The Secret Ingredient.

I know that many of my newer readers are under the impression that I am a pessimist by nature who enjoys skewering the Royals at every opportunity. Those of you who’ve been around a while know that if I’m guilty of anything, it’s of being unrealistically positive about the Royals; there’s no way I could have kept writing about the Royals when they lost 100 games back-to-back-to-back years otherwise. But it’s true that of late, I’m better known for criticism than praise. But I really do want the Royals to succeed, and I really do want to say nice things about their front office. So today, I have a column for you that’s nothing but sunshine and roses – and, best of all, completely truthful.

Once upon a time, the Royals didn’t do a good job of scouting Latin American talent.

That’s a euphemism. And not a small euphemism either; that’s not like saying that someone who died has “passed away”. That’s like saying that someone who died is actually alive and well, cleaned out the hospital’s stash of applesauce, and led the nursing team in singing a spirited karaoke of “Let It Go.”

By “once upon a time”, I mean the entirety of the franchise’s history before Dayton Moore was hired. And by “didn’t do a good job”, I mean the Royals conducted themselves as if the most popular sport in the Dominican Republic was jai alai. They acted as if there was no amateur talent in Latin America to speak of.

Back in 2011, I believe I wrote somewhere – and you’ll have to forgive me, I can’t find the reference – that the Royals probably had more Latin American talent in their farm system at that moment than they had developed in the 37 years before Dayton Moore was hired combined. Now, I know I can be guilty of hyperbole sometimes, hyperbole that occasionally tiptoes the line of outright untruth. But I stand by that statement 100%.

Here is a list of every amateur player that the Royals signed out of Latin America from 1969 to 2006, that would bat even 500 times or throw even 150 innings in the major leagues. (It’s possible that I missed someone, but I tried to be extremely thorough in my search.)

Player            Signed  Career    bWAR

Melido Perez       1983  1987-1995  11.3

Luis Salazar       1973  1980-1992   9.1

Hipolito Pichardo  1987  1992-2002   6.3

Carlos Febles      1993  1998-2003   3.5

Runelvys Hernandez 1997  2002-2008   3.3

Andres Blanco      2000  2004-2011   1.2

Ambiorix Burgos    2000  2005-2007   0.7

Onix Concepcion    1976  1980-1987   0.0

This is an astounding list. In 37 years, the Royals came up with eight players that would last the equivalent of just one season in the major leagues, barely one every five years – two in the 1970s, two in the 1980s, two in the 1990s, and two in 2000. And it’s actually worse than that, because only three of those players amassed even 4 bWAR – the equivalent of basically two league-average seasons – in their careers.

And it’s actually worse than that, because the two best players the Royals developed contributed nothing to the organization. After making three starts for the Royals in 1987, Perez was one of four players traded to the White Sox in an ill-conceived move for Floyd Bannister. (Sorry, Brian!) Perez would be a league-average starter for most of the next seven years. (Greg Hibbard, also included in the trade, would be a league-average starter for the next five years. Bannister would be a serviceable but below-league-average starter for the next season-and-a-half.)

But Perez, at least, was developed by the Royals until he was ready for the major leagues. Salazar, who played every position except catcher during his 13-year-career in the majors, was signed by the Royals in 1973…and released in 1974, after playing two games in the Gulf Coast League. In 1976, he resurfaces in pro ball with the Pirates, and reached the majors four years later. I don’t know the story here, but I’m going to say that the Royals deserve exactly zero credit for his development as a player.

Over 37 years, the best Latin American player the Royals developed who made a contribution to the team was Hipolito Pichardo. That is one of the most astoundingly depressing facts about the franchise that I’ve ever written, and I’ve written a lot of astoundingly depressing facts.

Just for a fun comparison, I thought I’d look at how the Blue Jays fared in Latin America. The Blue Jays started play in 1977, and soon thereafter Pat Gillick took over as their general manager. Here’s a sampling of the players they signed out of Latin America over the ensuing decade:

1978: Fred Manrique (2.6 bWAR)

1979: Luis Leal (10.6 bWAR), Tony Fernandez (45.2 bWAR)

1981: Luis Aquino (10.3 bWAR), Jose Mesa (11.7 bWAR)

1982: Nelson Liriano (3.0 bWAR)

1983: Tony Castillo (6.3 bWAR), Geronimo Berroa (7.5 bWAR)

1985: Junior Felix (6.1 bWAR), Francisco Cabrera (1.0 Franchises Murdered)

And so on. (The Jays would sign Carlos Delgado in 1988.) The Blue Jays were coming up with a useful player out of Latin America roughly once a year; even the guys without a lot of WAR, like Manrique and Liriano, played over 10 years in the majors. In their first five years, the Blue Jays came up with more 10-win players than the Royals have in their history. And they came up with a franchise player in Tony Fernandez.

Gillick is arguably the most successful baseball executive of my lifetime. He won two World Series with the Blue Jays in 1992 and 1993, assembled the Mariners team that tied the all-time record for regular season wins in 2001, and put together another world champion in Philadelphia in 2008. And his success in player development certainly wasn’t limited to Latin America; the Blue Jays were unusually successful in the Rule 5 draft (George Bell, Kelly Gruber), and of course they drafted well (Dave Stieb, Jimmy Key, Lloyd Moseby, Jesse Barfield). Aside from Fernandez and Leal, most of the Blue Jays’ Latin American talent from their early years moved on from Toronto before they found success. But the Blue Jays, a team that was starting from scratch in 1977, nonetheless came up with a talent stream that the Royals completely ignored.

The irony is that when the Royals were starting from scratch, they came up with a talent stream that every other team in baseball ignored. I’m speaking of the Royals Baseball Academy, still one of the most radical and innovative ideas ever implemented by a major league team. The Academy opened in 1970, taking undrafted American high school graduates who were short on baseball ability but long on tools. The Academy closed in 1974 because of its expense, and while closing it was a mistake, you can maybe understand that the Royals had yet to see its benefits but were definitely feeling its costs.

Many years later, Royals owner Ewing Kauffman would say, “If I were a younger man, I’d reinstitute it. That’s a disappointment in myself, because I wasn’t smart enough to see it and I let the finances of it bother me too much and, of course, at the time I didn’t have as much money as I did later on.” The shame isn’t that the Academy closed in 1974, but that in 1980 – when the starting middle infield of their World Series team, UL Washington and Frank White, were both Academy graduates – they didn’t re-institute it.

But maybe it’s understandable that the Royals, or any team, wouldn’t want to start an Academy to develop the best American teenagers that were left over after 1000+ players were drafted each year. Their reluctance to invest in developing the best Latin American teenagers, when there’s no draft siphoning away hundreds of players every year, is inexplicable. But that’s what happened. Kauffman passed away in 1993, and over a decade later the Royals still had as small a presence in Latin America as any team in the majors.

You have probably read this before – I know I’ve written it before – but according to Buster Olney, from 1995 to 2006 the Royals spent approximately a quarter million dollars in signing bonuses on Latin American talent. Not annually – total. That’s a total signing budget of barely $20,000 a year. That’s absurd, and it’s why during that entire time, the best players the Royals signed were Carlos Febles, Runelvys Hernandez, Andres Blanco, and Ambiorix Burgos.

It’s also at least part of the reason why the Royals sucked for pretty much that entire timeframe.

Dayton Moore was hired in 2006. He was hired in mid-June, too late to influence the draft that year, but not too late to influence the Royals’ ability to sign amateur talent south of the border. And almost immediately, the Royals’ fortunes began to change.

In 2007, the Royals made their first big financial push into Latin America, signing a pair of infielders from the Dominican for real money - $250,000 for Yowill Espinal, $230,000 for Geulin Beltre, each getting about as much as the Royals had spent in the last decade combined. The Royals also opened a new academy in the Dominican Republic that year. I’m not entirely certain whether this was something instigated by Moore or whether it was already in the works under Allard Baird – it takes more than a year to build an academy from scratch, I think. Whether the academy was Moore’s brainchild or whether it was just a coincidence, the fact is that the Royals had already started turning things around before the academy opened.

Because you see, in 2006, the Royals signed two players who have already made an impact in Kansas City. In October, they signed Salvador Perez. In December, they signed Kelvin Herrera.

With barely two seasons in the majors, Perez, with 8.6 bWAR, has already had the best Royals career of any player the franchise has ever signed out of Latin America. With one more half-decent season he’ll the greatest player the Royals have ever signed out of Latin America, period. With just two promising but not spectacular seasons in middle relief, Herrera, with 2.1 bWAR, is already seventh on that list.

In his first six months as the Royals’ GM, Moore signed two Latin American players who may well turn out to each be better than any Latin American player the Royals had ever signed before.

And that was just the first year. 2007 proved to be a fallow year, despite the bonuses to Espinal and Beltre. But since then:

In 2008, the Royals signed Yordano Ventura (#2 Royals prospect per Baseball America) and Angel Baez (#27).

In 2009, the Royals signed Jorge Bonifacio (#4) and Cheslor Cuthbert (#14).

In 2010, the Royals signed Miguel Almonte (#5) and Orlando Calixte (#13).

In 2011, the Royals signed Raul A. Mondesi (#3), Elier Hernandez (#11), and Pedro Fernandez (#16).

So by the end of 2011, the Royals almost unquestionably had more Latin American talent in their organization than they had developed in the 37 years before Dayton Moore was hired. Acknowledging that some if not most of these prospects won’t pan out, the Royals had Ventura, maybe the pitching phenom of this spring, who opens the season as their #3 starter; they had Bonifacio, who might be their starting right fielder next year. They had Cuthbert, who has had two disappointing years in a row but is still just 21 and already has Double-A experience. They had Almonte, who might be in their rotation at some point in 2015. They had Calixte, who’s an offense-minded shortstop who spent all of last year in Double-A at age 21, and will probably have a long career in a utility role if nothing else.

And in 2011, they signed the guy I consider the best prospect in the system in Mondesi; a potential prototype right fielder in Elier Hernandez who hit .301/.350/.439 in the Pioneer League at age 18 last year; and Pedro Fernandez, who is this year’s Almonte, the Dominican right-hander who is expected to emerge from obscurity onto the prospect radar by season’s end.

(As I mentioned when I wrote about Mondesi a couple of articles ago, he is pretty clearly the best shortstop prospect in Royals history. And the reason for that is pretty simple: shortstops, more than any other position on the field, tend to hail from Latin America. The reasons for that are multi-faceted and I’m not going to get into it here, but it makes sense that a team that ignored Latin American prospects suffered its most glaring development failure at the position most associated with Latin American prospects.)

And of course the Royals already have maybe the best young catcher in baseball, and a reliever who touches 101 on the gun. Put that on one side of the scale, and on the other side you’re putting a #3 starter (Melido Perez), a utility infielder (Salazar), a swingman (Pichardo), and a short-lived second baseman and #4 starter (Febles and Hernandez). We probably won’t have to wait until the careers of all of these prospects play out completely before we can declare a winner.

The Royals, truthfully, haven’t drafted all that well under Dayton Moore. While they drafted Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas, they had to spend a top-five pick on each, and they also used top-five picks on Christian Colon (bust) and Bubba Starling (the next good scouting report I read on him this year will be the first). And while they’ve drafted several fine relievers, most notably Greg Holland, from 2007 to 2011 the only impact player they drafted after the first round is Wil Myers.

The irony is that the Royals’ ranking as The Best Farm System Ever three years ago was built on the backs of their draft picks. All nine Royals in Baseball America’s Top 100 were American-born; Jake Odorizzi was acquired in a trade, but the other eight were all Royals picks. Hosmer, Moustakas, and Myers have (generally) lived up to their rankings; Colon and the non-Odorizzi pitchers have not.

And it’s possible that the Royals will have as little success with their Latin American talent as they have with their American talent. But Perez and Herrera are already ensconced on the roster, Ventura has already won a rotation job, and it’s hard to imagine that every other prospect will fail. Using Baseball America’s ranking list, four of the Royals top five prospects, and eight of their top 16, were signed out of Latin America. The renaissance of the organization might have been started with talent from the draft, but it will be completed – if it is completed – with talent from Latin America.

As impressive as the Royals ability to find talent south of the border has been since Moore was hired, it’s possible that it’s just a fluke, much like a team that just has a lucky run in the draft. But I don’t think it is. For one thing, Latin Americans occupy a significantly larger portion of major league talent today than they did a generation ago. As Nate Silver wrote about back in 2005, the percentage of major league players from outside the US – almost all from Latin America – more than doubled from 1985 to 2005.

And as Silver also wrote, that percentage would almost certainly continue to increase over time – simply because population trends dictate it. In 2005, the birth rate in the Dominican Republic was about 70% higher than in America. More babies mean more 16-year-old boys 16 years later; more 16-year-old boys mean more potential major leaguers. The trend of more and more baseball players from Latin America isn’t going to reverse itself any time soon, and will probably accelerate. It is for this reason that investing in Latin America is simply not an option for major league teams anymore, the way it obviously was for the Royals, who built a model organization and won a World Series without doing so.

It also means that a team that leads the way in Latin America today has more to gain than a team that did so 30 years ago, because there’s so much more talent. The Blue Jays’ record in Latin America is even more impressive when you consider they were fishing in a much smaller pond in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But it means that the Royals might actually find more major league talent in Latin America today than the Jays did in their salad days. They’re already well on their way.

The deeper well of talent is an advantage for the Royals, but then it’s an advantage for every other team as well. For the Royals to take real advantage, they need find more of that talent than every other team. The question is whether they can continue to do that, particularly given that since the new CBA went into effect in 2013, there is a soft cap to how much money teams can spend in Latin America. (I say “soft” because the penalty for going over is weak enough that it’s sometimes worth it to go over, and the Rangers and Cubs decided it was a trade worth making last year.)

But I think that, cap or no cap, the Royals are going to be fine. It’s true that the Royals’ success in Latin America coincided with them finally deciding to spend some money, and most of their big investments so far seem sounds. The only seven-figure bonus the Royals have doled out that looks unwise so far is Humberto Arteaga ($1.1 million), who has a slick glove but doesn’t look like he’ll ever hit. But Hernandez ($3 million) and Mondesi ($2 million) look like they’re worth the investment and then some; Cuthbert ($1.45 million) and Calixte ($1 million) still have time to pay off. (Edit: I was remiss not to mention Noel Arguelles, the Cuban defector who got $6.9 million and then had shoulder surgery almost immediately afterwards, and hasn't remotely looked like a prospect since. Cuban defectors are so hard to scout that they're almost an entirely different animal than the typical Latin American amateur, and I give the Royals a bit of a pass given that we never saw a healthy Arguelles in uniform.)

But what makes the Royals success in Latin America particularly remarkable – and why I think it will continue under the new CBA – is that they’ve done so well with players who didn’t get big bonuses.

Salvador Perez signed for $65,000. Yordano Ventura got $28,000. Miguel Almonte? $25,000. Jorge Bonifacio got lavished with cash – he had the major league bloodlines – to the tune of $135,000. The Royals potentially got two everyday hitters and two starting pitchers for $253,000 – basically the slot money for a sixth-round pick – combined.

They were able to do this because the nature of Latin American signings – players are eligible to be signed once they turn 16 – radically increases the variance in players. It increases the odds that a top prospect will bust, and increases the odds that a lightly-regarded kid suddenly gains 10 mph on his fastball, a la Yordano Ventura, and becomes a top prospect. If American kids were eligible to be drafted after their sophomore year of high school, we’d see first-round picks turn to mush and 37th-rounders become superstars all the time. (And conversely, if we raised the age limit we’d see fewer busts and fewer surprises. Stephen Strasburg wasn’t drafted out of high school; a year later he would have been a sure first-round pick if he were eligible.)

Signing 16-year-old players has two strategic impacts. It means that teams need to cast a wider net, signing more players rather than putting all their eggs on one or two baskets, because you never know when the malnourished kid you’re looking at today might be an absolute beast of a ballplayer a year from now. And it means that money is less important than connections.

Having a lead on the 16-year-old kid who can’t catch up to a fastball now but will grow three inches once he starts getting three square meals a day is immensely valuable. Developing a relationship with the family of a kid who might take a lower bonus because they trust your organization is immensely valuable. Having a relationship with the buscones, the unlikeable but indispensible trainers who find prepubescent players with promise and train them until they’re old enough to sign with a major league team, is immensely valuable.

Which is why the person who is key to the Royals’ Latin American success isn’t Dayton Moore at all, as I’m sure Moore will tell you himself. It’s a man who most Royals fans have never heard of. It’s Rene Francisco.

Francisco was one of the first hires that Moore made when he took the job, luring Francisco to be a Special Assistant to the General Manager/International Operations – basically, their international scouting director – in August of 2006. A few weeks later he was down in Venezuela watching a tryout where kids did their best to impress him. One of those kids was Salvador Perez.

Francisco was hired from the Atlanta Braves, and as much as we’ve made fun of Moore for his reliance on familiar front office hires from a familiar organization, he certainly nailed this one. Francisco had been the Braves’ Director of International Scouting for about a year; he had held the same role with the Dodgers for three years, and before that he had been with the Braves from 1993 to 2002 as an international scout and later a Latin American coordinator. He was “instrumental” in the signings of Rafael Furcal and Wilson Betemit, among others.

(I’m taking this from the Royals’ media guides, as online information on Francisco is, perhaps appropriately for a man whose contributions are so overlooked, scarce.)

That’s not to say that Moore doesn’t deserve credit for the Royals’ success in Latin America, because of course he’s the guy who hired Francisco in the first place, and hiring the right people is 80% of management success. It wasn’t Pat Gillick who was personally scouting Latin America; it was legendary scout Epy Guerrero, who Gillick hired soon after he became GM of the Blue Jays in 1978, and headed international scouting for the Blue Jays until 1995. Like Gillick, Guerrero’s tenure with Toronto roughly corresponds to the glory years for the franchise. (This obituary of Guerrero also tells the story of how Guerrero helped the Blue Jays land George Bell in the Rule 5 draft by arranging to keep him out of winter ball so that other teams wouldn’t get a good look at him.)

One of Moore’s unquestioned assets as a GM and as a person is that he’s the kind of GM that other people want to work for; the Royals have had remarkable stability in their front office, particularly on their minor league side, even as they developed the best farm system in the game and some of those employees would presumably be highly coveted by other organizations. J.J. Picollo, who was hired from the Braves the same day as Francisco, has run the player development operation since then. Picollo added “Assistant GM” to his title in 2008, and Francisco did in 2012, and presumably their responsibilities have increased over time – but they’ve remained with the organization and loyal to Moore since the beginning. They’re not the only ones – the turnover in the front office over the last eight years has been remarkably low, which says something about the man they report to.

I’m obviously not privy to the inner workings of the Royals’ operations, and I don’t want to suggest that it is only Rene Francisco who deserves credit for the team’s success in Latin America. Certainly there are scouts on the ground who do the grunt work and should be recognized. But just as the buck stops with Moore for the results of the team as a whole, the buck stops with Francisco on the international side. He, and those who work under him, have done a phenomenal job these last eight years. And they continue to do fine work.

In 2012, with the new CBA limiting their spending power a bit, the Royals backed off on their Latin American spending relative to previous years. But their #1 guy, a first baseman named Samir Duenez, has shown an advanced bat (albeit no defensive skills) so far. And last year the Royals broke new ground internationally by ponying up $1.3 million to Italian shortstop Marten Gasparini, the biggest signing bonus any team has ever paid to a European prospect.

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with this organization for longer than I care to admit, and I’ve probably flipped back and forth between loving and hating this front office a half-dozen times. I was perhaps irrationally exuberant about the farm system three years ago; I was perhaps unfairly bitter about the team’s inability to convert that promise into results in 2012, and then the Myers trade broke me for a full solid year.

But I’m getting my groove back again, and I’m doing my best to see the Royals as a capable and competent organization that simply let desperation coax them into making a single terrible move fifteen months ago. An organization isn’t defined by one trade, it’s defined by their accumulated decisions and – dare I say it – processes over years and years. For many years, beneath the surface, the Royals have put together a process of finding and developing Latin American talent that is unlike anything they’ve ever done before, and has become a huge competitive advantage for them.

They deserve a huge amount of credit for that, so much so that I’m even willing to try to see the bright side of Moore’s notorious comments about rebuilding being an eight-to-ten year process. That timeframe has been conveniently flexible, and suspiciously forgiving, and doesn’t simply excuse the fact that the Royals never won more than 75 games in his first six seasons on the job. And that timeframe is too long when it comes to draft picks, many of whom are college players who are 21 or 22 at the time. I mean, Luke Hochevar, who was drafted a week before Moore started, is 30 years old.

But the one place where an eight-to-ten year timeframe is entirely reasonable is in Latin America, where most kids sign when they’re 16 years old. It’s now nearly eight years since Moore was hired, and the first two kids they hit upon in Latin America, Perez and Herrera, will be just 23 years old on Opening Day. Perez, in particular, should still be three or four years from his peak. But they’re old enough now that they’re here and they’re contributing. This year they’re being joined by Ventura. Next year Bonifacio and Almonte should arrive; Mondesi could be ready the year after that; Elier Hernandez could follow, and now you can project new prospects coming off the assembly line at regular intervals into perpetuity.

No rebuilding process should take eight years. But those eight years are in the past, and now we can finally enjoy the fruits of the part of the rebuilding process that takes the longest, but that the Royals have done best. Maybe it won’t be enough to get the Royals over the playoff hump this year or next; maybe it won’t even be enough to save this front office in the end. But building a Latin American pipeline that is the one of the best in the game from scratch is this front office’s greatest legacy, and they deserve all the credit in the world for it.

Ultimately, talent wins. The signature weakness of the Royals during their dark ages was that they simply didn’t develop enough of it. It remains to be seen whether the Royals’ current front office can produce the talent to constitute a playoff team. But when it comes to this one vital source of talent, they most certainly are.

Royals Today: 3/10/2014.

I still owe you the article I promised last time out, but enough stuff has happened in spring training so far that I need to write a catch-up column first:

- Luke Hochevar’s career as a Royal may be over, as the former #1 overall pick blew out his ulnar collateral ligament and will undergo Tommy John surgery in the coming weeks.

As we learned with Danny Duffy two years ago, there isn’t always a sharp line between “healthy” and “torn” when it comes to the ligament; there’s a continuum between 0% and 100% torn, and pitchers can and do pitch with partial tears in their ligament. Hochevar has had a partially torn ligament since he first injured it in 2010; it took three-and-a-half years before it tore further, but this time the tear is irrevocable. Either the tear is so large that it will impede his velocity, or it’s so large it will almost certainly tear completely with continued pitching, or both.

It’s a terrible break for Hochevar, both because he finally found his groove as a dominant set-up man last season, and because he was set to be a free agent next winter and presumably could have cashed in on his new-found success.

I wouldn’t downplay just how good he was as a reliever last year; Hochevar was as good at relieving as he was bad at starting. Sum it up this way: last year, Luke Hochevar had the lowest WHIP (min: 40 IP) in Royals history:

Year  Pitcher         IP   W+H   WHIP

2013  Luke Hochevar  70.1   58  0.825

2008  Joakim Soria   67.1   58  0.861

2013  Greg Holland   67.0   58  0.866

1972  Roger Nelson  173.1  151  0.871

1972  Steve Busby    40.0   36  0.900

Sure, there was some luck involved there. But for a man who came into the season with a 5.39 career ERA, his conversion to the bullpen went better than anyone had a right to expect. And it wasn’t entirely a fluke – Hochevar’s strikeout-to-walk ratio more than doubled his previous career high. There was every reason to believe that he was a legitimately excellent relief pitcher. Now he’ll have to wait a year to prove that again.

While it sucks for Hochevar, it’s not the end of the world for the Royals, who as I’ve written many times had more quality relievers than they had roster spots for. Hochevar’s injury had the fringe benefit of ending the Wade Davis Rotation Experiment at the same time as it ended the Luke Hochevar Rotation Experiment, although I think the concerns that the Royals would actually give one of them a rotation spot over Yordano Ventura and Danny Duffy were vastly overblown. Still, it means that Davis now inherits Hochevar’s spot in the bullpen, and like Hochevar, Davis looked like a completely different pitcher in his one full year in the bullpen. Look:

Wade Davis, 2012: 70.1 IP, 48 H, 27 UIBB, 87 K, 5 HR, 2.43 ERA

Luke Hochevar, 2013: 70.1 IP, 41 H, 16 UIBB, 82 K, 8 HR, 1.92 ERA

Hochevar had better command, but really these look like two seasonal lines from the career of the same pitcher.

The Royals still have Kelvin Herrera, who I think could be the breakout star of the bullpen this year (his strikeout rate jumped from 22.4% to 30.2% last year). They still have Aaron Crow, who only threw 48 innings last year even though he was on the roster all season. They still have Louis Coleman, who couldn’t stay on the roster for most of the season even though he entered the year with a 3.25 career ERA – and when he finally did get a chance to pitch, allowed just two runs in 30 innings, putting up the sixth-lowest ERA (0.61) in major league history (min: 25 IP).

Oh, and they have Greg Holland, maybe the best non-Craig-Kimbrel reliever in the game today. That’s five right-handed relievers, which is all they need. If anyone gets hurt or needs to be replaced, Michael Mariot is almost ready for his close-up after a fine season in Omaha in his first year as a full-time reliever.

So the Royals should be fine, even if Hochevar’s injury just reiterates the point about trading bullpen assets while you can. Even if they had traded Holland this winter, they’d still have an above-average bullpen – and the considerable assets Holland would have brought them. And if they had traded Hochevar, well, they might not have gotten a Grade A prospect for him, but anything would be better than nothing at all – not to mention the $5.21 million they would have saved on his salary.

The Royals handled their excess a lot better than they handled Joakim Soria on a last-place club years ago, at least. They did trade one of their relievers – Will Smith – to Milwaukee for their starting right fielder. And with Hochevar out, the Royals no longer have an excess of great relievers. They have exactly the right amount.

I also wouldn’t overstate how much this hurts Hochevar in the long run. He’s already guaranteed his salary this year, which will push his lifetime earnings past the $20 million mark. And by having surgery now instead of trying to rehab for a few months, there’s a good chance Hochevar will be ready to pitch early in 2015 if not be ready by Opening Day.

Besides, with the market having finally adjusted to the fact that even the best relievers only throw 70-80 innings a season, and that even the best relievers are a highly unpredictable commodity – the fact is that an eight figure salary is not in the cards for any but the best relievers in the game. Sure, Craig Kimbrel got a 4-year, $41 million deal – but he’s Craig Kimbrel, the most dominant strikeout pitcher in baseball history. Joe Nathan, who is the second-best reliever of the 21^st century, got $10 million a year from the Tigers – but only got two years guaranteed. Jonathan Papelbon’s contract is a dinosaur that may go extinct once the man who gave it to him (Ruben Amaro, everyone!) is finally shown the door. Even with a great, healthy season for the Royals this season, Hochevar probably wasn’t looking at more than a 3-year, $24 million next winter.

Instead, Hochevar will probably need to sign a make-good contract along the lines of the one Joakim Soria signed with the Rangers last year, a two-year, $8 million contract with a team option for a third year. That seems like a reasonable parameter for Hochevar’s next deal; while Hochevar doesn’t have nearly the track record in relief that Soria did, he’s also not undergoing Tommy John surgery for the second time – Soria wasn’t expected to be ready at the start of last season, and in fact he wasn’t on the mound for Texas until July.

If Hochevar is amenable to a contract of that nature, I think he’s much more likely to fit into the Royals payroll structure. The Royals seem to like him, obviously; they gave him far more chances in the rotation than they should have, and they were genuinely and understandably thrilled by his success last year. So while his injury is not a good thing for the 2014 Royals, it may have the paradoxical effect of keeping him in a Royals uniform for longer than he would have been otherwise. If he pitches anything like he did in 2013 upon his return, that’s hardly a bad thing.

- Rumors are swirling that Ervin Santana is about to finally sign a free-agent contract, at a massive discount from what he originally wanted and at a significant discount from what everyone thought he’d get. On Saturday the word was that the Blue Jays had him for a one-year, $14 million contract – the same contract he would have gotten from Kansas City had he signed the qualifying offer – but then word came in that the Orioles are in the bidding, and that the Twins may even have made a three-year offer.

As Buster Olney wrote, the one thing that’s clear is that Santana and/or his agents overplayed their hand at the start of the off-season, and he’s left holding the bag. There have been repercussions – Santana apparently has left his original agent, Bean Stringfellow (yes, that’s really his name), although it’s not clear whether he fired Stringfellow or whether he simply kept Jay Alou as his counsel while Alou, who used to work at Stringfellow’s agency, went out on his own. If I cared about agent-on-agent dynamics, I’d watch Jerry Maguire. But something apparently happened. It’s not even clear it’s the agents’ fault in the first place; it’s quite possible that those initial contract demands came from Santana, who directed his agents to act accordingly.

I gave the Royals some flak on Twitter when it broke that Santana was going to get a one-year deal, which was partly in jest and probably a little unfair – it’s not the Royals’ fault that Santana’s getting smacked down in free agency, but I couldn’t resist expressing my displeasure with the Jason Vargas deal once again. I do think that the Royals are too eager to make a significant move at the start of the off-season. It remains to be seen whether the Vargas deal (November 21, 2013) was a mistake, and it remains to be seen whether the Royals overpaid when they gave Jeremy Guthrie a 3-year, $25 million deal (November 20, 2012) – Year One went fine, but with more red flags than you’d find in a souvenir shop in China.

But trading Melky Cabrera for Jonathan Sanchez (November 7, 2011) didn’t exactly work out – obviously, in retrospect we can’t fault them for trading Melky, but Sanchez was the worst starting pitcher to suit up for the Royals since Jose Lima’s second go-round. And trading David DeJesus for Vin Mazzaro and Justin Marks (November 10, 2010) was a really bad trade that’s been largely forgotten. DeJesus had just hit .318/.384/.443 and had an option year left on his contract. Mazzaro and Marks looked like Quadruple-A pitchers at the time of the trade, and that was borne out (Mazzaro did resurrect himself as a middle reliever for the Pirates last year).

Maybe I’m wrong about Vargas, and maybe Guthrie will continue to outpitch his fundamentals and none of this matters. But if they don’t, I hope the Royals will give the market at least until Thanksgiving to shake out next year. Let others set the market; as Shakespeare wrote, they stumble that run fast.

So yeah, it would be nice if the Royals had the payroll flexibility and roster space to bring back Santana cheaply. But honestly, I’d rather have the draft pick. If and when Santana signs, the Royals will be awarded the 30th (give or take) pick in the draft. Conservatively, that pick is worth somewhere between $5 and $10 million. Let’s say Santana would sign with KC for 1 year and $14 million – counting the pick, the true cost of Santana would be somewhere between $19 and $24 million. If Santana repeats his 2013 performance, that’s not a bad price to pay for a #2 starter for one year – but there’s more downside than upside in that contract.

I guess what I’m trying to say is the same thing I’ve said since the season ended: gimme the pick. The most important takeaway from the Santana news this week is that it does appear he’s going to sign soon, and he’s not going to hold out until after the draft, which means the Royals will get their pick. Add that to the #18 pick they already have, as well as their competitive balance pick (somewhere between #35 and #40), and the Royals have three of the top 40 picks in the draft. For $12 million and Brandon Sisk, the Royals got a fantastic season out of Ervin Santana and a draft pick that by itself is almost worth the money. No matter what I think of Vargas, that’s a hell of a trade.

- Speaking of competitive balance picks: Sean Manaea is looking like a steal so far. I wrote a couple of weeks ago, when I aggressively ranked him as the Royals’ #4 prospect, that I was extremely curious how he’d look in his initial outings of the spring.

In his first outing – which was just a side session – Manaea was pitching free and easy with good command and life on his pitches, though he only pitched in the 88-90 range. I was a tiny bit worried about the velocity, but was optimistic that he was just working into his fastball and didn’t want to push things.

But Friday, Manaea took the mound in a minor league game for the first time, and that 88-90 was more like 92-94. Jason Parks has a scouting report up at Baseball Prospectus today; on Twitter he previewed it by saying that it “reads like pure smut”. (This being Parks, that’s a compliment.) Andy McCullough has more here.

Granted, it’s March 10th, and Manaea has yet to throw a pro pitch in anger. But even if he doesn’t get back to the 94-96 range he had in college – and he very well might – left-handed pitchers who throw 92-94 with a good slider, long levers, and a deceptive low-three-quarters delivery tend to move quickly. I don’t want to put this level of expectation on him, but that scouting report reads a lot like the Pitcher That Got Away in the draft three years ago. Maybe drafting Manaea will make up for not drafting Chris Sale.

- John Lamb’s name has come up a few times this spring, sometimes bearing good news (the Royals reported he was throwing in the low 90s in one outing), and sometimes bearing bad news (he was 86-89 in his start on Saturday and was knocked out in the first inning).

At this point, any news from Lamb is good news. The reports that he was throwing in the low 90s were almost literally unbelievable – Lamb was throwing 83-85 while getting his ass kicked in low-A ball for most of last year. Even 86-89 would represent some real improvement for him, which would be highly unusual for a pitcher nearly three years after Tommy John surgery.

Here’s how far Lamb’s stock had fallen before this spring training: he wasn’t listed in Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook this year. I don’t just mean that he wasn’t ranked among the Royals’ Top 30 Prospects. I mean that Baseball America also lists a “depth chart” of prospects in each organization by position, and they go a lot deeper than 30 names. They had 68 players listed on the Royals’ depth chart, including 13 left-handed pitchers alone. Here, I’ll name them for you: Sean Manaea, Sam Selman, Chris Dwyer, Donnie Joseph, Cody Reed, Crawford Simmons, Justin Marks, Buddy Baumann, Daniel Stumpf, Jon Keck, Colin Rodgers, Scott Alexander, and Jon Dziedzic.

John Lamb wasn’t listed. That’s how far his stock has fallen. The fact that we’re even discussing him at all is a sign of progress. But he still has a long way to go.

- The most interesting roster decision lurking this spring is whether Yordano Ventura or Danny Duffy will win the fifth starter’s spot. (I would go with Duffy, for service time reasons if nothing else, but I’m not so wedded to the idea that I wouldn’t let what happens over the next month factor into my decision.) But the second-most interesting roster decision is how the Royals are going to fit six bench players into four spots. Since they seem utterly committed to carrying 12 pitchers – I can’t muster the energy to be upset about this anymore, particularly since just about every other team is doing the same thing – they need to jettison a couple of hitters.

Carlos Peguero seems an obvious choice; he was just claimed on waivers, and while he has excellent raw power doesn’t have the track record of either Jarrod Dyson or Justin Maxwell. Dyson and Maxwell give the Royals a left-handed and right-handed option off the bench, one with game-changing speed and the other with good pop. Peguero’s chances probably hinge on whether Lorenzo Cain can make it to Opening Day without getting hurt.

The other roster cut is a much more interesting decision. The Royals have to keep a backup catcher – presumably Brett Hayes – and they have to keep a backup middle infielder, so I guess that means Danny Valencia is the odd man ou…WAIT A MINUTE.

The Royals seem committed to keeping Valencia, which would mean they would open the season without a backup middle infielder. And I guess it’s possible that this could work. Back when Cal Ripken was playing every day, Earl Weaver was fond of saying “my backup shortstop is in Rochester”. But even those Orioles, I’m pretty sure, had someone on their roster capable of playing shortstop in a pinch. (It helps that teams back then typically carried 15 hitters and just 10 pitchers).

And anyway, the Royals don’t have Cal Ripken on their roster. They have Alcides Escobar, who is very durable in his own right – he’s never been on the DL, and in his three years with the Royals has played in 158, 155, and 158 games. But they also have Omar Infante, who missed six weeks with an injury last season and has never played in 150 games in his career.

Infante is ostensibly the backup at shortstop in case Escobar gets hurt, and the Royals are hoping that Valencia can be the backup at second base in case either one of their starters gets hurt. On the one hand, I admire their creativity – there’s no point in carrying a guy on your roster that you never plan on playing. Teams have to carry a backup catcher because no catcher can start more than 10 days or so in a row – but in theory, there’s no reason you can’t start a middle infielder every day, and the minute an injury rears its head, you can dial Omaha and have a replacement delivered to you by an Amazon drone before the start of the next game. A middle infield of Infante at shortstop and Valencia at second base would be grisly, but the world won’t end if you have to line them up that way for a single game.

To me, though, the bigger downside to not carrying a backup infielder isn’t that you have to start Escobar and Infante every game, but that you have to finish with them too. If Escobar hits like he did in 2012 again (.293/.331/.390), everything is hunky-dory, but the fact that the Royals would even contemplate going without a backup infielder suggests that they’re in denial that Escobar was, you know, the worst everyday hitter in the majors last year. His 559 OPS was the lowest of any qualifying regular in baseball.

That’s a problem, but it’s an even bigger problem when you can’t pinch-hit for him in any situation because you don’t have anyone who can play his position. And it’s an even bigger problem than that when the other team knows you can’t pinch-hit for him, and may pitch around or even intentionally walk other hitters in a key late-inning situation in order to get Escobar to the plate, knowing that Ned Yost is going to let 2013’s worst hitter bat no matter what the circumstances are.

So while I admire the Royals’ willingness to think outside the box on this one, I guess I’d sum up my feelings by saying that I can not recall a team ever opening the season without a backup middle infielder on their roster. I’m not saying it’s never happened – and if you know of such an instance, please share it in the comments – but if it has, it’s escaped my attention. And I think there’s a good reason for that. It seems to me the Royals are playing a little too cute here, and would be better off just going with Pedro Ciriaco or Christian Colon for the final roster spot.

When the Royals acquired Valencia, I thought it made sense given that they didn’t have a spot for David Lough, and Valencia at least could play third base against lefties. Even then, though, this roster issue was evident; I just assumed the Royals would make a move at some point over the winter to solve it. They still might; if Mike Moustakas keeps raking, they may well decide that Valencia has served his usefulness by scaring Moustakas into getting into better shape, and look to trade him before the season begins.

Otherwise, though, it looks like the Royals need a hitter to get hurt before Opening Day to clear up their roster issues. And I suppose that strategy just worked for the bullpen. But as a general rule, I don’t think it’s sound policy to rely on an injury happening to make roster decisions easier.

2014 Royals Top Prospects, Part 5.

#2: Yordano Ventura

Pos-T: SP-R

H-W: 5’11”, 180 lbs

DOB: 6/3/1991 (22 years old)

Signed: NDFA ($28,000 bonus), Dominican Republic, 2008

Stats:

2013: 150 IP, 132 H, 59 BB, 166 K, 10 HR, 3.18 ERA in Double-A (58 IP), Triple-A (77 IP), and MLB (15 IP)

2012: 109 IP, 92 H, 42 BB, 130 K, 8 HR, 3.62 ERA in Complex (4 IP), High-A (76 IP), and Double-A (29 IP)

The Royals have a well-deserved reputation for failure when it comes to converting minor league pitching prospects into major league starting pitchers. When Danny Duffy’s your biggest success story in the eight years since you’ve been hired…you have a problem.

Duffy’s not just the biggest success story, he’s the only success story. Since the 2007 season, 41 pitchers have started a game for the Royals. Duffy was literally the only one of those pitchers who was signed as an amateur by the Royals after Dayton Moore was hired following the 2006 draft.

Ventura is the second, and if he develops into a quality major league starter, it will go a long way towards restoring the reputation of the organization. It’s not simply that they developed a starting pitcher, but how they did it. Ventura was not a highly-sought after teenager in the Dominican; he got a piddling bonus, and didn’t even sign until 2008 even though he was eligible to be signed in 2007. He threw in the mid-80s when he was signed.

Even after he added 10 mph to his fastball, his short stature and command issues had everyone thinking he was a reliever. Two years ago, when he first started getting taken seriously as a prospect, most people in baseball thought he was a future reliever. Even a year ago, there was about a 50/50 divide between observers who thought he would stick in a rotation and those who saw him as a closer.

But after working his way to the majors without any degradation in his performance – his walk rate ticked up in 2012 but held steady last year, and his strikeout rates of 28% the last two years are the best of his career – the industry has come around to the idea that despite his stature, Ventura might be the rare short right-hander to thrive in a major league rotation.

And don’t wave away how rare that is. Since 1980, just eight pitchers listed at 5’11” or shorter have struck out 100 batters (with at least 10 starts) in a season at age 23 – Ventura’s age this year – or younger:

Johnny Cueto (twice)

Tom Gordon (three times)

Tim Lincecum

Mike Hampton (twice)

Mike Leake

Pedro Martinez (twice)

Jesus Sanchez

Fernando Valenzuela (four times)

Sanchez never matched his rookie success and disappeared from the majors quickly, but then, in the fourth start of his career he threw 147 pitches, and was one of the reasons why I developed the PAP system for measuring pitcher abuse back in 1998. Teams are a little more sensible about this stuff now. Okay, a lot more sensible.

But the other guys on that list all turned out pretty well, I’d say. Gordon couldn’t hack it as a starter, but turned into a very good closer for many years. Hampton threw 1261 innings with a 3.44 ERA through his age 27 season before making the fatal mistake of signing a long-term contract with the Rockies. Lincecum won back-to-back Cy Youngs and went to four straight All-Star games before his stuff went south, and he’s still taking the ball every fifth day. Pedro was, well, Pedro. Fernando was Fernando, and might well have been a lot more than even that had the Dodgers not let him average 266 innings a year for six years, from ages 21 to 26.

Cueto missed much of last season with a strained lat muscle, but his arm was fine, and he finished fourth in the Cy Young vote in 2012. Even Mike Leake, who’s both short and a finesse guy, has developed into a good #3 starter and is coming off his best season.

So it appears that the hard part for short pitchers is getting to the majors and sticking for a full season in the first place. If Ventura can get through his rookie year intact and without losing the strike zone, there’s no evidence that his height makes him a risk going forward. Or at least any more of a risk than any other young pitcher.

#1: Raul Adalberto Mondesi

Pos-B: SS-B

H-W: 6’1”, 165 lbs

DOB: 7/27/1995 (18 years old)

Signed: NDFA ($2 million signing bonus), Dominican Republic, 2011

Stats:

2013: .261/.311/.361, 24-10 SB-CS in Low-A (125 G)

2012: .290/.346/.386, 11-2 SB-CS in Rookie (50 G)

I fully realize that I’m going against conventional wisdom here – every Top 100 Prospect list I’ve seen has Mondesi behind either Zimmer, Ventura, or in most cases both. And from the perspective of where the Royals are at right now, I can see the argument that Zimmer and Ventura are more valuable prospects to them – they need young pitching and they need it now, a lot more than they need a shortstop who might be a superstar but won’t be playing for them until 2016.

Maybe Mondesi isn’t the top prospect for the Royals. But if you were starting a baseball team from scratch and could have one of the Royals’ prospects, I think Mondesi is the easy choice.

He’s 18 years old. Again: he’s 18 years old. He’s already played a full season in full-season ball, and was essentially a league-average hitter while playing a stellar shortstop. He has tremendous baseball instincts. He has bloodlines. He switch-hits. He plays the most important defensive position. And – in stark contrast to Zimmer and Ventura – he’s not perpetually one pitch away from losing it all.

But mostly, he’s 18 years old. He was the youngest player (to my knowledge) in Royals history to play in low-A ball, and this year he’ll be the youngest player (to my knowledge) to play in high-A ball, with the exception of Andres Blanco, who played in five games for the Blue Rocks in 2002 at the age of 18, after the Royals jumped him all the way from rookie ball for some reason at the end of the year. Blanco was a defensive whiz and a legitimate prospect, but this was also the Allard Baird era, when prospects could get called up to the majors because they had two good weeks in Double-A; no one saw Blanco as that kind of a prospect. That same year, actually, Zack Greinke pitched in one game for the Blue Rocks at age 18. Greinke probably deserved to be there, but still: Allard Baird, everyone!

Mondesi could well earn a promotion to Double-A at some point during this season, and he’ll be barely 19 when the season ends. Greinke and Billy Butler both played in Double-A at 19, as did Clint Hurdle (who had a monster season – he hit .328/.449/.529 in 1977, and was on the cover of SI the following spring). Bret Saberhagen was promoted to Double-A at age 19 in 1983. But Mondesi would be younger than any of them if he reaches Double-A at any point this year.

Just one player in Royals history has played for them before turning 20: Saberhagen, who was a week shy of his birthday when he debuted in April 1984. The second-youngest was…Blanco, who was 20 years and 6 days old when he debuted in April 2004. Seriously, Allard, what the hell? The difference between Saberhagen and Blanco is the difference between 1984 and 2004. Anyway, Hurdle was third-youngest (20 years, 50 days), and George Brett was fourth-youngest (20 years, 79 days).

At this point, Mondesi has a better than a 50/50 chance at joining the top five; if he debuts with the Royals at any point in 2015, he’ll be on that list. If he debuts before the All-Star Break, he’ll be the youngest player in franchise history.

Blanco wasn’t there on merit. Hurdle had a potentially great career derailed by back injuries. Saberhagen is in the Royals’ Hall of Fame, and Brett is in Cooperstown. Age matters. Youth is a vital asset, and Mondesi has it in spades.

More than just his youth, the breadth of his skill set makes it more likely that he’ll succeed. He’s consider a potential plus defender at shortstop in the majors. He’s not a burner but has enough speed to steal 20-30 bases in the majors. He doesn’t have a ton of power but enough to hit 10-15 homers at his peak. He’s not an extreme contact hitter but isn’t a free swinger either, and could hit .300 at his peak. Even if he doesn’t develop all of his skills, so long as a couple of these skills reach their potential, he’ll be an above-average shortstop in the majors. If all of his skills reach their potential, he’s a perennial All-Star.

And while ordinarily, projecting the rosiest upside for a player is fools’ good, that’s the thing about his age: Mondesi has so much time to develop that it’s actually not to envision a scenario in which he does, in fact, reach his potential in all facets of his game. And possibly even exceed them in some ways. He doesn’t project to hit .320 right now, or hit 25 homers, but he’s so young that he might develop in ways that scouts can’t even foresee.

Put it another way: Mondesi is ten years from reaching the traditional peak age of 27 for a position player. He’s five years from being a 22-year-old. In 2019 he’ll be as old as Mike Moustakas and Alcides Escobar were as rookies. That’s kind of nuts.

The Royals have quite literally never developed a quality shortstop from their own farm system. The best shortstop in team history, Freddie Patek, was acquired from the Pirates when he was 26. Patek is the only shortstop in team history to amass even 10 bWAR in his career with the Royals. (The second-best shortstop in Royals history, according to bWAR, is…Rey Sanchez. No, really.) Escobar is already tied for fifth, and could easily move into second place this year if he has a good season. Jay Bell is eighth, and he played in Kansas City for exactly one year.

As sad as that is, none of those guys were developed by the Royals. Here’s a list of the four best shortstops developed by the Royals:

1. UL Washington

2. Shane Halter

3. Mike Aviles

4. David Howard

I wish I were kidding. Shane Halter is the second-best shortstop the Royals have ever produced. David Howard is the fourth-best.

And I’m being lenient in defining “shortstop” here as anyone who played shortstop in at least 40% of their career games. Both Aviles and Halter would be off the list if I upped the requirement to 50%.

(I should point out that while I’ve tried to track down all the players that the Royals traded away before they debuted in the majors, it’s possible I missed someone. If you know of a shortstop the Royals had in their farm system who went on to success elsewhere, please leave it in the comments.)

Suffice it to say, there’s not only a possibility but a probability that Mondesi will be the greatest shortstop ever developed by the Royals. I’ll get into why that is in my next column. But for now, his ability to display a broad skill set at an age when most baseball players are still in high school makes him the best prospect in the system. If he develops as expected, a year from now he might be one of the best prospects in any system.

He’ll still be just 19.

2014 Royals Top Prospects, Part 4.

#4: Sean Manaea

Pos-T: SP-L

H-W: 6’5”, 235 lbs

DOB: 2/1/1992 (22 years old)

Signed: Supplemental 1st Round (#34), $3.55 million bonus, 2013, Indiana State U.

Stats: None

This is the first spot on the list where I differ from the consensus opinion – every other Top 10 list I’ve seen has placed Manaea behind either Bonifacio, Almonte, or both. And I certainly understand the concern – Manaea had surgery essentially immediately after he was drafted, and while it was both expected and routine, he has yet to throw a professional pitch.

But I’d still rather have him than either Bonifacio or Almonte, for this simple reason: one year ago today, before Manaea’s hip issues surfaced, he was probably the favorite to be selected with the #1 overall pick in the draft. He was the talk of the Cape Cod League in the summer of 2012; left-handed pitchers who throw 98 with an above-average slider tend to get the scouts abuzzing. (He struck out 85 batters in 52 innings on the Cape, the most strikeouts by any pitcher in that league since at least 2000.)

The Royals only had a shot at Manaea because he had a torn labrum in his left…hip, possibly the result of pitching through an injured right ankle. His velocity was down for most of the season, generally pitching in the low 90s – and yet, in a credit to his talents as a pitcher, he still had a 1.47 ERA and was third in the NCAA in strikeouts per nine innings (11.4).

You’ll recall that for about two hours last June, we thought the Royals had lost their minds, selecting Hunter Dozier – who no one saw as better than about the 15th-best player in the draft – with the #8 overall pick. But the Royals had a plan, and when Manaea was still there at #34 – by luck or by shrewd planning, and I’m betting the latter – it fell into place perfectly. Manaea got the bonus money that was awarded for Dozier’s slot and a little more; his bonus is the second-highest in history for a draft pick after the first round.

It’s possible that his velocity won’t pick up even now that he’s had surgery and fully recovered. If that’s the case, his prospect status takes a hit, although being left-handed I’d still imagine he’d project as a major league starter. But if his velocity is back…you’re looking at a pitcher with quite possibly the best stuff of any left-hander in the minor leagues. (Well, until Carlos Rodon signs.) It was a very shrewd gamble by the Royals, and frankly I don’t know why so many other teams elected not to take the gamble.

Remember, this was the second straight year that a pitcher who had the potential to be a #1 overall pick showed injury concerns before the draft. In 2012, it was Lucas Giolito who fell to the #16 overall pick because he sprained his ulnar collateral ligament three months before the draft. He had a real shot at being the first right-handed high school pitcher ever to go #1; instead the Nationals signed him for $2.925 million, and a few months later he underwent Tommy John surgery. He returned last July and made 11 starts in rookie ball, and showed such devastating stuff that he ranked #21 on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect list. (Jason Parks of Baseball Prospectus was even more effusive; his scouting report on Giolito is borderline pornographic. If Giolito reaches the upside Parks projects for him, he might be the best pitcher in baseball.)

Manaea’s recovery might not go as perfectly as Giolito’s has, but if it does, he’s a Top 25 Prospect in the game by mid-summer. I could see him starting in Wilmington, and moving to Northwest Arkansas by June or July – and if everything goes right, he could be ready for a major league audition by September. If the Royals are in a playoff race, adding Manaea’s arm – even out of the bullpen – would be a huge boost to the team when it needs it.

If he’s fully recovered. Which we don’t know yet. But we ought to know soon – spring training is in session and the minor leaguers arrive shortly. I know this much – when they do report, how Manaea looks, and what the radar gun says, is the one piece of information I’m looking forward to getting the most.

#3: Kyle Zimmer

Pos-T: SP-R

H-W: 6’3”, 215 lbs

DOB: 9/13/1991 (22 years old)

Signed: 1st Round (#5), $3 million bonus, 2012, U. of San Francisco

Stats:

2013: 108 IP, 91 H, 36 BB, 140 K, 11 HR, 4.32 ERA in High-A (90 IP) and Double-A (19 IP)

2012: 40 IP, 39 H, 8 BB, 42 K, 1 HR, 2.04 ERA in Complex (10 IP) and Low-A (30 IP)

The decision on whether to place Kyle Zimmer or Yordano Ventura higher was probably the most difficult ranking decision on this list for me. When I started this list, I actually had Zimmer ahead of Ventura. The Top Prospect lists are mixed; some (Baseball Prospectus) have Ventura higher, some (Keith Law at ESPN) have Zimmer higher, some have them almost equal (Baseball America has Zimmer #23, Ventura #26.)

But I’ve decided that Ventura should rank higher, for a pretty simple reason. The #1 concern we have with any young pitcher, no matter how good the stuff, is whether he will stay healthy or not. These concerns are a little more acute for both Ventura and Zimmer, but for different reasons.

In Ventura’s case, the reason is simple: he’s 5’11”. Short pitchers are not expected to be as durable as tall pitchers, and short pitchers who somehow break triple digits are expected to break down more often than pitchers whose long levers present a simpler biomechanical explanation for their velocity.

In Zimmer’s case, the reason is also simple: we’re concerned about whether he will stay healthy because he hasn’t stayed healthy in the past. A minor procedure to remove bone chips in his elbow ended his first pro season prematurely; some mild tightness in his throwing shoulder ended his second pro season prematurely. And now, some mild tendinitis in his biceps will delay his third pro season temporarily.

On their own, none of these injuries are too worrisome. Bone chips happen all the time; pitchers have come back from surgery within six weeks to pitch good as new. The Royals insist that Zimmer was shut down last year out of an abundance of caution, and they insist that they’re taking it slow with him this year because they want him to be able to pitch into September – and if need be, October. That’s a new priority for the Royals, and it’s hard to criticize them for thinking optimistically.

We still know a lot less about how to prevent injuries than we’d like to, and we’re still less able to predict injuries than we’d like to. But the variable that predicts future injury risk the most – by far – is simple: a previous injury history. The concerns about Ventura are purely theoretical; with Zimmer, they’re practical.

And beyond that, I hate to say this, but when it comes to pitchers coming back from arm problems, no matter how mild, the Royals have cost themselves some credibility in my eyes by the way they handled John Lamb.

I’m not blaming the Royals for the fact that Lamb’s career has been all but ruined by Tommy John surgery, a surgery that pitchers return to full health from 90% of the time. I’m not saying it’s not their fault – certainly there ought to be some soul-searching going on in the organization over that – but it’s quite possible that Lamb didn’t take his rehab nearly as seriously as he should have. I don’t know who to blame, or even if there’s any blame to place at all.

But I am blaming the Royals for consistently downplaying concerns about Lamb’s rehab – the decline in velocity when he first returned, the longer-than-usual time it took until he returned in the first place – when it was obvious to anyone that Lamb’s recovery from Tommy John surgery was not proceeding normally. We were told that everything was fine right up until he took the mound last April – 22 months after surgery – and put up a 5.63 ERA in Wilmington, with a fastball that wouldn’t get out of the mid-80s. Maybe it's not fair to blame the Royals for not coming out publicly and saying, "yeah, we're really worried about him", but if that's the case, it doesn't make sense to take anything the Royals say about Zimmer - or any other pitcher with injury concerns - at face value.

So I think it’s reasonable to be concerned about Zimmer until he proves that he’s healthy and proves that the adjustments he made in the middle of last season – from June 29th on, Zimmer threw 44 innings, allowed 25 hits and eight walks, and struck out 63 – were for real. If he does and he does, he could be the ace of the staff when James Shields departs at the end of the year. But at this point I’m a little more convinced that Ventura will fill that role than Zimmer.

2014 Royals Top Prospects, Part 3.

#6: Miguel Almonte

Pos-T: SP-R

H-W: 6’2”, 180 lbs

DOB: 4/4/1993 (20 years old)

Signed: NDFA ($25,000 signing bonus), Dominican Republic, 2010

Stats:

2013: 131 IP, 115 H, 36 BB, 132 K, 6 HR, 3.10 ERA in Low-A

2012: 77 IP, 56 H, 13 BB, 74 K, 2 HR, 1.75 ERA in Dominican (50 IP) and Complex (27 IP)

Almonte had pitched all of 27 innings on the mainland at the end of the 2012 season, but that was enough for Jason Parks, the lead prospect analyst at Baseball Prospectus, to rave about Almonte after seeing him pitch in instructional league – naming him a Top 10 prospect in the system right then and there and even comparing him to a poor man’s Julio Teheran.

While the consensus opinion on Almonte is not quite as optimistic as Parks – who actually ranked Almonte the #46 prospect in all of baseball on his Top 100 list this year – Parks clearly was on to something. Almonte jumped to full-season ball last year and was quietly excellent. He had a 5.40 ERA in April, but from May 1st on he had a 2.69 ERA and had nearly as many strikeouts (119) as hits and walks combined (123). He pairs a low-90s fastball with a changeup that’s already above-average and has the potential to be an out pitch. He needs to settle on a breaking ball and get consistent with it, but he doesn’t turn 21 until around Opening Day, and a good breaking ball is really the only thing he’s missing at this point.

I have him ranked a little lower than most others, because he’s a pitcher who hasn’t gotten out of A-ball yet, and you can't just ignore the attrition rate for pitchers who are four levels from the majors. Also, if it were that easy to throw a good breaking ball, everyone would be doing so. But Almonte is a very, very good prospect, and if he develops without any hiccups – something precious few pitchers in the Royals system have done recently – he should be a #3 starter at the very least. He’ll probably start this year in Wilmington; far less talented pitchers have put up excellent numbers there, so try to temper your excitement if he has a 0.86 ERA into mid-May or something.

#5: Jorge Bonifacio

Pos-B: CF-R

H-W: 6’1, 192 lbs

DOB: 6/4/1993 (20 years old)

Signed: NDFA ($135,000 signing bonus), Dominican Republic, 2009

Stats:

2013: .298/.372/.429 in Complex (9 G), High-A (54 G), and Double-A (25 G)

2012: .282/.336/.432 in Low-A (105 G)

With Wil Myers having been traded, and with Norichika Aoki being a free agent at the end of this season, Bonifacio is the Royals’ right fielder of the future, and they’re hoping that future begins in 2015. It doesn’t seem like an unreasonable hope to me.

Bonifacio has been very young for his levels; he started in full-season ball in 2012 when he was still 18 years old, and he’ll start this season at age 20 – he’s two months younger than Almonte – even though he’s already reached Double-A and hit well in a short stint there. He has a compact swing that many project will add power over time.

That time may not be this year, however. Bonifacio was hitting .325/.404/.452 for Wilmington on May 12th when he got hit by a pitch and broke his hamate bone. He returned six weeks later; after a ten-day rehab in Arizona he returned to Wilmington, and while he only hit .250/.307/.338 in 20 games there, he impressed the Royals enough that he was sent to Northwest Arkansas for the final month of the season, and hit .301/.371/.441.

Hamate bone injuries are notorious for taking a long time to recover completely from; in particular, hitters frequently see their power sapped for a year or even more afterwards. So don’t panic if Bonifacio fails to reach even his career high of 10 homers this season. Given his youth, swing, and the injury, he could easily be the kind of player who goes from hitting eight homers in the minors in 2014 to 15-20 homers in the majors in 2015.

Projecting forward, everything about Bonifacio suggests that he’ll be a league-average right fielder. He projects to hit .270-.280, he projects to hit 15-20 homers, he projects to have average plate discipline, he projects to be an average defender. That might sound like I’m damning with faint praise, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. A league-average player making the league minimum is a huge asset, and if he’s capable of being a league-average guy when he’s 23 or 24 years old, he might be a borderline All-Star when he’s 26 or 27. He’s already reached the high minors, he’s still very young for his level, and he has a job opening waiting for him next year. There are sexier prospects in the system, but there may be none safer.