Royals Report Card 2011: Part Five.

Finishing up the hitters with the second half of my outfielder review:

Jeff Francoeur: A-

A year ago, Jeff Francoeur was even more of a punch line than Melky Cabrera. Today, well, Francoeur is still a punch line among a certain element of baseball analysts, who believe that his 2011 season 1) was a fluke and/or 2) does not abrogate his horrible performance from 2008 to 2010. But even those analysts who believe that Francoeur will once again be an out machine in 2012 say so with considerably less confidence than before.

I can certainly see the case for their skepticism. Despite having his highest OPS (.805) since his 70-game rookie season, and despite having the best overall season of his career by Baseball-Reference (2.7 bWAR), Francoeur’s improvement was not the result of addressing his biggest weakness, his lack of discipline at the plate. Francoeur actually drew fewer walks (37 to 39) and struck out more times (123 to 111) than he did in 2008. That was the same 2008 season in which Francoeur was a full three games worse than a replacement-level player, one of the ten worst seasons by a position player in the Expansion Era.

But if you look closer, you can see some signs of improvement. I am hardly an expert when it comes to understanding Pitch f/x data, so I apologize if I’m completely misinterpreting the data. But if you compare Francoeur’s performance in 2011 to 2008, here’s what you find:

In 2008, when a pitch was outside the strike zone, Francoeur still swung at it 40.5% of the time. In 2011, he swung only 37.8% of the time. The league as a whole swung at bad pitches 27.6% of the time in 2008, and 28.6% of the time in 2011. I don’t think the entire league suddenly became more aggressive – this is probably an artifact of subtle alterations to the definition of the strike zone by the Pitch f/x computers. So let me phrase it this way: in 2008, Francoeur’s swing rate at bad pitches was 12.9% higher than the average hitter. In 2011, it was 8.8% higher.

In 2008, when Francoeur swung at bad pitches, he made contact 64.8% of the time – 1.1% lower than league average. In 2011, he made contact 72.4% of the time – 7.7% higher than league average.

Francoeur’s swing rate and contact rate on pitches within the strike zone did not appear to change significantly. But in 2011 he swung at fewer bad pitches, and took better swings at those pitches, than he did in 2008, or even in 2010. The improvement in his selectivity wasn’t enormous, and frankly it wasn’t enough by itself to explain his performance at the plate. But it was, at least, part of the answer.

The one other data point at Fangraphs that stands out is the data which breaks down Francoeur’s performance by pitch type. Frenchy showed, by far, his greatest improvement against fastballs – he was 6 runs above average against the heater, compared to 16 runs below average in 2010. That would go against the narrative that Francoeur improved when he stopped swinging at breaking stuff in the dirt.

Single-season data is fluky, and 2010 might be an outlier – he was above-average against fastballs in 2009, and terrible against sliders. From 2008 to 2010, he was 19.8 runs below average against the fastball, but 20.6 runs below average against sliders. In 2011, he was +6 against fastballs, and +2.7 against sliders. It’s fair to say that he showed significant improvement against both pitches.

My impression from watching Francoeur is this: he was a little better at laying off waste pitches down-and-away. He was also surprisingly good at dropping the bat head on inside fastballs and turning on them, whether for doubles down the line or homers into the left-field bleachers. The data certainly doesn’t contradict that. Francoeur was a little choosier about which pitches to swing at, but he was also served well by a new approach to inside fastballs.

The end result of his altered approach was a very solid .285/.329/.476 season, including 47 doubles, which nearly led the league. (After Ned Yost benched Francoeur for the last five games, Miguel Cabrera snuck past him with 48.) He hit right-handers for a line of .279/.318/.445, which is better than what he had done against all pitchers in his career (.270/.313/.433), and he crushed left-handers (.302/.363/.570).

Francoeur stole 22 bases, nearly equally the 23 bases he stole in the previous six years combined. He threw out 16 baserunners, which ranked second to Alex Gordon in all of baseball, and the amazing thing is that Francoeur threw out baserunners at pretty much his career rate. When you combine strength with accuracy, Francoeur might well have the best arm of any outfielder in the majors. (Francoeur’s arm alone has been worth somewhere between 5 and 8 runs a season, which is remarkable.)

So it was a good season, better than a lot of people thought possible, and there’s a lesson in that. It is very hard for me to write about the lessons learned without coming off as smug, given that I loved the Melky Cabrera signing and advocated that the Royals acquire Francoeur back in 2009. But I’ll try, and please forgive me if I fail.

In the three-division era (since 1995), 22 different players have played in 120 or more games in a season at the age of 21 or less. Here’s a list of those players, roughly in order of (present and future) career value:

Alex Rodriguez

Albert Pujols

Miguel Cabrera

Andruw Jones

Adrian Beltre

Justin Upton

Mike Stanton

Ryan Zimmerman

Jason Heyward

Eric Hosmer

Carl Crawford

Edgar Renteria

Elvis Andrus

Freddie Freeman

Starlin Castro

Melky Cabrera

Jose Guillen

Delmon Young

Cristian Guzman

Rocco Baldelli

Luis Rivas

Mike Caruso

Remember, the only qualification to make this list is to have played in 120 games in a season by age 21 – it didn’t matter how well or poorly the player performed. And yet: look at that list. You’ve got Mike Caruso, who somehow dinked his way to a .306 average for the 1998 White Sox, and was never heard from again. Luis Rivas was a bad defensive second baseman as a rookie and never improved. Rocco Baldelli had a pair of good seasons before he was felled by a rare mitochondrial disorder.

Every other player on that list has gone to a long, and in most cases excellent, career. Cristian Guzman, as a rookie, was just this side of Tony Pena Jr bad: he hit .226/.267/.276. But he was a 21-year-old rookie. The next year he led the AL with 20 triples, and the year after that he hit .302/.337/.477. His career petered out after 1406 games. Jose Guillen, who I ranked 17th out of 22 players, spent 14 seasons in the majors and played in 1650 games. At least half the players listed above have Hall of Fame possibilities.

Melky Cabrera is on that list. Jeff Francoeur is not, because he wasn’t called up as a rookie until mid-season – but he was so exceptional as a rookie that he was worth 2.5 bWAR in just 70 games. Among all players 21 or younger since 1995, Francoeur’s rookie season was the 16th-best. Only three other players in the Top 25 played in fewer than 100 games: Brett Lawrie last season, Adam Dunn, and Jose Reyes.

You might think, from my past writings on the topic, that player age is a bit of an obsession for me. You’re probably right – but only because I think that most people don’t comprehend just how important it is. For position players, it’s absolutely vital. As the list above shows, if a player is talented enough to play every day in the majors by the time he’s 21, it almost doesn’t matter how well he performs – he’s talented enough to have a long and successful career.

Cabrera was talented enough at age 21 to be the starting left fielder for the New York Yankees, on their way to winning the AL East for the ninth straight year. Francoeur was talented enough to be the everyday right fielder for an Atlanta Braves team that was on its way to finishing in first place for the 14th time in 15 years. That talent was largely wasted by both players over the next few years – Cabrera because he got out of shape, Francoeur because he never learned the strike zone. But the talent was still there.

Cabrera was 26 for most of last season. Francoeur was 27. Those are the two most common ages for a hitter to have his best season. Just like how some presumed washed-up former child stars come back to have a second career, Cabrera and Francoeur were both young enough to do the same. Sure, some child stars are fated to be Gary Coleman or Emmanuel Lewis. But some turn out to be Jason Bateman or Neil Patrick Harris. The Royals spent less than $4 million combined to find out whether either one was salvageable - and they got savaged for it.

There is a term used among fantasy baseball adherents to talk about players who were hyped prospects once upon a time, and then went bust, and just as they were over-rated when they were young and their upside appeared limitless, they’ve become under-rated now that the shine has worn off. They’re called “post-hype sleepers”. That’s what Francoeur and Cabrera were: post-hype sleepers. They were such deep sleepers, in fact, that even people who were familiar with the strategy thought that Dayton Moore was insane. He wasn’t. For at least one off-season, failed phenoms were the new market inefficiency, and Moore profited greatly from it.

He then doubled down on Francoeur, and it remains to be seen how that investment will turn out. You’ll recall that I was not partial to Francoeur’s extension at the time. However, two of my main objections to the deal have dissipated. My first objection was that the Royals gave him that extension in mid-August, when we had just four months of data suggesting he was an improved hitter. He could have easily gone in the tank over the last six weeks and the contract would already look like an albatross before it started. But after the signing, Francoeur actually performed better – he hit .313/.328/.523 in his last 30 games. (Albeit with just two walks – one intentional – and 26 strikeouts.) Waiting until the end of the season would not have lowered Francoeur’s market value – it might have increased it.

My second concern was that Francoeur was not as strong a fit for the Royals’ lineup as Melky Cabrera or Lorenzo Cain, because Cain provided defense and Cabrera provided the switch-hitting bat. That concern remains, but the Royals managed to solve their outfield glut while getting good value in return, by turning Cabrera into Jonathan Sanchez.

The lineup still tilts to the right too much – Gordon, Hosmer, and Moustakas are the only left-handed bats most nights – but I’d argue that upgrading the defense in centerfield means more to the 2012 Royals than having a fourth left-handed stick. The problem is that the right-handed lean to the Royals lineup is not just a problem for 2012. While the Royals are loaded to the gills with left-handed pitchers, they don’t have a single left-handed-hitting prospect of any note in the minor leagues. Balancing the lineup will be an ongoing project for the Royals’ front office for the next several years. But if you’re only going to go with three left-handed hitters, you could do a lot worse than Gordon, Hosmer, and Moustakas. So long as those three stay healthy, the lack of lineup balance won’t be a critical concern.

Also, we now have a number of similar contracts handed out to free-agent outfielders this winter, to compare with Francoeur’s deal:

Jeff Francoeur: 2.7 bWAR (2011), 3.3 bWAR (2009-2011), 2 years, $13.5 million

Coco Crisp: 2.1, 5.9, 2 years, $14 million

Jason Kubel: 1.3, 5.2, 2 years, $15 million

Josh Willingham: 1.8, 6.3, 3 years, $21 million

Francoeur had a better 2011 than any of the others, but had the worst three-year performance by far. Where you’d place Francoeur among his peers depends entirely on how much weight you place on his 2011 performance.

But Francoeur has two undeniable advantages. The first is that he has the least pricey contract. The difference with Crisp and Kubel is miniscule, but the third-year commitment for Willingham is a big strike against him.

The other edge for Francoeur is, once again, his age. Francoeur just turned 28 last week. Kubel will be 30 in May, Crisp is 32, and Willingham will be 30 before the season begins. Francoeur will be younger at the end of his contract than the other three at the beginning of theirs.

And then there’s the whole issue of Francoeur’s clubhouse influence. I have no doubt that the value of a player’s leadership in the clubhouse is overrated by insiders. I also have no doubt that it exists. I have no way to quantify its importance, but common sense tells me that having a player with a strong work ethic, and who is willing to impart that work ethic on his fellow teammates, is a lot more important on a team brimming with rookies and sophomores than on a team full of veterans.

If having Francoeur around to guide them makes it, say, 5% more likely that Hosmer and Moustakas reach their potential, to say nothing of Giavotella or Salvador Perez or even some of the pitchers, that effect would almost certainly be undetectable even if there was a way to measure it. And yet that effect would almost certainly be worth seven figures. I can’t prove that Francoeur has that effect, but “unprovable” is not the same as “non-existent”. Even stat guys have to take some things on faith. Everything I know about Francoeur tells me that he’s a positive influence on his younger teammates. That doesn’t justify a long-term deal to an undeserving player, but for a borderline case like Francoeur, that matters.

So call me crazy, but gun to my head, I’d rather have Francoeur under the terms of his contract than any of the other guys above on the terms of theirs. There’s a risk that Frenchy turns back into a punchline, sure. But you have to endure some risk to get a reward, and if Francoeur comes even close to duplicating last year’s performance, there will be a reward. So I’ve staked out a place of my own in the French Quarter. Go ahead and laugh at me. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Alex Gordon: A

And speaking of post-hype sleepers…going into 2011, Gordon was pretty much the definition of the term. In fact, googling the phrase led me straight to this column from last spring, and Gordon was the very first name on the list.

Of course, Gordon could have been the very first name on the list in 2010…or 2009. And there was a very real worry that if he was still on that list in 2012, it wouldn’t have been in a Royals uniform.

Instead, by year’s end the only lists Gordon was on was at the bottom of a few MVP ballots. He hit for average (.303), he hit for power (23 homers, 45 doubles), he drew walks (67, which led the team), he stole bases (17 in 25 attempts), he played good defense (he won a Gold Glove*), and it was as if 2009 and 2010 never happened.

*: I said he won a Gold Glove. I didn’t say he deserved it. My apologies to Brett Gardner.

Seriously, if you just erased 2009 and 2010 from his stat line, Gordon’s progression as a player looks completely normal: College Player of the Year at age 21, Minor League Player of the Year at age 22, a somewhat disappointing rookie season at age 23, an above-average season at age 24, and an All-Star-caliber season at age 27. Just never mind what he did at ages 25 and 26.

In pointed contrast to Francoeur, I don’t know anyone – stat analyst or scout – who thinks that Gordon’s breakout was a fluke. That doesn’t mean he won’t regress a little this season, because he might. But the base skills that produced 5.9 Wins Above Replacement – the best season by any Royals position player since Carlos Beltran in 2003 – are legitimate. As much as I write about how the Royals need to sign Edwin Jackson or Roy Oswalt, the reality is that the Royals’ #1 priority is still to sign Gordon to a contract extension that keeps him in Kansas City through at least 2015.

There’s no obvious reason why a deal won’t get done, and frankly I’m a little disappointed it hasn’t already. That was always part of the appeal with Gordon, why he was such a perfect player to be on the board when the Royals had the #2 overall pick in 2005: he’s from Nebraska, he grew up a Royals fan, he has a brother named Brett for God’s sake. Scott Boras is not his agent. He’s not Eric Hosmer, where you pretty much knew from the moment he was drafted that in a perfect world where he turned into a superstar, he was ours for six-plus years and then off to the highest bidder. Gordon seemed like a guy whose greatness wouldn’t prevent him from sticking around a while. And here we are, he’s coming off a great year, he’s two years from free agency and he’s expressed a willingness to sign a long-term deal. Let’s get this done, guys.

The most comparable long-term extension given to a player approaching free agency this winter was the one Howie Kendrick inked with the Angels. Kendrick has had a similar career arc as Gordon: massively hyped in the minor leagues (where he had a .360 career average), some early success in the majors (he hit .314/.340/.435 in 2007-2008 combined), followed by consecutively disappointing seasons in 2009 and 2010. Like Gordon, Kendrick had his best season in 2011, hitting .285/.338/.464 and making his first All-Star team. He also plays a fine second base, so while he wasn’t as valuable as Gordon was, he was closer than you might think – he had 4.3 bWAR, which is a very good number.

Kendrick signed for 4 years and $33.5 million. While he didn’t have as good a season in 2011, he also never struggled as badly as Gordon did in 2009 and 2010. He’s about seven months older than Gordon. Most importantly, he was going to be a free agent in one year, not two. Add all the factors together, and while I think Gordon can ask for more, I don’t think it’s a lot more.

I said during the season that Gordon probably was worth somewhere between $38 and $42 million for a four-year deal, and those numbers still fit. Maybe on the high side if there’s an option year, maybe on the low side if Gordon wants a no-trade clause, but those are details best left for the two sides to negotiate. The big picture is this: Gordon wants to stay, the Royals can afford to pay him, and they absolutely can’t afford for him to leave. Get it done, guys. Everyone – myself included – will sleep better at night.

If it’s going to happen, it will probably happen soon. In the last 12 hours, Brayan Pena and Chris Getz have agreed to terms on a contract. There’s a reason for the timing here – the deadline to exchange arbitration figures is tomorrow. Dayton Moore is a student of the Braves Way, and the Braves have long had a policy that if they don’t come to terms with a player before both sides have to exchange figures, then they will see the process through – meaning they will go to an arbitration hearing no matter what.

The rationale is that, if a player knows that the team will put them through the arbitration process, they will be more motivated to get a deal done before figures are exchanged – and by and large that has been the case, as I’m pretty sure the Royals haven’t had an arbitration hearing with a single player since Moore became the GM. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong.)

The one exception to this policy is if a player is willing to sign a long-term deal. Last January, Billy Butler exchanged numbers with the Royals – and one week later, on January 23rd, they announced a four-year deal. I suspect the same thing will happen here – once the Royals put all their other contracts to bed, they can devote all their resources to getting Gordon signed for the long term. But if Moore and Gordon aren’t shaking hands at the front of a press conference by month’s end, getting antsy is a perfectly justifiable reaction.

Mitch Maier: C+

Poor Mitch Maier. It’s hard to be on a team’s active roster all season long and wind up with fewer than 100 at-bats, but that’s what happens when the three outfielders in front of you avoid injury all season and all have the best seasons of their career. Maier batted so infrequently that when he finally got some pity playing time in the last three games of the season, he went 1-for-9…and it nearly ruined his season numbers. He was batting .244/.365/.360 until then, and his final line was .232/.345/.337, which is borderline acceptable at best for a backup outfielder.

In Maier’s defense, it’s not really fair to judge him based on 113 plate appearances. On the other hand, Maier’s career line is .253/.332/.346. This is who he is. He has no power, and he doesn’t hit for a high average. It’s a credit to him that he’s made himself a viable major leaguer anyway – he has the highest walk rate on the team, he’s a good baserunner, he isn’t vulnerable to left-handed pitching (he’s actually hit lefties slightly better than right-handers for his career), he can play all three outfield positions adequately, and he understands and has embraced his role as a bench player.

Is that enough to keep him in the majors? It really depends on how large a bench the Royals want. The Royals will be keeping a backup catcher (Brayan Pena) and a utility infielder (Yuniesky Betancourt). Even with the mammoth 12-man pitching staffs that teams like to employ these days, that still leaves two open roster spots. It would make more sense for the Royals to employ Jarrod Dyson, who does two things (run and play the outfield) better than Maier, and Clint Robinson, who does one very important thing (hit) better than Maier. (I don’t think Robinson will ever hit well enough to play every day, but as a pinch-hitting threat he has his uses.)

But the Royals are making noises about starting the season with thirteen pitchers, which is absurd, as it would leave them with a three-man bench. If that’s the case, though, then Maier is probably the best choice for the job. He can’t run as fast as Dyson, but he runs fast enough that he can pinch-run for Billy Butler and Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez. He doesn’t hit as well as Robinson, but he hits well enough to pinch-hit for Alcides Escobar against right-handed pitchers, and against certain pitchers he might be a better option than Perez or Giavotella or Cain. His jack-of-all-trades skill set makes him the best option for a roster spot that requires him to do a little of everything. But the Royals as a team would be better off splitting that role into two parts. And if they do the right thing, Maier may find himself the last guy without a chair at the end of spring training.

Royals Report Card 2011: Part Four.

We continue to wait and hope for the price tag on either Edwin Jackson or Roy Oswalt to drop, Dutch auction-style, until Dayton Moore puts up his hand. In the meantime, let’s move on to the DHs (i.e. Billy Butler) and the first half of the outfield corps:

Billy Butler: C+

In 2011, Butler did pretty much what he did in 2010 and 2009, and for many, doing the same was a disappointment. He played every day and hit a ton of doubles. He hit for a good average, he drew a fair amount of walks, and didn’t strike out a lot. But he only hit 19 home runs, and unless and until he hits 25 homers and drives in 100 runs – neither of which he’s ever done – Butler’s lack of power will be the first thing that comes to mind for a large portion of the Royals’ fan base.

Let’s look at these one by one:

He played every day. Butler played in 159 games in 2011. He played in 158 games in 2010, and 159 games in 2009. Butler is the first player in Royals history to play in 154 or more games in three consecutive seasons. In fact, the only other Royal to play in 158 games in any three different seasons is Kevin Seitzer, who did so in 1987, 1989, and 1990. Butler may look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, but on the field he’s the closest thing the Royals have to Iron Man.

He hit a ton of doubles. Butler hit 44 doubles last year; he hit 45 doubles in 2010 and 51 doubles in 2009. That’s three consecutive seasons with at least 44 doubles. No other Royal has hit 44 doubles in any three different seasons. You’d be forgiven for thinking that 44 doubles in a season is no big deal, given that Butler was joined by the entire Royals starting outfield in that department in 2011. But it is, and it goes a long way towards compensating for his lack of light-tower power.

He hit for a good average. Butler only hit .291 last year, down from .318 and .301 the two previous seasons. That looks like a fluke, or at least it’s entirely BABIP-driven – his batting average on balls in play was .316, down from .341 and .332. The difference between hitting .290 and .310 isn’t a huge deal, in all honesty, but for however much it matters, Butler’s “true” talent level is probably slightly north of .300, and he can be expected to rebound slightly in that regard.

He drew a fair amount of walks, and didn’t strike out a lot. Butler drew 66 walks, down from a career-high 69 in 2010, and struck out 95 times, up from 78 the year before. He was given an intentional pass a career-high 15 times, five of them by April 17th, before Eric Hosmer was promoted. Butler probably was a tad more aggressive at the plate than in previous years, but not enough to be concerned. He managed a .360+ OBP for the third straight year.

Short of going the Eddie Yost route and embarking on a mission to walk 100 times a year, Butler’s about as valuable as a DH can be without hitting more than 15-20 homers a season. That is to say, he’s a nice piece to the lineup, and he’s worth the $8 million he’ll be paid annually for the next three years. But he’s not a star.

As it’s been said the last three years, what will determine whether Butler can make the leap to stardom is whether he can hit more balls over the fence – and what will determine whether he can hit more balls over the fence is whether he can hit more balls in the air, period. He made modest improvements in that regard last year. Prior to 2011, Butler hit groundballs 47-48% of the time, and flyballs about 34% of the time. Last year his groundball rate dropped to 45.6%, and his flyball rate inched upwards to 35.8%, per Fangraphs. Most notably, after grounding into a franchise-record 32 double plays in 2010, he hit into only 16 last year, his lowest total in a full season.

Butler turns 26 in April. While 27 is the most common age for a position player to have the best season of his career, 26 might be the most common age for an already-established major league hitter to take a leap forward from his previous performance.

I have no idea whether Butler will make that leap, or take a small step, or inch forward at a snail’s pace. What I do know is that if he doesn’t improve one bit, he’s still an incredibly useful player and an integral part of what the Royals will try to accomplish over the next three years. But if he could figure out a way to turn a dozen of those balls off the wall into balls in the bleachers, well, that wouldn’t suck.

Melky Cabrera: A-

The Royals don’t have a long history of players who had great one-and-done seasons in a Royals uniform. There is Jay Bell, of course, who came over in that weird deal with the Pirates after the 1996 season, when the Royals traded Joe Randa and three pitchers named Jeff (Granger, Martin, and Wallace) for Bell and another Jeff, King. Bell was only under contract for one season, but what a season it was: he hit .291/.368/.461 with 21 homers and 71 walks as a shortstop.

Per Baseball-Reference, Bell was worth 5.3 Wins Above Replacement in 1997, easily the best season ever by a Royals shortstop, and the best season by any Royals hitter from 1986 to 2000. The Diamondbacks then signed him as a free agent in their inaugural season; the Royals got two draft picks, which they then wasted on Matt Burch and Chris George.

That very same year, the Royals employed Chili Davis as their DH. Davis had also been acquired in a savvy deal, as Herk Robinson dealt Mark Gubicza – who made all of two starts for the Angels before it became clear to everyone that he was finished – and marginal pitching prospect Mike Bovee* to Anaheim for Davis. Davis was 37, under contract for just one year, and hadn’t played the field in years. But he could hit. He batted .279/.386/.509 with 30 homers and 85 walks. Per Baseball-Reference, he was worth a respectable 2.3 WAR. (This was the peak of the high-offense era, and this was when the Royals had moved the fences in at Kauffman Stadium, making it one of the better hitters’ parks in the game.)

*: Long-time readers may have heard me say this before, but without Mike Bovee, I might never have started writing about baseball. But that’s a story for another day.

There aren’t a whole lot of others. The Royals have had 121 seasons from a position player with at least 2.3 WAR. Aside from Bell and Davis, the only other season that ranks in the Top 121 from a player who spent just that one season with the Royals is by Richie Scheinblum, in 1972. Scheinblum was purchased from the Texas Rangers after the 1971 season, then hit .300/.383/.418 for the Royals. If those numbers don’t impress you, they should; the AL hit .239/.306/.343 as a whole, which is why that winter the AL owners voted for the creation of the designated hitter.

And now…Melky Cabrera. Like Scheinblum, and unlike Bell and Davis, the Royals acquired Cabrera when he was essentially an unwanted commodity; the Royals inked him to a one-year, $1.25 million contract, and even that modest commitment had some fans up in arms. He then went out and hit .305/.339/.470. He became the first Royal with 200 base hits since 2000, and he also had 309 total bases, the most by any Royal since 2002.

Those numbers aren’t quite as good as they look, because Cabrera had plenty of opportunities to get them. The combination of playing every day, hitting at the top of the lineup, and rarely walking meant that Cabrera finished with 658 at-bats, the third-most in Royals history. Still, they were excellent numbers; it was easily the best season of his career. He also stole 20 bases, after never stealing more than 13 in a season. It’s amazing what you can do when you’re not fat.

The fly in the ointment was Melky’s defense, although its impact is debatable. Baseball-Reference rated his defense as 19 runs below average in 2011, which is terrible, and limited his overall value to 2.9 WAR (still a good season). But Fangraphs’ UZR system rated his defense at 7 runs below average, and Baseball Info Solutions’ +/- system rated him at just 3 runs below average. Gun to my head and I had to choose just one rating, I like BIS the most, but it’s always best to look at a range of data.

Cabrera’s season was so out of character for him that it’s possible, even though he’s still just 27, that the Royals enjoyed the best season he’ll ever have. Even if he does have a better year, it’s almost certain that no team will ever get more bang for their buck than the Royals got for $1.25 million.

Scheinblum was one-and-done with the Royals because, after the 1972 season, the Royals packaged him with Roger Nelson (who had just set the franchise record with a 2.08 ERA) to the Reds for Wayne Simpson…and Hal McRae. (There’s a reason why Cedric Tallis needs to be inducted into the Royals’ Hall of Fame this winter.) There’s no way that Jonathan Sanchez, who will be a free agent in a year, can live up to that deal. But turning $1.25 million into one excellent season from a centerfielder into a left-handed starter that struck out 200 batters two years ago may wind up being one of the great transaction series in Dayton Moore’s career.

Lorenzo Cain: B

Pity the Painkiller. In 2010, he reaches the major leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers at the age of 24, and proceeds to hit .306 over the next two months. Then the Brewers decide they’re going to go for it in 2011, and trade for Zack Greinke…and he’s part of the trade to Kansas City.

But wait, there’s more! Nine days before the trade, the Royals had signed Melky Cabrera, and guaranteed him their everyday centerfield job. We love you, Lorenzo, but even though you had a great year in the minors, and you hit over .300 in the majors, and you’re about to turn 25…we’re going to have to send you back to Omaha to start the season. But don’t worry – if Melky hits like he has in the past, you’ll be up to take his job by May!

Given the circumstances, it would have been understandable if Cain became somewhat disillusioned and had a subpar year. But I was told at the time of the trade that Cain had a great disposition, and if he was disappointed by his situation, he hid it well. He hit .312/.380/.497 in Omaha while waiting for an opening that – understandably – never came. After never hitting more than 11 homers in a season before, he cranked out 16. And now, an everyday job in the majors appears to be his.

If there’s one concern I have with Cain, it’s that after showing impressive plate discipline in 2010 – he walked 45 times in 84 games and had a .402 OBP in the minors – he fell off in that department last year. He drew fewer walks (40) despite playing 128 games in Omaha. However, he also set a career high with 15 hit-by-pitches. That may be a cheap way to get on base, but it still counts on the scoreboard, and Cain’s OBP in Omaha was still .380.

He turns 26 in April, so it’s now or never for Cain. Cain is as experienced as any serious prospect the Royals have had in recent memory; he’s played 156 games in Triple-A, and 144 in Double-A, along with his successful stint with the Brewers in 2010. (By serious prospect, I mean guys that the Royals genuinely liked, as opposed to someone like Kila Ka’aihue or Mike Aviles, who only got an opportunity to play grudgingly.)

For Cain, this means that there should be no adjustment process to the major leagues, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he comes out of the gate as one of the Royals’ hottest hitters in April. For the Royals, it means the days of rushing guys to the major leagues are long over. Cain won’t match his performance in Omaha from last season, or Cabrera’s performance with the Royals. But he ought to hit .275/.330/.410 or thereabouts, with improved defense and speed. He’s not someone you’d want to make a long-term commitment to, both because of his ability and his age. But he’s a perfectly respectable short-term solution in centerfield, and if all goes according to plan, the bridge to the Bubba Starling Era in Kansas City.

Jarrod Dyson: C+

“Once [Dave] Roberts got to Boston, he mostly sat. And sat. The manager kept an eye on him but didn’t call his name very often. It was as if Roberts had changed from a ballplayer into some kind of glass-front box with the words break in case of need for stolen base stenciled on the front. But Epstein’s orthodoxy, reinforced by special adviser Bill James, the creator of the whole analytical business that had debunked stolen bases in the first place, held that if you built the right kind of team, Roberts’s skill set would be largely extraneous. Except—and this was the key part of it, the flexible part of it that most people didn’t get—except when it was necessary.

And so here Roberts was, glass broken, standing on first base with Bill Mueller at the plate, the only potential run of the year that mattered anymore. It was a desperate moment, but nonetheless a moment that had been planned for. That was the difference between this time around and 1949, 1978, 2003, and all the other disappointments of the last century. God was in the details, and so were playoff victories. And the Red Sox were finally looking after the details.”

- From the prologue to Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning

Coming into the 2011 season, I don’t think the Royals knew exactly what they had in Jarrod Dyson. I don’t think any of us knew. That’s not surprising, given that Dyson came into professional baseball with precious little experience – there’s a reason he was a 50th-round draft pick – and then, owing to frequent nagging injuries, played in only 305 minor-league games in his first five seasons.

The best thing for Dyson would have been a full year in Triple-A, but Ned Yost could not resist the temptation to keep Dyson around for the first six weeks of the season as a pinch-runner and occasional defensive replacement. Dyson eventually got everyday playing time in Omaha, but only played in 83 games for the Storm Chasers.

In the end, we did learn some things about Dyson. We learned that he’s not a complete cipher at the plate; he hit .279 in Omaha, his highest batting average at any minor league stop that lasted for more than three weeks, and after hitting two home runs in his first five seasons combined, he hit three in 2011 alone. We learned that unlike a lot of speed goofs, he’ll take a walk every now and then. In 129 career games at Triple-A, Dyson has a line of .276/.345/.354, which is respectable.

We learned that these incremental improvements aside, Dyson’s bat is unlikely to keep him in a major league lineup on an everyday basis. My hopes that he might be the new Gary Pettis, modest though they might be, seem unlikely to be realized. If he has a career in the major leagues, it’s almost certainly as a bench player.

But we learned – if we didn’t know already – that he has the potential to be a game-changer off the bench.

Dyson had already demonstrated not just elite speed, but the ability to use that speed in a baseball context. Joey Gathright, for all his speed, was never all that good at stealing bases. But prior to 2011, Dyson had 131 steals in 163 attempts in the minor leagues, an excellent 80% success rate. For a guy who was still learning how to play the game, that was impressive.

In 2011, he took it up a notch. In those 83 games for Omaha, Dyson stole 38 bases – in 40 attempts. Combine that with his performance in Omaha in late 2010, and in 129 games he is 51-for-56 at that level, a 91.1% success rate.

He hasn’t been that good in the major leagues – his success rate drops all the way to 90.9%. In 2010, he stole 9 bases in 10 attempts during his September callup; his one caught stealing was actually a pickoff by the pitcher when he took off for third base too early. In 2011, Dyson stole 11 more bases before he was finally thrown out for the first time by a catcher* in the final game of the season.

*: Well, other than Salvador Perez in spring training.

“When I was with the Dodgers,” Roberts reflects, “Maury Wills once told me that there will come a point in my career when everyone in the ballpark will know that I have to steal a base, and I will steal that base. When I got out there, I knew that was what Maury Wills was talking about.”

Dyson reached base safely 16 times with the Royals last season. He pinch-ran another 12 times. He stole 11 bases. When Dyson reached base, there was about a 40% chance that he’d steal another – and remember, in some of those instances the base in front of him was occupied, or the score wasn’t close. When Dyson reached base, everyone in the ballpark knew that he was going to try to steal, and he usually did anyway.

That’s quite a useful skill.

On top of that, Dyson continued to put up frankly ridiculous defensive statistics on those rare occasions when he got to play the field. Dyson has played just 228 innings in the field in the major leagues, the equivalent of about 25 full games. The defensive metrics out there (Fangraphs, Total Zone, BIS’ +/-) rate him as somewhere between 5 and 8 runs better than your average centerfielder in that span. Over the course of a full season, that would come out to somewhere between 30 and 50 runs above average. That’s insane.

Between his speed and his defense, Dyson has two elite skills that would make him a fantastic bench player. The irony is that with Lorenzo Cain subbing for Melky Cabrera, the need for a defensive upgrade in the late innings has gone down significantly. Even so, if the Royals are serious about contending in 2012 and beyond, having a bench player that can win them a game with his legs is an asset worth holding on to. Dyson’s already 27; it’s time to stop worrying about what Dyson could become in future with the chance to play every day, and it’s time to focus on how he can help the ballclub right now.

And if the Royals should find themselves, at some point in the future, in an elimination playoff game, down a run to Mariano Rivera, and Billy Butler leads off with a walk…well, it would be awfully nice to have Jarrod Dyson behind that glass.

“Rivera got set in the stretch, looked once more at Roberts, then committed to home plate with a barely perceptible transfer of weight to his right foot, his left foot now rising off the mound.

But Roberts was already gone, digging toward second, erasing the past with every step.”

YUUUUUUU-NOOOOOOO!

I swear, sometimes I think Dayton Moore is deliberately screwing with us.

Like the swallows to Capistrano, like the Trekkies to Comic-Con, Yuniesky Betancourt has returned home. The Kansas City Royals, the one organization in baseball with a greater disregard for the importance of plate discipline than Yuni himself, has welcomed the prodigal son back into its bosom. And I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The decision to re-sign Betancourt is really the quintessential Dayton Moore transaction: completely unexpected, laughable, infuriating, completely tone-deaf to the hard-core fan base – and yet, if you look at it in a certain light, it actually makes a perverse kind of sense. Depending on how willing you are to swallow the party line, you can actually convince yourself that it’s a good signing.

Start with the obvious: the Royals did not bring Betancourt back to be their everyday shortstop, or their everyday anything, really. They re-signed him with the explicit understand that he will be the team’s utility infielder, backing up at three positions and starting at none. While Yuni is patently unqualified to be a starting shortstop, pretty much every utility infielder in the major leagues is unqualified to be a starting shortstop – that’s why they’re on the bench.

By way of comparison, the Royals were rumored to be interested in signing Edgar Renteria for that role, and I was kind of excited by that possibility. There are guys enshrined in the Hall of Fame that didn’t have demonstrably better careers than Renteria has had. (That’s not an endorsement of Renteria for the Hall; it’s an indictment of the people who voted for Travis Jackson or Rabbit Maranville.) Renteria made it to the major leagues when he was 19*, and hit .309/.358/.399 as a rookie for the Marlins.

*: It was thought at the time that Renteria was 20 years old. A few years later it was revealed that Renteria had lied about his age and was just 15 when he signed. Baseball-reference.com has his correct age, but to this day, for some reason the Bill James Handbook still lists him as being a year older than he is.

The following year Renteria became one of the few people in major-league history with a walk-off, World Series-ending hit, as the Marlins won a world championship. In 2003, he hit .330/.394/.480 for the Cardinals, and went back to the World Series with St. Louis the following year. As recently as 2007, he hit .332/.390/.470 for the Braves. He’s won two Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers, and made five All-Star teams.

And with all that, I’m not sure he would be a better choice for the Royals’ utility infielder in 2012.

Renteria is 35 years old; Yuni turns 30 next month. This season, Renteria hit .251/.306/.348 in part-time play for the Reds, good for an OPS+ of 78. Yuni, playing every day for the Brewers, hit .252/.271/.381, for a 75 OPS+. Over the last three seasons – and remember, this includes Yuni’s atrocious 2009 campaign – Betancourt actually has a higher OPS+ (77) than Renteria (76).

You may have heard that Betancourt, despite being signed as a utility infielder, has only played nine games at second base in his career, and has never played third. Well, Renteria has all of seven innings of experience at second base, and has also never played the hot corner.

Yet somehow, I doubt that signing Renteria would have generated even a fraction of the anger that Betancourt’s signing did. Will McDonald, whose writing I greatly respect, tweeted in the aftermath of the press release: “What we learned today, once and for all: Royals will never make the playoffs under Dayton Moore.” I would have more sympathy for that position if, you know, Betancourt hadn’t just been the starting shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers, who won the NL Central and came within two games of the World Series.

Yes, Betancourt is a crappy player – but utility players are supposed to be crappy. Look around the majors. The Red Sox just guaranteed Nick Punto two years to be their utility guy. Punto had a fluky .388 OBP in 2011, in very limited playing time, but over the last three years he has a .241/.339/.315 line – good for a 79 OPS+ – and he’s 34. Our old pal Willie Bloomquist, who also has a 79 OPS+ over the last three years and is also 34, also got two guaranteed years from the Diamondbacks.

Incredibly enough, Bloomquist isn’t even the worst utility player the Diamondbacks signed to a two-year deal this winter. They also re-upped John McDonald, the David Howard of his generation (career line of .238/.275/.326, and a 59 OPS+), for two years.

If we focus on just the other four teams in the AL Central, here are some of the guys used in a utility infielder role in 2011:

Adam Everett (166 innings between shortstop, third base, and second base)

Orlando Cabrera (743 innings)

Ramon Santiago (642 innings)

Omar Vizquel (384 innings)

Luke Hughes (405 innings)

Trevor Plouffe (524 innings)

Matt Tolbert (491 innings)

None of these guys were exactly the second coming of Tony Phillips, or even Bill Pecota. I mean, Omar Vizquel is 67 years old*, and played all around the White Sox infield last season.

*: Approximate.

So in terms of quality, it’s hard to argue that Yuniesky Betancourt is not qualified for work as a team’s utility infielder. Yeah, he’s a terrible defensive shortstop, and he won’t suddenly become a better defensive shortstop coming off the bench. On the other hand, he has significantly more power than your typical utility infielder. He has a career .391 slugging average, and has hit 29 home runs the last two years. McDonald has hit 21 homers in his entire 13-year career.

It’s true that Betancourt has no real experience at second base or third base, but I don’t see any reason why he can’t adapt to both positions in fairly short order. The reality is that most veteran utility infielders spent most, if not all, of their careers as everyday shortstops until one day they weren’t. Vizquel, for instance, never started a game anywhere but at shortstop for the first twenty years of his career. Then, in 2009, with no team willing to give him a starting job at shortstop anymore, he seamlessly made the transition (at age 42) to being a utility infielder, and has performed that role ably for the last three years.

Renteria, as noted, may be making the same transition Betancourt’s being asked to make. Miguel Tejada played only shortstop for his first 13 years before moving to third base, and last year started a few games at second. Orlando Cabrera started at no position other than shortstop from 2000 through 2010, until he transitioned to a utility role this year. And so on.

So, IF the Royals use Betancourt in a pure backup role, I think he will prove up to the role. If 2011 was any indication, Ned Yost is going to ride his starters as much as possible anyway. Alcides Escobar played in 158 games this season. Even if Yost dials him back to 150 starts, that’s just 12 games that Betancourt starts at shortstop. Let’s say that Yost starts Mike Moustakas 150 times at third base, giving Betancourt the opportunity to start 12 times against tough* left-handers. Betancourt is a career .275/.308/.421 hitter vs. LHP; it won’t be the end of the world if he’s in the lineup against a southpaw.

*: By “tough”, I don’t mean “elite”, although I worry that’s what the Royals mean. I mean “left-handers who, by nature of their delivery, are much more difficult on left-handed hitters than right-handed hitters.”

So in an ideal world, Betancourt gets a couple dozen starts, maybe bats 100 or 150 times on the season, and all the anger about his return to Kansas City turns out to be a tempest in a thimble.

Royals fans do not live in an ideal world. There are a couple of ways this best-case scenario gets screwed up:

1) An injury forces Betancourt into the lineup for an extended period of time. If Escobar goes down, Betancourt is going to be the Royals’ starting shortstop, and there’s nothing you or I can do about that.

Honestly, that’s not the scenario that scares me. The fact is that with or without Yuni, an injury to Escobar was going to lead to some really bad options at shortstop. This season Escobar played all but 64 of the Royals’ innings at shortstop, and the scraps were given to Mike Aviles (29 innings), Chris Getz (26), and Yamaico Navarro (9). Before Betancourt signed, Plan B at shortstop was probably…Irving Falu? Rushing Christian Colon to the majors? Betancourt may be a replacement-level shortstop, but the Royals’ other options are probably below replacement-level.

With Getz and Giavotella fighting for the starting job at second base, and with the loser likely banished to Omaha, we’re probably (hopefully?) spared from being one injury away from having Yuni starting at second base every day. But the nightmare scenario is what happens if Mike Moustakas goes down.

This year, four players suited up at third base for the Royals: Moustakas, Wilson Betemit, Aviles, and Navarro. Only Moustakas is still in the organization. The only other Royal on the 40-man roster who has ever played a game at third base is Getz, who has spent all of nine innings at the position (and made an error on his only fielding chance.) There’s no one in the farm system who is remotely close to being able to start in the major leagues.

(Edit: Alex Gordon has played third base, obviously. It's just hard to envision the Royals moving him away from left field. Though, if the need arose, it would be an inspired move if they did.)

So if the thought of “Yuniesky Betancourt, everyday shortstop” scares you, brace yourself for “Yuniesky Betancourt, everyday third baseman”. That’s Stephen King-level terror right there. I don’t know about the rest of you, but personally, I’m prepared to chip in to pay for a protective bubble for Moustakas, along with a company of food tasters and an entire squadron of young men to carry him around in a litter.

2) Even if everyone stays healthy, the Royals may feel obligated to give Yuni considerable playing time.

On the surface, there should be no reason for this. Moustakas, Escobar, and Giavotella are all demonstrably better players than Betancourt, and are all young enough to get better. But on the other hand…the Royals didn’t guarantee Betancourt $2 million to collect splinters. This season Mitch Maier batted 113 times, roughly one-sixth as often as the Royals’ three everyday outfielders. While you would think that, in an ideal world, Betancourt would bat roughly as often as Maier did, paying $2 million for a guy who plays one-sixth of the time is the equivalent of paying $12 million for an everyday player.

That would be insane, which is why I suspect the Royals have no plans to limit Betancourt to 113 plate appearances, or anywhere close to that. If Chris Getz beats out Giavotella for the second-base job in spring training, I fully expect Betancourt and Getz to form an All-Suck Platoon at the position. (And honestly, if forced to choose between Getz and Betancourt against a left-handed starter, I’d probably go with Betancourt myself.) But even if Giavotella wins the job, I’m terrified that the Royals will find a way to make Yuni at least a part-time starter at second base.

Betancourt has been an everyday player since he reached the major leagues. I have to think he understands that his days of playing 150 games a season are probably over. But I honestly don’t think he would have signed without some sort of assurance that he would start at least 50 or 60 games in 2012. Which is about 30 or 40 games too many.

Even in a best-case scenario, where everyone stays healthy and Yuni gets one start a week rotating at all three positions, there are two other factors that I think are going to limit his value to the team:

1) While Betancourt has little value as an occasional substitute in the everyday lineup, he has almost no in-game value as a bench player.

You’d like your bench players to do something well. In an era where teams are carrying four or even three bench players, you’d prefer your bench guys to do multiple things well. This is why I’m a Brayan Pena fan – having a catcher who doesn’t bat right-handed gives you a pinch-hitting option in the late innings against the many right-handed relievers that rely on a fastball and slider and have big platoon splits. Jarrod Dyson might not have the skills to be an everyday outfielder, but his speed and defense make him an outstanding bench player. Dyson could easily play in 70 or 80 games in a season without starting even one of them.

But what, exactly, does Betancourt do? Play defense? Don’t make me laugh. He’s not a particularly good runner, certainly not for a shortstop – he’s stolen 19 bases in the last five seasons combined. He has pop, but not enough that you’d want to pinch-hit with him in a situation where you really need a home run. (The only two players in the everyday lineup who Betancourt has a pronounced edge in power are Escobar and whoever is the starting second baseman.) He’s the last player in the world you’d want at the plate when you need someone to get on base to start a rally. He bats right-handed, so he’s not going to get the platoon advantage over someone like Escobar or Salvador Perez in the late innings.

Basically, the only utility I could see him having in the late innings is to pinch-hit for a left-handed hitter in a key situation. Here’s the problem: the Royals have only three left-handed hitters in their starting lineup. And their names are Alex Gordon, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Moustakas. Maybe you could justify pinch-hitting for Moose with Yuni against a left-hander with a sidearm delivery, a situation which might happen five or ten times all season. Given how rarely Betancourt strikes out (he’s never whiffed more than 64 times in a season), I suppose he might come in handy when you’ve got the winning run on third base with one out and just want someone to make contact. But again, that’s a situation that might come up once or twice a month.

Otherwise, Betancourt’s role off the bench will probably be limited to sub in for Escobar or Getz on defense after some other bench player has already been used to pinch-hit. Yost has intimated that he will be more aggressive about making in-game substitutions, but even so, Yuni’s primary duties in about 80% of the Royals games will be to take his place in the high-five line after a home run. In a best-case scenario.

2) Betancourt has been an everyday player for his entire major-league career; we have no idea how he’s going to handle a part-time role.

Three weeks ago, the Royals traded Yamaico Navarro for pennies on the dollar, and the only explanation anyone could come up with was that he was a real negative, disruptive force in the clubhouse, something you can’t tolerate from a part-time player. On paper, Navarro is a better hitter than Yuni, he couldn’t possibly be a worse fielder, and he’s six years younger.

While the Royals could not put up with Navarro, they had no compunction bringing back Yuni. Betancourt, remember, was run out of Seattle as much because of his poor work ethic as because of his performance. No one doubted Yuni’s inherent skills – that’s why Dayton wanted him – but he exasperated teammates and coaches alike because he wasn’t interested in putting the time in to get better. He gained weight and thickness in his lower half, and his defense went from tolerably bad to intolerably horrible.

Now, there’s a big difference between a player who isn’t working hard and a player who actively antagonizes his teammates. And having checked with some sources, I’ve been reassured that there were no issues with Betancourt as a teammate since he left Seattle – he was well liked by his teammates in both Kansas City and in Milwaukee. I think that’s an important distinction to make: his work ethic might be aggravating, but his personality isn’t. It’s hard to imagine that the Royals would have brought him back if that weren’t the case.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Betancourt, for the first time since he was brought to the majors in July, 2005, can’t show up at the ballpark with the expectation that he’ll be in the lineup. It’s cruelly ironic that Betancourt one undeniable skill throughout his career has been his durability. When the Royals first traded for him in 2009, he was on the DL, which is notable in that it’s the only DL stint of his career. Betancourt defected from Cuba in 2004, signed with the Mariners before the 2005 season, and with the exception of 2009, has played in over 150 games every year since.

So I think it’s fair to wonder what will happen when Betancourt, for the first time in his career, isn’t in the starting lineup the majority of the time. Are we certain that he’s going to be a supportive teammate? Are we certain that he’s going to be mentally and physically prepared to come off the bench at a moment’s notice? Are we really sure that, freed from the expectation of playing every day, he won’t let himself go, and gain even more weight than he already has?

I’m pretty sure the answer to the first question is “yes”. I think the answer to the second question is “yes” – even if his head isn’t entirely in the game, I can’t imagine any Neifi Perez-like tantrums. There’s no pretense here – Yuni was signed to fill a bench role, and if he didn’t want one, he should have signed elsewhere. But it’s the third question that has me worried. Yuni is stretched to play shortstop in the shape he’s in now – if he gains any additional weight, he becomes even more unplayable than he already is.

A week before the Royals signed Betancourt, the Washington Nationals quietly inked another ex-Royal, Andres Blanco, to a minor-league contract. Regardless of who would make the better everyday player, given the composition of the Royals’ roster, Blanco would make a lot more sense as a bench player. He’s an above-average defender at all three positions, he switch-hits, he can take a walk, and he’s already accepted his fate as a bench player – over the past three years he’s played in 157 games, and hit a respectable .258/.307/.345. Yet while Blanco was forced to accept a minor-league deal, Yuni got $2 million with incentives.

So as strange as this is to say, I don’t object to the Betancourt signing in terms of his talents as a player. I object to the signing because I think he’s a poor fit with the rest of the roster, I think he’s being paid too much, which will incentivize the Royals to play him more than he should, and I think that there’s a very real chance he will have trouble adjusting to his sudden loss in playing time. Bringing back Yuni was a bad idea.

But I’m not going to go so far as to say that there’s no way this can work out. I’ve had these battles with the Royals before; you may remember my reaction to the Willie Bloomquist signing. But while I may have won the battle on that one – Bloomquist’s mythical “winning” qualities didn’t keep the Royals from losing 192 games in his two seasons with the team – the Royals won the war, because in the end Bloomquist was a mostly harmless backup player who wasn’t worth the vitriol I expended on him. He had no business batting nearly 500 times in 2009, but that’s a failing of the Royals’ roster construction, not a failure to appreciate Bloomquist’s talents.

So while I disagree with the Betancourt signing, and think that Moore made another mistake, I’ve said my piece and made my peace with it. If Yuni plays as much as Bloomquist did, it will hurt the Royals significantly – but if he plays as much as Bloomquist did, something will have gone wrong above and beyond the decision to re-sign him.

Dayton Moore has made a number of mistakes on the free-agent market, and it is possible, even likely, that this is another one. But I think Sam Miller’s tweet on this subject is worth remembering. A year ago, the Royals fan base didn’t exactly embrace the Melky Cabrera and Jeff Francoeur signings. Betancourt certainly has less upside than either of them – but, owing to his bench role, he has less downside as well.

So while I think bringing Yuni back is a bad idea, I’d love to see him make me a liar. Yuni’s glaring weaknesses only make his occasional triumphs that much more exhilarating, as when an otherwise bad season in 2010 was punctuated by three grand slams. Those of you who follow me on Twitter know I was openly rooting for him to come through with clutch hits for the Brewers in the playoffs. Baseball is a crazy game, and what better way to illustrate the capricious nature of the sport than for Yuniesky Betancourt to come through with a franchise-altering hit in 2012?

So, to sum up: do I think that bringing Yuni back is a sign that the Royals have no clue what they’re doing? No. Do I think that he has the ability to be a competent utility infielder? I do. Am I worried that the Royals will over-utilize and over-expose him? Yep. Do I have concerns as to how he will adapt to a bench role? Certainly.

Do I think the Royals should have signed him? No way.

Am I rooting for him to prove me wrong? Absolutely.

Royals Report Card 2011: Part Three.

I apologize for the long gap between posts, but – aside from the fact that it has been a surprisingly (happily so) busy time at the office, the Royals just haven’t done anything really worth talking about.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this period of quiet will soon end. Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I’ve taken to referring to my “Daydar” – my sense that Dayton Moore is up to something. Well, as I write this, it’s six days until Christmas and both Edwin Jackson and Roy Oswalt – my two favorite free-agent targets this off-season – remain unsigned. Maybe the Royals reel in one of them, or maybe they pull off a trade for a starting pitcher. While it’s hard to see the Royals giving up the amount of talent the Reds surrendered for Mat Latos, the price that the A’s sold Trevor Cahill for was shockingly low, so much so that I’m writing a column for Grantland about it.

Cahill, as you might recall from my series on pitchers to acquire, was one of my favorite targets – he’s signed for the next four years for $29 million, along with two club options at $13 million each. The Diamondbacks got him (and Craig Breslow, a useful lefty reliever) for top prospect Jarrod Parker, and a pair of throw-ins in outfielder Colin Cowgill and reliever Ryan Cook. The Royals could have put together an equivalent package by offering, say, Mike Montgomery (or Jake Odorizzi), David Lough, and Kelvin Herrera. Parker is a slightly better prospect than Montgomery or Odorizzi, but then Herrera is a much better relief prospect than Cook. That’s a trade I absolutely would have made; it wouldn’t have gutted the farm system, and would have given the Royals an established #3 starter with genuine upside. (Cahill is one of the most groundball-oriented starting pitchers in the majors, his strikeout rate has jumped each of the last two years, and he doesn’t turn 24 until March. I think he’s a breakout waiting to happen.)

While not trading for Cahill was a missed opportunity, there are plenty of other starting pitchers still out there, and my Daydar is telling me that Moore won’t rest this off-season until he gets one. So stay tuned.

I need to address the one transaction the Royals made at the Winter Meetings, as they traded Yamaico Navarro to Pittsburgh for a couple of prospects in Brooks Pounders and Diego Goris. This was, to put it kindly, a strange move, as much for the timing as for the players involved. The Royals seemed obsessed with making this move prior to the Rule 5 draft, in order to open up a spot on the 40-man roster so they could draft a player. They fielded offers on Navarro from several teams, and settled on the Pirates’ offer Wednesday night. Thursday morning, with a roster spot now available, they were able to select left-handed reliever Cesar Cabral in the Rule 5 draft…and then immediately turn around and sell him to the New York Yankees.

Unless David Glass was using Bernie Madoff as his broker and didn’t tell anyone, I don’t think that the Royals were desperate to trade Navarro just to pocket 50 grand. It’s clear that they wanted to get rid of Navarro for the sake of getting rid of Navarro; while the rumors of a trade were brewing, I heard from two sources that Navarro, even in his short time in Kansas City, was a real negative influence in the clubhouse. You can put up with a jerk if he’s an integral part of the everyday lineup; there’s no point in accommodating a bench player in the same way, and that’s what Navarro projected as.

But that doesn’t explain the timing. Navarro had options; if the Royals couldn’t stomach his presence in the locker room, they could have just sent him to Omaha until the right deal presented itself. Instead they felt compelled to make a trade right this very instant, and wound up with pennies on the dollar.

Pounders has major-league possibilities; he was a second-round pick of the Pirates in 2009. He’s a huge guy (6’4”, 255) who doesn’t fit the stereotype at all, because he doesn’t throw all that hard (his fastball hovers around 90) but has excellent command (just 14 walks in 66 innings this year). He’s already been moved into a relief role – think of him as the Sean O’Sullivan of the bullpen. Which is to say, he’s nowhere near as valuable as Navarro. Goris hit .350/.387/.511 this season in the minors, which sounds great until you realize that 1) he was playing in the Dominican Summer League, and 2) it was his fourth straight season in the league. Goris turned 21 the day after the trade, and still hasn’t played a game on American soil. If Goris ever plays a game in the majors, the scout who recommended him in the deal deserves a raise.

Given Moore’s history of chicanery during the Winter Meetings – Jason Kendall, anyone? – I guess we should be happy that we got out of the meetings having only lost Navarro. The trade itself bothers me, but not nearly as much as the inexplicable urgency to make it.

Anyway, let’s move on with my report cards for the 2011 season. Today, I rate the infielders.

Mike Aviles: D+

You never knew what you were getting from Aviles from one year to the next; he hit .325 as a rookie in 2008, then .183 in 2009, then .304 in 2010. So I guess it’s appropriate that we didn’t know what we were getting in 2011 even from one month to the next. Aviles started the year 3-for-28, then hit .355/.379/.677 over the next three weeks. From May 7th until he was traded at the end of July, Aviles hit .168 (16-for-95), and frankly it was impressive that after all that the Royals were able to trade him for Navarro and Kendall Volz. (The availability of Navarro is, admittedly, much less surprising today.) Naturally, after the trade Aviles hit .317/.340/.436 for Boston.

The thing with Aviles is that while he has surprising pop for a super-utility guy, he swings at everything, so he has to hit .300 to be valuable. In 2008, and 2010, and for the Red Sox this season, he did that. But when he hits .222 and has a .261 OBP, as he did for the Royals this year, he’s an out machine, and it’s not like he makes up for it with his defense. He turns 31 in March, and while I imagine he’ll have more good years in the future, I wouldn’t want to guess which years they will be. Whatever happens, we’ll always have 2008, when an unknown rookie was brought up out of desperation, and in 102 games fashioned one of the best seasons by a shortstop the Royals have ever had.

Wilson Betemit: C+

Betemit was the surprise of the 2010 season, hitting .297/.378/.511, and you might remember that late in the year I advocated signing him to a long-term deal. He didn’t hit nearly as well for the Royals this year, hitting .281/.341/.409 with his usual lousy defense at third base; when Mike Moustakas was deemed ready, Betemit rode the pine for a month before the Royals were able to work out a deal to send him to Detroit.

With the Tigers, Betemit hit nearly as well as he did in 2010 – he hit .292/.346/.525 for the kitties – but despite that he started barely half the time after the trade, splitting time with Don Kelly and Brandon Inge. Betemit then started just twice in the Tigers’ 11 playoff games.

I know I’m stubborn, but I still think Betemit should be starting every day – at some position – in the major leagues. Over the past two years Betemit had 674 plate appearances, almost exactly a full season’s worth of playing time. In that span he’s hit .290/.359/.479 with 21 homers, 42 doubles, and 67 walks. Yes, he’s a lousy third baseman – but with those numbers, isn’t he worth trying in left field, or even at first base or DH? Instead, the Tigers didn’t even offer him arbitration – as far as I can tell, it’s been hard to get confirmation on that – and wherever he signs as a free agent, it doesn’t appear he’ll be getting an everyday job.

Which is a shame, because he deserves one. The Royals no longer have any need for his services, but he gave them good production at a bargain price, gracefully moved to the bench to make way for the youth movement, and fetched a possible future lefty reliever in Antonio Cruz at the trade deadline. I’ll remember him fondly. Most people, it seems, won’t remember him at all.

Alcides Escobar: B-

I set the grading curve so that a B- met a player “met expectations”, and really, “met expectations” describes Escobar to a T. He showed modest – very modest – improvements on offense; his batting average improved from .235 to .254, and that was about it, as his power was roughly the same and he actually walked less (although that is likely the result of not batting in front of the pitcher all season).

Defensively, though, Escobar lived up to his reputation from his days as a prospect, when he was deemed the best defensive shortstop in the minor leagues. After making a highlight-reel gem seemingly every day for the first two months of the season, the spectacular plays were lacking in the second half, though that might have simply been because he had raised our standards so much after we had watched Yuniesky Betancourt play the position while wearing ankle weights in 2010. Regardless, Escobar was undeniably one of the best defensive shortstops in the league, giving him real value despite his offensive struggles.

I’d like to believe there’s still some improvement left in his bat. He just turned 25 last week, and while I don’t think he’s a future batting title contender, I do think he can do better than hitting .254. He hit .315 in his final two seasons in the minors, he rarely strikes out (just 73 Ks all year), and his speed should allow him to beat out a ton of infield hits. But his improvement isn’t going to come overnight. This season, he was hitting .203/.237/.236 in early June, and then he went on a two-week tear where he hit .512 and everyone thought things had clicked.

But baseball doesn’t work like that. At the end of his hot stretch, Escobar had raised his numbers to .255/.289/.322; from that point on he hit .253/.290/.362. He did hit for a little more power in the second half, and you hope that forces pitchers to respect his power and pitch him more carefully going forward. But realistically, as a Royals fan you ought to be happy if he can just hit .270 with the same meager secondary skills he’s shown so far. With his defense at shortstop, that’s a heck of a player.

Chris Getz: C-

Chris Getz is not a useless ballplayer. He plays an average, maybe slightly above-average, second base. He hits left-handed, always a useful trait from a middle infielder. For his career he’s averaged 33 stolen bases per 162 games, with an 84% success rate. He can bunt, and he’ll take a walk when it’s presented to him.

But in a career of nearly 1000 at-bats, he has hit just two home runs. He doesn’t even hit doubles – he has 33 in his career, or less than four different Royals had this year alone. Since joining the Royals his power has actually declined; in 604 at-bats he has 15 doubles, three triples, and no home runs. He holds the Royals’ all-time record for most plate appearances (677) without a homer, and only Jason Kendall comes within 300 PA of his record.

His slugging average as a member of the Royals is .283. Among players with at least 400 plate appearances with the Royals, only Jackie Hernandez (.282) had a lower slugging average.

There are certain skills that are absolutely mandatory for a major-league hitter, and the ability to hit the ball 330 feet on occasion is one of them. Getz has the kind of power that even Jarrod Dyson scoffs at, and at 28 it’s hard to see him improving in that category. It’s frankly surprising that the Royals haven’t released him, given that he’s eligible for arbitration. You can’t carry a backup second baseman in the majors, so if Johnny Giavotella wins the starting job, Getz is going to spend a year as a very overpaid Triple-A second baseman. If it gets to that point, the Royals would be better off cutting ties with him completely.

Johnny Giavotella: A- (minors), C (majors)

For a guy who was drafted in the second round, Giavotella has had to prove himself at every level; that’s what happens when you’re 5’8” and not particularly fleet of foot. To this point, he’s done so. After hitting .322/.395/.460 in Double-A in 2010, Giavotella hit .338/.390/.481 in Omaha this year, and both seasons he tore the cover off the ball in the second half after initially struggling to adjust. Giavotella might have been the best player in the Pacific Coast League in June and July – from June 1st until he was called up, he hit .382, with 25 doubles and seven homers in 246 at-bats.

We have to hope that he got his adjustments to the major leagues over with in 2011, because his performance was disappointing: he hit .247/.273/.376, and when you factor in his subpar defense he was actually below replacement-level. The good news is that, with 15 extra-base hits in just 46 games, he’s pretty convincingly shown that he can punch above his weight. (Getz has 18 extra-base hits in 190 games with the Royals.) But the lack of plate discipline has to be concerning; he only drew six walks in nearly two months with Kansas City.

He’s always been a one-walk-per-ten-at-bats hitter through the minors, so my guess is that he was simply pressing, trying to prove he belonged in the majors on every pitch. The bigger concern is his defense, which was at times average, and at times decidedly less than that. The Royals were concerned that he let his struggles at the plate affect him on the field; on September 9th Giavotella failed to cover second base on a stolen base attempt, which convinced the Royals to bench him for a couple of days to clear his head and teach him a lesson.

The toughest path to the majors might be at second base, because there’s no backup option. Being a second-base prospect is like being a salesman in “Glengarry Glen Ross”, except the prize for third place and second place is getting fired. The window for Giavotella to establish himself as an everyday player in the majors is narrow; it might be this year or never. Fortunately for him, he’s in the perfect situation to do so in 2012. Getz is a more of a speedbump than a roadblock, Christian Colon is still a year away, and Rey Navarro is even further behind. I expect a .280 average and a ton of doubles overcoming some occasionally shaky defense next season. And I expect the Royals to have some difficult decisions to make next winter.

Eric Hosmer: A+ (minors), B+ (majors)

Given that I’ve been comparing Hosmer to Will Clark pretty much from the day he was drafted, it’s time for a comparison of their rookie seasons.

Eric Hosmer, 2011: 128 G, .293/.334/.465, 118 OPS+

Will Clark, 1986: 111 G, .287/.343/.444, 121 OPS+

Hosmer marginally beat Clark in OPS, but owing to the lower offensive levels of the NL in the mid-80s, The Thrill had the slightly higher OPS+. They’re still two peas in a pod. Both hit exactly 27 doubles and walked exactly 34 times as rookies.

The biggest difference between their seasons is this: Clark turned 22 in March, while Hosmer didn’t turn 22 in October. Seven months isn’t an enormous difference, but in players this young it’s not meaningless, and it favors our guy.

There were two flaws in Hosmer’s campaign that keep me from awarding him an A. The first is that his plate discipline was surprisingly lacking. In his breakout 2010 season, Hosmer walked 59 times against just 66 strikeouts, and it was expected that he’d be a patient hitter in the major leagues. But he drew just 34 walks this year, seven of those intentional. A batter with 27 unintentional walks in 523 at-bats – that’s practically Berroaesque.

I wouldn’t worry about it at all. Clark drew 34 walks as a rookie, and ten of his were intentional. Two years later, Clark led the NL with 100 walks. The difference? After hitting just 11 homers as a rookie, Clark pounded 35 home runs as a sophomore. While he would never hit for as much power again, Clark established himself as a power threat in the minds of pitchers. Power and plate discipline are allies. Sometimes a player will start to hit for more power because he’s learned to lay off the bad pitches, and sometimes a player will see more pitches out of the strike zone because pitchers fear his power.

While Hosmer didn’t walk much as a rookie, he was hardly a free-swinger; he struck out just 82 times. (Clark, as a rookie, whiffed 76 times.) In at-bats where Hosmer fell behind 0-and-2, he still hit .264 and slugged .409; you don’t do that if you’re swinging at bad pitches. Hosmer has shown more power at this stage than Clark did, and scouts project him to have even more power than Clark. If that’s the case, the walks will come, possibly as soon as 2012.

The second weakness in Hosmer’s game is a controversial one: despite a great defensive reputation, and despite qualifying as a good defender by the eye test, Hosmer’s defensive statistics were, well, abysmal. Most defensive metrics graded out Hosmer’s rookie season as about ten runs worse than the average first baseman, making him one of the worst fielders at the position in the game.

Defensive stats are not nearly as reliable as batting stats, and one season’s worth of data is simply not conclusive. But before you dismiss those numbers entirely, read this two-part evaluation of his defense at Royals Review. The conclusion they arrive at is both plausible and grounded in evidence: Hosmer was positioned to close to the first-base line, which allowed far too many balls to slip past his right side.

Defensive positioning is a crucial and very underrated aspect of fielding. Chase Utley had insanely good defensive numbers at his peak, and analyses done at the time suggested that the reason he was so good is that he positioned himself farther to his left than any other second baseman – basically, he closed up the same 3-4 hole that Hosmer appears to have opened up. The Tampa Bay Rays had the best Defensive Efficiency in the majors this season – really, it wasn’t close – in large part because Joe Maddon is so aggressive about shifting his fielders around based on who is at the plate.

Poor defensive positioning is certainly the easiest way to reconcile Hosmer’s poor defensive numbers with his potential-Gold-Glove reputation. It’s also an easy problem to fix, assuming the Royals are aware that there’s a problem in the first place. Fortunately, as Jin Wong reveals in this two-part interview with Jeff Zimmerman at Royals Review, the Royals are in fact aware of the positioning issue. If Hosmer is positioned further from the line next year, and if his defensive numbers improve, this will be a fantastic exhibit of how a public-private partnership can lead to a better product on the field.

Hosmer’s defensive numbers almost have to improve in 2012, and I expect his bat to take a step forward as well. He hit .313 and slugged .493 after the All-Star Break; both numbers seem like reasonable approximations for what he can do next season. Any better than that, and he’s a candidate to make the All-Star team in front of his hometown fans. And he’s only 22.

Kila Ka’aihue: D- (majors), D (minors)

If Kila had gone to Omaha and hit the crap out of the ball, the way he did in 2008 (.314/.456/.628), or in 2010 (.319/.463/.598), the narrative would be pretty simple: big guy, slow bat, AAAA hitter. He can beat up on minor league pitchers, but put him in a double-decker stadium against guys who can throw in the mid-90s and can control their secondary stuff, and he doesn’t have the bat speed to catch up to the fastball unless he cheats and starts his swing early, in which case the off-speed pitches will eat him alive.

But that’s not really what happened. Ka’aihue struggled for the Royals – granted, it was all of 23 games – hitting .195/.295/.317 before he was demoted to Triple-A. And he continued to struggle, hitting .272/.379/.433 for the Storm Chasers. He had an identical number of at-bats in Omaha in 2010 and 2011, but last year he hit 24 homers and walked 88 times, and this year he hit 11 homers and walked 57 times.

So then you take a step back, and you look at 2009, when Ka’aihue hit .252/.392/.433 in Omaha, and you wonder if he’s just a wildly inconsistent hitter, prone to really good years and really mediocre ones. He just had the poor timing of synchronizing one of his mediocre seasons with his one big shot at everyday playing time in the majors.

Billy Beane is gambling that it’s the latter. Granted, he didn’t wager much, trading a fringy pitcher named……Ethan Hollingsworth for Ka’aihue. The A’s will get a look at him in camp, where Ka’aihue will have to fight for playing time with Daric Barton and Brandon Allen and Chris Carter. If they don’t like what they see, Ka’aihue could be looking at a long and financially rewarding career in Japan.

But the A’s aren’t yet convinced that Ka’aihue is a AAAA player, and neither am I. For the first time in his career, Ka’aihue is playing for an organization that not only respects his approach at the plate, they encourage it. I’d hold off on writing his career obituary for one more season.

Mike Moustakas: B (minors), C (majors)

Honestly, I’d like to give Moustakas three grades: a B for his performance in the minors, an F for his first two months in the majors, and an A for the final six weeks of the season. Take a look:

Minors: .287/.347/.498

Majors, June 10 – August 16: .182/.237/.227

Majors, August 17 – end of season: .379/.412/.564

Moustakas, to me, is a fascinating test case in the importance of intangibles. By “intangibles”, I’m not referring to things like his ability to bunt and hit-and-run – I’m referring to the things that we can’t see from the stands that affect a player’s ability to reach his full potential. I’m referring to a player’s work ethic, in other words.

Statistical analysis is an incredibly useful tool to determine the value of a player’s present performance. It is a much less useful tool to predict a player’s future performance – not because of any inherent weakness in statistical analysis, but simply because we can’t predict the future. The error bars in projecting a player’s career are massive, in the same way that the error bars in projecting the weather forecast for a weak from Friday are massive. Since so much of an organization’s success is based on their ability to project how players will perform in the future, it makes sense that they take into account as much information as possible to do so. How a player has performed in the past is obviously an excellent starting point for predicting how he’ll fare in the future, but you’ll want to layer on all sorts of information on top of that: scouting reports, his health record, and yes, his willingness to better himself.

Moustakas, even when he was a top-10 prospect in all of baseball a year ago, had weaknesses in his game. His defense at third base was still shaky at times, he had difficulty hitting left-handed pitching, and he was too aggressive at the plate. But he also had a reputation for a sterling work ethic. He loved to play baseball, and he was willing to put in the time to get better at it.

His numbers in 2011 were superficially disappointing after his mammoth 2010 season in the minors. But take a look. After always struggling to hit left-handers in the minors, he went back to Omaha and hit lefties nearly as well (.260/.325/.507) as he hit right-handers (.300/.357/.493). His plate discipline held steady even after he reached the major leagues; he drew 22 walks in 338 at-bats with the Royals, not a great ratio but no worse than he had done in the minor leagues, despite facing superior pitching.

Most importantly, his defense was solid, even surprisingly good. The Royals already have a backlog of players at first base and DH; the last thing they need is to have to find a new position for Moustakas. But Moose played well enough at third base to put off any talk of a position change until well into the future. Notably, unlike Giavotella, Moustakas didn’t carry his at-bats into the field; he played solid defense at third base even when he was doing his Ray Oyler impression at the plate.

And, of course, after going into a horrific slump for two months, Moustakas emerged from the ordeal a better hitter.

Maybe I’m reading too much into things, and Moustakas will prove all the gains he made in the final part of this season to be illusory. But look: we know that not every top prospect fulfills his potential. We know that for every Evan Longoria, who has a smooth and easy progression from top prospect to major-league superstar, there’s a Brandon Wood (rated a top-10 prospect by Baseball America in 2006 and 2007) or a Chad Hermansen (a top-40 prospect four straight years from 1997 to 2000), who seems to have everything in his favor and still falls flat on his face.

We’ll never be able to predict the future perfectly, or even well. But it seems to me that if you’re trying to predict which top prospects will make it and which ones won’t, you probably ought to favor the guy who seems to be giving it his all.

To paraphrase Tolstoy*, successful prospects are all alike; every failed prospect fails in his own way. There are many pitfalls that can trip up a top prospect. Some are physical, like a hole in his swing that he isn’t able to close. Some are mental or emotional – a player is going through a bad breakup with his wife or girlfriend, or he starts drinking too much.

*: Yes, Tolstoy. To quote Hans Gruber**: “The benefits of a classical education.”

**: Yes, Hans Gruber. Hey, I wasn’t studying ALL the time.

But probably the pitfall that brings down the most prospects is simply an inability to make adjustments. Pitchers learn that you struggle to hit the inside fastball; you need to learn how to hit the inside fastball. Word gets around that you’re now susceptible to soft stuff away – you need to learn how to lay off those pitches. And so on. It took Alex Gordon, who has all the talent in the world, four years before he finally made all the adjustments that he needed to make.

I’m not saying that Moustakas has made all those adjustments. I am saying that a prerequisite to making adjustments is the willingness to put in the time to do so, something Moustakas seems to have in spades. And his performance over the season’s final six weeks suggests pretty clearly that he’s made at least some of the adjustments he needs to make.

Work ethic is no substitute for talent – but it’s a hell of a complement to talent. Moustakas, by all reports, has both. And that’s why I’m optimistic that going forward, he’s going to resemble the player we saw in September more than the player we saw in July.

For Want Of A Pitcher: Jonathan Broxton?

First off, I need to revise my analysis of the Bruce Chen signing to include a very important point that I somehow overlooked last time. It’s not entirely correct to say that Chen will cost the Royals $9 million (with incentives) over the next two seasons. Chen will, in fact, cost the Royals $9 million PLUS a supplemental first-round pick, the pick that they would have received had he signed with any other team.

This is not a trivial difference. Studies on the value of draft picks have estimated that a supplemental first-round pick is worth approximately $3 million, above and beyond the cost of actually signing that player. For a franchise that has made player scouting and development its central focus since Dayton Moore was hired, and a franchise which has done so well with the draft picks it has had, it’s astonishing how few high draft picks the Royals have had to work with.

By re-signing Chen, the Royals guarantee that they will not receive any extra draft picks next June, which means that in the seven drafts since Moore was hired, the Royals have had exactly ONE extra draft pick, the supplemental first-rounder they received when David Riske, of all people, departed. (Who did the Royals draft with that pick? Mike Montgomery.) Meanwhile, the Royals also forfeited their second-round pick in 2009 for signing Juan Cruz.

Obviously, the Royals value those extra picks, and they have tried to game the system to acquire some extra picks, as when they offered Mark Grudzielanek arbitration after the 2008 season with no intention of signing him. (The gambit failed when no other team signed Grudzielanek to a major-league contract.) But the Royals have had opportunities for extra draft picks in the past. Last winter, they could have declined David DeJesus’ option and offered him arbitration he almost certainly would not have accepted. Instead, they traded him for Vinny Mazzaro and Justin Marks, a pair of pitchers who combined weren’t worth the value of a draft pick.

This winter, they could have let Chen walk, replaced him with a comparable pitcher on the market, and be compensated with a high draft pick for their troubles. They chose not to, and that has to be added to Chen’s price tag. A transaction which might have earned a C grade otherwise is now more like a C- or a D+. Re-signing Chen might turn out to be a missed opportunity in more ways than one.

The Chen signing was predictable, at least, something that can not be said for the Royals’ decision to bring in Jonathan Broxton. At first glance, this seems like a transaction ripped out of the pages of the Dayton Moore 2009 catalog. Sure, let’s guarantee $4 million to a pitcher coming off an elbow injury, to fill a need that the team doesn’t even have.

The Royals’ bullpen ranked 8th in the AL this season with a 3.75 ERA, but to give you an idea of just how bad Mazzaro’s seven-out, 14-earned-run performance was, if you take out that one appearance, the bullpen’s ERA drops to 3.52 – which would have ranked third in the AL, just thousandths of a point behind the Angels for second. They did that with a bullpen that was, almost to a man, remarkably inexperienced and inexpensive. Aside from closer Joakim Soria, and Robinson Tejeda’s seven ineffective innings, every other reliever the Royals used last season was pre-arbitration-eligible. With the exception of Aaron Crow, who got a major-league contract when he signed as a first-round pick, every other reliever made six figures.

By the end of the season, the bullpen looked something like this:

CL Joakim Soria

SU Greg Holland

SU Aaron Crow

RH Louis Coleman

LH Tim Collins

LR Blake Wood

LR Nate Adcock

With occasional guest appearances from the likes of Everett Teaford. And on top of that, they have Kelvin Herrera, who projects as an impact reliever in the late innings and who is essentially ready for a spot in the bullpen now.

After Soria, the Royals reliever with the most service time coming into the 2011 season was Blake Wood, with 145 days. With the exception of Soria, not only was every Royals reliever pre-arbitration eligibility in 2011, they will all be pre-arbitration players in 2012, and only Wood will qualify for arbitration in 2013.

The Royals could comfortably go into 2012 with the six relievers above in front of Soria, and pay them less than $4 million combined. Instead they guaranteed Broxton $4 million by himself. The same Broxton who pitched all of 13 innings last season, and who, since June 27, 2010 – when Joe Torre let Broxton throw 48 pitches while blowing a four-run lead to the Yankees – has this line:

42.1 IP, 53 H, 32 BB, 35 K, 6 HR, 7.02 ERA.

Well, when you put it like that, it looks like a pretty ridiculous move.

There’s a method to the madness, though. From 2006 to 2009, Broxton led the major leagues in strikeouts (398) by a reliever, along with a 2.79 ERA over that span. In 2009 he struck out 114 batters in 76 innings. And before his fortunes took a turn for the worse in 2010, through June 26th that season he was probably the best reliever in baseball. In 33 innings, he had allowed just three earned runs, with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 48-to-5. As poorly as Broxton has pitched over the last 18 months, until 18 months ago he was one of the game’s most dominant relievers.

If his struggles could be traced to a shoulder injury, then his previous dominance would have as much relevance today as his SAT scores. But it appears his problems were entirely elbow related, culminating in surgery this September to remove bone spurs and “loose bodies” from his elbow. If that’s all it was, there’s a good chance he’ll be at 100%, or close to it, by March.

For the commitment the Royals have made – one year, $4 million – Broxton’s upside is worth it. The Royals have basically committed about half as much to Broxton, in terms of both time and money, as they did to Kyle Farnsworth and Juan Cruz. A week before the Royals signed Broxton, the Rangers gave Joe Nathan a two-year, $14 million contract. Nathan missed all of 2010 with Tommy John surgery, and his return in 2011 included a 4.84 ERA. Granted, a healthy Nathan was even better than a healthy Broxton (from 2004 to 2009, Nathan had a 1.87 ERA), and from June 28th on he was almost back to his pre-injury form: 28 innings, 20 hits, 5 walks, 28 Ks. But Nathan is also 37 years old, nearly a full decade older than Broxton. The Rangers – who last I checked had a pretty capable front office – gave Nathan a contract that guarantees him more than three times what the Royals guaranteed to Broxton.

And then there’s Heath Bell, who just got three years and $27 million from the Florida Marlins. Yes, Bell is healthy – as far as we know – and was effective in 2011. But you can practically hear him ticking. His strikeout rate in 2011 dropped to 7.3 Ks per 9, the lowest mark of his career. And Bell has benefitted massively from calling Petco Park his home. For his career, his road ERA is more than a run higher (3.61 to 2.56) than his ERA at home. The Marlins have guaranteed Bell nearly seven times as much money as the Royals have guaranteed Broxton.

If you’re looking for a sign that the reliever market is out of control, it’s not Broxton’s contract that you’re going to point at. Broxton might not be the best fit for the Royals’ needs, but at least in the abstract, his contract seems favorable.

With regards to the Royals’ needs, the Broxton signing has some ancillary benefits. Primarily, it means that Aaron Crow will be getting a sustained shot at returning to the rotation.

This isn’t the slam-dunk move it appears to be. Crow was a starter in the minors in 2010, and was awful; he was a reliever in the majors in 2011, and he was an (undeserving, but still) All-Star. He was successful in relief because he could focus on just his fastball and his slider; he still doesn’t have an out-pitch against left-handed hitters. This season, right-handed batters hit just .175/.283/.254 against Crow. Lefties? .311/.381/.538.

Having said that, I think the Royals have to give it a try. Crow was drafted as a starter, he succeeded in college as a starter, he has a starter’s build, and while he was mostly a two-pitch pitcher as a rookie, he did throw the occasional curveball, and he’s thrown a changeup in the past. More to the point, the value you get from a 200-inning starter is so much more than from a 70-inning reliever that you have to take a shot even if the odds are against you.

But if the Royals are serious about making Crow a starter again, they have to expect him to take a step backwards before he starts walking forward. While it would be great if he’s so impressive in spring training that he wins a rotation spot, realistically the Royals have to expect Crow to start the season in Omaha. If everything goes well he might be ready to return by June or July, but the temptation will be there for the Royals to scrap the experiment and recall Crow to shore up the bullpen if they ever blow leads in back-to-back games. If the addition of Broxton gives the Royals’ front office enough confidence in a Crow-less bullpen that they will give him a full audition as a starting pitcher, that alone might justify the millions they’re spending on Broxton.

And then there is the flexibility that Broxton’s addition affords the Royals on the trade market. In a market where teams are willing to guarantee eight figures to second-tier closers, the Royals have a veritable army of quality relievers who won’t be making even seven figures in a season until 2014. If the Royals don’t think the prices for free-agent starting pitchers reasonable, and they think their best way to upgrade in the rotation is via trade, dipping into their pool of relievers may facilitate a deal without having to give up a Wil Myers or a Cheslor Cuthbert.

I was annoyed by the reports that claimed that Broxton was signed to be Soria’s set-up man, because in his entire career Broxton has never had a season as good as the one Greg Holland had this year. (When you factor in the inherited runners – Holland allowed just two of the 33 runners he inherited to score – Holland quietly had one of the greatest relief seasons in Royals history.) But signing Broxton to be the eighth-inning guy makes a lot more sense if Holland is on the move.

The Toronto Blue Jays, at least, appear to be interested in him, giving the Colby Rasmus rumors some legs. But between Holland, Coleman, and even Wood, the Royals are in excellent position to trade a reliever for a more durable asset. Adding Broxton makes it easier for the Royals to give up a reliever, and still give Crow (and possibly Nate Adcock) time in Omaha’s rotation. The winter meetings are getting underway as I write this, so if there’s to be another domino to fall, it might be in the next few days.

Like a lot of Dayton Moore’s moves, the wisdom of signing Broxton depends in large part on whether this is the precursor to other moves. But even if it isn’t, it’s a modest commitment to a pitcher who, when healthy, has always been an excellent reliever. It’s a contract that has a chance to be a bargain for the Royals given the current relief market. If it allows the Royals to leverage their surplus in relievers for other needs, so much the better, but even as a standalone move, it’s a decent little transaction.

The one caveat I have is that if Moore thinks the acquisition of Broxton abdicates his responsibility to sign another starting pitcher, he’s wrong. I would question the decision to give $4 million to a reliever when that’s money that could have gone to a starting pitcher, but even with Broxton, as it stands the Royals’ 2012 payroll projects to around $55 million. I know that’s close to where Moore claimed the payroll was limited to in a notorious exchange he had at Blogger Night at the K. Call me an ostrich, but I just refuse to believe the Royals payroll has such a tight limit.

The Royals’ payroll exceeded $70 million in both 2009 and 2010; there’s no reason they can’t afford a similar payroll in 2012, a year when Kauffman Stadium will certainly host the All-Star Game, and just might host a playoff game. The Royals are at an inflection point, where they’re close enough to contention that adding a star pitcher might be the difference in a pennant race, and a playoff appearance would increase the Royals’ revenue by far more than the cost of a free-agent contract.

Basically, what I’m saying is this: just because the Royals have added Broxton, and Chen, and Sanchez, does not mean they shouldn’t still be major players for Roy Oswalt or Edwin Jackson. If the Royals make an honest effort to sign a top-tier starter and fall short, then Broxton’s addition will at least give the Royals something to show for their efforts, and they can hope that a killer bullpen might cover for their rotation inadequacies enough to keep them in the hunt. But if the money used to sign Broxton knocks the Royals out of the sweepstakes for another starting pitcher, then his signing, once again, was a wasted opportunity.

Broxton and Chen, combined, are guaranteed $8.5 million in 2012, and will probably make close to $10 million. It would be a shame if it turns out that money could have been used as the starting point to land them a true difference-maker in their rotation instead.

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I guess I should say something about the Frank White situation. I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said. Sam Mellinger nailed it pretty good here; a trusted source of mine vouches for Mellinger’s accuracy in portraying both sides. Will McDonald does a great job of informed speculation and connecting the dots here. Rob Neyer covers the situation with his usual aplomb here.

I know that White made it clear that he felt that he was fired for being too critical of the Royals on-air. But as facile an explanation as that is, I find it hard to square that with the fact that Paul Splittorff, who was as blunt about the Royals’ inadequacies as anyone in the media for the quarter-century before he passed away, was never let go. If “criticisms” really were the impetus for this, they were probably hurled off-camera.

But I do think that the Royals once again revealed themselves as unreasonably thin-skinned. The fact that producer Kevin Shank was also let go suggests a lot of things, none of them favorable to the Royals, about their perception of the telecasts.

In the long run, if the Royals start winning, none of this will matter, and Frank White may well return to throw out the first pitch before a playoff game. But until the Royals start winning, they need to avoid public-relations disasters like this one. Their continuing inability to do so is telling.