Hochevar: It's A Relief.

Sorry for my absence last week; I was working on my big article for Grantland – hey, any time you get the chance to write that the Yankees are doomed, you have to take it – and then I had to prepare for my Stratomatic draft. Priorities, people.

It may be a little light over the next 2-3 weeks, as I’m due to take my Dermatology re-certification exam later this month. Fortunately, I only have to take the exam every 10 years; if I’m still writing on this blog the next time I have to take the exam, something’s probably gone wrong.

Anyway…so, Luke Hochevar.

Let’s get the negative out of the way first. Luke Hochevar, who has a 5.39 career ERA, who in five seasons as a starter has never had an ERA below 4.68 – something unprecedented in major league history – was tendered a contract by the Royals, on the expectation that he would be in their rotation this season.

They gave up the ghost on March 13th.

I know many of you think I’m an insufferably arrogant human being, possibly because I can be insufferably arrogant at times. And I know many of you think that all I do is bitch about the Royals, even though this blog started with 23 Reasons Why I’m Optimistic About The Royals, and I’ve been complimentary of such moves as signing Juan Cruz and signing Jeff Francoeur and trading for Jonathan Sanchez.

But tell me, guys, how would you react if for the past 20+ years, this was the story of your life?

Me: “I can’t believe the Royals did X. That makes no sense.”

Royals: “We know what we’re doing.”

Me: “No you don’t. Here are seven reasons why doing X hurts the team.”

Royals: “Trust us. We’re the professionals.”

Me: “Then why does a rank amateur like myself know that you’ve made a mistake?”

A few months pass.

Royals: “We have elected to reverse decision X. It’s no one’s fault. Sometimes things don’t work out in baseball.”

Me: “And sometimes things don’t work out because they were bad ideas to begin with.”

Royals: “Trust us. We’re the professionals.”

I’ve been having these conversations – admittedly one-sided, and in the early years, entirely in my head – with the Royals since 1989, when I was 14 years old. Here’s just a short list of the decisions the Royals have made which were clearly, unequivocally bad from the moment they were made, and whose badness was only made clear and more unequivocal by the passage of time.

1989: Signed Storm Davis

1992: Left Jeff Conine exposed in the Expansion Draft; protected David Howard and Bill Sampen

1993: Traded Gregg Jefferies for Felix Jose

1995: Traded David Cone for three magic beans

1997 & 1999: Rode Jose Rosado’s arm into the ground

2000: Traded Jeremy Giambi for Brett Laxton

2001: Traded Johnny Damon in order to get proven closer Roberto Hernandez

2002: Hired Tony Pena as manager instead of Buck Showalter

2002: Traded Jermaine Dye for Neifi Perez

2005: Left Jose Lima in the rotation all year (and paid him incentive bonuses of $1 million) to finish with a 6.99 ERA in 32 starts

2005: Hired Buddy Bell as manager instead of anyone else in the whole world

2007: Signed Jose Guillen to a 3-year deal so he could poison the clubhouse, apparently

2009: Traded for Yuniesky Betancourt

2009: Destroyed Gil Meche’s arm

2009: Declined Miguel Olivo’s option and released John Buck so they could sign Jason Kendall to a two-year deal for more money than Olivo and Buck combined

2011: Brought back Kyle Davies for $3.2 million even though he wasn’t good at his job

2012: Thought so much of the Yuniesky Betancourt Experience that they signed up for it again

This isn’t a listing of the Royals’ worst mistakes, mind you; only a listing of the ones that were inexplicable to anyone with common sense. I’m not including the Mark Davis signing, or the many, many, many draft mistakes they’ve made over the years.

Now, you’ll notice that most of these occurred under a different administration, and it’s not fair to blame Dayton Moore for something Herk Robinson did. On the other hand, the pace of these unforced errors doesn’t appear to have slowed down at all. I think Moore has done more things right than his two predecessors, particularly in the player development department, which is why the Royals are poised to have their best season since John Schuerholz left town. But he’s also good for a doozy at least once a year.

And now we have one more. In December, the Royals tendered Hochevar a contract for more money than he would possibly have gotten on the free agent market. They didn’t even try to play hardball with him, the way they did with their two other arbitration-eligible players, Felipe Paulino and Chris Getz, both of whom signed before the tender deadline for less money than they might have earned in arbitration, out of fear that they might get cut.

But in Hochevar’s case, the Royals not only had no intention of cutting him, they were very explicit to the media that they had no intention of cutting him, which of course destroyed all of their leverage.

Three months later, he was moved to the bullpen.

Yes, you can argue that at the time Hochevar was tendered, the Royals hadn’t yet traded for James Shields and Wade Davis. But that’s a diversion. The fact remains that for the money they’re paying Hochevar, the Royals could have found better starting pitchers on the free agent market. The fact remains that in the last five years, 108 pitchers have made 90 or more starts in the majors, and Hochevar ranks dead last among them with a 5.45 ERA. No one else is higher than 5.06.

(This is kind of an aside, but it’s too funny not to mention: if you lower the minimum to 70 starts, here are the three worst ERAs from 2008 to 2012: Brian Bannister (5.58), Luke Hochevar (5.45), and Kyle Davies (5.20). Royals Baseball!)

The Royals are saying all sorts of nice things about how this will free Hochevar to air it out for an inning or two, and how they don’t see him as a long reliever but as a genuine power arm that could pitch the seventh and eighth innings alongside Crow and Collins and Herrera. That’s, um, debatable. What’s not debatable is that a small-market team that has an incredibly deep pool of young, cheap relievers is paying Luke Hochevar $4.56 million to pitch middle relief.

What’s not debatable is that, assuming Bruce Chen wins the fifth starter’s role, Hochevar will be paid more in 2013 ($4.56 million) than the other six relievers in the bullpen combined (about $3.8 million).

And sometimes things don’t work out because they were bad ideas to begin with.

---

OK, we’ve dispensed with the negativity. Which is good, because I would much rather dwell on the positives of this decision, which are plenty. It may sound snarky to say that upon hearing the news, I felt a lot better about the Royals’ chances to make the playoffs this year – but it’s absolutely true.

Because look, as silly as it was for the Royals to bring Hochevar back as a starting pitcher this season, it would be MUCH MUCH MUCH more silly for them to backtrack on their decision in May or June, after he’s already put up a 7-spot in the box score a couple of times, than to do so in March. Moving Hochevar to the bullpen now puts egg on their faces, but it doesn’t put any losses in the standings.

In past years, the Royals would stubbornly send a starting pitcher out there every fifth day in the hopes that he would turn it around, whether it was Jose Lima in 2005 or Kyle Davies in 2011. But in past years, the Royals weren’t really playing for anything; there weren’t really any consequences. That was what made Hochevar’s return so frustrating: a team that was going all-in on 2013, that had gambled so many prospects on that proposition, was prepared to undo all of that just to prove a stubborn point about Luke.

The Royals are still putting a brave face up about him, as they should, publicly. But by making this move, they are in effect acknowledging that if they’re serious about winning this year, they have to stop sacrificing potential wins to prove a point. As a fan, it was easy to say “why I should take the Royals’ chances of winning seriously when the organization itself doesn’t?” By making this move, the organization is finally saying: we do.

So I give them credit for doing it. I didn’t think they had the guts to – I mean, in my very last column less than two weeks ago, I said that Hochevar almost certainly wouldn’t lose his job. “And if they cut bait with him now, they’d be admitting they made a mistake without even giving him the chance to prove it. The embarrassment that would cause makes it highly unlikely that they would do such a thing.”

Instead, they sucked it up and accepted the embarrassment. They knew that when they made this decision, they’d be mocked the way I mocked them in the first half of this column. It’s that fear of embarrassment that causes organizations – not just in baseball but all of sports – to double-down on bad decisions long after they’ve been proven wrong. (Matt Cassel, anyone?)

Every year in spring training, the Royals say that the better player will win the job, even though the winner appears to be a foregone conclusion. It’s not just the Royals – every team puts on the illusion of competition even though they’ve already made up their mind. And I (and lots of other people) honestly thought that was the situation here.

That’s why this decision is so potentially significant. The Royals have made it very clear that when they say the best pitcher will be named the fifth starter, they mean it. That gives them the credibility to say that whoever wins the job at second base, or backup catcher’s spot, or the last spot in the bullpen, really did win the job because they were perceived to be the best player for it, and not just because the organization had already made up its mind and was too stubborn to change it.

Having said all that, the Royals haven’t gone far enough. Sparing us Hochevar’s 5+ ERA in the rotation is an enormous relief, but there’s no real evidence that he will pitch better in the bullpen, or at least better than Donnie Joseph or JC Gutierrez or Louis Coleman or whoever else would take that spot. Even when you apply the natural bump that pitchers get when they move to the bullpen, Hochevar’s looking at an ERA in the mid-4s. That probably deserves to be in a major league bullpen somewhere, just not for the money they’re paying him.

So yeah, you could argue that the best move for the Royals would be to just release him outright. And I’m not 100% convinced that they won’t. While the initial deadline to release a player and pay him just one-sixth his salary has passed, the final deadline is still two weeks away. If the Royals cut Hochevar by March 27th, they’ll owe him just under a quarter of his salary, about $1.1 million. By moving him to the bullpen now, they have two weeks to evaluate what they see. While I’m sure they’re not intending to cut him, if he handles the transition poorly, they have that option in their back pocket.

The other option is that they could trade him. I don’t think he has any trade value at his full salary, but I do think that if the Royals pick up a significant amount of his contract, he could be moved. Since they owe him $1.1 million anyway, let’s say they’re willing to pick up $2 million of his contract in a trade. Now another team might look at Hochevar and see a pitcher who, if nothing else, has made over 30 starts each of the last two years, a pitcher who is just 29 years old, who has the stuff and peripheral numbers of a #3 starter. The opportunity to acquire that pitcher for one year and $2.5 million dollars – along with the option to bring him back for one more year if he figures things out – might appeal to some teams.

No, not every team. Not most teams, honestly. But, say, the Colorado Rockies? Just maybe.

The Rockies have already been linked to Luke Hochevar this winter, although the reported rumor is that the Royals called them, not the other way around. But right now, the Rockies’ projected rotation is Jorge de la Rosa, Jhoulys Chacin, Drew Pomeranz, Juan Nicasio, and Jeff Francis. There aren’t a lot of rotations that Hochevar might improve, but that’s one of them. Then factor in that the Rockies…how do I put this nicely…don’t seem to know what they’re doing right now. Their front office is in disarray; I’m not even entirely sure who’s in charge. The Royals have already taken advantage of the Rockies’ poor decision making by acquiring Felipe Paulino for nothing and Jeremy Guthrie for less-than-nothing.

To you and me, it looks like no team could possibly have interest in Hochevar. But Hochevar’s trade value looks like Clayton Kershaw compared to where Jonathan Sanchez’s stock was last July, and the Royals were able to convince the Rockies to take a flyer on him.

There’s an added bonus to sending Hochevar to Colorado if you’re the Royals: it seems to me (and a lot of people) that the Royals don’t want to give up on him because they’re deathly afraid that they’ll let him go and he’ll figure it out somewhere else, and not only will they miss out, but they’ll like idiots for not fixing him themselves. Not to be cruel, but if you wanted to put a pitcher in a position where he was least likely to succeed and make you look foolish, um, wouldn’t you pick Colorado? Between the ballpark and the organization, Hochevar could have the best year of his career and still have a 5 ERA.

And if they’re able to convince the Rockies to take Hochevar and half his contract, and maybe even surrender a modest prospect in return, their decision to tender him that contract may yet be redeemed. After all, for all the inexplicable decisions the Royals have made over the last 20 years, few seemed as self-defeating as the decision to keep sending Sanchez out there last year to walk the ballpark and get pulled in the third inning every five days. I was adamant that he was never going to turn it around, and I was right. But the Royals found a way to be right as well, by finding a team even more oblivious to his suckitude than they were. If they can do it again with Hochevar, their decision to tender him will be explicable after all.

Even if they don’t, and they keep him around to pitch low-leverage innings, the worst he can do is turn a 6-3 game into a 10-3 laugher. Sure, I don’t want the Royals to throw away money. But I’d much rather that than to see them throw away games.

Five For Friday: 03/01/13.

Ca$h-Money. Maddog (@MadDogKiller): How bad of a spring does Hochevar have to have to get cut?

A really bad, no-good, awful, terrible spring. Mind you, it could happen. The Royals really don’t have a significant financial commitment with Hochevar – his salary isn’t guaranteed, and if he’s released before March 15th, he’s owed just one-sixth of his salary, less than $800,000. If he’s released after March 15th but before Opening Day, he’s owed a quarter of his salary, less than $1.2 million.

But the psychological commitment…that’s different. Contrary to how it seems sometimes, the Royals are quite aware of what people think about Hochevar. They are also aware that almost everyone thinks they’ve made a big mistake by retaining him at such a high salary – and by “everyone”, I don’t just mean fans, I mean most front offices. They know they’re bucking conventional wisdom here.

And if they cut bait with him now, they’d be admitting they made a mistake without even giving him the chance to prove it. The embarrassment that would cause makes it highly unlikely that they would do such a thing. The only scenario I could see that would earn him his release is if Hochevar’s stuff is qualitatively down this year – his velocity is gone, or he can’t throw strikes, something like that. Basically, the Royals would need an excuse – an excuse above and beyond the fact that he’s been a lousy pitcher for five years.

Once the season starts, things change. A bad first six weeks in the rotation might be enough to move him to the bullpen, if not off the team. The problem, of course, is that by that point his entire salary is guaranteed.

Sparksjay (@sparksjay): Anything about the Royals’ Spring Training start that has you adjusting the 86+/72- hopes for the season?

Is anyone seriously hurt? No? Then we’re still on course.

Seriously, there is very little that can happen in spring training that should adjust your expectations for an entire team, and most of what can happen is bad. Last year the Royals lost Joakim Soria for the entire season, and Salvador Perez for half the season, so we’re already ahead of the game there.

Every now and then a young player will show up to camp and impress the living daylights out of everyone. The problem is that for every Albert Pujols, there are ten Gary Scotts. Last year Danny Duffy showed some of the best stuff of any left-hander in baseball in March – and got me unduly excited – but that didn’t prevent him from blowing out his arm in May. (Although I still think it bodes well for him upon his return.)

So far, the only blip on this year’s radar screen is left-handed reliever Donnie Joseph, who has faced six batters and struck them all out. He has a chance to be an impact guy in the pen, but probably not until mid-season, and anyway you’re not going to change your projection for the team based on a middle reliever.

And as for the Royals’ 6-0-1 start…two years ago the Royals led all of baseball with a 20-11 record in spring training. They lost 91 games. In 1999 they led all of baseball with a 22-9 record in March. They lost 97 games.

Michael Buchanan (@ExtremeSquirrel): Does Adalberto Mondesi have the potential to become a top 10 MLB prospect?

Man, I could answer Adalberto Mondesi questions all day.

The short answer is: yes. Baseball Prospectus’ Jason Parks, who is admittedly Mondesi’s biggest fan among the prospect guru ranks, already has Mondesi ranked #58 overall. Remember: Mondesi 1) has played in 50 professional games and 2) is 17 years old. (He was the youngest player on BP’s Top 100 list.)

You might recall that when I wrote about Mondesi, I compared him to where Jurickson Profar was two years ago…and then had J.J. Picollo basically do the same thing. Well, on Twitter recently, Parks was asked what minor league player had the best chance of being the next Profar, and his answer was – Mondesi. So by those standards, Mondesi doesn’t have Top 10 potential – he has Top 1 potential.

He probably won’t get there, but he’s still a magnificent prospect, really unlike any prospect I’ve ever seen in the Royals’ system. He will probably open this season in Lexington, which would make him (to the best of my knowledge) the youngest Royal ever to play in a full-season league. If he makes it to Wilmington before the season ends, he will be the youngest Royal ever to reach that level. If he gets to Double-A before July of 2014, he would be the first 18-year-old Royal ever to reach that level. And so on.

Of course, he might struggle this year and get sent back down to short-season ball. He might have to repeat low-A ball next year, and not reach Wilmington until 2015.

In which case, he’ll still be 19 years old. Holy crap.

Nate Freiberg (@NateFreiberg): With the Royals thin at the corners, any chance Nady makes the team with that in mind? And does Endy have any shot over Dyson for 4th OF?

Barring injury, I would be shocked if either player makes the Opening Day roster. Nady is probably finished as a hitter, and Chavez is basically Jarrod Dyson in seven years. But I imagine that the Royals are hoping both players (and Willy Taveras, probably) are willing to accept a minor-league assignment when the season starts. Because as I mentioned in my last column, if any of the Royals’ corner players get hurt, they’re really down to Elliot Johnson as a replacement. If Nady goes to Omaha and rakes, he would actually be a viable call-up option if, say, Billy Butler goes on the DL and the Royals are desperate for DH at-bats.

This should terrify you, by the way.

David Hovey (@davidmhovey): I am a big Will Smith fan. Based on your past age discussions, would the Royals be wise to give him the #5 spot based on potential for improvement?

No. There is a very important distinction to be made here, which is that while age is an extremely important variable to consider for hitters, it is much less important for pitchers. A 20-year-old position player who is capable of being a league-average player in the major leagues is almost certain to improve significantly over time, and will probably become a star. For pitchers, that’s not the case. Just look at Rick Porcello.

Porcello is actually a good example of what is the most important variable for a pitcher’s longevity, which is his strikeout rate. As a rookie, Porcello had a very solid 3.96 ERA. But he struck out just 89 batters in 171 innings (or, if you prefer, a 12.4% strikeout rate), which is terrible. His strikeout rate has veeeerrrry slowly crept up – it was all the way to 13.7% last year – and he has yet to have a season as good as his first one.

Bill James put it this way many years ago (I’m paraphrasing): if you have to choose between a 37-year-old pitcher striking out 10 batters per nine innings, or a 27-year-old pitcher striking out 7 batters per nine innings, the 37-year-old will probably still be pitching in the majors when the 27-year-old has been forced into retirement. (The 37-year-old he was referring to was Nolan Ryan, so James was right.)

Compare Porcello to Ruben Tejada, who came up the year after and was mostly overmatched as a hitter – Tejada hit .213/.305/.282 as a 20-year-old middle infielder. Tejada wasn’t a dominant hitter in the minor leagues, mostly because he was so young for his level, and never made Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect List (Porcello was #21 twice, the first time before he ever threw a professional pitch). Few people thought Tejada was going to amount to much (my Stratomatic opponents will vouch for the fact that I was one of the few). But as a 21-year-old sophomore, Tejada hit .284/.360/.335; last year he took over for Jose Reyes and hit .289/.333/.351 as the Mets’ starting shortstop. If he doesn’t improve any further, he’s a league-average shortstop, and at 23 he’s probably going to improve further.

All of this is my typically long-winded way of saying: no, Will Smith’s age doesn’t make me think that he’s going to improve significantly. If he starts striking out a batter an inning in Omaha this year, then we’ll talk.

Brent Saindon (@basaindon): Just curious: any plans to resume “The Baseball Show”?

I included this bonus question just because it’s an easy way for me to announce: The Baseball Show With Rany & Joe should make its triumphant return next week. With the unfortunate demise of Up And In: The Baseball Prospectus Podcast with Kevin Goldstein and Jason Parks, and ESPN’s Baseball Today with Eric Karabell, Keith Law, David Schoenfield, et al, we know many hard-core baseball fans are looking for their fix of sophisticated baseball discussion. So if you haven’t listened to what Will Leitch calls “my personal favorite baseball podcast”, I hope you give us a try next week.

2013 Opening Day Preview, Part 2.

Continuing our breakdown of the Opening Day roster…

#20: Elliot Johnson

I already broke down Johnson’s game here, so I won’t rehash it. While I don’t think Johnson’s performance is going to make or break the season, I think it’s fair to say that how much playing time he gets will be a pretty good gauge of how successful the Royals are this year. I imagine that the plan is that he’ll start once a week at various positions, maybe twice a week on occasion. That’s 30-40 starts, maybe 150 plate appearances. Maybe he gets 20-30 plate appearances as a pinch-hitter, or as a late-inning replacement, but really, he should max out at around 180 plate appearances. (With the Rays in 2011, he got 181.)

If Johnson gets more than that, most likely one of three things happened:

1) Alcides Escobar gets hurt, and the Royals elect not to bring up Christian Colon to fill in;

2) Another starter gets hurt, and the Royals have so little depth to fill in anywhere that Johnson is forced into duty;

3) The winner of the second base job tanked, the loser doesn’t impress anyone in Omaha, and they turn to Johnson out of desperation.

None of these scenarios are appealing. (2) is the most likely by far; if any Gordon or Francoeur or Moustakas or Hosmer or Butler get hurt, Johnson is going to see a lot of at-bats.

Now, that won’t necessarily happen. All five players are in their 20s, they all have a history of durability, and none of them went on the DL last year. But – and this is no knock against Johnson – if you told me right now that he winds up with less than 200 plate appearances this season, I’d feel a lot better about the possibility that the offense takes a big step forward.

Unless, you know, Johnson himself gets hurt, and we’re treated to a heaping dose of Miguel Tejada instead.

#19: Kelvin Herrera

As you know, I am overly fond of comps for young players, and many of these comps make no sense whatsoever in retrospect. But all last winter I said Kelvin Herrera was the new Rafael Betancourt, and – with one important caveat – you could drop Herrera’s rookie stat line into Betancourt’s career and no one could pick it out.

While their end results are the same, they get there in different ways. Both pitchers rely heavily on a fastball that they throw with pinpoint command, which is why they issue very few walks. (They both give out a fair number of intentional walks, but strip those aside, and Herrera walked 15 in 84 innings – 1.60 per nine – and Betancourt has walked 107 in 618 career innings – 1.56 per nine.) They both combine their control with strikeout stuff – Betancourt’s career rate is slightly higher than Herrera’s.

Both also have fairly large platoon splits; for his career, Betancourt has a .205/.230/.336 line against RHP, but .260/.323/.410 line against LHP. As a rookie, Herrera was .235/.268/.311 against RHP, and .275/.351/.392 against LHP. In Betancourt’s case, his susceptibility to left-handers kept him in a set-up role for most of his career, although he finally earned the closer’s role with the Rockies last year, at age 37, and did just fine.

While the results look the same, their repertoires are different. Betancourt’s main secondary pitch is a slider, and he tosses the occasional changeup. Herrera’s main off-speed pitch is his changeup, and he throws the occasional curveball. This is important because slider-centric pitchers tend to have big platoon splits; changeup- and curveball-centric pitchers tend to have small splits, if any split at all. One season is not nearly enough of a sample size to judge Herrera, so despite his relative struggles last year, there’s good reason to think that he will be able to get left-handers out going forward. Particularly since his changeup is nasty.

The one important caveat, and the reason why Herrera has potential above and beyond what Betancourt has accomplished, is that his fastball is qualitatively better than Betancourt’s. It’s much faster, for one; while Betancourt’s heater has registered in the 91-93 range throughout his career, Herrera averaged 97.4 mph on his fastball according to Pitch f/x, higher than any pitcher in baseball other than Aroldis Chapman last year.

And the other difference is that Herrera’s fastball sinks as much as Betancourt’s rises. Betancourt’s groundball percentage for his career is 30%, and was as low as 23% in 2006; both numbers are insanely low. Herrera, by contrast, was at 55.5% last year, which is Trevor Cahill/Tim Hudson sinker territory, only with a pitch coming in at 97 mph.

For his career, Betancourt has surrendered 65 homers in 618 innings; that’s not a bad ratio per se, but it’s the biggest weakness in his game. Herrera, by contrast, gave up only four home runs in 84 innings last year, and that’s not really a fluke. More impressively, he gave up all four home runs by April 21st. In his first 10.1 career innings, Herrera gave up five homers. Since then, he’s working on a streak of 76 innings without allowing one.

Despite his flyball tendencies, Betancourt’s command has made him a consistently effective, if not dominant reliever. He had one transcendent season, in which he was arguably the best reliever in baseball, in 2007 (79 innings, 51 hits, 6 UIBB, 1.47 ERA). He followed that with his only bad season in 2008 (5.07 ERA, thanks to 11 HR in 71 innings). Every other season of his career has been almost indistinguishable.

I think that bodes well for the consistency of Herrera’s skill set, only at a potentially higher level than Betancourt. The only real concern with Herrera is simply health; he missed almost all of 2009 and 2010 before the Royals made him a reliever, and making 76 appearances last season approached, if not crossed, the line of danger last season.

But if he’s healthy, he’s almost certain to be effective. Given the variability inherent to the role, that’s a rare trait for a reliever.

#18: Aaron Crow

Well, I guess Crow is a reliever for good now. If the Royals had known they were using the #12 pick in the draft – and giving a major-league contract to – a reliever, I wonder if they would have still taken him. (In fairness, I wanted Grant Green, who’s turned into the A’s version of Christian Colon, a perfectly useful bench guy who’s going to be stretched as an everyday player. Point, Dayton Moore.)

At least Crow’s a good reliever; he’s basically a slightly worse version of Herrera. Herrera averages 97.4 on the gun; Crow averages 94.7. Herrera’s groundball rate is 55.5%; Crow’s career rate is 52.5%. Herrera has substantially better command, possibly because Crow tries to get hitters to chase his slider, which does lead to more strikeouts.

That slider is the difference between the two. He threw it 39% of the time last year, which is an astonishing number for a breaking ball. As he’s gotten settled in the relief role, he’s become exclusively a two-pitch pitcher – he threw curveballs about 5% of the time, and exactly two changeups all of last year. Unlike Herrera, he’s earned his platoon split honestly – for his career, Crow’s line against RHP is .218/.298/.287, while against LHP it’s .257/.333/.424.

Having two right-handed set-up men with varying repertoires is an asset if Ned Yost knows how to use them. Despite last year’s splits, Crow is the guy to use when predominantly right-handed hitters are due up, while Herrera’s the guy to turn to when it’s mostly left-handers or switch-hitters coming.

If this is Crow’s permanent role now, it would be nice if the Royals take the bubble wrap off of him a bit. He threw just 62 innings as a rookie – he was battling a sore shoulder late in the year – and last year, despite pitching in 73 games, threw just 65 innings. Crow is five inches taller than Herrera, he’s three years older, and he’s trained as a starter – he should be the guy throwing 80-90 innings a season. Particularly with the improvements the Royals made to their rotation, increasing Crow’s workload would help insure that their big four relievers are the only ones who ever need to pitch in meaningful late inning situations.

#17: Luis Mendoza

If he was projected to pitch in any kind of meaningful role, Mendoza would rank a lot higher than this, because let’s be honest: we still don’t know what he is. Is he the journeyman AAAA pitcher who, through 2010, had pitched 84 innings in the majors and allowed 92 runs? Is he the pitcher who, in his last 17 starts of last season, averaged over 6 innings a start and had a 3.82 ERA with a pretty K/BB ratio of 74 to 28? And where does the 2011 Mendoza, who led the PCL in ERA but struck out just 81 batters in 144 innings, fit in the equation?

I don’t know. I do know that Mendoza’s impressive second-half performance coincided with learning a new cutter from Dave Eiland in late June, adding credence to the theory that his improvement was not simply random variation.

(Advanced data doesn’t really help here. Pitch f/x doesn’t even recognize his new pitch as a cutter – it lists it as a two-seam fastball. Mendoza threw his four-seam fastball over 70% of the time every year of his career until last season – last year, he threw it just 28% of the time, his “two-seamer” 40% of the time, and his slider, which he threw less than 10% of the time previously, was thrown 22% of the time. My guess is that his cutter is confusing their algorithms, and is getting classified as a two-seamer sometimes and as a slider other times.)

I also know that Mendoza is still only 29 – he’s six weeks younger than Luke Hochevar – and that he’s not even arbitration-eligible yet, and won’t be a free agent for four years. So I know that the Royals should have a lot of motivation to find out who he is.

But as it stands, right now he’s the team’s seventh starter, and is more than likely to spend the year in long relief. A year ago that made sense, because his OPS rose dramatically after his first time through the lineup – but his difficulty the second and third times through the lineup disappeared around the time he learned the cutter.

If it were me, Mendoza would start the year in the rotation, and get a month or two to prove whether he really can be a cheap league-average innings eater. If he lost the job to Bruce Chen, I’d argue that’s a defensible decision, and I’d credit the Royals for having enough depth that they didn’t need Mendoza in their rotation.

Instead, he’s going to lose his job to Hochevar. If the Royals are right, more power to them. If they’re wrong, they can’t claim that they didn’t have any better options.

#16: Greg Holland

I really don’t think enough has been made about how unlikely Greg Holland’s emergence as a dominant reliever was. Two years ago, he was a short right-hander with okay stuff and command issues, a former 10th-round pick who in five minor-league stops never had an ERA under five. I don’t have my 2011 copy of the Baseball America Prospect Handbook on me, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t even rank among the Royals’ top 30 prospects. He started 2011 in Omaha and didn’t get called up until mid-May.

He then pitched 60 innings, allowed 37 hits, walked 16 batters and struck out 74. He became the second Royal ever – after Robinson Tejada in 2009 – to have twice as many strikeouts as hits allowed.

It was one of the best middle-relief seasons in franchise history, but given his history we wanted to see him do it again. And when he got cuffed around in April, losing two games and allowing 13 hits and 8 runs in 6.1 innings, it looked like 2011 might have just been a wonderful outlier. But it turned out he was pitching through a strained ribcage muscle; he missed three weeks to let it heal, and when he came back was almost the same guy he was the year before.

2011, all season: 60 IP, 37 H, 16 UIBB, 74 K, 3 HR, 1.80 ERA

2012, May 12th-: 61 IP, 45 H, 26 UIBB, 81 K, 2 HR, 2.08 ERA

His command was not quite as sharp, but he still missed tons of bats. (While Holland’s K/9 ratio was a full point higher in 2012 than 2011, he actually struck out a slightly lower percentage of batters overall – 31.5% instead of 31.8%. But because he faced more batters per inning, he had more opportunities for strikeouts. This is one example of why I’m trying to switch over to strikeout percentage instead of strikeouts per inning.)

I didn’t see Holland pitch in the minor leagues, so I don’t know if he’s a fundamentally different pitcher now than then. He threw hard in the minors, but I wasn’t expecting an average fastball of 95.6 mph, which he’s maintained throughout his career. He has used a nasty splitter as an out pitch, although that can’t alone explain his success, as he throws it only about 5% of the time. (I’m approximating – Pitch f/x doesn’t recognize his splitter at all. I’m thinking the Pitch f/x people still need to tighten up their algorithms a little.)

It’s tough to reconcile the pitcher we’ve seen the last two years with the pitcher we were told about in the minor leagues. But the Greg Holland we’ve seen has legitimate closer stuff, and he’s done it two years in a row now, and at this point we can stop worrying about whether it was a fluke. Like Joakim Soria, Holland was an unexpected gift for the Royals’ bullpen.

The difference is that Soria was unexpected because no one had seen him pitch in so long, and it is to the Royals’ credit that they scouted him and thought he could jump straight from A-ball and the Mexican League to the majors. But in Holland’s case, everyone had seen him pitch, and no one was particularly impressed.

But this is where relievers come from. They come from humble beginnings, they come from the Northern League (Jeff Zimmerman) and from underneath (Dan Quisenberry) and they master a new pitch (Bruce Sutter) and they’re 28th-round picks who learn the perfect slider (Sergio Romo). Greg Holland’s transformation is small potatoes compared to, say, Jonny Venters. Relievers are comets that arrive unexpectedly, and disappear just as fast. Which is why, when you’ve got a superfluous one, you need to trade him right away.

The Royals never traded Soria because they never understood that when you’re losing 95 games a year, a great reliever is superfluous even when you don’t have a replacement. And they don’t seem at all eager to turn trade from their current depth of relievers. But they really should. A team that likely can’t find room for Donnie Joseph or Louis Coleman is a team that can afford to trade relievers for help elsewhere.

Five For Friday: 2/22/13.

So after years of avoiding the temptation of easy content – the regular mailbag – I have finally surrendered to temptation. Let’s face it: I need content of any kind, easy or not. So here’s the plan – every Wednesday, I will send out a call on Twitter for questions about the Royals. You will respond with questions. I will select my five favorite questions and answer them on Friday. I will call it “Five For Friday”. I will not pay royalties to Sam Mellinger or Bob Dutton, even though they may deserve it.

I can’t guarantee this will play every week, but I’ll do my best. Here’s the first installment. Questions may have been slightly altered for grammar or to escape Twitter’s oppressive 140-character limits:

CWDIG (@ChrisDiggins): What kind of season would Wade Davis have to have to get moved back to the pen?

A pretty bad one, I think, not simply because the Royals have a lot invested in him as a starter, but because they really don’t have a need for another reliever at this point. I’ll have more to say about this when I get to Aaron Crow, but as much as I would like to see Crow get a chance to start, keeping him in the bullpen means the Royals have four relievers – Holland, Herrera, Crow, and Collins – who have the ability to serve as closers in their career. (Collins might not get the opportunity, simply because left-handers rarely get moved to the 9th inning, but he has the ability). This thankfully limits the temptation to limit yet another pitcher’s upside by shuttling him to the bullpen, whether that pitcher is an established major-leaguer like Wade Davis or a prospect like Yordano Ventura.

We saw what Davis could do as a reliever last year, and it was pretty spectacular – he was Aaron Crow with more swing-and-miss stuff. And if Davis is struggling to get his ERA under 5 in June and one of those four guys gets hurt, I could see a move being made. But even as a #4 starter, he has more value than as a middle reliever.

Also keep in mind – if he moves to the pen, then the Royals are probably going to decline his option after 2014, because they’re in no position to spend $7 million on a middle reliever. (Which is why they didn’t pick up Joakim Soria’s option this winter.) That would leave the Royals with nothing to show from their big trade after just two seasons. So I think they’ll give Davis every opportunity to establish himself as a mid-rotation starter, making his three club options very appealing.

Tom Lee (@tompl81): Who is your most unlikely candidate in the minors to see time with the big club this year?

The only likely candidates in the minors to get a big-league callup would be the Big Three starters (Kyle Zimmer, Yordano Ventura, and John Lamb), along with Donnie Joseph if there’s an opening in the bullpen, Christian Colon if there’s an opening in the middle infield, and David Lough if someone goes down in the outfield.

If you’re looking for a darkhorse…I guess I would go with Orlando Calixte. He hit well (.281/.326/.426) in Wilmington last year, and people still underrate just how tough it is to hit in that ballpark, particularly for right-handed hitters. I could see him going off in Double-A, in which case an injury on the left side of the infield could get him a shot, or – if the second base situation remains unsettled into August and the Royals are in contention – he might be asked to stop the leaking there.

The other darkhorse would be Chris Dwyer, who has been all but written off by most people, but if gets moved to the bullpen – where he really belongs at this point – he could come on quick and give the relief corps a second-half jolt.

Bart Parry (@Bart41CPA): If Vegas’s over/under of 78.5 wins is close, that’s the end of the Ned/DM era, right? We’re rooting for either under 78 or over 86 wins, right?

I’m glad you brought up the Vegas line, not because I partake – I have religious objections against gambling – but because for all the grief I’ve gotten from Royals fans for crapping all over the Shields trade, it’s important for people to realize that I’m actually considerably more optimistic about the Royals than most observers. I’ve been predicting 86 wins for 2013, which would put the Royals on the fringes of the wild-card race at least. But most people don’t see it that way.

Dayton Moore is already declaring Mission Accomplished and patting himself on the back for only taking seven years to build a competitive team. (Royals Review has a good takedown of his comments here. Frankly, I think they went too easy on him.) Of all the criticisms I have about what Moore said, the biggest one is this: you haven’t won anything yet. Not to go all Winston Wolf here, but maybe you should at least wait until you have a winning season before getting too pleased with yourself. According to the industry consensus, that won’t happen in 2013.

In Moore’s defense, 78.5 wins seems curiously low. The Royals won 72 games last year, with a Pythagorean record of 74-88. They had the youngest offense in baseball, and young offenses usually – but not always, as we saw from 2011 to 2012 – improve. They added a lot of starting pitching, not all of it great, but all of it better than the back of their rotation last year. They have a number of hitters who could be significantly better and almost can’t be worse. They don’t have a lot of candidates for regression.

Then again, Baseball Prospectus projects them to win 76 games. If that happens – particularly if the Royals play poorly in the first half of the season, as opposed to collapsing in September – then I think Yost is gone. Moore’s fate may be decided by the details of the Shields trade. If Shields and Davis are pitching well and Myers isn’t running away with Rookie of the Year honors, he’ll probably hold his job. But if the Royals are under .500 and the trade goes sour, the entire front office might get fumigated.

As for your second question – yes, that’s pretty much what I’m rooting for. 86+ wins, and Moore can take a bow, and I’ll happily eat my crow while watching a pennant race. 76 or fewer wins, and maybe the next Royals’ GM will be able to build on the foundation that Moore has created. But 82-80 does nothing for us, in the short or long term.

StillLovesZack (@ZackCanDeal): Are we selling Moose short? Am I wrong in remembering that at ST two years ago, Moose was considered a better prospect than Hos?

We might be. The dramatic improvement in Moustakas’ defense last season raises his ultimate ceiling, and his offense, while slightly disappointing, didn’t lower his ceiling much if at all. A .242/.296/.412 line doesn’t look that great, but he was just 23 years old. Compare that to Dean Palmer at 23 (.229/.311/.420) or Gary Gaetti at 23 (.230/.280/.443) or Matt Williams at 23 (.202/.242/.455), and you realize that Moustakas probably has a long and occasionally illustrious career ahead of him.

Palmer had only 10.5 career bWAR, while Gaetti had 38.0 and Williams 43.5, which you can mostly attribute to the fact that Palmer was a butcher in the field and the other two were Gold Glovers. By flipping his defense from a negative into a positive, Moustakas is likely to wind up somewhere in the range of the latter two – not a Hall of Famer, but a damn fine ballplayer.

Two years ago, Hosmer ranked #8 on Baseball America’s Top 100 list, Moustakas #9, and Wil Myers #10. You could make a case then for any of the three, and you can make a case today for any of the three.

Shawn Walker (@shawnywalk): Will Salvy’s large frame cause him to have more knee problems than the average catcher?

That’s the 6’5” elephant in the room. Perez is listed at 6’3”, but I’m 6’3”, and I’ve been close enough to him in the clubhouse to say that he’s at least 6’4” and might be 6’5”. And he’s listed at 245 pounds.

Bill James speculated a quarter-century ago that the constant squatting and unsquatting required of catchers put much more stress on the knees of the really tall ones, which is why many great and durable catchers in history (most famously 5’7” Yogi Berra and 5’9” Ivan Rodriguez) were short. Shortly thereafter, Sandy Alomar came along, who is probably the player Perez has been comped to the most, and is listed at 6’5” and 205 pounds. Alomar’s career was ravaged by knee problems. Joe Mauer, the only other 6’5” catcher who has caught 1000 games, has also had extensive knee problems which have forced the Twins to play him at first base and DH a lot.

In the live-ball era, they are the only two catchers 6’5” or taller with more than 512 games. So we don’t really have a huge data set to compare Perez to. Matt Wieters, listed at 6’5” and 240 pounds, is at 509 games already, and has been very durable. Players are simply bigger than they used to be, and it’s possible their bodies can take the pounding better than players in the past, who were just as tall but perhaps more spindly.

On the other hand, Perez already missed half a season with a knee injury, and it wasn’t even traumatic – he simply lunged for a pitch wrong. As much as the Royals acknowledge how vital Perez is to the entire organization for the rest of the decade, you have to hope that they take an active – and proactive – approach to keeping his knees healthy. 

2013 Opening Day Preview, Part 1.

I was unfortunately unable to find the time to do a postseason review of every player this winter, so instead I’m going to preview the projected 25-man Opening Day roster. (Obviously, the Royals will use more than 25 players this year, but work with me here.) I’m ranking the players from #25 to #1, not based on projected value but based on how important it is to the franchise that the player plays to his potential in 2013.

Put it this way: if you could pick any Royal to have a season at the top end of his range – his 90th percentile projection, in a sense – who would that be? Billy Butler is one of the Royals’ best players, but he wouldn’t rank near the top of this list, precisely because he’s such a known quantity. You’d certainly be thrilled if he played at the top of his range, but you’d be happier taking his typical season and giving the Get Out Of Jail Free card to someone else.

Another way to look at this is this: the higher a player ranks on this list, the more likely it is that a breakout season from him will coincide with a playoff berth for the Royals in 2013.

Working from the bottom up:

#25: Seventh Reliever

Six of the bullpen spots appear locked up: the two losers for the fifth starter’s job, and the four guys who made 60 relief appearances for the Royals last year (Greg Holland, Kelvin Herrera, Aaron Crow, and Tim Collins.) That leaves one spot up for grabs barring an injury, and maybe a dozen guys who have at least a puncher’s chance at winning it.

Louis Coleman is the most obvious candidate; for all the homers he gives up, he has a 3.25 ERA the last two years, and 129 Ks in 111 innings. But the Royals could go in many directions. If they want another lefty – neither Collins nor Chen are good fits for the role of lefty specialist – then maybe they go to Francisley Bueno. Or maybe Donnie Joseph, if the main piece in the Jonathan Broxton trade is lights out this spring. Everett Teaford has experience as a swing man. And that’s just the lefties; they could also consider Nate Adcock, and they added J.C. Gutierrez to the 40-man roster this winter, and don’t sleep on Guillermo Moscoso, who they claimed on waivers from the Rockies, and who pitched very well for Oakland in 2011.

With so many options for the 7th bullpen spot, the Royals effectively could run an 8 or 9 man bullpen by simply shuttling guys back and forth from Omaha – ride a reliever hard for five days, then send him back to Triple-A to rest his arm and bring another guy up in his place. That’s what the Royals did last year. The difference is that the Royals needed 8 or 9 relievers last year; the rotation averaged less than 5.5 innings per start, which forced the bullpen to throw 561 innings. You figure the average full-season reliever throws about 70 innings a season, so 561/70 works out to exactly eight relievers.

This year, the Royals might actually be able to reach Dayton Moore’s goal of 1000 innings from their rotation, which would leave only about 450 innings to the bullpen. You can get those innings from just six relief spots, particularly if you use that sixth spot as a revolving door from Triple-A. By carrying just 11 pitchers, that would open up another spot on the bench for a pinch-hitter, or a defensive specialist. Maybe David Lough gets the spot and allows the Royals to hide Jeff Francoeur’s flaws by sitting him against hard right-handers (by “hard”, I mean “big platoon split”, not “difficult”). Or they can carry three catchers, which would free them to use George Kottaras’ bat without worrying that they’ll be left without an emergency catcher.

It’s not going to happen; the 12-man pitching staff has become de rigueur in recent years, and anyway, Ned Yost isn’t the kind of manager who would make much use of an extra bench player. But the Royals really don’t need two long relievers this year; if they do, they’re cooked anyway. Trading away one of them and using that spot for a hitter makes tactical sense.

As it is, even with seven relievers, the Royals may not have room for Louis Coleman. That’s a deep bullpen. And aside from Chen, none of them are even arbitration-eligible yet (although Aaron Crow is still making seven figures thanks to the major-league contract he signed out of the draft). Building an elite bullpen, cheaply and almost entirely internally, is undeniably one of Dayton Moore’s biggest imprints on the 2013 Royals.

#24: Miguel Tejada

I kind of already covered this one. I’m skeptical that Tejada has anything left, and think that Irving Falu is a better fit for the job. But if the Royals recognize that the primary job of the second utility infielder is to wave pretty for the cameras, it really doesn’t matter. Barring injury, there’s no reason why this role should garner more than 100 plate appearances all season. If that’s all it entails, then Tejada’s clubhouse influence might be worth putting up with his diminished skill set.

But it’s the Royals, the team that signed Yuniesky Betancourt to be their utility guy last year, and wound up giving him more innings at second base than Johnny Giavotella. The issue isn’t whether Tejada or Falu wins this job. The issue is whether whoever wins this job will get playing time way out of proportion to his talent.

#23: Backup Catcher

Well, we’re all hoping that this job won’t rank any higher than this. I hope Ned Yost is exaggerating when he talks about starting Salvador Perez eight days a week – but remember, this is the same manager who started Jason Kendall behind the plate 149 times in 2008, the most starts by a catcher in the last 30 years. Kendall was on pace for an even heavier workload under Yost in 2010, before his shoulder broke down and ended his career, an event that I hope weighs on the mind of the front office when determing Perez’s workload this season.

Maybe Perez is the second coming of Johnny Bench, but if he is, it’s worth mentioning that Bench – who caught in 154 games when he was 20 years old – was done as an everyday catcher at age 32, and retired at age 35. Maybe we shouldn’t care what happens to Perez in his 30s, but given that 1) he’s under club control for seven more years and 2) he’s already had a knee injury, I’m going to say that discretion is warranted. And while Bench caught in 154 games when he was 20, some of those were late-inning appearances only – he started “just” 139 games behind the plate, and that was a career high.

(Quick aside – I think it’s forgotten what a ridiculous phenom Bench was in his early years. In 1970, when he was 22, Bench won the MVP by hitting .293/.345/.587 with 45 homers and 148 RBIs – as a catcher. Well, mostly as a catcher. The Reds were so intent on keeping him in the lineup that in addition to 130 starts behind the plate, he started five games at first base and seventeen in the outfield – including two games in center field. I’d love to see video of that.)

But again: Johnny Bench, possibly the best catcher of all time and certainly the best young catcher of all time, never started 140 games behind the plate in a season. In fairness, there were a lot of scheduled doubleheaders back in Bench’s day, which forced him to sit some games out. But even in 21st-century baseball, 140 starts for a catcher is extremely unusual. From 2001 to today, only two catchers have made 140 starts in a season: Russell Martin, with 143 in 2007, and Jason Kendall…SIX TIMES (2002 through 2006, and 2008). Kendall's signing was one of Moore's biggest mistakes and I said so at the time - but I'll grant you, he was a warrior out there.

Joe Mauer, who is at least as talented as Perez, has had his career severely impacted by knee problems traced to him squatting behind the plate too much – and Mauer’s career high in starts behind the plate is 135. Weighing all this information, I think it would be crazy to give Perez more than 140 starts this year, and I’d like to limit him to 135. That leaves 22-27 starts for the backup, hopefully Kottaras, who if used as a pinch-hitter occasionally could give the Royals close to 150 plate appearances of league-average offense.

#22: Bruce Chen

I’m ranking Chen here on the assumption that he doesn’t beat Luke Hochevar for the fifth starter’s spot; at this point, I’m operating under the assumption that Clayton Kershaw wouldn’t beat Hochevar out for that spot. As a middle reliever, Chen is certainly qualified, and just as certainly overpaid, but barring a trade that’s what the Royals are stuck with. You can’t even use him as a lefty specialist; for his career he’s been more successful against right-handed hitters (.258/.321/.464) than left-handed hitters (.282/.353/.450).

The shame of it is that, in some ways, last year was the best of Chen’s 14-year career. He set a career high in starts (and tied for the AL lead), and also set a career high in strikeout-to-walk ratio; at 140 Ks to 44 UI walks, he was at better than 3-to-1. Now, some of that improvement can be traced to the game itself – strikeout rates keep going up every year. In the year 2000, the AL's K/UIBB ratio was 1.74. As recently as 2004, Chen’s first year in the AL, the league’s K/UIBB ratio was 2.08. Last year, it was 2.57.

Stop and think about that for a moment. Strikeout-to-walk ratios are one of the most common quick-and-dirty ways to evaluate a pitcher’s stuff, and the scale has been completely thrown off in less than a decade. In Mark Quinn's rookie year, a ratio of 2.5 was exceptional. In Zack Greinke’s rookie year, a ratio of 2.5 was considered excellent. Last season, it was below average. (In the NL, where pitchers can make strikeouts at the plate as well as on the mound, the K/UIBB ratio last year was 2.76.)

But even so, Chen had a ratio better than league average last year, up from not even 2-to-1 the year before. His xFIP (4.62) was his lowest mark since 2005. But after consecutive years with a 4.17 and 3.77 ERA (and, not coincidentally, winning records), Chen’s ERA jumped to 5.07 last season. What happened was simple – his batting average on balls in play, which is usually in the .280 range, jumped to .305. You might say that a career of good fortune finally regressed to the mean, but Chen’s flyball-oriented style of pitching – he has one of the highest flyball ratios in the majors – should lead to slightly lower than average BABIPs. So Chen might well have been unlucky last season, and since (unlike Hochevar) he doesn’t have a history of consistently underperforming, he’s a good candidate to bounce back.

That’s what I’d be telling any potential trade partners, anyway.

#21: Jarrod Dyson

Much like Luis Mendoza, I’ve grown rather fond of Dyson after originally dissing him as not major league-caliber. Dyson isn’t much of a hitter and probably never will be, but the dude can run, and he knows how to apply his speed to useful baseball endeavors. Not only does he have 50 stolen bases in just 146 career games – and just 106 career starts! – but he’s only been caught stealing seven times. (Although he’s also been picked off seven times.)

He’s taken the extra base on hits (first-to-third on a single, first-to-home on a double) 63% of the time, well above the major league average of around 40%. And despite an absolutely horrible defensive start to last season, which colored everyone’s impression of his defense all season long, Baseball Info Solutions once again graded him out as above-average in centerfield. In 104 starts in center field, Dyson grades out as 12 runs above average, which over a full-season is almost Gold Glove worthy. He has a better arm than you’d think as well – he actually ranked second among all AL centerfielders with 8 baserunner kills last season, even though he only started 79 times.

His speed and defensive skills are such that even with his comical lack of power, if he could muster a .350 OBP he would be a legitimate everyday player. He probably can’t, but he does have a .320 career OBP, and Baseball Reference rather shockingly rates him as being worth 2.6 Wins Above Replacement in less than a season’s worth of playing time.

I don’t think he’s that good, but he’s good enough that I won’t lose much sleep when Lorenzo Cain inevitably needs to sit out a few games. And if Jeff Francoeur doesn’t quickly prove that 2012 was a fluke (and 2010, and 2009, and…), then you will see me clamoring for a Gordon-Dyson-Cain outfield. The Cleveland Indians just spent a lot of money so that they can field Michael Brantley, Michael Bourn, and Drew Stubbs, which might be the best defensive outfield in the majors. But that alignment for the Royals would be nearly its equal.

Royals Today: Lineup Preview.

The Royals acquired Elliot Johnson as the player to be named later in the Wil Myers trade, which changes everything.

It doesn’t, but Johnson is a useful pickup, a better acquisition than I was expecting. Of course, I wasn’t expecting much – not when the PTBNL was amended to include the option “or cash”. And let’s be honest – Johnson isn’t much; if he was, the Rays wouldn’t have designated him for assignment before the trade was completed. While Bob Dutton has intimated that the Royals and Rays were already talking about Johnson being the final piece beforehand, I prefer to think that the transaction went down like this:

Friedman: Hello?

Moore: Andrew, it’s Dayton. How are you?

Friedman: Hey, Dayton, how’s my favorite trading partner?

Moore: That’s nice of you, Andrew. I’m sure you say that to every GM.

Friedman: No, Dayton, you really ARE my favorite trading partner…uh…so what can I do for you?

Moore: I noticed you DFA’ed Elliot Johnson.

Friedman: We did.

Moore: And you owe us a player.

Friedman: We do.

Moore: Send Johnson our way and we’ll call it even.

Friedman: Done.

While Johnson wasn’t good enough to stick on the Rays’ 40-man roster, that doesn’t mean he’s without value. He has an interesting backstory, given that he signed with the Rays as an undrafted free agent out of high school back in 2002. I’d say that he’s unique in that regard, except that the Royals already have such a player on their roster in Tim Collins. I’d be surprised if there was another player in the major leagues who fits that description; I’m not aware of one, at least.

Johnson made it to Tampa Bay for a cup of coffee in 2008, but didn’t stick until 2011, when he was 27 years old, and hit just .194/.257/.338. Last season, though, he hit .242/.304/.350, and more importantly played all over the field. He has played every position except pitcher and catcher in his brief major-league career, though about 85% of his innings have come at shortstop. Which is exactly what you want to see in a utility player – the skills to play shortstop, the willingness and adaptability to move anywhere. His offense isn’t a complete cipher, not when you factor in his ballpark. In about a full season’s worth of at-bats, Johnson hit just .196/.258/.269 at Tropicana Field – but .251/.308/.411 on the road. In his last season in the minor leagues, 2010, Johnson was an all-around offensive threat, hitting .319/.375/.475 with 11 home runs and 30 steals.

You know who Johnson is? He’s basically Willie Bloomquist. Bloomquist’s overall numbers are better, but Bloomquist benefited from playing at the tail end of the Juiced Era; by OPS+, they’re very close (78 for Bloomquist, 75 for Johnson). They both can play all over the field. They both can run. Johnson is even more versatile in that he’s a switch-hitter, and he’s hit RHP better than LHP in his career, making him a viable option to give someone like Alcides Escobar a day off when a right-hander with big platoon splits, someone like Justin Masterson, starts for the opposition.

As you recall, I hated the acquisition of Bloomquist four years ago. I don’t hate the pickup of Johnson, for several reasons:

1) Bloomquist was signed to a two-year guaranteed contract. Johnson isn’t guaranteed anything; he could be cut in spring training if he doesn’t impress.

2) Bloomquist was paid $3.1 million over those two years. Johnson isn’t arbitration-eligible for another season, and will make around the major league minimum if he makes the team.

3) Bloomquist was a ridiculous luxury for a team that didn’t look to be in any position to contend in 2009. Johnson is joining a Royals squad that is all-in for 2013, and for whom even small improvements on the margins could be the difference between a playoff berth and another early end to the season. (Though it should be noted that the Royals’ record in 2008 – 75-87 – was better than the Royals’ record last year.)

4) It looked pretty clear at the time that the Royals intended to give Bloomquist a lot of playing time – and that’s exactly what happened, as he had a career-high 468 plate appearances in 2009. Call me naïve, but I don’t get the same vibe here. Johnson is looked at as a super-utility player capable of starting in a pinch everywhere, but isn’t expected to start anywhere.

5) Johnson has more defensive value than Bloomquist. The defensive metrics suggest Johnson is slightly below-average at shortstop and slightly above-average at second base; he hasn’t played the other positions enough to know for sure. Bloomquist didn’t play shortstop nearly as much as Johnson has – a red flag in itself – and has been pretty consistently below-average at every position he plays. (Also, Bloomquist was used considerably more in the outfield than in the infield as a Royal.)

Johnson makes the 2013 Royals a better team. Not much better, mind you, but better.

If Johnson’s arrival cost Miguel Tejada a spot on the roster, that would be even better, but he won’t. The Royals appear to be going with two backup infielders along with Jarrod Dyson and a backup catcher. There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s far better than carrying a 13th pitcher – but that second backup spot on the infield is Tejada’s job to lose and Irving Falu’s job to fight like hell for.

I went off on the Royals on Twitter when they signed Tejada, as it was reported at the time that it was a guaranteed $1.1 million contract with incentives. As it turns out, something was lost in translation – this happens sometimes with Latin American players – because Tejada has not been added to the Royals’ 40-man roster. Nevertheless, the Royals have made it clear that Tejada will have to play his way out of a job.

This is one of those decisions that will likely have little impact on the Royals’ fortunes on the field, but says so much about how the Royals operate. Miguel Tejada did not play in the majors last season. He did not play in the majors not because he was hurt, but because all 30 teams collectively decided that he had nothing left. This was a reasonable decision, given that Tejada was 38 years old, and that he had hit .239/.270/.326 with lousy defense for the Giants in 2011. He signed a minor-league contract with the Orioles, and played 36 games before asking for his release. In those 36 games, he hit .259/.325/.296.

Last year, Miguel Tejada failed to slug .300 in Triple-A. He failed to get called up by a team that might well have set some sort of record for most transactions in a season; the Orioles resurrected people like Lew Ford on their way to the most unlikely playoff berth in recent memory. But now, at age 39, on the basis of his performance in winter ball, the Royals are prepared to ignore a major league track record that says he’s been in a constant state of decline for eight years now. Look at his bWAR ratings going back to 2004, his first year with the Orioles, when he was 30:

7.1, 5.5, 4.2, 2.0, 1.7, 1.6, 0.3, -0.2, DNP

That’s actually kind of eerie. You’d expect sheer random variation to step in at some point, but no, Tejada’s bWAR declined seven years in a row until he was under replacement level, and once he dipped below replacement level, he was out of a job. That line above combines the sabermetric principles of the aging curve and the concept of replacement level into one tidy package.

The Royals stopped reading that sentence at “sabermetric”, so naturally, they think that because Tejada looked better for a few months in his home country against sub-standard competition, he has something left. And they’re prepared to pay him significantly more than minimum wage to do so, even though Irving Falu is cheaper, younger, has hit over .300 each of the last two years in Omaha (and hit .341 in brief playing time for the Royals last season), and after a decade of toiling in the minors, would probably be thrilled to be in the major leagues in any capacity.

On that note, at least, Tejada seems to be an asset. The Royals rave about his influence on the younger Hispanic players, and I won’t deny that a former MVP with 2000 hits and 300 homers will command respect in the clubhouse. If he doesn’t make the team, and the Royals get the benefit of his spring training presence without the financial and on-the-field cost of him during the season, he’ll prove to be an asset. Otherwise, this has the makings of yet another minor but revealing unforced error by the Royals.

Tejada will take the Yuniesky Betancourt Memorial Roster Spot, which is better than giving that spot to Yuniesky Betancourt. Not only did Yuni refuse to accept the fact that he wasn’t an everyday player, the Royals tried their best to assuage his hurt feelings; Yuni started 43 games at second base last year, even though he was released in mid-August. He played more innings at second base than Johnny Giavotella did.

I’m taking the Royals at their word that the job of everyday second baseman is a two-man battle between Giavotella and Getz, and that Johnson’s and Tejada’s playing time there will be sporadic and need-based. You know who I’d like to see win that battle, but it’s not the absolute slam-dunk that it was a year ago. Getz is coming off his best season; he hit .275 last year, and even showed the ability to drive the ball a bit with his new upright stance. I’m not suggesting that he hit a home run – perish the thought! – but he hit enough doubles and triples to slug a respectable .360.

Getz is an average defender, and if the Royals could bank a .275/.312/.360 line with average defense from second base this year, they’d take it and I wouldn’t blame them one bit. But on the other hand, they could have upside. Giavotella has been a remarkably effective – and remarkably consistent – hitter in the high minors for the last three years. From 2010 to 2012, his batting average has ranged from .322 to .338, his OBPs from .390 to .404, and his slugging averages from .460 to .481.

In the major leagues, he has failed two separate opportunities, with the caveat that the Royals didn’t give him consistent playing time last season, leading to a second extended stint in Triple-A. Gio hit .247/.273/.376 in 187 plate appearances in 2011, then .238/.270/.304 in 189 PA last year. Neither line is acceptable, particularly given that his bat needs to carry him. Both his defensive reputation and defensive metrics peg him as a below-average, but playable, second baseman.

Giavotella has 376 plate appearances, which isn’t nearly enough to state definitively that he can’t hit major league pitching, but is enough to create a justified concern on the part of the Royals. This is the shame of not giving him more playing time last season – by not letting him play every day during a season in which you weren’t competing for anything, the Royals face a situation in which they may not have the luxury of developing him as a player because they’re trying to win in the here and now.

I think Giavotella deserves the job; his minor league performances strongly suggest he can be an above-average second baseman offensely, and he did hit .264/.303/.375 in September last season. He’s still just 25 years old, while Getz is 30. But it’s a closer call than it was last year. The shame of it is that, as Joe Sheehan rails about in his most recent Newsletter, the Royals are going to make this decision based on a razor-thin sample size against uneven competition in exhibition games, instead of looking at Giavotella’s and Getz’s body of work over the last several years. Here’s hoping the best man wins, even while acknowledging that it’s not quite as clear as it used to be who the best man is.

The only other roster battle among position players is between Brett Hayes and George Kottaras for the backup catcher’s job. This is a classic glove vs. bat battle, and the Royals almost always go with the glove, but you have to think that the offensive difference between the two is too great to be ignored. Hayes has hit .217/.266/.361 in 357 major league plate appearances, and there’s no evidence in his minor league record that suggests he’s anything better than that. He’s John Buck without the hot streaks, basically.

Kottaras is a career .220 hitter, but in 694 plate appearances – essentially a full season – he has 91 walks, 36 doubles, and 24 home runs, leading to a .320 OBP and a .412 slugging average. He bats left-handed, making him a perfect complement to Salvador Perez. He’s overqualified to be a backup on the Royals, frankly; he’s the kind of catcher who should be starting 60-70 games a year, while barring an injury, whoever backs up Perez is lucky to get 20 starts.

But if the Royals are creative and realize that having Perez behind the plate frees them to use their backup catcher as a pinch-hitter, Kottaras would be an excellent ninth-inning option to pinch-hit for the Royals’ many right-handed bats. I doubt that will happen, but when Bruce Rondon or Chris Perez is on the mound and the tying run is at the plate, I’d rather take my chances that Kottaras can pop one than stick with Escobar or Giavotella or – ahem – Jeff Francoeur.

As stark as the offensive difference is, I can’t just wave away the defensive issues. In 781 innings behind the plate – just over half a season – Hayes has allowed 55 steals while nailing 19 runs, a caught stealing rate of 26%. In 1457 career innings – the equivalent of one full season catching every single game – Kottaras has thrown out 24 runners, but allowed 126 steals. I’m not sure what’s worse – that he’s only thrown out 16% of attempted thieves, or that he’s allowed nearly a stolen base per game.

The defensive difference between Hayes and Kottaras comes out to about 10 runs if they both played a full season. I’d submit that the offensive difference between them is greater than that, and when you throw in the tactical value of Kottaras, the decision should be clear. The Royals kept a bat-first backup catcher in Brayan Pena the last few years, and I’m hoping they make the same decision this time. While Kottaras has a weaker arm than Pena – who was surprisingly good at that aspect of the game – I don’t sense that he has the plate-blocking issues that plagued Pena and drove the Royals justifiably crazy.

The right decision there would leave the Royals with a four-man bench of Kottaras, Johnson, Tejada, and Jarrod Dyson. Even granted that Tejada probably has nothing left, that’s not the worst bench in the world, not in today’s American League. Kottaras can pinch-hit; Dyson can pinch-run; Johnson can do a bit of everything.

And it means the Royals field this lineup:

L LF Gordon

R SS Escobar

L 1B Hosmer

R DH Butler

R C  Perez

L 3B Moustakas

R RF Francoeur

R CF Cain

2B To Be Determined

(Another slight reason to favor Getz – he’d add some left-handed balance to the lineup, which is in danger of being very right-handed. On the other hand, 13 players batted 100 or more times for the NL Central Champion Cincinnati Reds last year, and 11 of them – everyone except Jay Bruce and Joey Votto – batted right-handed. Lineup balance is good; hitters who can hit are better.)

The most important part of that lineup is the top line. Alex Gordon may not fit the Platonic ideal of a leadoff hitter, but he’s so far and away more suited for the leadoff spot than anyone else on the roster that it would be criminal to put anyone else there. Thankfully, Ned Yost has made noises to suggest that, as much as it pains him, he might be forced to let Gordon lead off again this year.

I’m not an enormous fan of Escobar batting second, because his place there seems to be a nod to tradition more than to run maximization. If he hits .293 again, he’ll be fine there; if he hits closer to his 2011 performance, he’s going to kill the team. But putting Butler or Perez in that spot is too outside the box for most teams, not just the Royals. Let’s be blunt: the best fit for the #2 slot is in Tampa Bay now.

Otherwise, the lineup order is pretty close to optimal, and this could be an above-average lineup this year. Two things need to go right, though. First, they need to get something out of the 7-8-9 slots, which means that Jeff Francoeur needs to bounce back at least a little, and they need one of their second baseman to win that job and run with it.

The other thing is that the lineup needs to stay healthy. That’s a cliché, maybe, but I would argue that the only way losing Wil Myers won’t hurt the Royals in 2013 is if every one of their corner players avoids significant injury.

They all stayed healthy last year – Moustakas, Francoeur, Hosmer, Butler, and Gordon played in at least 148 games each – which is why Myers never got called up. Remember, the Royals were experimenting with Myers at third base, and if something had happened to Moustakas, Myers probably would have gotten the call. But now that he’s gone, the Royals are painfully exposed at the corners.

Up the middle, the Royals could fade a short-term injury. Dyson can fill in for Cain (and probably will have to) ably enough. The Royals have options at second base, and Christian Colon could hit an empty .270 at shortstop, although the defensive drop would be significant. While the Royals say Perez is their most indispensable player, the addition of Kottaras at least means the Royals wouldn’t be forced into a desperation trade if Perez were to get hurt.

But if Gordon gets hurt, or Hosmer, you’re probably looking at Elliot Johnson getting extended playing time. Aside from Colon, the Royals don’t have any hitters in the upper minors who can be counted on to contribute this year. (David Lough, I guess. Consider me unimpressed.) If everyone stays healthy, it probably won’t matter. But if any of Hosmer, Moustakas, Gordon, or Butler hit the DL, it’s going to hurt.

Royals Today: It Begins.

I’m a big fan of the World Baseball Classic, and I look forward to the day when the best players in the world take the event as seriously as the fans do. But the event sure does throw off my internal baseball timetable. Spring training isn’t supposed to begin until after Valentine’s Day, but here we are, at the exact midpoint of winter, and pitchers and catchers are down in Surprise, and James Shields and Salvador Perez are getting acquainted, and Bob Dutton is already reporting two-a-days.

Wait a minute – why am I complaining? This is awesome. We should have the World Baseball Classic every year.

The roster for the 2013 Royals is pretty much set – there’s the annual dumb last-minute trade right before Opening Day to account for – and news is starting to trickle in from Arizona. I’m starting to put the ugliness of the off-season behind me and get excited for the season to come, like I always do. My love-hate relationship with the Royals is obviously unhealthy, like Kirstie Alley with food, or Danny Duffy with Twitter, but try as I might I can’t quit this damn team. So let’s break it down.

- In his opening column from spring training, Dutton proclaims “This is the club’s most anticipated camp in more than a generation”. That’s an awfully bold statement from someone not prone to hyperbole. He’s probably right.

The only real competition since the strike would be 2004, after the Royals faked their way to an 83-win season in 2003, and followed their winning campaign by re-signing Brian Anderson and bringing in veterans like Benito Santiago and Juan Gonzalez. In retrospect, I don’t know what we were all smoking. Ken Harvey was a folk hero, Angel Berroa was going to be a star, Darrell May was a front-of-the-rotation starter, Mike MacDougal threw 110 mph and his curveball dropped so hard it could penetrate the earth’s crust. Chris George and Jimmy Gobble were the future of the rotation. I guess you had to be there. (Or you could just listen to the song.)

Anyway, aside from that brief, glorious delusion, there really hasn’t been a season with expectations like this one since 1994. Ewing Kauffman had just passed away the year before, and the team was set up to win now in his honor. (That included the regrettable decision to trade Jon Lieber to the Pirates for Stan Belinda the previous summer.) David Cone was still a Royal, and the entire infield (Wally Joyner, Jose Lind, Greg Gagne, and Gary Gaetti) were imports, as was leftfielder Vince Coleman. Tom Gordon was still a starting pitcher, and he and Kevin Appier were just 26 years old.

That team won 14 games in a row just before the strike hit, and were four games out of first place when the season ended. That was also the first year of the wild-card ever, with divisions whittled down to five teams and a backdoor to the playoffs. The optimism before that season stemmed as much from the added opportunities as from the team itself.

Before that, you have to go back to 1990, when the Royals were coming off a 92-win season, then were deemed to have won the off-season by masterfully signing both Storm Davis and Mark Davis. What a coup! (Incidentally, this was the precise moment at which I developed the baseball arrogance that continues to delight audiences today. I was 14 years old, and I knew that Storm Davis’ 19-7 record in 1989 was a fraud, the product of fantastic run support and quite possibly the greatest bullpen in baseball history to that point. Meanwhile, professional baseball men were telling us that Storm Davis just knew how to win.)

Mark Davis’ astonishing fall from grace after winning the 1989 NL Cy Young Award remains a mystery to this day. What’s not a mystery is that it was silly to think that a reliever would make that much of a difference in the first place.

Anyway, of the last three seasons that began with as much anticipation as this one, two of them (1990 and 2004) were fraudulent, and the other one (1994) was aborted. We can only hope this season goes better. But still: credit to Dayton Moore & friends for getting the Royals to this point in the first place.

- We’ll be seeing more Top Prospect lists come out in the near future, but over at ESPN.com, Keith Law has ranked the organizations, and the Royals – even after trading away two Top 100 Prospects and two other interesting names – rank a very solid 11th overall.

Law was one of the few people more critical of the trade than I was, so it’s only fair to point out that he still has nice things to say about the farm system. Notably, “They’ve got more sleeper/breakout candidates than any other organization” and “I didn’t like the trade for James Shields, but I still really like the overall direction of things in Kansas City when you look from top to bottom.”

Last spring I wrote that given that so few of their minor leaguers were likely to lose their rookie eligibility in 2012 – Kelvin Herrera was the only player among their top 20 prospects by Baseball America who did – “I think the Royals are in excellent position to have a Top-5, if not Top-3, farm system yet again next spring.” If you annul the trade, and add two Top 100 guys (along with Montgomery and Leonard, both of whom would rank in the #15-#25 range in the organization) back into the 11th-ranked system, the Royals might well be in the top 5. Law has the Cubs at 5th and the Astros at 4th, and the Royals would compare favorably to them. Heck, Law has Tampa Bay 3rd, and if you take away Myers et al, the Royals might rank ahead of them as well.

What’s done is done, but the point is that the Royals had a chance at a Top-5, if not Top-3, farm system for the third straight year. The system is still developing talent.

As a result of the trade, the Royals’ roster is pretty well set without expecting a contribution from a single rookie. Among the Royals top 20 prospects this year, not one is guaranteed to lose his eligibility to be on next year’s list. Donnie Joseph may work his way into the bullpen by mid-season. Christian Colon might get the call if 1) Alcides Escobar gets hurt or 2) the Chris Getz/Johnny Giavotella deathmatch at second base actually ends with both contestants dead. And it’s possible that one of Kyle Zimmer, Yordano Ventura, or John Lamb will blast through Triple-A and land in the Royals rotation by August – but quite unlikely, given that by that point they’ll be behind Danny Duffy and Felipe Paulino in the cafeteria line.

Everyone else is at least a year away. Which means that this time next year, the Royals are in good shape to be a top-five farm system again, unless they trade away more top prospects to fill another hole. Like, say, right field.

- As you would expect from a team that’s playing to win now, there aren’t a lot of position battles in camp. James Shields, Jeremy Guthrie, Ervin Santana, and Wade Davis are your top four starters, in some order after Shields. Your fifth starter will be one of Luke Hochevar, Bruce Chen, and Luis Mendoza.

Last year’s rotation contained all three of those guys, so the fact that there’s currently room for only one of them has to be deemed progress. I’m not going to waste time pointing out why Hochevar shouldn’t be here – that horse has been tenderized enough. But he shouldn’t be here.

(By the way, mark today down. I was listening to Soren Petro’s show on 810 WHB, and Danny Clinkscale was reporting from Surprise, and he had spoken with Luke Hochevar, who told him that he had looked at video of himself pitching from the stretch and he thought he had found a problem in his delivery. Now, this is about the tenth time that Hochevar or the Royals have spotted a flaw, and the last nine times didn’t fix anything. But at least this time, on February 11th, 2013, the Royals have finally acknowledged that Luke Hochevar’s problem boils down to the fact that he falls apart with men on base. Progress!)

Honestly, if it were my decision – and I had to make the decision today – I’d give the job to Mendoza. I was slow to come around on him, as you may remember, but the Royals believed that his 2011 season in Omaha wasn’t a fluke, and once he mastered the cutter last year, he was an above-average starter. (In his last 20 starts, he had a 3.82 ERA.)

Despite bouncing around for years trying to stick in the majors, Mendoza is actually six weeks younger than Hochevar, he’s the only one of the three who is a groundball pitcher, and he’s under club control for the next four seasons. He was just named the MVP of the Caribbean Series. Some pitchers break out in their late 20s; I’m not saying Mendoza will, but he’s got a much better chance than the other two.

Ned Yost feels Mendoza is better suited for long relief. I would have agreed with him up until last June – Mendoza’s stats the third time through a lineup were horrific – but adding the cutter gave him a new weapon to use the second and third time he faced a hitter, and he was able to work deeper into ballgames.

All three pitchers are out of options, and the Royals say they don’t want to lose any of them, so two of them are headed for long relief. Having two long relievers may have made sense last year, when the Royals were having trouble getting even five innings out of their starters until August. But I thought the Royals just spent a considerable amount of money and talent to upgrade their rotation precisely so that they wouldn’t need a long reliever, let alone two.

Over the last two years, Shields has averaged 7.23 innings per start. Ervin Santana has averaged 6.46 innings per start. Guthrie averaged 6.11 innings per start – but if you take out his time in Colorado, it was 6.41 innings per start. Wade Davis, in his last two seasons as a starter (2010-11), averaged 6.07 innings per start.

The Royals, as a whole, averaged 5.49 innings per start last year. If their four projected starters pitch as deep into ballgames as they have the last two seasons, the Royals will need somewhere between 100 and 150 fewer innings from their bullpen in 2013. Two long relievers, which were a necessity last season, would be a luxury this year – and given the team’s bullpen depth, a luxury they don’t need.

Which is why I’ll predict now that – barring an injury to one of the top four guys, which is certainly possible – the Royals do not break camp with Hochevar, Chen, and Mendoza all on their roster. I could certainly see a scenario in which Chen gets traded to a team that has a sudden opening in their rotation. Chen had a disappointing 2012, but he’s on a one-year, $4.5 millon contract, he’s suddenly durable (led the AL in starts last year), he set a career high in K/BB ratio last year…I don’t think you’re getting a top prospect for him or anything, but unlike Hochevar, I think his contract is moveable.

And for as much noise as the Royals have made about their faith in Hochevar, it’s worth noting that most of that noise came before they added two starting pitchers to their rotation. It’s also worth noting that most of Hochevar’s contract is not guaranteed. If he’s released prior to March 15th, he’s only owed about one-sixth of his contract (roughly $800,000). If he’s released after March 15th but before Opening Day, he’s owed about one-quarter of his contract (roughly $1.2 million). If he’s on the roster on Opening Day, his entire contract is guaranteed.

Truthfully, I doubt he’ll get cut, unless his spring training performances are surprisingly poor – not just results, but his velocity is down or something. But I do think something will happen. You can never have too much pitching, but you can have too much overpriced pitching, and right now the Royals have at least one overpriced pitcher too many.

More to come. I’m just getting warmed up.