Prospect Rundown, Part 6.

Let’s finish off this prospect review before any more of them retire…

As an update to the last post: I had mentioned that prior to Tim Melville, the Royals only had two non-first-round picks signed to million-dollar bonuses going back to Bo Jackson, namely Derrick Robinson and Roscoe Crosby. I have been reminded that the Royals gave Luis Cota, their 10^th round pick in 2003, $1 million to sign. Cota’s case was a little different, in that he was a draft-and-follow who didn’t sign that summer, but went to community college in Arizona and showed first-round talent on the mound. The Royals controlled his rights until one week before the 2004 draft, and ponied up the cash to sign him.

In Cota’s case, the Royals didn’t draft him with the intent of giving him big money to sign, so it’s not an exact parallel to the draft phenomenon I discussed last time. But he warrants mention. (Cota briefly impressed scouts with his fastball in the Midwest League before his shoulder exploded; he’s still trying to work his way back and I think he’s still part of the organization, but his future looks bleak.)

To continue…while Melville is emblematic of the Royals’ new aggressive approach to the draft, he’s emblematic of another trend as well. The Royals were able to gauge his signability in part because he was a local. I’m using the term “local” generously here; Wentzville, Missouri is maybe half an hour west of St. Louis. But even by an expanded definition of “local”, the Royals have a disturbing history of passing on local talent, even as many local products have gone on to have fine major league careers.

Let’s define “local” as broadly as possible – as any player selected in a six-state area: Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. In 1988, the Royals used their 1^st-round pick on Hugh Walker, an ath-a-lete from an Arkansas high school who, alas, didn’t actually know how to hit. The Royals did a lot of that back in the late 1980s; presumably their success with Bo Jackson emboldened the franchise into thinking they could turn track stars into superstars, and never mind that Bo was actually a very productive collegiate hitter at Auburn.

The failure of Walker, in turn, might have cooled the Royals’ feelings towards local players. Probably not, but for whatever reason the Royals hardly ever drafted a local player with a high pick in the years to come. In 2005, the Royals selected Alex Gordon out of the University of Nebraska – a pick that was a no-doubt dead-cinch-lock pick that almost every team in baseball would have made with the #2 selection.

In the 17 drafts in between, from 1989 through 2004, the Royals selected only three players out of that six-state area in the first seven rounds of the draft. Interestingly, all three players made the majors, and at least one would have become a star in a kinder, gentler universe.

That would have been Jamie Bluma, who was the closer for Wichita State back when the Shockers were perennially contenders for the national championship. Bluma was taken in the 3^rd round in 1994 as an almost-major-league-ready college senior; he was in Triple-A within a year, and in the majors the year after that, never posting an ERA higher than 3.12 along the way. He debuted in the majors on August 9^th, 1996, and when Jeff Montgomery’s season ended with arm soreness on September 1^st, Bluma took over as the team’s closer, saving all five of his opportunities. In 20 innings, he allowed just 18 hits and 4 walks, striking out 14. He was in place to be Montgomery’s set-up man the following year, and Monty’s presumed successor in the closer’s role.

And then he was hit by the curse – “curse” sounds nicer than “Gene Stephenson destroyed his arm” – that afflicted almost every high-profile WSU pitcher of that era. (Tyler Green. Darren Dreifort. Mike Drumright.) Bluma was found to have a torn rotator cuff the following spring. He missed all of 1997, pitched three lousy seasons in the minors from 1998 to 2000, and then retired without ever pitching in the majors again.

If you were to put together a list of the 10 most significant injuries in Royals history, I think Bluma has to be on the list. Montgomery started to lose his effectiveness in 1997, was a liability in 1998, and a disaster in 1999 – the year the Royals had what I have previously argued was the worst bullpen of all time. Bluma didn’t really project as a Grade A closer, but at the very least he would have given the Royals some stability in that role in the late 1990s. With Bluma, the Royals wouldn’t have felt pressured to trade for a closer, and might have traded Johnny Damon for someone who was actually valuable instead of Roberto Hernandez. They might not have spent millions on Ricky Bottalico. The turn-of-the-century Royals might have been prevented from doing a lot of dumb things had Bluma not been hurt.

Then in 1999, the Royals selected two local players with early picks. Their second-round selection was Wes Obermueller, a pitcher out of the University of Iowa. Obermueller was a converted outfielder with a live arm, and judging from his performance record might have been better served staying in the outfield. He reached the majors for a brief stint with the Royals in 2002, then was traded the following summer as partial payment for Curtis Leskanic when Allard Baird went all-in during the Summer of Fool’s Gold. (We really need a good nickname for the 2003 season.) Leskanic pitched very well for the Royals down the stretch, but his pitching earned his release the following summer; picked up by the Red Sox, he pitched well for them in a limited role, and then became the answer to a trivia question that October: “who was the winning pitcher the night Dave Roberts stole second base?”

Obermueller pitched three seasons in Milwaukee and another in Florida, and the lowest ERA of his career was 5.07. At the plate, he was a career .237 hitter, and was 15-for-39 in 2004.

In the fifth round, out of the University of Nebraska, the Royals selected Ken Harvey. We poke fun of Harvey a lot here in the blogosphere – and I’m still waiting for someone to put together a YouTube “greatest hits” compilation of Harvey’s most memorable plays – but he did play essentially two full seasons in the majors as a starting first baseman. In draft terms, you’re doing well if your fifth-round pick makes it to the majors. If you drafted a Ken Harvey in the fifth-round every year, that would win you some games.

The last quality player the Royals drafted from those six states was a true local; David Cone was drafted out of Rockhurst High in 1981. (Notice I didn’t use the term “All-Star” – Harvey was, incredibly, the Royals’ representative in 2004.) But it’s not because the Royals couldn’t find any star talent in their neighborhood; it’s because they didn’t even bother to try.

This wouldn’t be a big deal if there simply weren’t any major league players coming out of the Great Plains. But, of course, there were. Here’s just a sampling of local players – all drafted in the 4^th round or later – from 1989 to 2004:

1989: Mike Oquist, U. of Arkansas, 13^th Round*

1990: Mike Myers, Iowa State, 4^th Round

1990: Mike Lansing, WSU, 6^th Round

1990: Pat Meares, WSU, 12^th Round

1992: Doug Mirabelli, WSU, 5^th Round

1993: Bill Mueller, Missouri State, 15^th Round

1995: A.J. Burnett, Central Arkansas Christian HS, 8^th Round

1995: Ramon Vazquez, Indian Hills CC (IA), 27^th Round

1996: Joe Crede, Fatima HS (MO), 5^th Round

1996: Casey Blake, WSU, 7^th Round

1996: Travis Hafner, Cowley County CC (KS), 31^st Round

1996: Junior Spivey, Cowley County CC (KS), 36^th Round

1998: Eric Hinske, U. of Arkansas, 17^th Round

1998: Mark Buehrle, Francis Howell North HS (MO), 38^th Round

1999: Nate Robertson, WSU, 5^th Round

2000: Cliff Lee, U. of Arkansas, 4^th Round

2000: Adam LaRoche, Seminole State College (OK), 29^th Round

2001: Ryan Howard, Missouri State University, 5^th Round

2001: Dan Johnson, U. of Nebraska, 7^th Round

2002: Kyle McClellan, Hazelwood West HS (MO), 25^th Round

2003: Ian Kinsler, U. of Missouri, 17^th Round

2003: Brad Ziegler, Missouri State University, 20^th Round

*: Oquist wasn’t all that good, but I list him here because he happened to sit down next to me on a plane as I returned from the 2003 SABR Conference in Denver back to Chicago – Oquist was returning to the Atlantic League after going home for the All-Star Break. He was incredibly gracious, and we had a very lovely conversation.

Notably left off this list is Albert Pujols, for the simple reason that including Pujols on a list of mere mortals would be an insult to his majesty. But let’s just remember that Pujols, who as a 13^th-round pick in 1999 is inarguably the GREATEST LATE-ROUND STEAL IN DRAFT HISTORY, went to high school IN KANSAS CITY, and was drafted out of Maple Woods Community College IN KANSAS CITY, and while attending Maple Woods one of his roommates WORKED AT KAUFFMAN STADIUM.

That’s an impressive list of talent, particularly when you consider that we’re looking only at guys drafted in the 4^th round or later. In particular, that’s a shocking amount of talent drafted in the late rounds (10^th or later). Just using players from the 10^th round and later, you could put together an infield of Pujols, Kinsler, Meares, and Mueller, put Hafner at DH, move Hinske and LaRoche in the outfield (or move Pujols out there), use Vazquez and Spivey as utility infielders, start Buehrle on the mound, and put McClellan and Ziegler in the bullpen.

The Royals drafted none of them.

I have no way of knowing without breaking down each region of the country the same way, but this strikes me as an incredible amount of major league talent that late in the draft, particularly for an area that’s not exactly known for being a baseball hotbed. This shouldn’t be surprising. Precisely because the area around Kansas City isn’t well-populated, and the quality of amateur baseball competition isn’t that high, it’s a lot harder to evaluate the major league potential of the non-elite prospects. Consequently, a lot of guys with big futures get buried in the late rounds.

Which makes the fact that the Royals didn’t focus their draft efforts in their own backyard for so long a criminal offense. The closest the Royals got to a late-round find in that span were two guys who just missed: Kit Pellow, a 22^nd rounder in 1996 who briefly made the majors with the Royals and Rockies, and has since taken his all-or-nothing swing to leagues all over the world; and Ruben Gotay, a 31^st round draft-and-follow out of Indian Hills CC in Iowa, who was the Royals’ starting baseman at the age of 21, and if his glove were a little better might still be a starting second baseman for someone today. And that’s it.

After Pujols, Ian Kinsler is one of the biggest out-of-nowhere college picks in the game today; he went from the 17^th round to quality major leaguer inside of 3 years. You’d think the Royals would have had more looks at him coming out of Mizzou than other teams.

Almost half the guys listed above were drafted from three places: Wichita State, the University of Arkansas, and Missouri State (formerly Southwest Missouri State). There was a golden opportunity there for the Royals to out-scout their opponents for someone like Ryan Howard. Howard’s power wasn’t exactly a secret, but no one knew if he’d make contact consistently enough to be a major league threat. The Royals had the opportunity to make that assessment better. Another Missouri State grad, Shaun Marcum (who’s not listed above because he was a 3^rd-round pick in 2003) also made the majors in short order. Meanwhile, the Royals haven’t drafted a player out of Missouri State in any round since 1993. (That year they took Bart Evans – who made the majors and briefly looked like a potential closer before suffering a serious ankle injury – in the 9^th round.)

With Melville, the Royals finally took a flyer on a player from their own area. Just to prove that wasn’t a fluke, the Royals took Aaron Crow with their first-round pick last season. Crow was technically picked out of an independent league, but he went to Mizzou for three years and was drafted out of college by the Nationals the year before. He also grew up in Topeka and attended Washburn Rural there. I advocated that the Royals draft Grant Green with their pick last season, but I admire the fact that in Crow, the Royals took a player that they must have seen dozens of times in college. Their scouting dossier on him figures to be thicker – and presumably better – than most teams.

It’s not a coincidence that this new focus on home-grown talent started after Dayton Moore was named GM, because Moore is a product of the Braves’ front office, and the Braves are the most famous – and most successful – example of a team mining its own backyard for major-league talent. The Braves didn’t starting drafting out of Georgia in earnest until the year 2000. Prior to that, their most successful local pick was John Rocker, an 18^th-rounder in 1993. (They also found Kevin Millwood out of neighboring North Carolina in the 11^th round in 1994.) But here’s a list of all the Georgia picks from the first 6 rounds from 2000 through 2005:

2000: Adam Wainwright, high school, 1^st Round

2000: Bryan Digby, high school, 2^nd Round (did not reach majors)

2000: Blaine Boyer, high school, 3^rd Round

2001: Macay Mcbride, high school 1^st Round

2001: Josh Burrus, high school 1^st Round (did not reach majors)

2001: Richard Lewis, Georgia Tech, supplemental 1^st Round (did not reach majors)

2001: Kyle Davies, high school, 4^th Round

2002: Jeff Francoeur, high school, 1^st Round

2002: Brian McCann, high school, 2^nd Round

2003: Paul Bacot, high school, 2^nd Round (did not reach majors)

2004: Clint Sammons, U. of Georgia, 6^th Round

2005: Will Startup, U. of Georgia, 5^th Round (did not reach majors)

In 2006, which was the draft when Dayton Moore had one foot in Atlanta and one in Kansas City, the Braves took a pair of college pitchers from Georgia in the 2^nd and 4^th rounds. And in 2007 the masterpiece of this draft strategy was picked: Jason Heyward, one of the best hitting prospects of this decade, was selected by the Braves with the 14^th overall pick.

Heyward was considered an elite talent – at the time Jim Callis of Baseball America declared him the steal of the first round – but he fell to the middle of the first round in large part because, playing against weak high school competition, he was pitched around so much that opposing scouts rarely got a chance to see him swing the bat. The Braves’ scouts, on the other hand, had been following him for years, and had seen enough repetitions to know what was hidden behind all those semi-intentional walks.

Last season, the Braves didn’t get around to drafting a home-state player until the 7^th round, the latest they’ve waited to take a local product this decade. On the other hand, their first-round pick – Mike Minor, who most thought was a reach with the #7 overall pick – went to Vanderbilt; they drafted a kid from Florida in the 4^th round; a kid from South Carolina in the 5^th round; and a kid from Alabama in the 6^th round. This is a strategy that is here to stay.

And it’s a strategy that has largely worked. Certainly, the Braves have made their share of mistakes, but they found a pair of stars in Wainwright and McCann, a pair of maddening but still talented players in Francoeur and Davies, some useful relievers in McBride and Boyer, and a potential superstar in Heyward. Given that only a third of these players were taken with first-round picks, and that the Braves were drafting at the end of each round most years, that’s a heck of a good job of drafting.

There isn’t as much talent in the Royals’ neighborhood as there is in the Braves’ neighborhood, and what talent there is has been much more likely to come out of college than out of high school. That’s not surprising; the Braves have taken advantage of the East Cobb Baseball organization, one of the best youth baseball organizations in the country, that has developed players into premium prospects by the time they’re 18, while players in Kansas and Missouri aren’t getting the playing time against other top talent they need to develop until they’re in college.

But the talent is there, and it’s high time the Royals take advantage of it. They’re going to miss on a few no matter what; already under Dayton Moore the Royals missed Derek Norris, who was drafted by the Nationals in the 4^th round out of Goddard High School in Kansas in 2007. (Even growing up in Wichita, we thought of Goddard as the sticks.) Norris is now one of the best catching prospects in the game.

But you can’t win if you don’t play. The Royals are finally starting to play. In 2007, Moore’s first draft, the Royals took a signability player named Zach Kenyon out of an Iowa high school in the 9^th round; Kenyon could not be persuaded to sign. In 2008, they took Melville. Then last year, they took Crow in the first round; a pitcher named Nicholas Wooley in the 12^th round out of a small Missouri college named William Woods University; a toolsy high school outfielder out of an Oklahoma high school named Lane Adams in the 13^th round; and in the 15^th and 17^th rounds the Royals took the starting keystone combination at the University of Arkansas, Scott Lyons and Benjamin Tschepikow.

Oh, and in the 7^th round they drafted a Missouri State player for the first time in 16 years – a short lefty named George Baumann.

They’re going to miss on a few of these guys. (I just heard that Lyons and Tschepikow both retired in the last few days.) But when it comes to the draft, failure is the rule, and success the exception. Common sense dictates that success is more likely when you know more about the players you draft, and you ought to know more about the players in your own backyard. The Royals continue to common defy common sense in many other ways, but when it comes to looking for talent in the draft, credit Dayton Moore & Co. for putting common sense to good use.

Back with some short(er) comments on a few other players, and a final farm system wrap-up, soon.

Prospect Rundown, Part 5.

(So this is what I’ve become. What started as a simple post about Tim Melville is already approaching 3000 words. It’s not really about Melville at all at this point, but then, that’s usually what happens when I start an article with one topic in mind and end up rambling about another. So rather than provide fodder for those of you who like to mock the lengths of my posts (that would be, um, all of you), I’m splitting this into two parts. Which of course means that I’m the guy who needed to split an article about Tim Freaking Melville into two parts. Whatever. On with the show.)

The Royals have ten prospects that clearly stand out from the rest, and I’ve discussed seven of them – the two first-round hitters (Moustakas and Hosmer), the five lefties (Montgomery, Arguelles, Duffy, Lamb, and Dwyer), and their first two picks last year (Crow and Myers). That leaves only Tim Melville, but I certainly don’t want to leave the impression that he’s an afterthought. On the contrary, Melville is one of the organization’s most meaningful prospects, both in terms of his own talent and in terms of two positive organizational trends that he represents.

If, sometime in the not-too-distant future, The Process™ starts to work and the Royals become a perennial contender on the basis of a perennially productive farm system, we may identify the exact point at which the franchise started to turn itself around as the moment the Royals drafted Melville. Even in the moment, as I refreshed MLB.com’s draft page on my iPhone while walking towards my daughter’s school play, I was stopped cold when Melville’s name popped out. His selection was, to that point, completely out of character for the organization, and the first real sign that – at least in terms of the farm system – Dayton Moore might live up to his promise.

See, the Royals drafted Melville in the 4^th round. They drafted him in the 4^th round even though, if players were drafted based purely on their ability and not on financial considerations, Melville wouldn’t have gotten out of the 1^st. He was a high school right-hander out of a Missouri high school who could throw in the mid-90s with a terrific curveball, and prior to his senior year there was talk that he might be a Top-5 pick. His velocity dipped a little as a senior – there’s been a lot of talk that his high school coach altered his throwing motion to his detriment – but he still projected as at least a late-1^st-round talent.

But he wanted mid-1^st-round money to sign, and for some reason his money demands – which weren’t that egregious – caused him to fall in the draft. The further he fell, the more teams fretted that he wouldn’t sign, and pretty soon he was in that downward spiral where teams don’t want to waste a 2^nd or 3^rd round pick on a player that might not sign, even if he has 1^st round talent. At that point, a prospect might well fall into the double-digit rounds, where some team will finally gamble on an “unsignable” player, perhaps using him as an insurance policy in case their own top picks don’t sign.

The Royals correctly gauged his signability, stopped his fall in the 4^th round, and gave him $1.5 million to sign, which is only slightly more than slot money if he had been drafted where his talent had projected him. Melville wasn’t a loser – he got the money he wanted – but the Royals were definitely winners. They got arguably the best high school right-hander in the draft in the fourth round. In his first pro season last year, Melville was a little wild and raw (43 walks and 10 homers in 97 innings) but also showed true power stuff (96 Ks and a 3.79 ERA.) His fastball is usually in the 92-93 range but sometimes higher, and has great sinking action. His curveball is a potentially dominant pitch that drops straight down but is tough to control. In this fine article, J.J. Picollo compares him to Andy Benes, which is obviously optimistic but not completely insane.

You have to understand: before Melville, this stuff NEVER happened to the Royals. It was other teams, big-market teams, that benefited when top prospects slid in the draft for signability reasons.

But after Melville, well, it’s almost become commonplace. Last year, of course, the Royals drafted Aaron Crow, who was only available in the first place because he had rejected the Nationals’ contract offer after they had selected him with the #9 overall pick the year before. Crow got over $3 million guaranteed and a major-league contract to sign. The Royals didn’t have a second-round pick, but they drafted Wil Myers in the 3^rd round and gave him mid-1^st-round money; they then drafted Chris Dwyer in the 4^th round and gave him late-1^st-round money. Meanwhile, the money that might have been used on a 2^nd-round pick was spent and then some on international free agents: Korean catcher Shin-Hin Jo ($600,000); Nicaraguan third baseman Cheslor Cuthbert ($1.35 million); and Noel Arguelles, the first Cuban defector the Royals have ever signed, to a 5-year, $6.9 million deal.

The Royals spent over $11 million in the 2008 draft, an all-time draft record at the time. Counting Arguelles, they spent more on amateur players in 2009 than they did in 2008. They’ve reached a point where Kevin Goldstein, in the process of ranking every organization in terms of their minor league talent, wrote of the Royals (who placed 10^th), “Some might even classify them as trailblazers when it comes to small-market teams spending big money in the later rounds, as it's still the best bargain in baseball.”

Analysts like myself have been saying this for years, as it’s one of the most obvious lessons in the game: the most cost-effective way to find talent is through the draft, and “overpaying” to draft elite talent is an investment that almost always pays off. One of the most aggravating things about being a Royals fan for the last 15 years – really, since Ewing Kauffman died – was that the Royals refused to acknowledge this very simple concept. The Royals decided to spend $2.7 million on Jeff Austin instead of $7 million on J.D. Drew. Starting in 2003 they drafted a bunch of college seniors starting in the 5^th round and offered them $1,000 take-it-or-leave-it offers to save money.

As recently as three years ago, they spent $4 million on Mike Moustakas instead of $6 million on Matt Wieters or $7 million on Rick Porcello. In fairness, the decision to draft Moustakas instead of those guys is too complicated to break it down as simply a matter of money – there was a legitimate concern (albeit one I consider far-fetched) that Scott Boras simply wouldn’t let either Wieters or Porcello sign with the Royals.

Regardless, if the Royals did draft Moustakas in part to save money, it’s the last time they pinched pennies in the draft. The following year, they spent $6 million to sign Eric Hosmer; regardless of whether he was the right pick, he was certainly the most expensive pick the Royals could have made in that spot. They then spent well over slot money to sign Melville in the 4^th round. Last summer, they gave Aaron Crow a major-league contract to sign, and he looked so good in spring camp that he might be the first starter the Royals call up this season if a need arises. They gave millions to Myers and Dwyer, and Myers already looks like he’ll justify the money.

Of the Royals’ top 10 prospects, seven of them would never have become part of the organization if the Royals hadn’t been willing to overspend to sign them. Moustakas and Hosmer both signed for over MLB’s mandated slot money (with the caveat that “slot money” for the top 5 picks is ridiculously low, and teams almost always exceed the recommended slot unless they’re being ridiculously cheap, as the Pirates were when they selected Daniel Moskos one pick ahead of Wieters.) Crow also signed for above-slot.

Melville, Myers, and Dwyer all got first-round money even though the Royals were able to snag them rounds later. Arguelles was the Cuban bonus baby. That leaves only Michael Montgomery, Daniel Duffy, and John Lamb as “traditional” draft picks that signed for slot.

Under a different, pre-Dayton Moore administration, the Royals’ Top 10 prospects might look more like a Top 3. For about the same amount of money as the Royals have paid Jose Guillen so far, the Royals have improved their farm system dramatically in two years.

The last two drafts have a chance to be two of the best drafts in team history. The 2008 draft, in particular, could be historic if Hosmer comes around – at this point, he’s the only disappointment in the first five rounds. Montgomery was a supplemental-1^st-rounder; the Royals got scrappy second baseman Johnny Giavotella, who I think has become quite underrated, in the 2^nd round. In the 3^rd round they took Tyler Sample, a raw but hard-throwing right-hander out of high school in Colorado. Sample made huge strides in his control last season, and is an excellent bet to move into next year’s Top 10 rankings.

Melville was drafted in the 4^th round, and John Lamb was drafted in the 5^th. If the Royals’ 7^th round pick, Jason Esposito, had signed, this draft would look even better. Esposito evidently agreed to a $1.5 million bonus before he was picked, foregoing a scholarship to Vanderbilt, but he had second thoughts afterwards and decided to go to college. He’s considered a possible first-round selection in 2011.

Last year’s draft doesn’t have the depth of talent, given that the Royals were missing their 2^nd round pick and didn’t have a supplemental pick, but with Myers that draft has arguably more star potential.

But it all started with Melville, more or less. The Royals did give $1 million to sign Derrick Robinson out of the 4^th round in the 2006 draft. Robinson was considered the fastest man in that draft but a project with the bat, words that unfortunately remain as true today as they were four years ago. And in 2001, the one time Allard Baird convinced David Glass to open up his vault for some 18-year-old kids, the Royals spent $1.75 million on their 2^nd round pick, Roscoe Cr…Roscoe Cros…I’m sorry, my fingers won’t let me time his name. (The Royals would end up recouping some of that bonus money. The story of what happened is long and still not entirely clear, but after signing, Crosby never appeared in a game. I don’t mean a major-league game – I mean a pro game. One of the most-hyped Royals draft picks of the decade never so much as suited up for a minor-league game before he was released.)

Before Crosby, unless I’m missing someone, the last time the Royals went way over budget to sign a draft pick was…Bo Jackson, who got a major-league deal for over $1 million (the largest bonus ever given to an amateur player to that point) as a 4^th round pick in 1986.

Between Melville, Myers, and Dwyer, the Royals have signed more high-priced draft picks in the last two drafts than they did in the 20 previous drafts. That’s a trend I can get behind.

More to come…

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.