The GOP And Me.

(WARNING: This post has nothing to do with baseball. On Election Day, I have decided to grab on to both third rails - religion AND politics - at the same time. If you don't want to read any further, you have my permission to click away now. I have no intention of revisiting these subjects any time soon, and maybe ever. But if you come here with an open mind, I'd be honored if you read this column. Just be warned - it's a long one. No, I mean, REALLY long. Pack a picnic basket for this one.)

Almost before I knew that I was an American, and almost before I knew that I was a Muslim, I knew that I was a Republican. I knew this because my father told me so. My father finished his cardiology fellowship just weeks after I was born, and moved the family from Michigan, where we had relatives and a large Muslim community, to Wichita, Kansas.

Kansas, then as now, was a Republican state, and those political sensibilities suited my dad just fine. These were the 1970s, when the income tax rate on the highest earners was 70%, a rate that people of all political persuasions would agree today can only be described as confiscatory. My dad had just left behind Syria, where the government had literally confiscated his family’s wealth, and he would be damned if he was going to let the American government take more than two-thirds of his marginal income.

So a political party whose platform rested on tax cuts and placed small business owners on a pedestal – well, they didn’t have to ask my father twice. The early years in Wichita were the Jimmy Carter years, and while my parents admired Carter and what he accomplished with the Camp David accords – bringing the first measure of peace to the Arab-Israeli conflict – they were swept up by the Reagan Revolution.

“Government is not a solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

My parents had settled in America to get away from an authoritarian regime in their homeland, and here came a man running for President on the platform that the best way to govern was to leave the public alone. All my parents wanted was to be left alone, to work and raise their children and own a house with a finished basement and a white picket fence. My dad, who had just obtained his American citizenship in 1978, became a reliable supporter of the Republican Party, both with his ballot and occasionally with his checkbook. He wasn’t alone. Most immigrant Muslims to America – once they obtained their citizenship – joined the Reagan Revolution.

Most of the men who had come to America were self-made men, men who had only made it to America by dint of hard work. Many, like my dad, were doctors who had to outperform millions of their classmates on high school exams to get into medical school in their home countries, and saw a career in medicine as their ticket to America. Others had come to America to attend college, braving a new land and a new culture and a new language in order to forge a career as an engineer or an architect or some other credentialed profession. And others had come to America with little formal education and no intent to further it, but with the entrepreneurial spirit needed to buy and sell and trade their way to the top. They opened grocery stores and drove taxicabs and manned gas stations to forge a living for themselves and their families, and to send money to their relatives back home.

It was hard work and it involved long hours. The Muslims who immigrated to America in the 1970s, like the ones who immigrate to America today, were not lazy. Lazy people don’t leave their homeland 5,000 miles behind to move to a foreign country where they speak a foreign language. For these Muslims, the Republican message of self-reliance and entrepreneurship, the exaltation of small business owners, the emphasis on cutting taxes to encourage industriousness, was catnip. So too was the vilification of people sucking from the public teat and asking for handouts. There were no Muslim welfare queens, and Muslims joined the Republican stampede against them.

The immigrant Muslim community remained a reliable pillar of support for the Republican Party throughout the 1980s and 1990s, even as the party underwent a gradual but very significant change. Ronald Reagan’s platform when he ran for president in 1980 was largely an economic one; social issues were only an ancillary part of his message. Twenty years later, when George W. Bush ran for president, his platform revolved around social issues: his pro-life and anti-gay marriage positions were front and center. His platform reflected the massive influence that Christian organizations had had on the Republican Party over the previous two decades, intertwining Christian religious beliefs with politics, and co-opting the Republican message on issues of great concern to devout Christians.

Believe it or not, Muslim support for the Republican Party did not waver in the face of its gradual Christianization. On the contrary, Muslims saw common ground with Christians on most social issues. While the topic of abortion is not nearly as cut-and-dried for Muslims as it is for many Christians, the Muslim community certainly agreed with the goal of limiting them as much as possible – and more to the point, in limiting unwanted pregnancies in the first place by stigmatizing casual sexual encounters. Muslims shared with their Christian neighbors their belief in the sanctity of the nuclear family, and their belief that a household headed by a married mother and father was the best household in which to raise children.

By 2000, the Muslim community in America was several decades old, and had started to mature as a political entity. Muslim organizations almost unanimously endorsed George W. Bush. I voted for Bush that year. I would have voted for Bob Dole in 1996 if I weren’t so busy with medical school that I forgot to vote; I would have voted for Bush Sr. in 1992 if I weren’t still 17 years old.

In the 2000 election, approximately 70% of Muslims in America voted for Bush; among non-African-American Muslims, the ratio was over 80%.

Four years later, Bush’s share of the vote among Muslims was 4%.

What happened? Well, a lot.

It would be easy to say everything changed on 9/11 – because everything did change on 9/11. But 9/11 was a chance for America to show off the better angels of its nature, and as a nation, by and large, we did. A week after the World Trade Center came crashing down, President Bush spoke before both houses of Congress in one of the defining moments of his presidency. He did not disappoint, and while he outlined the need to attack Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, he was scrupulous not to point the finger at Muslims in general. “The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics, a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam,” he said. And later, “I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself.”

In the chaos and hysteria that accompanied the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush’s speech was deeply reassuring to American Muslims that whatever the fallout of the attacks would be on our community, the federal government was on our side.

But words were not followed with actions. Quite the contrary; a month later, when the PATRIOT Act was signed into law, Muslims were taken aback by the far-reaching implications. Citizens could have their phones or computers tapped with neither their knowledge nor any recourse. Muslims in Indiana found themselves on the No-Fly List because they had the misfortune of sharing the same name with a terrorist suspect in India - and there was essentially no way to clear their name from the list. Thousands of Muslims, many of whom had lived and worked in America for decades, were arrested on flimsy immigration violations and deported back to their countries of birth.

An illustrative example: In May, 2004, a gentleman named Brandon Mayfield, who was an attorney living in Oregon, was arrested on suspicion that he had been involved in a terrorist attack that occurred in Spain that March. It was, on the surface, an absurd accusation – apparently his fingerprint had turned up at the crime scene. Mayfield had never been to Spain; he hadn’t traveled outside of America in over a decade. But he was arrested and held without charges for over two weeks. Mayfield would later learn that prior to his arrest, the FBI had covertly searched his house, wiretapped his phones, and bugged several rooms in his home.

After two weeks, Mayfield was released, after the Spanish authorities insisted that Mayfield’s fingerprint was not a perfect match, and in fact that they had matched the fingerprint found at the scene to an Algerian national. Actually, the Spanish authorities informed the FBI of the mismatch before Mayfield was ever arrested; the government withheld this information from Mayfield’s lawyers. He was released only after the European press broke the story that Mayfield’s fingerprint had been cleared weeks earlier.

Mayfield sued the government, and won a judgment of $2 million, along with a formal apology. The District Court Judge who presided over the case, Ann Aiken, stated in her decision that the evidence that Mayfield’s fingerprint was a perfect match to the one found at the crime scene was “fabricated and concocted by the FBI and DOJ.” Aiken also ruled that two provisions in the PATRIOT Act were unconstitutional, as they violated the Fourth Amendment. The government appealed this ruling, and these provisions were restored in December, 2009.

Why was this troubling to the Muslim community? Because in the 1980s, Brandon Mayfield had converted to Islam. What's that, Paul Harvey? “And now you know…”

Individually, each of these incidents was upsetting but tolerable. But they were part of a pattern; while officially the Bush Administration was careful to say that the American Muslim community was not under suspicion, their actions spoke otherwise. Most egregious was the way the government handled the case of the Holy Land Foundation.

The Holy Land Foundation was a charity founded in the late 1980s, ostensibly to provide humanitarian relief to the people of the Palestinian territories. In December, 2001, the federal government formally accused the Foundation of siphoning some of their funds to support Hamas, which had been designated a terrorist group by the United States in 1993. While some thought this was a witch hunt against a pro-Palestinian organization, most Muslims - myself included - were mortified that a respected charity had deceived the American Muslim community as to where their donations were going. The case finally proceeded to trial in 2007, and every count against the Foundation ended in either acquittal or a mistrial, in what the New York Times called “a stunning setback for the government.” Undaunted, the Feds pursued a retrial the following year and obtained convictions on many counts.

But it’s not the way the Bush administration handled the Holy Land Foundation that rankled the Muslim community. It’s the way they smeared virtually every Muslim organization in America in the process. As part of the indictment against the Holy Land Foundation, the government submitted a list of “unindicted co-conspirators”. This was a list of individuals and organizations who the government had not a shred of evidence implicating them in supporting terrorism, but decided to smear them with the accusation anyway.

It’s hard to overstate just how distraught and disappointed this made the Muslim community. The list of “unindicted co-conspirators” ran over 300 members long, and included the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest umbrella organization of Muslims in America; the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the premier civil-rights organization working for Muslims; and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which as holder of the deed of hundreds of mosques, is the largest Muslim endowment in America. Basically, if you were a Muslim organization and weren’t on the list, you probably weren’t that important.

Now try to parse the term “unindicted co-conspirator”. The layman sees the word “conspirator” and naturally assumes these people were guilty of something – and if it was a conspiracy, well, it must be something awfully sinister. But the key word is “unindicted”. These people weren’t arrested and found guilty. They weren’t arrested. They weren’t even indicted. Given the maxim that a good district attorney can indict a ham sandwich, what does it say about these Muslims that they weren’t even indicted? (Maybe that’s their secret: Muslims don’t eat pork.)

It’s bad enough that the concept of an “unindicted co-conspirator” turns the bedrock principle of American law on its head, and makes everyone on that list guilty until proven innocent. But it’s much worse than that, because they’re guilty with no recourse to prove they’re innocent. How can you defend yourself against an indictment that doesn’t exist? For the last decade, the most prominent Muslim organizations in the country have carried this “unindicted co-conspirator” tag around with them like it was herpes.

Without charging these organizations with any crime, the Bush administration succeeded in tarnishing their reputation. Any time someone wanted to cast suspicion on the American Muslim community, all they had to do was bring up the leadership of ISNA, which included some of the most respected Muslim scholars in the country, and remind their audience that ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator. CAIR filed a lawsuit against a corporation for firing a Muslim woman because she refused to take off her head scarf at work? Unindicted co-conspirator. A Muslim community somewhere in America wanted to borrow money from NAIT to build a mosque? Now they’re doing business dealings with an unindicted co-conspirator.

After these organizations sought legal redress from the government for years, in October, 2010, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis issued a ruling that stated the government should never have publicly released the names of the “unindicted co-conspirators”, and that the government had violated their Fifth Amendment due process rights by doing so. Fat lot of good that’s done. The list is out there, and you can’t squeeze toothpaste back in the tube.

And then, of course, there was the Iraq War, which was deeply unpopular among the Muslim community. I was actually among the minority of Muslims who grudgingly supported the war, on the theory that the Arab world was so shackled by tyranny that it would be almost impossible to make things worse. I was wrong. The invasion was a cakewalk, as expected. But the breathtaking lack of post-invasion planning; the absence of any weapons of mass destruction; the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib – somehow we did the impossible: we made the Iraqi people pine for the days of Saddam Hussein.

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But as frustrated as the Muslim community was with President Bush, we had to grudgingly admit that he at least respected our constitutional right to practice our religion. He never suggested that Islam was somehow un-American, or that Muslims as a whole were a threat to our nation. Perhaps we didn’t realize how good we had it with Bush until his term expired, because when he retired to his ranch in Texas, that’s when the crazies came out.

I got a taste of this during the 2008 presidential campaign, when my friend Mazen Asbahi, who had gone to work for the Obama campaign, found himself smeared as a terrorist sympathizer. I won’t rehash that here; I wrote about it at the time, and talked about it on an episode of NPR’s This American Life. ("Unindicted co-conspirators" feature prominently.)

After Obama was elected, things started to get crazy. Let’s take a tour of what some of our duly-elected congressmen and congresswomen have said about Muslims:

Let’s start with a press conference held on October 14, 2009, by four Republican members of the House: Paul Broun (GA-10), Trent Franks (AZ-02), Sue Myrick (NC-09), and John Shadegg (AZ-03). This press conference was called to expose shocking allegations about CAIR. (The press release sent out by Rep. Myrick’s office stated that “CAIR was named as a co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism case”. Somehow the word “unindicted” was left out. I’m sure it was an oversight.)

Rep. Myrick said, “It’s frightening to think that an organization with clear-cut ties to terrorism could have a hand in influencing policy – especially national security policy – within our government.” Rep. Broun said, “I believe allegations that CAIR has targeted members of Congress on security related committees must not go uninvestigated.”

Rep. Franks, care to comment? “This Congress must be deliberate in taking a strong stance against those groups and organizations that align themselves with terrorists, and standing with organizations that are standing against Islamic extremism and terrorism.” Rep. Shadegg, you have the floor. “Muslim Mafia is just one of many books that highlight the infiltration of radical Islamists into our society and the dangers that this poses.”

So what’s this all about? The press conference was held in part to announce the release of the book “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America.” (Personally, I think the title is a little understated.) The book was written by a guy named Paul Gaubatz, after his son Chris Gaubatz, posing as a new convert to Islam, managed to work as an intern at CAIR for six months before anyone smelled a rat.

Six months was long enough for Chris to learn the inner workings of the organization, and to obtain internal documents that might cast the organization in a bad light. One of those documents, outlining CAIR’s long-term strategy, was the centerpiece of the accusations in the book. It was the smoking gun that brought four members of Congress together to denounce CAIR as an organization with “clear-cut ties to terrorism”.

What did the document say? “We will impact local congressional districts with each chapter influencing at least two legislators through strong grass roots responses. We will focus on influencing congressmen responsible for policy that directly impacts the American Muslim community. (For example congressmen on the judiciary, intelligence, and homeland security committees.) We will develop national initiatives such as a lobby day and placing Muslim interns in Congressional offices. We will work to add at least 30,000 new voter registrations.”

The horror. “Grass roots responses”? “Influencing congressmen”? “A lobby day”? “Muslim interns in Congressional offices”? Worst of all, “new voter registrations”? My God, it’s worse than I thought. This document didn’t prove CAIR were aspiring terrorists. It proved they were aspiring – gulp! – lobbyists.

Call me naïve, but if someone with an axe to grind with CAIR spent six months working undercover, and the most damning document they could come up with expressed a plan to help Muslim interns be placed in Congressional offices – that strikes me as pretty persuasive evidence that CAIR was not a nefarious organization, or at least no more nefarious than the rest of the political outfits that work in DC. Instead, four Republican members of Congress thought that the threat from CAIR was so pressing that they held a press conference, and afterwards they pressed the House of Representatives to research whether CAIR was, in fact, a security threat.

Fortunately, many Democrats in the House denounced the press conference as the ridiculous Kabuki Theater that it was, and eventually the matter died down. But not before the Republican Party made it crystal clear to the Muslim community that we were all under suspicion.

Any residual doubts were dispelled during the grand summer of 2010, when a group of Muslims made the mistake of trying to build a Muslim community center in their neighborhood. It would have included a small prayer area for Muslims, but it also would have held an auditorium, a theater, a fitness center, a swimming pool, a culinary school, and a performing arts center. It just so happened that their neighborhood was lower Manhattan, and the proposed building would have been a few blocks away from where the World Trade Center stood, and oh my God you would have thought they had proposed a statue of the 9/11 hijackers.

Rudy Giuliani called it a “desecration”, and said, “Nobody would allow something like that at Pearl Harbor.” Never mind that there are, in fact, many Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines near Pearl Harbor. And never mind that Muslims have conducted prayer services inside the chapel at the Pentagon – which also had a Boeing slam into it on 9/11 – for many years.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House: “It's not about religion, and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.” Speaking with regard to the original proposed name for the building, the “Cordoba House”, Gingrich said, “’Cordoba House’ is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain–the capital of Muslim conquerors, who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex... every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest.”

With all due respect to Gingrich…he’s a moron. Muslims recognize Cordoba as a symbol of the most enlightened era in Islamic history, as a nation where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together peacefully for centuries. Maimonides, perhaps the most respected rabbinical scholar in Jewish history, was born and raised in Muslim Spain. Decades after the Muslim conquest of Spain, the Muslim leader purchased a small church from the local Christians, and over decades it was converted into the largest mosque in the country. It wasn’t a symbol of victory, and anyone who says otherwise is historically illiterate. Or just politically opportunistic.

The National Republican Trust Political Action Committee produced this television ad that included this voiceover: “On September 11th, they declared war against us. And to celebrate that murder of 3,000 Americans, they want to build a monstrous 13-story mosque at Ground Zero.” Yep, you caught us. American Muslims – dozens of whom were killed along with their fellow countrymen by the 9/11 terrorists – want to celebrate the darkest day in our history by building a monument to tolerance and interfaith dialogue. Man, we can’t slip anything past you guys.

Ilario Pantano, a Republican candidate for Congress in the 2010 elections, wrote in an op-ed piece that “This is not about reconciliation or understanding. It is about marking religious, ideological, and territorial conquest. The mosque is a Martyr-Marker, and it must be stopped.”

Okay then.

Not all elected Republicans opposed the mosque. Notably, Senator Orrin Hatch and Congressman Ron Paul, who despite his party affiliation is really a libertarian, both supported the Muslim community’s right to build the community center on the basis of an obscure clause in a federal document that guarantees freedom of religion. But it was not lost on the Muslim community that, with very few exceptions (most notably Senator Harry Reid), every politician who was publicly opposed to the project was Republican. In contrast, prominent Democrats (President Obama, former President Bill Clinton, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois) and Independents (New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg) all came out in support of the fundamental right of Americans – all Americans – to build houses of worship as they see fit.

To the Muslim community around America, the implications of this tempest in a teapot was far more troubling than the simple matter of whether the Park51 Project (as it was formally known) would get built. I live in suburban Chicago; ultimately it doesn’t affect my life one way or the other if this project comes to fruition. And certainly, I understand how raw our nation’s emotions are, even a decade later, about what happened on 9/11. If one of the developers had asked me for my opinion before the project was announced, I might have suggested a slightly different site than the one that was picked.

But the controversy over the Park51 Project quickly veered away from a discussion over whether it was insensitive, and became a discussion over whether Muslims are trying to take over America. Which is not just ridiculous, it is deeply frightening. If Faisal Abdul Rauf, the original spiritual force behind the project, was guilty of anything, it was naïveté. Instead, he was portrayed by the Republican Party as some sort of extremist Muslim radical trying to plant the flag of Islam in Manhattan like he was an astronaut on the moon. Abdul Rauf is such an extremist that when journalist Daniel Pearl was murdered by true Muslim extremists in Pakistan, Pearl’s widow asked Abdul Rauf to speak at a memorial service for him.

At the service, here is what Rauf said.

“We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one, Mr. Pearl. And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different.”

Clearly, those are the words of a man bent on world domination.

I and most American Muslims were deeply ambivalent about the project when we first heard about it, because we understood the emotions involved. When Sarah Palin tweeted, as only she can, “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.” I understood her concerns. I disagreed with them, because like most Muslims, I saw the building of a community center run by Muslims who were dedicated to a moderate, tolerant version of Islam blocks from Ground Zero to be a giant middle finger to Al-Qaeda. But I respected her right to feel slighted by it.

But it’s one thing to claim the project was insensitive, and quite another to claim the project celebrates the murder of thousands of Americans, or that it was a symbol of Islamic conquest. This attempt to lump moderate American Muslim leaders with the murderous thugs of Al-Qaeda was a clear message from the Republican Party to their Muslim constituents: all you Muslims are the same. Believe me, we got the message.

In August of 2010, when the Park51 Project controversy was at its peak, I happened to be exiting my local mosque in suburban Chicago after evening prayers. I ran into my friend Eiman, who pointed to a car in the parking lot and grinned widely. “You think that guy is here for prayers?”

He was pointing to a large pickup truck that was stopped in the driving lane between parking spaces, loudly blaring a Toby Keith song. We shared a laugh. The mosque shares the parking lot with a bank and several other businesses, so I didn’t think much of having a truck blaring music right outside our mosque.

Until I noticed that the truck wasn’t playing just any Toby Keith song. It was playing “Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue.”

Now this nation that I love

Has fallen under attack

A mighty sucker-punch came flyin’ in

From somewhere in the back

Soon as we could see clearly

Through our big black eye

Man, we lit up your world

Like the Fourth of July

Hey Uncle Sam 
Put your name at the top of his list 
And the Statue of Liberty 
Started shakin' her fist 
And the eagle will fly 
Man, it's gonna be hell 
When you hear Mother Freedom 
Start ringin' her bell 
And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you 
Brought to you courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue 

Justice will be served 
And the battle will rage 
This big dog will fight 
When you rattle his cage 
And you'll be sorry that you messed with 
The U.S. of A. 
'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass 
It's the American way 

“Huh,” I thought, “that’s interesting.” The car wasn’t parked, but it wasn’t moving either. I turned to Eiman and said, “I wonder if this guy is trying to send us a message.” Finally, the song came to an end.

And immediately, the same song started playing from the beginning.

Well, at this point we had heard enough. Eiman and I slowly walked over to the pickup truck, to see whether we could give directions to the driver, who was clearly lost and thought he was outside the caves of Tora Bora. At that moment, a big SUV pulled up behind us and the driver jumped out – it was the landlord of the property, who had clearly figured out the same thing we had. At which point the pickup truck hauled ass and drove away.

I’m not sure what the driver was trying to accomplish, honestly, other than to intimidate us with a crappy country song. (No offense, Toby. I love “Beer for My Horses.”) But it was deeply unsettling. Our congregation had been worshipping in that same building for the past eight years, and someone decided that this was the moment to make us feel unwelcome.

On the other hand, the mosque is located barely 800 miles from Ground Zero. Maybe he just thought our location was insensitive.

But just in case the message from the GOP wasn’t clear enough, some Republican officials have decided to eliminate any pretense of differentiating between the massive moderate Muslim majority and the tiny wing of violent extremists. Herman Cain ran for the GOP nomination for President in today’s election. When asked whether he would consider appointing a Muslim to his cabinet or as a judge, he replied, “No, I will not. And here’s why: there’s this creeping attempt – there’s this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government.” Cain also argued that a community in Tennessee had the right to ban the building of a mosque there, and claimed that the majority of Muslims in America "share the extremist views". This is where we’re at in 2011: a presidential candidate openly – and proudly – proclaims that all American citizens of a specific religion would not be welcome in his administration, or really, in America. And not one prominent member of his political party has stood up against his statements.

Newt Gingrich, who also ran for President, introduced an angle that I – and presumably every American of sound mind – had never considered before. Speaking at a Texas church in March, 2011, Gingrich brought up his grandchildren to the audience, and then said, “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

I’ll admit: I had never considered the threat of secular, atheist, radical Islamists before. But then, that’s why Newt Gingrich was running for president and I wasn’t. He sees things the rest of us don’t. He even has the ability to see things that don’t actually exist.

(Mitt Romney, perhaps because he is a member of a religious minority himself, has not said anything nearly as inflammatory about Muslims. On the other hand, he once said, in response to a question about whether a Muslim might serve in his Cabinet, “based on the numbers of American Muslims in our population, I cannot see that a Cabinet position would be justified.” I’m waiting for him to say the same thing about Episcopalians, or Jews - or Mormons.)

The inevitable end result of the GOP’s demonization of Muslims were the congressional hearings called in March, 2011 by Peter King, Republican congressman from Long Island and chair of the Committee on Homeland Security. The hearings were called on “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.” Congressman King, who was fond of saying – without a shred of evidence – that “over 80 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by radical Imams,” wanted to put the American Muslim community on the spot as to whether they supported terrorists. (In fairness, if anyone in Congress knows about supporting terrorists, it’s Peter King – who was a zealous supporter of the IRA and once compared Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to George Washington.)

The hearings wound up being more political theater than hard-hitting investigation. The highlight of the hearings came when Leroy Baca, Sheriff of Los Angeles County, testified. Baca’s testimony – that the Muslim groups that he had worked with, specifically CAIR, had cooperated with the authorities to combat extremism in the local community – didn’t exactly fit in with the hearing’s agenda. Chip Craavack, Republican Congressman from Minnesota, challenged him on his testimony. Speaking about CAIR, Craavack said, “You’re dealing with a terrorist organization,” and “they might be using you, sir.” (After all, they’re unindicted co-conspirators!)

To which Baca replied, “If the FBI has something to charge CAIR with, bring those charges forth and charge them in court.” After the gasps died down, he continued, “We don’t play around with criminals in my world. If CAIR is an organization that’s a quote, ‘criminal organization’, prosecute them.”

In the end, the hearings accomplished little other than to allow politicians on both sides of the aisle do some political posturing. And CAIR never was prosecuted.

But the ugliest episode of Republican-instigated attacks on the American Muslim community – at least so far – occurred when a Muslim organization known as the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) held a fundraiser in Orange County in March of 2011. The fundraiser was being held to raise money for Hamas and Hezbollah…no, wait, they were raising money for homeless and women’s shelters in the area. It’s so easy to get those confused. But ICNA made the terrible mistake of inviting a well-known Muslim leader to speak at the event, a gentleman named Siraj Wahhaj, who is – you guessed it – an unindicted co-conspirator. (Man, those guys are everywhere.)

The fundraiser, then, attracted a crowd of protestors that lined up outside the banquet hall to give those who attended a piece of their mind. They held signs that read “ICNA supports Hamas and Hezbollah.” (Hamas, homeless shelters…they do sort of sound alike.) They also held signs that called the Prophet Muhammad “a pervert” and “a child molester.” The chant “GO BACK HOME!” was a continuous drumbeat as attendees filed in. (Go home to where? Anaheim?) A Muslim man who had the audacity to film the protestors was greeted with calls of “You beat your women and rape your children!” Other catcalls included “One Nation Under God, Not Allah!” and “Never forget 9/11!” and “Your hands are bloody!”

The protestors were a motley crew of locals, egged on by well-known Islamophobes like Pamela Geller. (Geller, one of the leaders behind the opposition to the Park51 Project, runs an organization knows as “Stop the Islamization of America”, an organization that’s been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 mostly-teenage Norwegians in July, 2011 for the crime of being “multiculturalists” who were allowing Muslims to take over Europe, cited Geller in his manifesto.)

It also included three elected Republican officials, two of whom were congressmen. All three officials addressed the gathering mob outside.

Congressman Ed Royce told the crowd, "A big part of the problem we face today is our children have been taught in schools that every idea is right, that no one should criticize others' positions no matter how odious. That’s…and…what do we call that? They call it multiculturalism, and it has paralyzed too many of our fellow citizens to make the critical judgments we need to make to prosper as a society."

He was followed by Congressman Gary Miller, who kept his comments brief. “The only reason I’m here today – is to give you a flag, and to say ‘I am proud of you, I am proud of what you’re doing, and I’m proud of this country and what we believe in, and let’s not let people who disagree with us destroy it.”

Just in case the intent of their comments wasn’t explicit enough, though, Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly also spoke at the podium. “Let me tell you – what’s going on over there right now,” she said, as she pointed to the banquet hall, “make no bones about it. That is pure, unadulterated evil.” She continued, “And I don't care. ... I don't even care if you think I'm crazy anymore. I have a beautiful daughter. I have a wonderful 19-year-old son who is a United States Marine. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few Marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise."

Nice people. (And if you think I’m exaggerating, you can get more details and watch video here and here.)

It hasn’t been much different here in the Chicago suburbs where I live. My own mosque, that started congregating out of converted space in an office park a decade ago, spent over two years attempting to win zoning approval to build a formal house of worship on land that we purchased next to a Greek Orthodox church and a Buddhist temple. The resistance that we got from the Republican-controlled county zoning board was so intense that it was covered by the New York Times, and eventually the Chicago Tribune had to publish an editorial defending our right to build a mosque.

Perhaps it’s just as well that we haven’t built it yet, given the threats to existing mosques. Last year on Halloween morning, a mosque on the west side of Wichita was set ablaze. While no one was ever arrested, authorities determined that it was, in fact, arson. It just so happens to be the mosque that I attended with my family in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

This year, in the pre-dawn hours of August 6th, the mosque in Joplin, Missouri burned to the ground. Again, it was ruled arson. Again, no one has been arrested. I don’t know about you guys, but this isn’t my idea of a Border War.

The day before the Joplin mosque was incinerated, a former army veteran with ties to white supremacists named Wade Michael Page walked into a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee and opened fire, killing six people before turning the gun on himself.

The Sikh massacre was on a Sunday, the mosque burning was on Monday. On Wednesday Congressman Joe Walsh – a Republican who represents a district here in suburban Chicago – spoke at a town hall meeting about the threat of radical Muslims. “One thing I’m sure of is that there are people in this country – there is a radical strain of Islam in this country – it’s not just over there – trying to kill Americans every week. It is a real threat, and it is a threat that is much more at home now than it was after 9/11.”

Accuse me of political correctness if you must, but when there was a terrorist attack on American soil just three days ago, and the victims of that attack were a religious group frequently confused with Muslims, now might not be the best time to accuse Muslims of being potential terrorists. Granted, Walsh was speaking in generalities, and just saying that somewhere in America lurked extremist Musl- “It’s in Elk Grove, it’s in Addison, it’s in Elgin. It’s here.”

Wait, what? Did a member of congress just claim that there were terrorist threats lurking in specific, small towns – both Elk Grove and Addison have fewer than 40,000 residents? There are probably not more than a few hundred Muslims living in both towns combined. That’s a pretty extraordinary accusation to make.

Walsh made his comments on a Wednesday. On Friday, shots were fired at a mosque in Morton Grove, a suburb not far from where Walsh spoke. A nearby resident named David Conrad was arrested. On Sunday, a homemade acid bomb was thrown at a Muslim school in the suburb of Lombard, while worshippers were praying inside. No one was arrested for that one.

Congressman Walsh stood by his comments. Meanwhile, my local mosque had to hire private security to watch our back for the remainder of the month of Ramadan.

This is where we are today. Barely a decade ago, the American Muslim community was safely in the womb of the Republican Party. Today, prominent Republican leaders have made it clear that they view all Muslims with suspicion; they accuse prominent Muslim organizations of trying to infiltrate the U.S. government because they dare to support placing Muslim interns on Capitol Hill; they label a Muslim community center open to all faiths as a “victory mosque” for Al-Qaeda; and they publicly declare that Muslims are evil. No, wait, not evil – pure, unadulterated evil. In case there was any doubt as to which kind of evil they were.

They have the chutzpah to play up the threat of homegrown Muslim terrorists causing another 9/11 at the same moment that Muslims and Sikhs are ducking for cover from genuine terrorists.

Oh, and many of them believe that President Obama is a secret Muslim sent here by Terrorist Command Headquarters to destroy our nation. A full 30% of Republicans believe that Obama is a Muslim. If any of you are among that 30%, I don’t know what to say to you, except to say that PRESIDENT OBAMA IS NOT A MUSLIM. If he is, believe me, no one would be more surprised than the Muslim community. Yes, his father was born a Muslim – but his father was openly atheist as an adult, and abandoned his family when Barack Jr. was a toddler. President Obama’s mother and the grandparents who helped raise him were Christian. He attended church his entire adult life. He’s never been seen praying like a Muslim, or fasting like a Muslim, or doing anything like a Muslim.

But as offensive as it is that so many people believe he’s a Muslim, even more offensive is the implication that there would be something terribly wrong with that. I’ll let a once-respected national figure explain:

“I’m also troubled by…what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as ‘Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well the correct answer is ‘He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian.’ But the really right answer is ‘What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?’ The answer is ‘No. That’s not America.’ Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”

The man who said these words was Colin Powell, a Republican. Powell, himself a minority, was likely drawn to the Republican Party for the same reasons my family and I were many years ago. It’s probably not a coincidence that Powell’s own prominence within the GOP coincided with my allegiance to it. And it’s probably not a coincidence that Powell is today a marginalized and forgotten figure. Powell said those words on Meet the Press, on the eve of the last election, in the process of explaining why he was endorsing Barack Obama for the presidency. And his words eloquently summed up why, in 2008, I did too.

It was with some reservation that I voted for Obama today. I have found his presidency to be a disappointment in many ways. He wasn’t nearly aggressive enough about addressing the financial crisis he inherited, nor did he press for a public airing of what caused the crisis in the first place. His sustained use of drones to fight the War on Terror has been both utterly immoral – an inordinate number of innocent victims, including children, have been killed – and completely counterproductive, because the obvious immorality of these attacks has ignited more terrorists than it has killed. Obama’s weak and unfocused response to the horrors being committed every day by the Syrian government is appalling.

But - third parties aside - the alternative was Mitt Romney, and I could not vote for Mitt Romney. There is simply no way that I can justify voting for a party that denies the very legitimacy of my identity as an American. And there is no way that I can justify voting for any member of that party that does not, in the strongest possible terms, denounce that view. Nor can most other members of the American Muslim community, who just happen to be clustered in swing states like Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. If Nate Silver is right, not only will Romney lose the election, but it can be safely said that if the Muslim community had voted the same way they had in 2000, he would have won.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Muslim community still shares many core values with Republicans, the same core issues that attracted most Muslims to the Republican Party in the first place. Muslims haven’t changed their views on limited government, or the superiority of the traditional nuclear family, or the importance of encouraging entrepreneurship. A Republican Party that focused on its core principles rather than on demonizing a minority as a way to score cheap political points would find support among the American Muslim community again.

Look, I don’t want to be a party-line voter. It does Muslims no good to be identified with a single political party – we run the risk of being taken advantage of by the Democratic Party, while having our needs completely ignored by the Republicans. And I look forward to the day, hopefully in the near future, when I once again vote for a Republican candidate. If Chris Christie - who unlike Romney has forcefully denounced "the crazies" (his term, not mine) - runs for President, I'll give him full consideration.

But first, the Republicans have to stop insinuating that I’m alien to this nation. They have to stop implying that I support terrorists. They have to stop accusing me of being anti-American. And they need to denounce anyone in their ranks who does those things. That, I’m afraid, is not negotiable.

(Please note: given that the risk of a flame war in the comments section approaches 100% when the subject of the article involves Muslims, I am turning the comments for this post off. You can hit me up on Twitter if you like.)

For Want Of A Pitcher: That's More Like It.

So it took less than 24 hours for my last column to be rendered completely obsolete. I believe that’s a personal record.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

It turns out that Dayton does have money to spend after all. And it turns out that the Royals were able to think outside the box a little too. Four weeks after I wrote that they should trade a reliever to the Angels for the non-buyout portion of Dan Haren’s 2013 option, they traded a reliever to the Angels for the non-buyout portion of Ervin Santana’s 2013 option.

It’s not ideal, but it’s close enough.

The positives regarding Santana:

1) He’s durable. He’s made at least 23 starts every year since 2005, and has made at least 30 starts each of the last three years. He threw 229 innings in 2011, 223 innings in 2010.

2) He’s not terribly old. He’ll be 30 next month, which is to say, he’ll be 30 when his contract is up. He’s past his peak, but given that age is less of a factor for pitchers than it is for hitters anyway, there’s no reason to expect an age-related collapse in the next 12 months.

3) He was a fine pitcher in 2010 and 2011. He had a 3.92 ERA in 2010, a 3.38 ERA in 2011. He was an All-Star in 2008, when he had 214 strikeouts and just 47 walks in 219 innings. He is certainly capable of brilliance.

The negatives:

1 )He sucked in 2012. He had a 5.16 ERA, and in just 178 innings, he managed to surrender a league-leading 39 homers.

2) The Angels play in one of the best pitchers’ parks in the league, making his numbers look better than they are (and they weren’t good to begin with). His ERA+ was 73 this year. Will Smith’s ERA+ was 77. Luke Hochevar’s was 71.

3) This isn’t the first time he’s sucked. He had a 5.03 ERA in 2009, and a 5.76 ERA in 2007.

The positives will be afforded the opportunity for a rebuttal.

4) Even though his ERA skyrocketed this year, Santana still maintained a solid strikeout-to-walk ratio. He whiffed 133 batters in 178 innings, and walked 59. His K rate of 6.7 per 9 was just a smidge off his career norm of 7.1 per 9; his BB rate of 3.1 was just a tick above his career rate of 2.9.

5) While Santana has always been fairly homer-prone throughout his career, his home run rate this year was a fluke. He’s actually become a more groundball oriented pitcher the last two seasons. His groundball rate from 2005 through 2010 ranged from 35 to 39%. The last two years, it’s been 43.5% and 43.2%. He used to be a flyball pitcher; now he’s pretty much average in that regard.

Here’s a listing of Santana’s HR/FB ratios starting in 2005: 9%, 8%, 12%, 9%, 13%, 9%, 10%, 19%. One of these things is not like the others…

6) While Santana was terrible for the season as a whole, he was considerably improved in the second half. In his first 19 starts, he had a 6.00 ERA and was the worst starting pitcher in the majors. But from July 30th onwards, Santana he had a 3.76 ERA; in 67 innings, he walked 17 and struck out 58, including two starts with double-digit strikeout totals. (He still gave up 16 homers in those 67 innings, amazingly enough.)

His turnaround might have been a fluke, but it coincides with this article from the Orange County Register, indicating that the Angels had subtly changed Santana’s release point, which put more bite back on his slider and helped him command his fastball better. Notably, the article was published on August 16th; Santana continued to pitch well after the article came out, so it has more validity than if it had been written as an ex post facto article after the season.

Negatives, you have the floor.

7) Santana might have been unlucky on homers, but he was also very lucky on hits – his batting average on balls in play was .241. Granted, his career mark of .284 is very good, but .241 is unsustainably low.

8) Santana’s fastball was down a full mile per hour last year – his fastball averaged 91.7 mph in 2012, down from 92.7 mph in 2011. Historically, when a pitcher loses that much velocity off his fastball from year to year, it’s rare for him to regain it.

Positives, your final statement?

9) In 2009, Santana didn’t lose one mph – he lost 2.3 mph, from 94.8 to 92.5 mph. His ERA jumped from 3.49 in 2008 to 5.03 in 2009. If velocity were everything, he would have been finished. But instead, in 2010 and 2011 – despite not regaining any velocity on his fastball – he was an above-average and durable starter each year.

Even last year, Santana was substantially more effective in August and September even though his fastball didn’t regain any velocity – if anything, he threw a little slower late in the year than early in the year.

Negatives, you get the last word.

10) You made my point for me. Santana’s velocity continued to decline throughout the 2012 season, and at some point he simply won’t throw hard enough to make batters respect his slider any more.

Alright, time for the judgment.

This isn’t a great trade, not by any means. The Royals will pay Ervin Santana $12 million in 2013, making him their highest-paid player. It’s highly unlikely that he’ll be their best player. It’s not even clear that he’ll be an above-average player. Right now, if you told the Royals that Santana would give them 200 innings with a league-average ERA, they’d take that no questions asked. $12 million is a lot of money for league-average innings.

And yes, there is certainly the potential for Santana to go completely Sanchez on us next year. If his velocity continues to slide, and he starts nibbling more to compensate, and his walks shoot up…you’ll have a guy with a 5+ ERA making $12 million. If the Royals wanted that, they could just keep Luke Hochevar for half that. Oh wait, they’re doing that as well.

So no, it’s not a great trade. But ultimately it’s a trade I endorse. While acknowledging that there is a LOT of variance in what we can expect from Santana next year, I think 30 starts and an ERA in the mid-4s is a reasonable midpoint. His xFIP last year was 4.48, and it’s ranged from 3.48 to 4.55 the last five years. While the Angels play in a much better pitchers’ park than the Royals, Kauffman Stadium is actually a little tougher to hit home runs in, and given that the long ball is Santana’s biggest weakness, that’s a good fit.

Is 180 innings and a 4.50 ERA worth $12 million a season on the open market? Probably not. But it’s also not worth merely a one-year contract. If Santana were a free agent, he might be looking at 2 years and $16-18 million. It’s possible he might get more money if salary inflation really takes hold this winter, or he might get more years if a team was really desperate to clinch the deal.

In effect, what the Royals have chosen to do is to modestly overpay Santana in 2013 – on the order of about $4 million – rather than overpay him (or another pitcher) by an even greater amount in the long term. Essentially, the Royals have three ways to add a starting pitcher for 2013, and they all have downsides:

- They can sign a free agent pitcher to a long-term deal. The downside here is that while you’ll probably pay close to what that pitcher is worth in 2013, the risk of injury and decline goes up with each year, and you’re almost certain to have to guarantee three years, if not longer, for any pitcher worth his salt. There’s a good chance that almost all the money you’re paying that pitcher in 2016 or 2017 is dead money. (See also: Meche, Gil.)

- They can trade for an established pitcher approaching free agency. Here, you’re much less likely to overpay the pitcher, but you’re forfeiting prospects.

- They can do what the Royals did with Santana, and what I advocated they do with Haren: trade essentially nothing for a pitcher on a one-year deal. The downside is they’re paying too much money in 2013, but only in 2013, and they don’t touch their farm system at all.

(I have a soft spot for Brandon Sisk; four years ago one of my nurses, whose boyfriend had decided to plan independent baseball five years after his college career ended, told me that one of his teammates in the Continental League had been signed by the Royals. Sisk pitched very well in the low minors, but he’s a left-handed reliever whose stuff is a little short, and in 99 innings at Triple-A he’s walked 48 batters. He might have a long career as an up-and-down second left-hander, but he’s not someone the Royals are likely to miss at all.)

The Royals chose door #3, and I think that – at least to fill one of the holes in their rotation – it’s the way to go. The Royals think that they will have many more internal options for their rotation in 2014 than in 2013, and I agree with them. With their need for a starter being much more acute in 2013 than in future years, I think it’s reasonable for them to overpay for 2013 if it gives them flexibility in 2014 and beyond. That’s exactly what the Royals have done. They’ve improved their rotation for next year without making any financial commitments beyond that, and without touching their farm system.

That exact sentence could have been written a year ago for Jonathan Sanchez, and I probably wrote one very similar to it at the time. But that’s just it: we’ve already seen what the absolute downside is to acquiring Santana. It’s almost physically impossible for him to be any worse than Sanchez was this year. And yet as bad as Sanchez was, it was only one season. Forget for a moment that the Royals turned him into Jeremy Guthrie. Suppose they had just cut him in July, after he had done his best to single-handedly destroy their playoff hopes. As bad as he was, there was no more damage he could do. Compare that with, say, Jeff Francoeur, or to a lesser extent Bruce Chen, who both got two-year deals. Not only did they fail to help (or in Frenchy’s case, actively hurt) the Royals in 2012, we have to go through an entire off-season where they’re on the roster, where they’re on the payroll, and they serve no purpose other than to take up payroll and block better options.

The worst-case scenario involves him putting up a 7+ ERA in the first half of the season before he gets cut. But you know what? That’s no worse than the worst-case scenario if the Royals had signed Santana as a free agent to a one-year, $2 million contract. No matter what happens, he doesn’t hurt the Royals in 2014 and beyond, neither financially nor in terms of giving up future talent to get him.

Sure, he’ll cost the Royals a ton of money in 2013, money that could be used elsewhere – but at least that money is there in the first place. Maybe I overreacted to Moore’s comments after the Volstad signing, but if I did, I was hardly the only one. But now, not only has the Glass family authorized adding $12 million to the payroll, but according to Moore (who, admittedly, misled us with his previous comments), “We’re not done,” he said. “We’re going to try to continue to upgrade our rotation through trades that make sense…and we’re certainly going to explore free agency.”

That’s the most important part of this transaction. If Ervin Santana is the Royals’ Opening Day starter, we’re in trouble. If they add one more guy in front of him, they’ve got a chance to contend. If they add a guy in front of him and another guy next to him – say, Jeremy Guthrie – they have an even better chance to contend.

The addition of Santana puts the Royals’ payroll for next year at $71 million. Keep in mind, that includes $7.4 million for Luke Hochevar and Chris Volstad. If those two are just placeholders for a real starting pitcher, the Royals could add another $12 million-a-year guy – someone like a Josh Johnson in trade – cut Hochevar and Volstad, and still be around $75 million.

They could also backload a free agent contract, pushing some of those dollars to 2014 – when Francoeur and Chen come off the books – and beyond. Moore said so himself: “We can backload whoever we end up signing or whoever we end up trading for. We can structure the contract in a way that allows us to balance the dollars out.” And then we’ll find out how serious David Glass is about winning, and whether he’s willing to push the payroll another $5-10 million in 2013 to bring Guthrie back or add another comparable starter.

But for now, at least we know he’s serious enough about winning to add Ervin Santana and his salary. And we know that Dayton Moore is not letting his dream of dominating in 2015 or 2016 keep him from at least trying to contend in 2013. That’s damning with faint praise, perhaps. But it’s a much better look for the organization than where they were even 48 hours ago.

For Want Of A Pitcher: Really?!

Last off-season, after I sorted through dozens of options to upgrade the Royals’ beleaguered rotation, they went off the board by trading for Jonathan Sanchez. I have barely begun to look at this off-season’s pitching options, but I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that I could have put together a list a hundred deep and wouldn’t have gotten to Chris Volstad.

That’s not to say Chris Volstad is a complete bum. A year ago, in fact, he was a very interesting buy-low candidate. Theo Epstein certainly thought so; the new Cubs’ president* got Volstad from the Marlins in return for Carlos Zambrano – with the Cubs picking up the bulk of Big Z’s contract.

*: Poor Jed Hoyer. He’s been the Cubs’ GM for a year now and probably 80% of Cubs fans think that Epstein holds his job.

It’s not hard to see why. Volstad reached the majors when he was 21 and had a 2.88 ERA in 14 starts. He’s never been that good again, but he’s a groundball pitcher (50% career rate, relative to league average of around 44%) with good control. His strikeout rate is below average, but still, two out of three ain’t bad. In 2011, he had a 4.89 ERA, but his xFIP was 3.64. He was like a better version of Luke Hochevar – a pitcher who should be better than he was, but who wasn’t terrible as is.

That was then. Now, after a season in which he had a 6.31 ERA, his strikeouts dropped, his walks jumped, and he extended his personal losing streak to 14 games before breaking it – well, that ship has sailed. The Cubs put him on waivers. The Royals claimed him.

Now, this was just a waiver claim – the Royals have made no commitment to Volstad, they could cut him tomorrow if they wanted. They did much the same thing with Aaron Laffey a year ago, and quietly made him disappear not long thereafter. Volstad’s still just 26 years old, and his fastball velocity this season (91.2 mph) was actually higher than it was in 2011 or 2010. It’s possible he just had a bad year. As a non-roster invitee, a guy you bring to camp with a chance to make the team, Volstad would actually be a nice little pickup.

The problem is that Volstad’s not an NRI. He’s on the roster, and he’s due big money in 2013 if he stays there. Volstad made $2.655 million with the Cubs last year, and he’s arbitration-eligible for the second time. If the Royals keep him, he’s due about $3 million, per Baseball Trade Rumors’ salary estimates.

That kind of money for that level of expected performance makes Hochevar’s contract look...well, not good, but better. Volstad has a 4.87 career ERA, pitching in the easier league, without the DH. Sure he’s young, but while some young guys blossom later, most young guys just get old.

And again, if the Royals keep him, he’s going to get paid as much as Alcides Escobar will next season.

I’d feel better about the pickup of Volstad if this meant that the Royals were going to cut ties with Hochevar. You replace Hochevar with a younger, less-talented but also less-maddening version, and save $1-2 million in the process. That’s still worse than just releasing Hochevar outright, but at least you can see the upside.

But there’s every indication that the Royals are digging their heels in on Hochevar, choosing to put their faith in the starting pitcher with the second-worst ERA in major-league history (min: 120 starts), behind only the last pitcher they dug their heels in on, Kyle Davies.

The worst part of all of this, though, are Dayton Moore’s comments in the wake of the Volstad claim.

“We know who we are and how we have to build this team,” general manager Dayton Moore said, “and how we have to build our rotation. We’re going to be as aggressive as we can, but we know who we are and how we need to do it.”

We know who we are.

Who are we, exactly? Are we the team with the bright and shiny future forecasted by everyone ever since we had the Best Farm System Ever two years ago? The team that only needs to add a couple of starting pitchers to contend and has tens of millions in payroll space with which to do just that?

Or are we the team that’s unwilling to raise payroll – even when Fox, ESPN, and TBS are making it rain to the tune of an extra $28 million per team starting in 2014? Even though the Royals’ amateur budget, which was $19 million in 2011, was limited to about $9 million by the new CBA this year?

Let’s assume that the Royals were only able to spend $19 million on amateur talent in 2011 because their major league payroll was miniscule – less than $40 million – thanks to a reliance on rookie players. In 2010, their payroll was between $72 and $75 million, depending on which figures you use. They spent close to $10 million on amateur talent. Let’s conservatively say $82 million, total. Add $28 million in new TV revenue to that, and that’s $110 million to spend – and at most $10 million can be spent on amateur talent.

The Glass family claims that they’ve run the franchise to break even, but they’ve never claimed to take a loss. So if they could break even with a $72 million payroll in 2010, they can break even with a $100 million payroll in 2014, even if they don’t earn an additional dime from increased attendance, concessions, their local TV contract, etc.

I’m not asking for a $100 million payroll – I’m just asking for $85 million in 2013. But Dayton Moore’s comments make that possibility seem bleak.

“We’ve got to look internally,” he said. “We’ve got to look through trades. We’ve got to look, certainly, through free agency…we might be able to pick off a player or two, but we’re not going to build our team through free agency. It won’t work.”

I can’t confirm whether Moore was waving a white flag while he gave this quote.

No one’s asking you to build a team through free agency. We’re asking you to finish a team through free agency. You’ve got your entire lineup in place, more or less. You have a complete bullpen. You’ve got a half-dozen options to fill the #4 and #5 slots in your rotation. All we’re asking you to do is to find three, and if not three then two, competent solutions for your starting rotation. They don’t even all have to be free agents – you certainly have the farm system talent to trade for one above-average starting pitcher. Really, all we want is one good, solid, #2 starting pitcher in free agency.

Instead, you’re giving us Chris Volstad.

These dollars have club officials pondering more affordable alternatives as a bridge to what they see as a coming wave of homegrown rotation help by the start of the 2014 season – plus the return of Danny Duffy and Felipe Paulino from elbow surgery.

Those are Bob Dutton’s words, but they reflect the organization’s thinking, I’m sure. And look, I’m sympathetic to the idea that the Royals don’t want to commit millions of dollars to a pitcher in 2016 or 2017, which will likely be wasted money at that point, to fill a need that primarily exists for 2013. It’s true that, by 2014, Duffy and Paulino should be healthy, and that Jake Odorizzi, John Lamb, Yordano Ventura, and even Kyle Zimmer might be ready for a rotation spot. Obviously all six guys won’t make it, but if even two or three of them are ready, the Royals will have much less need for external starting pitchers than they do now.

But if that’s the case, do what I suggested earlier and trade for Dan Haren’s one-year option. If that’s not possible – Haren apparently has a no-trade clause to eight teams, although we don’t know whether the Royals are on his list – then explore the trade market for pitchers with one year left on their contracts, like Josh Johnson and Matt Garza.

But what you don’t want to do is spend $3 million on Chris Volstad. You certainly don’t want to spend $3 million on Volstad, and $5 million on Luke Hochevar, and maybe another $2 million to bring back Joakim Soria, and then claim you don’t have the money to pursue a high-end starting pitcher.

It’s Baseball Economics 101 – a dollar is always worth more than four quarters. You’re always better off paying for one premier free agent than spreading that money around three or four fringy guys. Back in 2006, the Royals spent $10.85 million on four free agents – Scott Elarton, Mark Grudzielanek, Doug Mientkiewicz, and Joe Mays. I shouted from the rooftops that they should put all that money into one basket – specifically, A.J. Burnett.

Burnett signed with the Blue Jays for $11 million a year, and was an above-average starter for three straight years before he opted out of the last two years of his contract. The opt-out wasn’t good for the Jays, but on the other hand, the contract was backloaded so they actually only paid him $28.6 million for three years. Elarton and Mays, meanwhile, were so titanically (and predictably) awful that Allard Baird lost his job two months into the season.

I’m reminded of 2006 right now not just because the Royals are in danger of repeating the same mistake, but because reading Moore’s comments, I sense the same thing I sensed with Baird towards the end: he’s defeated. He’s trying his best to put together a winning roster, but the payroll constraints that have been placed on him by ownership are starting to weigh him down. I think he’s been told in no uncertain terms that the payroll will not reach $85 million next season, and he’s struggling to find a way to put together a rotation with those limitations.

With that in mind, the report – courtesy Geoff Baker and the Seattle Times – that the Royals are actively scouting James Paxton makes me even more nervous. Paxton is a fine pitching prospect, a left-hander who touches 95 and has a vicious curveball. Baseball America ranked him the #52 prospect in the land this spring, and then he went out and had a very good year in Double-A. But compare:

James Paxton, 2012: 106 IP, 96 H, 54 BB, 110 K, 5 HR, 3.05 ERA

Chris Dwyer, 2010: 102 IP, 90 H, 43 BB, 113 K, 5 HR, 3.00 ERA

That’s probably not fair to Paxton – Dwyer spent most of that season in high-A. Dwyer was ranked the #83 prospect after that season – Paxton is already a Top 100 prospect. On the other hand, Dwyer was a year younger than Paxton is now.

The point is that hard-throwing lefties with a good curveball and command issues are hardly a sure thing. I like Paxton a lot, and would be happy to have him. But what’s concerning is that the Royals seem interested in him as a way to fix their rotation issues in 2013. It makes no sense for the Royals to be interested in him otherwise. By their own statements, they think they can build a 2014 rotation from within – so why would they trade for Paxton unless they think that he can help them sooner?

And why would Paxton be so appealing? Well, he’d make the major league minimum. The Royals’ interest in him – if they indeed have interest – would be another indication that they’re trying to improve their rotation without increasing the payroll.

The problem is, you ain’t getting James Paxton for nothing. And you’re not getting him for other pitching prospects – the Mariners are as desperate for hitters as the Royals are for starting pitchers. If they can get him for Jorge Bonifacio and Cheslor Cuthbert, more power to them. But they’re not. They’d either be trading an established position player for him (Gordon, Butler, Moustakas, Hosmer), which makes no sense…or they’d be trading Wil Myers.

Which is crazy. Even if the Mariners throw in something of substance to make up for the fact that Myers is the better prospect, trading an elite hitting prospect for an elite pitching prospect is a bad, bad idea. The Mariners know this – last year they traded Michael Pineda, who wasn’t just an elite pitching prospect but an elite pitcher, who made the All-Star Team as a rookie starter, for Jesus Montero, who had played just 18 games in the major leagues. Montero wasn’t great as a rookie DH/catcher for Seattle, but is still immensely talented, and is probably a big part of their decision to move in the fences at Safeco next season. But Pineda had surgery to repair a torn labrum in March and missed the whole year, and his future is very much in doubt.

It is very, very possible that I’m reading too much into a simple waiver claim and some generic quotes from our general manager. I certainly hope I am. It’s still October, free agent season hasn’t even begun, it’s still a month before teams have to tender contracts. It’s even possible that by the time you read this, the Royals will have already made a move on Haren – his option has to be picked up by tomorrow, and he’s expected to be traded before then.

But the more I try to connect the dots, the more I’m worried that:

1) The Royals’ payroll will be far more limited than it should be for 2013, and

2) Even if the financial resources he has to work with are limited, Dayton Moore isn’t exactly covering himself in glory with the way he’s using them.

If the Glass family has given him a payroll figure that is tying his hands, then I’m sympathetic to Moore. On the other hand, it’s hard to muster much sympathy to a GM who’s insisting on keeping Luke Hochevar around, and now has added Chris Volstad, which commits $8 million in payroll to two pitchers who are below replacement-level. I was sympathetic to Allard Baird as well given his payroll constraints, but giving Scott Elarton a two-year, $8 million contract used up all that sympathy in one stroke.

Six years after Dayton Moore was hired, this is the rotation that the Royals would open the season with if the season began today: Luke Hochevar, Bruce Chen, Luis Mendoza, Chris Volstad, and either Jake Odorizzi or Will Smith.

Six years after Dayton Moore told us that “pitching is the currency of baseball,” he’s still flat broke.

I don’t think they’re going to open the season with that rotation, because they can’t. They just can’t. They’re going to upgrade it somewhere, and somehow. But if Moore is unable to raise payroll in order to do so, his options are limited. And if one of his preferred options is to trade one of his elite hitters for a high-quality but risky pitching prospect like James Paxton, the cure may be worse than the disease.

So right now, I’m not going to lie to you: I’m nervous. And I just want to let the Royals know – they’re playing with fire right now. They are this close to taking over Kansas City, what with the metropolitan area in open revolt against the Chiefs and their repulsive front office. A contending season would turn Red Fridays into Blue Everydays, and make the Royals the toast of the town.

But the Royals only have to look across the Truman Sports Complex, at the empty seats on Sundays, at the paper bags over people’s heads, at the banners flying over the stadium, to understand what can happen if you cross the line and betray the trust of your fan base completely. A lot of readers have compared Matt Cassel to Luke Hochevar, and that comparison might be truer than you think. If the Royals neglect their rotation the way the Chiefs neglected their quarterback situation, and if they start next season the way the Chiefs have started this season, it’s going to get ugly.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s plenty of time for the Royals to spend money on a quality free agent, or to trade some excess prospects for a short-term rotation upgrade. If Chris Volstad is just a placeholder for a real starting pitcher, we can all look back at this column in a few months and have a good laugh. But if the front office thinks Chris Volstad is the answer, and the question is “How do we put a rotation together on a budget?”, no one’s going to be laughing.

For Want Of A Pitcher: The Elite Free Agents.

Before we look at the available options on the free-agent pitching market, there are two key points to make. The first is that this is the year to be bold and aggressive if you want to corral a high-end free agent. With TV revenues – both local and national – booming throughout baseball, expect payrolls to follow. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if free agents who sign this winter get 15-20% more money than comparable players on the market last winter.

Dayton Moore has a history of making big transactions within days of the end of the World Series, but they tend to be trades, and they tend to be ill-advised, like trading the former Leo Nunez for Mike Jacobs (October 31st) or trading Mark Teahen for Chris Getz and Josh Fields (November 6th) or trading David DeJesus for Vinny Mazzaro and Justin Marks (November 10th) or trading Ramon Ramirez for Coco Crisp (November 19th). By contrast, his big free-agent signings (Jose Guillen and Gil Meche) were both in December, around the time of the Winter Meetings.

I think this might be the year to try to get the jump on the market, and make a pre-emptive offer to a top-tier pitcher in November, an offer that might look overpriced when it’s announced, but that looks like a bargain when the rest of the market has settled in January. It means offering a potential #2 starter, the kind of guy who got $12-13 million in the past, closer to $15 million a year. But that same pitcher might cost $16 million a year, or get a five-year deal instead of a four-year deal, a month or two later.

And that brings me to my second point, which is that no matter what the Royals say publicly, THEY CAN AFFORD IT, and don’t believe them if they say otherwise. This has been done elsewhere, but here’s a quick breakdown of the Royals’ payroll obligations for 2013:

Already Signed (6 players, $33 million)

Alex Gordon, $9 million

Billy Butler, $8 million

Jeff Francoeur, $7.5 million

Bruce Chen, $4.5 million

Alcides Escobar, $3 million

Salvador Perez, $1 million

Arbitration Eligible (3 players, $4.5 million)

Felipe Paulino, $2.7 million

Chris Getz, $1.2 million

Blake Wood, $600,000

The figures for the arbitration-eligible players are estimates which I took from MLB Trade Rumors here.

That’s $38 million going to nine players. Here’s the thing: the other 16 players on the Royals’ active roster would all be pre-arbitration eligible players, earning only slightly more than the major league minimum of $480,000 on average.

We’ll throw in some extra costs here; Aaron Crow will make at least $1 million next season, the result of the major-league contract he signed out of the draft. Joakim Soria is owed $750,000 in a buyout, and will probably re-sign a smaller incentive-laden deal. After his surgery I suggested something like $2.5 million guaranteed, so let’s run with that. That’s $41.5 million for 11 players. Let’s say the other 14 players average about $580,000 each – let’s say $8.12 million. Throw in Noel Arguelles and the $1.38 million he’ll make to spend another year in the minors, and that’s a grand total of $51 million.

(By the way, you’ll notice who’s missing from my list: Luke Hochevar, who would earn around $4.4 million in arbitration next year.)

The Royals’ payroll this season was over $63 million. Their payroll was close to $75 million in both 2009 and 2010. As I argued earlier, the Royals will be earning an additional $27 million in national TV revenue in 2014 – so if we take the Royals at their word that they were only breaking even in 2009-2010, that means their break-even point would be over $100 million by 2014.

Let’s be charitable and say the Royals should have a payroll of $85 million next season. That’s $34 million to play with.

Let me repeat that: THE ROYALS HAVE $34 MILLION TO PLAY WITH.

Let’s say they re-sign Jeremy Guthrie, and pay him $8 million in 2013. Let’s say the Royals spend another $2 million on low-end free agents, say a backup catcher, or even another reliever beyond Soria*.

*: Although why they’d do this is beyond me. Consider this: after the Royals traded Jonathan Broxton and waived Jose Mijares, EVERY SINGLE RELIEVER in their bullpen was pre-arbitration eligible. Not only that, but every one of them will still not be eligible for arbitration next year. A Soria/Holland/Herrera/Collins/Crow/Coleman bullpen would cost under $6 million next season, giving the Royals the leeway to spend their money elsewhere.

That still leaves $24 million. That means every single free agent is in play. Even if they go cheap and try to keep the payroll in the $75-80 million range, they can add an additional $14-19 million worth of contracts, which should include every free agent pitcher but one.

That one is Zack Greinke, of course, for whom the bidding will probably start at 5 years, $100 million – the contract he reportedly turned down from the Brewers before they traded him. After a rough early start with the Angels, that had people once again questioning his mental toughness, he finished strong: a 2.04 ERA in his last eight starts, allowing fewer than a baserunner per inning.

There is an assumption in certain circles that the Royals simply have no chance of signing Greinke, given the awkward way he left town. I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think the Royals have as much of a chance to sign Greinke as they would any pitcher who was clearly the prize of the free-agent market. Which is to say, exceedingly slim, but not zero. If anything, their chances might be slightly higher, simply because some free agents want to seek out the bright lights of the big cities, and would cross Kansas City off their list before even talking numbers. Greinke, it’s safe to say, does not want to play for the Yankees come hell or high water.

The two obstacles for the Royals are the same as always: their willingness to spend, and their ability to win. Regarding the first, I think that it’s going to take something in the range of 6 years and $130 million to sign Greinke. While the Royals can afford that, it would require them to put a substantial amount of their payoll into one player – a pitcher, no less. If Greinke gets hurt, you’ve just flushed a quarter of your payroll down the drain.

In Greinke’s defense, his combination of mechanics, low workload in his early 20s (thanks in part to his sabbatical), and injury history make him about as good a bet to stay healthy as any pitcher in the major leagues. My friend Will Carroll publishes his injury risk scores for every player during spring training, and two or three years ago, Greinke had the lowest score Carroll had ever given a pitcher. After he was called up in 2004, Greinke didn’t miss a start until he walked away from the team two years later; after he went back into the rotation for good in August, 2007, the only time he’s missed a start was when he broke some ribs playing basketball in the spring of 2011 and missed the month of April.

He’s as good a bet for 32 starts and 200 innings a year as anyone in baseball. He just turned 29 yesterday, so even a six-year deal would only take him through his age-34 season. I understand the risk of putting too many eggs in one basket. But this is one sturdy basket.

The other obstacle is simply that Greinke doesn’t want to play for a team that doesn’t have a chance of winning; that’s the reason he forced his way out of town in the first place. And let’s face it – the Royals didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory by going 72-90 this year. You’d like to think the Royals can sell Greinke on the young talent on the team – not just on the farm, but on the team – and the fact that the only thing that is keeping the Royals from a winning record is the same thing that his addition would correct.

But there’s another way the Royals can convince Greinke that they mean business about winning. Ten years ago, the Royals signed Mike Sweeney to a 5-year, $55 million contract that contained an unprecedented clause: if the Royals failed to finish at .500 in either 2003 or 2004, Sweeney would be able to void the last three years of the contract. The contract was actually held up briefly until MLB approved the language of the deal, because it was the first deal to contain a provision of this kind.

The Royals went 83-79 in the first year of the contract, rendering the clause moot, and then Sweeney started getting hurt so much that fans wished the Royals hadn’t finished above .500 so that Sweeney could have walked away. But that doesn’t change the fact that the clause was an inspired idea, making it possible for the Royals to sign one of their best players to a long-term deal while providing some guarantees to the player that he wouldn’t play for a loser forever.

If the Royals want to be serious about pursuing Greinke, they should offer him the same proviso – if the Royals don’t have a winning record in 2013 or 2014, he can walk away. If the Royals are as good as they think they are, there’s no risk in the guarantee. (And if you’re Dayton Moore, you know that if you’re not over .500 by 2014, you’re going to be out of a job anyway.) But from what we know of Greinke, that kind of reassurance might mean the difference between coming back to Kansas City and going elsewhere.

I doubt that he returns, because I doubt the Royals are serious about pursuing him. But they should be. He’s the only guaranteed game-changer on the market, and that’s worth the premium they’d have to pay.

But if they can’t land Greinke or don’t want to try, then they need to go all-in on Anibal Sanchez. Those of you who catch my radio spots have heard me talk up Sanchez as the ideal free-agent target for months now; he’s this year’s version of Edwin Jackson for me.

Sanchez was a highly-regarded prospect with the Red Sox when he was traded along with Hanley Ramirez for Josh Beckett after the 2005 season. He had a fine rookie season in 2006 (2.83 ERA in 114 innings) but tore his labrum in early 2007, and missed more than a year. He returned in 2008 and was not effective; in 2009 he regained his effectiveness, and in 2010 he added durability to his talents. He has thrown between 195 and 196 innings each of the last three years, with ERAs ranging from 3.55 to 3.86.

The injury history has to be somewhat concerning; labrum tears are no joke. But in a way he reminds me of Gil Meche, who missed over TWO years following labrum surgery, but had been healthy for years before the Royals signed him – and if the Royals hadn’t criminally neglected his shoulder pain in the third year of his contract, he might still be pitching today.

Sanchez was traded to the Tigers this summer, and in 12 starts gave them a 3.74 ERA. Even though it was only 12 starts, it is very reassuring that he proved he could handle AL competition. His performance did suffer a little – his strikeout rate dropped to 6.9 per 9 innings, which would be his lowest rate since returning from surgery. But that’s still an acceptable rate for a starting pitcher in the AL, particularly one with well above-average (and improving) command. Sanchez’s walk rate has dropped from 3.2 per 9 in 2010, to 2.9 per 9 in 2011, to 2.5 per 9 before he was traded, to 1.8 per 9 after he was traded. This is the progression you’d expect to see from a starting pitcher as he ages – his strikeout rate dips slowly, but his walk rate drops as well, allowing him to maintain his effectiveness.

Plus, Sanchez’s strikeout rate is starting from a high enough point that he could lose some of his stuff and remain effective. He struck out 202 batters in 196 innings just last season; the only qualifying starters with a higher strikeout rate were Greinke, Brandon Morrow, and Clayton Kershaw. I’d expect a small bounce upward in Sanchez’s strikeout rate next year, particularly since his fastball is not losing velocity – according to Pitch f/x, his average fastball velocity has been between 91.5 and 91.8 mph each of the last three years.

Sanchez isn’t an ace, but he’s perfectly capable of being a #2 starter. He has shown remarkable consistency over the last three seasons, has taken the ball every time out, and has the ability to miss bats. He’s had the opportunity to face AL competition and has passed the test so far. He’ll turn 29 next February, so he’s young enough to justify a long-term deal. And – like Greinke – because he was traded during the season, he won’t cost the Royals draft pick compensation. That’s a rule change in the new CBA; the Tigers won’t get a draft pick if he signs elsewhere, and the team that signs him won’t lose one.

Really, the only thing not to like about him is that he keeps pitching well for the Tigers in the postseason and jacking up his price. He threw 6.1 innings against the A’s in the ALDS, allowing only two runs, then threw seven shutout innings against the Yankees in the ALCS. Postseason performances attract attention; probably too much attention, given how small of a sample size they are.

The more I think about it, the more I like the Gil Meche comp – Sanchez can be a durable #2 starter for 3-4 years, and perhaps longer. The problem is that while only a few teams believed in Meche given his track record, there’s a much longer line of teams interested in Sanchez. Throw all the new TV money on the pile, and what was 5 years, $55 million for Meche is probably going to be 5 years, $70 million at the minimum for Sanchez. I could see 5/$75 or even 5/$80 as the asking price.

The thing is, I’d probably pay it. Assuming his health woes are behind him – and he’s pitching better than ever, so I’m thinking they are – he’s already an above-average starter, and there’s upside here that he could refine his command even more and be a 210 inning, 3.30 ERA pitcher for the next few years. And given that the Royals are unlikely to convince Greinke to sign quickly no matter what they throw at him, the single piece of advice I would give Dayton Moore is this: the moment teams are allowed to talk to free agents, get Sanchez’s agent on the phone, offer him 5 years and $70 million, and don’t let him hang up until you’ve got a deal done.

If the Royals are unable to get this year’s version of Edwin Jackson, they would be well-advised to get in touch with the real thing. They showed no interest in him last winter, so instead he signed a 1-year, $11 million deal with the Nationals, and then went out and did pretty much what you’d expect him to do: he made 31 starts (his sixth straight year with 31+ GS), threw 190 innings, and had a 4.03 ERA. His ERA was a little inflated by giving up eight earnies in 1.1 innings in his next-to-last start of the year; he actually set a career-high with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.17.

Speaking of consistency, Jackson’s xFIP – my favorite single stat to evaluate a pitcher’s effectiveness, scaled to ERA – the last three years reads 3.71, 3.73, 3.79.

Oh, and the Nationals led the major leagues with 98 wins. That probably should count for something.

I’m actually not quite as high on Jackson as I was last winter. While he went out and had a season essentially identical to his performances the previous three years, part of my obsession with him was the small chance that he would have a breakout season and establish himself as an ace-level starter. That could still happen, but he’s a year older now and the odds are slightly less. Also, given that he spent the whole year in the NL for the first time in his career, I would have liked to see him take a step forward just because the quality of competition was worse.

But honestly, these are small quibbles. Jackson is still young enough to break out – he turned 29, making him one month older than Greinke and five months older than Sanchez. While his ERA drifted over to the wrong side of 4, what’s more important is that he set a career high in strikeouts per nine innings at 8.0 (helped no doubt by facing opposing pitchers at the plate). And while Sanchez has raised his price tag in October, Jackson’s lukewarm performance this month – he allowed four runs in five innings in his only start, then gave up a run in a relief inning when Davey Johnson got desperate for bullpen help in Game 5 – seems to have knocked his price down a peg.

Last year, I suggested that the Royals offer him 4 years, $50 million. He might not have accepted it at the time, but it’s noteworthy that he got rid of Scott Boras as his agent. The Pirates offered him a 3-year, $27 million contract that he rejected in favor of the one-year deal. While Boras was probably right to reject it – Jackson’s going to make more than $16 million over the next two years – Jackson’s decision to drop Boras suggests an unwillingness to play hardball.

Frankly, even though Jackson’s not quite as appealing as he was a year ago, the market inflation is so great that 4 and $50 sounds like a great deal right now. If Sanchez is worth $14 million a year for 5 years, then Jackson’s worth at least $13 million a year for 4, or $12 million a year for 5. If that sounds like way too much money, consider that after Jackson, the quality of starting pitchers available drops off a cliff.

The man standing at the edge of the precipice is Kyle Lohse. If I could give Dayton Moore a second piece of advice, it would be this: STAY AWAY FROM KYLE LOHSE.

Not that I expect Moore to listen to me. As Bob Dutton reported earlier this month, “there are indications the Royals have right-handers Anibal Sanchez and Kyle Lohse at the top of their list.” And if Dutton’s reporting it, you can take that to the bank.

So let’s compare the two, shall we?

- Sanchez turns 29 in February. Lohse turned 34 earlier this month.

- Sanchez has made 31+ starts each of the last three years. Lohse made just 18 starts in 2010, missing half the season following surgery to relieve compartment syndrome in his elbow.

- Sanchez has had ERAs ranging from 3.55 to 3.86 each of the last three years. Lohse had a 6.55 ERA in 2010.

- Sanchez’s ERAs the last three years are a fair representation of his performance – he has a 3.69 ERA, and a 3.63 xFIP. While Lohse has a 2.86 ERA this year, and a 3.39 ERA last year, his xFIP was 3.96 this year, 4.04 last year. The take-home conclusion: while Lohse has had better ERAs the last two seasons, he has actually pitched worse than Sanchez, but has been the beneficiary of good luck and good defense.

- On that subject, Sanchez’s BABIP the last three years have been eerily consistent - .310 this year, .310 last year, .305 in 2010. Lohse, on the other hand, had a .262 BABIP this year and a .269 BABIP last year. Those are not sustainable – his career BABIP is .297. (In his disastrous 2010, it was .364.) If you don’t like the fancy-pants numbers, just trust me on this: Lohse has been lucky for the last two years. Sanchez hasn’t. And since Kansas City is the place where luck goes to die, I’d rather have the pitcher whose success doesn’t depend on it.

- Sanchez misses bats. He struck out 7.7 batters per 9 this season, and his career rate is 7.6 per 9. Lohse does not. His strikeout rate was 6.1 batters per 9 this season, and that’s his highest rate in a full season since his rookie year in 2002.

- Sanchez at least spent half of this season in the AL. Lohse hasn’t pitched in the AL since the Twins traded him away in 2006. He has a career 4.88 ERA in the AL, vs. 4.07 in the NL. That’s not entirely fair to him – he’s a different pitcher now than he was in his 20s – but it’s fair to wonder whether he can make the adjustment back to the better league.

On the subject of Lohse being a different pitcher today, that’s one of the things that worries me most about him. He joined the Cardinals in 2008, a 29-year-old pitcher who had just come off a mediocre season for the Reds and Phillies – a 4.62 ERA in 193 innings. Of course, Dave Duncan’s specialty has always been, more or less, 29-year-old veteran starters with mediocre results, and sure enough in his first year with the Cardinals, Lohse had a 3.78 ERA in 200 innings, as he cut both his home runs and walks by about 20%.

That’s what Dave Duncan did – by preaching command of the sinker above all, he got pitchers to throw more strikes and give up fewer homers. In five seasons with the Cardinals, Lohse has walked 2.2 batters and allowed 0.9 homers per 9 innings. Everywhere else, he’s allowed 2.8 walks and 1.2 homers per 9 innings. Granted, Duncan retired after last season and Lohse was better than ever this year – but I’d be very worried that whatever made Lohse such an effective pitcher in St. Louis will stay in St. Louis when he leaves.

I made the point with Sanchez that as a pitcher ages, his strikeout rate tends to suffer, but because his walk rate drops in tandem, his overall effectiveness may not decline. The problem for Lohse is that his walk rate is so low that there’s not much more he can improve in that regard.

Lohse reminds me of no one so much as Joel Pineiro, who washed ashore in St. Louis after the Mariners and Red Sox gave up on him. Duncan got him to cut his walk rate in half, and in 2009 he threw 214 innings, walked 27 batters (the lowest walk rate in the NL) and allowed just 11 homers. Even though he struck out just 105 batters, he was very effective, with a 3.49 ERA.

Pineiro then signed a two-year, $16 million contract with the Angels. In his first year, he only made 23 starts but posted a solid 3.84 ERA – in one of the best pitchers’ parks in the league, mind you. In 2011, he had a 5.13 ERA in 146 innings. He then tore his labrum and his career is in jeopardy.

Pineiro was a more extreme version of Lohse, granted. In his walk year, Pineiro struck out just 4.4 batters per 9 innings. But like Pineiro, Lohse owes his success primarily to not walking anyone. And unlike Pineiro, you’re not getting Lohse for 2 years and $18 million. On 810 WHB, Buster Olney speculated that it would take 5 years and $75 million to sign Lohse.

Which is insane. It’s one thing to give $75 million to a pitcher with strikeout stuff in his late 20s. It’s quite another to give that much money to a command-and-control pitcher in the inferior league for his age 34 through age 38 seasons. It’s telling that the Cardinals did not sign Lohse to a long-term deal this summer, even while they were signing teammate Jake Westbrook to a two-year extension.

Oh, and assuming the Cardinals offer Lohse a qualifying offer (a 1 year, $13.3 million deal, which they almost certainly will), signing Lohse will cost the Royals the supplemental draft pick they got in the new competitive balance lottery. That will probably be around the #35 pick overall – that’s not chump change. (This would also apply to Edwin Jackson, I should point out.)

My suspicion is that one of the reasons the Royals have interest in Lohse is because they think he just needs a good defense behind him, and they’ve bought into the fiction that the Royals have a great defense. I hate to tell them this, but the Royals don’t have a great defense. There’s no evidence that they even have a good defense. There is evidence that they have one of the worst defenses in baseball.

Our ability to evaluate a player’s defense using statistics is still developing. However, our ability to evaluate the defense of a team as a whole is actually quite good. The statistic Defensive Efficiency – essentially, the percentage of balls in play that are turned into outs – is a fairly strong measure of team defense.

In 2012, the Royals ranked 28th in the majors in Defensive Efficiency, at .689. They ranked dead last in the AL, ahead of only the Brewers and Rockies, and right behind the Tigers.

Like you, I look at the team on the field and I wonder how this can be true. Mike Moustakas is Gold Glove-caliber, as is Alex Gordon. Alcides Escobar wasn’t quite as brilliant as he was in 2011, but was still above-average. Lorenzo Cain was terrific in center field. Salvador Perez is Ivan Rodriguez Jr. But again, this isn’t a measure of a single player, where errors are more likely, but the measurement of an entire team. It’s the difference between a political poll that surveys 300 voters vs. 3000 voters – the larger the sample size, the smaller the margin of error.

And if you look at what Defensive Efficiency says about other teams, you have to concede it’s a pretty accurate measure. The Tigers are winning despite a brutal defense, using the same philosophy the Brewers did last season. The best two defenses in baseball are the Angels and Rays, which makes sense. The A’s aren’t far behind them. The Orioles have a good defense. The Indians don’t.

So instead of fighting that conclusion, we need to figure out what that’s the case. Is Eric Hosmer’s positioning still hindering his defense? (Probably.) Is Jeff Francoeur just that bad? (In terms of his range – ignoring his arm – absolutely.) Can anyone on this team play defense at second base? (Maybe not – all five guys the Royals used there ranked below average, and as a whole, they were 25(!) runs below average.)

It’s possible that the Royals’ pitching staff was so bad that they made the defense look worse than it was, but I imagine such an impact was minimal. For one thing, as bad as the rotation was, the bullpen was above-average. So I have no choice but to come to the conclusion that the Royals have a bad defense. Maybe they’ll bounce back next year, now that Yuni is gone and Francoeur is likely to be put out to pasture soon. But for now, at least, I wouldn’t be signing a starting pitcher whose greatest virtue is that he puts his defense to work.

Which means I wouldn’t sign Kyle Lohse. Certainly not for the money it will take to get him.

I’ll get to the other free agents later, guys like Hiroki Kuroda and Shaun Marcum and the rest. But for now, the Royals could hardly do better than to find a way to reel in one of Greinke, Sanchez, or Jackson. And they could hardly do worse than to sign Kyle Lohse.