Prospect Rundown, Part 4.

(Before we get to the meat of this article, in our continuing effort to bring you all things Chris Hayes, here’s a nice piece on Disco in Saturday's Chicago Tribune, including a few choice comments from yours truly. Bonus: this article ran on the front page of the paper - not the sports section, the front page - along with a large picture of Hayes in full Royals uniform that you can see here. Be afraid, Chicagoans - the yokels from the Midwest are taking over. Next step: please welcome your new alderman, Zack Greinke.)

As discussed last time, the Royals have had a truly frightening track record of developing left-handed pitchers throughout their history. But due to a combination of good scouting and aggressive spending on big-money prospects, the Royals have no fewer than five lefties who have reasonable odds of becoming long-time pitchers in the major leagues.

We’ve already covered Mike Montgomery, the consensus best of the lot. It might be a little audacious to project Montgomery as a future #1 starter, at least unless he develops more velocity (which some still think may happen.) But at the very least he looks like a good #2 starter, comparable to a Danny Jackson or Jose Rosado in terms of effectiveness if not repertoire.

Here, in no particular order, are the other four:

Noel Arguelles: Arguelles is the $7 million cherry on the top of what was already a formidable amount of pitching depth in the minors. He was signed in December to a five-year contract after defecting from Cuba in the summer of 2008.

There’s always a risk in signing international free agents to big-time contracts, but that risk is multiplied when those free agents hail from Cuba. It’s not hard to understand why. Take Arguelles – aside from the occasional international tournament, he’s done all his pitching in Cuba, in a domestic league where the average talent level is comparable to a short-season league in the minors, in a totalitarian state off-limits to scouts, where he’s dependent on the government for everything from his daily meals to his glove to the right to travel out of the country with the national team. The Royals based their decision to spend $7 million on him largely by watching him pitch in showcases set up by his agents after he defected.

So it’s not surprising that Cuban defectors come with their own unique set of challenges and mysteries – even their listed date of birth can’t be taken at face value. This is why some Cuban players have proven to be bargains (Kendry Morales) and some quickly proved to be huge busts (Andy Morales).

So there’s no question that Arguelles has the most risk of any of the lefties on this list, even as he has the most upside. And he does have the most upside – he has true #1 starter potential, something not even Montgomery can claim at the moment.

Here’s what we know about him: his fastball runs around 93 mph, and his second-best pitch is a changeup with good deception. His curveball has a slider-like tilt, and the Royals are working with him to develop the pitch. He also has the body type of a potentially overpowering pitcher. When I spoke with a member of the front office, the first word they used to describe Arguelles was “physicality”. I even heard a C.C. Sabathia comparison – at 6’4”, 225 pounds, he’s not quite as big as Sabathia, but he’s also more athletic.

He gets high marks for his coachability, although of course he has to adapt to massive cultural differences like every other Cuban player. For that reason, the Royals expect to move him slowly, likely starting him at Wilmington even though he has the stuff to start in Double-A. He’s listed at 20 years old; if that really is the case, he has plenty of development time ahead of him, and there’s no sense in rushing him at all.

Before he’s even thrown a pitch, Arguelles cracked the final spot on Baseball America’s Top 100. Certainly, there’s risk here, but it’s worth noting that most of the true busts that have come out of Cuba have been hitters, while the pitchers have been generally (but not always; see Alain Soler) as advertised. This makes sense – it’s very difficult to evaluate a hitter against sub-par competition, whereas you can formulate an opinion about a pitcher just from seeing him throw on the side. If the radar gun says Arguelles throws 93 in warmups, he’s not suddenly going to throw 88 just because a hitter stands in.

Arguelles has inevitably been compared to Aroldis Chapman, the Reds’ $30 million bonus baby, given that they’re both lefties who defected around the same time. Chapman throws a legitimate 98-99, but his off-speed stuff isn’t as polished as Arguelles’ is. While no one would argue that Arguelles is the better prospect, the difference between them isn’t nearly as great as the difference in their signing bonuses would have you believe.

The Royals are being very cautious with Arguelles, understandable given his youth and the fact that he needed some rest after showcasing his arm from the time he defected until the time he signed. So we haven’t seen any game action from him this spring. By proxy, then, the fact that Chapman is impressing people above and beyond expectations for the Reds may be a good sign that Arguelles will do the same thing when the Royals take the bridle off him.

Danny Duffy: Duffy is the most experienced pitcher in the group; he’s the only one who’s been in the organization more than two years. Duffy was the Royals’ third-round pick in 2007 out of a small inland California high school, and a good piece of scouting. (He makes up for the fact that the Royals’ second-round pick that year, Sam Runion, looks like one of the bigger busts in recent memory.) He works with a standard-issue fastball-curveball combo, with his changeup still being a work in progress.

Duffy has known nothing but success since turning pro. Last year, he had a 2.98 ERA for Wilmington, allowed just 108 hits and 41 walks in 127 innings, while striking out 127 – and those were easily the worst numbers of his career. Nonetheless, he was passed by Montgomery as the Royals’ top pitching prospect last year, because on a pure stuff basis he projects more like a #3 starter than an ace.

I will admit: I’ve always been a little skeptical of Duffy, because the more success he has pitching in the minor leagues, the more he reminds me of Chris George and Jimmy Gobble, both guys who overmatched hitters in the low minors but whose stuff was too short to succeed in the majors. I shared these concerns with a scout a few months ago, and he alleviated my concerns a little, pointing out that Duffy’s fastball ranges from 88 to 92, which is at least an average major-league fastball from a lefty, and harder than either of the G-men threw.

Duffy’s short-term outlook is clouded by an elbow strain he suffered earlier this month, evidently after he tried to impress the Royals in his first major league camp by throwing too hard too soon. I’ve been told his elbow is “intact and structurally sound”, but he’s going to miss at least a month of the season as a precaution. If he’s healthy, he should slot right into the Double-A rotation.

The temptation is there to rush him, as he’s close to major-league ready – indeed, he was talked about as a dark-horse bullpen candidate out of spring training before his sore elbow cropped out. I think the Royals would be better served taking it slow with Duffy, despite his polish. Alternatively, given the other lefties he’s competing with, and the fact that the major league rotation isn’t suffering from a lack of candidates to begin with, Duffy ought to be a trade candidate if and when the Royals decide to trade some of their pitching excess for some bats.

Chris Dwyer: Dwyer was drafted out of the third round last year as the rare draft-eligible freshman. He was held back a year in school early on, and then made up another year in high school after transferring to a private academy, which is why he didn’t enter college until he was 20. He’s actually the oldest of the lefties on this list, as turns 22 next month.

All that means that there isn’t much projection left in Dwyer’s body. The Royals drafted him anyway – and gave him late first-round money ($1.45 million) to sign – because they think his stuff is plenty good already. He throws 90-94, and his curveball has a lot of downward bite. His changeup is also a plus pitch when he’s on. The problem with Dwyer is his command, which is spotty, as are his mechanics.

In his one season in college, you can see his strengths and flaws on his stat line – he struck out 95 batters in 86 innings, but also walked 33 and allowed 11 homers, leading to an unimpressive 4.92 ERA.

The best way to describe Dwyer is that he has the combination of stuff and rawness you’d typically find in an 18-year-old – only he’s 21. (Think of him as the Dee Gordon of pitchers.) He’s a pure scouting pick, but how he develops may tell us more about the Royals’ development process than about their scouting department.

John Lamb: While Dwyer is a college pitcher with the profile of a high school guy, Lamb is a high school pick with the polish of a collegiate arm. He’s not so much a scouting find as a medical find, as the Royals banked he would regain his stuff after he suffered an injury before the draft. (The Royals have done this a few times in recent drafts, most notably with Keaton Hayenga, a late-round pick the Royals gave $300,000 to in 2007 even though he tore his labrum sliding into a base before the draft.)

Lamb had broken his elbow in a car accident, and the Royals reasonably gambled that once healed it would present no further problem. It hasn’t, and his stuff returned as good as new. He returned to action last summer and struck out 71 batters in 69 innings.

He throws his fastball 90-91, but in the words of one front-office source, “he throws strikes with his fastball more consistently than anyone else in the system.” His curveball and changeup are still developing, but both project as plus pitches. Lamb’s best attribute is simply that “he can really pitch” – not only does he throw strikes, but he knows when to add and subtract, he keeps the ball down in the zone, he never gets rattled, etc.

He’s still only 19, and while he’s listed at 6’3”, I was told he’s actually 6’5”. Either way, there may be some projection left there. He’s the guy whose name came up when I asked the Royals for a sleeper among their pitching prospects. If there’s one guy in the system that could vault his way onto a Top 100 Prospects list next season, it would be Lamb.

If I were to rank the five lefties in terms of upside, it would look like this:

1. Noel Arguelles

2. Mike Montgomery

3. Chris Dwyer

4. John Lamb

5. Danny Duffy

Ranking them in terms of the odds that they’ll develop into at least a #3/#4 starter in the majors, I’d rank them like this:

1. Mike Montgomery

2. Danny Duffy

3. John Lamb

4. Noel Arguelles

5. Chris Dwyer

However you rank them, all five ought to have significant major league careers, in the bullpen if not in the rotation. And the sheer number of lottery tickets makes it likely that at least one will develop into a front-line starter. The term “dominant Royals southpaw” may not be an oxymoron for much longer.

I’ll be back soon to finish up with a few other prospects, as well as an overall assessment of the state of the farm system.

Royals and Southpaws: A History.

(Okay, so this piece was meant to look at the various quality left-handed pitching prospects the Royals have in their system. But first I wanted to give a little background about the Royals’ inability to develop left-handed pitching over the years, and…well…you know me. One thing led to another, and before I knew it I had written over 3000 words and still hadn’t gotten around to the present day. So consider this a prologue – a really, really long and depressing prologue – to my uplifting next post.)

If the Royals have their deepest minor league system in over a decade, it’s a testament to the amount of left-handed pitching they’ve uncovered. It’s not an exaggeration in the slightest to say that right now the Royals have the most left-handed pitching in their farm system in the history of the franchise. While that’s a testament to the scouting department, it’s also an indictment of the team’s past. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the Royals have as many elite left-handed pitchers in their system today as they’ve developed in the last 41 years combined. Seriously.

The Royals have a long-standing tradition of developing All-Star right-handed pitchers, a tradition that began with Steve Busby and Dennis Leonard* in the 70s, continued in the 80s with Bret Saberhagen and Mark Gubicza and David Cone, then with Kevin Appier in the early 90s, and then after an embarrassingly long gap, has once again resurfaced with Zack Greinke.

*: Leonard never actually made an All-Star team, but he twice received votes for the Cy Young Award, which is even better.

But when it comes to southpaws, the organization has been astonishingly unproductive. In the entire history of the franchise, the Royals have had just four left-handed pitchers make even 120 starts with the team, the equivalent of about four full seasons in the rotation: Paul Splittorff, Larry Gura, Charlie Leibrandt, and Bud Black.

Splittorff had a decent strikeout rate his first few years in the majors, but after 1973 he became a pure junkballer, never again striking out even one batter per two innings in his career. In 1978 he won 19 games, despite striking out just 76 batters in 262 innings. He holds the franchise record with 167 166 wins – famously one more than Sandy Koufax – but never made an All-Star team.

Gura was even more of a soft-tosser; he had washed out of the Cubs and Yankees organizations before the Royals acquired him in 1976 for Fran Healy, their backup catcher. The same year that Splittorff won 19 games, Gura went 16-4 for the Royals, with just 81 whiffs in 222 innings. During his time in Kansas City, Gura struck out just 633 batters in 1701 innings. That type of extreme pitch-to-contact pitcher simply doesn’t exist anymore. In the decade that just ended, 73 pitchers threw at least 1200 innings. The lowest strikeout rate of those 73 guys belonged to Paul Byrd, with 4.67 Ks per 9 innings. Gura’s career rate was 3.52; Splittorff’s was 3.72. They were both very successful pitchers, but don’t try this at home, kids.

Leibrandt was, by those standards, a power pitcher. By any other standard, he relied on smoke and mirrors: his career K rate was 4.37 Ks per nine. His stock had fallen so low when the Royals acquired him from the Reds that all they had to give up to get him was Bob Tufts, who would never appear in another major league game after the trade. Leibrandt went 76-61 with the Royals, was a key part of the 1985 Championship team, and when the Royals thought he was washed up and traded him to Atlanta after the 1989 season, he rebounded to be the fourth starter on another two World Series teams in 1991 and 1992.

And finally there’s Bud Black, another finesse lefty with a low profile when the Royals got him as a PTBNL from the Mariners in a trade for the immortal Manny Castillo before the 1982 season. Black’s strikeout rate with the Royals was the best of the bunch: a towering 4.68 Ks per nine innings. He gave the Royals the better part of four seasons as a slightly above-average starter, two more seasons as a swingman, and after he was traded away for Pat Tabler in 1988, he hung around long enough to pitch for the 1995 Indians team that went 100-44.

These four guys all have something in common: none of them was remotely a power pitcher. The Royals acquired three of them in trades for virtually nothing. The fourth, Splittorff, was drafted by the Royals in their inaugural draft of 1968 – in the 25^th round.

The best power lefty the Royals ever developed is almost certainly Danny Jackson, who they got with the very first pick of the 1982 draft – the weird January supplemental draft, which was long ago disbanded and whose eligibility rules were so arcane that I honestly don’t know why some players were eligible and some weren’t. Jackson threw hard – not mid-90s hard, but hard enough – and had a wipeout slider, and struck out a respectable 5.43 batters per nine innings with the Royals. He was an above-average starter for three straight years from 1985 to 1987, and is the forgotten star of the championship run – twice he pitched in a Game 5 with the Royals staring down the barrel of a 3-games-to-1 deficit, and twice he threw a complete game, allowing just one run, to get the Royals back into the series.

But in 1987 he had the misfortune of getting the worst run support in the league – the Royals scored just 3.46 runs a game for him, and in 17 of his 34 starts they scored two runs or less. Despite a 4.02 ERA – a well-above average mark in the original Year of the Homer – Jackson went 9-18. The idea that a pitcher’s won-loss record is as dependent on his run support as his own pitching is so deeply ingrained in even casual fans today that it’s easy to forget that, a generation ago, this was considered radical thinking. It was certainly consider radical thinking by the Royals, who were as hidebound by tradition then as they are today.

So thinking Jackson a failure, they traded him to Cincinnati that winter for Kurt Stillwell. The following year, Jackson’s ERA dropped to 2.73, the Reds averaged 4.75 runs a game for him, and he went 23-8. He was a shoo-in for the Cy Young in late August before Orel Hershiser decided he didn’t feel like giving up any more runs the rest of the season.

In the quarter-century since Jackson came through the system, the only left-handed starter to star for the Royals has been Jose Rosado. As a draft find, Rosado represents a victory for stats over scouts – he was the MVP of the Junior College World Series, yet lasted until the 12^th round of the 1994 draft because he didn’t throw all that hard. He was in the majors within two years, and as a rookie posted a 3.21 ERA in 107 innings and finished fourth in the Rookie of the Year award balloting even though he didn’t debut until June.

If Rosado had come along five years later, I’m convinced he’d still be pitching today. Unfortunately for him, he arrived in an era when pitch counts were still largely ignored around baseball, and definitely ignored by Bob Boone and Tony Muser. In 1997, Rosado had a fantastic 3.39 ERA at the All-Star Break, and made the All-Star team as a 22-year-old in his first full season. He had also thrown 115+ pitches five times, which relative to its time wasn’t a criminal workload, but for a young pitcher of slight build (Rosado was listed at 6’ even and 175 pounds), it was too much. After the Break, Rosado was awful, allowing 99 walks and 36 hits in just 79 innings, with a 6.75 ERA.

He started the next season in the bullpen, and while he worked his way back into the rotation, he was hit-or-miss all year. But in 1999, he was back. At the Break he had a 3.01 ERA in 114 innings, with good peripherals (106 hits, 38 walks, 72 Ks). He made the All-Star team for the second time. (Rosado has more All-Star appearances (2) than all other Royals’ left-handed starters (1, by Gura) combined.)

But he also had the following pitch counts over a 12-start stretch from May 25^th to July 28^th:

117, 119, 70, 107, 122, 124, 83, 123, 125, 122, 120, 132.

Rosado was still just 24 at the time. Muser had confused experience with age, and rode Rosado like he was a much older starter. Earlier that year, Kerry Wood’s elbow had snapped in spring training after his sensational rookie season. That summer, Rick Ankiel’s agent (the ubiquitous Scott Boras) got into a little snit with the Cardinals over limiting the phenom’s pitch count. In Detroit, the Tigers publicly announced they were keeping rookie Jeff Weaver on a pitch limit, and stuck to it – Weaver’s season high was 110 pitches. On the interwebs, a snotty outfit called Baseball Prospectus had unveiled a new stat called Pitcher Abuse Points. But the pitch count train hadn’t rolled into Kansas City yet, and Rosado paid the price.

Rosado’s ERA after the break was 4.89, but more to the point, early the following season he complained of a dead arm. The Royals skipped his turn in the rotation once, but waited on getting an MRI. He was sent back to the mound on April 30^th, and gutted his way through 5.2 innings and picked up the win. His arm pain was worse afterwards. The Royals finally got the MRI. The verdict: his shoulder was shredded. He would never throw another pitch as a professional. Rosado’s career was over at 25.

Rosado threw 693 innings through his age 24 season. Only two Royals pitchers have thrown more: Saberhagen and Gubicza. All three had their careers cut short by arm surgery. Rosado was not the first young Royals pitcher to have his career ruined by throwing too many pitches at too young an age. Thankfully, he might have been the last.

(Or at least the next-to-last. Two years later, Muser rode a 23-year-old Chad Durbin hard, and Durbin tore his UCL the following year. It’s questionable whether Durbin would have become a quality starter regardless, but he has reinvented himself as a key middle reliever for the Phillies the last two years.)

Aside from Rosado, only two other left-handers in the last quarter-century have made even 60 starts for the Royals: Darrell May and Chris Haney. May was signed out of Japan after the 2001 season, and sandwiched one well-timed good season in 2003 between poor seasons in 2002 and 2004 before he was shipped away for Terrence Long. Haney was acquired from Montreal for Sean Berry, and had a career 5.24 ERA for the Royals (meanwhile, Berry had some terrific seasons in Montreal and Houston.)

Aside from Rosado, the Royals may not have developed a single decent left-handed starter in 25 years, but it’s not for lack of trying. Most notably, in 1993 the Royals used the 5^th overall pick in the draft on Jeff Granger, a college left-hander out of Texas A&M who was supposed to be ready for the majors almost immediately. Granger did, in fact, make it to the majors by September – but only because his contract stipulated a promotion. (I believe that Granger and Bo Jackson are the only two Royals to play in the majors the same year they were drafted.) Granger wound up pitching all of 32 innings in his career, with a 9.09 ERA. His main contribution to the Royals came as a throw-in to the trade that brought Jay Bell and Jeff King to Kansas City.

Seven years later the Royals used the 4^th overall pick on Mike Stodolka, a high school left-hander from California. Stodolka would eventually reach Triple-A – as a first baseman. As a pitcher he struggled to a 4.93 ERA in the minors over five seasons before he was moved to first base, where he was considered a 2^nd/3^rd round talent out of high school. He was an on-base machine, with a .287/.394/.444 line in three seasons, but rather than chase the dream of becoming the next Ross Gload, he elected to retire after the 2008 season. (In fairness to Stodolka, the 2000 draft is widely considered to be the weakest draft of the last 20 years. While Adrian Gonzalez went #1, the two picks in between were Adam Johnson and Lou Montanez.)

The Royals also spent late or supplemental 1^st round picks on Chris George, Jimmy Gobble, Matt Campbell, and J.P. Howell this decade. Campbell struggled in the minors and then tore his rotator cuff, but the other three all reached the majors to much fanfare. Howell did finally achieve a measure of success, but it took a trade to Tampa Bay and a move to the bullpen to find it.

George and Gobble had eerily similar career paths; both drafted out of high school in the supplemental first round a year apart; both had great seasons for Wilmington as 19-year-olds; both ranked as Top-50 Prospects by Baseball America the following season; both entered the Royals rotation at the age of 21; and both were ultimately done in by a complete lack of an out pitch, and were out of a major league rotation for good by the time they were 24. Gobble got the chance to remake himself as a lefty reliever and failed even at that; George disappeared from the majors completely, and was last seen pitching in Mexico. (Both Gobble and George are non-roster invitees to spring training.)

And that leaves Jeremy Affeldt, a third-round pick in 1997, a projectable high school arm who slowly advanced up the chain without doing anything to distinguish himself, and then showed up to spring training camp in 2002 with a 94-mph fastball and a curveball that dropped out of the sky like Icarus. After his first spring training outing, which consisted of five strikeouts and a popup, multiple writers gushed – knowing full well how ridiculous they would sound – that he looked Koufaxesque. And in their defense, at times he did. The problem was, at times he didn’t, and those were the times when he’d get beaten to a pulp. Affeldt made the team out of spring training, pitched reasonably well as a swingman, and then the following season was the team’s #2 starter when the 2003 Royals came out of the game gate like a house on fire. He struggled to a 4.82 ERA as a starter despite two great pitches; he moved to the bullpen in the second half and, his fastball touching 96-97, was terrific: in 42 innings he allowed just 28 hits and 12 walks.

This being the Royals, nothing was as easy as it looked. Affeldt spent the better part of two seasons fighting a blister problem that eventually required nail surgery, and while the surgery fixed the problem, it also seemed to affect his pitching. He sucked as a reliever in 2005, and in 2006 the Royals finally pawned him off on the Rockies in the Denny Bautista trade. At the time of the trade Affeldt had walked 42 batters and struck out just 28.

Naturally, almost from the minute he was traded Affeldt settled down as one of the better left-handed set-up men in baseball; last year, pitching for the Giants, he had a 1.73 ERA and coaxed a ridiculous 18 ground-ball double plays in just 62 innings. In retrospect, if the Royals had just made him into a reliever from the beginning, they would have gotten better value out of him. But when he was on his game in 2003, he had the best stuff of any left-handed starter the Royals have ever had, and I don’t blame the team one bit for dreaming on what could be.

So after 41 seasons, not only have the Royals received pathetically little production from left-handed pitchers, most of their best ones had to be imported from other organizations. With the caveat that I might have missed someone along the way, I tried to put together a list of the 10 best left-handed starters signed and developed by the organization. As you’ll see, I tried, but I did not succeed.

1) Paul Splittorff. I’m still not sure how he did it, but there’s no questioning that he did it. Over 2500 innings, 167 wins, and a solid 101 ERA+ over 15 seasons.

2) Danny Jackson. 112 career wins, an ERA+ of exactly 100, two All-Star game appearances, and a second-place finish in the Cy Young balloting gets him this spot.

3) Jose Rosado. His career lasted less than four full seasons, and he went only 37-45 in his career, but his 4.27 ERA came at the height of the juiced ball/bat/batter era, good for a 114 ERA+.

4) Atlee Hammaker. The Royals’ first-round pick in 1979, Hammaker was foolishly traded to the Giants as one of four players in the Vida Blue trade. Hammaker quickly became the pitcher the Royals hoped Blue would be. As a rookie in 1982, he went 12-8 with a 4.11 ERA, and in 1983, Hammaker led the NL with a remarkable 2.25 ERA. He blew out his arm the next year, and while he came back to pitch in the Giants’ rotation for three more seasons, he was never again dominant, or even above-average. Final numbers: 59-67 record, 97 ERA+ in 1079 innings.

5) Greg Hibbard. The Royals’ 16^th-round pick in 1986, Hibbard was foolishly traded to the White Sox as one of four players in the Floyd Bannister trade. Hibbard was a pure finesse pitcher, sort of like Jeff Ballard without the panache, but fooled enough hitters to win in double digits in four straight years from 1990 to 1993. He then signed a three-year contract with the Mariners, and won exactly one game for them before he blew out his arm. Final numbers: 57-50 with a 98 ERA+ in 990 innings.

6) Bob McClure. The Royals’ pitching coach was selected in the 3^rd round in 1973 – in something called the June Secondary draft, and I won’t even pretend to know what that was. After just 19 innings with the Royals, he was traded to Milwaukee in the traded that brought Darrell Porter to Kansas City. While he spent the bulk of his career in the bullpen, McClure was made into a starter by the Brewers in 1982. In 73 career starts he went 27-23 with a 4.41 ERA, which in the early 1980s was not particularly impressive, and after 3 seasons he returned to relief work.

7) Glendon Rusch. Drafted in the 17^th-round in 1993, Rusch quickly climbed the system, as his tremendous control mitigated his propensity for the home run. After two disastrous years in the rotation in 1997 and 1998 (he went 12-24 with a 5.68 ERA), the Royals traded him to the Mets for something called “Dan Murray”. Rusch has alternated between being borderline useful (he went 11-11 with a 4.01 ERA in 2000) and a complete disaster (he went 1-12 with a 6.43 ERA in 2003) for a variety of different teams since. Remarkably, he’s still in baseball – he pitched for the Rockies last year, allowing 35 hits in just 19 innings.

That’s a theme for Rusch, who has generally been ineffective despite pretty strikeout-to-walk ratios throughout his career. He seems to be on a crusade to single-handedly disprove DIPS theory. For his career, Rusch has allowed a .331 average on balls in play. Not only is this the highest mark of any pitcher with 1000+ innings in the last 50 years, it’s ELEVEN POINTS higher than the second pitcher on the list, Paul Quantrill. The difference between Rusch and Quantrill (.320) is the same as the difference between Quantrill and Dave Weathers (.309) – who ranks 25^th on the list.

For his career, Rusch epitomizes the replacement-level starter, with a 67-99 record, and an 88 ERA+. But he’s stuck around for nearly 1500 innings, and that’s more than enough to make this list.

8) Jeremy Affeldt. No, really. Jeremy Affeldt, who made all of 42 starts for the Royals, whose career ERA with the team was 4.77, is the 7^th-best lefty starter they’ve ever developed. Would you prefer Jimmy Gobble (43 starts, 5.23 ERA)? Chris George (44 starts, 6.48 ERA)?

It’s a biologic fact that left-handed pitchers are harder to find than right-handers. But the Royals have still done an inexcusably poor job of finding and developing them for their entire existence. That, though, may finally be about to change. I’ll explain why in my next post.

Prospect Rundown, Part 3

First off, I’d like to thank the fine people at mediaite.com for naming me to their list of the “Top 25 Sports Bloggers, Writers, and Tweeters.” Unfortunately, I’d much rather that the Royals make the Official Standings list of the “Top 25 Major League Baseball Teams.” (Last year they finished tied for 26^th. So close!)

Still, it is an honor, and I’m especially pleased to be part of Kansas City’s domination of the list. Joe Posnanski and Jason Whitlock need no introduction, but both Jason King and Sports by Brooks’ Brooks Melchior worked at the Star before branching out into the wild world of the internet. The sportswriting scene in Kansas City continues to be the bizarro version of the Royals, the scrappy small-market outfit that dominates its larger, better-funded competitors.

Back to the prospects. After discussing Mike Moustakas, the third baseman with a catcher’s body, it’s only appropriate that we move onto Wil Myers, the catcher with an outfielder’s body. But unlike the case with Moustakas, where Moose’s prospect status is threatened by his lack of a stable position, the fact that Myers’ ultimate position is undefined only adds to the intrigue. In Myers’ case, at least at this point his bat projects at any position. If he can master the tools of ignorance, well, you go from talking about a potential star to a potential superstar.

Myers was considered a dark-horse first-round candidate before last year’s draft, ranking #31 on Baseball America’s draft chart; he only ranked that low because, playing at a private high school in North Carolina, he rarely faced strong competition outside of showcase events. The Royals reportedly considered taking him with their first pick, and might well have done so if Aaron Crow had not been available. Myers then fell to the third round, in large part because teams were worried about his bonus demands, and the Royals – continuing a recent trend for which Dayton Moore & Co. deserve massive credit for – snagged him in the 3^rd round, with the 91^st overall pick. They signed him for $2 million, roughly mid-1^st round money, and double what any other third-round pick (save one) received.

It appears to be money well spent. Myers quickly laid to rest the concerns about his bat against pro competition. In 22 pro games after signing, he hit .369/.427/.679, with 14 extra-base hits in just 84 at-bats. Numbers like that are nice, but may not be that meaningful in such a small sample size. True, Billy Butler hit .373/.488/.596 in his first pro season straight out of high school; on the other hand, Jeff Bianchi hit .408/.484/.745 in his first year.

There are a couple reasons to think that Myers is closer to Butler than Bianchi on the prep hitter spectrum. For one, most of his performance came at Idaho Falls, one rung above rookie ball, and away from the thin Arizona air that always inflates hitters numbers. Butler spent his entire first season in Idaho Falls; Bianchi benefited from the Arizona League.

But the main reason to think Myers’ numbers are meaningful is simply because his scouting reports are equally impressive. He has everything you’d want from a teenage hitter; tremendous raw power, quick wrists that allow him rip line drives to both fields, and the ability to wait on pitches and avoid swinging at ones out of the zone. It’s early, but Myers looks like the most special bat the Royals have drafted out of high school since Butler. There’s a reason why Myers landed at #83 on Kevin Goldstein’s list, and was strongly considered for the Top 100 by both Baseball America and Keith Law. That may not sound like much, but it’s very rare for a player to make a Top 100 Prospect list the winter after he was drafted unless he was a first-round, or even top ten, pick.

Now, it’s way too early to compare Myers to Butler offensively. Myers would have to reach Double-A this summer and hit .313 with power during his time there to match Butler’s performance when he was 19 years old. But whereas Butler’s entire value resided within his bat, Myers has the tools and athleticism to help his team in multiple ways. Butler has spent five years working on his defense, and it was still considered a major breakthrough for him last season when he played a passable first base in the majors. Just based on his physical build, Myers figures to have far more defensive value than Bam Bam. Myers is taller (6’3” vs. 6’1”), leaner (190 pounds vs. 240), faster, and far more athletic than Butler. He throws in the upper-80s, and moves well behind the plate.

It’s still a long shot that he’ll reach the major leagues as a catcher. While Myers’ arm helped him to throw out 5 of 12 potential basestealers last season, his inexperience showed when it came to blocking errant pitches – he allowed six passed balls in just 10 games. Myers played all over the field in high school, so while scouts feel he has the necessary tools to become at least an average catcher, he is a very much a work in progress.

I absolutely agree with the Royals’ decision to try Myers behind the plate for at least all of this season. But the Royals may find themselves in a strange paradox: the quicker his bat develops, the more they may be pressed into moving him to a less demanding position rather than hinder his progress up the chain. He doesn’t have the classic body type for a catcher – he’s a little too long and lean – and it’s no surprise that two players he’s been compared to are Dale Murphy and Jayson Werth, both guys who developed as catchers but only blossomed in the majors after a move to the outfield.

Myers, at 6’3”, is pretty much at the upper bound of how tall you can be and still play catcher – the taller you are, the more of a pounding your knees take from all the squatting and standing. Joe Mauer is 6’5”, but Mauer defies historic comparison in so many ways. (And Mauer has already dealt with significant knee and back problems.) In the live-ball era, only one other player that stood 6’5” has caught even 600 games: Sandy Alomar, who seemingly had knee problems from the moment he entered the league. Nine guys measured at 6’4” have caught 600 games, including our main Jamie Quirk; the most successful were 60s-era Johnny Edwards and Tom Haller. Werth is 6’5”, Murphy is 6’4”. Drop the bar down to 6’3”, and you find a wealth of successful and long-lasting catchers, including Mike Piazza, Lance Parrish, and Iron Man Carlton Fisk.

Can Myers make it as a catcher in the majors? It’s certainly worth giving him that shot. But I think his bat is special enough that I won’t be too heartbroken if he has to move to the outfield, because as much as the Royals’ need a long-term solution at catcher, their long-term outlook in the outfield isn’t much better. The team hasn’t come remotely close to developing an outfielder since David DeJesus was a rookie in 2004, and as it stands, all four of their potential starting outfielders (DeJesus, Podsednik, Ankiel, and Guillen) are all potential free agents after this season. (DeJesus, fortunately, is tied to a club option in 2011.) While the Royals have some decent short-term replacement options in Jordan Parraz and David Lough, and a couple of long-term lottery tickets in Derrick Robinson and Hilton Richardson, they don’t have a single outfielder in the system who’s a Grade A, or even Grade B, prospect.

So if Myers’ future is in the outfield, as say a prototypical power-hitting right fielder with a strong arm and range afield, I’ll be perfectly happy with that. But if the light bulb goes on this season and we start getting glowing reports about his catching skills, then feel free to get really excited. I know that I’ll be watching closely to see how he hits this season – Myers, more than anyone else in the system, has the potential to rocket himself into phenom territory this season, the guy who winds up in Baseball America’s Prospect Pulse and Kevin Goldstein’s Monday Ten-Pack every week. I’ll be watching, but I’ll be listening even more intently to the scouting buzz about his defense. A lot can go wrong on the road from Idaho Falls to Kansas City. But Myers has a chance to be that Special Talent that we all thought Moustakas and Hosmer would be.

Prospect Rundown, Part 2

Continuing where we left off last time…

While I admire Keith Law’s willingness to put himself out there with Eric Hosmer, I agree with the consensus opinion that the Royals’ best prospect is Mike Montgomery. Montgomery ranks #35 overall on Baseball Prospectus’ list, and #39 on Baseball America’s list (Law has him just #75 overall). Montgomery is a good piece of scouting, a projectable left-handed arm out of southern California that the Royals took with a supplemental first-round pick in 2008. His elite ranking stems from the fact that he makes scouts and stats types go equally gaga over him.

His stats are terrific; last season, split between Burlington and Wilmington, Montgomery threw 110 innings, allowed just 80 hits and 36 walks, and struck out 98 batters. He allowed one homer all year. His career ERA as a pro is 2.06. But what separates Monty from, say, Danny Duffy, who has nearly as impressive stats but not nearly the prospect cache, are two things: 1) his stuff and 2) his projection.

His stuff is already major-league caliber – he throws in the low 90s, which is plenty for a lefty, and he has the makings of both a [high-]quality curveball and changeup. His curveball overmatches minor leaguers, but he throws a weird palm curveball that people are skeptical will work at higher levels, and the Royals are working with him to master a more traditional one.

Right now, he has the repertoire of a #2 or #3 starter. But what vaults Montgomery into elite status is that, at 6’5” and just 180 pounds, he was expected to add velocity when he was drafted, and while it’s up a tick, many think that his fastball hasn’t peaked yet. He gets high marks for his mechanics, and he repeats them well, also leading credence to the theory that the best is yet to come. He doesn’t turn 21 until July 1^st. He’s famously competitive – thrown off his high school basketball team for committing too many technicals – and his work ethic is such that the Royals had to work with him to dial down his between-starts throwing regimen last spring. He should start the year in Double-A, and while everyone thinks Aaron Crow will be the first of the Royals’ wave of young pitchers to reach the majors, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if Montgomery is pitching in the majors come September.

Crow is the consensus #2 prospect in the organization; BP ranks him #53, and BA ranks him #40 (right behind Montgomery) overall. Law has him #87. Crow is in many ways the opposite of Montgomery – he’s almost a finished product, a right-hander drafted out of college (and then, when he didn’t sign, drafted out of the independent leagues by the Royals a la Luke Hochevar).

His fastball is maybe a tick faster than Montgomery’s, though without the projection for more, and from the right side his velocity is not quite as special as Montgomery’s. What makes Crow’s fastball special is his command of the pitch, as well as the fact that it has natural sinking motion. And whereas Montgomery – like most Royals’ prospects – throws a curveball, Crow’s out pitch is a tight slider that is unhittable when it’s on. His changeup, though is still a work in progress, and some people worry about his mechanics.

I’ve seen Crow compared to a lot of pitchers, but the comparison I’d like to make – because I like being reckless – is that if everything works out, he could sort of resemble Kevin Appier. Appier worked primarily off a good sinking fastball and a hard-breaking slider, rarely threw a changeup, and people worried about his unorthodox motion for years even though he never suffered a serious arm injury until an off-field injury tore up his shoulder. I don’t think Crow will be quite that good, but it’s something to shoot for.

With Crow, we simply won’t know for a while what we have, because his only pro experience to date is a short stint in the Arizona Fall League. He gave up 17 hits in 15 innings pitched – no surprise, given the hitter-friendly nature of the league – but more tellingly, he walked just 2 batters and struck out 12. It’s a very small sample size, but fits with the notion that Crow is an advanced arm, who will probably start in Double-A, and could be ready for a major-league audition as soon as mid-season.

While Montgomery and Crow are a pretty easy consensus for the Royals’ two best prospects, the competition for the third spot is a heated one. In one corner you have Mike Moustakas, the #2 pick in the land in 2007, but who suffered through a disappointing 2009. In the other you have Wil Myers, the Royals’ third-round pick just this past summer, but who after signing for a $2 million bonus opened eyes and dropped jaws with his performance in rookie ball.

Both BA and BP rank Moustakas ahead on their Top 100 Prospects list; BP has Moustakas #79 and Myers #83, while BA has Moustakas #80 and doesn’t rank Myers. But strangely, the Baseball America Prospect Handbook, which ranks the top 30 prospects for every organization, ranks Myers as the Royals #3 prospect and Moustakas #4.

Moustakas seems destined to me to a disappointment, as much as for what others (like Matt Wieters and Rick Porcello) have done as for what he hasn’t done. What Moustakas hasn’t done is convert his still formidable skills into performance. He has ridiculous bat speed, but he swings at too many bad pitches to take full advantage of it. In 2008, he hit a promising .272/.337/.468, walked a reasonable amount (43 times in 496 AB), and hit 22 homers (the most by a teenager in the Midwest League in years). Last season, his offensive game took a step backward in every way: he hit just .250, he walked just 32 times in 492 AB, and he hist just 16 homers (although he did hit 32 doubles). Overall, his line of .250/.297/.421 was unacceptable.

The elephant in the room is Daniel S. Frawley Stadium, where the Wilmington Blue Rocks play. The Blue Rocks have played in one of the minors’ best pitchers’ parks since they joined the Carolina League nearly two decades ago, and Moustakas would hardly be the first Royals prospect to struggle there. At the same age Moustakas was last year, Carlos Beltran hit just .229/.311/.363 for the Blue Rocks; two years later he was the AL Rookie of the Year.

There’s a well-researched article here which points out that while Wilmington is a tough place to hit overall, it’s actually not a bad park for left-handed power hitters, because the right-field fence is considerably closer than the left-field one. That may be true, but the fact remains that last season, Moustakas hit just .205/.266/.373 at home, and .292/.331/.473 on the road (numbers approximate). Maybe Frawley Stadium affected him mentally more than physically – its reputation precedes itself – but regardless, on the road Moustakas’ numbers were a doppelganger of his 2008 performance. With a promotion to relatively hitter-friendly Northwest Arkansas this year, we’ll see if there’s a breakout performance coming.

I’m still confident that he will develop into a strong power threat, but I’m increasingly worried that he’ll never develop the plate discipline that he needs to be an above-average player. Case in point: after his disappointing season for Wilmington, Moustakas headed to the Arizona Fall League, and took advantage of the thin air to slug .560 and hit 5 homers and 11 extra-base hits overall in just 75 at-bats. But he drew just 2 walks the entire time he was down there, and finished with a .288 OBP. We have enough sub-.300 OBPs on the roster already. Moustakas is young enough to improve in that regard, but he’s also in arguably the worst organization in baseball when it comes to teaching him the strike zone.

The other major concern I have with Moustakas is a lack of a defined position, which stems in part from the fact that he has a weird set of defensive tools. He has a cannon for an arm, strong enough that he hit the low-90s from the mound while in high school. The problem is that he just doesn’t have the body type to play the infield. I finally got a good look at Moustakas during the AFL all-star game, and was struck by just how unathletic he looked. He has what the scouts call a “thick lower half”: he has big thighs, and – there’s no nice way to put this – a big ass. Honestly, the first thought I had when I saw him was, “he looks just like Billy Butler.” That doesn’t mean he can’t hit, but as Butler has proven, that does mean that you can’t play the left side of the infield without eliciting an unending stream of guffaws. (And in three plate appearances, Moose saw a total of four pitches, twice putting the first pitch in play.)

With that arm, he could certainly move to right field, but in addition to losing a lot of positional value out there, I’m not sure he has the speed to be even an average defender out there, and he’s not going to pick up speed as he ages. In addition to being an average runner at best, Moustakas is also short and squat. He’s listed as 6’0” and 195 pounds in BA’s Handbook, and it would be wonderful if that were the case. According to his minorleaguebaseball.com player page, he’s 5’11” and 230 pounds.

Over the last few years there have been two grassroots movements afoot to move two Royals into different roles. The first has been the campaign to move Joakim Soria into the starting rotation. I would love to see how Soria would do as a starter, to satisfy my curiosity if nothing else, but I have made my peace with the Royals’ decision to keep him in the bullpen. There are legitimate concerns about him losing velocity in the rotation, his slight frame, his history of arm problems – I can understand the Royals’ reluctance to meddle with one of their greatest assets, particularly with a wave of young starting pitching about to crest.

But I’m riding shotgun for the other bandwagon movement, the one that says that the Royals should move Moustakas behind the plate. This isn’t a new idea; I’ve heard baseball analysts like Law suggest it for two years now. And as much as the Royals want to dismiss the idea as just so much fan-induced craziness, it’s neither crazy nor fan-induced. On the contrary, the most vehement supporters of this idea are generally scouts for other teams.

If you poll scouts from other organizations who have followed Moustakas, you will find a sizeable minority, if not a majority, of them think that it’s a great idea. That’s both because Moustakas has the perfect raw tools to be a catcher (not too tall, agile but not fast, laser arm), and because he doesn’t really fit anywhere else on the diamond. Just two months ago I spoke with a scout about some of the Royals’ prospects, and the first thing out of his mouth when I inquired about Moustakas was “man, I’d really love to see what he could do behind the plate.”

That the Royals have shown absolutely no inclination to even entertain the idea is not an indictment of the idea, but of the Royals. Once again, we see one of the central failings of the organization: a team that plays in one of the game’s smallest markets, a franchise that was once the class of baseball in large part because of its willingness to think outside the box (the Royals Baseball Academy, anyone?), simply refuses to think of creative solutions to their problems. Moustakas has a great arm and good first-step quickness, but he’s not built to be a third baseman. I suppose he could be a third baseman the way Ron Cey was a third baseman – Cey was known as “The Penguin” because of the way he waddled when he ran. Cey was 5’10” and 185 pounds – Moose has nearly 50 pounds on him.

So Moustakas may not make for a good third baseman, and anyway the Royals still have Alex Gordon over there. While Gordon may remain a bust, it doesn’t make sense to plan for failure. The Royals don’t need Moustakas at first base. He’s unlikely to be anything more than an average right fielder, and a move there would make the deficiencies in his bat that much more glaring. And yet there’s a position on the field where 1) Moustakas has the raw skills to develop into an above-average defender; 2) the offensive requirements are much less demanding – if Moustakas hits .270 with 25 homers, even with poor plate discipline he'd be one of the best-hitting catchers in baseball; 3) the Royals have an enormous need.

Naturally, the Royals have shown absolutely no interest in the idea. Never mind that other teams have had great success with converted catchers. Russell Martin was drafted as a third baseman, and is now one of the best defensive backstops in baseball. Jorge Posada was a second baseman in his first pro season. Michael Barrett – a first-round pick – was a shortstop in his first season in the minors, before he was pointed in the direction of home plate. Geovany Soto dabbled in the outfield and on the infield corners his first two years in the minors. Hell, Mike Piazza had never caught in his life when the Dodgers signed him and handed him a mask.

So yeah, count me among those who think that the only way for Moustakas to reach his true potential is become a catcher. Sure, it might slow down his progression to the majors. But let’s face it: he’s no longer on the fast track to Kansas City in the first place. It’s going to take at least another year or two before he’s ready no matter where he plays. Given that, the Royals might as well move him to a position where he’ll be worth the wait.

Speaking of catchers, more on Wil Myers – and some other top prospects – still to come.

Addendum: After I posted this article, a source with connections to the Royals contacted me to let me know that, late last year, the Royals did in fact quietly broach the subject of moving behind the plate with Moustakas. He made it clear that he had no interest in such a move, and the idea was shelved.

While in a perfect world a team could tell one of their top prospects to jump and he'd respond with "how high?", back in the real world it's probably not a good idea to force a position change on a player without getting some buy-in from him. If Moustakas were a complete bust at this point, the Royals might push the subject a little harder on the premise that they had nothing to lose. But he's not; there's still a good chance that his bat will come around to the point where he's an asset at third base, or any other position. So I stand corrected: the Royals tried, and I can't fault them for not succeeding.

Also, I've been told that immediately after the AFL, Moustakas - at the behest of both the Royals and his agent, the Scott Boras Corporation - enrolled in an intense workout regimen designed to make his soft body a little less so. This fits with the word out of spring training that he looks to be in much better shape than last season. I know, I know - this is National Best Shape of His Life Month. But at least Moustakas recognized there was a problem, and - no one questions his work ethic - applied himself towards fixing it. Of all the Royals' top prospects, he's the only one whose shape I worry about, so if anyone gets a good sighting of him this spring, I'd love to hear about it.

Reboot.

There’s still snow on the ground over much of the Midwest, but it’s sunny and warm in Surprise, the entire roster has reported for duty, everyone’s in the best shape of their lives, and Kyle Farnsworth’s changeup is unbelievable. (And his pitching coach is comparing him to Zack Greinke!) Forget the calendar – spring has arrived. Optimism abounds. Hope springs eternal. Again.

So it’s time to reboot. Last year was a nightmare in so many ways, and even after a winter off, I can’t say that the bitter taste in my mouth has completely washed out. But I’m going to try my best to start afresh. I don’t think I can maintain this blog if I have to ride the highs and lows that I did last season. But I’ll try my best to be here, perhaps not as often as before, and perhaps not as emotional – for good or for bad – as before. I’ll try not to let the fact that the Royals and I see baseball through completely different prisms get in the way. I’ll try not to let the fact that in an admittedly bizarre Fox Sports clip with Jim Bowden – I’d link to it, but it’s apparently been pulled from the web – Dayton Moore let it be known that two of his favorite sabermetric stats are “runs scored” and “runs batted in”. That’s like saying that your favorite president was Benjamin Franklin.

So I’ll try to stay positive, but not at the expense of being honest.

But in all honesty, there is reason to be positive about the Royals today, even after an off-season that was spent mostly spinning our wheels. You might think that I’m incredibly bearish on the Royals’ off-season moves based on my posts, but in the big picture, it wasn’t a disaster. Yes, the Royals signed Jason Kendall, and the pundits are still laughing. But aside from Kendall, Moore and friends didn’t make any egregious errors. Brian Anderson looks superfluous. Scott Podsednik is a band-aid. Rick Ankiel is a project. But none of these guys are signed beyond this year, and they’re not – as yet – blocking any better options in the system. (Indirectly, they’re blocking Kila Ka’aihue, but if playing Ka’aihue at DH means that Jose Guillen has to take the field…it’s back to Omaha for you, Kila.)

The Mark Teahen trade brought in Josh Fields and Chris Getz, both of whom are far from sure things, but if either one of them turns into a quality everyday player, the Royals win the deal – they’re both under club control for the next five years. And best of all, the Royals found the time and money to squeeze in the Noel Arguelles signing, adding another Top-100 prospect to the system.

In terms of talent moving into and out of the organization, there’s no comparison: this was a much better winter than last year. (Notice the qualification: the Zack Greinke extension trumps everything, even if it was a no-brainer.)

So I can still see the reasons to be optimistic about the future of the Kansas City Royals. It’s just that, for the umpteenth year in a row, “future” means “after this season”. I mean, yes, it’s possible that the Royals could be a surprise contender this season. If the magic that descended upon Kansas City in 2003 returns this summer, like some sort of seven-year cicada, anything is possible. The Royals still have one trump card up their sleeve that the Rays, the A’s, and the Mariners don’t: they play in the AL Central. If the Central is as weak as it was last year, or as weak as some project it to be this year (the last update of Baseball Prospectus’ projections has the Twins winning the division – with 81 wins, just seven more than the Royals) – hey, anything’s possible.

On the other hand, the Royals also have a lineup in which Yuniesky Betancourt might bat seventh – or, in one of Trey Hillman’s permutations, a lineup in which Jason Kendall bats second. So pardon me for not taking their playoff chances all that seriously.

But that doesn’t mean that 2010 can’t be a successful year for the franchise. It just means that we have to direct our expectations elsewhere – namely, to the farm system, where the Royals have been stockpiling teenage talent through the last three drafts, talent which is only now starting to reach the higher levels of the minor leagues. But it’s there. What’s unusual about the Royals’ farm system is that while they probably have three or four future All-Stars quietly developing, it’s not clear who those three or four guys are. If you look at the most well-respected Top 100 Prospects lists out there – Baseball America, Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law at ESPN.com – the Royals have three or four guys on each list. But it’s a different mix of players on each one.

The highest-rated Royal on any of these lists, as hard as it may be to believe, is Eric Hosmer, who comes in at #34 on Law’s list even though he didn’t make the Top 100 at all on the other two lists. I love getting Law’s input, because he’s at once well-informed yet iconoclastic, which frequently leads to situations like these where his opinion of a prospect differs wildly from the consensus.

I had the chance to speak with Law at some length about Hosmer at the winter meetings, and was impressed with his enthusiasm for Hosmer – so this ranking doesn’t surprise me. We all know the story about Hos – considered the best pure hitter out of the high school ranks in years, but fell flat on his face in his first full season, hitting just .254/.352/.382 in Burlington, and then even worse (.206/.280/.299) after a bizarre late-season promotion to Wilmington. Hosmer’s season then ended prematurely because 1) he couldn’t see properly and 2) the Royals had problems finding him a good pair of glasses, which led to a lot well-earned snickering.

But Hosmer did have LASIK surgery at the end of the year to correct his vision problem, which evidently had only surfaced after he was drafted. It’s important not to let the frustration with how the Royals evidently couldn’t find a LensCrafters anywhere in Delaware (I recommend the one at the Concord Mall) obscure the fact that Hosmer’s astigmatism was, in the big picture, very good news indeed. If there wasn’t a good reason for Hosmer’s struggles last season, that would be very worrisome. But there was a good reason, and evidently that reason has been taken care of – Law’s sources told him that Hosmer was seeing the ball much better in BP after surgery.

And Law also pointed out the other extenuating circumstance for Hos, one that seems to have been lost in the shuffle – he played much of the season with a hairline fracture in one of his fingers. If you take these two health issues together, they actually explain the two biggest deficiencies in Hosmer’s performance last season. You would expect a hand injury to sap him of his power, which it did. You would expect vision problems to manifest themselves primarily against same-side pitching, and Hosmer was terrible against southpaws – he hit a ridiculous .171/.220/.220 against them. (Against RHP, he hit a much more reasonable .273/.376/.435.)

That’s not to say that Hosmer gets a pass for 2009 – he doesn’t, not when he’s a first baseman, not when he got the largest signing bonus ($6 million) in franchise history, not when the Royals could have taken Justin Smoak, who looks to take his Mark Teixeira impression to Arlington this summer, or Gordon Beckham, who’s already established himself in the White Sox infield. But Law’s ranking serves to remind us that all is not yet lost with Hosmer, who after all is still just 20. This is a huge season for him, of course. And of all the minor leaguers on the list, he’s the one guy whose spring training reports are worth looking for. If he’s belting the ball with authority in March, I’ll feel much more comfortable about his ability to do the same from April through August.

More to come…

Now Starting For The Royals, Number 40...

As most of you know, Dick Kaegel had another scoop last week, and this time it was intentional:

Didn’t like Kyle Farnsworth as a relief pitcher? Hang on, he might be a starting pitcher for the Royals this year.

“Kyle Farnsworth is competing for a job in the rotation,” pitching coach Bob McClure revealed Wednesday.

That’s right, the big right-hander will at least get a chance to show what he can do as a starter in Spring Training.

“We’re going to lengthen him out and see how it goes,” McClure said. “Because what he showed me last year was the ability to back off a little bit and not pitch with his hair on fire. And, to be a starter, you have to be able to just kind of go pitch-by-pitch.”

I don’t want to oversell the impact of this proclamation – saying that Farnsworth is competing for a job in the rotation could mean anything from “he’s all but won a job” to “there’s no way in hell that he’s going to start for us, but we have to at least pretend that there’s a chance he’ll earn the money we’re paying him.” This could all be forgotten by mid-March, so it’s not worth getting too worked up about this either way.

Still, it’s worth talking about, because it certainly is…different. I will admit to thinking many different things – only some of them printable – when Kyle Farnsworth took the mound last year. At no point did one of those thoughts consist of, “you know, I think Farnsworth’s problem is that he’s miscast as a reliever.”

Having said that, I don’t want to dismiss this idea out of hand. Dave Cameron, who generally knows his baseball, has endorsed the move, going so far as to say “The Royals take a lot of crap from us, but I’ll applaud them for recognizing an opportunity here.” And an AL front office type I talked about this with actually thought it was a worthwhile gamble for the Royals. (He was too polite to indicate whether that was because Farnsworth had upside as a starter, or simply because the Royals have nothing to lose.)

So at the very least, it’s not fair to reflexively label this idea as another episode in that recurring reality show “Royals Gone Wild”. The fact that the Farnsworth-to-the-rotation idea seems to have come from left field does not automatically mean that it’s a ridiculous one.

Let me see if I can sum up all the reasons to make this move:

1) Farnsworth is a power pitcher, and clearly has enough velocity that even if he loses the usual 2-3 mph on his fastball when he has to pace himself, he should still have plenty of raw stuff to succeed in the rotation.

2) Bob McClure has a pretty good track record as a pitching coach.

3) Even if Farnsworth isn’t as effective in the rotation as he is in the bullpen, he might still be more valuable because he’ll throw a lot more innings.

4) After last year’s debacle, no one has any confidence that Farnsworth can pitch effectively out of the bullpen anyway, particularly not in key situations.

5) Farnsworth is a free agent at the end of the year, so while there is a risk that he’ll hurt his arm trying to make this move, the Royals aren’t on the hook for his contract past 2010.

The first thing you’ll notice about this list of reasons is that #3 and #4 directly contradict each other. The reason why starters generally don’t pitch as well as relievers is that relieving is a lot easier than starting – it’s much easier to throw all-out with your two best pitches for one or two innings, than to pace yourself and work in three or four pitches over a seven-inning stint. Studies have shown that the typical starting pitcher, when moved to the bullpen, will see his ERA drop by as much as 25%.

Which means the converse is true – the typical reliever, moving to the rotation, will see his ERA rise by close to 30%. The number of pitchers moved to the bullpen because they couldn’t cut it in the rotation is legion. The number of pitchers moved to the rotation because they sucked in the bullpen? That’s a much rarer entity, and for good reason. Making a reliever a starter because he sucks in relief is like moving a third baseman to shortstop because he couldn’t handle playing the hot corner.

That’s not to say this can’t work. Farnsworth does throw plenty hard: according to Fangraphs, the average velocity on his fastball last season was 96.0 mph, and over the last eight years his fastball has averaged 94.6. A reliever who throws 96 translates into a starter who throws 92-93, and that’s just fine. It’s absolutely true, as the Kaegel article suggests, that Farnsworth started throwing a cut fastball last season – he threw it 28% of the time, in fact. A pitcher who throws two kinds of fastballs and a slider has enough pitches to succeed in the rotation. And while Farnsworth doesn’t throw a curveball, my AL front office source mentioned that a few years back he saw Farnsworth throw a “surprisingly quality*” changeup on the sidelines, although Farnsworth rarely broke it out in a ballgame.

*: Total aside here, but am I the only one who’s amused by the KC Star’s writing guidelines, which require that the word [high-] be added onto a quote whenever someone says the word “quality”? Like this: “Bob McClure raved about Greinke’s repertoire. ‘Zack throws a [high-]quality fastball, a [high-]quality slider, a [high-]quality curveball, and a [high-]quality changeup. What more could you ask for?’” If I ever give an interview to the Star, I’m going to have to work in the word “quality” about a dozen times just to see what happens.

So the stuff is probably there for Farnsworth to succeed in the rotation. The problem is that the stuff is definitely there for him to succeed in the bullpen, yet his stuff rarely translates to results. In 11 major league seasons, Farnsworth has had an ERA under 4.00 just three times.

The biggest reason for Farnsworth’s lack of consistent success has been the fact that his fastball, while very fast, is also very straight, which leads to a ton of flyballs, some of which inevitably travel 400+ feet. For his career, Farnsworth has given up more than one home run every seven innings. This is not a trait you want in any pitcher, but particularly not a pitcher that you’re asking to face Jim Thome with the go-ahead runs on base in the eighth inning on Opening Day. Just hypothetically.

Now, if Farnsworth were really throwing a new cut fastball last season, one that has less velocity but more sink, you’d expect him to coax more groundballs. That, in fact, is exactly what happened. In the three seasons prior to joining the Royals, Farnsworth’s groundball rates were 34%, 30%, and 35%. Last year, his groundball rate jumped to 46%. Granted, it was a small sample size of just 37 innings, but it fits with the narrative that he quietly became a different pitcher last season. (Amazingly, he only gave up three homers all year – of course, two of them directly cost the Royals the game, and both during the first two weeks of the season.)

So there is, at least, some reason for optimism that Farnsworth can handle the change, at least in terms of his physical stuff. I confess to being worried about how Farnsworth can handle the change mentally, but that’s not fair to him. I mean, how well do we really know these guys? Farnsworth wears glasses, throws incredibly hard, and often has no idea where the ball is going – he certainly seems like a Rick Vaughn clone, a guy who’s not calm enough or not smart enough to pace himself over six or seven innings. He would seem oddly out of place on the mound in the first inning, like Keith Law in a churrascaria. But as fans we really don’t know whether he’s a completely different person behind the clichés. In the video attached to Kaegel’s article, Farnsworth describes how he loves to hunt and fish…but also admits that he loves to cook. So who knows?

I do think that Cameron goes overboard when he writes, “in a lot of ways, Farnsworth is reminiscent of Ryan Dempster, another power reliever with command problems who flourished with a move to the rotation.” Sure, Dempster has pitched beautifully for the Cubs since returning to the rotation – but Dempster had only been a full-time reliever for about three seasons before he made the move. He had 162 major-league starts to his credit before he became a full-time reliever, and while the results weren’t always pretty, sometimes they were – notably in 2000, when as a 23-year-old Dempster had a 3.66 ERA and struck out 209 batters in 226 innings.

Farnsworth, on the other hand, has just 26 major league starts on his resume, in his first two seasons in the majors a decade ago. He had a 5.81 ERA in those starts, and in 144 innings allowed 32 homers and struck out just 86 batters. Dempster might be a similar type of pitcher, but he’s simply not of the same quality. You might as well compare Farnsworth to John Smoltz – hey, Smoltz moved from the bullpen to the rotation successfully as well!

No, if you’re going to compare Farnsworth to a successful reliever-turned-starter, you need to compare him to his teammate, the guy who probably convinced the Royals that this crazy idea might be worth trying: Robinson Tejeda. Unfortunately, it’s precisely because of Tejeda that this idea makes no sense.

Let’s review Tejeda’s story, both for our benefit and for the benefit of the Royals, who have evidently forgotten it. Tejeda broke in with the Phillies in 2005, and after a brief stint in the bullpen, entered the starting rotation, where he stayed through two seasons with the Rangers. Between 2005 and 2007 Tejeda made 46 starts and just 13 relief appearances, and pitched lousy. He had a 4.91 career ERA, and a terrible strikeout-to-walk ratio of just 181 to 143. After four relief appearances with the Rangers in 2008, he was released and picked up by the Royals, for whom he has pitched brilliantly: in 113 innings, he has allowed just 65(!) hits and 7 homers, and while he’s walked 69 batters, he’s also struck out 128.

On September 4^th last year the Royals moved him back into the rotation, and he continued to be unhittable, allowing just 15 hits in 32 innings. He was still wild (20 walks) but was still overpowering (32 Ks), and most importantly, was still effective (2.84 ERA).

And it appears the Royals have completely forgotten about him. Much like Alberto Callaspo has mysteriously become an afterthought in the Royals lineup, to the point where Kaegel’s projected Opening Day lineup excludes him, Tejeda has become the forgotten man in the Royals rotation.

In the same article that we learn of Farnsworth’s move to the rotation, we learn that “Farnsworth isn't the only pitcher who might emerge from the Royals' bullpen. Robinson Tejeda, another imposing right-hander, will also get a shot at the rotation after making six starts last season.” Really? He’ll get a shot? The guy who’s been lights out since joining the Royals, who was the team’s second-best starter down the stretch last year, will get the same shot to join the rotation as the guy who sucked last year and hasn’t started in the majors in a decade?

In this AP article, we learn from Trey Hillman that “I’m not counting Robby out.” Well, that’s awfully generous of you, to not count out the guy who saved you from 100 losses last September.

I’m not saying that Tejeda’s success in the rotation last September was for real. We’re all too familiar with great September performances from a young starter that didn’t carry over to the next season (see also Davies, Kyle). But don’t you think he at least deserves the chance to prove it was a mirage? Or at least a better chance than the guy who’s being moved to the rotation in part to keep him as far away from eighth-inning tie games as possible?

And really, there can only be room for one of them at most, because the rotation remains the team’s greatest strength – the CHONE projection system has ranked the Royals’ rotation as the sixth-best in baseball – and arguably doesn’t have room for either of them. The same five guys the Royals relied on most of last season – Greinke, Gil Meche, Brian Bannister, Luke Hochevar, and Davies – all return this season, and you can make a case that they’re still the five best options for the rotation.

Greinke and Meche are of course locks. Bannister, I think, has to be as well – he doesn’t have the repertoire you associate with a reliever, and his 4.73 ERA was far better than Davies and Hochevar. For the second time in three years he wore out down the stretch – he gave up 34 runs in 31 innings in his last six starts before getting shut down on September 2^nd. You might argue that he’s incapable of lasting a full season in the rotation, but the flipside to that is that in his first 20 starts he had a 3.59 ERA and excellent peripherals, and if the Royals can figure out a way to maintain his stamina all year long, he’s an excellent #3 starter.

That leaves Hochevar and Davies. Hochevar is an enigma wrapped in a riddle shoved inside a mystery which is locked inside a puzzle, then the whole thing is deep-fried in a conundrum. I don’t think you can give up on a guy who in separate starts threw an 80-pitch complete game, struck out 13 batters and walked nobody, and threw a three-hit shutout – even if he did have a 6.55 ERA. Davies, on the other hand, has exasperated pretty much everyone with his inconsistency for going on five years now. He’s walked nearly a batter every other inning throughout his career, and I don’t think his problem is control so much as the fact that he feels he has to nibble to compensate for the fact that he doesn’t quite have elite-caliber stuff.

So I could see moving Davies to the bullpen in the hopes that his velocity picks up a notch, he feels emboldened to challenge hitters more, and voila! You have an excellent middle reliever who can throw 90-100 innings without a problem.

That opens up a job for one starter. And between the guy who did it last year and the guy who’s never done it, I know which guy I’d rather see in that role.

Like the Ankiel signing, in isolation I like the idea of trying Farnsworth in the rotation. The Royals have nothing to lose, and potentially something to gain. But also like the Ankiel signing, I keep thinking that the Royals are just waiting for major league baseball to announce a rule change mandating 30-man rosters and 7-man rotations any day now, and they’re going to be in for a rude shock come the end of March. Just as the Royals’ machinations with their offense will make a lot of sense if there’s a big trade brewing, so too does the idea to move Farnsworth to the rotation make a lot of sense if, say, Bannister is about to pack his bags. But we’ve received no indication that that’s going to happen.

Pitchers and catchers report this week, and all of these permutations will be sorted out soon enough. I’m just worried that the Royals are as in the dark as to the final outcome as we are.

The Greatest Quote In The History Of Whatever.

Dick Kaegel has covered the Royals as a beat writer for something like a quarter of a century, writing for the Royals’ website for the better part of a decade and for the Kansas City Star long before that. You know what you’re going to get from a Kaegel article, generally – a solid account of each game, a number of clubhouse quotes, and a perpetually rosy (and occasionally fanboyish) perspective on the Royals.

What you don’t expect from a Kaegel article is anything controversial. Which is why, I suspect, a mind-blowing quote embedded within one of his articles for MLB.com last week passed by unrecognized by Royals fans everywhere.

Here’s the article – in which Kaegel is surprisingly explicit about the Royals’ issues – if you want to play along at home. See if you can find the quote I’m referring to.

If not, here’s an excerpt from the article:

And, over in the Royals' front office they’re saying, in the words of one exec, “We’re much more athletic than we were last year.”

Maybe so. And, if they also turn out to be better, the Royals have done it at much less cost than last year when their re-signing of Olivo ($2.8 million, including buyout) and adding Coco Crisp ($6.25 million, including buyout), Jacobs ($3.275 million), Kyle Farnsworth ($4.25 million) and Juan Cruz ($2.25 million) was close to a total of $20 million invested. OK, $18.825 million if you're adding it up.

In return for Crisp and Jacobs, two guys who were counted on to amp up the offense, they traded away relievers Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez. Seemed pretty reasonable at the time.

“Everybody thought we had the greatest offseason in the history of whatever and people in the game were saying we did as good as anybody in improving the team,” a Royals official said.

It didn't work out that way, did it? The club won 65 games and tied for last place.

This year’s new crop has added a mere $8.7 million to the 2010 payroll.

Read that again.

“Everybody thought we had the greatest offseason in the history of whatever and people in the game were saying we did as good as anybody in improving the team,” a Royals official said.

One more time.

“Everybody thought we had the greatest offseason in the history of whatever and people in the game were saying we did as good as anybody in improving the team.”

Everybody thought. Greatest offseason. History.

Let’s ignore the part about how “people in the game” said the Royals “did as good as anybody in improving the team.” This very well may be true. I mean, let’s say there was a guy in your fantasy league who has sucked year after year, whose draft strategy ossified in 1985 and who thinks that Joe Saunders is a first-round pick because he’s won 16 games each of the last two years. If that guy was tired of getting beaten up year after year, and was thinking of leaving the league – or worse, he was thinking about learning what all this hullabaloo about “sabermetrics” and “Moneyball” was about, and asked you for advice, what would you tell him? If you wouldn’t be tempted to pat him on the back and give him a few “attaboys” and tell him that he’s doing great and eventually his luck has to turn, well, you’re a better man than I.

So if Billy Beane or Kenny Williams told Dayton Moore that hey, we love what you did with your roster, and that Mike Jacobs is going to be a huge addition to your lineup and Kyle Farnsworth could be a force in your bullpen, well…let he who wouldn’t have done the same thing in their shoes throw the first stone. I’m fresh out.

But the first part…”everybody thought we had the greatest offseason in the history of whatever”…might be the single most delusional quote in the history of the franchise.

Back in 1993, Troy Aikman was named to People magazine’s annual “50 Most Beautiful People” list. If memory serves, when told of the honor, Aikman’s immediate response was, “they must not know that many people.” If someone in the Royals’ front office believes that “everybody” thought they had a good off-season last winter, they need to talk to more people. Preferably ones who aren’t imaginary.

I can’t possibly list everyone’s opinions about the Royals’ moves last winter, but here’s a sample. Here’s Posnanski on Mike Jacobs. Here he is (towards the end of a long post) on Kyle Farnsworth. Here’s Rob Neyer on Willie Bloomquist. And you don’t need me to link to what I wrote at the time to know that I hated all three of these acquisitions. And let's not forget - though it's so tempting to - about Horacio Ramirez.

Granted, that’s just three writers, although the three writers most commonly associated with the Royals. Okay, so here’s ESPN's season preview for the Royals last season. Down at the bottom you have a prediction from five different writers as to how the Royals would finish in 2009. Three predicted that the Royals would finish last in the division – the other two predicted fourth. (And all five were right!) Not the kind of consensus you would expect after the greatest offseason in the history of whatever.

In the interest of fairness, I should point out that reviews of the Coco Crisp trade were mixed. Many people – myself included – thought the Juan Cruz was signing was a nice buy-low acquisition. And the long-term contract extension for Zack Greinke, even if it was a no-brainer, may have single-handedly redeemed the off-season. But – at-best – the off-season was a wash. It wasn’t the greatest offseason in the history of whatever. It was barely the greatest offseason in the history of the 2008-09 Royals.

I could criticize this quote from now till kingdom come, but really, this quote transcends criticism. It is a masterpiece of hallucinatory thinking. I’m convinced the secret to cold fusion is locked somewhere inside that quote. So the only proper response is not criticism – it is mockery. Let’s imagine what this anonymous Royals’ official would have said about some famous historical events:

France, 1940: “Everybody thought we had the greatest series of concrete fortifications and trenches in the history of whatever and generals were saying we did as good as anybody in defending our border.”

The set of Heaven’s Gate, 1980: “Everybody thought we had made the greatest movie in the history of whatever and critics were saying we did as good as anybody in crafting a 3-hour, 39-minute film.”

Massachusetts, 2010: “Everybody thought we had run the greatest campaign in the history of whatever and politicians were saying we did as good as anybody in running for Senate.”

Feel free to play along in the comments section. Create your own quote – it’s fun! At least, it’s a lot more fun than contemplating the implications of the real one.