more than a #4 starter in the majors, and the consensus opinion was that he was a #5/fringe starter/Four-A pitcher. You don’t trade your best position player, even one with only a year left on his contract, for that. (Yes, the Royals also got Justin Marks in the deal. No, he doesn’t make a difference.)

I’ve heard the trade described as a salary dump, that the Royals just wanted to get rid of DeJesus’ $6 million salary for 2011. If that’s the case, they could have dumped his salary the direct way – they could have declined his option. Better still, since DeJesus was a Type B player last year, they would have picked up a supplemental first-round pick in the draft this year – a draft which, even over the winter, was shaping up to be one of the deepest drafts of the century.

What would you rather have – Vinny Mazzaro and Justin Marks, or a sandwich pick next week? Particularly since the Moore administration’s signature skill is scouting amateur talent, I think the answer is clear.

Meanwhile, the A’s have DeJesus – whose .259/.337/.404 line is a lot better than it looks in The Year of the Pitcher, good for a 106 OPS+. And when DeJesus’ contract ends this winter, the A’s have a good shot at a supplemental pick of their own. Billy Beane wins again.

The reason I bring this up is that Wilson Betemit is likely to be traded in the coming months, if not weeks; the Royals will want Moustakas in the majors as soon as he’s safely passed the Super Two point, and Betemit is hitting .315/.384/.448. There are a ton of contending teams that could use a third baseman. (The Rockies’ third basemen have combined to hit .179/.228/.272. The Cardinals are in first place, but with David Freese out they’re so desperate for a third baseman that they moved Albert Pujols over there for a start.)

Betemit is worth a fair amount of talent on his own, but what’s important is that if he continues to be an everyday player all season, he will almost certainly qualify as a Type B free agent this winter, earning his team a top draft pick. If the Royals do trade him, they absolutely need to factor in that whatever team trades for him is also trading for that draft pick, and his price needs to be elevated accordingly. Given the meager returns the Royals got for DeJesus, you have to be worried that whatever teams acquires Betemit will give up less for the privilege than they’ll receive in return when he signs elsewhere this winter.

- One last thing about Mazzaro. The combined ERA of the Royals’ bullpen this season is 3.66, 19th in the majors and exactly the MLB average. Subtract Mazzaro’s one relief outing, and their ERA drops to 2.99 – fifth in the majors. That’s one spectacular outing – Mazzaro surrendered nearly one-fifth of all the runs the Royals’ bullpen has given up this year.

- Getting back to Felipe Paulino…I don’t want my criticism of the way the Royals handled Tejeda to overshadow the decision to claim Paulino, which I think was a very shrewd move.

Three years ago, the Royals claimed Tejeda on waivers from Texas. Tejeda had pitched well as a swingman for the Phillies as a rookie in 2005, and after a trade to Texas had given the Rangers a 4.28 ERA in 14 starts in 2006. But in 2007 he was awful (6.61 ERA), walking 60 batters and allowing 17 homers in just 95 innings. The Rangers moved him to the bullpen in 2008, but after just four appearances they gave up on him. The Royals got him, and he was terrific from his very first appearance. He always had the power arm, and simply needed some time to cultivate his command in short stints – time the Rangers didn’t have to give him.

Thursday morning, if you had asked me to draw up a list of the pitchers in baseball most likely to pull a Tejeda – a pitcher with little history of recent success, likely available for a song, who had the stuff to dominate if he could simply start throwing strikes – Paulino might well have been at the top of it.

Paulino made 31 starts for the Astros in 2009 and 2010, and was pretty terrible; his career ERA with the Astros was 5.82. On the other hand, it was the Astros. His stuff was tremendous; Fangraphs lists his average fastball at 95.4 mph for his career. His slider averages 86.9 mph. His stuff hadn’t translated to results, but he had never been tried in the bullpen consistently. When the Rockies acquired Paulino for the execrable Clint Barmes this winter, Joe Sheehan was so appalled by the Astros’ decision to let Paulino go that cheaply that he devoted a good chunk of one of his newsletters to this seemingly trivial move. (As Joe pointed out, only two starting pitchers had a faster fastball than Paulino last year – Ubaldo Jimenez and Stephen Strasburg.)

Paulino made 18 relief appearances for the Rockies and didn’t fare much better, with a 7.36 ERA. But he was pitching in Coors Field, and had never had a home ballpark that wasn’t terrible for pitchers. He’s 27 years old; Tejeda was 26 when the Royals claimed him.

So yes, I liked the claim a lot, and that was before Paulino shut the Rangers down last night, retiring 13 of the 14 batters he faced and allowing the Royals to come back and win the game. (If Dallas isn’t an airport hub, the Royals probably lose. Paulino encountered travel delays and didn’t get to the ballpark until gametime, and was on the mound by the third inning.)

One appearance means nothing, and Paulino might be sent packing again soon. But he has undeniable talent, the Royals are pretty good at scouting this sort of talent, and they have a track record of rehabilitating exactly this sort of pitcher. He may yet have a future in the rotation, and he isn’t a free agent until after the 2014 season. Let’s just hope that if he does work out, the Royals manage his departure better than that of the man he replaces.

Whew. 2500 words and I haven’t gotten to the good stuff yet. Be back with more positive comments soon.

A New, And Improved, Lineup.

Here, presented without any commentary, are the combined statistics for the nine slots in the Royals’ lineup. Take a minute to look it over and see what stands out to you:

#1: .201/.281/.331

#2: .275/.313/.462

#3: .296/.353/.491

#4: .285/.394/.437

#5: .234/.307/.449

#6: .271/.333/.426

#7: .264/.323/.405

#8: .211/.340/.308

#9: .257/.303/.326

There are a lot of conclusions one can draw from those numbers, but I think it’s safe to say that the first thing most of you will notice is this: the Royals’ worst lineup slot this season has been their leadoff hitter.

Or to put it another way, the guy in the lineup who bats the most has also been the guy in the lineup who hits the worst.

There has been a lot of research done on the optimum way to build a lineup, as well as on just how important it is to have an optimum lineup in the first place. Most analysts agree that the difference between the absolute best possible lineup and a poorly-constructed one is rarely more than 20 or 30 runs. On the other hand, 1) 20 or 30 runs means two or three wins, which can be the difference between first and second place; 2) the majority of the difference can be had by prioritizing a few simple things.

The first thing to prioritize is this: let your best hitters bat more often.

The next thing to prioritize is this: put the hitters who get on base ahead of the hitters who can drive them in.

So far this year, in 41 games, the Royals’ worst hitter has batted most often. More than that, the Royals’ leadoff hitter has reached base less often than every other spot in the lineup. That’s an impressive trick. The Royals’ leadoff hitter has a .281 OBP, which is Yuniesque. The Royals don’t lack for hitters who can drive in runners – indeed, the #2 through #7 spots in the lineup all have higher slugging averages than the AL mean. What they lack is the hitter who gets on base ahead of them.

(Amazingly enough, two AL teams – the Orioles (.279) and Rays (.277) have lower OBPs from the leadoff spot. It’s still nothing to be proud of.)

It’s been a group effort from the leadoff spot. Chris Getz has led off 19 times, and has hit .181/.274/.236. Getz isn’t hitting from any spot in the lineup, and one can only hope that the Royals’ insistence that he’s a major-league caliber second baseman is starting to weaken. Mike Aviles has started 15 times, and while he’s a good hitter, he’s woefully ill-suited for the leadoff spot – he’s hitting .203/.253/.420. (Jarrod Dyson has started six times, and is 3-for-20.)

The one thing that the leadoff hitters have brought collectively is speed – they are a perfect 13-for-13 in steal attempts, while no other lineup spot has more than seven. And if this were 1979, people might even say that it was worth putting up with the low OBP to keep the speed at the top of the lineup. I mean, it worked for Omar Moreno.

We know better now. For one thing, if the ultimate goal of any leadoff hitter is to score runs, we can simply look at the total number of times the leadoff hitter has crossed home plate – and despite all those steals, the Royals’ leadoff hitter has scored just 19 runs in 41 games. That’s a horrific number – the leadoff hitter is on pace to score 75 runs all year, and that’s for a mythical leadoff hitter that plays every inning of every game. And that’s with a well above-average middle of the lineup to drive him in.

Or look at it another way. The only inning in the game where you know exactly who is scheduled to bat is the first inning – a well-constructed lineup should score a higher percentage of its runs in the first inning than in any other inning. In 41 games, the Royals have scored 14 runs in the first inning – 0.34 runs per inning. That’s 35% lower than their average of 0.52 runs per inning. In the second inning – when the middle of the lineup is generally due up – the Royals have scored 24 runs.

By comparison, the Royals’ opponents have scored 36 runs in the first inning. After one inning, the Royals have led just five times, but have trailed 16 times.

Suffice it to say, the Royals have had no success to speak of from the leadoff spot, and this one weakness has led to a dysfunctional offense that has hamstrung the Royals’ ability to score early.

Enter Alex Gordon.

You may recall that when Hosmer was called up, I suggested that he bat leadoff. This led to a discussion with Nate Bukaty and Steven St. John on 810 WHB, with Nate suggesting that for clubhouse reasons it wasn’t practical to lead off with Hosmer, but that you might be able to do it with Gordon. Which was fine with me. At this stage of their careers, Hosmer and Gordon are pretty similar offensive players – left-handed hitters who can hit for a good average, will take a walk, and have power to the gaps if not to the bleachers, and while neither one is a threat for 40 steals, they both have the speed to take the extra base and occasionally catch the opponents napping with a steal.

If anything, from what we’ve seen from Hosmer so far, he probably has more home run power than the re-tooled Gordon. In which case he might be the better candidate for the #3 hole.

Done and done. Tonight’s lineup:

L 7 Gordon

S 8 Cabrera

L 3 Hosmer

R 9 Francoeur

R 0 Butler

S 5 Betemit

R 2 Treanor

L 4 Getz

R 6 Escobar

This isn’t the ideal lineup – any lineup with Getz in it can’t be called “ideal” – but it’s close. In a world without relievers, an ideal lineup would probably have Hosmer batting second – the most controversial finding of lineup analysis, but one I firmly believe, is that you want your best hitter to bat second, not third. But a real lineup has to split up the lefties and righties, and this lineup does that pretty well. I’d flip-flop Betemit and Cabrera – Betemit gets on base more, and if you bat him higher in the lineup, you can get more at-bats out of him before pulling him for defense in the late innings. But otherwise it’s pretty good.

What’s really interesting about the lineup is that Butler has moved down to fifth. I can’t speak to the psychological issues here; if Butler views this as a demotion and pouts, that could be a problem. (Remember, a permanent move to DH combined with a lineup demotion just sparked a huge controversy in New York.) But if Butler is okay with batting fifth, I actually like the move a lot.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, you don’t want a low-OBP slugger in the #5 hole. Why is that? Because the #5 hitter is most likely to lead off the second inning. If Butler doesn’t bat in the first inning, he’s going to bat first or second in the second inning, where his OBP skills come into play. And if he does at in the first inning, it’s likely to be with two outs, which takes his GIDP skills out of play.

This change in the lineup isn’t going to be worth a run a game, or a quarter of a run a game; it might be worth a tenth of a run per game. But every run counts. Teams pay millions of dollars for players who might help them score 10 or 15 runs more per season. Tonight the Royals are getting a similar boost without paying a dime.

So kudos to Ned Yost for doing the unthinkable and listening to the blogs and sports talk radio. (Or coming up with a blog/sports talk radio idea on his own, which would be equally impressive.) Let’s just hope he has the conviction to stick with an unconventional, but more effective, lineup all season.

Eric Hosmer And The Gathering Horde.

(So I started working on this piece yesterday, and I expected to finish it up last night after taping my weekly podcast with Joe Sheehan. And then, well, this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. So this has gone through a bit of a re-write, and is even more meandering and off-point than most of my stuff.)

By promoting Eric Hosmer when they did, the Royals made a statement that they were taking their playoff hopes seriously. At the same time, by promoting only Hosmer when they did, even though there are perhaps half-a-dozen guys in Omaha who are ready for major league duty, the Royals also made a statement that they weren’t willing to go all-in just yet. Which they shouldn’t be. The Royals may register on the postseason radar, but their odds have only upgraded from “none” to “slim”. Until the Royals get some clarity regarding their playoff hopes, they risk paying out millions of dollars in future salary for every top prospect they call up, and getting nothing in return except a lower draft pick next season.

Hosmer wasn’t simply ready – he was wasting his time in Triple-A when he was called up. And even with that, there’s no consensus as to whether the Royals should have called him up when they did. Jeff Passan argued they should have; Sam Mellinger argued they shouldn’t have. Kevin Goldstein argued the former, and then changed his mind.

It’s not an easy question to answer, just because the stakes are so high. But the case to be made for calling Hosmer up isn’t simply to argue he makes the Royals a better team, because even the best players are rarely worth more than 6 wins a season over a replacement player, which is to say, one win a month. To argue that the Royals couldn’t wait one month to call up Hosmer because they needed that one win so badly – that might be the case if the Royals were legitimate contenders. If they were the Indians, and had built up a large lead on the division, that would be one thing. (Baseball Prospectus’ playoff odds gives the Tribe a 28.5% chance of making the playoffs.) But the Royals are still fringe contenders, who are playing over their heads and still just fighting for second place. (BP puts their odds at 0.6%.)

Those odds are unrealistically low, because BP projects the rest of the season with the assumption that each player is exactly the same player they were at the beginning of the season. In other words, BP just assumes that Jeff Francoeur is the same crappy player he’s been for the past five years, and that the Royals are therefore the same crappy team they’ve been for the past seven years. The computer formula can’t account for the possibility of radical transformation. But even so, it’s hard to argue that the Royals’ playoff odds are any higher than 10%. Those odds are improved by the addition of Hosmer, but not enough to justify bringing him up a month early.

The argument for Hosmer, though, is simply that he was dominating Triple-A to such an extent that he simply had nothing left to learn against minor league pitching, and keeping him in the minors would hinder his development. Most hitting prospects – even most top hitting prospects – are not finished products as rookies. Yes, there’s a chance that Hosmer is Albert Pujols, who was one of the five best players in baseball on his first day in the major leagues – but more likely than not, he’ll be a better player as a sophomore than he is as a rookie. The more reps he gets this year against major league pitching, the more likely he is to go off on the league next year – and next year, the Royals will want their best team on the field from day one, because next year their playoff odds figure to be a lot higher than 10%.

It’s nearly impossible to quantify the true benefit of having Hosmer up early, and so it’s nearly impossible to say with any conviction whether bringing him up on May 5th was the right thing to do. I know very smart people on both sides of the aisle. But the tiebreaker goes to the player – when in doubt, I think I speak for all Royals fans when I say, we’d like to see the kid.

Particularly if he plays like he did last week. On Wednesday, in the fifth game of his career, Ned Yost batted him third. My initial reaction was to mock Yost – until I remembered that he did the same thing with Ryan Braun in the third game of Braun’s career, and Braun responded by leading the NL in slugging as a rookie, winning Rookie of the Year honors, and has batted third (or occasionally cleanup) ever since.

Yost’s confidence in his players – especially young players – is his defining trait as a manager, and the reason why I think that, despite his tactical weaknesses, he’s the right guy for the Royals right now. Of course, it helps when that young player happens to be Eric “Yankee Killer” Hosmer. Hosmer homered into the second deck against A.J. Burnett, which was even more impressive given that it was the only hit Burnett surrendered in seven innings of work. And in the 11th, Hosmer had an equally impressive at-bat; with the bases loaded and one out, he fell behind 0-2, then reached out and poked a ball at shoe-level and managed to hit it deep enough to score Chris Getz from third base for the winning run.

(A surprise #3 hitter…a home run…the game-winning RBI in extra-innings…where have I seen this before?)

Hosmer homered again on Thursday night – this time a laser beam that just cleared the fence – and singled, and hit an excuse-me double down the left field line on a check swing, and the Royals won their first series at Yankee Stadium since 1999. He went hitless against the Tigers on Friday and Saturday, although he was robbed of extra bases twice by Austin Jackson on Saturday, once on one of the best catches of the season. As a Royals fan, I can’t say I’m used to this – I’m used to top prospects struggling out of the gate, and then we have to wait months, or maybe years, to see if they reach their potential. Having a top prospect come up to ridiculous expectations and meet them right away? Watching him hit two homers in his first week in the majors? At Yankee Stadium? I’m getting a little woozy just thinking about it.

I know it’s been barely a week, but if Eric Hosmer is at all representative of The Greatest Farm System In The History Of Whatever…the next six-plus seasons ought to be a blast.

And with that in mind…let’s take a look at how the Blue Wave – hey, that’s what Baseball America called them – are doing right now. These are the nine Royals that made BA’s Top 100 list, in the order they appeared:

#2: Mike Moustakas (.267/.346/.481 in Triple-A)

Moose struggled to start the season and got left in the dust by his bosom buddy Hosmer, but I’m actually very encouraged by the shape of his season so far. I said before the season that I thought he needed a few more months in Omaha, service time issues or not, because while his power was ready for the majors, the rest of his game wasn’t. He didn’t hit lefties much last year, and he swung at entirely too many pitches.

Sure enough, he came out of the gate cold, and hit just .229/.304/.410 in April. But he’s heating up, hitting .351/.444/.703 in his last ten games. He came back yesterday from missing a couple of games over the weekend after getting hit in the arm by a pitch, and doubled and homered.

More importantly, he’s making progress on the two weak spots in his game. While he’s only hit .234 against lefties, he has three doubles and three homers in 47 at-bats, and is slugging .489 vs. southpaws. He also has 14 walks in 135 at-bats, none intentional. (In this lineup? Pick your poison – if you’re not facing Moose, you’re facing Clint Robinson.) That would be the highest walk rate of Moustakas’ career.

He’s been somewhat error-prone at third base, with eight already in just 33 games. On the other hand, he’s making more plays than ever before – his range factor is 3.12 chances per game, and while range factor is a very weak defensive stat, any third baseman making more than three plays a game is doing something right. The scouting reviews of his defense are the same as ever – a little stiff, but certainly playable.

#3: Wil Myers (.284/.357/.392 in Double-A, in just 20 games)

Myers has been slowed down by some knee problems – he missed ten days at the end of April after he apparently slipped and fell on the asphalt outside his apartment and gashed his knee open good. And now he’s got an infection in the same knee that’s put him on the DL.

Aside from that, he’s been fine. He’s not dominating Double-A like he did the two levels below, but he’s 20 years old, and he’s holding his own. The only area of concern, if it is one, is that his strikeout-to-walk ratio is 20 to 9 after he had nearly as many walks as strikeouts last year. But he’s only played 20 games; I’m not worried about it. The defensive reports of him in the outfield are encouraging. The slim odds before the season that he might rip through Double-A and force the Royals to promote him to Kansas City this season have dwindled to almost nothing. But he’s still on target for a mid-2012 debut.

#4: John Lamb (34 IP, 33 H, 13 BB, 21 K, 3 HR, 3.15 ERA in Double-A)

The first thing you need to know about Lamb is that his velocity has been down since late in spring training; his fastball is in the 88-91 range after being a couple ticks faster last year. The second thing you need to know is that he’s been pitching through a strained lat muscle, which everyone assumes is the cause of his dip in velocity.

If that’s the case, and if his velocity gets back to its 2010 level, he’s going to be fine. Even with the decreased velocity, he’s been effective if not particularly dominant in Double-A. Like Myers, he’s still 20. Like Myers, I’d be concerned if his performance doesn’t improve as the season progresses and he gets healthy. And like Myers, his ETA is more likely to be 2012 than 2011. But again like Myers, his long-term outlook is minimally, if at all, changed.

#5: Mike Montgomery (42 IP, 38 H, 25 BB, 33 K, 2 HR, 4.25 ERA in Triple-A)

Montgomery – not Hosmer – was the most impressive player on the field at the Royals’ Futures Game, and his performance since the games started to count has been disappointing. The primary concern has simply been his command – he’s still throwing in the mid-90s, he just isn’t throwing the ball where he wants to.

His numbers look a lot better if you take out his last outing – he had a 2.84 ERA before Saturday, when he allowed nine hits, four walks, and 11 runs in 4.1 innings. I wouldn’t worry – he was pitching in Colorado Springs, where the ball flies. Put it this way – if he had managed to finish the fifth inning, he would have gotten the win – the Royals won the game 16-11, as Lorenzo Cain hit for the cycle with 7 RBIs. Montgomery won’t have to pitch in those kinds of conditions in the major leagues.

I’d like to see fewer walks, and more strikeouts, from Montgomery. But he’s still on target – remember, before spring training the expectation was that he was headed to Double-A, but he looked so good that he forced an accelerated timetable. He’s still only 21. He turns 22 on July 1st, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he celebrates his birthday with the big club.

#6: Christian Colon (.263/.346/.347, 8 for 12 in SB)

I’m still not entirely sure what kind of player Colon is going to be, in part because he’s been two different players in 2010 and 2011. Last year, he signed right after the draft and got into 60 games in Wilmington, where he hit .278/.326/.380. Those are good numbers for a guy straight out of college in a tough hitters’ park, but I was concerned by the fact that he walked only 13 times in 60 games, with 33 strikeouts.

This year, he’s hitting only .261 with very little power – he has just five extra-base hits in 115 at-bats. But he’s already drawn 14 walks in 32 games, with just 11 strikeouts. He’s also stolen eight bases already after he stole just two bases (in six attempts) all of last season.

The other mitigating factor here is that Northwest Arkansas has run into some absolutely brutal weather. They had an off-day on April 20; they were rained out on the 21st, and after playing a doubleheader on the 22nd (minor-league doubleheaders go only seven innings each), they were rained out again on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th. They also got rained out on back-to-back days on May 1st and 2nd. I’d like to see what Colon can do when he’s getting to play every day. For now, he’s been a little disappointing, but he’s a 9-for-15 stretch away from batting .300 and justifying the comparisons to Placido Polanco. And – like most everyone on this list – he’s still awfully young, having just turned 22 on Saturday.

I can’t say I’m not worried that the Royals used the fourth pick in the draft on a role player, but then, I was worried about that last June, and it’s not like the other players the Royals might have taken have been much better. Chris Sale is a left-handed reliever for the White Sox, and he’s struggling. Yasmani Grandal, the catcher the Royals were rumored to want, would have been a better fit for the organization after the Royals traded for Alcides Escobar. He’s hitting .292/.419/.542 for the Reds, but he’s in A-ball, and in a hitters’ league. He might prove to be the better player, but it’s way too early to say for sure.

The one thing I know is that the Royals were two losses in 2009 – or one loss, if it had been to the Orioles – away from drafting Manny Machado last year. Machado is hitting .333/.450/.611 as an 18-year-old shortstop in the Sally League, and has future star written all over him. So do the two guys taken before him, Bryce Harper and Jameson Taillon. But we knew going into the draft that the Royals had the first pick of the common pile. Nothing that’s happened since the draft has changed that perception, or the perception that the Royals made the best pick they could under the circumstances.

#7: Danny Duffy (36 IP, 30 H, 10 BB, 43 K, 4 HR, 3.00 ERA in Triple-A)

A year ago today, Duffy was retired, and the best you could have hoped for a year later was that he’d be pitching somewhere in the system. Instead, after just seven starts in Double-A last season he joined Montgomery in Triple-A to start 2011, and has been the ace of the staff. His last start, when he gave up nine baserunners and four runs in four innings, was his first poor outing of the season.

A year ago, I was worried that even if Duffy returned, that his profile was a little too close to Jimmy Gobble’s or Chris George’s profile for comfort. He had good command of three pitches, but his fastball rarely broke 90, and he didn’t have any sink on it. Only a funny thing happened when he returned – he started throwing harder than ever, consistently 92-93, touching 95. And even better, he maintained that velocity all season, and he still had it when he showed up in camp this spring. Best. Retirement. Ever.

And now, he’s in the major leagues, because as I write this, the Royals have announced that Danny Duffy will be starting at Kauffman Stadium tomorrow night. (Another fringe benefit of having The Best Farm System In The History Of Whatever: you can wash away the bad taste of a 19-1 drubbing with the flick of a pen.)

Is he ready? Well, he’s certainly not as ready as Hosmer was, but it’s hard to argue that he’s being rushed either. He walked three batters and struck out just two in his last start – but in the six starts before that, his worst strikeout-to-walk ratio came on April 21st, when he struck out five and walked two. Prior to his last start, his last three lines looked like this:

6 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 8 K, 0 HR

6 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 2 BB, 9 K, 1 HR

6 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 8 K, 1 HR

Let’s put it this way: if it weren’t for the service time concerns, no one would bat an eye about Duffy’s callup. There are going to be some bumps in the road, and Duffy is an extreme flyball pitcher who’s going to give up his share of homers (although Kauffman Stadium will help with that.) But is he better than the alternatives? Absolutely. No one would be surprised if he winds up being the Royals’ best starter the rest of the season.

But the service time concerns are there – if you assume that Duffy is going to turn into an above-average starting pitcher, this might cost the team $5 million in additional payroll over the next six years. As recently as last week, I was arguing that having called up Hosmer, the Royals needed to hold the fort for another month, because no one else in Omaha had proven without a doubt that they were ready for the majors.

I’m deeply ambivalent about the Duffy call-up, because as I said at the start of this piece – which I wrote when a call-up looked remote – the odds are slim that calling up Duffy now will make the difference between the playoffs and the couch in October. On the other hand, if you listened to last week’s podcast, when Joe and I talked about the callups of Hosmer and Julio Teheran and other top prospects around the majors, Joe made the point that with starting pitchers, there’s only so many bullets in their arm, so you might as well call them up when they’re ready. Many of you are familiar with the concept of TINSTAAPP (There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect), which Joe and Gary Huckabay popularized at Baseball Prospectus years ago. People have understood that expression to mean that even the best pitching prospects are so injury-prone that you can’t rely on any of them.

That’s part of what the expression means – but the other part is that when you do have an elite pitching prospect, a Mark Prior in the minors or Stephen Strasburg last May or whatnot, he’s not really a pitching prospect – he’s a major-league pitcher just biding his time in the minors. Pitchers, unlike hitters, can hit the ground running. And whereas most hitters improve until the age of 27 or so, the age curve for pitchers is quite variable. Some pitchers don’t hit their stride until their 30s, but far more pitchers peak in their early 20s – and many pitchers are as good at the age of 22 or 23 as they’ll ever be. If you hold those guys in the minors for too long, you run the risk of missing their peak entirely.

Danny Duffy is 22. He’s not an elite prospect, but he is a very, very good one, and he’s ready for the majors. If the Royals are going to continue to play for this year – and after last night, I’d understand if they weren’t – but if they are, they need Duffy in their rotation now. With Davies on the DL, and Mazzaro having been sent back to Omaha because the Royals don’t have an affiliate in Outer Mongolia, the Royals either start Duffy or they call up Jeff Suppan. If they call up Suppan, you can go ahead and plan that vacation to Europe in October. The path to the playoffs is a treacherous one, but the only person who can navigate it right now is Duffy. I know the Royals would rather have waited a month to call him up. But I don’t blame them for doing what they had to do.

#8: Jake Odorizzi (37 IP, 28 H, 8 BB, 55 K, 1 HR, 2.45 ERA in High-A)

Jackpot. I felt from day one that Odorizzi was the most underrated part of the Greinke deal, and possibly the most valuable of the four players the Royals received in the deal. (The original trade rumor did not have Odorizzi in the deal, and I did not like the trade for the Royals at that point – Odorizzi’s inclusion rotated my thumb 180 degrees.) Odorizzi wasn’t a Top 25 prospect, but he had the stuff, projectability, and athleticism to say that, if everything went right in 2011, he’d be a Top 25 prospect by the end of the year.

So far, everything’s gone right. He’s made seven starts, and hit double digits in strikeouts three times. Prior to his last start, he had struck out over a man an inning in every start this season. He gave up a season-high three earned runs in 4.2 innings in his last start, striking out four while walking none.

The interesting thing is that this breakout has not been accompanied by an uptick in velocity – his fastball generally is in the 92-93 range, occasionally faster, which is where he was last year. The difference, though, is that he has much better command of his curveball and changeup. His fastball might preclude him from being a #1 starter in the majors – but a pitcher with a plus fastball and two plus off-speed pitches projects as a #2 starter at the very least. Oh, and he’s just 21 years old – there’s still a chance that he’ll add velocity over time. I expect him to be in Double-A soon; if everything goes according to plan he’ll start next season in Omaha, and this time next year we’ll be agitating for him to join the big-league rotation.

#9: Chris Dwyer (33 IP, 33 H, 19 BB, 26 K, 3 HR, 6.61 ERA in Double-A)

There was going to be a clunker somewhere. Dwyer was always the Ringo of the Fab Four lefties, on account of his lack of polish, and his command issues have been exposed this year. The good news is that I haven’t heard any rumblings that his stuff has gone downhill, only his ability to throw strikes have. He’s more of a two-pitch pitcher (fastball/curveball) than the other three lefties on this list, and my suspicions that he’d wind up in the bullpen are only growing. He still projects as an impact arm in some role.

If you evaluate these nine prospects in sum, you might be a little disappointed with them overall. If you re-ranked the Top 100 Prospects at the moment Hosmer was called up, Hosmer himself might have moved up as high as #3 – the only prospects in baseball clearly better than him were Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. But Moustakas and Myers wouldn’t be Top 10 guys – they’d probably be in the 20s. Montgomery would be unchanged, but Lamb would probably drop from #19 to #40 or so. Colon would move down, and Dwyer would be off the list entirely. On the other hand, Odorizzi and Duffy would both be comfortably in the Top 50, meaning the Royals would have 7 of the top 50 prospects in the game.

Farm systems are like players – great seasons are bound to regress. If a player hits .390 for a full major league season, you expect his average to drop the next season, because a .390 average is so rare that it can only occur when great ability is combined with great luck. Players don’t have breakout seasons and then get even better the next season, unless their name is Jose Bautista.

The Royals’ farm system in 2010 hit over .400. There was no way they could sustain that this year, and they haven’t. But they haven’t been exposed as a fluke or a mirage either. Notably, none of the team’s top pitching prospects have suffered an arm injury, which is generally the bane of any farm system loaded with pitching prospects.

Besides, a new season gives opportunities for other players to emerge. David Lough is batting .336/.367/.564 for Omaha and making those David DeJesus comparisons look realistic. Everett Teaford, who couldn’t even crack the Royals Top 30 Prospects according to Baseball America, has been fantastic in Omaha (27 IP, 16 H, 6 BB, 24 K, 3 HR), and got called up to replace Vinny Mazzaro last night. I’m not sure what his role will be – he could be the lefty specialist, a long man, or even be in the rotation – but he should be an asset however he’s used. (Teaford and Duffy will be the fifth and sixth pitchers to make their major league debut with the Royals this season. The Royals had just four pitchers debut in all of 2009 and 2010 combined.)

Clint Robinson continues to mash, and while no one believes in him, he’s been proving his doubters wrong for so long that he might be able to fetch some value on the trade market. Kelvin Herrera, a kid many of you have never heard of, was a starting pitcher who threw in the mid-90s and made it to full-season ball when he was 18, but assorted arm problems derailed him – he pitched in only nine games in 2009 and 2010 combined. The Royals finally decided to move him to the bullpen to keep him healthy, and he’s already rocketed through Wilmington and is pitching well in the Naturals’ bullpen. With his fastball and a great changeup, he’s sort of a better version of Leo Nunez.

Rey Navarro, who the Royals quietly acquired from the Diamondbacks for Carlos Rosa last year, is hitting .324/.376/.485 in Wilmington as a 21-year-old second baseman and is starting to get second looks from scouts. And potentially the biggest news is that Noel Arguelles, the $6.9 million Cuban bonus baby who missed all of last season with shoulder problems, is not only pitching but pitching well, with a 2.43 ERA in 7 starts for Wilmington.

I wouldn’t get too excited about Arguelles – whereas he was supposedly throwing 94 when the Royals signed him, after surgery his fastball is in the 88-90 range now. On the other hand, that velocity will play for a lefty, and he has shown shockingly good command for someone coming off surgery, particularly of his slow curve and his changeup. While he only has 23 strikeouts in 33 innings, he’s also walked just three batters all year. I hesitate to project what he’ll be because it’s so dependent on whether his velocity returns, but he ought to be something.

And finally, we’re just now starting to see the second wave of prospects make it to full season ball; as the weather finally warms up here in Chicagoland, the Royals are starting to send their elite teenage arms to Kane County. Yordano Ventura, who’s 19 years old, stands 5’11”, and throws 99, made his full-season debut on Sunday (he didn’t pitch well). Jason Adam, the Kansas City kid who has been getting rave reviews since he signed last summer, makes his pro debut tonight.

A season like 2010 for the Royals’ farm system could not be repeated, and it’s not. But the talent that projected to make the Royals a perennial contender by 2013 is still there, and if anything, the timetable is moved up. The Royals almost certainly won’t be the #1 farm system in the game, let alone in history, at the end of this season. For one thing, the Rays were already #2, and in one month they get to cash in on the greatest haul of draft picks in the history of the draft, in one of the strongest drafts anyone has ever seen.

But more importantly, the farm system is a victim of its own success, as it ought to be. Hosmer is not a minor leaguer anymore, neither is Duffy, and by the end of the year, Moustakas and Montgomery will probably have exhausted their rookie eligibility as well. That leaves Myers, Lamb, Colon, Odorizzi as the only elite prospects left from the start of the season. Throw in the #5 pick in the draft, and maybe Jason Adam and another elite arm or two, and it will still be a good farm system, a Top 10 farm system – but not one of the best in the game.

But that’s not the point, and it was never the point. The point is to do what the Royals are doing now, which is to get these guys to the majors. I said at the start of the year that we might see a prospect debut in the majors every few weeks this season. That timetable has accelerated slightly – the Royals had three debut on Opening Day, Louis Coleman a few weeks later, Hosmas was May 6th, and now Teaford and Duffy are here together. I suspect that this is the last of the debuts until we’re past the Super Two deadline, but if the Royals are all-in for this season, they’re all-in, and if Montgomery turns the corner in his next two starts, I wouldn’t rule out an early promotion for him. If the Royals finally accept that Chris Getz is never going to hit, you might even see Johnny Giavotella (.298/.355/.397 in Omaha) soon.

In all honesty, all this activity doesn’t change the fact that the Royals are facing long odds to make the postseason this year. They’re a .500 team, the Indians seem unbeatable, and the Tigers are getting hot. And yeah, one day the Royals might regret committing millions of dollars in future payroll in their quixotic attempt to make the postseason a year ahead of schedule.

But don’t let the Royals’ long odds this year distract from the more important point – which is that the Royals are much better set up to win the Central in 2012 than people thought even a few months ago. Their top eight prospects to start the season are all on course to be in the major leagues by mid-June of next year, and they’ll find a bullpen waiting for them. The Royals need to find a battery – they’re about one starting pitcher and one catcher short of having a complete team for the second half of next season. But right now, gun to my head, if I had to predict what team would win the AL Central next season – I’d pick the Royals. And I suspect I’m not the only one.

In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the show. Everett Teaford might debut tonight. Danny Duffy will debut tomorrow. And the iceberg extends deep.

Hosmas.

Last year, on a lovely Thursday afternoon at Kauffman Stadium, the afterglow of a victory against the Indians that ended a 7-game losing streak was interrupted just minutes after the game ended, when the Royals announced that Trey Hillman had been fired.

Once again this year, the Royals chose the sleepy aftermath of a Thursday home game – just like last year, it was the annual “School Day at the K” promotion that brought in a crowd of almost 30,000 – to announce another thunderbolt. This time, it was Kila Ka’aihue getting the axe, and this time, the news wasn’t about who was departing Kansas City so much as about who was arriving.

(And by happy circumstance, both moves came just hours before my radio show. If you want to listen to my immediate reaction to the news, you can listen to the podcast of the show at 810 WHB’s website – look under “additional programming”.)

With any luck, we may look back at the day that Trey Hillman was fired as the nadir of the Dayton Moore Era, the day a clueless manager running a listless team going nowhere was shown the door, and the day the Battleship U.S.S. Royal started to turn around. And with any luck, we may look back at Thursday’s announcement as the day the battleship perfected its bearings, and opened its throttle.

Eric Hosmer is now a Royal, the future is now the present, and The Process is now being judged by results at the major-league level.

The excitement at Kauffman Stadium for Hosmas yesterday rivals that for any Royals prospect debut in a generation. Alex Gordon’s debut may have been equally anticipated, but his debut came on Opening Day, with a crowd that would have been a sellout under any circumstances. With respect to a mid-season call-up, Zack Greinke’s home debut (his first start was on the road) drew 30,614 to Kauffman Stadium on a Friday night – but there was a week’s notice that he’d be starting that night. Johnny Damon debuted on a Saturday afternoon at the K, on August 12, 1995. He was accompanied from Omaha by Michael Tucker, who had made the team out of spring training but was demoted mid-season, and a one-time prospect named Brent Cookson who had hit .401 in Omaha. That game drew only 20,572.

Last night’s game drew 30,690, and according to the Royals, about 10,000 of those tickets were sold on the day of the game. When Jeff Passan writes that Hosmer’s debut was the most anticipated debut in Kansas City since Bo Jackson, he’s not exaggerating.

The hyperbolic reaction to Hosmer’s debut – “Eric Hosmer” was one of the ten most-tweeted terms in the world last night, and even Bill Simmons got in on #hosmerfacts (“Justin Bieber wears an Eric Hosmer backpack”) – is not simply about Hosmer. Six weeks ago, it wasn’t even a consensus that Hosmer was the best prospect in the Royals’ system. The majority of the Top 100 Prospect lists I saw had Mike Moustakas slightly ahead of him. I disagreed with that assessment because of concerns about Moustakas’ plate discipline and ability to hit left-handers, concerns that are being borne out in Omaha right now, but I wasn’t certain whether Hosmer or Wil Myers was the better prospect.

The celebration that we saw at the ballpark last night over Hosmer’s debut was not simply about what he did in the last six weeks to cement himself as the best prospect in the system. Which isn’t to discount his performance in Omaha, which quite frankly put him in the discussion as the best prospect in all of baseball. The hype about Hosmer started in spring training, when everyone wanted to get a good look at this supposedly-historic cache of talent the Royals were building. No one impressed more than Hosmer, who according to multiple scouts was even better than advertised. Baseball Prospectus’ Jason Parks proclaimed him ready for the major leagues right then and there.

Hosmer then went to Omaha and proved that assessment true. You can write “small sample size” til the cows come home, but Hosmer hit .439 in Omaha. He drew 19 walks in just 29 games, for an OBP of .525. He hit .500 against lefties with all three of his homers. And somehow, he was just heating up: in his last ten games with the Storm Chasers, he hit .538 (21-for-39) with nine walks and a .612 OBP, a number I’ve only ever seen associated with Barry Bonds before. Here’s a game-by-game breakdown of how many times he reached base safely in his last eight games: 3, 4, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4.

I spoke with a scout about ten days ago who had just seen Omaha in action, and who wasn’t particularly impressed with Moustakas. (He told me, “you know who Moustakas reminds me of? I think he’s going to hit like Shea Hillenbrand with more power.” Fighting words, those are.) But when I asked about Hosmer, the first thing he said was, “he’s going to hit .300 with 30 homers in the majors.”

So yeah, Hosmer is ready. But that’s not why everyone is excited. There are two other subplots hanging over Hosmas that explain why May 6th may be the start of a new era.

The first is that while the Royals broke camp with a couple of prospects in tow, they were all in the bullpen – Tim Collins, Aaron Crow, Jeremy Jeffress, and even Nate Adcock are pieces of the puzzle, but they’re not the guys you build around. Louis Coleman debuted a few weeks later, giving the Royals five rookies in their bullpen – but the only other rookie on the roster is Jarrod Dyson.

But Hosmer is the first member of the Big Six (Danny Duffy has elevated himself into that top tier of prospects with his performance this season) to make it to the majors. He’s not a complementary piece – he’s a future #3 hitter in a championship lineup. And he’s here. Today. He may not be a #3 hitter yet, but he’s better than anyone else the Royals have right now.

And that brings us to the second subplot, which is that with this one unexpected move, the Royals are sending a subtle (or not so subtle) message: we’re going for it – this season. You may not agree with the message. I’m not so sure I agree with it myself. But I can’t help but admire an organization which sees a window of opportunity they weren’t expecting, both because they didn’t think they would be above .500 at this point and because the two teams that were expected to battle it out for the AL Central have both been colossal disappointments, and tries to steal the division a year or two before everyone thought they’d be ready.

It would be one thing if the Royals made a move to win in 2011 that actively hurt their chances of winning in 2012 and beyond. If they had traded from their stash of prospects for a veteran pitcher in the last year of his contract, we’d be storming Dayton Moore’s office like it was the Bastille. If they had started the season with Hosmer on the roster, moving up his free agency date by a year, we would have all screamed bloody murder. (As it is, despite – or perhaps because of – Aaron Crow’s success, I’m still a little perturbed that the Royals needlessly moved up his free agency date. But pitchers have a much shorter shelf-life than hitters, so it’s not quite the same thing.)

If they had rushed a prospect to the majors to fill a hole, Allard Baird-style, I’d be furious. But they didn’t. You can argue the Hosmer promotion was a bad idea from a number of angles, mostly regarding the economic and opportunity costs. But you can’t reasonably argue that he was rushed. Every piece of scouting and statistical data I’ve seen says otherwise.

So at least on the surface, the Royals made a move which improves the major league team immediately, gives a clear signal that they’re going to take their chances of contention seriously until proven otherwise, and gives their long-suffering fan base a glimpse of a brighter future to come. And they did so without compromising their farm system at all.

That’s not to say that Hosmer’s promotion is entirely cost-free, because it’s not. The most obvious cost of promoting Hosmer on Thursday is, well, the cost. Under the current rules, by being promoted exactly five weeks into the season, Hosmer is almost guaranteed to be a “Super-Two” player at the end of the 2013 season. The rules allow players with three full years of service time to be eligible for arbitration, and a limited number of players with between two and three years of service time. The cutoff is generally about two years and four months – which is to say, any prospect promoted before June will typically qualify as a Super-Two a few years later.

That’s not a piddling designation. The binary nature of major league baseball’s salary structure is such that someone who falls even one day short of being a Super-Two is subject to having his salary the following year decided by his employer. You don’t amass the money needed to buy a baseball team without learning how to exploit employees, so this means the player will earn only slightly more than the league minimum. However, a player who qualifies for arbitration can compare his performance to that of other arbitration-eligible players. He won’t earn as much as he would as a free agent, but he’ll earn seven figures for sure.

For the typical, average player, the difference between being arbitration-eligible and not might be a few million dollars. Alex Gordon was a Super-Two after the 2009 season, and settled with the Royals for $1.15 million – so the Super-Two designation was worth barely half-a-million dollars to him. Of course, he was coming off a year in which he played 49 games and hit .232. For a star player, the cost could be a lot more.

If memory serves, the largest arbitration award for a Super-Two player was the $10 million Ryan Howard got before the 2008 season. He earned that money because the year before, Howard had hit 47 homers with 136 RBIs and finished 5th in the MVP vote, and all those numbers paled to his performance in 2006, when he won the MVP behind 58 homers and 149 RBIs.

Tim Lincecum was widely expected to challenge Howard’s arbitration record before the 2010 season, but settled before his hearing for a 2-year, $22 million contract that paid him only $9 million last year. All Lincecum had done over the previous two years was win the Cy Young Award – both years.

So the worst-case scenario for the Royals – which is actually the best-case scenario – is that Hosmer’s premature promotion will add about $10 million to their 2014 payroll. The question I can’t answer – and if there are any baseball business experts out there, please feel free to comment (paging Maury Brown) – is this: does a Super-Two player also get higher arbitration awards in future seasons?

By that, I mean that a player who reaches arbitration for the first time – generally after 3 years of service time – can compare himself to players with similar amounts of service time, between 3 and 4 years, I believe. Players with 4 years of service time – players eligible for arbitration for the second time – can compare themselves to players with between 4 and 5 years of service time. And so forth. As a result, a player will see his salary increase as he approaches free agency even if his performance stays the same.

What I don’t know is whether a Super-Two player gets any additional advantages after his Super-Two season. The following year (when he’s a “Super-Three”), is he treated like all the other arbitration-eligible players with three years of service time, or does he get an additional advantage because it’s his second year of eligibility? If he doesn’t, then his financial advantage is limited to that first year; if he does, then he may continue to reap an increase in his salary every year until he hits free agency.

I am pretty sure he does not get an advantage beyond the first year – aside from the fact that his previous year’s salary is a lot higher, and a player almost literally never sees his salary cut in arbitration. If I’m right, then the absolute maximum cost to bringing up Hosmer on May 5th, instead of June 25th, would be $10 million. And a more realistic cost – assuming he doesn’t compete for MVP awards over the next two seasons – would be about half that. (If he does compete for MVP awards, I’m sure we’ll find a way to deal with it.)

That’s not chump change. And even if the cost only winds up being $5 million – Sam Mellinger thinks it could be a lot more – that’s a hell of a lot of money for the next six weeks of Hosmer’s career. But the caveat here is this: the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the players’ union and ownership expires this winter. Everyone expects a new agreement to be hammered out peacefully, but everyone also expects some changes to be made in the agreement. One of the areas where changes may be seen is in the area of Super Two players. There’s probably a 50/50 chance that the rules will be changed substantially, in which case Hosmer either won’t be a Super Two after all, or he would have been a Super Two even if he had stayed in the minors for another six weeks.

It’s still a big risk, and I’m not sure it was risk the Royals needed to take. If they think they can stay in contention all season, then it’s a risk they can justify. But they better be right.

(An excellent analysis of the arbitration implications for Hosmer can be read here.)

I’ll take a moment here to address what I consider to be the most ridiculous argument against bringing up Hosmer, which is that if the Royals had kept him in the minors until mid-April, 2012, they would have delayed his free agency for another season. I understand the temptation to treat players as commodities – anyone who’s ever played fantasy baseball has that temptation. But look – in order for this to have worked out, you’d have to keep Hosmer in Omaha all season AND not call him up in September AND not break camp with him next spring.

Hosmer’s not going to hit .439 in Omaha all season – but frankly, he might well have hit .369, with walks and power and great defense. If he had spent all season in Omaha, he would have had one of the greatest Triple-A seasons by a true prospect in modern history. (That’s a good question – who was the last prospect to play a full season in Triple-A and rake like this? Mike Marshall comes to mind – Marshall hit .373/.445/.657 with 34 homers and 21 steals in 1981, when he was 21 years old. But Marshall had the benefit of hitting in the thin air of Albuquerque. There’s probably a more recent example.)

If Hosmer rakes all season and you don’t bring him up in September, you’re going to have a grievance on your hand, and you’re going to lose. (Hosmer’s agent is Scott Boras, who don’t forget filed a grievance against MLB alleging that his client Pedro Alvarez signed after the deadline in 2008 – a grievance which eventually led to Hosmer being forced to sit out after the Pirates leaked the news that Hosmer also signed after the deadline.) The only way Hosmer can be held down in the minors another 11 months is if he 1) gets hurt or 2) starts sucking. If your financial strategy revolves around rooting for your best prospects to fail, you must be Frank McCourt.

The other cost here is the opportunity cost for one Kila Ka’aihue. Ka’aihue got less than 100 plate appearances to show what he can do, and after he failed his audition, his time with the Royals is now, for all intents and purposes, over. There is no way to spin this as anything other than a massive fail for the Royals.

I’m not saying that Ka’aihue is guaranteed to become a productive major league first baseman. On the contrary, I’ve seen enough from him this year, and spoken to enough scouts whose opinions I respect and who understand what the numbers say, to have some serious concerns about his future. It’s quite possible that he’s another Calvin Pickering, another player who hit for massive power in the minors but whose swing and bat speed was exploited by major league pitchers. But it’s also quite possible he’s a poor man’s Carlos Pena. Pena was a slightly above-average hitter – which is to say he was a below-average hitting first baseman – from 2002 to 2005, and then he nearly washed out of baseball, winding up as an NRI with the Devil Rays in 2007. At which point, at the age of 29, he hit .282/.411/.627 with 46 homers, beginning a three-year run as one of the best first basemen in baseball.

The problem is, we simply don’t know. Ka’aihue has 87 games and 326 plate appearances in his major league career. He’s hit .216/.309/.375, unacceptable numbers for a first baseman. On the other hand, Mike Jacobs hit .228/.297/.401 with the Royals – after accounting for the downturn in offense, Ka’aihue’s OPS+ is actually higher (88) than Jacobs’ (84). Jacobs got 128 games and 478 plate appearances with the Royals.

Ka’aihue deserved – and still deserves – a chance to play everyday in the majors for a full season. The Royals decided they could no longer afford to give him that chance in 2011, because their priorities have been forced by circumstance to change from playing for the future to playing for this year. Their priorities are debatable, but at least they’re understandable. What’s not understandable, and what has never been understandable, are the Royals’ priorities in 2009 and 2010, when they were clearly never in any danger of contending for the playoffs.

Giving up on Ka’aihue this year is frustrating and disappointing – but it’s not inexplicable. It’s not a clear blunder. Waiting until August last year because God forbid we should let Jose Guillen go and deprive ourselves of his speed, defense, and clubhouse leadership – that was a clear blunder. Not letting Ka’aihue prove himself in 2009, and trading a useful reliever in Leo Nunez for an expensive DH that couldn’t muster a .300 OBP – that was a clear blunder. Those blunders are even more clear today, because they led us to this moment, where the Royals gave up on a player who was perhaps the best hitter in the minor leagues the last three years, without ever giving him a sufficient opportunity to play in the majors.

So Hosmas was a bittersweet day. Ka’aihue may one day be a quality regular in the majors, but if he is, it’s almost guaranteed it won’t be with the Royals. And after doing everything in their power to destroy his trade value, it’s hard to imagine the Royals would get anything substantial for him.

So where do we go from here? We saw in Hosmer’s debut just what the hype was about. It started with his defense, when he started a slick 3-6-3 double play to get out of the first inning. Perhaps the most underrated thing about Hosmer is that he’s not just a left-handed hitter, he’s a left-handed thrower – of all the positions on the field, first base is the only position where throwing with a specific arm gives you an inherent advantage. (Well, the only position where you actually see players throw with either hand. Throwing right-handed is such an enormous advantage at the other three infield positions that there hasn’t been a left-handed throwing shortstop, third baseman, or second baseman in modern major-league history.) Hosmer is an above-average defender with a terrific arm for a first baseman; Billy Butler might as well rent a long-term storage facility for his gloves.

As a hitter, I’ve always compared Hosmer to Will Clark, and I think Clark’s rookie season is a terrific approximation for what to expect from Hosmer this year: Clark hit .287/.343/.444 with 11 homers in 111 games. (Not only is my Will Clark comparison no longer considered outlandish, some people think it might undersell Hosmer. Kevin Goldstein said of a comparison to Will Clark that Hosmer is “bigger and stronger” than The Thrill.) While Hosmer has massive power potential, he only hit three homers in Omaha, and it’s expected that his power will take some reps to manifest itself. But as we saw in his debut, Hosmer has a very mature batting eye, and between the walks and his line-drive swing, an OBP north of .350 as a rookie seems possible.

It’s for that reason that, after watching Hosmer steal second base easily after his second walk of the night, that I had a brainstorm: Hosmer should be batting leadoff.

I know it sounds crazy. But the Royals simply don’t have anyone on the roster who fits the leadoff role well. Mike Aviles doesn’t walk at all; Chris Getz doesn’t hit at all; Jarrod Dyson doesn’t play at all. Suddenly, the Royals have added a player who should hit for a high average, knows the strike zone, and has surprising speed. With the 2-through-6 spots in the lineup already largely set, why not put Hosmer at the front of the line? The leadoff hitter gets the most plate appearances on the team – who would you rather see at the plate more often, Hosmer or Getz?

I can’t imagine this will ever happen, simply because Ned Yost is so hidebound by tradition that he would never think of using a first baseman in the leadoff spot. And unless you mix up the heart of the lineup, batting Hosmer leadoff might lead to having Aviles/Treanor/Escobar, three right-handed hitters, batting back-to-back-to-back from 7 to 9. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the solution to the Royals’ leadoff dilemma might have just presented itself.

Now that Hosmer has arrived, the question becomes whether his promotion is an anomaly or whether it heralds a youth movement that is coming faster than anyone expected. My suspicion is this: Hosmer is a unique case, given how well he was playing, and the Royals would rather not promote anyone else prior to the Super Two deadline. The promotion of Moustakas, which seemed a fait accompli a few weeks ago, is now on indefinite hold, both because of the way Betemit and Aviles are hitting, and because of the way Moustakas isn’t. The Royals can run seven quality hitters out there every day, and the two positions they can’t (shortstop and catcher) are two positions where the farm system doesn’t have any ready-made solutions.

The bullpen can’t get any younger unless the Royals start elementary school auditions. However, the Royals really need a second left-handed reliever, particularly since Tim Collins’ repertoire makes him ill-suited to be a lefty specialist. If anyone gets called up the rest of the month, look for it to be Everett Teaford, who recently moved from the rotation to the bullpen, likely with a promotion in mind.

That leaves the rotation. Mike Montgomery and Danny Duffy are both pitching very well in Omaha, and the rotation is the roster’s weakest link. However, none of the five starters have pitched themselves out of the rotation yet. Kyle Davies, I think, still has a few starts left to prove himself one way or the other. Sean O’Sullivan, who everyone expected to be the first guy out, has actually pitched the best of the five. Furthermore, if one of the five gets bombed or gets hurt, Vinny Mazzaro will probably be first in line.

So at least for the next six weeks, the Royals will probably stand pat. If, six weeks from now, the dream has died, then so be it: maybe Hosmer will have been called up a little early, but on the other hand he’ll be that much more prepared to dominate in 2012. At that point the Royals can promote every other prospect according to a timetable dictated by their development, not by the team’s needs.

And if, six weeks from now, the Royals are still in it? After another six weeks, the Royals will have that much better an idea of what they have in Montgomery and Duffy. They’ll have that much better an idea of which starters in their rotation need to be pulled. And the financial cost of bringing up a prospect will be that much less.

So stay tuned. A playoff berth this season is an improbability, but it’s no longer the impossibility it seemed to be. And keep this in mind: even if the Royals don’t contend this year, the acceleration of the youth movement makes contention in 2012 much more likely. I never bought the talk after the Greinke trade that the window of contention for the Royals had been pushed to 2013. I still thought that 2012 was a reasonable goal if the prospects all developed as expected – but inherent to that development was that the elite prospects had to arrive sometime in 2011. If Hosmer and Moustakas and Montgomery and Duffy all got their feet wet in 2011, I thought, they’d be ready to compete in 2012.

So whether Hosmer’s promotion means the Royals are more likely to contend this season, it’s safe to say that his promotion – and the promise of more promotions over the next few months – makes the Royals more likely to contend next season. In the meantime, just enjoy the ride.

And remember, while Will Clark didn’t set the world on fire as a rookie, the following year he hit .308/.371/.580 with 35 homers, and finished fifth in the league in MVP voting.

And the Giants went to the playoffs.

A Tale Of Two Outfielders.

Rany’s posts are so long. – Will McDonald, Royals Review.

Guilty. As I’ve said before, I write long posts because I don’t have time to make them shorter.

But I’ll try to squeeze in a quick one today, by writing about two very specific players – our two redemption projects in the outfield, Alex Gordon and Jeff Francoeur – and one very specific question – whether their hot starts are meaningful or not.

Specifically, I want to look at whether their performance in the month of April has precedence in their careers or not. If it has, well, then they may have simply had the good fortune to time their annual hot streak to the start of the season. If it hasn’t, well, maybe it means something more.

First up, Gordon, who in the month of April* hit .339/.395/.541 in 119 plate appearances, albeit with 21 strikeouts against just eight walks.

*: As per standard baseball convention, “April” includes the stray regular season game played in March. Take out Gordon’s 0-for-5 on Opening Day, and his April line was actually .356/.412/.567.

Thanks to injuries and demotions to Triple-A, in his four previous seasons in the majors, Gordon had batted 70 or more times in a month on just 13 different occasions. Here are the five best months (min: 70 PA) of Gordon’s career:

Apr 2011: .339/.395/.541, 936 OPS

Jun 2007: .327/.383/.500, 883 OPS

Sep 2009: .279/.359/.471, 830 OPS

Aug 2007: .271/.320/.490, 810 OPS

Apr 2008: .301/.363/.447, 809 OPS

This past month was pretty clearly the best month of Gordon’s career. He not only had an OPS more than 50 points higher than in any previous month, but he set career highs in batting average, OBP, and slugging average. And for all the talk about how Gordon is sacrificing power for average, it’s notable that in only one of the other four months listed above did Gordon have more isolated power (slugging average minus batting average) than he did this April.

However, this is not the best stretch of Gordon’s career. He finished the 2008 season on fire, but he missed three weeks from August 21st to September 14th that season with a mild injury (an oblique pull, if I remember correctly.) So he only batted 69 times in August, and 49 times in September. But he hit .268/.377/.500 in August, and .311/.367/.556 in September.

If you go back to July 27th, from that date until the end of the season, Gordon played 33 games and batted 133 times – a little more than a full month’s worth of action. Compare his numbers then with his numbers this April.

2011: .339/.395/.541

2008: .301/.400/.549

2011: 12 doubles, 2 triples, 2 HRs

2008: 11 doubles, 1 triple, 5 HRs

2011: 8 walks, 21 Ks

2008: 20 walks (3 intentional), 25 Ks

Gordon is rapidly approaching the point at which we can say that he’s never played so well for so long. But he’s not quite there. For the better part of two months in 2008 – his best season – Gordon had a better performance, and a performance that was not nearly as reliant on a high batting average. He hit for more power, and drew a lot more walks. It’s worth noting that Gordon was rarely healthy in 2009 and 2010, and in some ways he may be picking up in 2011 where he left off the 2008 season.

Verdict: I don’t think what Gordon’s doing is sustainable, in the sense that he’s going to hit .339 all year. But I think that, if he stays healthy, the odds that he regresses back to the Gordon of the last two years is remote. He might only be as good as he was in 2008, but the Gordon of 2008 was a pretty good player. If he starts walking more as pitchers realize they have to pitch him more carefully – and I think he will, as patience has always been a signature skill of his – I think he could be even better than that.

And now Francoeur, who in April hit .314/.357/.569, and perhaps more impressively given his reputation, drew 7 walks (one intentional) against 18 strikeouts.

Unlike Gordon, Francoeur has been a very durable player throughout his career, and after debuting in July, 2005, batted at least 70 times in every calendar month from August 2005 until last September, when he batted only 56 times as a bench player for the Rangers. Here are the best months of Francoeur’s career:

Apr 2011: .314/.357/.569, 926 OPS

Apr 2007: .306/.367/.541, 908 OPS

July 2007: .330/.371/.519, 890 OPS

Apr 2010: .284/.355/.531, 886 OPS

Aug 2005: .312/.364/.514, 878 OPS

As streaky a hitter as Francoeur has been in his career, I’ll admit: I expected to find at least one calendar month in his career where he better than he did this April. I did not find one. He has certainly played at close to his April level in the past; it’s not hard to find a month where Francoeur hit over .300 and slugged over .500. But his performance this year is at the top of the list, and when you consider the historically low offensive levels (as Joe and I discuss in this week’s podcast – go to iTunes now and download “The Baseball Show With Rany And Joe”!) so far this season, his numbers are even more impressive.

Like Gordon, though, this is not the hottest stretch of Francoeur’s career. That remains – and probably will always remain – the first six weeks of his career, the six weeks that put him on the cover of Sports Illustrated. In July 2005, he hit .413/.413/.913 in 46 plate appearances. He debuted on July 7th; from that day until August 20th, he hit .379 and slugged .734 in 33 games. He hit 10 homers and 12 doubles in 124 at-bats.

He also did not walk a single time.

Naturally, pitchers adjusted. Obviously, given his track record, Francoeur could not adjust back.

What I think is fascinating about Francoeur’s track record is that he always starts hot. You’ll notice that three of his five best months listed above are Aprils, and one of the remaining two was his first full month in the majors. He hit well in his first two months with the Mets, and in his only month with the Rangers. Francoeur’s career line in April is .278/.321/.483, easily his best line of any month. It’s almost as if, every winter, pitchers forget that Francoeur can’t hit any pitch with a bend in it, and it takes them a few weeks of getting their fastballs crushed to remember.

Whether Francoeur can make the adjustment this year depends on whether he can maintain some semblance of plate discipline. His 6 unintentional walks in April were encouraging, but relative to his history, not unprecedented. He has drawn more than six unintentional walks in a calendar month five times in his career. (He has never drawn more than eight walks of his own accord in a month, however.)

Verdict: It’s been a nice month for Frenchy. But if you don’t mind, let’s hold off on offering him a long-term contract a little while longer.

Programming note: “Rany on the Radio” makes its triumphant return this Thursday at 6 PM. Here’s the setup, basically: unless the Royals are playing at 6 PM (which happens only twice the rest of the season, I think), I will always be on 810 WHB at 6 PM. If the Royals are playing at 7 PM, then I will be on with Danny Clinkscale as part of WHB’s standard pre-game show. If the Royals are off that day, or playing an afternoon game, then I will host “Rany on the Radio” – alone. (My partner in crime the last two seasons, Jason Anderson, now hosts an afternoon show in Louisville, where presumably he’s forced to discuss horse racing or college basketball all the time. The poor thing.)

Rob Neyer has graciously agreed to be my first guest this Thursday, and we’ll – I’ll – probably take callers in the final segment. So those of you who complained that there wasn’t enough Rany on “Rany on the Radio” – well, be careful what you wish for.