Royals Today: Mid-Season Update.

Exactly halfway through the season, the Royals are 33-48, on pace for a 66-96 record, and all you need to know about this franchise is that the Royals have averaged a 66-96 record for the past 10 years. Honestly, a 33-48 record is about where I expected the Royals to be at this point in the season; I predicted that they would win 69 games, but I also expected them to be a better team in the second half of the season. If they pick up the pace even a little, they could win 70 games, something they’ve accomplished just twice in the last decade.

The shape of the team’s performance has to make you skeptical that they can accomplish even that. The Royals started 10-4, which means they’re 23-44 since – they’ve lost essentially two-thirds of their games for the last two-and-a-half months. Not even their annual dose of NL competition has helped; the Royals are 4-11 against NL opponents with this weekend’s series in Colorado left to play. From 2005 to 2010, the Royals were 58-50 in interleague play. In 2005 and 2006, the Royals went 19-17 against NL opponents even though they lost 100 games each season.

So yeah, there’s reason to worry that the Royals might be trending in the wrong direction. Then consider that the Royals have played 47 home games and just 34 games on the road so far. Then remember that the Royals have yet to play the Red Sox or Rays. Another 100-loss season is still in play. On the other hand, the Royals are playing much better than their 33-48 record. They’ve only been outscored by 49 runs all season; take out the Mazzaro game and their run differential is -32. Of their last 13 losses, ten of them have been by one or two runs. A preponderance of close losses is sometimes the fault of a leaky bullpen; in the Royals case it’s simply a matter of having rallies fall a run or two short.

Regardless, this season is less about wins and losses than it is about problems and solutions for 2012 and beyond. On that scoreboard, the Royals are doing a lot better than 33-48. While the well-documented problems with the Royals’ left-handed pitching prospects have people worried about the near future, let’s not forget that a pair of unexpected solutions have also presented themselves.

- Solution #1: Alex Gordon is hitting .293/.363/.479, in a down year for offense. He has 24 doubles, four triples, and nine homers – double those numbers, and you can see how impressive a pace he’s on. Thanks to Gordon, the Royals rank third in all of baseball in OPS from their left fielders, and they lead the AL by a country mile – the Yankees are second with a line of .264/.343/.418.

Gordon has also been a revelation defensively. His range has been fine – not outstanding, but certainly at least average. And his arm, of course, has been an absolute weapon. Gordon has 13 outfield assists in half a season. Thirteen assists is a good full-season total for any outfielder – in left field, it’s fantastic. In fact, Gordon has already tied the all-time Royals record for assists by a left fielder. Assuming my research is accurate, Gordon has tied Lou Piniella (1969) and David DeJesus (2009) with 13 outfield assists from left field. And there’s still half a season left to play.

Most importantly, Gordon has been healthy all season, missing only three games, all of them by manager’s choice. He leads the Royals with 2.8 WAR, and absolutely should be the team’s All-Star representative.

There’s always the chance this is a fluke half-season, but we’re talking about Alex Gordon here – the surprise isn’t that he’s playing so well, but that it took him until his fifth season in the majors to do so. Unlike his outfield mate Jeff Francoeur, Gordon has already shown the ability to fight his way out of a slump:

Opening Day – May 1st: .339/.395/.545

May 2nd – May 19th: .153/.219/.254

May 20th – Today: .315/.395/.521

There was some concern early on in the season that Gordon’s new-found production was coming at the expense of his plate discipline, and that once pitchers exploited his new-found aggressiveness he’d be in trouble. But Gordon’s patience has returned as the season has gone on  – he drew just eight walks in April, but 11 in May, and 14 in June.

In short, there’s every reason to think that Gordon’s performance is for real. Which means there’s every reason for the Royals to start thinking about offering him a long-term contract. The Royals have a policy of not offering contract extensions during the season, and in Gordon’s case I think that’s fine; even I would like to see him keep this performance up for a full season before I’m completely convinced. But if his final numbers are within range of where they are today, then locking up Gordon has to be the Royals #1 off-season priority.

Gordon is under team control for 2012 and 2013 as it is, but locking him for 2014 and 2015 – either through a 4-year deal or a 3-year deal with a club option – is imperative. Gordon will play the 2015 season at the age of 31. He’s a good athlete and takes very good care of his body, so I’m confident he will maintain his peak performance into his early 30s. The Royals have plenty of payroll space and can easily afford the 8-12 million dollars a year (depending on the length of the deal, options, etc.) that it will take to lock him up.

There’s another reason why the Royals need to keep Gordon around for the next several years, one that hardly ever gets talked about: he bats left-handed.

With Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas headlining the Royals’ farm system the last few years, the Royals seemed focused on getting right-handed hitters to protect Hosmer and Moustakas in the lineup. Two days before the Greinke trade, Moore was on radio talking about what they were looking to acquire, and while talking about the up-the-middle positions the Royals were trying to fill (catcher, shortstop, centerfielder), he specifically mentioned a “right-handed-hitting centerfielder”. This is why I took the Greinke rumors so seriously when Bernie’s Crew broke the trade – Lorenzo Cain fit Moore’s stated desire perfectly, and made me think the trade was nearly finalized when Moore was being interviewed.

The problem is that, aside from Hosmer and Moustakas, every other top hitting prospect in the system is right-handed. Alcides Escobar is right-handed. Billy Butler is right-handed. At second base, both Johnny Giavotella and Christian Colon (if he moves there) are right-handed. Salvador Perez is right-handed. Cain is right-handed. Wil Myers is right-handed. Even the low-level prospects with high ceilings, like Cheslor Cuthbert and Brett Eibner, are right-handed. Bubba Starling? Right-handed.

The best hitting prospects in the system who don’t bat right-handed? David Lough, who might be a fourth outfielder in the end. Jarrod Dyson and Derrick Robinson, who might be fifth outfielders in the end. Kila Ka’aihue and Clint Robinson, who are blocked with the Royals and no one takes seriously as prospects anyway. Finally, there’s the suddenly-interesting Rey Navarro, a switch-hitting middle infielder who just got promoted to Double-A the other day. And that’s it – you have to go down to the rookie leagues to find even a borderline prospect who doesn’t bat right-handed.

If you put together a projected Royals lineup for 2013, every hitter in the lineup is right-handed except for Hosmer and Moustakas. And Gordon.

C: Perez (R)

1B: Hosmer (L)

2B: Colon or Giavotella (R)

3B: Moustakas (L)

SS: Escobar (R)

LF: Gordon (L)

CF: Cain (R)

RF: Myers (R)

DH: Butler (R)

All things considered, you’d rather have more left-handed hitters in your lineup than right-handed hitters, simply because most starting pitchers are right-handed, so you’d rather have the platoon advantage more often than not. (Besides, most of the left-handed starting pitchers play for the Royals already.) You can survive with six right-handed hitters in your lineup, but it’s not ideal. Starting seven right-handed hitters is an invitation for abuse – every team in the AL Central will carry some low-slot right-handed specialist with the express purpose of carving up the Royals’ lineup.

There’s two take-home points from this:

1) The Royals need to figure out a lineup that splits up their three left-handed hitters, because it makes absolutely no sense to bat, say, Hosmer and Moustakas back-to-back followed by five right-handed hitters. At the same time, you don’t want any of them batting seventh. When you think about it, having Gordon in the leadoff spot makes a ton of sense. Gordon leads off, Hosmer bats third, Moustakas bats fifth, and you fill in the other guys as needed.

2) The Royals really can’t afford to let Gordon get away in two years.

- Solution #2: Five weeks ago, Felipe Paulino was a 27-year-old journeyman who had been traded for a washed-up veteran (Clint Barmes) and waived in the span of a few months. He had a career 5.93 ERA in the major leagues.

Today, if my life was on the line and I had to pick one Royals starter to win a game for me, Paulino wouldn’t just be my choice – he’d be the only choice.

It’s hard to overstate just how impressive Paulino has been. He entered the game on May 27th just minutes after he arrived at the ballpark to join his new team; he retired 13 of the 14 hitters he faced that night and the Royals won in extra innings. He’s made six starts since, and all of them have been impressive in their own way.

His last two starts may have been his finest work, even though he gave up nine runs in 15 innings. On June 23rd against Arizona, he gave up runs in each of the first four innings – and then retired twelve straight batters from the fifth to the eighth inning before tiring in the ninth. On Tuesday against San Diego, he gave up hits to five of the first eight batters he faced, and allowed three runs in the first two innings. He then pitched five more innings and allowed only an unearned run.

In the two starts, he walked just two batters, while striking out 15. If that’s how he performs when he’s struggling, sign me up for more struggles.

Since joining the Royals, Paulino has thrown 42 innings, and has allowed just 10 walks (one intentional) and two homers, while whiffing 36 batters. His peripherals are even better than his 3.21 ERA, and his ERA is easily the best in the rotation.

And like Gordon, there are very good reasons to think Paulino’s performance isn’t a fluke. That’s because there are very good reasons to think that Paulino’s 5.93 ERA before joining the Royals was the product of terrible luck more than terrible pitching. In 223 career innings, Paulino had walked 90 batters unintentionally – not great, but not terrible – and had struck out 201. He had allowed 32 homers, but he wasn’t a flyball pitcher – his groundball percentage of 42% is about league average.

The bottom line: Paulino’s xFIP – which is basically a measure of what his ERA should have been, given normal luck – was about 4.25. And there was reason to think that he was capable of improving on that mark – his average fastball velocity has been over 95 mph every year of his career. Last year, only Ubaldo Jimenez and Stephen Strasburg threw harder among starting pitchers.

Since joining the Royals, Paulino hasn’t been lucky; it’s just that he’s finally pitched the way you’d expect a man with his stuff to pitch, and his ERA finally reflects the way he has pitched. After barely a month with the Royals, Paulino looks like Dayton Moore’s greatest find since at least Joakim Soria. Oh, and he’s under club control through the 2014 season.

Paulino’s emergence goes a long way towards making amends for the struggles of Mike Montgomery and Chris Dwyer and the injury to John Lamb. Combined with Danny Duffy’s step forward this season, the Royals now have two potential above-average starters for their 2012 rotation. Luke Hochevar drives us crazy, but he’s at least worthy of the #5 starter’s role, with some upside.

There’s a big difference between having three holes in your rotation and two. The Royals need to be aggressive in acquiring an established starting pitcher between now and next spring, whether it’s on the free-agent market (which is incredibly weak, but does include Edwin Jackson, who I like) or on the trade market (which I plan to talk about in a future column.) But Paulino allows the Royals the flexibility of only having to fill one rotation spot with a high-end acquisition, as the remaining rotation spot can either be filled internally (if Mike Montgomery rights himself over the last two months of the season, or if Aaron Crow gets an audition in the rotation and nails it) or externally by means of another low-cost low-upside signing along the lines of Jeff Francis or Bruce Chen.

Meanwhile, the Royals have more relievers than they know what to do with – Nate Adcock is the only guy in the pen who isn’t dealing, and guys like Kelvin Herrera and Kevin Chapman are already dominating in Double-A. The lineup features five obvious solutions (Gordon, Butler, Hosmer, Moustakas, Escobar), and in Giavotella and Cain, the Royals have two major league-ready hitters who could step in tomorrow and provide average production at second base and in centerfield.

I know it’s hard to look past the wreckage of another 95+ loss season. But the Royals are still well positioned to go into 2012 with reasonable expectations of a .500 season, and a shot at contending if everything goes right. They’re still well positioned to ascend to the top of the AL Central in 2013, and stay there a while.

As I write this, the Royals are getting destroyed by Colorado, 9-0. And you know what? It’s still a good day as a Royals fan, because down in Omaha, Mike Montgomery returned to the rotation after skipping a start and responded with 6.2 shutout innings in his best outing of the season. I know things look dim in the here and now. But I’m still convinced that light at the end of the tunnel really is the sun.

Grantland.

I have very few rules in life, but one of them is this: when I get a direct message on Twitter from @sportsguy33 asking for my email address, I give it to him.

This morning, I made my debut over at Grantland, which you can read here. Hold on to your seats, but it's about the Royals. If you're shocked at how short the article is, keep in mind that my original draft was approximately 237,000 words. (Apparently there are these people called "editors" whose job it is to make your articles more concise. Who knew?)

If you're a regular reader of mine, then this column doesn't break a lot of new ground, but it's a good primer for the regular sports fan. And it was worth it if only to confirm that yes, aside from the Expos/Nationals, every other sports franchise in America has made the playoffs since 1986.

(It was cut from the original piece, but even more humiliating is this fact: between the four major sports, there have been 24 expansion franchises which have started play since 1986. EVERY ONE OF THEM HAS MADE THE PLAYOFFS TOO, with the exception of the Houston Texans, who have been in existence for all of nine seasons. All four baseball expansion franchises have been to the playoffs at least twice, and all four have been to the World Series.)

It's too soon to know whether I'll be writing regularly for Grantland or not; if I do, I'm sure I won't be writing about the Royals every time. So you'll still see me here writing regularly.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the piece. Since Grantland doesn't allow for comments yet, feel free to leave your feedback here.

Ballpark Event At The K.

For years Baseball Prospectus has conducted events at major-league ballparks around the country, giving fans a chance to come out and meet their favorite writers, hear from executives from their local team, and enjoy a great game of baseball all in one evening. However, until now, no event had ever been held at Kauffman Stadium.

That is about to change. For the first time ever, Baseball Prospectus is holding an event in Kansas City. On Saturday, July 9th, you can come out to the ballpark early and meet your favorite Baseball Prospectus writers, including minor-league expert Kevin Goldstein; Craig Brown (also of Royals Authority); Jeff Euston; and Joe Hamrahi. You can also meet me.

You'll hear from us, and you'll also hear from someone in the Royals front office who will talk about the organization and answer questions. You'll also get a ticket to that evening's game against the Tigers; we'll all sit out in right field in front of Rivals during the game and continue our conversations, while waiting to fight over a home run ball from Hosmer or Gordon.

The game is a 6:10 start, but the fun begins around 4 o'clock. The cost of the entire event, including your ticket to the game, is $30. And if you are a current or prospective subscriber to BP, you'll get half of that money back in a $15 rebate to a BP subscription.

I'd love to meet as many of you as possible that evening, so if you can make it, please sign up here. Please note that registration for the event ends on Monday, so please sign up as soon as possible.

Bubba.

For better or for worse, whether Bubba Starling winds up in the Hall of Fame or winds up ahead of Roscoe Crosby on the list of “Five-Tool High School Outfielders Who Went Bust” – he is a Kansas City story now. The highest-drafted high school player in the history of the state of Kansas, and the highest-drafted player of any sort from the Kansas City area, was selected by his hometown team. With the fifth pick in a loaded draft, the Royals bypassed numerous other options, including Baseball America’s consensus #1 prospect in the draft, Anthony Rendon, in order to take the local kid.

It’s a fairy tale story, even if we’re still on chapter one, and even if we have no idea whether the story has a Disney ending or a Tim Burton one. Decades from now, stories will still be written about the day the local kid fell in love with the local team, and the team fell in love with him, and how these two entities were destined to wind up together in lifelong bliss or heartbreak or War of the Roses-like acrimony or however the story turns out.

What might be lost to history, or buried as an inconvenient truth, is this: the Royals didn’t really want Bubba Starling. He wasn’t the love of their life; he was their BFF who was still standing there when all their true loves were spoken for.

The Royals will never state this publicly, but multiple sources – most recent Baseball America’s Jim Callis, who joined me on my radio show last Thursday – have indicated that the Royals had their eye on four players, and Starling wasn’t one of them. Eyeing their short-term needs for starting pitching, the Royals wanted a close-to-the-majors pitcher. By that, I mean they wanted a college pitcher or an unusually polished high school pitcher (cf. Zack Greinke) who might be ready for the majors within two years.

There were three elite collegiate pitchers in this draft, UCLA’s Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer, and Virginia left-hander Danny Hultzen. Meanwhile, Dylan Bundy emerged out of an Oklahoma high school with the rare combination of power stuff and uncanny poise for an 18-year-old kid. The Royals drafted fifth, and until 15 minutes before their pick, they were fairly certain they were drafting one of these four guys.

And then the Mariners, who were widely presumed to have their eye on Rendon (and if not Rendon, a high school hitter like Starling or Francisco Lindor), blew up everyone’s draft board by taking Hultzen. The Pirates had already selected Cole #1 overall; Arizona and Baltimore followed with Bauer and Bundy. Drafting fifth, the Royals had their eye on four pitchers. For the first time in the history of the draft, pitchers were selected with each of the first four picks. Figures.

So no, Bubba Starling wasn’t the player the Royals had pined for all season long. But man, he is one hell of a consolation prize.

This was not a charity pick, or a selection made by the team’s marketing department. Bubba Starling was pretty clearly one of the top five talents in the draft. At least one analyst, my friend Joe Sheehan (and with the caveat that Joe isn’t a draft expert), felt Starling should have been the #1 pick overall. The fact that Starling went to high school 40 miles away from Kauffman Stadium is a wonderful fringe benefit, but I doubt that factored into the pick in any significant way.

In the history of the franchise, the Royals have drafted only two players who have gone on to display true five-tool talent in the major leagues. The first was Bo Jackson, and I’m stretching the definition of “five-tool” with Bo, because one of the five tools is hitting for average, and not even Art Stewart probably thought Bo would make enough contact to be more than a 50 hitter. (I’m using the 20-80 scouting scale here, where 50 is major-league average.)

But I’m listing Bo anyway, because when he was drafted, he had legitimate 80 power. A tool of “80” is absolutely elite; there might not be ten players in the major leagues with 80 power at any time. Bo also had 80 speed. He also had an 80 arm. If I understand things correctly, Bo Jackson is the only player of the draft era who had an 80 in all three of those categories. He was a freak when he was drafted in 1986, and he’d be a freak today.

(While Bo is the only player with 80 power/speed/arm, he’s not the only guy with an 80 grade for three of the five tools. Call me crazy, but when Ichiro was a rookie you could argue he had an 80 hit tool (he led the league in batting average), 80 speed (he led the league in steals), an 80 arm (ask Terrence Long), and an 80 glove (he won a Gold Glove as a right fielder). That’s pretty damn impressive.)

The other five-tool talent, who did a much better job of actualizing his tools than Bo did, was Carlos Beltran. I don’t know that any of Beltran’s tools were 80-grade, but he was an above-average hitter and well above average in the other four categories.

Bubba Starling has a chance to be the third. Even those draft experts who didn’t think he was the best player in the draft agree that he had the highest upside in the draft. He has crazy power, well above-average speed, terrific defensive instincts, a cannon for an arm. There’s nothing he can’t do on a baseball field.

Of course, most of the baseball fields he’s played on have been in Kansas, and meaning no disrespect to my homeland, many of the pitchers he faced in high school would struggle to make the JV team in southern California. The history of the draft is littered with high school outfielders who could run like the wind, hit balls into parking lots, got drafted in the top half of the first round – and whose knees buckled the first time they saw a professional-grade curveball.

Roscoe Crosby, the Royals’ second-round pick in 2000 (and who got top-15 money to sign), played high school ball in South Carolina, also not a baseball hotbed. We’ll never know if he could hit a curveball, because he never saw one – at least not in a game. Crosby never played a game in his career. Not a major-league game – a minor-league game. Starling is no Crosby, but he is baseball’s version of Mauna Kea – his ceiling is in the stratosphere, but his floor is buried a few miles under the ocean waves.

That said, the risk level with Bubba Starling is a lot lower than it would have been 20 years ago, for the same reason that the risk level for high school players in general is lower. We don’t have to evaluate Starling based on his performance against Kansas high school pitching. Like most elite high school players, Starling has faced off against some of the nation’s other high school players in showcase events.

He also played for Team USA’s Under-18 team last summer at the IBAF World Junior Baseball Championships. He not only held his own, but for a player facing the best pitchers he had ever stepped in against, he dominated. In 19 games, he hit .339 with a .532 slugging average, and most impressively, his OBP was .474 – suggesting that even against the best teenager pitchers in the world, he was able to control the strike zone. The vast majority of first-round tools guys who don’t pan out are done in by their plate discipline. Starling stands a much better chance of converting his prodigious tools into stardom if he doesn’t undermine them by swinging at unhittable pitches.

Two years ago, the San Diego Padres used the third pick in the draft on a similar tools-heavy but raw high school outfielder named Donovan Tate. To this point in his career, Tate has been a bust – owing mostly to the fact that he can’t stay healthy, but also because he simply hasn’t hit enough to bring his other tools into play. The consensus in the industry, though, is that even before he was drafted, there were very genuine concerns about Tate’s bat – much more so than there are with Starling.

My biggest concern with Starling is a concern I have with more and more draft picks – his date of birth. Starling was born August 3rd, 1992 – meaning he’ll already be 19 years old by the time he signs with the Royals. This is a societal trend, not a baseball trend – whereas a generation ago, parents wanted to get their kids into kindergarten as soon as possible, parents are more and more inclined to hold their children back from kindergarten a year so that they’ll be more mature and ahead of the other children in their class. (This process has become so prevalent that they call it “redshirting”.) Starling turned six before he even started kindergarten*. If he had started kindergarten when he was five, as many kids still do, he would have been eligible for the draft last year. (And come to think of it, the Royals probably would have drafted him last year as well.)

*: I’m assuming here that Starling wasn’t held back at some point in his academic career.

I talked about this on The Baseball Show with Joe Sheehan, but I’m willing to bet – and would love for someone to do the research – that high school players taken in the first round are older, as a group, than they were 10 or 20 years ago. It seems like more and more drafted players turn 19 the summer after they are picked. It might be a faulty perception on my part, but I’d certainly love to know either way.

While Starling turns 19 soon, the second-best high school hitter in the draft, Francisco Lindor, was also one of the youngest players in the draft – he doesn’t turn 18 until November. It’s worth noting that the two biggest high school phenoms of the draft era – Ken Griffey Jr and Alex Rodriguez – were both 17 when they were drafted. Every high school hitter taken #1 overall in the last quarter-century was either 17 or a very young 18 when he was picked – Joe Mauer and Chipper Jones were born in April, Josh Hamilton and Adrian Gonzalez in May. Justin Upton was still 17 when he was picked. Mike Trout, who was the #25 pick in 2009 but quickly made the 24 teams that passed on him look foolish, was just 17 on draft day. And Bryce Harper is in his own category.

Starling’s older than all of those guys. Particularly given the lack of reps Starling has taken against elite competition, the Royals have to hope that he is more refined than he looks, because the clock is already ticking. It’s hard to overstate just how important another year of development is at that age. The difference in future potential between a 25 and a 26 year old is minimal. Between an 18 and a 19 year old? It’s massive.

I don’t want to make too much of the age issue – after all, Delmon Young was also a #1 overall pick who was just 17 when he was drafted. Four years ago, the Royals elected to take Mike Moustakas, who turned 19 the September after the draft, instead of Josh Vitters, who turned 18 the August after the draft. The 11-month gap between them worried me greatly – but in the case of those two specific players, the Royals seem to have made the right move. Let’s hope they once again made the right decision that Starling, despite being 15 months older than Lindor, is still the better prospect.

Tactically, yes, the Royals’ failure to land an elite starting pitcher hurts them in the short term. The Royals’ youth movement has taken over the bullpen, and the offense is settling into place nicely – not only are Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas already in place, and not only has Alcides Escobar been possessed by the ghost of Arky Vaughn, but the Royals already had two key pieces of the future lineup in place in Alex Gordon and Billy Butler.

But on the pitching side, the Royals were essentially starting from scratch at the start of the season. The only member of the Opening Day rotation who might figure in the team’s long term plans was Luke Hochevar, and even that is debatable. While Danny Duffy arrived ahead of schedule and struck out an astonishing nine batters in 3.2 innings yesterday*, John Lamb is out for the year, Chris Dwyer’s ERA in Double-A is over 6, and last night, you could almost hear the warning sirens going off on the mound as Mike Montgomery gave up nine runs and four homers in three innings down in Round Rock.

*: Despite leaving the game in the fourth with a leg cramp, Duffy became just the fourth pitcher in Royals history to strike out nine or more batters in one of the first seven appearances of his career. Two of the other three are Steve Busby – the only guy to strike out 10 – and Paul Splittorff. The third is Runelvys Hernandez.

It’s not true that prospects are designed to break your heart. But it is true that pitching prospects are designed to break your heart. The Royals had three elite hitting prospects at the start of the season; two are in their lineup, and Wil Myers, who qualifies as a “disappointment” relative to the other two, is hitting .281/.347/.407 in Double-A and is just 20 years old. But the pitchers…oh, the pitchers.

If the best way to develop two good starting pitchers is to start with ten pitching prospects, then the only solution to the Royals pitching problems is more pitching. Before the draft, Soren Petro had an extended conversation with Joel Goldberg about this very subject on 810 WHB, arguing that the Royals simply had to draft more pitching because, as we’re seeing with the Royals’ farm system, the failure rate with pitching prospects is so high.

I’m not so sure I agree. Yes, most pitching prospects don’t pan out, and the Royals need more pitching prospects if they think they can build an entire rotation out of their farm system. But precisely because most pitching prospects don’t pan out – even the best of them – is the answer really to spend a precious top-five draft pick on yet another pitching prospect who might not pan out? That’s sort of like saying that since most penny stocks wind up being worthless, the key to amassing a fortune is to buy as many penny stocks as you can.

Or you can diversify and invest in a blue-chip stock instead. That’s what Bubba Starling is, relatively speaking. No, he’s not a safe college hitter like Rendon is, but in addition to his upside, Starling plays a key up-the-middle position, and the one weakness of the Royals’ farm system is the lack of elite prospects up the middle. At shortstop (Escobar) and catcher (Salvador Perez) the Royals have, at least, elite defenders. Starling gives them a potential up-the-middle player who’s a star in both halves of the inning.

As for the solution to the pitching problem, there is a solution other than “draft more pitching”. The solution, in two words, is: Felipe Paulino. It’s early, but Dayton Moore may have struck gold here.

The problem with pitchers isn’t that none of them are any good, obviously – unless we’re playing on the other side of Lake Wobegon, some of them have to be above-average. The problem with pitchers is that it’s so hard to figure out which ones are going to be good. This is a crisis when dealing with draft picks or minor leaguers. But it’s an opportunity when looking for pitchers in other places, like the waiver wire. Show me a great offense, and I’ll show you an offense where nearly every player was expected to be good – meaning they were either developed internally, traded for in kind, or signed for big free agent dollars.

But show me a great rotation, and that’s not always the case. Sure, the Phillies’ Fab Four were expected to be great, but most rotations have at least one surprise pitcher, someone who was acquired for next to nothing. I mean, where would the Yankees be this year without Bartolo Colon?

The 1991 Braves, who I’m contractually obligated to bring up every couple of months when writing about the Royals, had drafted Steve Avery and Tom Glavine. But John Smoltz was in Double-A and going nowhere when the Braves snagged him in the famous Doyle Alexander trade. And the veteran that held the staff together was Charlie Leibrandt, who was given up for dead by the Royals after the 1989 season, when he almost single-handedly killed the team’s playoff hopes with a 5.14 ERA. (This was back in the days when a 5+ ERA was grounds for dismissal in Kansas City. Today, he’d be the Opening Day starter.) The Royals traded him to Atlanta for the immortal Gerald Perry – and it turns out Leibrandt had three more great seasons left to give.

The 1985 Royals had one of the great collections of young homegrown pitching talent ever – Bret Saberhagen, Mark Gubicza, and Danny Jackson were all rookies together in 1984. But they also had, well, Charlie Leibrandt, who had been acquired from Cincinnati for Bob Tufts in the summer of 1983 – Tufts would never again pitch in the majors. The fifth starter, Buddy Black, had been acquired as a player to be named later from Seattle in exchange for a guy named Marty Castillo.

Even the 2008 Rays, who won the AL pennant without ever starting a pitcher more than 26 years old, relied on shrewd player acquisition more than development to build their rotation. Their only two homegrown starters were James Shields (16th round pick) and Andy Sonnanstine (13th round pick). Matt Garza was acquired in the blockbuster deal that sent Delmon Young – who had just finished second in the Rookie of the Year vote at the age of 21 – to Minnesota. Edwin Jackson had been pilfered from the Dodgers for a couple of middling relievers in Danys Baez and Lance Carter. And Scott Kazmir had been stolen…well, “stolen” isn’t the right word. I’d say “taken at gunpoint”, but the Mets were pointing the gun at themselves. Anyway, the Rays got Kazmir for Victor Zambrano in the greatest WTF? trade of the 21st century.

The point is that while it’s great if you can build a rotation entirely from within, a failure to do so isn’t damning, so long as you can find a starter or two off the waiver wire or trade for them on the cheap.

Moore has certainly tried to find diamonds in the rough for his pitching staff, and in the bullpen he’s done great work – Joakim Soria was a Rule 5 pick obviously, and Robinson Tejeda was picked up off the waiver wire. But he let Jorge de la Rosa slip through his fingers, and while it took a few seasons, de la Rosa blossomed into an above-average starter with the Rockies (before blowing out his elbow this year.) But in Paulino, Moore might have finally found the gem he’s been looking for in the starting rotation.

Look, if Cole or Bauer or Bundy had been available, I would have preferred them to Starling. (Not so much Hultzen, who’s a safe, polished lefty without much upside. I’m not sure what the Mariners were thinking, to be honest.) But the pitcher they wanted wasn’t there, and you have to let the draft come to you. All things equal, maybe you draft for need, but things weren’t equal when it came to the Royals’ pick.

There were two players that stood apart from the rest, Starling and Rendon. If Starling bombs, they’ll be plenty of regrets that they didn’t take Rendon, who could be in the majors by this time next year if his shoulder doesn’t need surgery. (No, the Royals didn’t need a third baseman. But you know who really didn’t need a third baseman? The Nationals, who have Ryan Zimmerman locked up through 2013, and took Rendon anyway. When you have the opportunity to get a #1 pick-caliber player with the #6 pick, you draft first and ask questions later.) But if Starling hits, he’ll give the Royals something Rendon couldn’t – an elite hitter and defender at an up-the-middle position.

There’s still the matter of getting him signed, and yes, he’s a Boras client, and yes, he has a scholarship to play quarterback at Nebraska waiting for him. But the Royals have drafted Boras clients with their first pick three times in the last four years, and signed them all. And while Starling can play quarterback, he’s more of an option quarterback than pro-style passer – his NFL future pales to his MLB one. His two-sport status allows the Royals to spread out his bonus over five years. Expect him to sign a few minutes before the deadline on August 15th. I predict a bonus of between $7 and $7.5 million – the highest draft bonus in franchise history. I also predict that he will not get a major-league contract that would put him on the 40-man roster, which is important given that the roster is stuffed to the gills as is.

As for the rest of the story, we’ll just have to wait and see. As Alex Gordon can attest, when a player signs with his local team, not even an elite minor league career guarantees a happy marriage. As Jeff Francoeur can attest, not even a standout rookie season can offer protection against a nasty break-up. I have no doubt that Starling and the Royals will have their ups and downs, they’ll make mistakes and have regrets. All relationships do. But I choose to believe that they just might live happily ever after. What can I say? I’m a sucker for fairy tale endings.

***

The Royals got back to their roots after picking Starling, selecting high school players with each of their first five picks. After Starling, they took Cameron Gallagher, a prep catcher out of Pennsylvania; Bryan Brickhouse, a pitcher from the same Texas high school as rookie Kyle Drabek and last year’s #2 overall pick Jameson Taillon; a short but athletic right-hander from Florida named Kyle Smith, and a power-hitting shortstop from Texas named Patrick Leonard.

The Royals’ draft was most notable for not being notable. In the last three drafts, the Royals took advantage of other team’s penurious ways to grab players with signability issues in the middle rounds. In 2008, they took Tim Melville, a first-round talent, in the fourth round, and gave him $1.25 million to sign. In 2009, they grabbed Wil Myers (who they almost took with their first pick) in the third round and gave him $2 million; they took borderline first-rounder Chris Dwyer in the fourth round and gave him $1.45 million. Last year, they gave second-rounder Brett Eibner $1.25 million, and they snagged local high school right-hander Jason Adam in the fifth round, paying him $800,000 to sign.

This year, then, was conspicuous in that there were no eye-catching draft picks of players who deserved to go higher on talent alone. I’m not blaming the Royals for that necessarily; they’ve shown their willingness to pay big bucks to players they felt were deserving in the past, and it’s not like Starling was a signability pick. As more and more teams get religion about the draft and realize how foolish it is to draft a lesser player in order to save a few hundred grand, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to draft elite talents in the later rounds to begin with. True, the Royals could have taken someone like high school lefty Daniel Norris with their second pick; Norris was a first-round talent who reportedly wanted $3.9 million to sign. But given their track record, the Royals deserve the benefit of the doubt that they passed on Norris not because they couldn’t afford him, but simply because they wanted Gallagher more.

The one player who might have gotten away, through no fault of the Royals, is Jason Esposito. Esposito, you might recall, reportedly had a deal in place to sign with the Royals out of high school after the Royals took him in the 7th round in 2008. He (allegedly) agreed to sign for $1.5 million, then had cold feet after the draft and elected to attend Vanderbilt instead. He went into this season as a potential top-15 pick, but struggled a little with the bat and was expected to go in the supplemental first round.

Instead, he made it all the way to the second round – where the Orioles, drafting one pick ahead of Kansas City, snatched him. I have no idea whether the Royals would have taken him – but given their obvious interest in him three years ago, given that he fell in the draft farther than anyone expected, and given that he’s an excellent defensive third baseman, you have to wonder whether the Royals, for the second straight round, were screwed out of the player they wanted with one pick to go.

(Remember Alex Gordon’s two-out walk-off homer of Alfredo Simon last July? If Gordon had struck out instead, the Royals draft fourth ahead of Baltimore, and I might have just spent 5000 words writing about Esposito and Dylan Bundy. This is the Butterfly Effect applied to baseball.)

On paper, the choice of Cameron Gallagher makes me queasy – the last time the Royals took a Pennsylvania high schooler in the second round it was Jeff Bianchi*, and the last time they took a high school catcher in the second round it was Adam Donachie, whose claim to fame was hitting a homer off of the Royals’ first-round pick – Zack Greinke – in high school. Bianchi’s struggling after coming off Tommy John surgery; Donachie washed out years ago.

*: And the last time the Royals took a Pennsylvania high schooler in the first round, it was Chris Lubanski. Before him, it was Jim Pittsley. Oh, the humanity.

Brickhouse is more interesting; he has shown the ability to get his fastball in the mid-90s, but his breaking stuff needs work, and he doesn’t have the smoothest delivery in the world. Kyle Smith, for the round he was taken, is my favorite of these three picks. He throws in the low 90s, but with good secondary pitches, good command, and with more athleticism than Brickhouse. What dropped Smith in the draft is his size – he’s listed at 6’ even, and watching some videos of him online, I find it hard to believe he’s even that tall. I’ve long felt that teams downgrade short pitchers in the draft excessively, ever since the Royals grabbed a 5’9” pitcher with a dominant fastball and curveball in the 6th round in 1986. Tom Gordon was the Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 1988, nearly won the Rookie of the Year award in 1989, and pitched 21 seasons in the major leagues.

While the Royals didn’t get any steals in the draft, none of these guys were overdrafts either; according to Baseball America, they were all drafted about where you’d expect. Gallagher, taken with the #65 pick, was BA’s #64 draft prospect. Brickhouse (drafted #95) was #74; Smith (#126) was #106. The bottom line is that the Royals’ selections weren’t made on the basis of money, but simply on the basis of talent.

Given the front office’s track record, that’s good enough for me. While the Royals get a lot of attention for their willingness to go over slot, which has landed them Melville and Myers and Dwyer et al, some of their best picks have been guys who were drafted where they were expected to be drafted, and who signed for slot.

That 2008 draft? The Royals took Eric Hosmer* with the third pick, even though Baseball America ranked him the #7 player in the draft. With the #36 pick overall, the Royals took Mike Montgomery, who BA had ranked #40. Montgomery was your typically long-limbed projectable left-handed pitcher; no one knew if he would add velocity after he was drafted, but he did. With the #49 pick, the Royals took Johnny Giavotella, shocking everyone both because he seemed a bit of an overdraft (BA ranked him #127) and because a short college second baseman seemed the antithesis of the typical Dayton Moore pick.

The two guys that fell to the Royals were right-handers Tyler Sample (ranked #42, drafted #80), and Melville (ranked #15, drafted #115). While both are still legitimate prospects, the bullpen may be the future destination for both. And after taking Melville, the Royals used their fifth-round pick (#145) a pitcher who missed his entire senior season with a broken elbow, and who didn’t make BA’s Top 200 Draft Prospect list at all, John Lamb.

*: Thank God the Pirates took Pedro Alvarez with the #2 pick that year. Not only because it spared the Royals from the possibility of taking him, but because I’m pretty sure they would have taken Hosmer anyway. That would have provoked one of the most vicious – and in retrospect, one of the dumbest – articles I would have ever written. So thank you, Pittsburgh, for not making me look stupid. Sorry you wound up with the dunce cap instead.

The 2008 draft may go down as one of the best in the history of the franchise – more on that later – and yet their best draft picks were all guys who were drafted no lower than, and in many cases much sooner than, expected. The two guys who appeared to be great value for their draft slot have been the two most disappointing players in the first five rounds.

The point is that shrewd drafting has played at least as much a part in building the Royals’ farm system as the willingness to spend money. My comparison of Gallagher to Bianchi and Donachie is valid only if you think there’s no difference between the crew Dayton Moore has assembled to scout talent, and the skeleton crew that Allard Baird had at his disposal. Given the focus on high school talent once again this year, it will be years before we know how this draft pans out, and years before any of these guys – even Starling – helps the Royals at the major league level.

But if the Royals did nothing to help the team win in 2012 and 2013 and maybe even 2014, they may have done a lot to help the team win in 2015 and beyond. If you believe, as I do, that there’s enough talent on hand for the Royals to contend in the next three years – even with pitchers dropping like flies – then this draft may help elevate the Royals from an occasional contender to a budding dynasty.

Or it may be a total bust. Bubba Starling is a microcosm of the entire draft – the downside is frightening, but the upside is tremendous. Given the franchise’s track record, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Moose.

Let me start with the good stuff. I think Mike Moustakas was absolutely deserving of a major-league callup, and despite his superficially unimpressive numbers in Triple-A, I feel like his return engagement in Omaha could have hardly gone better.

Let’s go back to what Moustakas did last year. After missing the first couple of weeks of the season with a strained oblique muscle – perhaps a blessing, given his notorious struggles in cold weather in the early part of every season – he debuted for Northwest Arkansas with a bang, hitting two homers in his first game. In 66 games in Double-A, he hit .347/.413/.687, with 21 doubles and 25 homers. (And not that they mean anything, but he had 76 RBIs in 66 games.) His teammate Clint Robinson won the Texas League Triple Crown; Moustakas was on pace to beat Robinson in every category before he was promoted.

Moustakas continued to hit in Omaha, but his weaknesses were more exposed. He hit .293/.314/.564, with 15 homers and 16 doubles in 52 games. But he drew just eight walks, exposing Weakness #1: he’s too much of a free swinger.

After accounting for park effects, Moustakas actually hit right-handed pitching about as well in Triple-A as he did in Double-A; after clubbing right-handers for a .349/.421/.716 line at Northwest Arkansas, he hit .333/.356/.667 against them in Omaha. But after hitting .348/.426/.640 against southpaws in Double-A, Moustakas hit .222/.250/.383 against the more polished, craftier left-handers in Triple-A.

It’s a small sample size – just 81 at-bats – but the stats fit with the scouting narrative of Weakness #2: Moose is vulnerable to left-handed pitching.

Weakness #3 is no secret: Moustakas isn’t the most agile third baseman in the world. He has that squat, low-center-of-gravity body type that made a lot of scouts want to see what he could behind the plate, but doesn’t necessarily make for Gold Glove play at the hot corner. He has a cannon arm that compensates for his lack of range to some degree, but he’s still below-average overall.

So Moustakas returned to Omaha to start the year, and once again the cold weather – or something about the month of April – didn’t agree with him: he hit just .229/.304/.410. He hit four homers, but notably, just one double. With Eric Hosmer ahead of him in the lineup and hitting .439, the contrast was notable – one top prospect was clearly ready, and the other one clearly wasn’t.

But in May, Moustakas turned it on, hitting .321/.382/.560. His homers ticked up from four to five, but he smacked 11 doubles. In seven June games before he was called up, he hit .323 with three more doubles and a homer. His final line of .287/.347/.498 did not represent an improvement on his Omaha line from last season, but the trendline was very promising.

More importantly, look at his weaknesses:

He’s too much of a free swinger. Even in April, Moustakas drew nine walks, a number he matched in May. He drew 19 walks overall in 223 at-bats, after he walked eight times in 225 at-bats in Omaha last year. Not one of his 19 walks was intentional – the product of batting in front of Clint Robinson – so Moose actually had the highest walk rate of his career when he was called up.

This is meaningful. Moustakas is never going to be a 100-walk guy, not unless he hits for so much power that pitchers just refuse to throw him strikes, Sammy Sosa-style. He doesn’t need to draw 100 walks to be valuable. He simply needs to show enough discipline at the plate that pitchers know they need to challenge him. One of Moustakas’ strengths as a hitter is that he doesn’t strike out a lot for a power hitter, but his ability to make contact can make it tempting for him to swing at – and make weak outs on – pitches that other hitters can’t reach.

(The curse of easy contact is what has hamstrung the career of Josh Vitters, the player drafted immediately after Moustakas, and who the Royals were planning to pick until the morning of the draft. For four years, Josh Vitters has been described as having the prettiest swing you’ll ever see from a right-handed hitter, and he rarely strikes out – his career high is 65. But his career high in walks is 21, and he’s still trying to get out of Double-A.)

My worry with Moustakas was that if he reached the majors before his plate discipline improved, he’d be eaten alive. I hoped that another two months in Triple-A would prevent that. It appears that they have.

Moose is vulnerable to left-handed pitching. Small sample sizes and all that, but in 73 at-bats against lefties in Triple-A, Moustakas hit .260/.325/.507, a line not statistically distinguishable from his .300/.357/.493 line against right-handed pitchers. I suspect Moustakas will still struggle against left-handers more than Hosmer will, at least in the short term, but it doesn’t appear to be a crippling problem.

Moustakas isn’t the most agile third baseman in the world. At least from a scouting perspective, there’s no change here; Moustakas is a below-average, but playable, third baseman. There are legitimate long-term concerns with Moustakas, that if he gains any more weight in his lower half as he moves into his mid-to-late 20s, that he’ll have to move off the position. I wouldn’t be offering him any seven-year deals, let’s put it that way. Since his agent is Scott Boras, we’re probably not in any danger of that happening.

From a statistical perspective, though…traditional defensive stats are worthless at best, and misleading at worst. Minor league fielding stats are even worse. The only reason to look at fielding percentage would to make sure the number doesn’t start with an “8”. Moustakas’ career fielding percentage at third is .936; this year’s it .942. Those are low numbers for a major leaguer, but minor league fielding percentages generally improve in the majors owing to better field conditions.

But what strikes me as interesting about Moustakas’ fielding numbers is his range factor, which is simply the number of plays he makes per game. Compared to fielding percentage, range factor is 100 years more advanced; unfortunately, that’s the difference between the 1870s and the 1970s. But it’s something. And after never making more than 2.80 plays per game at third base, Moustakas’ range factor this season is 3.20.

For a third baseman to make 3.2 plays per game is astounding. Ryan Zimmerman and Scott Rolen, to take two Gold Glove third basemen of recent vintage, never made 3.2 plays per game, at either the major or minor league level. I don’t know that it means anything; maybe more balls were simply hit in the general direction of third base. You’d expect that if the Omaha pitching staff didn’t strike out a lot of guys – but they’ve averaged 7.3 Ks per 9 innings. You’d expect that if Omaha started a ton of left-handed pitchers – they’re a little above-average in that regard, as 25 of 66 starts have been made by lefties (mostly Duffy and Montgomery), but nothing exceptional.

Or maybe it’s a stone-cold fluke. Range factor, like RBIs, is subject to a lot of biases. A range factor of 3.20 is like having 65 RBIs in 55 games. You can have all those RBIs without being a great hitter, but you probably can’t have that many RBIs without being at least a good hitter. Moustakas probably can’t have a range factor that high without being at least a decent third baseman.

So anyway, even though the value of his performance in Omaha this year was no better than last year, I think Moustakas is significantly more ready for the majors now than he was at the start of the year. If there were any doubts about his plate discipline, they were dispelled when he drew a walk in each of his first four games. Moustakas is the first player in Royals history to draw a walk in the first four games of his career. Yeah, I didn’t see it coming either. But I’m glad it came.

Having said all that…I still don’t understand why he was called up when he was. As with Hosmer, it’s easy to let the excitement of having another piece of the puzzle on the roster overshadow the very real concerns with the timing.

First off, there’s a chance – a slim chance, but a chance – that Moustakas will still qualify as a Super Two. I take it on faith that the Royals would not have brought him up on June 9 unless they were absolutely, completely certain that he would not get the service time he needs. (It’s important to remember that the season started early this year, on March 31, which would move all the usual deadlines back a few days.) But what was the downside if they had waited another week and brought him up at the start of interleague play, which was apparently the plan? Was it really that important to get Mike Aviles off the roster? If they didn’t want to play Aviles at all, they could have just let him sit on the bench for a week. Mitch Maier could have given him pointers.

That is, I am hoping, a moot concern. What isn’t a concern is this: overnight, the Royals turned Wilson Betemit from an everyday third baseman into a bench player. And on this team, “bench player” means “cheerleader.” I really don’t know what the Royals think of Betemit. On the one hand, he’s an ex-Brave, and Dayton Moore signed him as a minor league free agent when he had washed out of the Yankees and White Sox organizations. On the other hand, all Betemit has done since he was promoted last year is hit, and evidently that has not been enough to impress the team’s brass.

Last season he hit .297/.378/.511 for the Royals, one of the great half-seasons in franchise history. The Royals’ response, from what I have heard, was to give Betemit a $1 million, take-it-or-leave-it offer; they were prepared to release him rather than go through arbitration if he wanted more. Perhaps surprisingly, he took it.

This season, Betemit is hitting .289/.348/.411 – not great numbers, but still well above-average in today’s world. (He was hitting .314/.379/.449 on May 30 before going into a 3-for-24 slide.) Two days ago, Buster Olney wrote, “The Royals' Wilson Betemit is drawing a lot of interest from rival evaluators, because of his positional flexibility, because of his production and because he's damn cheap -- his salary this season is $1 million.”

If rival evaluators are coming to see Betemit play, they’re going to be disappointed. In the first five games since Moustakas was called up, Betemit didn’t get off the bench. The Royals gave him a spot start today, undoubtedly cognizant of the fact that he’s not going to increase his trade value growing splinters in his butt.

Betemit isn’t Jose Guillen here – this isn’t like the Royals refusing to take a look at Kila Ka’aihue so Guillen could pump his trade value enough to fetch…Kevin Pucetas, who was taken off the 40-man roster to make room for Moose. Betemit is a free agent at the end of the year, but he’s an above-average hitter at a key position, he’s a switch-hitter, he’s dirt cheap, and even if he’s not the best defender in the world, that has value. Plus, he might fetch a draft pick at the end of the season – although the odds of that go down with every game he sits out.

Maybe the Royals have been feverishly trying to trade Betemit since December with no luck, and just got tired of waiting. But it feels like the Royals are so committed to their youth movement that anyone who’s not a part of it is treated like an afterthought. Moustakas is ready – promote him! We’ll figure out what to do with Betemit afterwards!

The Royals feel like Betemit is not a part of their future on the field, and that’s fine; while he’s a talented and versatile player, the positions he can play are already spoken for in Kansas City. But Betemit does have a part in the Royals future, in the guise of whatever young talent he can bring back in a trade. Every day he sits on the bench is a wasted day for him, and a missed opportunity for the Royals.

That’s the strategic loss of promoting Moustakas last week. The tactical loss is this: Wilson Betemit is now the Royals’ backup shortstop. He is also the Royals’ backup second baseman. In the last three seasons, Betemit has played 57 innings at shortstop. He has played 16 innings at second base.

Admittedly, he has spent more time at both positions while in the minors. But the reality is that there’s no way Ned Yost is going to feel comfortable playing Betemit at either position, and short of an injury or a 17-1 game, I can’t imagine a situation in which Yost removes either Alcides Escobar or Chris Getz from a game.

Which means the Royals are now locked at not one, but two positions. The Royals have two players in their lineup who absolutely will not come out of a game – and who just happen to be the two weakest hitters in their lineup. The Royals only have three bench players as it is – generally Maier, Betemit, and whichever catcher isn’t starting. When you have only three bench players, and the two weakest hitters in your lineup are sacrosanct, you’re basically sending a message to the opposing team, a message that says, “Bring in any pitcher you want against my ballclub. I won’t retaliate.”

(And yes, I’m well aware that Escobar is 16 for his last 29, raising his batting average 40 points in the process. That doesn’t invalidate my criticism of Ned Yost for refusing to pinch-hit for him. My point was not that Escobar wasn’t capable of improvement – on the contrary, I have repeatedly praised Yost’s track record in developing young hitters. But the Royals can have their cake and eat it too – Escobar’s development as a hitter isn’t going to be hurt if they pinch-hit for him every now and then. No matter how well Escobar is hitting, against a tough right-handed closer with the game on the line, I’d rather have Mitch Maier at the plate. Yost hasn’t made that switch once this season, and with Wilson Freaking Betemit as the backup shortstop, you’re sure as hell not going to see it now.)

With interleague play about to start up, it would seem that the Royals would have to – please?! – send down their 13th pitcher to bring up another hitter, as otherwise they’re going to have four players (counting Butler) they can pinch-hit with, meaning they could easily run out of pinch-hitters in an extra-inning game and be forced to hit with Jeff Francis or something. Jarrod Dyson’s speed and defense would make him a useful player in that role. But unless the Royals recall Mike Aviles after one week (which I’m not sure is even allowed by the rules) or do something crazy like call up Irving Falu, the same problem will remain: Chris Getz and Alcides Escobar will play. Every inning. Of every game.

Is that the sign of a team that takes winning seriously?

Again, in the grand scheme of things, these are annoyances, not catastrophes. Not wringing the most value out of Wilson Betemit because Mike Moustakas was ready to be called up is a wasted opportunity. Mike Moustakas not being ready to be called up in the first place would be cause for alarm. Losing a few extra games this season because you placed the entire lineup in a straitjacket is frustrating. Losing a few extra games each of the next few seasons because your young players weren’t as good as you thought they were would be heartwrenching.

The narrative is the same as always. Dayton Moore & Co. are doing a bang-up job of developing young talent, and everything else is just details. But details do matter. Maybe one day they’ll get them right.

Yost, Escobar, & The Ghost of J.J. Hardy.

“Not right now,” Yost said. “I’m not going to do it. I don’t care what anybody says I’m not going to do it. This is a kid that I think is going to hit one day, I want him to have as many at-bats as he can get because there’s going to be a time when we’re in line to win a championship and I want him to be able to handle himself in those situations.”

I owe you a draft recap, but when Ned Yost drops column gold into your lap, you run with it.

Last night, after the Royals spotted the Blue Jays a 9-4 lead in the sixth inning on a two-out grand slam by Adam Lind – which was set up when Ned Yost chose to intentionally walk Jose Bautista* – the Royals got back into the game when Billy Butler hit a two-out, three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning.

*: Speaking of dumb moves…look, I know that Jose Bautista is, right now, The Best Hitter In Baseball. Intentionally walking him in that situation was still a ridiculous idea. Bautista is hitting .351/.502/.723 and leads the league in all three splits, as well as homers, walks, and runs scored. But Lind is batting .317/.358/.579 himself; Yost himself said afterwards that while Bautista is “arguably the best hitter in the American League coming up”, Lind is “one of the top 15 hitters in the league.”

I’m not sure there’s any situation in which you ought to issue an intentional walk in order to face one of the top 15 hitters in the league. But if there is, this wasn’t it. With two outs, you’re not setting up the double play. By loading the bases, you allow a walk to turn into a run. And most importantly, YOST GAVE UP THE PLATOON SPLIT. With a right-hander on the mound, he walked a right-handed hitter to face a left-handed hitter.

Afterwards, Yost defended the move by saying that “Nate’s matchup numbers are good against left-handers.” At that moment, left-handed hitters were batting .255 against Adcock – 14 for 55, with two homers. Making a decision based on a sample size of 55 at-bats is exactly the type of pseudo-statistical decision-making that real analysts deride as nonsense. On the one hand, we have 135 years of evidence that left-handed hitters have more success against right-handed pitchers, and vice versa. On the other hand, we have a sample size of 55 at-bats, and not a particularly impressive sample.

Left-handed hitters are now 15 for 56 against Adcock. With three homers.

So anyway, the Royals headed into the bottom of the ninth down 9-7. Chris Getz grounded out, but Brayan Pena followed with a single up the middle to bring the tying run to the plate, in the form of Alcides Escobar.

Yost, as he has done all season long, allowed Escobar to bat for himself. Escobar struck out on four pitches. Alex Gordon followed with a double into the left-centerfield gap that drove in Pena all the way from first base. But with the tying run at second, Melky Cabrera’s looper into short left field was snared by shortstop Mike McCoy to end the game. If Escobar – or whoever batted for Escobar – had reached base, they would have scored on Gordon’s double, the game would have been tied, and the Royals could have done no worse than send the game into extra innings.

After the game, a member of the media rather sensibly asked Yost whether, in light of the fact that Escobar is hitting .209, with nine walks and seven extra-base hits (all doubles) in 62 games, Yost considered using a pinch-hitter for him. Yost did not take kindly to the question.

Yost has made the argument all season that winning games in the here and now will sometimes take a backseat to player development. This is an admirable philosophy, which will hopefully exchange current wins for future wins. Yost’s track record of development is, in fact, the primary reason why I supported him as the Royals manager, both when he was hired and today.

But there comes a point when sticking with a player through thick and thin becomes counter-productive. Escobar is not “struggling” at the plate. He is out-and-out sucking to a degree that is almost historic. Perhaps the Royals (and their fans) do not appreciate the historic nature of Escobar’s offense, because they’ve so recently lived through the equally historic suckitude of Tony Pena Jr. and Neifi Perez.

But we’re in historic territory nonetheless. After yesterday’s game, Escobar was hitting .209/.241/.241 in 238 plate appearances. No player with an OBP and a slugging average both below .250 has reached 250 plate appearances in a season since 1989, when John Shelby hit .183/.237/.229 in a remarkable 371 plate appearances. (Granted, Chone Figgins is neck-and-neck with Escobar to accomplish the feat this year.)

So yes, Escobar is killing the Royals at the plate. He has certainly resurrected them time and time again with his glove – but at some point, you have to cry uncle. The bottom of the ninth inning, when the Royals are losing, would seem to be that point. But Yost disagrees. Even in a situation where Escobar’s defense is meaningless – where the team is not going to play defense again unless they score some runs – Yost feels that the development of Escobar’s bat would be hindered by pinch-hitting for him.

I have so many questions I want to ask Yost.

The first question I’d like to ask Yost is this: it’s great that you’re so worried about Escobar’s confidence, but what about the confidence of the other 24 players on your roster? How do you think they feel when it’s the bottom of the ninth, the tying run is at the plate, the team has a history of dramatic late-inning comebacks, and you’re letting one of the weakest hitters in the league bat against the opposing closer?

The second question I’d ask is: if removing Escobar from the game in the ninth inning would hurt his confidence, then wouldn’t it hurt the confidence of, say, Aaron Crow when you pull him for your closer in the ninth inning? (Never mind, for a moment, the issues with Joakim Soria.) Crow, at least, is pitching great. Imagine a young reliever who was pitching terribly – could you imagine any manager leaving that reliever in to protect a one-run lead in the ninth? That would be madness. So how is it okay to leave a young struggling hitter in to bat with his team losing in the ninth? With pitchers, we expect them to have success in low-pressure situations before putting more things on their plate. Why wouldn’t we do this with hitters?

The third question I’d ask is: don’t you think that, at some point, forcing Escobar to bat with the game on the line might actually be hurting his confidence? As bad as Escobar is hitting overall, he’s even worse when the chips are on the line. He’s hitting .153 with runners in scoring position. With two outs and RISP, he’s batting .138 (4-for-29). In situations that Baseball Reference deems “high leverage”, he’s hitting .138 (8-for-58). If all the repetitions he’s getting in key situations will help him down the road, why do they only seem to be making things worse in the present?

The fourth question I’d ask is: if it’s so important to stick with a young, great defensive middle infielder who’s struggling to hit, why have other managers found success the other way? In 1968, Mark Belanger was a 24-year-old rookie shortstop with great defensive skills but who hit .208/.272/.248 for a team that was getting ready to contend (the Orioles won three straight AL pennants from 1969 to 1971.) Earl Weaver, his manager, removed Belanger from a game early 33 times that year. He wasn’t pinch-hit for every time – there were a few double-switches mixed in – but if the Orioles were losing in the late innings, Weaver didn’t let the need to develop Belanger’s bat keep him from trying to win the game.

How did this affect Belanger’s development? In 1969 he shocked everyone by hitting .287/.351/.345, won his first Gold Glove, and even got a few MVP votes. Belanger was never a good hitter and would have some terrible seasons with the stick in the future, but it’s hard to see how being sheltered from important situations at the age of 24 hurt his development when he had one of his best seasons at age 25.

Sticking closer to home, Frank White came up to the Royals as a defensive marvel but as someone whose offensive skills still needed to be refined. And unlike Escobar (and unlike Belanger) the raw tools were there to be an effective hitter. In 1975, when he was 24, White hit only .250/.297/.365. White was pulled out of a game early 17 times – and in the DH era, none of those were for double-switches. In 1976, when White hit .229/.263/.307, Whitey Herzog pulled him from a game early 36 times. Contrary to hurting his development, White continued to improve as a hitter into his mid-30s. (White, to his credit, has publicly stated that being pinch-hit for when he was young and inexperienced actually helped his development.)

“I went through this with J.J. Hardy,” Yost said. “He was hitting about .170 and everybody was screaming why we not pinch-hitting for him? How much longer are we going to go with a guy hitting .170? And the next year he hit 25 homers and made the All-Star team. So, I’ve got a little bit of an idea of what I’m doing here.”

Ah, so here we get to the rub of it. Yost treated J.J. Hardy the same way, and Hardy developed into a fine young hitter, and he’ll be damned if he’ll treat Escobar any differently.

If only that were the case.

Yost is a little off with Hardy’s numbers, but only a little. Hardy debuted with the Brewers in 2005 as their Opening Day shortstop, and as late as July 14th, was hitting .187/.293/.267 in 219 plate appearances. From that point until the end of the season, though, Hardy hit .308/.363/.503 with eight homers in 208 plate appearances. Hardy’s sophomore season ended in May when he tore ligaments in his ankle, but in 2007 he returned healthy and hit .277/.323/.463 with 26 homers, making his first All-Star team.

Yost stuck with Hardy through his struggles as a rookie, and Hardy responded by breaking out at the plate in the second half of the season. I am happy to give Yost the credit for sticking by his young shortstop despite his struggles. But did he?

On April 21st, the Brewers entered the top of the ninth against the Astros down 8-3. Hardy was due up fourth, and after two of the first three hitters reached base, he was pinch-hit for with Billy Hall. Hall drove in a run with a groundout, but his inability to reach base proved crucial when the next batter walked and then Brady Clark homered. The Brewers lost, 8-7.

On May 4th against the Cubs, the Brewers were tied 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth. Lyle Overbay led off with a single, which led to a sacrifice bunt and an intentional walk to bring up Hardy. Yost pinch-hit for Hardy with Junior Spivey, who struck out. The Brewers did not score that inning, but won the game on a bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the ninth.

On May 16th, the Brewers were losing 5-2 going into the ninth in Washington. Hardy was due to lead off the inning, but Jeff Cirillo batted instead, and grounded out; the Brewers went down in order in the inning.

On June 13th, the Brewers trailed the Devil Rays 5-3 in the top of the ninth. After Prince Fielder led off with a flyout, Yost called on Chris Magruder to pinch-hit for Hardy. Magruder flew out. A single and a walk gave the Brewers life before Rickie Weeks popped out to end the game.

On June 17th in Toronto, the Brewers trailed 9-5 in the ninth. After Geoff Jenkins walked with one out, Yost again called on Cirillo to pinch-hit for Hardy. Cirillo hit into a double play to end the game.

On June 21st at home, the Brewers trailed the Cubs 4-2 in the ninth. With two out, Damian Miller walked to bring Hardy up representing the tying run. Yost went to Lyle Overbay instead. Overbay walked; Cirillo then pinch-hit for the pitcher and grounded out to end the game.

On June 24th, for the first time Yost pinch-hit for Hardy even though the Brewers were leading, 2-1 against the Twins, in the bottom of the eighth. Hardy came up with men on first and second and one out. Wes Helms pinch-hit for him, and singled up the middle to load the bases. Cirillo then got hit by a pitch to drive in an insurance run. Helms stayed in the game to play third, Bill Hall moved from third to shortstop, and despite the defensive hit, Hall turned a 6-3 double play in the ninth and the Brewers held on to win, 3-1.

On July 16th, Hardy came up with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and the Brewers trailing the Nationals 5-3. Chris Magruder pinch-hit for him and flew out to end the game.

Eight times in the first half of the season, Ned Yost pinch-hit for J.J. Hardy. Six of those eight times occurred in the ninth inning; seven of them occurred with the Brewers losing. Only three times did Yost pinch-hit for Hardy with a left-handed hitter; the other five times he pinch-hit for him with another right-handed hitter, suggesting that even without obtaining the platoon advantage, Yost felt like a pinch-hitter gave the Brewers a better chance to win. (This is germane to the Royals, as they have the perfect pinch-hitter in Mitch Maier, who also has the advantage of batting left-handed.)

It so happens that on July 16th, Hardy had gone 1-for-3 with a double, starting a six-game hitting streak that would turn his season around. Yost only pinch-hit for him one more time the rest of the season. Once Hardy started to hit, Yost saw no reason to take him out.

But when Hardy was struggling at the start of the year, Yost pinch-hit for him repeatedly. Yost evidently wasn’t worried about ruining his young shortstop’s confidence by letting a more accomplished hitter bat with the outcome of the game in the balance. And judging by the results, he shouldn’t have been.

That was in 2005. Now it’s 2011, and Yost has pinch-hit for Escobar once all season – in the bottom of the fifth inning of a 17-1 game after Vinny got Mazzaro’ed, just to give Escobar a few innings of rest. Alcides Escobar is hitting .209, he has yet to hit a home run, and Ned Yost has not pinch-hit for him once in a meaningful situation all season.

The Ned Yost of 2005 would have.

“I went through this with J.J. Hardy,” Yost said. “He was hitting about .170 and everybody was screaming why we not pinch-hitting for him? How much longer are we going to go with a guy hitting .170? And the next year he hit 25 homers and made the All-Star team. So, I’ve got a little bit of an idea of what I’m doing here.”

Well at least in 2005, with J.J. Hardy, you did.

If Yost wants to hold up J.J. Hardy as a model for how you should handle a young shortstop who’s struggling to hit, well, I agree. The problem isn’t the way Yost handled J.J. Hardy. The problem is that he can’t even remember how he handled Hardy in the first place.

(Postscript: I was working on this piece throughout the day on Thursday, planning to post it as soon as my radio show was over. Naturally, the Royals announced immediately after the game that Mike Moustakas was called up, and suddenly this entire article is a news cycle behind. I’ll try to get you some analysis of the Moustakas call-up soon, followed by a draft recap and other things.)

Draft Preview 2011.

(See updates at bottom.)

The first thing you have to understand about my draft preview is that I’m not a draft expert. Of course, I’m not and never was a minor league expert, but that didn’t stop me from writing Baseball Prospectus’ Top Prospect List, debuting the list in 1999 (and continuing until BP hired a real minor league expert in Kevin Goldstein to take over the task in 2006.) And while there were some real howlers on those prospect lists, there were also some real gems – I think you’d find that in retrospect, our lists hold up well with anyone else in the industry at that time.

The point is that while I am not a scout, I know some scouts, or more precisely, I know (and read) people who know a lot of scouts. I will never be able to even approach the work that people like Goldstein and the guys at Baseball America do, the first-hand sourcing and reporting that they do. What I can do is take their work, analyze the historical trends of the draft, and arrive at my own conclusions. It’s cheating a little, I admit.

(This is a good time to point out that Prospectus has opened their vault, making access to articles more than a year old available to the public. What this means is that, if you haven’t read my series of draft articles from 2005-2006, this would be a good time to do so.)

The second thing you have to understand is that, given that statistical analysis is almost useless for evaluating amateur players, and given the Royals’ admirable track record in this regard under the Dayton Moore administration, this might be the only time all year where, no matter what the Royals decide, I will probably defer to their judgment. In my 2008 draft preview, the conclusion I came to was that Eric Hosmer was the riskiest selection of the guys the Royals were considering, both because there was a college first baseman who was much closer to the majors (Justin Smoak), and because my draft analysis had shown that high school first baseman taken in the early rounds had a terrible track record.

My conclusion was, shall we say, incorrect. I was correct that Smoak was a comparable player who would need less development time, but the argument I heard in favor of Hosmer at the time was that while Smoak was a potentially great power hitter, Hosmer was a potentially great pure hitter with power. So far, they’re both playing out that way. And I was correct that from 1984 to 1999, the timeframe that my draft study looked at, high school first basemen almost literally never panned out. Derrek Lee was, I believe, the only high school first baseman taken in the first round in that era that developed into an above-average player.

Since 1999, only three teams have drafted a high school first baseman in the first ten picks of the draft. In 2000, one of the worst drafts of all time, the Marlins nonetheless managed to use the first pick on Adrian Gonzalez. Two years later, the Brewers took Prince Fielder with the seventh pick overall. And in 2008, the Royals took Hosmer third. The lesson, as always: past performance is no guarantee of future results. Also, the lesson is that teams do a much better job of scouting amateur talent than they used to. (Particularly high school talent, owing in large part to the national showcases which allow high school players to show their abilities against elite competition.)

Two years ago, the Royals used the 12th pick of the draft on Aaron Crow, ignoring my advice to take college shortstop Grant Green (who the A’s gleefully snagged with the next pick.) Three months ago, with Crow coming off a terrible season in the minors, and Green hitting .318/.363/.520 last year in the California League, the Royals appeared to have erred. Today the answer is unclear; Green is hitting .289/.346/.381 in Double-A, and is probably a future second baseman. On the other hand, the Royals used the 12th pick in the draft on a reliever. If Crow makes a triumphant return to the rotation, it’s a big win; but even an elite closer doesn’t make for great value in the top half of the first round.

Also, if the Royals had selected Green, they probably would not have turned to his high school double-play partner Christian Colon with the fourth pick last year. I liked the pick of Colon, but he was my second choice behind college catcher Yasmani Grandal. Colon is hitting .239/.308/.318 for Northwest Arkansas; he’s basically Alcides Escobar without the glove. Grandal is still in high-A ball, in a hitter’s league, but his .288/.404/.488 line looks a lot more appealing, particularly for a catcher who can switch-hit.

So the bottom line is: I am not a draft expert, and no matter who the Royals select, I will be reluctant to criticize them too much until we see how things play out. Even 18 months from now it will probably be too soon to have a definitive opinion. Fifteen months ago, nine out of ten Royals fans would have happily traded Hosmer for the eighth pick in that draft, Gordon Beckham, and the tenth Royals fan would have been flogged by his peers for his insubordination.

Fifteen months ago, Mike Moustakas looked like another bust, and the decision to take him over Matt Wieters and Rick Porcello looked like another case of the Royals being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Today, while Moustakas wouldn’t go #2 overall if the draft was re-held, the only first-round picks clearly superior are David Price (who went #1 overall) and Jason Heyward. Wieters would probably go ahead of Moustakas, and Porcello might, but given that the first two seasons for each player in the majors would have already been wasted on the Royals, at this point I’d rather have Moustakas through 2017 than Wieters or Porcello through 2015.

So now that I’ve established that I have no credibility when it comes to the draft, here’s my draft analysis.

Last season, the Royals had the unfortunate position of drafting fourth in a draft with three marquis talents, which made it very difficult to figure out who the Royals should or would be taking. The Royals were linked to Grandal a week before the draft, then to Chris Sale until literally 20 minutes before the draft began, when word came out that they had agreed to a deal with Colon.

This year, once again there’s a good chance we won’t have a firm idea who the Royals will be taking when the draft starts. The reason for that, thankfully, is much different.

Let me back up here and start with this: with less than 48 hours until the draft, six players have separated themselves from the pack. Furthermore, it appears that four of those six players are just slightly ahead of the other two, although that is far from a consensus opinion. Let’s start with those four:

Gerrit Cole, RHP, UCLA. Cole was a first-round pick of the New York Yankees out of high school. That right there is a point in his favor: he turned down the Yankees. And thank God he did, too, because from his freshman year it was clear there was no way he should have lasted to the #28 pick overall. He’s been talked about as a potential #1 pick in this draft for over two years, and he may yet live up to that assessment.

Cole has three well above-average pitches: a fastball in 94-97 range, touching 99 and even 100; a hard-breaking slider, and a changeup that he doesn’t throw enough but gets excellent reviews when he does. His stock has dropped a little this season, because for whatever reason his numbers weren’t matching the results. In 114 innings he has a 3.31 ERA, and has allowed 103 hits and 24 walks, while walking 119 strikeouts – excellent numbers, but a little underwhelming for a potential #1 overall pick in college, particularly in what is the Year of the Pitcher for the NCAA as well (in college, it’s for an obvious reason – the types of bats that hitters are allowed to use has been limited significantly.)

Friday’s start in UCLA’s Regional is illustrative – Cole struck out 11 batters in seven innings, while walking just one. He also gave up 11 hits – ten of them singles – and three runs, and took the loss.

I’m not that concerned with his performance. Cole’s not some fly-by-night pitcher; he’s not Colt Griffin. He’s been one of, if not the best, pitcher in his age class for close to four years. His stuff is as good as ever; the main complaint I’ve heard is that his fastball sometimes gets elevated and straightens out. If a little bump in the road allows him to drop to #5 overall, well, the Royals just got a gift.

The latest word from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is that the Pirates have decided to take Cole #1 overall. If that’s true, good for them. He’s not Stephen Strasburg, but he’s one level below him, and could be in the majors by the end of next season.

Anthony Rendon, 3B, Rice. I’m not sure whether I should spend much time on Rendon, because it would seem almost inconceivable that he would fall to #5. It seems inconceivable that he would fall to #3; last summer, he was the clear #1 pick in this draft.

Then Rendon broke one of his ankles while playing for Team USA last season. He healed from that, but has been playing with an injured shoulder all season, one that might require surgery, and he’s not a big guy at 6’0” and 190 pounds, and suddenly there are concerns that he might just be injury-prone.

He’s still raked all season, but his power has taken a hit. As a sophomore, he hit .394/.530/.801 with 26 homers in just 63 games. This year, he’s hitting .332/.522/.531, with only six homers. He’s compensated for his lack of power by improving his plate discipline from excellent to ridiculous – he’s walked 79 times in 62 games. He’s also considered an above-average defender at third base.

The Mariners, with the #2 pick overall, have been on him all season. But late word is that the Mariners are at least considering a couple of high school bats (Bubba Starling and Francisco Lindor). If the Mariners go in another direction, the Diamondbacks and Orioles seem locked in on pitching, which means that Rendon could somehow fall to the Royals at #5.

The problem is, there are few things the Royals need less than a third baseman. (Well, a first baseman.) Rendon profiles as a better defensive player than Moustakas, so the Royals could move Moose to right field, I suppose – but then what about Wil Myers? Actually, there’s some word that the Mariners might actually consider him at second base, because apparently the Mariners have an obligation to try every college hitter they select #2 overall at second base. Moving Rendon to second base would be sub-optimal defensively, but man, that would make for a nice offense.

While I think that it’s fair for teams to consider positional weakness as a tiebreaker, you should never draft for need in the first round. If Rendon is there at #5, the Royals will need a damn good reason to turn him down. He’s the safest pick in the draft, and profiles as Evan Longoria with less power. But I have to hope that he’s not there when the Royals pick, because it’s hard to envision a scenario where the Royals take him even if he is.

Danny Hultzen, LHP, Virginia: Hultzen doesn’t have the overpowering raw stuff of a Gerrit Cole or the unconventional dominance of a Trevor Bauer. He is a safe, polished, almost boring left-handed starter. His polish and command was a given before the season, but now his velocity has ticked up into the low 90s, pushing him into Top 5 consideration. He might be the closest pitcher to the majors in the draft, and he compares favorably to Drew Pomeranz and Mike Minor and Brian Matusz, the first college southpaws taken in the last three drafts.

Yesterday he threw seven innings in a Regional game, allowing three hits and a walk, striking out 12, and getting the win. That’s par for the course for Hultzen; in 15 starts this year he’s 11-3 with a 1.57 ERA. In 103 innings he’s allowed just 69 hits and 17 walks, while striking out 148. Whichever team drafts him can reasonably project him to be ready for a rotation spot in the majors a year from now. He’s more of a #2 starter than an ace, but the lack of risk more than compensates for his lack of extreme upside.

That team is almost certainly not going to be the Royals. The Diamondbacks love him at #3; if they go in another direction the Orioles are inclined to take him at #4. The wild card here, again, is if the Mariners take a high-school hitter at #2, in which case I don’t know whether Arizona or Baltimore would be inclined to take Rendon instead of Hultzen. If he’s available for the Royals at #5, then something very strange has happened in the draft. Left-handed starters are always in demand; even though the Royals have less need for a left-handed pitching prospect than any other team in baseball, it would be hard for them to turn down a guy who could fill a rotation spot by next summer.

Dylan Bundy, RHP, Owasso (OK) HS: No right-handed high school pitcher has ever gone #1 overall in the draft, and Bundy is unlikely to break that streak. But the mere fact that he’s even being considered for the #1 pick is testament to his combination of elite stuff and uncanny polish for an 18-year-old. Not only does he throw in the 94-97 mph with his fastball, but he’s also mastered a cutter in the upper 80s which is an equally good pitch. Throw in an above-average curveball and an average changeup, and you have an 18-year-old with the maturity of a 21-year-old.

Nine years ago, much like today, the Royals wanted to draft a college pitcher that would make it to the majors quickly. Fortunately, their Florida scout (Cliff Pastornicky) succeeded in convincing Allard Baird that the quick-to-the-majors college pitcher he wanted was actually still in high school. Zack Greinke made his major league debut less than two years later.

I haven’t heard anyone compare Bundy to Greinke in terms of their stuff or delivery. But simply in terms of a high school pitcher who has the ability to reach the majors quickly and has the potential to develop into a front-line starter, Bundy is giving me the same vibe. He’s “only” 6’1” and 205 pounds, and doesn’t have much projection left. But frankly, he doesn’t need much projection; the stuff he has right now is already ace-caliber. If he’s there at #5, there isn’t another pitcher in the draft I’d rather take with the possible exception of Cole.

Again, though, he probably won’t be there. The Orioles love Bundy, and his brother is actually a pitcher in their system. They also love Hultzen, and could be tempted to take him if presented with the option. But the odds that both Hultzen and Bundy are there for the Orioles at #4 are slim.

If I had to guess the first four picks right now, I’d say it’s going to go Cole, Rendon, Hultzen, Bundy. But I’d also say there’s a 30-40% chance that the draft will not proceed in that order. Maybe the Pirates are sufficiently worried about Cole’s final start that they select Rendon, and the Mariners take Starling or Lindor, and Cole falls all the way to #5. Or maybe Trevor Bauer’s last start makes the Diamondbacks or Orioles change their mind and they select him instead, and Bundy falls to #5. There are a lot of scenarios in play which allows one of the four elite players in the draft to fall.

But if none of them do – or even if one of them does – the Royals have a pleasant decision of their own to make. Specifically, that decision looks like it will come down to the following two players, both of whom have as much upside as anyone in the draft, but both of whom (for very different reasons) have more risk than the four guys above:

Trevor Bauer, RHP, UCLA: Cole’s teammate at UCLA doesn’t match Cole in terms of his repertoire. But Bauer far exceeds him in terms of results.

Even last year, Bauer was the slightly better pitcher. He threw more innings (131 to 123), had a better ERA (3.02 to 3.37), had fewer walks (41 to 52) and more strikeouts (165 to 153). But this year, Cole hasn’t come close to matching Bauer’s performance. No one in college baseball has.

In 16 starts, Bauer is 13-2 with a 1.25 ERA. In 137 innings, he has allowed 73 hits and 36 walks, and has struck out 203. After Cole lost UCLA’s regional opener on Friday, Bauer took the mound yesterday and threw a complete-game six hitter, walking two and striking out 14. With his last strikeout, he broke the Pac-10’s single-season strikeout record of 202…set by Mark Prior.

Bauer’s season ranks up there with Prior’s junior year and Stephen Strasburg’s junior year and Jered Weaver’s junior year as one of the most dominant statistical seasons by a college starter in a generation.

His raw stuff, while not Cole’s caliber, is awfully good. His fastball is more 91-93, but he maintains his velocity deep into ball games. His breaking ball is a dynamite curveball, and he throws an above-average changeup and dabbles with a slider and even a split-finger. He has tremendous raw intelligence which serves him well on the mound – he graduated from school a year early to join the Bruins, and he doesn’t turn 21 until next January. Combine Brian Bannister’s smarts with elite stuff…that’s quite a pitcher.

So what’s the problem? Well, that complete game yesterday was hardly an anomaly – he’s thrown TEN complete games in 16 starts, and is averaging 8.56 innings per start. Yesterday he threw 133 pitches, and he’s routinely gone over 130 this season. The shame of it is in that many of his starts, the Bruins were up by 5 or more runs in the eighth and ninth inning. I understand that college coaches only care about winning in the here and now and don’t care what happens to their pitchers in the future – but you’d think that, for recruiting reasons alone, the Bruins wouldn’t waste Bauer’s arm on needless innings.

I know that if I had a son that was a highly-recruited pitcher out of high school, there’s no way I’d let him go to Rice, given what that university has done to guys like Wade Townsend and Philip Humber and Jeff Niemann and Kenny Baugh. UCLA has a great reputation for developing pitchers, but if Bauer breaks down, I don’t see how that wouldn’t affect their ability to recruit pitchers.

In any case, Bauer hasn’t made the situation any better with his unique training regimen, which includes throwing up to 60 pitchers at full strength before the game even starts, and throwing between innings, and throwing in his sleep, and…the stories all seem to run together, but it’s clear that Bauer throws a lot. Again, he’s a very intelligent guy, has studied biomechanics intensely, and his idol is Tim Lincecum, whose pitch counts in college put Bauer’s to shame and has, ahem, worked out. But it has to be a concern. The fact that Bauer is younger than your average college junior may actually work against him – as bad as it is to throw this many pitches when you’re 21, it’s even worse when you’re 20.

And then there’s the whole long-toss thing, as Bauer (and Dylan Bundy) are intense devotees to the style of training which involves pitchers throwing up to 300 feet to build arm strength and command while preventing injury. Many baseball teams, the Royals among them, are skeptical of this training regimen. The Royals have already had their issues with Michael Montgomery, who adheres to the same long-toss guru (Alan Jaeger) as Bauer. The Royals and Montgomery compromised; he doesn’t throw as far as he’d like, but farther than the Royals would like him to.

This issue came to the forefront a few weeks ago when Jeff Passan penned this column, claiming that Bauer and Bundy had basically told a few teams – the Royals among them – not to draft them. As recently as two weeks ago, it appeared certain that the Royals would not take Bauer, as much because of their own concerns as his. But Dayton Moore was in attendance scouting him a few weeks ago (of course, since he pitches the day after Cole, it would have been silly for Moore not to stick around.) And I’ve been told that these concerns are vastly overstated, and that Bauer is absolutely in the mix for the Royals’ pick.

The upside here is crazy high, if you think that Bauer and Lincecum are at all comparable. Their pitching style isn’t quite the same, but in the sense that Lincecum’s workload in college has not hurt him one bit in pro ball, and may have helped him – if you knew for a fact that Bauer wouldn’t get hurt, and would be able to hold up to 33-start, 220-inning workload in the majors, how could you not draft him?

On the other hand, he might break down tomorrow. Anyway, he’s one option.

The other option, of course, is Bubba Starling, Gardner-Edgerton (KS) HS. The Royals have had a top pick for so many years that I guess it was inevitable that, eventually, they’d have the option of choosing from a kid in their backyard. Starling is not your ordinary kid, though – he might be the greatest multi-sport athlete in Kansas history. He’s almost certainly the greatest Kansas high school baseball player of the draft era.

In the history of the June draft, the highest a high school position player has been drafted out of the state of Kansas was…drum roll…Lee Stevens, a Lawrence High School grad who went #22 overall to the Angels in 1986 draft. Stevens was horrible for the Angels and disappeared from the majors for four years, but came back at age 28 and was a league-average hitter for about five years. Brian Holman, a right-hander out of Wichita North, is the highest Kansas high school pick at #16 in 1983, to the Expos, and Holman pitched four quality seasons in the majors before his arm blew up at the age of 26, and he never pitched in the majors again.

(Seven players have been drafted out of Kansas in the top 11 picks overall. All seven went to Wichita State.)

So Starling’s emergence as the premier high school hitter in the country is really without precedent in Kansas. He’s a five-tool centerfielder who had first-round talent as a pitcher, in addition to being the quarterback recruit for the University of Nebraska.

If you’re inclined to be suspicious of a team using their top pick on the local high school legend, remember that this is exactly the situation the Twins found themselves in ten years ago, when they had the #1 overall pick and passed on Prior, and Georgia Tech first baseman Mark Teixeira, for a local high school catcher, one of the premier multi-sport athletes in Minnsota history, who was also the #1 QB recruit in the country and had a scholarship waiting for him at Florida State. Time proved that the Twins were right to take Joe Mauer. And time might prove that the Royals ought to take Bubba Starling.

I certainly don’t think that Starling is a reach with the #5 pick, but I do think that some Royals fans are so spooked by the Royals missing on Albert Pujols – and more recently, Logan Morrison – that they want Starling come hell or high water. Taking the local player is fine as a tiebreaker, but you shouldn’t be basing decisions on a player’s proximity to your ballpark. The second-highest drafted Kansas high school hitter, taken #23 overall in 1996, was a kid named Damian Rolls. The Royals passed on him with the #14 pick, and a lot of local fans were upset that the Royals didn’t take the local legend.

Rolls was taken by the Dodgers, and was a bust in the minors. The Royals actually acquired Rolls in the 1999 Rule 5 Draft…and immediately traded him to Tampa Bay in a pre-arranged deal. Rolls played 266 games for the Rays, back before the Rays decided to try to impersonate a major league organization, and was terrible. Then again, with that #14 pick the Royals took Dee Brown, who while a beast in the minors wound up with eerily similar overall numbers to Rolls in the majors.

If the Royals pass on Starling, it’s not because they “missed” on him, like they did with Pujols or Morrison. Every team in the country is well aware of Starling’s abilities. They’re also aware of his flaws – he’s faced very weak high school competition, and while he has speed and raw power in abundance, there are at least some concerns about whether he’ll hit enough to make the whole package worthwhile. Two years ago the Padres used the #3 overall pick on Donovan Tate, a similar all-world athletic talent who need to refine his hit tool, and Tate has been a big disappointment so far. Starling projects as a better hit at this point than Tate did, and it’s worth noting that Keith Law, who doesn’t impress easily and made his first-ever trip to the state of Kansas to see Starling play, ranks Starling as the #3 player in this draft. But the risk is there.

Starling has the highest upside in this draft – a true five-tool centerfielder, a guy who hits .300 with 30 homers and 30 steals and Gold Glover-caliber defense. He also has the lowest floor of anyone likely to go in the first ten picks. There’s a legitimate possibility he won’t get out of Double-A. As with Bauer, the Royals have to decide whether the potential for a perennial All-Star talent is worth the risk that they once again bust on a Top-10 pick.

As recently as a week ago, the odds the Royals would take Starling appeared slim – they were focused on pitching, particularly college pitching, and Starling was not on their radar. Now, if Cole and Hultzen and Bundy are all gone, word is that they’re at least re-considering Bubba. The Royals need another pitcher, and a quick-to-the-majors college pitcher fits the team’s contention window a lot better than a centerfielder who might not reach the majors until 2015 or 2016. But you can’t force these things. If the pitcher isn’t there, take the best player available, and if it so happens that he lives forty miles down the road, even better.

Here’s how I would rank the six guys if I were drafting:

1. Cole

2. Bundy

3. Rendon

4. Hultzen

5. Bauer

6. Starling

But ultimately, as long as the Royals pick any of these six players, I can’t fault the pick. The nightmare scenario here is one in which the first four guys above are off the board, and the Royals decide against both Bauer and Starling – Bauer because they’re worried he’ll get hurt or don’t want to deal with the headache of his long-toss program, Starling because they don’t think he’ll hit or because they want a college pitcher above all.

If that’s the case, they’ll wind up selecting from a host of second-tier pitchers – Matt Barnes of Connecticut, Texas’s Taylor Jungmann, Vanderbilt’s Sonny Gray, or Kentucky’s Alex Meyer. I think that would be a horrible mistake.

While the risk/reward equation for the draft has changed over the years, one thing I believe is as true today as it was when I did my draft study is that of the four quadrants of draft picks (high school vs. college, pitcher vs. hitter), college pitchers return the least value. High school pitchers are a better value because major league organizations do a better job of protecting arms than college coaches, and hitters are a better value than pitchers because of the risk of injury. Just take a look at every college pitcher the Royals have taken in the first or supplemental round in the last 25 years. (WARNING: This list contains graphic displays of fail, and may not be suitable for pregnant women or small children.)

2009: Aaron Crow (#12)

2006: Luke Hochevar (#1)

2004: Matt Campbell (#29)

2004: J.P. Howell (#31)

1999: Kyle Snyder (#7)

1999: Mike MacDougal (#25)

1999: Jay Gehrke (#32)

1998: Jeff Austin (#4)

1998: Matt Burch (#30)

1997: Dan Reichert (#7)

1993: Jeff Granger (#3)

1992: Sherard Clinkscales (#31)

Crow, along with Howell and MacDougal, has found success in the bullpen, but all three of those guys were drafted to be in the rotation, and they failed at that task. Hochevar, as much as he drives us crazy, is clearly the best starter the Royals have found from the college ranks in the first round. (Kevin Appier was a JuCo pick in 1987. You have to go back to Scott Bankhead in 1984 to find a college pitcher worthy of a first-round pick.)

That’s not to say the Royals should shy away from all college pitchers, but it does make me very worried about the fate of the second-tier guys I mentioned above. Some will pan out; others will end up in the bullpen, some will get hurt, and some will make people scratch their head three years from now and ask, “how was that guy ever a first-round pick?”

If the Royals go off the board, I hope they do so for someone like Francisco Lindor, a high school shortstop with elite defensive skills who ought to be able to hit well in the majors. Or maybe even Archie Bradley, who’s just the second-best right-handed high school pitcher in Oklahoma, but also the second-best high school pitcher in the country. But if they take a “safe” pick like Barnes and then wonder why he’s topped out as a Quadruple-A pitcher two years from now…well, they get what they deserve.

At the very least, we can be reasonably confident that the Royals will take the player they think is the best available, not the player they think is the best available from among the players that fit their budget. The days of taking Jeff Austin because the Royals didn’t want to pay J.D. Drew’s price tag are, thankfully, over.

Check back here between now and the draft; if there are any updates as to who the Royals will select, I’ll try to update this post with some quick thoughts. And then my usual draft recap a few days later.

(Update 1, 11:52 AM CDT: So the final draft predictions are being filed. Keith Law at ESPN and Jonathan Mayo at MLB.com agree on the order of the Top 3: Cole, Rendon, and Bauer. This is a good thing, I think - I'm worried that the Royals would pass on Rendon and Bauer if they were there, which might lead to a nightmare scenario. If they're both already taken, that means plenty of good options remain on the table.


Mayo has Hultzen going to the Orioles, and the Royals taking Bubba Starling; Law has the Orioles with a surprise pick of Archie Bradley, with the Royals taking Bundy. Bundy would be a coup - the #2 talent in the draft in my opinion. Starling obviously would be a fine pick as well. Jon Heyman tweeted his top 6, with the same top 3 as the others, but with Bundy going to Baltimore and the Royals taking Danny Hultzen. That would be a surprise, but a good kind of surprise, because no one expected Hultzen to fall to #5.


As I write this, Baseball America has just posted their final draft order, and their top five is the same as Law's. I know fans want the local kid, but Oklahoma is local enough, isn't it?)


(Update 2, 1:39 PM CDT: Kevin Goldstein has chimed in, and he's with the consensus - Cole, Rendon, Bauer, then Hultzen to Baltimore, and Bundy to the Royals. Let's hope there are no surprises in the next five hours - I am quite happy with the consensus here.)