Dayton, More?

To: David Glass, Owner, Kansas City Royals

From: Rany Jazayerli, Fan, Kansas City Royals

Dear Mr. Glass,

Hi. We’ve never met, though I imagine our paths have crossed on more than one occasion. I know who you are, obviously; you might know who I am, but only because of that little stink I caused in your front office earlier this summer when I had the audacity to be critical of certain members of the organization.

So I guess I should start off by making it clear that you were not one of the targets of my criticism, and in fact, you might be the one member of the front office that I have not been at all critical of in the last three years.

I must admit, that wasn’t always the case – certainly not during the Allard Baird era in Kansas City, not after multiple sources laid bare what was happening behind the scenes. If you’re honest with yourself, I think even you’ll admit that you and your son interfered with baseball operations on many an occasion, and with an almost uniformly bad outcome.

Whether it was nixing a trade of Mike Sweeney to the Angels which would have brought the Royals several top prospects; or cutting the draft budget at the last minute, which forced your team to draft a bunch of college seniors and then offer them $1000 to sign; or whether it was famously giving Baird 36 hours to move Jermaine Dye, resulting in the disastrous Neifi Perez trade, just a few months after you vetoed a trade of Dye to the Blue Jays for a rookie named Vernon Wells – let’s be honest, much of the blame of the Allard Baird era can be laid at your feet. (And the three incidents above are just a sampling; there are other, even more egregious examples of meddling that I have multiple sources for.)

But since you hired Dayton Moore over three years ago, you have been, dare I say it, a model owner. You have opened your checkbook repeatedly, not just to sign major league free agents, but to sign high-priced amateur talent, both in the draft and on the international market. You have given Moore the financial flexibility to hire as much front office talent as he felt he needed, a luxury that was on full display when Moore hired the well-respected Mike Arbuckle, who had been in the running to replace Pat Gillick as the GM in Philadelphia, to a job position that didn’t even exist – Arbuckle’s scouting eye was deemed valuable enough that he was worth creating a job for.

And most importantly, you have empowered your GM to run the organization without interference. They say that in business, success has two ingredients: hire the right people, and then stay the hell out of their way. For whatever reason, too many businessmen – and we’re talking about businessmen successful enough to be able to afford a baseball team – seem to forget this simple rule when it comes to building a major league organization. But for the last three years, you have followed this rule to the letter. Two years ago, when I first started this blog, I wrote a positive review of your new approach to ownership. Despite the team’s struggles since, I stand by my conclusion that you have become a net positive force in the owner’s box, and I hold you essentially blameless for the disaster that the 2009 season has become. This isn’t a popular position to take among the fan base, trust me.

So I hope that in reading the following, you keep in mind that this isn’t just another critical screed from a disgruntled fan who’s had it in for you for a long time. I truly – and some might say naively – believe that you are committed to building the Royals into a winning organization again, and that you are as frustrated by what’s happened this season as the rest of us.

Which is why I think it’s important for you to get another fan’s viewpoint to the unexpected news that you have granted Dayton Moore a contract extension. I believe I speak for virtually all Royals fans, and virtually all national baseball writers, whether they are Royals fans or not, when I say: Why?

Why on earth do you feel compelled to give Moore a contract extension in the midst of what has become, if not the worst, then certainly the most disappointing season in the history of the franchise?

Now, let me make it clear: I am not advocating that you fire Dayton Moore. On the contrary, I feel – and once again, I am taking a position that is not popular with Royals fans today – that Moore should be allowed to keep his job for another season.

It’s undeniable that virtually every personnel decision that Moore has made since the end of last season has backfired, and while a few of those decisions looked good on paper, the majority of them were panned at the time, both by myself and by the general baseball establishment. Now, a general manager is going to make controversial moves – and as long as some of those moves work out, you can forgive the ones that don’t. In Moore’s case, every controversial move (I use “controversial” as a euphemism for “other baseball teams were openly mocking him”) has has failed miserably, and in some cases spectacularly. It’s been a bad, bad year for your front office.

Even so, I think Moore has earned the right to keep his job for another season, if only to prove whether or not he can learn from his mistakes this season, and to give him the opportunity to make amends. A year ago, Moore had earned the faith of most of the Royals’ fan base, and the respect of most of the other 29 major league teams, with a few bold and savvy moves (signing Gil Meche to a five-year deal, trading Ambiorix Burgos for Brian Bannister, grabbing Joakim Soria in the Rule 5 draft) that had helped the Royals to a 75-87 record in 2008. He made a few mistakes along the way, like trading J.P. Howell for Joey Gathright, and surrendering actual baseball talent for Tony Pena Jr. But no GM is perfect; as Moore himself said (quoting Arbuckle), “If we’re not making any mistakes, we’re probably not being very aggressive.”

No one would argue that Moore hasn’t been aggressive. And up until about a year ago, his aggressiveness had done more good than bad for the franchise. Now, it so happens that over the past year Moore’s best-laid plans have blown up in his face like they were designed by the Acme corporation, but I submit that no single season – not even a season as bad as this one has been – ought to wipe out the impression that Moore had made in his first two full seasons as GM. I believe he deserves another chance.

But there’s a hell of a difference between “he deserves to keep his job” and “he deserves an extension.” Particularly a four-year extension. There are three more Olympic Games scheduled between now and the end of Moore’s new contract.

I asked the question “why?” above, and that was meant to be a rhetorical question, but maybe it shouldn’t. There must be a legitimate reason why you would decide, in the midst of one of the worst 100-plus-game stretches in team history, that the man who put this team together ought to be rewarded for his efforts. Particularly since, according to Moore himself, you were the one who initiated the contract talks. Here’s what I came up with:

1) You were afraid that if you didn’t extend Moore’s contract, that he would bolt to another team after next season. I refuse to believe that a man smart enough to run one of the world’s largest corporations would actually be worried about this contingency. Once upon a time, Dayton Moore was the most sought-after GM candidate in the country. Now is not that time. Once upon a time, Moore was respected by most of his peers. After the train wreck of the 2009 season, here’s what one front office person had to say about Moore to my colleague Kevin Goldstein:

“It’s not like they were going to suddenly contend, so I have no idea why they rushed him to the big leagues,” commented another team executive, as far as the Royals’ decision making with Gordon’s development. “But I also have no idea why they traded Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez for non-tenders, or why they signed Jose Guillen, Horacio Ramirez, Sidney Ponson, and on and on and on.”

Mind you, Goldstein hadn’t asked about Moore – he had asked about Alex Gordon. The criticisms of the Royals’ front office came unbidden. Three years ago, Moore commanded respect. Today, if this quote is any indication, he commands only derision.

I’m sure you know this, which is why I’m sure you had other reasons to extend Moore’s contract. Like:

2) You felt it was necessary to issue a public vote of confidence for your GM, in order to quell the growing groundswell of sentiment in favor of his firing. You wanted to eliminate any distractions.

This might be part of your motivation, but I don’t really buy it either. Sometimes an organization will need to do this for an embattled manager, to make it clear that the manager has the full support of his superiors, in order to head off a potential mutiny – a mutiny of the players, not a mutiny of the fans.

A manager needs to command the respect of his players above all else, and nothing is more damaging to a manager’s reputation than the sense that he doesn’t have the backing of his bosses. But for a general manager, who doesn’t interact with his players on a day-to-day basis, that respect is much less meaningful. If I’ve got a good relationship with my boss, I don’t really care what my relationship with my boss’s boss is like.

So I don’t really buy this rationale either. Which leaves:

3) You want to make it clear that, by extending Dayton Moore’s contract through 2014, you are committed to building a premier organization in the long term, and you want to make sure that the spectacular failure of the 2009 season does not distract your front office from that long-term goal.

Now we’re getting somewhere. If this is indeed your purpose, it’s a defensible one.

For one, I concede that it would be risky for you to let Moore go into the off-season with just one more season remaining on his contract. Few things are more potentially destructive to a rebuilding franchise than a GM who’s worried about his job security. When your general manager’s interest don’t align with your franchise’s interests, you run the risk that your GM will make bizarre short-term decisions that can hamstring the franchise for years to come.

(The classic example of this – a little history lesson here, if you don’t mind – is Dave Littlefield’s notorious trade-deadline acquisition of Matt Morris. On July 31^st, 2007, the Pirates were 42-62 and 14.5 games out of first place, but Littlefield – whose job was on the line – made the inexplicable last-second decision to trade for Morris, a 32-year-old starting pitcher under contract through the 2008 season (at over $10 million a year). Morris had a 4.35 ERA at the time, but was operating on fumes – opponents were hitting .302 against him at the time. The Giants were just looking for a team that was willing to pick up a portion of his salary, and were as surprised as anyone when Littlefield not only agreed to pick up the entire contract, but gave up two prospects – including Rajai Davis, who’s turning into a fine outfielder for the A’s – for the privilege. [Two prospects for a declining major leaguer that no one else wanted. Sound familiar?] Morris would go 3-8 with a 7.04 ERA for the Pirates before he was released the following April; by that time the man doing the releasing was new GM Neal Huntington, as Littlefield was fired on September 7, 2007, in no small part because just six weeks prior he had made a deal which cost his organization close to $15 million for a below-replacement value pitcher.)

While Dayton Moore has made a ton of mistakes this year, the overriding theme that drove his worst errors was the mistaken assumption that the Royals could contend in 2009. I’m not blaming him for that assumption (I shared it to some extent) so much as the execution of his plan, but the point is that if Moore didn’t have job security past 2010, the temptation would be there for him to operate this winter under the short-term goal of building a contender for 2010. We’ve seen that movie before, and it sucked.

So if you decided to extend Moore’s contract because you wanted to make sure that the front office kept its eye on the prize – the prize being a winning team in 2011 and beyond – then I support the decision. And certainly, as a fan I would much rather that you maintain a strong commitment to someone who has convinced you to spend big money on amateur talent, than to clean house and bring in a new GM who has fresh ideas but who doesn’t have access to your checkbook.

But this is a very qualified endorsement. It’s great that you want to insure continuity and a long-term perspective in your front office. But keeping the same general manager personnel in place only makes sense when your general manager knows what the hell he is doing. Frankly, the evidence of that is still lacking. We know that your general manager can spend your cash; we don’t know that he can spend it wisely. I can’t imagine that you look at the millions of dollars Moore convinced you to give Kyle Farnsworth, or Horacio Ramirez, or especially Jose Guillen, and think that you got your money’s worth. I’m sure that you see those transactions as mistakes that should not be repeated.

Unfortunately, Moore’s public comments have yielded no evidence that he feels that way. To question Moore’s decisions is to doubt The Process, and if someone in the media dares to criticize any of his decisions, he risks getting shut out from the organization completely. (I’m not referring to my own situation with ballclub – I’ve heard from national media members who have had similar experiences with the team.)

In all honesty, what I find more concerning than the mistakes made by the Moore administration this year is the sense of arrogance that has accompanied these decisions – an arrogance clothed in insecurity. Virtually every person who has covered the Royals regularly this season – print, radio, TV, whatever – has been struck by just how ridiculously thin-skinned the front office is. Which is a problem. Not because it makes it harder for the media to do their job (it is, but that’s not a problem for anyone but us), but because a front office that can’t handle criticism is a front office that doesn’t broker dissent. It’s a front office that’s unwilling to admit when it’s made a mistake. It’s certainly a front office that’s incapable of learning from its mistakes.

This should trouble you greatly, because you’ve just promised to pay Dayton Moore a lot of money on the notion that he will learn from the mistakes he’s made this season. And my greatest worry about this extension is that Moore will regard this endorsement from his owner as a validation of The Process. Moore has defended the Royals’ performance this year as the consequence of unexpected injuries and unexpectedly poor performances, rather than as an indictment of whatever Process cooked up the idea of Mike Jacobs as an everyday first baseman or Kyle Farnsworth as a highly-compensated set-up man. Moore’s public defense of his actions is understandable; it’s not easy for a GM to admit when he’s wrong, and it’s even harder to do so without offending some of those very players he acquired. But it’s one thing to say it, and it’s another thing to believe it. I worry that, having been rewarded with a contract extension despite his track record, Moore will start to believe his own words, and assume that he earned a contract extension because of his track record.

As fans, we are not privy to the conversations that you had with Moore before this contract was signed. It’s quite possible that Moore bared his soul to you, that he took full responsibility for the disastrous product he put on display this season. It’s possible that he admitted to you that he hasn’t put enough emphasis on statistical analysis, that he underestimated the importance of plate discipline, that he made a mistake in putting together an expensive bullpen full of hard throwers who don’t actually get anyone out. I can only hope he said those things to you, because he certainly won’t say those things to us. It’s not reassuring at all that in his most recent interview, he once again repeats the canard that “I know things would have been drastically different if we would have stayed healthy.” Unless Coco Crisp is the most valuable player in the history of baseball, this is simply untrue.

It’s telling that, on the day the contract extension was announced, we saw the very best and the very worst of the Dayton Moore administration on display. At the major league level, the Royals lost a howler to the A’s, 8-5, in a game which featured two of the dumbest moments by a Royals player in a decade full of them. Three years after he was hired, the major league team Moore has assembled is not just as bad as any roster Allard Baird assembled, it’s also just as embarrassing.

But that night, in Wilmington, 20-year-old southpaw Mike Montgomery, the Royals’ supplemental first-round pick last season, faced 22 hitters, only one of whom reached base safely, and 12 of whom struck out. It was the finest outing in the pro career of arguably the Royals’ #1 prospect. As promising as Montgomery is, he’s unlikely to make any kind of impact at the major league level until 2011, if not later. Moore has been committed to building the franchise with high school talent, preferring to take the long road to the top. Your decision to let Moore finish what he started, to at least see the fruits of his farm system fully ripen before making a final decision on him, is laudable.

Or at least, it’s laudable so long as you don’t wait until 2014 to make that final decision. If the Royals haven’t made substantial improvement at the major league level within two years – and by “substantial improvement” I mean at least a .500 team – then it won’t matter if Moore’s contract extends to 3014, he needs to go. Sticking with a failing GM out of a false sense of loyalty is nearly as bad as not providing your GM with adequate support from the start.

If you don’t believe me, just look across the Truman Sports Complex, where Lamar Hunt stayed loyal to Jack Steadman even as the Chiefs had just two winning seasons from 1974 to 1988. When Hunt finally let Steadman go and hired Carl Peterson to run his franchise, the team’s fortunes turned around immediately. The Chiefs would make the playoffs seven times in eight seasons from 1990 to 1997, but after 1997 the talent dried up, and after treading .500 for the next nine years the Chiefs cratered in 2007 – but Hunt stuck with Peterson up until the day he passed away, and while his son Clark finally brought in a new GM to clean house, the mess Peterson left behind may take years to clean up.

Sam Mellinger points out that by granting Moore this extension, you have made it clear that this is Moore’s show to run – either into the playoffs or into the ground – and that the results going forward are entirely on your GM. I agree, to a point. If the Royals continue to flail and Moore gets canned in 2011, then you can argue persuasively that you gave Moore every opportunity, and every resource, to get the job done. But if the Royals continue to flail and Moore still gets to keep his job for the next five years, then you must share in the blame for failing to hold your GM to the standard of excellence that you profess to have.

I guess what it boils down to is this: I’m fine with Dayton Moore getting a four-year contract extension…as long as it’s really a one-year extension with three option years. The money is guaranteed either way, but let’s be honest: you could fire Moore tomorrow and you’d only be out about $5 million, or about what you’re paying Farnsworth this year alone.

And that’s the point: the financial commitment to Moore is less important than the commitment you’ve made to let Moore spend far more of your money on other personnel. As long as you understand that the contract only obligates you to pay Moore through 2014, and not actually to employ him, then the downside is limited.

Like so many other Royals moves, if handled correctly this transaction has the potential to be a shrewd gamble, and if handled incorrectly this transaction could be an enormous albatross on the organization. Given the team’s history, sad to say, I know which one I’m betting on. But I also know which one I’m hoping for. For a Royals fan, hope always trumps reason. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be Royals fans.

Thanks for reading,

Rany Jazayerli.

Zack Greinke, Part III: Return of the Jonah.

Alright, let’s talk about something positive for a change. I’m halfway through a piece breaking down the Dayton Moore contract extension rumors, but it’s a lot more fun to talk about Zack Greinke instead.

As everyone knows, Greinke struck out 15 batters last Tuesday, becoming the first pitcher in the 40-year history of the franchise to do so. Most every Royals fan knows about the fact that no one on the team has ever hit more than 36 homers, but the fact that no Royals pitcher had ever struck out 15 batters has long been a nearly equally embarrassing factoid for me. Just as the Royals have never had a truly dominant power hitter, the lack of a 15-K start points to a lack of a truly dominant power pitcher throughout the franchise’s history.

Steve Busby was, briefly, and he probably would have reached the 15-K plateau at some point, but his arm was shredded after just three seasons. Dennis Leonard was perhaps the closest the Royals have come, at least in 1977, when he struck out 244 batters, a franchise record that has never been challenged until this year. That season Leonard struck out 13 twice, 12 once, 11 once, and 10 twice, but never more than that. And in recent years, Kevin Appier certainly had the ability – he once struck out 13 batters in just 5.2 innings – but his propensity for high pitch counts made it difficult for him to stay in long enough to amass 15 strikeouts.

But on one otherwise non-descript Tuesday evening in yet another wasted Royals season, Greinke washed away 40 years of history, and all you need to know about Greinke is that I was neither surprised nor all that impressed by his accomplishment. Okay, I was impressed in the sense that Greinke is always impressive, but there was no sense of astonishment or wonder from my perspective. On the contrary, the way Greinke has thrown since about this time last year, I thought a 15-strikeout start was almost inevitable. I didn’t think he could have a start like this – I thought he would have a start like this, and it was just a matter of time. It just so happened that August 25^th was the date. Greinke has made the extraordinary look absolutely commonplace, and there’s no greater compliment I can pay him than to say that when he set an all-time Royals record, I didn’t even flinch.

But I must say, for him to follow up his 15-strikeout performance with a one-hit shutout…for him to follow up a performance never before duplicated by a Royal with a performance that was last done in 1995...okay, even the Baseball Jonah’s biggest fan is impressed by that. If Greinke makes the extraordinary look commonplace, he also makes the inconceivable look merely impressive.

You may have seen the list of pitchers who have followed up a 15-strikeout performance with a one-hit complete game in their next start. It’s a short list – Greinke is just the fourth pitcher to do so, after Pedro Martinez in 1999, Randy Johnson in 1998, and Vida Blue in 1971. That’s two sure-fire Hall of Famers and Blue, who might be in the Hall of Fame today if he weren’t too good for his own good: that season, Blue went 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA and won the MVP award – and threw 312 innings at the age of 21. He would never pitch that effectively again, and he won only 18 games after his age 32 season. (He’s still the answer to that great trivia question: who’s the last switch-hitter to win the AL MVP award?)

I think it’s telling that Greinke once again shows up on a short list with Pedro Martinez, given that I had compared the two extensively early in the season. As it turns out, Greinke could not keep up with Pedro’s pace from 1999-2000, which is less a failure of Greinke than it is a testament to how otherworldly Martinez was during those two seasons. Martinez’s dominance extends to this comparison as well, because while Greinke followed a 15-strikeout start with a one-hitter, he whiffed just five batters on Sunday afternoon. Martinez struck out 15 batters in eight scoreless innings in Seattle on September 4^th, but the one-hitter he threw in his next start remains one of the most dominant pitching performances of all time; he gave up a solo homer to Chili Davis, but he also struck out 17 that day. His game score was 98; since 1954, that is the highest game score for a pitcher who surrendered a run (and didn’t pitch into extra innings.)

But if Greinke can’t quite match up to peak Pedro, he still stands taller than every other pitcher in baseball today. After a period of time where Greinke looked almost mortal, Sunday’s start extends a stretch where Greinke has almost returned to the unhittable form he showed at the start of the season.

In Part 1 - his first ten starts - Greinke was 8-1 with an 0.84 ERA, and allowed just 54 hits and 12 walks in 75 innings. But from May 31^st – yes, the day I flew to Kansas City to see him in person – through August 8^th, he was positively mortal, with a 3.84 ERA in that span. He was betrayed by his teammates on both ends. Defensively, his ERA was inflated by a defense that could not turn batted balls into outs. In 84 innings, Greinke walked just 21 batters and struck out 86, and allowed only seven homers, but thanks to his defense he gave up a whopping 96 hits in that span. And offensively, the Royals scored just 42 runs in 13 starts (12 of those in one game), saddling Greinke with a 3-6 record.

But much as Greinke pitches better the deeper he works into a ballgame, he’s pitching better as the season enters the home stretch. Part 3 of Greinke's season started on August 14th, and over his last four starts Greinke has allowed just 15 hits in 31 innings, with 35 Ks against just seven walks, and a 1.74 ERA in that span.

He now leads the AL in ERA by 45 points; he has snatched the WHIP crown back from Jarrod Washburn; he leads the league in fewest homers per nine innings; he’s second to Justin Verlander in strikeouts; he’s second to C.C. Sabathia in innings pitched. He had five Ks and just one walk on Sunday, and his K/BB ratio actually went down.

Yes, he’s just 13-8. But I think that those who are writing off his chances of winning the Cy Young Award are doing so prematurely. I don’t simply mean that it’s premature to write Greinke’s chances off because there’s still time for him to win his last six starts and get back into this thing. I mean that even if the season ended today, there’s a very good chance that his weak showing in the historically-decisive win-loss department might get trumped by his across-the-board dominance in every other category.

For one thing, while Greinke has only 13 wins going into September, he’s still just two behind Sabathia, and just one behind Verlander, Josh Beckett, and Scott (!) Feldman. There’s a reasonable chance that no one in the AL will win 20 games. Those who are saying that Greinke’s case is hopeless because starting pitchers can’t win the Cy Young award with just 16 or 17 victories ignore the fact that this is shaping up to be a year where the gap between 16 wins and the league lead just isn’t that great. Brandon Webb won the NL Cy Young in 2006 with just 16 wins…in large part because somehow, 16 wins was enough to lead the league. If Greinke wins 16 games and Sabathia wins 19, there’s a good chance that Greinke’s edge in every other category can overcome Sabathia’s edge in wins. If Sabathia or someone else tips the magic “20” barrier, the psychological impression that will make on some voters will be much harder to overcome.

Second, while Greinke may not have a lot of wins, he has every other counting statistic on his side. He has 190 innings, just two behind Sabathia; no one can accuse him of not being a workhorse. With his performance on Sunday, he now has more complete games (6) and more shutouts (3) than any other pitcher in the major leagues. This isn’t a Chris Carpenter situation, where voters will have to judge the merits of a pitcher who might have been more effective on a per-inning basis but wasn’t able to answer the bell every fifth day. When it comes to Cy Young voting, availability matters almost as much as ability; Greinke has both.

(It's worth noting that according to ESPN's Cy Young Predictor, based on a formula Bill James presented in The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, Greinke has edged back into first place.)

And finally, we have to acknowledge that award voters are, generally speaking, a lot more savvy than they used to be. I have made the mistake of giving BBWAA members too much credit in the past – I still can’t believe Tim Raines has appeared on barely a quarter of Hall of Fame ballots the last two years – but I honestly think that Cy Young voters are more inclined to consider the extenuating circumstances for Greinke than they would in the past.

I’ve pointed this out before, but 16 years ago, Kevin Appier led the AL in ERA by 38 points, won 18 games, finished second in the league in WHIP and hits per nine innings, and by any advanced metric you chose was clearly the best pitcher in the AL. He finished a distant third in Cy Young voting, behind Jack McDowell and Randy Johnson. McDowell had a 3.37 ERA – he wasn’t in the league’s top 10 – but went 22-10, and no other AL starter reached 20 wins. Johnson led the league in strikeouts, but he went 19-8 with a 3.24 ERA, compared to Appier’s 18-8 and 2.46 ERA. Apparently that one extra win trumped more than 75 points of ERA.

(Not only that, but in McDowell’s 34 starts, the White Sox went 23-11 overall. In Appier’s 34 starts, the Royals went…23-11. So Appier didn’t miss out on the Cy Young because his team wasn’t as successful as McDowell’s team was – he missed out on the Cy Young because some of those team wins were awarded to his reliever. He was denied the Cy Young, in other words, because of an accounting decision.)

The reason I point this out is that the most galling aspect of Appier’s disappointing finish in the Cy Young vote is that he received just one first-place vote, from then-Rangers beat writer Phil Rogers. That’s right – neither writer from the KC chapter of the BBWAA gave Appier a first-place vote. Both of them swallowed the conventional wisdom about pitcher wins hook, like, and sinker.

Well, this year I have it on good authority that one of the Cy Young ballots goes to this guy. Times have changed, and I’d like to think for the better. There’s still a lot of baseball to be played, and a memorable September in either direction could render this whole discussion moot. But I think this is going to be a very close Cy Young vote. And my hope is that while Greinke may not win a majority of first-place votes, he may receive a plurality of them, as the anti-Greinke voting bloc gets split up between two or three different candidates (Scott Feldman for Cy Young!)

Ultimately it really doesn’t matter if Greinke wins; awards are fun, but success on the field is what matters. But since we’re not having much of the latter, it would be nice if we could have some of the former to keep this season from being a total loss.

Now that the Joe Mauer-for-MVP train has left the station, it’s time to hop aboard the Zack Greinke-for-Cy Young express. So get out there and remind people that Greinke is, indisputably, the best pitcher in the American League. Remind people that his 13-8 record is the result of having the worst run support of any qualifying major league starter. Remind people that his 2.32 ERA, as impressive as it is, is actually inflated significantly by pitching in front of the defense with the worst defensive efficiency in all of baseball. (This is an underplayed theme, by the way – everyone is harping on his win-loss record, but it’s not hyperbole to suggest that, with an even average defense behind him, Greinke’s ERA could be in the 1’s right now, and it would be almost impossible to deny him the Cy Young vote.)

With five weeks left in the season, it’s far from clear whether Greinke is the AL’s Cy Young pitcher. What is clear is that he is the AL’s best pitcher, and just as clear is that he is the property of the Kansas City Royals for three more seasons after this one. Whatever else you want to say about the 2009 season, if 2009 is also the season when Zack Greinke took his place among the elite players in the game, it wasn’t a total loss.

Minor League Update, Part 3.

I probably should apologize for posting as infrequently as I have; it’s been a struggle to find the motivation to write even once a week. But I won’t. This is what happens when you cover the most disappointing team in the history of the Royals, a bold statement for a franchise that has averaged over 94 losses a season over the past 12 years.

The Royals are 47-76 after today’s debacle, which puts them on pace to lose exactly 100 games this season. Less famously but perhaps more tellingly, if the Royals lose 100 games, they will tie an American League record for the most losses by a single franchise over the span of an intact decade.

The Royals have lost 927 games and counting during the 2000s*. They have blown past the Pirates (903 losses) and the Rays (901) as the losingest franchise of the decade. In the history of baseball, only six teams have lost more than 927 games in a decade, and the Royals are almost certain to pass at least three of them by the end of the year. Here they are:

Philadelphia Phillies, 1920s: 962

St. Louis Browns, 1930s: 951

Philadelphia Phillies, 1940s: 951

Philadelphia Phillies, 1930s: 943

San Diego Padres, 1970s: 942

Boston Red Sox, 1920s: 938

Kansas City Royals, 2000s: 927 and counting

(*: Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the 2000s is this: the decade is now about 96% complete, and there is still no consensus as to what call it. A hundred years ago they called the 1900s the “aughts”, but that’s not going to fly in the 21^st century. I call it the “2Ks”, personally, but that’s hardly a consensus term. I would have thought we’d have a word in place by 2002 or 2003.)

When it comes to major league futility, no team can hold a candle to the Phillies, who from 1918 to 1948 had one winning season – 1932, when they went 78-76. The Royals would need to suck for another 16 or 17 years to match that. But within the confines of the American League, the Royals have a chance to stand alone. If the Royals lose 100 games exactly, they will finish the decade with 951 losses, tying the 1930s Browns as the losingest team of a decade; if they lose 101 games, they will have the AL record all their own. Trust the Process.

(The all-time record for losses over any 10-year stretch is safe; the Phillies lost 1016 games between 1936 and 1945. But the Royals can go for the AL record (the then-Devil Rays lost 972 games from 1998 to 2007) next year.)

This season, the Royals have designed a roster that not only is hurtling towards 100 losses, but a roster with few players that can be expected to improve in the future. The Royals have employed 37 different players on their roster this season. Not only have none of them made their major league debut this season, but just one – Bam Bam Butler – is under the age of 25. Trust the Process.

And to top it off, we have a front office that’s so fearful of the stigma of another 100-loss season that they’re afraid to promote deserving minor leaguers, because God forbid that the Royals should have to endure the inevitable struggles of young players to adjust. Playing poorly for the Royals, evidently, is a prerogative reserved for veterans only. Kila Ka’aihue’s .400 OBP might not adjust well to major league pitching, so best to stick with Mike Jacobs and his .304 OBP, whose bat is so dangerous that Trey Hillman elected not to use him against a right-handed pitcher in the ninth inning on Saturday night with the tying run on base.

The Royals are not only carrying eight relievers – maybe three of whom belong on a major league roster – they’re carrying three catchers. This means that on a night when Jacobs is the DH, the Royals have exactly one – ONE! – bench player who isn’t a catcher. One. On Saturday night, Brayan Pena was the DH – apparently Hillman is going to evaluate Pena’s catching skills from the batters’ box – so the Royals were blessed to have both Jacobs and Willie Bloomquist on the bench. And despite losing in the ninth inning, and despite having Bloomquist to take over at shortstop or right field in case the game went to extra innings, Hillman still elected to keep Jacobs on the bench while Yuniesky Betancourt and Josh Anderson made outs.

So pardon me for being a little apathetic. Judging from the lack of traffic at virtually every Royals website out there, I’m not the only one. A month ago, at least, Royals fans cared enough to write about the Royals, even if everything they wrote was critical. I warned after the Yuniesky Betancourt trade that anger would turn into apathy, and that’s exactly what happened.

I doubt the Royals have gotten the message yet, not when 33,811 came out to see the team play on Saturday night. Never mind that half of them were Twins fans, and that most of the other half were there to see the new ballpark. If the front office thinks that their fan base is willing to start over again next year like 2009 never happened, well, they’re going to be in for a rude shock when season ticket renewals go out this winter. We don’t Trust the Process, Dayton. And we don’t appreciate being talked down to by a GM and a manager who are the architects of the biggest clusterf**k this franchise has ever assembled.

And on that cheerful note…let’s go back to the minor leagues. You know, the place where the Royals can spend $6 million sign Eric Hosmer, but then can’t spend money to have a new pair of prescription glasses delivered overnight. Allard Baird had two really good excuses for the Mickey Mouse operation he was the nominal head of: he had no money to spend, and he had to contend with ownership that liked to meddle in baseball operations. Dayton Moore has neither excuse. Not that it will stop him from coming up with one.

A quick note on Wil Myers and Chris Dwyer first. The one saving grace of this administration has been the willingness to spend big-market dollars on amateur talent (and, equally impressive, getting ownership to share in that willingness.) After a very promising draft in 2008, the Royals have a chance at the same this year, grabbing three potential Top-40 picks despite not having a second-round pick.

I’m a little skeptical of Dwyer; while he was a good grab in the fourth round, he was considered more of a supplemental first round or even second round talent than a true first-rounder, and the money he got ($1.45 million) is a Top 25 bonus. I’m also a little concerned that he’s already 21, partly because there’s not much projection left, and partly because you have to be a little concerned about the teachability of a 21-year-old college freshman.

Myers, though, looks like the real deal. The rumor is that if Aaron Crow had not been available with their first pick, the Royals would have taken Myers then. He’s a legitimate first-round talent, and if he can stay behind the plate, he fills a desperate need for up-the-middle talent in the organization. A lot is riding on Myers; he was the only position player the Royals drafted in the first eight rounds. He may not prove to be worth the gamble, but he’s exactly the kind of gamble the Royals need to be making.

Oh, and regarding Aaron Crow…I expect him to sign by the end of September. We’ve heard word at the radio station that Crow and his agents (the Hendricks brothers) are not on the best of terms. Frankly, Crow should be pissed off at his agents. They turned down $3.5 million last year, and after a year in purgatory, he’ll be lucky to get the same bonus he turned down from the Nationals. The rumor is that the Royals are offering him $3 million, and sticking to it. They absolutely should, and more than that: they should publicly issue a deadline after which the offer gets taken off the table.

Crow and his agents need to realize that the draft game is a game of leverage, and he doesn’t have any. If a high school player doesn’t sign, he can go to college in three years and continue to develop his baseball skills. Even the best high school players will benefit from college competition. But the best college players are almost major league-ready, so for them, the alternative to signing – playing independent ball – does nothing to develop their skills. Crow turns 23 in a few months, and aside from a few starts with the Fort Worth Cats, he hasn’t thrown a pitch in anger in fourteen months. At some point he’s going to realize that the $3.5 million he turned down is gone for good, and he’ll sign. If his agents don’t realize it, well, they might not be his agents for much longer.

13) Henry Barrera, RHP, 23. Barrera is a hard-throwing reliever who was a last-minute addition the Royals’ 40-man roster last winter; after Barrera struck out 78 batters in 58 innings for Wilmington last year, the Royals were worried he might get picked in the Rule 5 draft. This year, Barrera didn’t debut until June 2^nd because of arm problems, made four appearances for Burlington over the span of 10 days…and hasn’t pitched since. You do the math. Grade: D-.

14) Tyler Sample, RHP, 20. Sample was a third-round pick out of a Colorado high school last summer; he had some of the best pure stuff of any prep pitcher, including an excellent knuckle-curve, but was also very raw, which showed when he walked 29 batters in 27 innings in rookie ball. This year, he’s moved up to short-season Burlington (not the same as low-A Burlington), and has held his own; for the season he has 20 walks and 42 Ks in 42 innings, with a 4.10 ERA and just two homers allowed. He’s not that young – he turned 19 just three weeks after he was drafted – so while his performance is nothing to be ashamed of, neither is it something to be all that excited about yet. Grade: C+.

15) David Lough, OF, 23. Finally, an unqualified success story. Lough was an 11^th-round pick out of a tiny college in Pennsylvania in 2007, where he was a multi-sport athlete. He showed a wide array of talents for Burlington last season – 16 homers, 11 triples, 12 steals – but his overall numbers (.268/.329/.455) weren’t that impressive for a 22-year-old in low-A ball. This year, his athleticism has helped him to a breakout season; he hit .320/.370/.473 in 65 games for Wilmington, then after a promotion to Double-A has hit even better (which isn’t unusual, remember): .337/.380/.541.

For the season he’s hitting .327 with 13 homers, 24 doubles, and is 17-for-25 on the basepaths. A lack of walks – just 21 – is a big black mark against him, but it’s worth noting that he’s been a lot more patient since he was moved to the leadoff spot a month ago; he’s drawn 7 walks in 67 at-bats in August. He’s not going to be a star, but he strikes me as someone who can be a decent everyday outfielder, particularly if he can handle centerfield. Comparisons to David DeJesus are in order; like DeJesus, Lough stands just 6’0”, and can handle centerfield but is a plus defender in a corner. The Royals are going to go into the winter looking for a centerfielder again, but rather than overpaying for a short-term solution they really ought to consider giving Lough a shot. Grade: A.

16) Derrick Robinson, CF, 21. Dubbed the team’s centerfielder of the future ever since the Royals gave him $1 million as a fourth-round draft pick in 2006, Robinson is one of the fastest players in organized baseball, which doesn’t change the fact that he’s never learned how to hit. Last season, Robinson hit .245/.316/.322 for Wilmington, which wasn’t good but was something to build on for a 20-year-old in high-A ball, particularly given that he didn’t start switch-hitting until after he signed. The thinking of scouts was that if things started to click for Robinson, they could click fast.

Unfortunately, we haven’t seen any clicking this year, as Robinson is hitting .237/.288/.313 in a repeat engagement at Wilmington. He’s still fast as the wind – after stealing 62 bases last year, he already has 65 this year – but you can’t steal first base. Well, you sort of can if you’re willing to take four pitches outside the strike zone, but after doing so 51 times last season, Robinson only has 35 walks this year.

Robinson’s grade gets boosted a half point because while it’s woefully premature to say so, it’s possible something clicked for him this month. Robinson didn’t hit a single home run in 2008, and had none in 2009 either – until August, as he’s gone deep four times and is slugging .488 this month. It’s probably just random variation, but if you’re the Royals you have to hold onto optimism wherever you can find it. Grade: D+.

17) Jason Taylor, 3B/1B, 21. Taylor was the Royals’ second pick after Luke Hochevar in the 2006 draft, and was suspended for the entire 2007 season by the Royals for undisclosed reasons. He returned last year and while hit just .242 for Burlington, he showed a rare combination of power (17 homers), plate discipline (81 walks) and speed (40 steals). Expected to take a big step forward this season, he instead confirmed the rumors regarding his suspension in 2007 when MLB issued a 50-game suspension to Taylor for violating the substance abuse policy (read: marijuana). Since coming back Taylor has shown only flashes of last year’s promise; he’s hitting .253/.339/.380 in a repeat engagement at Burlington. Even if avoids pot in the future, he’s got a lot of catching up to do to regain even a glimmer of prospect status. Grade: D.

18) Julio Pimentel, RHP, 23. Tore his ulnar collateral ligament during spring training; out until 2010 following Tommy John surgery. This one’s easy. Grade: F.

Didn't See That Coming.

The minor league update is proceeding at an even more glacial pace than I expected – at this rate I’ll be done sometime around Thanksgiving – so rather than waiting until I’m done to tackle other topics, let’s interrupt the proceedings to talk about today’s news. Kyle Farnsworth made his triumphant return* to the Royals’ roster today, and to make room for him, Alex Gordon was optioned to Triple-A.

*: On Opening Day of this year, the Royals had seven relievers on their roster: Joakim Soria, Jamey Wright, Juan Cruz, Ron Mahay, Kyle Farnsworth, Robinson Tejeda, and Doug Waechter. Horacio Ramirez, who started the year in the rotation, replaced Waechter when Waechter went on the DL in April. John Bale started the season on the DL, but he was activated on May 24^th when Tejeda went down. Roman Colon was called up the same day. Ramirez was released on June 13^th and Tejeda returned a week later. Bruce Chen was called up on June 27^th when Farnsworth was hurt, and would later join the bullpen.

Since June 27^th, here is the combined performance of every Royals reliever except for Joakim Soria:

114.2 IP, 127 H, 88 R, 81 ER, 74 BB, 86 K, 19 HR, 6.36 ERA.

Since June 27^th, the only change made to the bullpen has been the activation of Doug Waechter on August 6^th when Juan Cruz went to the DL. Waechter fit right in, allowing three runs in 1.1 innings before going back on the DL. And now Farnsworth takes his place.

The Royals’ middle relief corps has, over the past seven weeks, delivered a performance rarely before witnessed in the annals of baseball history. They have sucked in every conceivable way and in a few inconceivable ones. And over the past seven weeks, Dayton Moore has not felt fit to make a single change to his personnel. The only change made was made because an injury forced his hand (or Cruz’s performance forced him to declare an injury) – and instead of trying a fresh face he just reactivated another one of the guys he brought in over the winter – and who was so recovered from his own injury that he went back on the DL a week later.

And now Kyle Farnsworth is back. Meanwhile, not once has Dayton Moore shown the conviction to give one of the Royals’ minor league products – the products of the farm system he has invested so much effort and money in over the past three years – an opportunity to see if they can improve on the middle relief corps’ six-plus ERA.

That might be the most scathing indictment I can think of regarding Dayton Moore: the Royals are 46-72, chugging towards the worst record in baseball, and we can’t even point to all the rookies on the roster as both an excuse for that performance and a hope that the performance will improve in the future. Consider this: it’s August 18^th, and NOT ONE ROYAL HAS MADE HIS MAJOR LEAGUE DEBUT THIS SEASON. That’s a stat you might expect from a contending team with a huge payroll and stars at every position. That’s not something you expect from a last-place team that is supposedly building for the future.

I guess The Process – I capitalize it out of respect – involves not just losing, but losing with a bunch of veterans while keeping promising minor leaguers like Kila Ka’aihue and Chris Hayes right where they are. Unless The Process includes “purposely tanking this season to get first dibs on Bryce Harper”, color me confused.

Wow, that was one long tangent…back to Gordon. When the season started, the Royals’ hopes for contention were predicated on three young former first-round picks taking big steps forward. As disastrous as this season has been, it’s important to remember that two of those guys have, in fact, done so. Zack Greinke is the best pitcher in the American League, and Billy Butler is hitting .298/.353/.480 and is on pace for over 50 doubles. Two out of three isn’t bad at all; Greinke is under contract through 2012, Butler through 2013, which gives the Royals plenty of time to build a winning roster around them. This season hasn’t been a total loss.

But it has been a total loss for Gordon. Gordon hit .260/.351/.432 last year, which was still a disappointment by the standards we had set for him, but was actually a pretty good season: his OPS+ was 110, and by comparison Butler’s OPS+ this year – his breakout season – is 119. Even if Gordon didn’t take a big step forward to becoming the middle-of-the-lineup presence we thought he would be on draft day, he was already an above-average player – and if he took just a small step forward, turned a few strikeouts into walks and hit a few more home runs, he’d be one of the five best third basemen in the league.

Instead, he got hurt. Injuries happen, and while it was frustrating that it came at such an inopportune time, his hip problem didn’t seem likely to alter his long-term course. He raked the ball during his minor league rehab – in 13 games he hit .350/.491/.650 – and I was confident that he would return the same hitter as before, and hopefully better.

Instead, he’s hit just .227/.310/.333 since returning, and .198/.300/.313 overall. At times he’s looked like he’s rounding into form, as when he hit two doubles and two homers in a five-game span last week; and at times he’s looked totally lost at the plate, as when he’s gone 0-for-11 since. His walk totals are a refreshing change of pace on this team, but I can’t really say he’s got good plate discipline, not when he continues to swing at pitches low and away and then take pitches right down the middle. Gordon might strike out looking more often than any Royal ever.

And frankly – and this incredibly sad to write – I like this move. I would have liked this move a lot more had it come TWO YEARS AGO, when he deserved it, and when a Triple-A refresher might have kept his career from stagnating the way it has. But better late than never. Gordon has earned this, and the Royals have to stop shying away from holding their most promising young players accountable when they don’t perform as expected.

The really interesting implication here has to do with service time. If Gordon was not sent down, he’d be eligible for free agency after 2012. By getting sent down, the wheels are in place to delay free agency by a year. There’s about a 12-day gap between the number of calendar days in a full MLB season and the number of days required to qualify for a full year of service. However, that’s not the determining factor here. The determining factor is that if a player is optioned to the minors but returns in under 20 days, he gets full credit for the service time he missed during his option.

This is critical, because the last day of Omaha’s season is September 7^th. If Gordon is recalled on September 8^th, he will have spent 21 days in the minor leagues. The margin is so thin here that issues like “does today count as a minor league day or major league day?” and “does he have to spend MORE THAN 20 days, or AT LEAST 20 days in the minors?” matter. As I understand the CBA, he needs to be in the minors for at least 20 days, and he’s likely to be there for 21.

So don’t pay attention to Moore when he says there are no financial implications here. Not that I’m complaining. If this move works – if Gordon’s bat comes around – then delaying his free agency until 2013 will be HUGE. If it doesn’t work, then frankly his service time doesn’t matter anyway. But as I see it, this move has the potential to resurrect Gordon’s career, and delays his free agency by a year. And if it hurts the Royals on the field in the meantime – putting them in a better position in the Bryce Harper sweepstakes – so much the better. What’s not to love?

Minor League Update, Part 2.

Let’s dispense with formalities and just pick up where we left off last week:

6) Danny Duffy, LHP, 20. The consensus opinion is that Duffy is having a terrific season for Wilmington and is one of the brightest lights in the organization. I don’t entirely disagree with that, but I think it’s important to sound a note of caution. Just as we have to make allowances for Moustakas because Wilmington is such a tough hitter’s park, we have to discount Duffy’s numbers for being the product of the same ballpark. Those numbers are good – 3.51 ERA, 95 K and 31 BB in 100 IP – but not great, even for a 20-year-old.

Look at this line from a former Wilmington left-hander: 10-6, 2.55 ERA, 134 H in 162 IP, 154 K, 33 BB, 8 HR. Looks like a pretty good pitcher, huh? What if I told you this pitcher didn’t turn 20 until late in the season? You’d think he was a stud prospect. And once upon a time, Jimmy Gobble was a stud prospect.

Let’s try another left-hander, and this one spent his entire season at Wilmington at age 19: 9-7, 3.60 ERA, 145 IP, 142 H, 53 BB, 142 K, 8 HR. This line once belonged to Chris George. George and Gobble had eerily similar careers; both were supplemental first-round picks, both had great seasons for Wilmington the year they turned 20, both were in the Royals’ rotation two years later (George at age 21, Gobble a few weeks after he turned 22)…and both turned out to be massive busts.

I’m not saying that Duffy is destined to follow their career paths – at one time both George and Gobble projected as #3 starters in the major leagues, so obviously something went wrong. But Duffy’s repertoire is just similar enough to give me pause. His fastball is just average, maybe a tick above average; even with the makings of a good curveball, the potential is there for him to be just good enough to get bombed in the major leagues. He hasn’t done anything wrong this year, but he hasn’t taken a big step forward either, and at some point he needs to take a big step forward out of the shadow of the guys who came before him. Grade: B.

7) Danny Gutierrez, RHP, 22. If I had written this piece a few weeks ago, my evaluation of Gutierrez would be very different. Gutierrez broke out last season as one of the most intriguing arms in the organization; the former 33^rd-round draft-and-follow showed an improved fastball and dynamite curveball on his way to striking out 104 batters in 90 innings for Burlington last season. But his debut this season was delayed by an arm injury – continuing a trend, as he missed a month last season with a fracture in his pitching elbow – and then had a fight with the organization over his rehab process.

I confess to not having a handle on all the details; if I understand things correctly, he also took on Scott Boras as his agent during this time frame, and Boras has already picked a fight with the Royals over their rehab process (the Carlos Beltran affair of 2000). One way to look at this is that Gutierrez has some growing up to do. Then again, given my opinion of the Royals’ training staff, it’s hard to be too upset with the kid.

In any case, Gutierrez finally regained his health and was assigned to Wilmington two weeks ago. Working out of the bullpen, he allowed just three hits and one walk in eight innings, striking out 10…and then earlier today he made his first start for the Blue Rocks and threw four hitless innings, with a walk and 3 Ks. We’re only talking about 12 innings, but those are 12 damn impressive innings. He seems healthy again if nothing else, and his upside rivals anyone in the organization. I’ll give him a Grade B- for now, though I’m tempted to just give him an incomplete.

8) Carlos Rosa, RHP, 24. Rosa has long been one of the most well-regarded arms in the organization, but his perpetually fragile elbow – he had Tommy John surgery in 2005, and his forearm strain last season spooked the Marlins into refusing to take him instead of Leo Nunez in the Mike Jacobs deal – finally forced the Royals to give up on him as a starter and move him to the bullpen full-time. Given his stuff, this was expected to be an easy transition; back in March I imagine the Royals thought he’d be firing his bullets as Soria’s setup man by now.

Things haven’t gone according to plan. He had a terrible May (22 hits, 11 walks, 20 runs in 15 innings), and after working his way back into dominant form in July, he’s struggling again, having allowed 13 hits in just six innings this month. For the year he’s struck out 64 batters in 59 innings, but he’s also allowed 58 hits, 29 walks, and six homers, for an ERA of 5.19. It’s possible he’s not completely healthy yet; it’s also possible that all the repeated injuries have sapped away some of his stuff. He’s still a good bet to be a part of the Royals’ bullpen at some point next year, but the dream of Rosa as a shutdown reliever is fading fast. Grade: D+.

9) Kila Ka’aihue, 1B, 24. If you want to be charitable, you can say that the Royals were right: he’s not as good as he was last year, when he hit .314/.456/.628 and smacked 37 homers between Double-A and Triple-A.

The most remarkable part of his success last season was that he hit all those homers while striking out just 67 times. This year, his K rate is up (from 17% of his at-bats to 21%), and as a result his batting average has dropped over 50 points, to .261. The other weird thing about his performance last year is that he hit 37 homers but just 15 doubles, which is an unsustainable distribution; even the best power hitters hit nearly as many doubles as homers. This year, Ka’aihue is getting extra-base hits at nearly the same pace (11% of his at-bats this year, 13% of his AB last year), but the distribution is totally different: 26 doubles, 1 triple, 14 homers. As a result, his slugging average is just .450.

But if the Royals were right that he’s not as good as he was last year, I’m still right that the Royals would have been better off playing him at first base than trading for Mike Jacobs. His average may have dropped, his power may be off, but if there’s one thing Ka’aihue can do consistently, it’s work the strike zone. He has 85 walks and a .398 OBP. Using Clay Davenport’s work, we can translate Ka’aihue’s numbers into what he would have hit at the major league level: .245/.373/.426. Jacobs is hitting .236/.309/.432. I have absolutely no faith that the Royals will ever give Ka’aihue a shot, but if they don’t have a use for a minimum-wage 1B/DH that hits .245/.373/.426, I’m sure there are a lot of teams that would be willing to give him that opportunity. Ka’aihue has been a little disappointing this year – I figured his power numbers would drop, but not quite this much – but just as we all knew he wasn’t as good as he looked last year, I think he’s a little better than he’s looked this year. And he hasn’t looked bad this year. Grade: C+.

10) Blake Wood, RHP, 23. Another disappointment. Wood shook off back issues that slowed him down in 2007 last season, and was dominant for Wilmington before a promotion to Double-A, where he struggled (5.30 ERA) but had a healthy strikeout-to-walk ratio of 76 to 32 in 86 innings. Expected to take a big step forward this season with the Naturals, Wood stagnated instead; he had a 5.27 ERA in 13 starts, and struck out just 46 batters in 72 innings. He’s been out since June 21^st with “inflammation in his right elbow”. The combination of disappointing performance record and arm issues is a tough one to overcome. Grade: D.

11) Johnny Giavotella, 2B, 21. The square peg in the round hole that was the Royals’ 2008 draft, Giavotella was the rare college hitter selected in a draft that was typically heavy in high schoolers and pitchers. You had to figure the Royals saw something special in Giavotella to draft him in the second round, and he hit the ground running, getting assigned to a full-season league in Burlington last season and hitting .299/.355/.421. He’s spent this season in Wilmington, and is hitting .259/.367/.376.

Giavotella is the rare draftee who was young for his grade level – he didn’t turn 21 until a month after he signed, and just turned 22 last month. Away from Frawley Stadium he’s hit .270/.382/.425, and he has terrific command of the strike zone, with 62 walks against just 47 strikeouts. He doesn’t have much power, and his defense is still a little rough at second base, but he might be my favorite sleeper prospect in the organization.

I think the comparison I made when he was drafted last year was that he could develop into “Chuck Knoblauch without the speed”, and I still think that holds. He’s not that fast (although he does have 19 steals this year) and he doesn’t hit for power, but he does everything else well. I have a feeling that he’s going to have a breakout year for Northwest Arkansas next season, and this time next year we’ll be wondering why the Royals won’t make room for their new second baseman. Grade: B.

12) Kelvin Herrera, RHP, 19. Signed out of the Dominican when he was 16, Herrera was called up from short-season ball to Burlington late last season, and at age 18 held his own in the Bees’ rotation. There was a lot of hope that Herrera would be the star Hispanic pitching prospect the Royals haven’t had in, well, ever. Quick question: can you name every above-average starting pitcher the Royals have ever signed and developed out of Latin America? No? Congratulations – you’re correct! In forty years, the best Latin American starter the Royals have ever developed is probably Hipolito Pichardo. Hipolito Pichardo. If you disqualify Pichardo because he was mostly a reliever, you’re left with Runelvys Hernandez. Runelvys Hernandez. (Actually, the answer is probably Melido Perez, who won 78 games in the majors – but only one for the Royals before he was ill-advisedly included in the trade for Brian Bannister’s dad.)

Herrera started the year in extended spring training, then made his debut with five scoreless innings for Burlington on May 6^th. He hasn’t pitched since. I’m having trouble finding out the reason, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s not a good one. Grade: D pending more information.

More to come…

Minor League Update, Part 1.

First off, I owe you guys an apology. On our radio show this Monday, Jason Anderson and I started the show by promising to stay positive for the duration of the show…and then we spent the next hour ripping the team from every direction. It wasn’t intentional, I assure you. It’s just that the abyss has become so deep that I simply can’t find an angle that portrays the Royals in a positive fashion. Some people are so ugly that no trick of lighting can flatter them.

This is where we’re at: three months after the Royals were 18-11 – the front office has made sure that none of us will ever forget the 2009 Royals’ record after 29 games – they have the worst record in the American League, and the second-worst record in the major leagues. Call me an unrepentant optimist, but even the most hardened cynic could not have imagined in May – or even a month ago – that we’d be in the running for the Bryce Harper Sweepstakes. I never would have imagined that, come August, I’d be scoreboard watching the Nationals in the hopes that Washington might go on a hot stretch (five in a row, baby! Just five games back!), or rooting for their negotiations with Stephen Strasburg to go fubar.

Instead, if the season ended today the Royals would draft in the top 3 next year – meaning they were one of the three worst teams in baseball this year – for the fifth time in six seasons. They’d draft in the top 2 for the fourth time in six seasons. Three years after we thought we hit bottom, three years after Dayton Moore told us where the parade would be held, we’re once again forced to subsist on nothing but dreams of a Tuesday in June – and hoping that this time we strike gold with a Top-3 pick.

And on that note, and because I’m trying to find that something positive, it’s time to take a long look at the minor leagues. As horrible as the team that Dayton Moore has fashioned is, he wasn’t brought in simply to fix the major league roster – he was brought in to fix the organization. And one of the reasons I was so positive about his hiring for so long was that he seemed to determine to fix the organization the right way – by expending every possible resource towards building the farm system. Over the last three years the Royals have spent all kinds of resources on the minors, not just in terms of money – they spent a major-league record $11 million on their draft picks last season – but in terms of things like having a seventh minor league team, and opening a new academy in the Dominican (granted, something that was in the works before Dayton was hired).

The Royals dug themselves into the hole they’ve been in since 2004 by neglecting the farm system for 15 years. (From 1993 to 2001, the Royals had fifteen first-round picks – and Mike MacDougal has turned out to be the best of them. Mike Macdougal.) It was going to take years of successful drafting and development to reverse that trend, and if you told me in 2006 that the Royals would continue to suck for three or four years before the farm system burst forth with talent? That’s a trade I would have made – if the farm system burst forth.

So that’s ultimately the question: while we’ve all been watching the team in Kansas City burn to the ground, have the Royals been quietly planting the seeds for the team’s renaissance in places like Springdale and Wilmington and Burlington? If so, all the sins of 2009 may be forgiven; if not, well, judgment is nigh.

Unfortunately, the most recent organization-wide assessment of the Royals’ farm system came from Baseball America three weeks ago, and it was less an assessment than an indictment. The Royals were listed as one of three organizations “headed down” based on how their top prospects have fared since the start of the season, including this comment: “Not much has gone right in the minors, from modest seasons by power plants Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas to spotty pitching at upper levels.”

Well, then. If that’s indeed the case – if the Royals have endured as much disappointment in the minor leagues as they have in the majors – then it’s time to turn out the lights. But is that a fair assessment? There’s only one way to find out.

Over the next few posts, I’m going to take a look at how the Royals’ top 30 prospects from before the season – as judged by Baseball America – have fared this year. For each player I will also assign a letter grade based on whether they appear to have a brighter future today than they did in March. I’ll go with a B- curve – a B- grade means the player has essentially the same outlook today as they did before the season. Keep in mind that the grade takes into account the player’s standing – a B- grade for your #1 prospect is a fine grade, because it means that he still projects as a #1 prospect. On the other hand, an A- grade for your #30 prospect means that he might have elevated his stock into the 11-20 range – he’s gone from a long-shot to make the majors to maybe projecting as a bench player, hardly something to get excited about.

Here we go. Each player’s age is as of July 1^st, 2009:

1) Mike Moustakas, 3B, 20. Right from the start, we’ve got a disappointment. Moustakas hit .272/.337/.468 last season and led the Midwest League in homers, the first teenager to do so in over a decade. Promoted to Wilmington this year, he’s hitting just .254/.297/.419, and the reviews of his defense at third base are unflattering enough that it’s likely he’ll have to change his position again before he reaches the majors.

In his defense, we would like to call Frawley Stadium to the stand. The Blue Rocks’ home ballpark is one of the best pitchers’ parks in the minor leagues, and when evaluating Wilmington players, that must be taken into account. At home, Moustakas is hitting .201/.262/.356; on the road he’s hitting .295/.326/.468, which is eerily similar to his numbers from last season.

I’ve said this many times before, but the ballpark effect for the Blue Rocks is so significant that hitters promoted from A-ball to Double-A typically hit better at the higher level. Just this season we have two terrific examples of this, in Jeff Bianchi (.300/.360/.427 in Wilmington, .325/.371/.450 for Northwest Arkansas) and David Lough (.320/.370/.473 vs. .331/.368/.500).

My favorite example of this is Carlos Beltran, who in 1997, at age 20 – the same age as Moustakas right now – hit a puny .229/.311/.363 for the Blue Rocks. The following year, he returned to Wilmington and hit .276/.364/.427, was promoted at mid-season and hit .352/.427/.687 in Double-A. The following year he was the AL Rookie of the Year. Johnny Damon hit .316/.399/.462 for Wilmington when he was 20 – the following year he hit .343/.434/.534 for Wichita and was considered the best prospect in baseball when he was promoted to Kansas City in August.

So it’s way, way, way too early to write off Moustakas as a bust. My concern isn’t with who Moustakas is, it’s with who he’s not. He’s not Rick Porcello, who’s an above-average major-league starter at age 20. He’s not Matt Wieters, who’s enjoying a solid season as the Orioles’ rookie catcher after entering the season as the #1 prospect in baseball. He’s not Jason Heyward, who doesn’t turn 20 until next week and is hitting .422/.505/.722 since being promoted to Double-A last month – with Wieters now in the major leagues, Heyward has taken his spot as the #1 prospect in baseball. Porcello, Wieters, and Heyward were all selected in the top half of the first round in 2007; most observers considered Porcello the second-best player in the draft after David Price, and most considered Wieters third. The Royals decided they couldn’t afford either player – for all the money they’ve spent in the draft the last few years, they chose an awfully inopportune time to save money. And instead of considering Heyward, who BA dubbed the steal of the draft from the moment he dropped to #14 overall, the Royals took Moustakas.

(An underappreciated side effect of the Royals’ disdain for statistics is that they don’t seem to understand the critical importance of age and how it relates to draft picks. The team frequently drafts players who are old for their grade, whether high school senior or college junior. Case in point: Moustakas was born on September 11^th, 1988, meaning he turned 18 just a month after he signed. Heyward and Josh Vitters, who the Royals nearly took instead of Moustakas before changing their mind at the last moment, were both born in August, 1989.

A year of development doesn’t mean much when comparing a 27-year-old to a 28-year-old – but when comparing a 17-year-old to an 18-year-old, it’s critical. It remains to be seen whether the Royals should have taken Vitters or not – after a monster start in low-A ball this year, Vitters has struggled since joining Moustakas in high-A ball. But Heyward, like a couple of other 17-year-old hitters drafted in the first round (Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez), has made a quantum leap in development from age 17 to age 19, and now sits at the doorstep of the major leagues. If the Braves make the playoffs, he could be their version of Andruw Jones, the preternatural rookie who makes a postseason impact before he’s legally eligible to partake in the champagne bath afterwards.

Oh, and Moustakas’ teammate at Chatsworth High, fellow first-rounder Matt Dominguez, was also born in August 1989. Dominguez just got promoted to Double-A as well.)

But getting back to Moustakas…he has been disappointing this year, certainly, but not critically so. It’s not hard at all to envision a scenario in which he goes to Springdale next spring, hits .300 with power, and becomes a trendy Rookie of the Year candidate for 2011. But next year is crucial for him. He’s been passed by enough fellow first-round picks as it is. Grade: C-.

2) Eric Hosmer, 1B, 19. The second of the Royals’ Twin Towers, Hosmer is having an equally disappointing season. Hosmer was sent to Burlington and was expected to exceed Moustakas’ performance there last year, but instead hit just .254/.352/.382, with a puny five homers in 79 games. He struck out in nearly a quarter of his at-bats (68 of 280), and scouts were critical of the fact that he stood too far away from the plate, making him vulnerable to outside pitches. He changed his stance last month, started to hit a little better, and the Royals decided to promote him to Wilmington despite his struggles – in 14 games so far, he’s hitting .208 with just two extra-base hits. He does take walks, but the light-tower power that we were promised has yet to materialize outside of batting practice.

If it’s too early to write off Moustakas, it’s way too early to write off Hosmer…but as I said on draft day last year, if the point of drafting Hosmer is that in three years he’ll be one of the best hitters in the minor leagues, why not draft the college guy who will be one of the best hitters in the minors the day he signs? The Royals passed on Justin Smoak, who fell to the 11^th overall pick, and Smoak is hitting .295/.407/.460 this year and is already in Triple-A.

At the beginning of the year, there was a lot of controversy over which prospect rated higher – BA had Moustakas #1, but BP had Hosmer #1. We’re going to have the same debate this off-season, for all the wrong reasons. Unless Hosmer starts to rake a little for the Blue Rocks this month, he’s had the slightly more disappointing season, and the relative rankings of these two players won’t change. Grade: D+.

3) Danny Cortes, RHP, 22. Yeah, because I really want to relive this again. Cortes was having a truly disappointing season – his walks were way up, his strikeouts down, despite repeating Double-A – before he was traded for Yuniesky Betancourt. (If Alexei Ramirez is the Cuban Missile, can Betancourt just be the Cuban Crisis?) Since the trade he has made four starts with the Mariners, and continues to walk guys (13 in 20 IP), but at least he’s getting the strikeouts (22). It’s easy to forget: he’s just 22, younger than Aaron Crow, and he still has the power stuff, he’s just lost his command. I have this sinking feeling that he’s going to arrive late next year as a shutdown setup man for the Mariners. For metamorphosing into Betancourt, I’m tempted to give him an F- grade, but based on his actual performance, Grade: D.

4) Michael Montgomery, LHP, 20. Like so many other Royals prospect, he was old for his draft class – he actually turned 20 on July 1^st, just a year after he was drafted – but unlike so many others, he’s developing nicely. In 12 starts for Burlington he had a 2.17 ERA, with 52 Ks in 58 innings, before he was promoted to Wilmington – he’s allowed three runs in nine innings so far. When Cortes was traded there was a lot of talk about Danny Duffy being the Royals’ best pitching prospect, but I still think Montgomery is better. His velocity is a tick better – sitting in the low 90s as opposed to touching the low 90s – and his body has a little more projection than Duffy’s does. The Royals have a ton of high-upside arms in their farm system, but Montgomery might have the highest upside of them all. If Moustakas and Hosmer don’t get it going soon, Montgomery’s a legitimate candidate to be rated the #1 prospect in the organization at year’s end. Grade: B+.

5) Tim Melville, RHP, 19. The Royals signed Melville, a Missouri high school product, in the fourth round last year when he fell from his projection as a late first-round pick because of signability concerns. His selection may well represent a tipping point in the history of the Royals’ draft – the moment when the Royals went from being one of the victims of the draft’s economics to one of the aggressors. Before Melville, the last time the Royals got a first-round talent this late in the draft was probably Bo Jackson in 1986.

Melville started the year in extended spring training, but debuted with Burlington in May and has been consistently good, not great, all season. In 15 starts he’s thrown 68 innings, allowed 64 hits, walked 29, struck out 65, and surrendered 6 homers. There’s some hint that he may be improving as the season goes on – in his last six starts he has a K/BB ratio of 35/11 in just 28 innings. The perfect Grade: B- guy – he’s exactly what we thought he was at the beginning of the year. That’s a compliment.

More to come…