Royals Today: 7/5/12.

I feel like I owe you an all-positive post today, to make up for all the Sanchez-bashing last time around. So here you go.

Salvador Perez

We all missed Perez terribly, while he missed the first half of the season recovering from a torn meniscus suffered in spring training. (Perez tore his meniscus lunging for a pitch out of the strike zone. Who threw that pitch? Jonathan Sanchez, of course.) But I don’t think we realized just how badly we missed Perez, because I don’t think we appreciated just how good he might be.

I appreciated how good he was last season; as I’ve written before, he had the highest batting average by a 21-year-old catcher (min: 100 AB) in major-league history, and the 3rd highest OPS, behind Joe Mauer and Johnny Bench. But even I was concerned about what his performance meant. Batting average is a highly variable statistic, particularly in a sample size of just 39 games, and Perez hadn’t hit at that level at any point in the minor leagues.

His career line in the minors is .287/.329/.397; in Double-A last season, he hit .283/.329/.427. Those are fine numbers for an elite defensive catcher who is young for his leagues, but not the performance you’d project into an All-Star caliber player in the majors. Throw in the injury, and you had to be concerned that the player we saw on the field in late 2011 was a bit of a mirage.

That may yet prove to be the case, but we’re getting closer and it still looks like an oasis. Perez played 12 games in Triple-A on rehab and hit .340 – a soft .340, with just two walks and two extra-base hits (both doubles) – but still, .340. He was activated on June 22nd – and homered in his first game back. He hasn’t stopped hitting since.

Literally. Perez has played in 10 games since his return, and has a hit in all 10 of them – including one game in which he had a single pinch-hit at-bat. Perez has a ten-game hitting streak going, which is already the second-longest hitting streak by a Royal this season. (Eric Hosmer, surprisingly, hit in 11 straight from May 28 to June 9.)

Late update: Perez is in the lineup for the fourth straight night tonight, and singled in his first at-bat, starting a five-run inning. So 11 games, 11-game hitting streak, tied for the longest of the season.

He’s not just hitting, he’s hitting for power. I remarked on this a little last season, when I was in attendance at US Cellular Field in September when Perez hit an absolute bomb to right field. It’s rare to see any player hit a ball that far to the opposite field, let alone a 21-year-old rookie catcher. He’s shown that kind of power again this year. His second homer, on June 29, was an opposite-field homer at Target Field. Do you know how hard it is to hit a home run to the opposite field at Target Field? I don’t have numbers for this season, but between 2010 and 2011, according to the Bill James Handbook, Target Field reduced homers by 24%. For left-handed hitters, homers were cut 32%, which suggests that it’s even harder to hit homers to right field than elsewhere in that ballpark. (Since the ballpark opened, Joe Mauer has hit 14 homers on the road – and just three at home.)

Here's a link to the video. As you can see, it wasn't a cheapie.

On Monday night, Perez showed a different kind of power. He dropped the bat head on a pitch that was low and inside. Just keeping that ball fair was impressive enough – but he hit a line drive that somehow carried over the left field wall. I can’t do it justice with words – watch it here.

In ten games, Perez is hitting .371/.371/.714; for his career – all of 49 games – he’s hitting .339/.363/.519. There are warts to Perez’s game, certainly. He hasn’t drawn a walk yet, and he’s bounced into two double plays. Extrapolate his career to 162 games, and he’d have as many GIDPs (23) as walks. He’s only thrown out 10 of 44 base stealers (23%) in his career, although 1) his career rate in the minors was 42% and 2) that doesn’t count the three guys he’s picked off.

I realize the sample size is vanishingly small here, but my opinion on Perez isn’t simply based on the numbers, but on – perish the thought – my eyes. He hits everything HARD. His line-drive rate (and with the caveat that “line drives” are highly observer-dependent; what some people will call a line drive other people will call a fly ball) for his career is 27.6%, well above the league average of 18%. He’s earned his .339 average.

And as crazy as this might sound, if you put a gun to my head and I had to predict which player in the Royals organization will go to the most All-Star Games in his career…I’d probably pick Perez. Moustakas, Hosmer, Gordon, Butler…all those guys play high-offense positions where the standard for offense is really high. If Perez is simply a .280-.290 hitter with 15-20 homers, he’s going to be one of the best offensive catchers in the league along with excellent defense. The two best catchers in the AL right now are probably Joe Mauer and Matt Wieters. (Mike Napoli starts the All-Star Game, but that’s a homer pick that’s unlikely to be repeated.) Mauer can’t stay healthy and might move to another position before long; Wieters has the sterling pedigree but is more of a very good player than a star.

Perez has a lot to prove, starting with whether he can stay healthy or not. But everything we’ve seen from him since he arrived in Kansas City says that he’s a budding star. And as for his minor-league track record…let’s not forget that he was 17 when he started playing. He hit .189 in A-ball in 2009 – when he was 18. He started 2010 in Wilmington when he was 19 – he turned 20 a month into the season. Hitting in the Death Valley of the minor leagues, he batted .290/.322/.437. Last year he hit .290/.331/.437 in the high minors and was in the majors three months after he turned 21. (If I’ve done the research correctly, Perez is the ninth-youngest position player ever to suit up for the Royals.)

While much of the reason why the Royals have been such a failure the last 15 years is because many of their top prospects have failed to develop, a contributing factor is that they really haven’t had anyone who wasn’t a top prospect who surprised in a positive fashion. Think of someone like Andre Ethier, who was a 23-year-old in Double-A that the A’s thought so little of that they traded him for Milton Bradley – and then arrived in the majors the following year as an above-average outfielder who improved until he was an All-Star. Or Robinson Cano, who hit .278/.331/.425 in the minor leagues and was made available to the Royals for Carlos Beltran, only Allard Baird decided on Mark Teahen because dadgummit, they needed a third baseman.

Well, Perez might be that guy. When the Royals placed nine guys on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect List, we knew some of them would fail, but we hoped that those failures would be compensated for by players who snuck under the radar of that list. Most people would agree that Perez is one of those players. What is much more controversial is that Perez might prove to be as valuable as anyone the Royals had on that list in the first place. It’s way too early to say so with any confidence. But every time we think Perez has reached his ceiling, he builds himself another one. I can’t wait to see the perch he finally settles in at.

In the meantime, I suggest the Royals keep his knees in bubble wrap. Tall catchers and knee injuries go hand in hand. The Royals can’t afford another one.

Luis Mendoza

The quick prologue to the Luis Mendoza story: a journeyman right-hander going nowhere, rebuilt his delivery last season in Triple-A, led the PCL in ERA despite striking nobody out. We were very skeptical of his chances. He pitched very well in spring training, including an excellent strikeout rate, which might have indicated something.

Or not. In his first start, Mendoza walked four and struck out two, which set the tone. In his next start, he walked four and struck out one, and also allowed nine runs in four innings. He was bumped from the rotation after just four starts, but the same pattern continued in the bullpen. Through the 6th of June, Mendoza had 25 walks and 19 strikeouts, and it’s essentially impossible to be even remotely successful in the major leagues in the 21st century when you have more walks than strikeouts. Batters were hitting .312/.405/.399 against him; he was lucky to have a 5.36 ERA.

But then something funny happened. He went back into the rotation on June 12th when the dreaded Black Arm Death swept through the pitching staff. In his first start, he took a no-hitter into the seventh – and struck out four batters against two walks. In five starts since returning to the rotation, he has walked no more than two batters in any start. He has struck out at least four batters in all but one of those starts. Wednesday night, he struck out a career-high nine.

Here’s Mendoza’s line in his last five starts:

30 IP, 28 H, 6 BB, 25 K, 2 HR, 3.26 ERA.

I have no idea what this means. I have no idea if this is sustainable. But strikeout and walk rates stabilize as quickly as any stat in the game, meaning that you don’t need as large of a sample size to trust them. Something happened to Mendoza when he returned to the rotation. Whether it was something as simple as gaining confidence in his pitches, or whether it was trying to mix his pitches up more so that his repertoire wasn’t as predictable the third time through the lineup (where he was getting killed), I don’t know. Maybe he added a pitch, or subtly adjusted an old one. I don’t know.

But I want to see more. Given the state of the Royals’ rotation, it’s easy to say “well, he’ll certainly get the opportunity to show us more,” but it’s actually worse than that. Mendoza has a 4.50 ERA on the season, which is hardly great, or even good – the American League as a whole has a 4.04 ERA, and starting pitchers have a 4.37 ERA*, so his performance is still below-average.

Except that right now, Mendoza has the best ERA of anyone in the Royals’ rotation. Luis Mendoza, for lack of a better term, is currently the Royals’ ace. He is their stopper. Those aren’t the saddest words I’ve ever written, but if you’re thinking that the Royals might actually have a chance to get back in the race this year, I suggest you read the opening sentence of this paragraph a few dozen more times.

*: AL starting pitchers have a 4.37 ERA, but AL relievers have a 3.41 ERA. Relievers generally have better ERAs, because they’re more effective and because of the way inherited runners are charged to the outgoing pitcher, but the gap isn’t usually this wide. Just three years ago, for instance, AL starters had a 4.62 ERA, but relievers had a 4.17 ERA. The ERA gap was 45 points in 2009, and 96 points – more than double – in 2012. So if it seems like every team has a great bullpen…that’s because they do. It might be just one of those years – or it could be that teams are doing a better job than ever of identifying potential bullpen arms and deploying them correctly.

Bubba Starling

Any truth to the rumors that the Royals are keeping Starling in extended spring training to shield him from prying eyes that may notice he’s not very good? – May 2nd

You probably know about my growing concerns with Starling, the hometown kid who was the #5 overall pick in one of the deepest drafts in a generation last season. You probably remember my study from last year about the importance of draft age among high school hitters, and the implication that Starling, who turned 19 before he even signed, was a significant risk to underperform, particularly compared with #8 overall pick Francisco Lindor, who was just 17 when he signed.

My concerns only grew when Lindor headed straight to the Midwest League in April and performed well – he’s hitting .262/.349/.374 as an 18-year-old, and scouting reports are uniformly glowing – while Starling stayed back in extended spring training. They grew more when it turned out our expectations that Starling would head to Kane County as soon as the weather warmed up were unfounded, and that the Royals eventually decided he would be best served by debuting in the Appalachian League, a couple rungs down the minor league chain.

Swing remains long. Wrists very fast. – May 10th

Meanwhile, it felt like every 2011 first-round pick was crushing it. I’m not just talking about the four guys who went ahead of Starling, like Gerrit Cole and Danny Hultzen and Trevor Bauer and Dylan Bundy. I’m talking about Jose Fernandez (#14 pick to the Marlins, now the #8 prospect in baseball per Baseball America) and Matt Barnes (#19 to the Red Sox, #13 prospect) and Lindor (#14 prospect) and Archie Bradley (#7 pick, #16 prospect) and Javier Baez (#9 pick, #25 prospect) and George Springer (#11 pick, #45 prospect).

And then Starling got hurt, straining his hamstring after his first at-bat in an exhibition game two days before his season was supposed to begin. Let’s just say I was becoming less worried and more bitter. I was starting to wonder whether Starling was just the local version of Roscoe Crosby. Starling ranks #46 on Baseball America’s mid-season list – behind ten other guys in the 2011 draft.

Everything’s working except the bat. – May 19th

Starling finally debuted on June 28, and I knew I would violently overreact to his first pro game. Naturally, he went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts (and a walk). Beautiful.

But if I’m allowed to overreact over one game, I can also overreact over one week. And I will say, a week later, that I’ve lowered the DEFCON rating a slot on Starling. On Monday, in his fourth game as a pro, he homered – twice – and singled. On Tuesday, he went 2-for-4. Last night, he went 2-for-4 with a triple and two walks.

Starling’s had a hand dip in his swing his whole life. Will take time to unlearn and retrain. Easy thing to spot, don’t know how easy to fix. – June 14th

Through six games, Starling is hitting .360/.484/.680. More importantly, he’s showing at least a rudimentary understanding of the strike zone. In six games, he’s struck out seven times – and drawn five walks. Even in a sample size of just six games, those rates are somewhat meaningful. The #1 pitfall for tools demons who get drafted in the first round is plate discipline. As an example, Anthony Hewitt was the Phillies’ first-round pick in 2008 despite being very raw at the plate, because he was one of the best athletes the draft had seen in years. In his first pro season, he struck out 55 times – and walked seven times, for a K/BB ratio of nearly 8 to 1. Incredibly, it got worse each of the next two years – 77/9 in 2009, 158/13 in 2010. Hewitt is 23 years old and still in A-ball, his career jeopardized by a simple inability to tell balls from strikes.

I’d venture to say that there is no point in Hewitt’s career where he drew as many as five walks during a stretch where he struck out seven times. Simply ruling out an extreme case of plate indiscipline makes it more likely that Starling will reach his considerable ceiling as a hitter. It’s certainly not enough – Donavan Tate, the #3 overall pick in 2009 and a worst-case scenario for Starling, has had pretty good strikeout-to-walk ratios throughout his career; he simply hasn’t hit worth a damn.

Bubba Starling’s swing is transformed. In like a month. Whoever’s been coaching him has worked wonders with it. He’ll match the hype even if he doesn’t improve his technique any further. – July 5th

All quotes in italics are from a Baseball Person whose opinion I trust greatly. If anything, the evolution of his opinions are more dramatic – and more optimistic – than any amount of statistical evidence that six games can provide.

I’d still rather have Dylan Bundy. I’d still rather have Francisco Lindor, frankly. But then we knew on Draft Day that Starling was a bigger risk than either of them; it’s just that he had an upside that bordered on historic. It’s still doubtful that he’ll reach it, but I’m feeling a heck of a lot better about him than I was a month ago, or even a week ago.

Royals Today: 7/1/12.

My apologies for the long gap between posts, though this time, I have an excuse you’ll actually appreciate: I’ve been writing a review of the 1985 World Series for 810 WHB’s All-Star Program, which I’m told will be available (free!) in various outlets around Kansas City over the next 7-10 days. So pick one up if you get the chance. It was a weird sensation to write about a Royals team in a completely positive manner.

And now back to what I hope will be shorter, and more frequent posts going forward.

- Rooting for this team right now is an incredibly frustrating experience, because they seem determined to maintain a bipolar existence, playing like minor leaguers for a stretch, then like contenders for a stretch, often within the same week. Of their last seven series, four have been sweeps – two each way. After winning four in a row to close to within four games of .500 – their best record since their 12-game losing streak – they’ve lost three in a row to the team with the worst run differential in the majors. And for whatever reason, since June 7th, the Royals are 9-1 between Monday and Thursday, and 3-10 between Friday and Sunday – with the result being that the analysis you hear from me on 810’s The Border Patrol Monday mornings is completely different from the analysis I give on The Program on mid-day Fridays.

The Royals are currently seven games under .500 at 35-42, which is appropriate, because they’ve stayed within a tight band between four and ten games under .500 every single day since their losing streak ended. The random streaks disguise the fact that this is pretty much what they are – a below-average, but not terrible, team. They’re on pace to finish 74-88, which would make them the 8th-worst team* in the majors. If they draft #8 next season, it would be only the second time in the last nine drafts that they didn’t pick in the top five. So…um…progress?

*: Though they currently have a better record than the Philadelphia Phillies, who are suddenly in full-on sell mode. This seems like a good time to link to this. Murky at best, y’all.

- One of the biggest reasons why the Royals are unable to sustain any kind of winning streak is that they insist on trotting Jonathan Sanchez out there every fifth day. Their allegiance to Sanchez long ago passed through “annoying” territory, then “exasperating”, and now is quickly moving through “destructive”. I can’t make this any more clear than to go to all caps:

JONATHAN SANCHEZ IS DONE. HE HAS NOTHING LEFT.

In 46 innings, Sanchez has walked 40 batters. He has struck out just 32. His walk rate is 55% above his career average AND his strikeout rate has been cut by a third. He’s allowed 52 hits. He’s hit five batters. He’s thrown four wild pitches. He’s made four errors, for a tidy fielding percentage of .600. He’s averaging barely 4.6 innings a start. He has a 6.80 ERA. There is literally nothing he has done well this year.

And he’s not getting better. The Royals already tried the gambit of giving him a month on the DL to rest his arm. He came back on June 13 and allowed just one run in five innings – but seven hits and two walks. Since then:

On June 18, he went six innings, and deserves a gold star for that given that the bullpen desperately needed a breather after a 15-inning game the day before. But twice he made errors trying to pick off a runner at first; the first throw was so wild the runner scored, while the second time he got to third base. That runner reached base when he was hit by a pitch, then scored on a single. With two outs and the runner on first, Sanchez hit a batter, then allowed a single to load the bases, then walked in a run. He allowed four runs, and was saved when a runner was thrown out at the plate. The Royals lost, 9-7.

On June 24, he allowed a three-run homer to Carlos Beltran in the first when he threw a 0-2 fastball right down the middle. In the second inning he allowed two more runs; both runners reached base on a walk, and the second one scored on a wild pitch with two outs. Sanchez escaped with a no-decision despite allowing 6 runs in 5.2 innings, because the offense bailed him out, but the Royals lost 11-8 because their bullpen is ultimately human.

On June 30, he gave up 10 hits and six walks in 4.1 innings. Twice he allowed a double steal because he wasn’t paying attention to the runners. On an admittedly-bizarre squib single that spun back into fair territory, he failed to cover home plate, allowing the speedy Ryan Doumit to score from second base on an infield single. The Royals lost, 7-2.

Since coming off the DL, including his successful first start, Sanchez has allowed 27 hits and 18 walks in 21 innings. Batters hit .325/.452/.506 against him in June. He’s not getting better. He’s getting worse.

I could mention here the terrible body language, the fact that he seems to have been uninterested in playing for the Royals since the day he was acquired. But honestly, it’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is when he does things like forget the runners or fail to cover a base, because those things cost runs, and runs turn into wins. And what’s relevant is that his performance is so bad that even if he had Jeff Francoeur’s personality and Bruce Chen’s sense of humor, he’d deserve to get cut.

And the Royals are circling the wagons around him. Here’s Bob Dutton’s lede from Saturday’s game: “The breaking point for the Royals with struggling left-hander Jonathan Sanchez remains, apparently, far down the road…”

I get it: the Royals know what they’re doing, they have information that we don’t, we’re just frustrated fans who don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.

I cheerfully admit that I’m not an insider, and that I don’t know the details regarding his struggles. But that’s sort of the point. The Royals are so close to the situation that they can’t see the forest for the trees. I’m sure they have a bunch of explanations for why Sanchez sucks so much, and with those explanations come solutions – if we just fix his mechanics here, if he just gets the umpire’s calls there, if every scalding line drive just happens to find a glove…he’s gonna be fine.

But if they would just take a step back, they would realize two things: 1) Few pitchers have ever been as wild as Jonathan Sanchez has been, and 2) Those few pitchers who have, never got it back. Never.

In the last 20 years, just six pitchers have walked at least 7 batters per 9 innings, while making at least 10 starts.

Jesus Sanchez walked 60 batters in 76 innings in 1999, as a 24-year-old sophomore for the Marlins. Sanchez really shouldn’t count; 11 of his 60 walks were intentional, and while he made 10 starts, he also made 49 relief appearances. In any case, Sanchez “rebounded” in 2000 to make 32 starts with a 5.34 ERA, but his career quickly fizzled out; he had a below-league-average ERA every year of his career.

Aaron Myette was, like Sanchez, a 24-year-old pitcher in 2002 when he walked 41 batters in 48 innings. He also allowed 64 hits, including 11 homers, and had a 10.06 ERA. He would throw a grand total of 7 more innings in his career, in which he gave up 11 runs. He finished with 154 innings – and a 8.16 career ERA. That’s the highest ERA by a pitcher with 120+ innings in major league history.

Nick Neugebauer was a flame-throwing right-hander the Brewers selected in the 2nd round in 1999, sort of the primordial version of Jeremy Jeffress. He threw as hard as anyone in the minors, and in 2001 struck out 175 batters in 149 minor league innings. Baseball America ranked him the #17 prospect in baseball before the 2002 season. That year, he made 12 starts for the Brewers, and walked 44 batters in 55 innings. He then blew out his shoulder something fierce, and aside from a single appearance in A-ball two years later, his career was over at the age of 21.

Unlike Sanchez, none of those three guys ever had success in the majors before their command disappeared. But Dontrelle Willis was a sensation – Rookie of the Year in 2003, second in the Cy Young balloting in 2005. But he started to go bad in 2007, with a 5.17 ERA for the Marlins, before the Tigers acquired him along with Miguel Cabrera for six prospects.

Willis then lost the strike zone completely. He walked 35 batters in 24 innings for Detroit in 2008, then 28 batters in 34 innings in 2009. By 2010 the Tigers had tired of him, let him go mid-season and Arizona gave him a shot, so for the season he made 13 starts, during which he walked 56 batters in 66 innings. The Reds gave him a chance in 2011 and he had his best season in four years, “best” being a relative term, since he had a 5.00 ERA and walked 37 batters in 76 innings. His career is somewhere between limbo, jeopardy, and the River Styx at the moment.

Speaking of sensations, Steve Avery was the #1 prospect on Baseball America’s first-ever Top 100 Prospects list back in 1990. He made the Braves’ rotation that year; in 1991, he went 18-8 with a 3.38 ERA and was beyond fantastic in the NLCS to pitch the Braves to the World Series. Too many pitches too soon took a toll, and his career started to go downhill in 1994, when he was 24. By 1999, he was pitching for the Reds and pretty much washed up – in 96 innings, he walked 78 batters and struck out 51. He spent all of 2000 in the minors and then took a couple of years off. The good news is he made it back to the majors briefly in 2003. The bad news is that he made it back as a reliever for the worst team of my lifetime, the 2003 Detroit Tigers. Steve Avery was done after that.

And finally…you may remember when I analyzed this trade back in November, I made the point that the range in what Sanchez could be was enormous. If you spliced the data a certain way, there were two people in baseball history that compared to Sanchez. One was Randy Johnson.

The other was Oliver Perez, who is an eerily good comp for Sanchez, because like Sanchez, even at his best he was uncomfortably wild. In 2004, Perez had a 2.98 ERA in 196 innings, struck out 239 batters…and walked 81. In 2005 and 2006, he was so wild that he had an ERA north of 6 over that span, but found himself a little after joining the Mets in 2007 and 2008. After the 2008 season they signed him to a 3-year, $36 million contract, even though he had led the NL in walks in 2008.

In 2009, Perez made 14 starts, threw 66 innings, walked 58 batters, and had a 6.82 ERA.

In 2010, Perez made 7 starts and 10 relief appearances, threw 46 innings, walked 42 batters, and had a 6.80 ERA.

(As a reminder, Sanchez has made 10 starts, thrown 46 innings, walked 40 batters, and has a 6.80 ERA. Spooky.)

Perez is back in the majors, having resurfaced with the Mariners as a reliever, and has pitched reasonably well in five outings. But when his command went, nothing could save him as a starter, and no amount of hoping could change that.

Perez, Avery, and Willis were all left-handers; all of them had above-average fastballs when they were young. All of them lost velocity on their fastball at the same time their command failed them, which is probably not a coincidence. Another pitcher comes to mind here: Scott Kazmir, who was never quite this wild, but in 2010 mysteriously lost his magic fastball shortly after the Angels acquired him from Tampa Bay. His strikeout rate plummeted that year, his walk rate was a career high, and he had a 5.94 ERA. Despite being just 26 years old, his career was effectively over. In 2011 he made a single start, allowed five runs in 1.2 innings, and hasn’t pitched since.

So, I’m sure you’re asking, what do we know about Sanchez’s fastball? I’m glad you asked.

In 2009, the average velocity on his fastball was 91.6 mph.

In 2010, it was 90.5 mph.

In 2011, it was 89.7 mph.

In 2012, it is 89.1 mph.

Hmmm…a left-hander with career-long command issues, who has lost his fastball and can’t throw strikes? Yeah, let’s keep throwing him out there every fifth day.

I know the Royals don’t give a damn about my opinions, but I’m still entitled to them. And my opinion is that JONATHAN SANCHEZ IS DONE. The evidence couldn’t be more clear. Look guys, I’m sorry that you gave up Melky Cabrera to get him. I’m sorry that Cabrera is making you look like the laughingstock of baseball, hitting .352/.394/.514, leading the NL in hits, and being elected to start the All-Star Game – back in Kansas City. I understand you want to get something out of the trade.

But accept the facts: Jonathan Sanchez is a sunk cost, and letting him continue to take the mound is throwing bad starts after good. I was supportive of the trade at the time, and so were many others in the KC media. I’m owning up to my mistake: I was wrong. And if you would admit to your mistake, or better still if you would have admitted to it two weeks ago when it was clear that this train wasn’t coming back to the station, we could put this behind us and move on. No team has a perfect track record when it comes to trades; if you make trades, you’re going to make some stinkers. So be it.

I’m not a fraction as upset about the trade as I am about your stubborn unwillingness to admit you screwed up. It’s over. Melky Cabrera is awesome. He’s also going to be a free agent at the end of the year. Just pretend you traded Cabrera for Ryan Verdugo, and move on.

The sad part of this? This isn’t even close to the worst case of the Royals sticking with a starting pitcher beyond all reason. You may remember 2005, when the Royals signed Jose Lima to a one-year, $2.5 million contract after they let him get away to Los Angeles following the miracle 2003 season. Lima then rewarded them with a 7.33 ERA heading into the All-Star Break – he had allowed 121 hits, including 20 homers, in 93 innings. And they just kept pitching him. Lima stayed in the rotation all season, making 32 starts. He was better in the second half – his ERA after the Break was all the way down to 6.57. For the season, Lima had a 6.99 ERA, the worst by a qualifying starter in a non-strike-shortened season since 1936.

And here’s the kicker: Jose Lima had incentives in his contract based on starts made. By sticking with him all season, he earned over $1 million in bonuses. If I ever get Allard Baird attached to a lie detector for ten minutes, the first question I’m asking him is…well, the first question is “Tell me about every single instance of the Glass family meddling in baseball affairs.” But the second question will be “WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING WITH JOSE LIMA, YOU IMBECILE?!”

We’re not at that stage with Jonathan Sanchez yet. But we’re on that track. And this is a track that should never, ever be used.

- I meant to cover a lot of things today, but of course Sanchez got me all worked up into a lather. So let me just finish with Billy Butler, the first Royals’ hitter to make the All-Star Team in seven years.

I’m not sure that Butler is the most deserving player on the Royals’ roster. Mike Moustakas has probably been the Royals’ best player overall, given his offensive and defensive contributions. Alcides Escobar has been an absolute joy, and I’ve done him a disservice by not talking about him (or his contract, which suddenly looks like a bargain) at all this year. And Baseball-Reference somehow has Alex Gordon as the team’s best player, although that’s because they’ve scored his defense this year somewhere in Andruw-Jones-in-his-prime territory. He’s good; he’s not that good.

But if the Royals were to only have one representative – and with the game in town, it’s a shame they only have one – I’m glad it’s Butler. For too long, people have focused on what he can’t do – play defense, or hit at a Pujolsian level – instead of what he can. Since the beginning of the 2009 season, he’s hitting .303/.369/.480. He’s averaging 45 doubles and 21 homers a season. And after years of people complaining that he just doesn’t hit enough home runs, he’s finally tapping into it this year – he has a career-high .512 slugging average, and 16 homers in just 77 games. He’s on pace for 34, and while he’s more likely to regress to the mean than he is to pick up that pace, there’s at least the possibility he could make the epic Chase For 37 a reason to tune into Royals games in September. So good for Billy.

Unfortunately, that may be the only reason to tune into Royals games in September. At least that’s what I think now. Talk to me Friday morning, and I may sing a different tune.

The Pen Is Mightier.

As I write this, as Saturday afternoon’s ballgame gets underway, the Royals rank 5th in the American League in runs allowed.

That may be somewhat deceptive. The Royals have allowed 263 runs, just two fewer than the Rangers and seven fewer than the White Sox. (The Rays have allowed 262 runs; if I had written this yesterday, the Royals would have ranked 4th in the league in runs allowed.) All three teams have played 64 or 65 games, while the Royals have played only 62 – if we lined teams up by runs allowed per game, the Royals would rank 7th.

But the point here isn’t whether the Royals rank 4th or 5th or 7th. The point here is that the Kansas City Royals, who were widely assumed to have one of the worst rotations in the league before the season – and whose rotation has played to form and then some – are better than average when it comes to run prevention.

Before the season, I said that while I didn’t expect the Royals to contend, that I also didn’t think their rotation automatically disqualified them from consideration. If the Royals could just get mediocre production from their starting five, the rest of the team was good enough to vault the Royals into contention. Basically, the rotation was to the Royals what Matt Cassel is to the Chiefs.

As I saw it, the Royals looked like they had an above-average offense, an above-average defense, and a well-above-average bullpen. With starting pitchers throwing fewer and fewer innings every year throughout baseball, their relevance was also declining with each season, and the Royals were strong enough in other areas to compensate.

As it turns out, the offense hasn’t been above-average or anywhere close, an issue which I hope to address later. But the rest of that argument has held up well.

The Royals’ starters have combined for a 4.87 ERA, which is next-to-last in the AL. They are in no danger of falling to dead last – the Twins have a remarkable 6.09 ERA from their rotation. It’s almost as if putting a bunch of finesse pitchers in front of a bad defense isn’t a good idea. But still, the Royals are 13th in the league, which is about where we’d expect them to be.

The Royals’ bullpen has a 2.87 ERA, the fourth-best in the AL.

So far, so good. But here’s the thing: as Sam Mellinger pointed out a few days ago, the bullpen isn’t only effective – it’s also prolific. The Royals are on pace to get more innings from relief pitchers than any other team in baseball history.

Royals starters have thrown 316 innings in 62 games. That’s 5.10 innings per start. Think about that for a moment. We’re in the middle of June, and the Royals are getting basically five innings from their starter every single day. (Late update: after Bruce Chen got knocked out in the second inning, the Royals are now averaging 5.04 innings a start.) The Twins have 329 innings from their rotation, while EVERY OTHER TEAM IN THE LEAGUE has at least 366.

To compensate, the bullpen has thrown 239 innings in 62 games. Let’s compare the Royals to the Oakland A’s, who rank just ahead of the Royals with a 2.80 ERA from their bullpen:

Oakland: 196.1 innings, 61 earned runs, 2.80 ERA.

Kansas City: 238.2 innings, 76 earned runs, 2.87 ERA.

The Royals’ pen is slightly worse on a per-inning basis – but they’ve thrown 22% more innings. If you subtract out the A’s numbers from the Royals, you get:

42.1 innings, 15 earned runs, 3.19 ERA.

Kansas City’s bullpen has basically matched what the A’s have done – and then thrown another 42 innings with a well-above-average league ERA.

If you do this with the Yankees, who rank second in the league with a 2.71 ERA – but in only 170 innings – here’s what you get:

69 innings, 25 earned runs, 3.26 ERA.

The Royals can’t touch the Orioles, whose bullpen not only has a 2.38 ERA, but thanks to a ton of extra-inning games, have thrown 219 innings as well. But a strong case can be made that given the extra work that’s been asked out of them, the Royals have the second-best bullpen in the league.

Another way to look at it is this: the Royals essentially have three types of pitchers on their roster. They have starting pitchers, they have relievers, and they have “shadow starters”, pitchers who are trained to be starters but who are stashed away in the pen, waiting for the inevitable call in the third inning. Some of these guys have made starts of their own. Nate Adcock. Everett Teaford. Vinny Mazzaro. Luis Mendoza.

Those four pitchers have made 13 starts, in which they’ve thrown 61 innings. But they’ve also made 13 relief appearances, in which they’ve thrown 44.1 innings. In essence, those are the extra innings that the Royals have gotten from their bullpen. In those 44.1 innings, they’ve allowed 17 earned runs.

So here’s a way to break down the performance of the Royals’ pitching staff:

Starters: 316 innings, 4.87 ERA

Shadow starters: 44 innings, 3.45 ERA

Relievers: 194 innings, 2.74 ERA

(To go on a tangent here, you can drop that ERA nine points if you take out Roman Colon’s appearance last night. I’m trying to stay positive here, but…I think Dayton Moore’s attachment to Roman Colon has now leapfrogged past Jeff Francoeur and even Yuniesky Betancourt as the most bizarre fetish of his career.

You may recall Colon as the reliever the Royals acquired from the Tigers shortly after he had been suspended from his Triple-A team after punching a teammate in the face. In 2007, he had a 4.43 ERA in the minors. In 2008, he had a 4.74 ERA in the minors. But in 2009, he pitched reasonably well in 13 relief appearances, and got promoted to Kansas City, where he fashioned a 4.83 ERA in 50 innngs, with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of just 29 to 21.

But the next spring Colon reportedly had developed a new nuclear slider which was supposed to change the world, so he made the team out of spring training. In five appearances, he allowed 8 of 14 batters to reach base, and was sent packing with an 18.00 ERA. He was soon sold to a team in Korea, and even in Korea he didn’t pitch all that well.

In 2011, he was back stateside with the Albuquerque Isotopes in the Dodgers’ organization, where he fashioned a 4.85 ERA. This winter the Royals re-signed him, sent him to Omaha, and he was modestly effective. In 30 innings he had a 3.34 ERA, but he also had walked 14 batters and allowed 27 hits.

And Friday, they called him up. They did so despite the fact that Colon has never been effective at the major-league level, he’s never been dominant at the minor-league level, and he’s 32 years old. They did so even though it meant burning a spot on the 40-man roster. They did so even though they had sent down Louis Coleman THE DAY BEFORE. Coleman’s numbers IN THE MAJORS (20 innings, 3.15 ERA) were better than Colon’s numbers in the minors. They sent Coleman down so that they could keep Clint Robinson in the majors – and then sent Robinson down one day later. So in order to keep Clint Robinson on the roster FOR ONE MORE DAY, they replaced Coleman with Roman Freaking Colon. Who, naturally, coughed up two runs in two-thirds of an inning last night. If the rest of the staff hadn’t thrown 8.1 innings of shutout ball, this would have cost the Royals the game.

The Royals front office has a lot of smart guys and they’ve done a lot of smart things. But the blinders they have towards certain players are more than just aggravating – they are potentially destructive. End of rant.)

I don’t know if the bullpen can continue to maintain this level of excellence going forward. Some regression to the mean is likely even if you don’t think that they’re going to burn out from all the times they’ve been called on.

To the Royals credit, they’ve spread out all those innings as much as possible. Not only have they carried eight relievers most of the season, but they’ve worn out I-29 shuttling pitchers back and forth – Adcock, Mazzaro, Coleman, Teaford, and Tommy Hottovy have all gone back and forth. They essentially have had a nine-man bullpen, with the ninth man resting his arm for a few days in Omaha.

Here are the relievers on pace to throw the most innings for the Royals this year:

Kelvin Herrera: 88.2

Tim Collins: 81.0

Aaron Crow: 75.0

Jose Mijares: 68.0

Jonathan Broxton: 64.1

That’s not a particularly heavy workload  – only two pitchers are on pace to throw 80 innings, and none are on pace to throw 90. But here’s a list of the relievers on pace to appear in the most games this year:

Jose Mijares: 84

Aaron Crow: 81

Tim Collins: 76

Kelvin Herrera: 76

Jonathan Broxton: 65

There’s some cause for concern there. The interaction between innings and appearances for relievers is complicated and not well-understood. But my belief is that it is risker to let a reliever throw 80 innings in 70 games than to throw 100 innings in 50 games. We never see the latter anymore; relievers rarely cross even 90 innings anymore, and yet they continue to get hurt, whereas someone like Goose Gossage could throw over 130 innings in a season three times in his career without a problem (but only once in his career did he pitch in more than 65 games).

I start to worry about a pitcher who makes 75 appearances in a season, and the Royals might wind up with four guys who fit that profile. The depth in the bullpen makes it tempting for Ned Yost to call on three or four different guys a night to throw an inning apiece, but my suspicion is that it would be better to ask guys like Herrera and Crow – who were both starters in the minors – to throw two innings at a time, but only use them twice a week.

It will be interesting to see if the bullpen can keep up this pace all season. It will also be interesting to see if the Royals learn from the mistakes of the past, recognize that even elite relievers are one pitch away from the DL, and sell high on some of these guys – not just the obvious pitcher in Broxton, but one or two of their young, club-controlled commodities like Crow or Herrera. That’s a topic for a later time.

But one thing is clear: a bullpen this strong and this deep can absolutely cover for a rotation this bad. The Royals are 27-34 with the lowest-scoring offense in the league. With even an average offense, they would be over .500 and fighting for first place in the AL Central even with a rotation of Bruce Chen, Luke Hochevar, Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and Eduardo Villacis.

Which makes it that much more frustrating that, for lack of an offense, they’re not doing just that.

Draft Recap 2012.

I said before the draft that I would find it almost impossible to rip the Royals, no matter who their first-round pick turned out to be. And when the Royals took Kyle Zimmer, I accepted their choice with good cheer, even though I had my reservations. But with each passing day, I’ve warmed up to the pick more and more. On Monday, I thought that Zimmer was the safe pick. Today, I think he might have been the best pick as well.

On my pre-draft board, I had Zimmer ranked 8th, which of course means that he was not the top guy left on my list when the Royals picked. But let’s look at the guys that were still there:

At #7, I had Albert Almora, the Florida high school outfielder. Honestly, I didn’t have a strong feeling one way or another as to who to rank higher – I originally had Zimmer #7 and Almora #8. When it’s this close between two players, I have no problem drafting for need and taking the college pitcher over the high school hitter. And I wouldn’t question the Royals at all if they felt it was not close.

At #4, I had Lucas Giolito, the high-school right-hander who might have gone #1 overall before he strained his elbow. I still think he’s the one pitcher in this draft with #1 upside, and if the Nationals can get him signed at #16, that’s a massive steal for them. But I get the decision not to take him. Given the concerns about his arm, given the concerns about his signability, given that he might have to sit out a year at some point if and when his elbow gives out, I appreciate that there were a lot of risks involved. Obviously, the Royals weren’t the only team to pass on Giolito’s upside. They might have been wrong to do so, but if so, they have a lot of company.

And that leaves Mark Appel, whose slide to the #8 spot in the draft was the biggest surprise of the first round.

Everything else equal, I’d rather have drafted Appel, and as stunning as it was that he was available when the Royals picked at #5, it was completely unsurprising when the Royals passed on him. It’s just like the Royals to look a gift horse in the mouth, and then send it back.

The question is, why? Why did he fall so far, and why did the Royals pass on him in favor of another college pitcher? The easy answer is that he’s a Scott Boras client, and he was going to be a tough sign and blah blah blah. We’ve heard it all before, like when the Royals passed on J.D. Drew and took Jeff Austin again.

Only that’s too easy. That was 14 years ago; Drew’s retired, for God’s sake. Dayton Moore’s Royals didn’t let Mike Moustakas or Eric Hosmer or Bubba Starling pass by because of their Boras-ness. (Nor did they let Luke Hochevar or Christian Colon pass by, though maybe they should have.) The new draft rules complicate things, but if anything, they should reduce the leverage of Boras clients, not enhance it.

That leaves only one other possibility, which is that the Royals honestly believe that Kyle Zimmer is the better prospect. And I will say, in the days since the first round was consummated, that I have heard from some people in the industry who share that assessment. It’s a minority opinion – but not a tiny minority. There is a segment of baseball people who really like Kyle Zimmer. Appel has more consistent stuff and a much longer track record; the general consensus is that he’s the safer pick. But a lot of people feel that Zimmer has the higher upside.

Remember, the one nick on Appel before the draft was that the whole didn’t always add up to the sum of the parts – that he should have dominated college hitters even more than he did, given his stuff. That may mean nothing; a similar complaint was lodged against Justin Verlander in college. But you can forgive the Royals for seeing this as a giant red flag, given that they have the poster child for this at the major-league level in Hochevar. I don’t know if their experience with Hochevar factored into the decision to pass on Appel. But I wouldn’t blame them if it did.

I’m not sure I agree with the decision to take Zimmer instead of Appel. But based on what I know now, I’m fairly confident that the decision was made based on a pure baseball evaluation, not simply on the finances involved and the difficulty in signing each player. All I can ask is for the Royals to take the player they think is the best available, and I think they did that here.

And I’ll say this: I’m not sure they’re wrong. Zimmer is really growing on me.

What worried me before the draft – the reason I placed him behind Appel and Gausman – were two things: 1) he sort of came out of nowhere, in the sense that two years ago he wasn’t pitching, and before this college season he was seen as a mid-to-late first-round pick; 2) after dominating early in the season, his stuff was down at the end, presumably (but not assuredly) because of a hamstring injury.

I haven’t encountered anyone who is genuinely worried about his velocity drop; it seems to be a consensus that it was, in fact, just a product of a tight hamstring, and that when he returns to the mound later this month or in July, his fastball will be back to sitting 95 and touching 99 again. And while he did have a meteoric rise from high school third baseman to college ace, he’s shown enough stuff for enough time that the odds it was all a mirage are close to nil.

Two years ago, Cubs’ GM Jim Hendry shocked the industry by using their first-round pick on a kid named Hayden Simpson, a Division II pitcher who had added velocity leading up to the draft. Almost from the moment he signed, Simpson’s new-found velocity disappeared – he had a nasty case of mono, and his fastball never came back. He currently has a 7.32 ERA in A-ball, with 29 walks and 14 strikeouts, and Hendry is no longer the GM of the Cubs.

Maybe that was in the back of my mind when I evaluated Zimmer before the draft. Or maybe it was Colt Griffin, who threw in the upper 90s for roughly three months in his entire life – it just happened to be the three months before the Royals took him in the 2001 draft. There are a lot of pitchers who show elite velocity for a short period of time, and you don’t want to be the team drafting them in the first round.

But that shortchanges Zimmer. Gaining velocity quickly is not a red flag in itself. Stephen Strasburg went from throwing 89 to 99 in less than a year, going from undrafted out of high school to a guy who, after his freshman season, was already being talked about as a potential #1 pick after his junior year. You just want to see a pitcher maintain his new-found velocity for more than a month or two. Zimmer only threw in the upper 90s for a couple of months, but he’s thrown in the low-to-mid 90s for the better part of two years. He outdueled Gerrit Cole when Cole was pitching at UCLA last season. That’s real.

Beyond that, Zimmer’s not defined by his velocity. His curveball is a fantastic pitch, and he has terrific command of both pitches. Actually, that might be the most interesting thing about Zimmer: that for a guy who didn’t start pitching until two years ago, he has tremendous polish.

Then there’s the age factor. Zimmer is still just 20 years old; he doesn’t turn 21 until August. (He’s just 11 months older than Bubba Starling, who was drafted out of high school.) My original study on the impact of age was limited to high school hitters, but I expanded on that study for a chapter I wrote in Baseball Prospectus’ book Extra Innings, which came out this spring. What I found was that younger draft picks tended to outperform older draft picks among college pitchers as well – although the effect was muted, roughly half as significant as the effect on high school hitters.

Still, that’s a good sign. The combination of youth, inexperience, stuff, and polish is really quite rare, and I struggle to think of another pitcher who fits that mold. I mean, in Royals history, the last example I can think of would be Bret Saberhagen, who wasn’t even drafted as a pitcher – he was a 16th-round pick as a shortstop – but was in the majors within two years, became the youngest Royals player ever, and as a rookie walked 32 batters in 158 innings.

I’m not comparing Zimmer to Saberhagen. I’m just saying that just because an 18-year-old position player magically turns into a 20-year-old phenom on the mound isn’t a bad thing.

(As long as we’re talking about converted third basemen turned into elite pitchers, Brandon Beachy was a third baseman in college, barely pitched at all, the Braves took a flyer on him as an undrafted free agent…and he was in the majors in barely two years. Last year, as a rookie, he led all major leaguers with 100+ innings in strikeouts per nine innings. This year, he leads the majors in ERA.)

As a former position player and multi-sport athlete in high school, Zimmer also does the things you’d expect from athletic pitchers, like field his position well, repeat his delivery, etc. And the other benefit from his lack of experience on the mound is this: he only threw 88 innings this year. Unlike pitchers at some college programs, Zimmer wasn’t abused at all by his coach, who never allowed him throw more than 120 pitches in a game. The Royals are getting a fresh arm; if he gets hurt, it’s not because he was mishandled before they ever got their hands on him.

And finally, yes, there’s the signability issue. Again, in some ways the new rules make it easier to sign elite players, because teams have the leverage that they have to stick to their slots or face punitive penalties. But in some ways the new rules make it harder to sign elite players, or at least more painful, because every dollar you give that player is a dollar you can’t give someone else. No one knows if Appel signs with the Pirates; while they would appear to have the upper hand, I’ll declare defeat for Scott Boras only after the game is over. But even if they do sign him, it will probably take more money than the $2.9 million that pick is slotted for, meaning they’ll have to take that money from other slots.

By getting Zimmer to agree to a deal quickly, the Royals not only signed him within days of the draft – becoming the first top pick to sign that fast since Billy Butler in 2004 – but worked out a $3 million deal, $500,000 less than the slot money assigned to that pick.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that Zimmer’s a bargain. Major league baseball was actually quite generous in their allotment for some of the slots at the top of the first round. While it took $5 million for the Diamondbacks to sign Archie Bradley, the #7 pick last year, Bradley is the only #7 pick in history to receive a signing bonus of more than $2.5 million. (And Bradley was a special case; that pick was a compensation pick for the Diamondbacks after they didn’t sign Barret Loux the year before. The pick was not protected, meaning if they hadn’t signed Bradley, the Diamondbacks would not have received a compensation pick the next year. So Bradley had more leverage than usual.)

Nonetheless, Zimmer signed for less than slot, and quickly, allowing the Royals to move that money elsewhere. I’m not sure whether I’d rather have Zimmer over Appel. But I’m pretty sure I’d rather take Zimmer, save on drama as well as money, and use the money saved to draft and sign better players elsewhere in the draft. That’s exactly what the Royals did, and it’s hard to fault them for that.

My fear, going into the draft, was that the Royals would take a college pitcher over Carlos Correa, who as you know I really, really, really like. As it turned out, that possibility was eliminated the moment the draft started. The fact that I might be partially responsible for the fact that Correa wasn’t available when the Royals picked – The Economist weighs in here – is, ahem, uncomfortable. (Particularly since Sam Mellinger hints here that the Royals probably would have taken Correa if he was available.) But given that he wasn’t, there wasn’t anyone else on the board who was clearly a better use of the #5 pick than Zimmer.

In the second round, the Royals took Sam Selman, another college pitcher, this time a left-hander from Vanderbilt. Sort of a boring pick, Selman ranked #146 on Baseball America’s draft rankings. He vaguely resembles Zimmer in that he’s a college pitcher who has a relatively fresh arm; whereas Zimmer steadily improved his draft stock over the past two years, Selman really only came on in the last half of this season. I’m a big fan of Vanderbilt players in general, which may reveal my own bias towards a school that melds academic and athletic success (at least in baseball) as well as any college in the country. If I had a son who was worthy of a Division I scholarship, Vanderbilt would be on my short list of schools I’d want him to go to. But I don’t know if that makes Selman a better prospect or not.

Third-rounder Colin Rodgers has already signed, albeit for $700,000, about 50% more than the $476,500 slot for his pick. BA had Rodgers ranked #207 overall, but the Royals clearly differ in their opinion. He’s a left-hander out of high school with good stuff when he’s on, but he’s not always on, and at 6’ even and 185 pounds, there’s not a lot of projection there.

My favorite pick in the draft after Zimmer – one of my favorite mid-round picks the Royals have made in recent years, in fact – is fourth-rounder Kenny Diekroeger, a shortstop out of Stanford. Diekroeger turned down $2 million from the Rays out of high school; after he hit .356/.391/.491 as a freshman, there was talk that he might be the #1 overall pick in this draft. Even after a disappointing sophomore season (.293/.356/.364), he was still looked at as a probable first-round selection.

Last September, Baseball America released their preliminary Top 50 for this year’s draft. Diekroeger ranked #18 on the list. One spot below him, at #19, was…Kyle Zimmer. At #20 was...Carlos Correa.

Of course, Diekroeger had an even more disappointing junior year; as I write this (Stanford is still playing) he’s got a .271/.339/.372 line this season. His swing is a mess, and most scouts think he’ll have to move to second base as a pro.

But…Diekroeger plays at Stanford. The Cardinal have a fantastic track record in college baseball, but they are notorious for having a hitting approach that doesn’t fit every player, emphasizing hitting the other way over power. While some players have taken to it very well, both in college and in the pros (e.g. Carlos Quentin), other players who were top high school prospects were completely fouled up by it. Most famously, Michael Taylor, who was a very well-regarded prospect out of high school (he attended school with Zack Greinke, two years behind) fell all the way to the fifth round in the 2007 draft after a poor Stanford career. By the end of the 2009 season he was one of the 30 best prospects in baseball, after hitting .346/.412/.557 and .320/.395/.549 in back-to-back years. He was then a key part of the Roy Halladay trade, and while he is still struggling to break through in Oakland, he was definitely a worthwhile use of a fifth-round pick.

Of course, there’s only one Michael Taylor, and there are plenty of Stanford picks that simply never panned out in the pros. But it’s a fourth-round pick. In a weak draft. He doesn’t pan out? Neither do 90% of other guys taken in that round. But I think it's worth a fourth-round flyer to draft a kid who, nine months ago, ranked ahead of two of the top five picks in the draft. (Keith Law, incidentally, had Diekroeger #49 overall on his draft sheet, largely on the theory that there might be a ballplayer waiting to break out once his Stanford Swing is fixed.)

The Royals will probably need to pay Diekroeger more than slot money to sign, which is why it’s nice they saved some money on Zimmer. This leads to a discussion of the Royals’ philosophy in this draft, in light of the new draft rules. Many teams decided to use their draft pool to go after premium players early, and then subvert the system by drafting college seniors – who generally aren’t as talented and definitely have no leverage – from rounds 6 to 10, thereby moving their draft pool money to the top guys. (Remember Allard Baird’s Glass-family-mandated “take it or leave it” $1000 offers to college seniors? Turns out the Royals were just a decade ahead of their time.)

The Blue Jays, for instance, took a bunch of tough-to-sign top prospects in the first three rounds – where they had seven picks – and then, from the fourth through the tenth rounds, they took a college senior with every pick, and not one of them was listed among Baseball America’s Top 500. These guys are getting $5,000 to sign, and the Jays will presumably be able to afford the elite guys they drafted. They’re like ringers in reverse.

It’s a shrewd philosophy, with one drawback: it means you’re wasting mid-round picks on guys with essentially no chance to develop into prospects. The Royals went the other route: perhaps because they knew that Zimmer would sign for less than slot money, they didn’t take a single college senior in the first ten rounds. Presumably, they took the best player on their board in each round; if even one of those later picks develop, they’ll be ahead of the vast number of teams in those rounds.

I say “presumably” because many of the players the Royals selected in those rounds were not high on Baseball America’s list either. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong; the Royals have earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to identifying amateur talent. But it’s worth watching. Last year, remember, the Royals gave bonuses of at least $575,000 to eight different players, some of whom were not ranked highly before the draft either. I can’t tell you how those decisions have worked out, because not one of those eight players (not even Bubba Starling) has played a game this year – they’re all in extended spring training waiting for the short-season leagues to start.

One undeniable benefit – at least to the Royals – of the new rules is that players are signing much, much faster. Of the Royals’ first ten picks, everyone except Selman and Diekroeger has already signed. Between them and last year’s holdovers, we’ll find out a lot in the next three months about whether the Royals can keep their draft touch going. But in a draft this weak, and with just one selection in the top 65, Kyle Zimmer’s success or lack thereof will make or break this draft for Kansas City. I’m optimistic, but then, I usually am.

Draft Preview 2012.

The first rule of the draft is: I don’t know anything about the draft.

The beauty of baseball is how so much of it is accessible to the informed outsider. I love football, but I couldn’t tell you 90% of what goes on in any given play. The teams themselves don’t know half of what’s going on, at least not in the moment, which is why they watch so much tape afterwards and guard the overhead 11-on-11 videos from the public like they’re state secrets.

The easy quantification of baseball makes it possible for someone like me to know what is going on. Maybe I don’t know how or why, but I know what. It allows me to opine on the abilities of players and the sensibilities of tactics without coming off as a complete moron. (A partial moron, sure.)

But the draft is still a black box. Yes, we have stats. But high school stats are essentially meaningless; college stats aren’t much better. It’s the most important aspect of baseball that is impervious to statistical analysis. So my opinions here are even more speculative than my other ones.

I can’t talk about the draft without mentioning the elephant in the room, which is that the new CBA completely changes the draft, even if no one knows exactly how. In essence, the Royals have a draft cap, and their cap is different from that of every other team. Signability is no longer an excuse to keep from spending money – it’s a very real issue. (Even if the reason that the draft cap was put in place was to keep teams from spending money.)

My opinions on the new draft rules are complex, and require a column of their own, whether it’s here or at Grantland. The short analysis is this: I disagree with the conventional wisdom that states that the new draft rules hurt small-market teams that spend in the draft, i.e. the Royals. The CW is based on the assumption that if the old draft rules had stayed in place, that the Royals and Pirates could have kept outspending higher-revenue teams in the draft ad infinitum.

Which is kind of ridiculous. I’m fairly certain that other teams subscribe to Baseball America, and are aware that the Royals built The Best Farm System Ever largely by being willing to spend big dollars in the draft. That would have encouraged other teams to spend more, and it did – last year teams spent more money than they ever have in the draft. The dollars would have spiraled to the point where eventually even the Royals wouldn’t have been able to keep up.

I don’t think the new draft rules are fair, in the sense that I think it’s fair to dictate to a player not just where is he going to play for the next decade, but for how much money, take it or leave it. But I don’t think the new draft rules are tilted against small-market teams.

But it definitely introduces a new wrinkle.

The Royals draft fifth overall this year, which is probably as good a place to draft as any. It’s been a long time since the very top of the draft was as scrambled as it is this year. There have been years where there was no clear choice for the Royals, as it was two years ago, when they didn’t commit to Christian Colon until about half an hour before the draft started. (The rumor, of course, was that until then they were planning to take…Chris Sale. Forget the we-should-have-drafted-Tim-Lincecum revisionist history – Chris Sale may prove to be The One Who Got Away.) But that year, the top three players were clear – Bryce Harper, Jameson Taillon, and Manny Machado, the last two players in either order. It’s just that the Royals were drafting fourth.

This year, no one knows yet who the Astros will take #1, and no one knows who the Astros should take #1. There are seven or eight players who seem to stand out from the pack, but all of them are flawed in some way. If it weren’t for the new draft rules – which allow the Astros to spend twice as much money at #1 as the Royals can at #5 – you’d almost rather pick fifth. But the Astros can work out a deal for that #1 pick and use the extra draft cap space later in the draft.

The final thing to remember is that this year’s draft is, to be kind, below-average. It’s not quite 2000-level bad (Adam Johnson! Luis Montanez! Mike Stodolka! Justin Wayne! Believe it or not, those are the players selected #2, #3, #4, and #5 overall – and the Royals only picked one of them!), but it’s a huge dropoff from last season. The first eight players selected last year would all have a chance to go #1 this year. The #5 pick this year is roughly as valuable as a mid-first-rounder was last year.

But the middle of last year’s first round included some gems; Jose Fernandez, who the Marlins selected #14 overall, is one of the best prospects in the game now. There’s talent there; it’s just not clear where it is. Given the Royals’ track record, given the lack of a clear can’t-miss type in this draft, and given the new wrinkle of the draft cap, I would find it almost impossible to rip the Royals for their first-round pick, no matter who it is. At least not right away.

Presenting the candidates:

The Guys That Won’t Be There

There are two guys who are 98% certain to be taken before the Royals pick. That I’m not 100% certain they’ll be gone is why I need to list them:

Mark Appel, a right-hander out of Stanford, is generally considered the best college starting pitcher in this draft. The full package is there: upper 90s fastball, a very good slider, and a solid changeup. The knock on him is that his numbers have never quite matched his stuff; last year, he gave up over a hit an inning and struck out just 86 batters in 110 innings for the Cardinal. This year, though, he’s got a 2.27 ERA in 119 innings, with 92 hits allowed and a K/BB ratio of 127 to 26. That’s not Strasburgian, but it’s very good. He reminds me of a slightly toned-down version of Gerrit Cole, the #1 pick in last year’s draft, and Appel is currently the favorite to go #1 to the Astros this year.

Byron Buxton, a quintessential five-tool outfielder out of a Georgia high school, is the Bubba Starling of this draft, if Starling had a touch less power, a touch more speed and a slightly better hit tool, and was black. The more common comparison is to one of the Upton brothers. Like the Uptons, Buxton is unlikely to fall past the #2 pick overall, but the final-hour chatter around this draft is so up-in-the-air that I could see a scenario where he drops to #5.

The Guys That Might Be There

Kevin Gausman, a right-hander from LSU, might be the best college pitcher in the country on the right day. He doesn’t throw quite as hard as Appel, but hard enough, and he has an excellent changeup. Neither his curveball nor slider have distinguished themselves yet, but even so, he’s an easy Top 10 pick. His numbers at LSU this year are almost indistinguishable from Appel’s (2.72 ERA, 116 IP, 100 H, 27 BB, 128 K). He’s a draft-eligible sophomore, but don’t let that fool you – he’s actually six months older than Appel, who’s a junior.

Gausman would be a fine pick for a team with a need for close-to-the-majors pitching, and indeed he was the player most linked to Kansas City as recently as a week ago. Recent developments suggest he may go to Baltimore at #4, which would be the third year in a row that the Orioles, drafting one slot ahead of the Royals, took the guy they wanted. (Two years ago, it was Machado, which was a no-brainer. Last year, it was Dylan Bundy, who Nate Bukaty has reported had a deal already worked out with the Royals if he had made it to #5. That hurts.)

If Gausman isn’t there, there’s a good chance that the Royals will take…

Kyle Zimmer, a right-hander from the University of San Francisco, who might be the best college pitcher in the country on the right day. Zimmer didn’t even start pitching until college, but over the past year has elevated his draft stock as much as anyone in the country. Unlike Gausman, he has a fantastic curveball, but his changeup needs work. He doesn’t turn 21 until September, and the combination of relative youth and relative inexperience on the mound suggests there’s more to come. For a guy with so little experience pitching, he has uncanny polish – he has excellent command, fields his position well, all that good stuff.

The problem is that he’s had a mild hamstring injury which has limited him down the stretch – he’s only thrown 88 innings this year, with 104 Ks against 17 walks – and his velocity was also down late in the year, around 91 mph instead of his usual 94-95. It’s possible – even likely – that the two are related, and that his velocity will bounce back once he’s fully healed. But it’s enough of a concern that after being talked about as a probable #3 or #4 pick, he’s likely to be there when the Royals pick, and may drop further than that – Dayton Moore was in attendance for Zimmer’s final start of the year, and he got rocked.

If the Royals are convinced that Zimmer’s struggles are transient, he could be a steal at the #5 spot – not just for his talent, but that as a college pitcher with a lot of polish, he could fill the Royals’ needs perfectly and be in their rotation quickly. But it’s also possible that he’s already peaked, that his velocity won’t return – particularly when he’s throwing every five days instead of once a week – and the Royals will quickly find that they took a #4 starter with the #5 pick. I’ll give the Royals the benefit of the doubt on the gamble, but it’s a gamble.

This leads me to the most – maybe only – important point I want to make: the Royals can not draft for need. Let me repeat that: don’t draft for need. It’s such a basic point, and yet here we are, with the Royals trying to win with a patchwork rotation, and people are screaming “THEY HAVE TO TAKE A PITCHER!”

No. They. Don’t.

I don’t mean to be patronizing, but this isn’t the NFL, guys. Whoever the Royals take isn’t going to magically be ready to help the major league team right away. In the history of the draft, you can probably count the guys who could contribute at the major-league level on Draft Day on your fingers. Bob Horner. Dave Winfield. Pete Incaviglia, maybe. Stephen Strasburg, if they had let him.

So you’re not going to draft anyone who can solve the Royals’ rotation problems today, or at any point in 2012. Okay, you say, but how about 2013? The Royals could win in 2013 if they can just improve their rotation, and a college pitcher might do just that.

To which I say: if there’s a pitcher in this draft who could be in a major-league rotation this time next year, he shouldn’t fall to #5. There might be one or two of those guys in a typical draft, and this isn’t even a typical draft. Strasburg was in the majors a year after he was picked. Tim Lincecum was as well, and he went #10 overall, and if there’s a Tim Lincecum in this draft who falls to #5, then Hallelujah. But you can’t plan on that.

NONE of these guys – not Zimmer, not Gausman, not even Appel – can be expected to be major-league ready until late in the 2013 season, if not 2014. Danny Duffy is likely to be starting in the majors again before any of them. For that matter, Jake Odorizzi and John Lamb would probably beat them to the majors as well. (I’ve stopped making any kind of projections about Mike Montgomery. He’s like the Luke Hochevar of the farm system.)

Okay, you say, but the Royals are still going to need starting pitching in 2014, and it’s better that the Royals draft a guy who could be in their rotation in 2014 then a player who might not contribute in 2015 or 2016. To which I say: if you’re looking for an impact starting pitcher in the summer of 2014, the safest way to do that is to trade some excess prospects for an established starter in the winter of 2014.

And the best way to have excess prospects is TO DRAFT THE BEST PLAYERS AVAILABLE.

Four years ago, the Cincinnati Reds used the #7 overall pick on Yonder Alonso, a college first baseman. They did this even though they already had Joey Votto, who was a rookie on his way to finishing 2nd in the Rookie of the Year vote. This would be like the Royals drafting a college first baseman this year.

Two years later, the Reds used the #12 overall pick on Yasmani Grandal, a college catcher. They did this even though Devin Mesoraco – a high school catcher they had taken with their first-round pick in 2007 – was in the midst of a breakout season in the minors. (Mesoraco hit .302/.377/.587 between A-ball and Double-A.)

In both cases, the Reds drafted the best player available. And when they needed a pitcher, this past off-season, they simply packaged both players – along with veteran retread Edinson Volquez and minor-league reliever Brad Boxberger – to the Padres in exchange for an established, young, club-controlled starter in Mat Latos.

You might quibble over the details; there were legitimate concerns about Latos moving from the spacious confines of Petco Park to the bandbox that is the Great American Ballpark, and indeed Latos has a 4.91 ERA as I write this. But the principle is sound: draft for talent, and you can trade the talent to fill a need. Draft for need, and you might end up drafting Matt Stark because you really need a catcher, even though the guy at the top of your draft board is Roger Clemens. (Which actually happened.)

If Gausman or Zimmer is at the top of the Royals’ draft board when it’s their turn to pick, so be it. But if they’re not, drafting them just because they play a position of need on your current roster is madness. Much better to select…

Carlos Correa, a high school shortstop from Puerto Rico, who might just be the best player in this draft. Roughly comparable to Francisco Lindor in last year’s draft, or Machado the year before, Correa is a do-everything shortstop who might outgrow the position and move to third, but should have the bat for either position.

I have an obvious bias here, which is that Correa is just 17 years old, not turning 18 until September, and I wrote this last year. If I had researched and written that before last year’s draft, I would have strongly agitated for the Royals to take Lindor instead of Starling, who is 15 months older than him. And I’m quite certain that Lindor has surpassed Starling in the minds of almost everyone in the industry, given that Lindor is holding his own in the Midwest League at the age of 18, hitting .280/.329/.411 at the moment, while Starling is headed to short-season ball and has yet to swing a bat in anger as professional. Also, he’s older than Bryce Harper, and turns 20 in two months.

Kevin Goldstein has reported that my study has been the talk of more than a few front offices. It so happens that Correa, who was on the fringes of Top 10 consideration at the start of the season, is less than a 50/50 shot to even be on the board when the Royals pick. I’m not sure how much the former has to do with the latter; Correa has performed magnificently this year. I apologize if opening my big mouth means that Correa won’t be there when the Royals pick. On the other hand, if he’s already taken, at least it means there won’t be any second-guessing when the Royals pass on him.

The Royals’ draft preferences have become increasingly inscrutable as the draft has approached, and while I don’t think the Royals will take Correa, there have been at least some rumblings that if the board breaks right, they will take him. I hope they do. Maybe he doesn’t fill a need at a position, but he fills the one need every team has: potential star talent.

Mike Zunino is clearly the best college position player this year, largely because the crop of college hitters is, in the estimation of some scouts, the worst in 20 years. He’s a catcher at the University of Florida, and so might lead to a natural comp with Buster Posey, who was drafted out of Florida State. That’s too ambitious a comparison; the comp that’s thrown out there the most is that Zunino resembles a right-handed Jason Varitek: he’s not going to hit for average, but he’ll give you 20 homers, good plate discipline, and run a pitching staff. Not a star, but an above-average regular, and in this draft, that’s a heck of a player.

Originally thought to be a Top-3 pick, Zunino really struggled to hit once the SEC turned to conference play (although his numbers are still a robust .316/.388/.658), and he might fall as far as #8 now. He doesn’t have elite upside and the Royals already have a catcher signed from now until the apocalypse, but if he’s the best player on the board, he’s the best player on the board. There’s certainly nothing wrong with him at #5.

The Wild Cards

When you talk about wild cards in this draft, the discussion begins and mostly ends with Lucas Giolito. Three months ago, Giolito was the favorite to be the #1 overall pick. This would have been historic; he would have been the first high school right-hander in the history of the draft to be selected with the first pick.

For good reason: more than anyone else in this draft, he has the true ability to be a #1 starter in the majors. His fastball and curveball are elite; his changeup is well above-average; he’s 6-foot-6 and has a great work ethic. He’s not Dylan Bundy, but he was being talked about as just a tick below Bundy in terms of having a combination of tremendous upside and relatively little risk for a high school starter. I’ve also heard Josh Beckett comps, Beckett being the last high school right-hander to go #2 overall.

And then he sprained the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow in March. Let’s not beat around the bush: the UCL is the ligament you tear in Tommy John surgery. As my friend Will Carroll repeats incessantly, “A sprain is a tear,” which is to say, Giolito has a partial tear in his UCL.

He’s been rehabbing from the injury, and is back to throwing on flat ground, although he hasn’t thrown from a mound, and naturally that makes him an enormous risk. Also, there’s the matter of signability; his father is a Hollywood producer and they don’t need the money, so if he doesn’t get what he thinks he’s worth, he’ll go to UCLA and try again in three years.

Despite the risk, I’d rather have him than any other pitcher in this draft with the possible exception of Appel. We know all about UCLs and Tommy John surgery in Kansas City – more than we want to know. We know that Danny Duffy was pitching with a partial tear in his UCL for years before it gave out. We know that Giolito might be a Tommy John waiting to happen – he might need Tommy John right now. But you know what? So what. Give me the #1 starter, and I’ll wait the extra year for him to recover. Strasburg is doing just fine.

Other possibilities, in capsule form:

Max Fried is the second best high-school pitcher (and best left-hander) in the draft. He’s also just the second best pitcher at his high school – he’s Giolito’s teammate and fellow UCLA commit. He has polish and good secondary pitches, but his fastball ranges from the upper 80s to the low 90s. He’s projectable, and if the velocity comes, he could be great. This means nothing, but the last time the draft was this unsettled at the top, in 2006 when the Royals took Luke Hochevar, there was some talk that a high-school left-hander should be in the discussion for the #1 overall pick. If the Royals had taken Clayton Kershaw, I wouldn’t have to curse at my iPhone every fifth day.

I wasn’t even planning to mention Albert Almora, but just a few minutes ago Frankie Piliere of Scout.com tweeted that the Royals are suddenly taking a close look at him. Almora is a high school outfielder from Florida who is about as low-risk as a high school player can be: he has tons of experience playing on USA National teams, so he’s faced top-flight competition, and all of his tools grade out as average or better – and he projects to stay in center field. He doesn’t have Buxton’s tools, but is a better bet to actualize them. If Buxton has a 25% chance to be a superstar, Almora has a 50% chance to be a star. Given that the Royals already have Starling in their system, Almora would diversify their portfolio in the outfield nicely.

Hopefully this is the last time I mention Michael Wacha, who seems to be the consolation prize if the top three college pitchers are all gone. Wacha is a right-hander at Texas A&M; there’s nothing inherently wrong with him, but he’s a mid-round talent, not a #5 overall pick. There was chatter that the Royals were looking at him as a backup plan earlier, but that chatter thankfully seems to have died down.

Lance McCullers has been on draft radars for a few years now, which is unusual for a high school player, though not so unusual when you consider his dad pitched in the majors. McCullers throws as hard as anyone in this draft, but until this season had future reliever written all over him – he was even used as a reliever in high school. But this year he has started and has made some scouts change their minds as to his upside. His slider is almost as impressive as his fastball; despite being a two-pitch pitcher at this point, there are some who think he could make it as a starter, and potentially as an elite one. He’s more of a mid-round talent overall, but the Royals have been linked to him.

In a previous draft, selecting someone like McCullers would have been upsetting. But with the new rules in place, if the Royals take McCullers with the agreement that he’ll sign for, say, $2.5 million, then use that extra $1 million on later picks, that’s a perfectly acceptable use of their resources. If he is the pick, you have to assume the Royals think he can start. High risk, but potentially very high reward.

Marcus Stroman is a very interesting pitcher – a college pitcher out of Duke, he has fantastic stuff and fantastic results, both at Duke and for Team USA last summer. But he’s 5-foot-9, which has most teams projecting him as a reliever, albeit an impact guy along the lines of Tom Gordon, and someone who could be in the majors by September. Like McCullers, if the Royals are convinced he can start, and work out a deal, he could save them some money without compromising on talent. Unlike McCullers, he could also be as quick to the major leagues as anyone in this draft.

Who would I take? With the usual caveat that I Am Not A Scout, here’s how I’d line them up:

1) Carlos Correa. A 17-year-old shortstop who can hit? His career could develop in so many ways, almost all of them good.

2) Mark Appel. The combination of upside and relative safety is hard to resist.

3) Byron Buxton. Buxton and Starling would be the toolsiest outfield in the minor leagues.

4) Lucas Giolito. Unless the medicals are worse than we’re told, the potential for a #1 starter is worth the risk.

GAP

5) Mike Zunino. Not sexy, but safe, and two-way catchers are gold on the trade market.

6) Kevin Gausman. He won’t be an ace, but there’s nothing wrong with a #2 starter – if he gets there.

7) Albert Almora. Not sexy, but safe, and centerfielders with average or better tools across the board are gold on the trade market.

8) Kyle Zimmer. He won’t be an ace, but there’s nothing wrong with a #2 starter – if he gets there.

9) Max Fried. Apparently, the Royals still need left-handed pitching, and he could be a good one.

10) Marcus Stroman or Lance McCullers. If you believe either one can start, and can work out a favorable deal before the draft, this is a legitimate option.

Who do I think the Royals will take? Even the experts don’t have confidence in their pick, though they were leaning to Zimmer before the weekend. Kevin Goldstein had the Royals taking Zimmer Friday morning, then switched to Fried Friday night. Keith Law has Zimmer there, but also mentions Gausman, Fried, and even McCullers. Jim Callis at Baseball America has the Royals with Zimmer as well.

Of course, things may have changed over the weekend. I think all three guys will have an updated mock draft out sometime Monday, but I get the sense that Zimmer is hardly a lock. Here’s how I’d handicap it:

Kyle Zimmer: 24%

Kevin Gausman: 20%

Carlos Correa: 13%

Mike Zunino: 12%

Max Fried: 9%

Albert Almora: 7%

Lucas Giolito: 6%

Byron Buxton: 3%

Mark Appel: 1%

The Field: 5%

The only thing I’m certain of is that, when the draft begins at 6 PM CST, I’ll be riveted to every pick.